# Chapter Four — Resurrection and Rebellion

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## Italy’s “Resurrection”

In 1850, if you were an American, your leader was the president of the United States. If you were Spanish, you spoke the language of Spain and saluted the Spanish flag. And if you were French, you swore allegiance to the leader of France.

But in 1850, to be “Italian” simply meant that you lived on the rocky peninsula that stretched down into the Mediterranean Sea like a boot. On that peninsula, over a dozen different states jostled each other. Each had its own laws, its own borders, and its own prince. Most of those states belonged not to a country called “Italy,” but to the country of Austria. There *was* no Italy. “Italy,” one Austrian nobleman remarked, “is merely a geographic expression!”

But in the years between 1820 and 1860, the people who lived in the Italian states began to believe that “Italy” should be more than a “geographic expression.” *Italy* should be a *nation*.

All over the Italian peninsula, men who hoped to shake free of Austria and unite the Italian states into one country began to meet together in secret societies. These societies had names like “Sublime Perfect Masters” and “the Carbonaria.” They had secret passwords and codes, mysterious rituals, and underground meetings. Their members grew long hair and bushy beards. The police who patrolled Italian streets watched for these rebels, hoping to arrest them. Then the police would drag them off, not to jail—but to the barber’s, for a haircut.

If Italy was ever going to be free of Austrian rule, the secret societies would have to do more than hold meetings and grow long hair. But although the different societies all wanted the Italian states to be united into one nation, each society had a different idea about what this nation should be. Some wanted Italy to be a republic—a country in which the Italians themselves would elect their leaders and make their own laws. Others wanted the Italian states to join together under the leadership of the pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, who lived in the Italian city of Rome. Still others thought that Italy should be ruled by a king—perhaps the king of Piedmont-Sardinia, the powerful Italian state in the north.

In 1831, the secret society called “the Carbonaria” managed to join all of these disagreeing societies together in an open revolt against Austrian rule. But Austria sent soldiers to break up the rebellion. Hundreds of secret society members were arrested. The ringleaders were sentenced to be hanged or shot.

One of the ringleaders, Giuseppe Mazzini, escaped. He watched in horror as the other leaders of the Carbonaria were put to death—but he wasn’t willing to give up the fight for independence. Instead, he formed another society, called Young Italy. Every Young Italian was under forty and had to own a rifle, a dagger, and fifty bullets. The Young Italians knew that two hundred years earlier, back in the days of the Renaissance, the Italian states had been free and powerful. They hoped to make the states free and powerful once more—but this time, united into one Italian republic. This movement became known as the *Risorgimento* (the “rising again,” or “Resurrection,” of Italy).

The princes of Italy and the noblemen of Austria were frightened of Mazzini. He believed that God had told him to free Italy. He always wore black, saying, “I am in mourning for my country.” And he preached that it was moral and right to assassinate tyrannical leaders. One of his heroes was Brutus, the Roman senator who had helped to kill Julius Caesar. Soon, Austria declared that membership in Young Italy was a crime punishable by death.

But Young Italy continued to grow. Soon a young sailor named Giuseppe Garibaldi joined Mazzini’s Young Italy. Garibaldi would soon become Mazzini’s right hand man in yet another revolt against Austrian rule.

This revolt began in 1848. Fighting spread north as far as the powerful state of Venice, and south all the way down to the city of Rome. As the fighting grew bloodier, the pope fled from Rome into Naples, the southern kingdom of Italy, which was still under Austrian control. He sent out messages to Roman Catholic kings all over Europe, begging them to send their armies to drive the Young Italians out of Rome.

France answered the pope’s call. Soon, French soldiers were sailing towards the coast of Italy, expecting to land near Rome and march into the city without much resistance. But as soon as they landed, they found themselves attacked by an army made up of Young Italian volunteers. The army was commanded by Giuseppe Garibaldi—and fought fiercely. “They were as wild as dervishes!” one French officer exclaimed. “They were even clawing at us with their hands!”

But the French troops were well-trained soldiers, unlike Garibaldi’s inexperienced revolutionaries. They pushed on towards Rome. For three weeks, Garibaldi resisted. But finally he was forced to flee, along with the rest of his men.

Up north in Venice, the revolt had fared no better. The Austrian army was marching against the rebels. They had cannons, better guns, and even the very first bombers; Austrian soldiers sailed over Venice in balloons and dropped bombs on the revolutionaries below!

Before long, Venice was forced to surrender. Mazzini escaped capture and hid in the city of London. Garibaldi fled to the United States. Austria reclaimed the Italian states, and the pope returned to Rome. The republican revolution had failed.

The revolutionaries had not given up hope, though. Once again, they began to plan for a war of independence. It took them ten years to regain their strength. But a decade after the failed revolt in Rome and Venice, the Italians tried once again to fight for their freedom.

This time, they had decided to abandon the idea of an Italian republic. Instead, they would bring the Italian states together into a kingdom, under the reign of an Italian king. This king, Victor Emmanuel II, had just come to the throne of the northern state Piedmont-Sardinia.

Victor Emmanuel and his advisors remembered the disastrous revolt of ten years before. So he and his advisors promised the king of France that, if French soldiers would change sides and fight *for* Italy this time, Victor Emmanuel would give the French king part of his own kingdom.

The French king agreed. So the rebels formed an army in the north. Soldiers came from all over Italy to join. Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed back from America and became a major general. Once again, the Austrians and the Italians clashed. This time, the Italians had the French army behind them. But not for long! After less than a year of fighting, so many French soldiers had died that the king of France decided to withdraw from the war. He made peace with the Austrian government.

The rebellions in Rome and Venice had failed. The revolt in Piedmont-Sardinia seemed doomed. So Giuseppe Garibaldi collected over a thousand soldiers together, put them onto leaky ships, and sailed down through the Mediterranean Sea to the south of Italy. He would invade Naples, the southern kingdom of Italy, and make one last attempt to fight for freedom.

Garibaldi landed his ships on the shores of Sicily, the large island at the tip of the Italian peninsula. He marched his men towards Palermo, one of Sicily’s most important cities. An army under Austrian command was already on its way over from Naples to fight against him.

But Garibaldi convinced the poor farmers and peasants of Sicily that he would be able to free them from Austrian oppression. In tens, and then in hundreds, the Sicilians flooded into Garibaldi’s army. When the two armies met at Palermo, Garibaldi’s men won the battle.

Garibaldi then sailed his men over to the shores of Naples. His army had grown to thirty thousand soldiers.

Less than three months after his arrival in the south of Italy, Garibaldi’s thirty thousand revolutionaries met the soldiers of Austria and Naples at the Volturno River, in the center of Naples. The Battle of Volturno was the final fight of the Risorgimento—and Garibaldi’s army was victorious! When Victor Emmanuel travelled down south to celebrate the triumph, Garibaldi greeted him with the words, “I salute the first king of Italy!”

The following year, 1861, Victor Emmanuel was crowned king of Italy—the first king of the *nation* of Italy. Italy was not a republic, as Mazzini had hoped that it would be. But at last, Italy was *Italian*.

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## The Taiping Rebellion

In China, a new kind of war had already begun—a war not between countries, but between the rich and poor of the same nation.

China would not be the only country where rich and poor fought. But in China, the war was led by a man who believed that God had ordered him to overthrow the emperor of China.

The emperor belonged to the Qing dynasty, which had ruled in China for more than two hundred years. At first, this family of emperors had tried to be both powerful and virtuous. The early Qing rulers wanted to be just and wise. One of the first Qing emperors had even written out rules that should govern the life of every virtuous man, and had done his best to follow those rules himself.

But as time went on, the Qing emperors had grown less virtuous. By 1850, the royal court was filled with luxury, waste, and corruption. Government officials had begun to take advantage of the poor, and to use tax money to make themselves rich.

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Meanwhile, China was growing. Between the year 1700 and the year 1850, the population of China *doubled—*from 150 million to 300 million people! By 1850, all of those extra people were moving away from the crowded cities of China towards the more distant farmland in the north and west. Soon, groups of newcomers to the far areas of China began to quarrel and fight with the people who already lived there. Government officials in these distant parts of China sometimes treated the newcomers harshly, taxing them or driving them away.

And China was growing poorer and poorer. British merchants had brought the drug opium to Chinese ports. “Opium eaters” had beautiful dreams, but they couldn’t stop taking opium. Millions of Chinese became addicted. Chinese opium users gave British merchants tremendous amounts of money for opium. But the British didn’t spend nearly as much of *their* money on Chinese goods, so more money was leaving China than was coming into it. The country was becoming poorer. Chinese workers could find no work—and often, no food. And taxes were rising.

The poor people of China were desperate, hungry, and hopeless. They were ready to follow anyone who would promise them a better life.

The leader who arose was named Hong Xiuquan.

Hong came from Huaxian, far south of China’s two great rivers. He had studied for a long time to take the examination that would allow him to become a government official. As a matter of fact, he studied so hard and so long that he collapsed in exhaustion! While he was unconscious, he had an odd dream. He dreamed that an elderly man with white hair gave him a special sword and ordered him to fight against demons, and that an older brother joined him to fight at his side.

When he woke from his dream, Hong was sure that God had spoken to him in his dream. Hong had learned a little bit about Christianity from Western missionaries in his home town. So he decided that the elderly man in his dream was God the Father, that the older brother was Jesus Christ—and that Hong himself was the younger, Chinese brother of Jesus, called to fight against the evils that made the poor people of China miserable.

Hong began to tell his friends of his new calling. He began to collect a following around him. Soon, he had over two thousand disciples—poor farmers, mineworkers, charcoal burners, ex-soldiers, and peasants. They called themselves the God Worshippers. They gathered together, agreed not to use opium or alcohol, and put all of their belongings into a common treasury.

By 1850, the God Worshippers had grown to a group of almost twenty thousand people. This huge gathering of peasants made the wealthy land owners in the area very nervous! So the land owners joined with soldiers from the Qing dynasty and attacked the God Worshippers.

Hong decided that this attack on his followers simply proved that he was indeed fighting against evil. He announced that he would now call himself the Heavenly King, and that his followers were citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace—in Chinese, the *Taiping Tianguo*.

Hong’s followers, now called the Taipings, fought back against their attackers successfully! As a matter of fact, they captured a little, walled city called Yongan, a little to the west of Hong’s home town. They made Yongan their military headquarters, organized themselves into a regular army with commanders and soldiers, and got ready for war. Hong told his followers, “Men and women officers must all grasp the sword! Together, rouse your courage; together, slay demons! Golden bricks and golden houses await you. Even the lowest shall wear silks and satins!”

These were wonderful promises for poor peasants to hear. Inspired by Hong’s words, the Taipings began to march north towards Nanjing, a large Chinese city far to the northeast. They planned to fight against the corrupt Qing officials, and destroy the government that stole from the poor. To show that they were enemies of the Qing, they grew their hair long instead of wearing the traditional queue (pigtail) of the Qing. People who saw them pass called them the “longhaired rebels.”

Probably no one thought that this odd little army would amount to anything. But something amazing happened. It took the Taipings a little less than a year to march to Nanjing. And in that year, over one million Chinese peasants joined them!

As they marched, the growing army of the Taipings attacked and killed unjust landlords and greedy government officials. They burned tax papers and destroyed government offices. “Every time they entered a rich house,” wrote one man who saw the Taipings with his own eyes, “they dug into it to find treasure. But they did not take from the peasants. Instead, they gave clothes and other goods that they had taken from the rich to the poor.”

Now the Taipings were no longer a little rebel group. They were revolutionaries. They had great ideas as to how China should be run once the Qing were overthrown. They planned to divide the land up evenly, with men and women getting equal shares. Each family would grow crops and keep as much as they needed for themselves. They would put the rest into a public store. In this new country, all men and women would be brothers and sisters. Later, one Taiping leader would even suggest that China hold elections for its leaders, like Western countries.

When the Taipings reached Nanjing, they conquered it and made it their capital. Then they sent out an army to attack Beijing, where the Qing emperor lived. They weren’t able to capture Beijing—but the Qing soldiers who poured out to meet them weren’t able to retake Nanjing either. The two forces simply went on fighting for years.

By 1860, the Taipings were marching towards Shanghai. For a little while, it seemed that this city, too, might fall to the rebels.

But then the war began to turn against them. Great Britain had signed a treaty with China that would open up more Chinese ports to British merchants, just as soon as the rebellion was put down. So the British began to help the Qing fight back against the Taipings. British steamships helped to move Qing armies up and down the coast. Some British soldiers even joined with the Qing in battle!

By 1864, the Taiping rebellion was doomed. Nanjing was captured. As the Qing army flooded into the city, Hong Xiuquan killed himself. As many as thirty million Chinese had died during the Taiping Rebellion.

But once the revolt was over, the advisors who surrounded the Qing emperor did make some changes. The Chinese government would now help peasants who had to move to new areas by giving them tools and seeds, and helping them to build irrigation systems. Taxes were lowered. Corrupt officials were removed from power.

The Qing dynasty had barely survived the rebellion. But thanks to these reforms, the Qing would sit on the Chinese throne just a little bit longer.

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