[
    {
        "id": 215340,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 117,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "65\n\nshould send a message to Li that he was sending a woman, his wife, to report as he himself was incapacitated. She would take with her lavish presents borne by a thousand soldiers all disguised as porters and women with their weapons concealed within the gifts. Everything went as planned and when Madame Xian and her entourage entered the city she gave the order to attack. The city was taken and a great victory achieved. Li abandoned Gaozhou and fled to Ningzhun.\n\nIn the year of her husband's death the Chen Wu Di emperor rewarded Madame Xian by creating her nine year old son, Feng Pu, the Governor of Yangchun [Yangchun Taishou] with Madame Xian as his guide and mentor.\n\nsummoned Feng Pu, the\n\nWhen, in AD 570, Ouyang He Yangchun Taishou, to Nanhai to entice him to join yet another rebellion, Feng Pu's first reaction was to inform his mother who advised him saying that having been loyal to the throne for three generations her son should not become involved. Then she, herself, led troops to attack Ouyang, captured him and sent him to Qiankang (present day Nanjing) where he was beheaded. The Chen emperor Xuan Di conferred the title of Xuan Hou on Feng Pu, reflecting his mother's loyalty and bravery. When Feng Pu died he left his three sons, Feng Sheng, Feng Huai and Feng An in the care of his old mother.\n\nIn AD 588, the Sui emperor Wen Di planned to invade the Kingdom of Chen with a force of some half a million men concentrated in Jiangnan [the area south of the River (Yangze)]. Chen's defensive force was established in Lingnan with Madame Xian appointed commander by popular demand. She and her three grandsons were the great defenders of the Kingdom of Chen. Sadly, in the spring of 589 Jiangnan fell to the Sui emperor and the Chen emperor was captured. The Sui emperor asked the defeated Chen emperor to issue an edict to Madame Xian informing her that the destiny of a rule is decided in Heaven and that his kingdom had fallen. He ordered Madame Xian to submit to the Sui emperor and to serve him as loyally as she had the Chen dynasty. Enclosed with the edict was a rod made from a rhino horn which when examined by Madame Xian, confirmed that the Chen dynasty had in fact fallen. She agreed to surrender and peace returned to the area.\n\nIn AD 589 Wang Zhongzhuan of Panyou rebelled and attacked",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216036,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 335,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "269\n\nthe time ripe for an insurrection..\n\nThe rebellion began among the Hakka people in the southern provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong and by 1853 was spreading north and west, led by Hong Xiuquan, a schoolmaster who had picked up a smattering of Christianity. Whilst suffering from an illness he experienced severe hallucinations and saw that his mission was to free the Chinese from Manchu rule. He also convinced himself and others that he was the younger brother of Christ and a son of God sent to save mankind. The Taiping rebels were known colloquially by the Chinese peasants as the Long-haired Rebels, Chang Mao, as they refused to shave the front of their head. [China's Manchu conquerors had ordered that all Chinese males would shave the front half of their head and wear the rest tied into a lengthy queue or 'pigtail'.] Hong Xiuquan's liberated territory was known as the Kingdom of Great Peace, Taiping Tianguo and by 1860 he had more than a quarter of China under his control. Much of the fighting between the Manchu Imperial forces and the Taiping rebel armies took place across Zhejiang province and down the Yangzi, especially around the Taiping capital at Nanjing. With Zhenjiang captured by the Taiping in April 1853 [a mere eleven years after the British had taken the city], their control of the southern bank of the Yangzi was virtually complete. Zhenjiang lay deserted during the Taiping era, being no more than a fort occupied by the Taiping rebels. The pagodas and temples were all destroyed with the usual Taiping iconoclastic fervour, and in many places their stones used as fortifications. The city, surrounded on three sides by a remarkable line of Taiping trenches some ten to eleven miles in length, was besieged several times by the Imperial forces. Each time they were driven off, with the city remaining in Taiping hands until compelled by a failure of supplies the rebels were forced to evacuate it early in 1857. Zhenjiang never fully recovered. The Taiping were finally defeated in 1864 when their capital at Nanjing finally fell to the Imperial forces - assisted by several foreign-led armies of Chinese and western mercenaries, one of which was the Ever-Victorious Army under General Gordon. Rasmussen in 1905 refers to the decayed trench system as 'Gordon's trenches', with some of his guns still to be found sunk deep into the soil of their old embrasures. He added that 'the only reminder now [1905] of the Taiping Rebellion was the thousands of graves covering the countryside, and the ghost-ridden walled city where the whole population had been put to the sword'. Thomas Adkins, the British Consul in Zhenjiang,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]