According to the data in the Collection of Thieves compiled by Zhang Dejian, Zeng Guofan's aide, Jiangsu people accounted for more than half of the female soldiers in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Gui Li recorded in the Military Affairs Summary of Jinling that there were more than 2,000 female soldiers in Guangxi at that time. More than 400 people in Hunan; More than 25,000 people in Hubei; More than 3,000 people in Anhui; Mianyang has about 10,000 people; Jinling100000 * *140000.
As can be seen from the composition of these female soldiers, most of them were recruited from the surrounding areas after the Taiping Army occupied Jinling. These female soldiers were forcibly recruited by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Of course, it is not excluded that some of them joined the army voluntarily. Among them, more than 2,000 people in Guangxi are indeed Hakkas, and most of them do not bind their feet.
But other hundreds of thousands of women are basically little girls with little feet. Such a woman is difficult to go to the front to kill the enemy in the war, and usually becomes a logistics role. So it is inappropriate to praise the female soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. What's more, these female soldiers have no brilliant achievements in history.
Because the activities of female soldiers in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are mostly in Jinling area, there are not many records of military wars. According to the Records of the Year of Jia Gui in Jinling, from 1853 to 1854, the Taiping Army set out from Tianjing and attacked the camp of the Qing army in Jiangnan. At that time, it was recorded that there were female soldiers carrying a basket full of bran in Taiping military camp.
Their role is to fill the bran in the laundry list into the abandoned trench once the Taiping Army wins. At the same time, he is responsible for picking up trophies with a laundry list. This is a relatively real historical record, not a romantic version. According to historical records, female soldiers are very powerful on the battlefield. However, this is enough to prove that female soldiers can't fight with their feet.
Most of these female soldiers do logistics work, do military supplies, escort food and grass, and be sex slaves of male soldiers. This is the tragic end of the women soldiers of Taiping Army. After they were captured, they were generally insulted and tortured to death. Most of them were executed this year. The so-called stories of Hong and Su Sanniang are mostly fabricated by later generations, not historical facts.
Tian Ping Paradise really improved the social status of women in China for a period of time because of its special teachings. However, this improvement is based on some kind of political and military conspiracy. Finally, many women have become the tools of this war and become the tragic ending. There is no need to boast about the combat effectiveness of female soldiers. As a collective, they staged the most sympathetic historical tragedy.