Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Shi Dakai
Taiping Assistant King who beat Zeng Guofan's river fleet in 1855, broke with Hong Xiuquan after the 1856 purge and was trapped at the Dadu River in 1863
A mountain camp at night, with a beacon fire burning on a wooden platform at the upper left, several white tents on the slope and a red cloth tied to a rope; a wooden palisade with a gate stands at the right beyond a timber bridge over a rough river, under a clouded moon.
Also known as Wing King
- Roles
- Uprising Leaders
Shi Dakai, from a well-off farming family in Gui county, Guangxi, joined the God Worshippers young and in 1851 was made Assistant King at Yongan with the title Lord of Five Thousand Years. Early in 1855 he defeated Zeng Guofan's Hunan river fleet around Hukou and Jiujiang and went on to hold much of Jiangxi. In the Tianjing purge of 1856 Wei Changhui killed his family in the capital; Shi returned to run the government afterwards, but Hong Xiuquan distrusted him, and the next year he left with his army. For six years he campaigned through Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan, until in May 1863 Qing forces trapped him at Zidadi on the Dadu River in Sichuan. He went into the Qing camp and was held there, and in June the Sichuan governor-general Luo Bingzhang had him put to death by slicing in Chengdu.
Life and times
Dates 1831 CE–1863 CE