Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Chen Yucheng
Taiping commander who joined the rising at fourteen, destroyed Li Xubin's Hunan army at Sanhe as the Brave King and was betrayed to the Qing in 1862
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 Chen Picheng · Heroic King
- Roles
- Uprising Leaders
Chen Yucheng, originally named Picheng, came from Teng county in Guangxi and in 1851 joined the Jintian rising at fourteen with his uncle Chen Chengrong. In 1854 he led his men up the walls to take Wuchang, and his string of victories made him, with Li Xiucheng, one of the two chief Taiping commanders of the later years. In 1858 the pair broke the Qing northern siege camp, and at Sanhe Chen wiped out Li Xubin's Hunan army; the next year he was made Brave King. His attempt to relieve Anqing failed in 1861 and the city fell to the Hunan army, and the next year, breaking out of Luzhou northward to Shouzhou, he was lured into a trap by the militia leader Miao Peilin and handed over to the Qing general Shengbao. He was executed at Yanjin in Henan in June 1862, aged twenty-six by Chinese reckoning.
Life and times
Dates 1837 CE–1862 CE