Battle of Jiangnan (1860)

Overview

The Battle of Jiangnan, also known as the Second Rout of the Jiangnan Battalion took place in 1860 between the Qing dynasty's Green Standard Army and the army of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom during the Taiping Rebellion. The Green Standard Army twice attempted to besiege Nanjing, capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but was unable to break through. To break the siege of Nanjing, the Taiping forces maneuvered to divert Qing forces by sacking Hangzhou, before quickly moving back to Nanjing to counter-encircle the Qing siege forces and routing the Green Standard Army garrison completely, breaking the siege of Nanjing.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

The Battle of Jiangnan in 1860 marked the decisive collapse of the Qing dynasty's second attempt to besiege Nanjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's capital. The Green Standard Army, numbering roughly 180,000 troops, was encircling Nanjing when the Taiping forces executed a strategic diversion and counter-encirclement that resulted in catastrophic Qing losses — approximately 140,000 casualties against roughly 8,000 on the Taiping side. The destruction of the Jiangnan Battalion effectively ended organized Qing offensive pressure on the Taiping capital for this phase of the rebellion, preserving the Heavenly Kingdom's seat of power and demonstrating the Taiping leadership's capacity for large-scale operational coordination. The outcome prolonged the Taiping Rebellion by removing the immediate threat to Nanjing and underscored the Green Standard Army's structural limitations against a mobile and numerically superior opponent operating on interior lines.

Tactics

Forces & casualties

Commanders (10)