The Taiping Rebellion

Hong Xiuquan failed the imperial examination four times. After the last failure he had a breakdown, and later read a Christian tract that convinced him the visions he had experienced meant he was Jesus Christ's younger brother, sent to destroy the demons — by which he meant the Qing dynasty. He raised an army of the poor, the displaced, and other failed candidates, took a third of China, held Nanjing for eleven years, and abolished private property, foot-binding, and opium. The war to suppress him killed somewhere between twenty and thirty million people, more than the First World War, and left the Qing hollow.