Taiping Rebellion Question

Who is the most rational/sensible figure in the Taiping leadership, religious or military? I am looking for a leader that could negotiate rationally with the west and set down a realistic program for success.

It doesn't have to be someone prominent from the beginning of the rebellion. I have in my mind that there was a talented and rational general of Taiping forces but his name eludes me.
 
The 'South King', Feng Yunshan was generally considered the best of the Taiping leadership and really built up the majority of the force that rebelled in Guangxi. However, he dies following a freak cannon shot outside of Yongzhou, Guangxi in 1852, 1 year into the rebellion and 1 year before Nanjing was captured, so he might be of little use here. Also I'm not sure how friendly he would have been to the Westerners; certainly he would have been more pragmatic - a Zhou Enlai to Hong's Mao Zedong, if you will.

Hong Rengan, 'Shield King' of the Taiping kingdom and Hong Xiuquan's cousin is your best bet, arriving in Nanjing during 1859 (too late to stop the killing of East King Yang Xiuqing, or to keep the talented general Shi Dakai from leaving). Having spent the 1850s in Shanghai and Hong Kong, he knows many of the missionaries in China personally and generally is considered more pragmatic than Hong Xiuquan.

Li Xiuqing, the 'Loyal King', is also sympathetic to Westerners and led the wildly successful force that seized Suzhou and Hangzhou in 1860, though he also led the disastrous attack on Shanghai in August 1860 that resulted in Western intervention, though not because of any malice to the West on the Taiping's part. Further attacks on Shanghai and Anqing in 1862 and 1863 did not help matters.

Honestly, however, it's going to be hard for the Taiping to negotiate with the west. I think the closest analogy to the Taiping was a jihadi state - no peace until everybody in China was converted. This was not what the Westerners wanted. But if pressed, an administrative team of Feng Yunshan/Hong Rengan, backed up by the military talents of Li Xiuqing and Shi Dakai could have worked. More importantly, the Taiping must not attack Shanghai - for attacking Shanghai causes the Westerners to ban arms exports to the Taiping, fatally weakening the latter's forces against the Qing Dynasty.
 
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This is extremely helpful thanks. One of the options I am considering is "flipping" Gordon and the EVA. It may be too extreme when I consider it in detail but the execution of the prisoners under his protection in 1863 on the orders of the Chinese mandarin (again who's name eludes me for the moment) almost resulted in Gordon shooting the chap. That could lead to a permanent severing of Gordon from the Imperials certainly. The more difficult question is to flip him rather than have him withdraw/resign.

Being something of a mystic himself I always wondered what kind of relationship Gordon might have with the Taipings if circumstances had been different. Of all Westerners (and particularly officers that might have been appointed to command the EVA) he seems the most likely to sympathize with the Taipings.

Anyway that is just one options. I am only starting to refresh my research (I read quite alot around the Taipings but it was about 7-10 years ago).
 
I think the Chinese mandarin was none other than Li Hongzhang, one of the finest and also undeservedly-hated ministers of the Qing Dynasty.

Not sure that the EVA would flip with Gordon, since they were mercs, after all. Some good Western leadership for the Taipings would have done wonders for their defence, although Gordon's flip will cause much embarrassment to the UK, to put it lightly.

1863 is a good PoD, though Gordon resigning seems to be the more likely option there. A more realistic flip could be him being captured at Kunshan (some miles up the Yangtze from Shanghai) in 1862, which was a pretty close-run thing OTL anyway.

An important date to note is the visit of Issachar Roberts and other missionaries to Nanjing in 1860-1862, the results of which were a wasted opportunity for the Taipings to build goodwill with the influential missionary community (though Hong Xiuquan was basically like the Sudanese Mahdi at this point - hard to see how the missionaries could be impressed by that. Hong Rengan would have made a better impression).

Also, in January 1862 British merchant Lambert is captured by the Taiping and interrogated harshly and threatened with death. Not good.

The passage of Lord Elgin in 1858 as he takes his fleet up the Yangtze from Shanghai to Wuchang is also a lost opportunity for the Taipings. Well-timed commercial concessions from the Taipings here might have shifted British support from the Qing (which they were at war with) to the Taiping. Hong Xiuquan again messes the encounter up with his perceived arrogance.
 
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