The border area of Sichuan, Chu and Shaanxi provinces is a virgin forest zone, which has always been a gathering place for refugees who have been forced to leave their homes. In the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth years of Qianlong (1772, 1773), hundreds of thousands of hungry people from Sichuan and Chu provinces came here to feed. Plus refugees from Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi and other provinces, the total number is not less than one million. The soil in this area is barren and the climate is bad. In addition to farming in sheds, refugees also need to be employed by wooden box factories, iron factories and paper factories to survive with meager wages. They were not only exploited by Manchu landlords, but also blackmailed by officers and lawyers, and their lives were extremely difficult. Desperate refugees have become the targets of Anbalism.
Ambry religion was the main secret religion in Ming and Qing Dynasties. It worships "motherless" and "Maitreya Buddha", and takes "motherless in vacuum" as the eight-character mantra, which makes people get spiritual sustenance. For those refugees who are in dire straits and trying to get rid of this world, it is very attractive, so they drift with the tide day after day.
In the late Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, various social contradictions in the Qing Dynasty intensified. Bureaucrats, landlords and wealthy businessmen gobbled up land. Population explosion and shortage of cultivated land have led to a sharp rise in food prices, and more and more people are hungry. In addition, the feudal ruling class lived in luxury, corrupt officials were rampant, and national oppression and resistance were increasingly intensified, so the propaganda of Anbalism also increased the content of resisting reality. In the thirty-ninth year of Qianlong, Fan Mingde, the founder of this religion, proposed to Henan believers that it was the "last year of doom" and he wanted to "exchange Kun for the world". Later, when Liu Zhiji preached in Hubei, Sichuan, Anhui and other places, he also proposed "Maitreya reincarnated as an auxiliary cow" (the cow was written in Zhu, alluding to the descendants of the Ming Dynasty), claiming that "the Yellow Heaven will die, and the Heaven will live", and all fire, water, swords and soldiers can be spared from disaster. After entering the teaching, "the wealth gained from teaching is divided equally", the teachers who study "dress and eat, regardless of me", "share weal and woe, share weal and woe, and travel around the world penniless" and so on. This kind of propaganda not only satisfies the requirements of small producers for equality, equality and mutual assistance, but also satisfies their desire for resistance and survival. Therefore, by the end of Qianlong period, Anbalism had developed into a powerful force and planned to hold an armed uprising.
In the sixty years of Qianlong reign, the leaders and secret merchants of Bailian Sect in Hubei launched an uprising on the "Chen Yue Chen Day" (the 10th day of March of the first year of Jiaqing), asking believers to prepare gunpowder for swords and spears. The rapid development of Anbalism and its anti-Qing content caused serious anxiety of Manchu rulers, so they ordered a large-scale search for An Baili believers. A large number of religious leaders and believers were executed in the middle of the year, while local officials extorted money in the name of Chana. "No matter whether you learn to teach or not, you will not give money." "If you don't get what you want, you will be falsely accused of heresy." Religious leaders around the country used the slogan of "officials forcing the people to rebel" and called on believers to rise up and resist. On the seventh day of the first month of the first year of Jiaqing (1796 February 15), Zhang Zhengmo and Nie, the leaders of Yidu and Zhijiang areas in Hubei Province, were forced to raise their righteousness in advance because of the urgent need of the government. Christians in Changyang, Laifeng, Dangyang and Zhushan counties followed closely. On March 10th, Christians in Xiangyang, led by Wang Conger and Yao Zhifu, revolted on the scheduled date. Insurgents from all walks of life did not belong to each other and fought in their own way. Most of the cottages or counties were attacked by the Qing army. Only Xiangyang Uprising Army adopted the strategy of mobile warfare, and its strength grew rapidly, becoming the main force of Hubei Uprising Army. Under the influence of the rebellion in An Baili, Hubei, An Baili Christians all over Sichuan also responded. In September, the religious leaders of Dazhou, Xu Tiande, Dongxiang (now Xuanhan, Sichuan), Wang Sanhuai and Leng Tianlu led the uprising.
At the beginning of the second year, Xiangyang Rebel Army began large-scale mobile operations again, moving to Hubei, Sichuan, Henan and Shaanxi, and then entering Sichuan in three ways. The Qing army only followed, exhausted. In July, the Sichuan Rebel Army was besieged by the Qing army, and Xiangyang Rebel Army came to the rescue and joined forces with the Sichuan Rebel Army in Dongxiang. Insurgents from all walks of life set up shop assistants, marshals, pioneers, company commanders and other posts according to green, yellow, blue and white semicolons. However, due to the inherent dispersion and conservatism of small producers, the insurgents did not really integrate, and each share was still fighting in its own way and acting in a decentralized manner.
In March of three years, Xiangyang Uprising Army was surrounded by Qing army in Yunxi, Hubei. Wang Conger and Yao Zhifu, the leaders, jumped off the cliff and died, while the others continued to struggle. Sichuan insurgents also suffered heavy losses. But before March of the fifth year of Jiaqing, the insurgents were in the stage of development and growth. Because of the support of the people all over the country, the insurgents "have shelter, food, clothing and gunpowder, mules, horses and straw to take their place", and some Christians all over the country "lead them to lose their luck", which has hit the Qing army many times. After the Battle of Matiling in Jiangyou, Sichuan Province in April of Jiaqing five years, the uprising began to turn into a low tide. The number of people has decreased from several hundred thousand to several tens of thousands, and many important generals have died one after another.
The strategies of "strengthening the wall and clearing the wild" and "building castles and practicing in groups" of Manchu rulers gradually spread and played a role. By building castles and merging villages, the people moved into them, enriched the supplies of private grain depots, and trained Ding Zhuang's defense, thus cutting off the contact between the rebels and the people, making them unable to get the supplement of food, grass and soldiers, and their strength was failing day by day. In the second half of the sixth year of Jiaqing, the activities of the rebel army were basically confined to the border areas of Sichuan, Chu and Shaanxi, fighting in the old forests of Wanshan, with no more than 24,000 people, and the number of besieged Qing troops was ten times that. Under extremely difficult conditions, the insurgents insisted on fighting.1September 1999, the uprising finally failed.
In more than nine years of fighting, the An Baili Rebels occupied or breached 204 counties, fought against a large number of troops recruited by Manchu nobles in 16 provinces, wiped out a large number of Qing troops, killed more than 400 squadron leaders and more than 20 first-and second-class officials such as Boon, and the military expenditure of Manchu rulers reached 220 million yuan, equivalent to four years' fiscal revenue. The uprising also weakened the corrupt Qing dynasty.