Hong Xiuquan, Death Toll: at least 20 Million. The number one winner of "bloodiest cult leader of all time" is someone most modern westerners have never heard of: Hong Xiuquan. Hong was a 19th Century Chinese schoolteacher from a peasant family. He tried to pass the difficult Imperial exams to get a job in the bureaucracy, but when he failed he had a kind of nervous breakdown; during his breakdown he claimed to have a series of visions that put it into his head that he was the son of God and younger brother of Jesus Christ. He began to preach in his local area that God had given him a vision for the restoration of China, which involved the destruction of Confucian and Buddhist idols. He started vandalizing local temples with his followers, wielding a huge sword he'd had specially made that he called the "Demon-Slayer Sword". The local Imperial authorities persecuted him but he amassed a large number of followers from disaffected local peasants and ethnic minorities. In less than a decade he got about 30000 followers, and they rose up and beheaded the local Imperial governor, declaring the founding of a new "Heavenly Kingdom of Transcendent Peace", beginning what would come to be known as the Taiping Rebellion. His territory was considerable, and his army came to number half a million fanatics. In his Kingdom, Hong outlawed opium, gave women certain rights, banned polygamy (except for Hong and his chief lieutenants) and outlawed most forms of commerce, while promoting communal land-ownership. Between the war and badly-planned communal farming policies, starvation eventually became widespread in his territory. Even so, it took 15 years for the Imperial Chinese forces to finally defeat the sect. Hong committed suicide by poison to avoid capture, and his body was burned by the authorities. Between the war, executions and starvation, the death toll of the Taiping Rebellion is estimated at around 20 million people, a level only 20th-century secular maniacs like Hitler, Stalin, and China's own Chairman Mao managed to beat.