The Panthay Rebellion, also known as the Du Wenxiu Rebellion, was a Hui Muslim rebellion against Qing Chinese rule which broke out in Yunnan from 1856 to 1873. Tensions had risen between the Hui Muslims and the Buddhist Han Chinese following a three-day massacre of Hui by Qing officials in 1845, and a conflict between Han and Hui miners in 1853 led to increased rancor between the two groups. In 1856, a Manchu official sent to suppress Hui unrest in Kunming massacred several Muslims, resulting in a province-wide, multi-ethnic insurgency. The Muslim rebels were joined by the local hill tribes, and, in Dali, the Han convert to Islam Du Wenxiu established the independent kingdom of Pingnan Guo. Du Wenxiu directed his rebels' hatred against China's Manchu rulers rather than their Han subjects, calling on the Han to overthrow the Manchu regime and drive them out of China. Sectarian divisions within the rebels led to the defection of the Hanafi rebel leader Ma Rulong, while the Sufi rebels refused to surrender. From 1860 to 1868, the Sultanate of Pingnan Guo captured or destroyed 40 towns and 100 villages, but the defeat of the Taiping Rebellion enabled the Qing government to focus on crushing the Muslim uprising. In 1871, the Qing government waged a campaign of annihilation against Yunnan's Hui community, launching well-organized attacks on town after town. In 1872, Du Wenxiu sent his son Prince Hassan to London with a personal letter to Queen Victoria to request Britain's intervention on the side of the rebels, but the British government politely and firmly rejected intervention, and Dali was captured by Imperial troops - aided by French artillery experts - in January 1873, before Hassan's mission had even returned. Du Wenxiu was beheaded by his enemies before he could commit suicide via opium overdose, and the Manchus retaliated against the rebels by killing thousands of civilians and severing their heads and ears. Ma Rulong, called "Marshal Ma" by the Europeans, acquired control of Yunnan, and, by May 1873, the last rebel resistance had been crushed. Up to 1 million people in Yunnan were killed as the result of the uprising, and many Yunnanese Muslims fled across the border with Burma and settled in Wa State, founding the Hui town of Panglong.