Chapter 16 Chapter 15 Three Years of Tongzhi: Famous generals wither and flowers fall

On March 25th, intending to remove the military power to quell suspicion and slander After breakfast, due to illness, thank you for not seeing any guests.Rotate to tell the sick to fold one piece.It also changed the Japanese military drama, which was changed three times by Rifan.A game of Go.Muyou came to see him several times.It has been engraved, and Pang Shengsan has been talking for a long time.In the afternoon, the nuclear department approved the manuscript and wrote six couplets.After lunch, Tang Zhongcheng came to say goodbye. Qu went back to his hometown to scan the grave today. The conversation lasted for about a while.Read a lot of documents today, and approve each draft.You engrave the trip out of the city to see Tang Zhongcheng off, and return in the evening.Send 30% off, five pieces.Reading "Ancient Documents and Documents" at night, going to bed at two o'clock and three o'clock, very tired.During the day, due to the memorial of the Ministry of Households, it seemed that there was an embarrassment with this place on purpose, and Cun Xin was depressed and uncomfortable.If I use it for too long, I am afraid that people will suspect that my military power is too heavy and my power is too great.I want to get rid of the military power and retire for a few years to calm doubts and slanders. Therefore, I am going to ask for a sickness today to show that I dare not hold the heavy handle for a long time.

At this time, the city of Nanjing had been encircled, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was no longer likely to cause disturbances. The cunning rabbit dies, the running dog cooks.When the birds are gone, the good bow is hidden.At this time, the greatest threat to the Qing Empire was no longer Hong Xiuquan, but Zeng Guofan.Zeng Guofan was well aware of this, and said in his own statement: I have been working for too long, and I am afraid that people will suspect that I have too much military power and too much power.So he simply reported sick leave and asked for leave to go home to recuperate.

This attitude is a must.If you don't have this posture, more and more people will put a magnifying glass on you and find trouble on you calmly.Even if you are a natural saint, you can't help too many people get along with you. And when this sick leave report is handed in, the person who is about to come to find trouble will suddenly wake up: it's a bad dish, if Lao Zeng asks for leave and returns home, and Hong Xiuquan starts making trouble again at this time, wouldn't it be a tragedy?No, Lao Zeng can't leave. To go or not to go, it does not matter, what is important is that a sick report is required.The minds of the Chinese people are used in this aspect.In the final analysis, it is the fault of the political system. This kind of imperial power system is characterized by playing with people. If you are caught in the trap, you have to play.

On May 17, it was heard that Xiong Liyuan's son and wife were killed by You Yong in the middle of the river After breakfast, I cleaned up the files, wrote a letter from Yuandi, and practiced calligraphy on a piece of paper.Meet a guest once.Si Dao came to see, and after a narration, ordered to read the stone case carefully, from Chenzheng reading to Shen engraving.Yu also often goes to the outer hall to talk to him.Seeing guests again, Uncle Li Ren waited for a long time to talk, and Chen Xinquan came to talk.nap for a while.In the afternoon, the nuclear department approved the manuscript, wrote three couplets, and hung a screen.After lunch, I talked with Si Dao, read today's documents, reviewed and approved each manuscript, and read the stone case files.Shave once.Talk to Meisheng in the evening.There are a lot of manuscripts for re-approval letters at night, finish at two o'clock in the second watch, and go to bed at three o'clock.On that day, I received a letter from Brother Yuan, and I also planned to invite Li Shaoquan to come to the meeting to suppress it. The brothers agreed.I heard that Xiong Yuanli's son and wife were killed by wandering warriors in the middle of the river. Several people were killed, silver was stolen, and his boat was scuttled to eliminate traces.You Yong is so ferocious and fearsome.

As the saying goes, governing a soldier is like governing a tiger, and controlling a terrifying war machine is a very dangerous thing.For Zeng Guofan, the biggest threat to him is not the courtiers' irrational attacks, but the brutality of this war machine and the confrontation between human nature caused by the war. There is an appalling criminal case here. A young couple was hijacked in Jiangxin. All the people on board were killed and their belongings were robbed.Then the robbers scuttled the boat to wipe out the traces.This is done by professional soldiers who have left the army. Those who kill people have become accustomed to not paying attention to human precious lives.

Zeng Guofan expressed shock, saying: You Yong is so ferocious and terrifying. This sentence is a terrible signal, and it is time to deal with the Hunan Army.Those iron-blooded soldiers trained by Zeng Guofan painstakingly, after they were dismissed, wandered in the wild, without food and clothing, calling for a new era of war in vain. Dismantling a war machine is no easier than building one, but Zeng Guofan couldn't help it.His value is not only to quell the chaos of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but also to kill the chaos of the Hunan Army in the bud in advance.In this regard, the Empress Dowager Cixi was his bosom friend in court, so Zeng Guofan was given more time.

At least, wait until Nanjing City is conquered. On June 28, the body of Hong Xiuquan was examined Clean up files after breakfast.Seeing guests several times, watching Jiudi and Xingnan's Go games, Yu and Lu Qiuhang's Go game, talking about family affairs with Yuandi a lot.For lunch, I sat down with fellow guests Huang Guanbei, Le Shaozhong, etc., and ate vegetable rice by myself. Because of the hot weather, oil and meat were slightly forbidden, and I felt a little clear.Xiong Dengwu dug up Hong Xiuquan's body and examined it. He found that the beard was slightly white, his head was bald and there was still flesh on his left arm, and he was wrapped in yellow satin dragons.After the inspection, there was heavy wind and rain for about half an hour.Then there was a false court lady who called for questioning.It is said that a Daozhou native was taken captive among thieves at the age of seventeen. He is now in his thirties and serves as a maidservant for a false maid. His surname is Huang.Hong Xiuquan died on April 20th, the 27th day of the real constitution.Huang's father buried Hong Xiuquan in the hall, so he knows the details.Spin for elegiac couplet.In the evening, I wrote the elegiac couplets for the sacrifice, and reviewed and approved all the manuscripts. The night nuclear department approved a lot of manuscripts.

So soon, Hong Xiuquan was in bliss? He died too late.For this mentally ill patient, the Chinese paid more population sacrifices than the two world wars before ending his madness.Regarding the number of people who died directly at the hands of this lunatic, there is an exaggerated statement that it is more than 100 million, and a slightly conservative statement is no less than 70 million.The most conservative figure also admits that there will never be less than 20 million people. What a crime this fellow has committed. American S. W. William, in his book "Middle Kingdom", commented on Hong Xiuquan's historical contribution as follows:

Their entire existence has been a catastrophe, with only misfortune at their side throughout, and they make no effort to rebuild what has been destroyed, preserve what remains of the world, or repay what they have stolen.In the lands after their departure, the beasts roamed free, making their lairs in abandoned towns.The bustling noise of the inhabitants had died down, replaced by the swish of wild pheasants.Land that was once laboriously cultivated has been covered by weeds or bushes.Ten or twenty million taels of silver were irretrievably lost and destroyed, and the survivors endured poverty, disease, and famine, and besides, according to estimates by foreigners living in Shanghai, from 1851 to 1865 During the entire period, 20 million people were murdered related to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement (excerpted from American Hale's "Biography of Zeng Guofan", translated by Wang Jiqing, Hunan Literature and Art Publishing, July 2011 edition).

As mentioned above, Hong Xiuquan is a mentally abnormal person, and the most ruthless thing is that he dared to call himself Jesus' younger brother Jedi. Except for him, who is a little bit normal, he would not dare to play like this.And his abnormality just formed the theoretical basis of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but he didn't have a clear understanding of all this.Having said that, he doesn't have the slightest thinking ability at all. Hong Xiuquan had three sons and five daughters, all of whom were borne by different women. He took great care in educating his children and forbade them from reading any books not written by him himself, for fear that the next generation would be snatched away by class enemies.However, he had too many sexual partners in the harem, so he had no time to write books at all. At most, there were only a few books such as "Shiquan Dajishu" written by him in the early days of his life and entrepreneurship, and the content was also about how he met in heaven. The story of Heavenly Father Jesus and his sister-in-law joining forces to fight against Satan.This means that his children have no books to read at all.But after years of reading those strange books by him, he could still read the characters after all.

Except for the young heavenly king Hong Tianguifu, Hong Xiuquan's children all died in the rebellion.And the name of the Young Heavenly King actually has four characters, which was also formed by Hong Xiuquan's unconstrained thinking that day. Hong Xiuquan is like this, he does everything according to his own temperament, so he ignores you so much. There is also Hong Xiuquan's daily taste, which is super scary.According to young heavenly king Hong Tianguifu, heavenly king Hong Xiuquan only ate extra-large centipedes for every meal and fried them with oil, and nothing else was to his liking. People are very concerned about Hong Xiuquan's next generation because many people still have illusions about the Hong family. Maybe after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom takes hold, it will gradually be regulated in a few generations.From this we need to understand Hong Xiuquan's educational achievements for his son. After the young heavenly king Hong Tianguifu was captured, he wrote three famous poems, which are as follows: It's hard to get along with Changmao, it's dangerous to run around.Now I go home with my brother, and go back to study and test for talent. Now I am not a long-haired man, and I am dedicated to assisting the Qing Dynasty. Long live the emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and the chaotic officials and thieves will never escape. Now that I have followed Brother Tang, I can only be respectful and harmonious as a brother. Brother Tang mentioned in the poem is Tang Jiatong who is in charge of guarding him.When Zeng Guofan read his poem, he couldn't help but stare at him, and blurted out: This is a melon. In short, a lunatic is a lunatic, and no one but a fool would place their hopes on a lunatic. On the sixth day of July, read Li Xiucheng's confession Clean up files after breakfast.Play a game of Go.I took a nap twice a day.Shen engraved and read today's documents, and the rest read Li Xiucheng's confession, about 40,000 words, and proofread them one by one.Today, only more than 20,000 characters have been corrected. The first eight leaves have been corrected yesterday, and the last ten have not yet been corrected.In the unitary engraving, Li Xiucheng will be executed.I changed the manuscript again at night, went to bed at two o'clock and four o'clock, and couldn't sleep well. Chen Xiucheng, a famous general of a generation, became a prisoner of Zeng Guofan in this way. Such an upright and compassionate star like Li Xiucheng is destined to become the focus of people's attention for a longer period of time.As early as when he was killed by Zeng Guofan, it caused infinite panic in the court.Because of the order of the imperial court, such an important figure as Li Xiucheng must be taken to Beijing for trial, and then he will be hacked into pieces.But Zeng Guofan and Zeng Guoquan killed Li Xiucheng before the imperial decree came.This made the court startled, Zeng Guofan is the most experienced old guy, he doesn't know this truth?Why did he kill Li Xiucheng first?Did he kill the real Li Xiucheng?If not, then who did he kill?Where did Li Xiucheng hide again? In the early 1960s, another fierce quarrel broke out in the historian circle. The two camps of the quarrel were divided into the loyal and insane faction and the normal disloyal and insane faction.The former believes that Li Xiucheng has fought hard for the Taiping and Taiguo all his life, and he is loyal to the lunatic Hong Xiuquan.The latter believed that Li Xiucheng called Zeng Guofan an old middle hall in his confession, thanked Zeng Guofan for his kindness, and expressed his willingness to recruit the remnants of the Taiping Army for Zeng Guofan, so Li Xiucheng was not loyal to the madman Hong Xiuquan. How could he be disloyal to a madman? Instead of being a normal person?This is a serious political mistake.Because of the great historical quarrel that year, Li Xiucheng's political mistakes were determined, saying: being unfaithful at the end of the festival is not a lesson. The matter was not over yet, and later, the descendants of the Zeng family broke out again, claiming that there were materials showing that Li Xiucheng had falsely surrendered, wanted to be Jiang Wei in the Three Kingdoms era, and persuaded Zeng Guofan to raise troops against the Qing Dynasty, and so on. These debates are very interesting, but they do not belong to the normal historiographical discussion. In normal historiographical discussions, you should at least regard Li Xiucheng as a normal person with dignity and independent personality.You can't be insane enough to force a normal person to express loyalty to a psychopath.Li Xiucheng is loyal to his career, family and friends.The reason why he fought for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was not because he had any feelings for the lunatic Hong Xiuquan, but because he had to rise up to protect his blood relatives.So in this sense, there is not much difference between him and Miao Peilin, the giant on Huaihe River, but he is more open, brighter, and more compassionate. With Li Xiucheng's wisdom, it is absolutely impossible to persuade Zeng Guofan to be an emperor.The emperor's thing, is it made by a normal person?It was precisely because of Hong Xiuquan's abnormal mental state that he became a heavenly king by accident. Compared with Hong Xiuquan, although Zeng Guofan was far from a normal person, he was not crazy enough to dare to be an emperor. So, why did Zeng Guofan take the risk of disobeying the court and forcibly kill Li Xiucheng? This is probably Zeng Guofan's benevolent heart.Li Xiucheng was fighting for his family, friends, blood relatives, and Zeng Guofan was the same. The two of them were just opponents on the battlefield, not enemies in private.There is only mutual respect and love between the two, and there is absolutely no dirty and despicable selfish desire mixed in it.Therefore, there is only one reason for him to kill Li Xiucheng: he must kill Li Xiucheng, that is the honor of a winner. He had to kill Li Xiucheng to end the long battle of honor between the two.He couldn't let Li Xiucheng fall into the hands of those villains gathered in the court, let those despicable villains cut Li Xiucheng into pieces.If Zeng Guofan sent Li Xiucheng to the capital, what kind of benevolent would he be? That's it, when we use the rational thinking of normal people to look at history, we can draw normal conclusions, which can lead us to goodness, to a bright and dignified life.And when someone interprets history with a crazy view of history, only crazy conclusions are drawn.A crazy view of history can effectively destroy and injure this society, but it does not have the slightest construction significance. On September 21, when they heard that Cheng Bofu's house had broken into Youyong, he sent people to suppress Clean up files after breakfast.Spin to see the guest, sit to see the guest twice, and play two games of Go with Xue Bingwei.See guests again, four times for those who see them standing, and two times for those who see them sitting down.Check and revise the draft.Inviting guests at noon, Xie Lifu, Mei Shixiong, Lu Shixiong, Zhu Shixiong, etc., did not disperse.After reading today's document, I changed another manuscript.Shen Zheng went to talk with Yuan's younger brother, and after the lamp, he changed Xie Enzhe for his younger brother, and returned to the residence at two o'clock and three o'clock.Hearing that Cheng Bofu's family came to visit eight people and broke into the inner room, it was very worrying.They sent Geshiha and Yongba to suppress them, and they were trapped there for a night of patrolling, and they were captured in the fourth watch.Because of this, Yu was hanging and couldn't sleep soundly. After fulfilling its historical mission, this terrifying and violent machine of the old Hunan Army is still stubbornly surviving, trying to re-experience the unruly style of blood and war. Simply put, war fosters a mindset of resolving conflicts by killing, which prevails.Countless stragglers walk bravely on the streets, reminiscing about their golden age.Once such frustrated people gather, it means that new chaos will erupt at the next point. To be more cruel, even though Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Heavenly Kingdom caused a large number of deaths, the reduction in the population has not yet broken away from the critical point of social collapse.New wars and new battlefields are coming slowly after the end of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the age of wind and cloud that summoned Zeng Guofan and the Nian Army. Chronicle of Zeng Guofan involved in this chapter: In the third year of Tongzhi, 1864 AD, Zeng Guofan was 54 years old. On the 21st day of the first lunar month (February 28th), Zeng Guoquan's Hunan Army Ketianbao City entered the Taiping Gate and completely encircled Tianjing outside the Shence Gate. On February 24 (March 31), Zuo Zongtang led his army to conquer Hangzhou. On the seventh day of March (April 12), Bao Chaojun conquered Jurong. On March 30th (April 25th), Bao Chaoke went to Jintan to visit his relatives. On the sixth day of April (May 11), Li Hongzhang conquered Changzhou. On April 27th (June 1st), Hong Xiuquan died at the age of fifty. April: Duolong'a died in Shaanxi.Yang Yuebin (Zai Fu) was ordered to supervise the military affairs of Jiangxi, Huang Yisheng was awarded the admiral of the Yangtze River Navy, and Li Chaobin was awarded the admiral of Jiangnan. On May 30 (July 3), Zeng Guoquan conquered the bunker city. May: Yang Yuebin was appointed governor of Shaanxi and Gansu. On June 16 (July 19), Zeng Guoquan's Xiang army entered Tianjing, and the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom was declared a failure. On June 19th (July 22nd), Li Xiucheng was expelled by villagers in Fangshan, outside Tianjing City, and sent to Xiao Fusi Camp. On June 24 (July 27), Zeng Guofan set off from Anqing to Jiangning for inspection.On the same day, Zeng Guofan rewarded the crown prince with the title of Taibao, conferred the title of first-class marquis, hereditary replacement, and rewarded him with double-eyed feathers. On June 29th (August 1st), Zeng Guoquan rewarded the crown prince with the title of Shaobao, a first-class earl, Jiechen Dian a first-class viscount, Xiao Fusi a first-class baron, and all three of them wore double-eyed feathers. On the sixth day of July (August 7), Zeng Guofan killed Li Xiucheng in Jiangning. On July 13 (August 14), 25,000 Hunan troops inside and outside Jiangning City were ordered to be abolished. On August 27th (September 27th), on the grounds that his illness was increasing day by day, his younger brother Zeng Guoquan Chen invited him to leave the vacancy of Zhejiang governor and return to his hometown for recuperation. On the first day of September (October 1), the group moved from Anqing to Jiangning. On the eighth day of September (October 8th), the trip arrived in Jiangning, and the Governor's Yamen of Liangjiang was temporarily set up in the former Yingwang Mansion. On the ninth day of September (October 9th), Hong Rengan and others were captured in Shicheng, Jiangxi. On the tenth day of September (October 10th), the Qing court approved Zeng Guoquan's vacancy to return to his hometown. September: Zuo Zongtang bestowed the first-class earl, Bao Chao bestowed the first-class viscount, Zhang Yunlan went to Fujian as an envoy, died on the way, and Liu Songshan and Yi Kaijun divided the old Hunan camp under his command. On the first day of October (October 30), Zeng Guofan left Jiangning and returned to Hunan. On the sixth day of October (November 4), Hong Rengan and others were executed in Jiangxi. On October 13th (October 13th), he was ordered to go to Hubei and Anhui to supervise the army to attack the Nian Army and the Taiping Army. On the fifth day of November (December 3), the imperial edict was received, the previous order was revoked, and there was no need to go to Anhui. November: Make up the Jiangnan Township Examination, and take the Jiangnan Yougong Examination.