Chapter 2 The introduction was thought of by Qi Shan's betrayal of the country

Qi Shan was born into a Manchu noble family.The ancestor, Engedlier, was awarded the title of first-class marquis by leading the crowd to join him.His father was Chengde, and he was an official to Rehe.When Qishan was 16 years old, he was assigned to the Ministry of Punishment with the qualification of Yinsheng, and Yuanwailang, a fifth-rank official, was a substitute. At the age of 18, he officially became an official. Since then, his official career has been smooth and prosperous. In 1819, when he was 29 years old, he became the sole governor of Henan.Later, he served as the governor of Shandong, the governor of Liangjiang, the governor of Donghe, and the general of Chengdu. In 1831, he moved to the governor of Zhili, the head of the border ministers. In 1836, he was awarded a Bachelor of Co-organization.

Qi is good at doing things for officials, and he is good at using deceitful ways and doing strange things, but he also has many proven results.He is arrogant and arrogant, but he has a lot of friends in official circles.He has the courage to do things, he is very happy with his achievements, and he has almost as many failures in his work as his achievements.Emperor Daoguang also paid special attention to his character of daring to innovate and taking responsibility. By the time of the Opium War in 1840, Qi Shan's official status was the first-class marquis, the scholar of Wenyuan Pavilion, the governor of Zhili (later changed to the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi), and the imperial envoy.In his official correspondence with the British side, he triumphantly called himself "this minister, Juegebutang".It can be said that he is an extremely human minister, his family members are prosperous, and he has reached the peak of his life, which is beyond the reach of his colleagues.

If we think about it from the perspective of the people at that time, we will have doubts: Qi Shan’s family has been favored by the country, and they should have been more loyal to the emperor and patriotic.This seems to be incompatible with the scene where Wang Jingwei changed his family because of political dissatisfaction. Some treatises at that time used the term "bribery" when talking about Qi Shan's actions.Let's look at the possibilities in this regard. The Qishan family is a large family with a history of more than one hundred years and a wealth of wealth.He himself has been a high-ranking official for a long time, and his skill in collecting money is no worse than other bureaucrats.He is a rich man.

Regarding Qishan's family property, the rumors circulating among the people are almost astronomical. A copy of Qishan's list of confiscated and confiscated homes in 1841 stated that Qishan owned 10 million yuan in "Fanyin", pearls and rare treasures, and others. There are 34 hectares of land, 340 houses, 6 pawnshops, and 81 storehouses.If this is true, Qishan's family property surpassed any British nobleman at that time, even the queen herself. However, judging from the archives and historical data, the folklore is obviously exaggerated.According to the officials who were in charge of the inspection, Yi Jing, the commander of the infantry, and others said:

Later, according to Emperor Daoguang's face-to-face order, Mu Zhang'azuo, the Minister of Military Affairs who was in charge of accumulating interest in Qishan's official property to pay for soldiers, said: Since we have not found any other memorials or lists related to the confiscation of the house, we still cannot know about Qishan’s self-occupied property and the rare treasures and antiques that are often found in the homes of high-ranking officials and nobles. The amount is already considerable. If it is said that rich people will not accept bribes, of course it cannot be established.But Qishan, who has a lot of money, probably won't feel excited when he sees novelty foreign goods such as chiming clocks and glass cups.In the Sino-British negotiations, if he wants to accept bribes, it must not be a small amount of money, but must be a large sum.

In fact, the rumor about Qishan's "bribery and harmony" was very popular at that time, and even Emperor Daoguang, who was deeply in the palace, had heard of it.On the third day after the suspicious Emperor Daoguang ordered Suona Qi to take care of his aftermath, he secretly ordered General Yishan of Jingni to "secretly investigate and visit" between Yilu and Qishan "there is a matter of selfless gifts".Yishan failed to find evidence for this.After Qi Shan was arrested in Beijing, Emperor Daoguang personally approved the interrogation of Qi Shan, one of which was:

Qishan categorically denied this, saying in the interrogation: Qi Shan's reply obviously did not reassure Emperor Daoguang completely.While interrogating Qishan, the Military Aircraft Division interrogated Bao Peng, who acted as a liaison officer for Qishan in the Sino-British negotiations, and raised the same question: Bao Peng also completely denied this question. Naturally, the confession of the parties cannot be used to prove the innocence of the parties.Fortunately, what Qi Shan wants to be greedy is not a small number. If it is a large amount, the British side will naturally have an account.

However, judging from the available English materials so far, Elliot and other British officials did not use bribery methods, and there is no record of Qi being good at extorting bribes.When Elliot heard that Qishan was being interrogated for accepting bribes from Elliott, he deliberately drafted a document denying that he had bribed Qishan and that British officials would not bribe, and handed it over to the Guangzhou prefect.Of course, this document did not reach the center, and even if it did, it might not be beneficial to Qishan, but instead proved his collusion with Yilu. We might as well imagine the scene at that time again. At this time, Elliot and others are no longer the appearance of retreating in Macau, claiming to be "remote jobs", and begging for love and dredging everywhere, but the murderers who led the army to extort and rob.There is no such thing in the world where robbers come to the door to bribe first and then attack.This seems to be incompatible with the situation where Russia bribed Li Hongzhang for the Sino-Russian secret treaty and the Middle East Road.

Because before the Opium War, there was only commercial relations between China and Britain; and because of the corruption of Qing government officials, bribery and bad rules have become an indispensable lubricant to maintain the continuous operation of this relationship; any officials involved in this kind of business relationship, It has long been regarded as a normal phenomenon in the officialdom to be bribed and get rich.The rumors about Qishan's "bribery" are likely to lead to speculation and reasonable imagination.It is precisely because of this that such rumors have a wide market, although there is no actual basis.

The above research on Qishan’s traitorous psychological activities is analyzed from the perspective of seeking official glory, greed for money and profit, that is, from the perspective of human beings’ own defects.However, traitors throughout the ages still have a magnificent explanation for their behavior, that is, to follow a certain doctrine and realize a certain ideal. However, it seems impossible to apply this to Qi Shan. Before the Opium War, Chinese civilization had been developing relatively independently, and with its superiority, it was exported to the outside world, forming a Han cultural circle centered on China in East Asia.Although its connection with the outside world has been inexhaustible since ancient times, if foreign things want to enter China, they must undergo a strong and lasting transformation of Chinese civilization, turning the outside into the inside, before they can become an integral part of Chinese civilization.If things go on like this, the Chinese are used to looking around with a condescending attitude.It was in this historical precipitation that the Qing Dynasty developed and completed the "Heavenly Dynasty" external system.

In ancient times, according to Confucian classics, the emperor of China was the "Son of Heaven", who represented "Heaven" and ruled everything on the earth.The area directly ruled by the emperor, compared to the surrounding "wild" land, is the "kingdom of heaven". "Under the whole world, is it the land of the king", this sentence is often quoted to explain that the land system at that time actually reflected the world that the Chinese people could see at that time, that is, "the world", which did not appear for a long time. in East Asia.Undoubtedly, this concept of "common master of the world" is not correct, but it objectively reflects the indisputable superiority of Chinese civilization in East Asia for a long time, and has long maintained the lineage of the great unified dynasty in China. , which is the so-called "there are no two monarchs in a country".In the Qing Dynasty, this situation was concretely manifested in the triple relationship of "the kingdom of the heaven", the vassal state, and the "foreign states". The prosperity of the Qing Dynasty caused the monarchs of various countries in the surrounding areas to submit to China one after another out of various motives, to pay tribute to the Qing Dynasty, and to be canonized by the Qing Dynasty.As for countries other than vassal states, including Western countries, the Qing Dynasty generally regarded them as "states of barbarians from outside China", and called them "barbarians" in official documents, and added the word "kou" to their country names.For example, Britain, France, and the United States are called "