Chapter 133: Rebellion
Many people in later generations believe that the greatest feature of the Ming Dynasty was the eunuchs' exclusive power. Especially the Manchus, in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes, specially formulated very strict regulations for the eunuchs in the palace to prevent trouble before it happened. The effect is good. There were indeed many famous eunuchs in the history of the Qing Dynasty, such as An Dehai, Li Lianying, Cui Yugui, etc. But everyone also admitted that no matter how bad these father-in-laws were, they didn't make any waves - but this did not prevent them from taking the blame. In fact, many people in this group are actually severely stigmatized. Let’s take Li Lianying as a few examples.
One. The Beiyang Navy formed an army, and Li Hongzhang petitioned the court for review. Cixi ordered Li Lianying to go with Prince Chun Yixuan (pronounced "Xuan", the biological father of Emperor Guangxu). During the entire trip, Li Lianying served Yixuan attentively, handed him cigarettes and water for washing his feet, and helped him fall asleep every day before returning to his room to rest, so that even those who didn't know would regard him as the prisoner of Prince Chun's Mansion. After the review, Prince Chun ordered the photographer to take photos "from Ti Zhen Dafu to the Guard Captain", but Li Lianying politely refused.
Second.
During the Gengzi Incident, Cixi and Guangxu fled westward in panic and stayed in ruined temples. After saying good night to Cixi, Li Lianying went to Guangxu's place to say hello. She found that Guangxu was sitting under a lonely lamp and was not sleeping, so she persuaded him: "Your Majesty, you should rest early. You have to go on a journey tomorrow morning." Guangxu said sadly: "I can't sleep. Come out. I was in a hurry and didn’t bring any bedding.”
Li Lianying cried!
While crying, he kowtowed and said, "This slave deserves to die. If the emperor doesn't mind being dirty, I will bring you my own bedding, and you will have to live with me for one night."
Then, he sat on the porch outside the door and watched all night!
After Guangxu returned to Beijing, he said personally: "Without Li Lianying, I would not be alive today."
Third. When Cixi died, Li Lianying observed mourning for her in the palace for a hundred days. When she said goodbye to Longyu, she handed over all the rewards she had received over the years and said: "These are royal things and cannot be left among the people. I have carefully kept them all for decades." Return him to his master." Later his tomb was dug up and found nothing!
After all, eunuchs are the emperor's personal slaves. Except for some extremely rare circumstances, their special status determines the natural attribute of being absolutely loyal to the Holy Emperor: once they are separated from the imperial power, they completely lose the meaning of their existence - the imperial system. In this era, who dares to use eunuchs as servants? So we see that for those powerful eunuchs, such as Liu Jin and Wei Zhongxian, who are described as having overwhelming power, the emperor would surrender and kill them with just a few words, not to mention stubborn resistance, without even a symbolic argument.
The autocratic power of eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty was indeed a thing, but it was not the core of the problem—the prevailing hypocrite culture was! The so-called hypocrite culture is the practice represented by the civil service group, which is based on the practice of fishing for fame and erecting memorial arches. "Usually, you stand up and talk about your heart, but when you are in danger, you die to repay the king." Well, usually you don't do anything serious, but you die in the end. This is considered a good thing! The most terrible thing is to fight for "reputation" for the sake of sensationalism and blatantly use "righteousness" as a fig leaf to risk death. For example, identifying your biological father to the emperor.
After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the atmosphere of the entire civil service group had completely deviated from the normal track. In order to resist the constraints of the imperial power on the imperial power (many of which were deliberately caused to show his "offensive and direct remonstrance"), the emperor had to rely on himself. House slaves, eunuch group. Of course, history is written by civil servants, so when the world falls, women and eunuchs become the natural blame-bearers. If the weight is not enough, one or two treacherous ministers will be introduced, and everything will be over.
The ministers and ministers of the capital all received heavy gifts from Huguang, so they turned their attention to other places, especially Sichuan, where another war was taking place and it was very chaotic. In other words, if you want to find faults, there are plenty of ready-made pigtails.
Sun Jie, the beloved general of the Holy Emperor, is having a hard time these days. Although he occasionally wins a small victory, he is always suppressed and beaten by Zhang Hu. There is no way, Sun Jie's men are indeed the elite left by Mr. Sun, and their combat prowess is second to none among the officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty. But there are only four combat camps in total, with a population of more than 2,000, and the number of auxiliary soldiers is only five or six thousand; and Zhang Hu is sitting on a mob of more than 100,000 people, and does not care about human life at all. Sun Jie was reluctant to completely bury his family fortune in the flesh and blood mill in northern Sichuan.
In fact, Zhang Hu's rebellion should not have happened in the first place.
When Anhua King Zhu Zhixiu, the same Zhu Tutan, started the farce of rebellion, almost all the border towns did not take it seriously after receiving his message to "raise volunteers together to defeat Liu Jin and use the Qing Dynasty as a side", except for Yansui Town sent the proclamations to the imperial court, but most of them neither reported nor took any countermeasures.
The first person to raise troops to put down the rebellion was Cao Xiong, the commander-in-chief of Shaanxi Province, and Zhang Hu was the commander-in-chief of the cavalry under Cao Xiong. During the battle, after hearing the news that Zhu Tuituan had been captured alive by Qiu Yue, He Jin, Ding Guang and others who led the rebels to intercept Cao Xiong at the Yellow River ferry abandoned their army and fled, and the rebels were defeated. Zhang Hu led his ten cavalrymen to cross the border and chase him out of Helan Mountain. Finally, he killed several of his guards outside the border wall (today's Alxa Left Banner) and captured all the leaders such as He Jin and Ding Guang alive!
However!
The Ming Dynasty civil servant group, which always treats people and things wrong, collectively turned a blind eye to this - because Cao Xiong is Liu Jin's in-law!
Not only that, Cao Xiong had a tragic end: exiled to guard the border! The dignified military commander who was the first to raise an army and defeat the rebels was sent to be the lowest level beggar soldier!
Even if the commander-in-chief is like this, Zhang Hu's situation is not much better - the great success of capturing He Jin, Ding Guang and others must fall on the heads of Lord Yang's cronies hundreds of miles away from the battlefield. In order to prevent the incident from happening, someone wanted Zhang Hu to shut up forever. Originally, it was an easy thing to go into the camp with a smile and a knife to "invite" Zhang Hu to kneel down and listen to the "reward": Isn't it just a matter of saying "die in the rebellion"? It’s impossible for the imperial court to care about which cannon fodder dies!
Unfortunately, the few people who entered the camp found Zhang Hu and just said half a sentence, their heads flew into the sky one after another - Zhang Hu and his ten brothers didn't say a word and just drew their swords!
Because they got the news beforehand.
The person who conveyed the news to them was Qiu Yue, the number one hero of this battle.
Qiu Yue's real surname is Wang. His real name cannot be verified anymore. He is just a cat or a dog. He was born in an ordinary military family in Pingliangfu Town. Once I went to Chimukou (today's Sanguankou) with Baihu to patrol the border. Unexpectedly, I had a chance encounter with Mongolian compatriots who came to thresh straw. In a hand-to-hand encounter with the enemy outnumbered, the patrol team was wiped out. Xiao Wang was hit in the back by a hammer and passed out. When he woke up, he ran away to Pingji Fort... Then he met three "noble men" - three Mongolian compatriots with not very agile legs who fell behind the large army!
Even though they are very young and their legs and feet are not good enough to keep up with the large army, every Mongolian compatriot has two treasures: the Mongolian horse under the crotch and the head on the neck! Xiao Wang, a very thief, knew that no matter how young and strong he was, he could not outrun the Mongolian horse, so he pretended to be dying and struggled half-seriously into a small forest, tricking the three of them into dismounting and following... Finally, he won The grand prize of the hide-and-seek game: a genuine level 3 "captive head" and three Mongolian horses!
With such military achievements, Xiao Wang became an officer in hundreds of households, and was appreciated by Qiu Li, the commander of the Ningxia capital, who recognized him as his adopted son! Classmate Xiao Wang changed his surname to Qiu. Since he became an officer, he could no longer call him Cat or Dog. When he changed his name, he thought it would be more powerful and domineering, so he called him Yue! Later, "Qiu Li died and had no heirs, so he ordered Yue to attack his official position"! In the second year of Zhengde's reign, he was promoted to Ningxia guerrilla general.
A guerrilla warrior who lived in a bitter cold frontier surrounded by yellow sand, the civil servants didn't pay attention to him at all, and no one paid any attention to him. However, when Qiu Yue, who was trapped in the tiger's den, led a hundred servants to capture King Anhua alive, it would be different: How could this be done? You have to participate, otherwise how can we reflect the existence value of our group of people!
"I heard that the Yue has a rat head and two ends, and when I saw that it had gone against the general trend, I took advantage of its unpreparedness and took advantage of it."
"I second the proposal. After careful investigation, I found that this person is actually a person who betrays his ancestors and forgets his ancestors for the sake of advancement!"
"Shameless villain!"
"Capricious, (Han) Xin belongs to (Lü) Bu!"
The young Qiu Yue (52 years old at the time) knew that he could not defend himself against those guys no matter what, so he endured it. His old superior Cao Xiong was expelled from the army and he was really helpless. He endured it, but he heard that someone was coming to arrest Zhang. Hu and others "discussed the reward". General Qiu*, who had served in the military for more than thirty years, could no longer suppress the sympathy and sympathy in his heart, so Zhang Hu and others were warned in advance.
Zhang Hu was the first to rise up. Cao Xiong's thousands of soldiers were leaderless. Half of them fled on the spot. The other half stayed in the camp and waited for the court to deliver justice. The remaining half followed Zhang Hu. Zhang Hu, who was well aware of the strength of the frontier camps and forts, led his troops to avoid the heavily stationed Yuquan Camp (Qiu Yue's defense line) and went straight to Xi'an Suo (now Haiyuan, Ningxia), and then went south along the border between Jingluwei and Pingliang Prefecture. Gongchang Prefecture, at Yuleiguan (now Yulei Township, Wenxian County, Gansu), known as the "Throat of Longshu", followed Jiamengshui (now Bailongjiang) to Baoning Prefecture, Sichuan, and captured Guangyuan, an important town in northern Sichuan! As for the few Cao soldiers who stayed in the camp and did not follow Zhang Huyu to break the net and risk their lives, most of them were benevolent - Zhang Hu's murder of officials and rebellion has been proven beyond a doubt, further confirming that the adults are as smart as they are. . Since Cao's tribe has become a rebel, they must be surrounded and suppressed! It doesn't matter if you can't catch Zhang Hu. Anyway, if you catch up, you may not be able to defeat him. Aren't there hundreds of people who will be captured without any effort?
Hundreds of heads handed in, another great victory!
If Zhang Hu's rebellion was actually forced out, but if no one made trouble, there was no way that the defeated soldiers, who were few in number and panicked, could become bigger. Zhang Hu led his troops all the way south from Xi'an. After arriving at Tongwei in Gongchang Prefecture, they faced a disaster: there were pursuers in the north, there were only a few small villages 200 to 300 miles to the east that were completely unable to supply supplies, and the wall was in the west. The Gongchang Mansion is high and deep - both the east and west directions are still land routes, and the transportation is extremely inconvenient. The mob will break up after not walking very far. To the south, Xue Chengye, the prefect of Gongchang, had mobilized heavy troops and Dingzhuang from Zhangxian, Ningyuan (today's Wushan), Qinzhou (today's Shui) and other places to block Fuqiang (today's Gangu) to stand ready! Zhang Hu, who was completely unaware of all of this, robbed dozens of large and small fishing boats in Tongwei and went down the Huachuan River. Huachuan merges into the east-flowing Wei River in the shape of an inverted "T" in Fuqiang - that is to say, if there are no accidents, the end of this road is Fuqiang: the end of Huachuan, and the end of Zhang Hu's life . All true.
However, it would not be Ming Dynasty if no one caused trouble at the critical moment. Yu Chaozhi (named Liren), the censor who patrolled Shaanxi Province, angrily participated in Xue Chengye's performance and left the city without permission! Yu Shicai went to the field to inspect the environment in person. After looking at a map that looked like a landscape painting, he came to the conclusion: Gongchang Mansion is so close to Tongwei and so far away from Fuqiang (the map's proportions are seriously out of proportion. In fact, the distance is about the same, like a Isosceles triangle), if you don’t attack head-on, you are clearly fearing the enemy like a tiger! Moreover, the city is connected in all directions, and if something goes wrong, you will be punished with hundreds of deaths!
In order to show his righteousness, Yu Xunjian, who did not do secretive things, directly handed over a copy of the concert to Magistrate Xue. Xue Chengye's face turned green after reading this: Even though the supervisory censor is a seventh-rank official, he is "on patrol on behalf of the emperor, and everyone below the prefect is under his orders"! Without saying a word, he immediately led all the troops and ran back to Gongchang Mansion.
On the third day after Xue Chengye left, Zhang Hu drove directly into Fuqiang City, which was almost undefended and already in chaos.
Soon, the Holy Emperor saw Yu Xun's memorial "The thieves were very powerful, but I took precautions and stationed troops in Gongchang, but fortunately they were not lost" and nodded frequently. Unfortunately, the palace wall was too high, and the Holy Emperor did not see the fire in Fuqiang City. The capital was too far away, and the Holy Emperor did not hear the dying cries of the old, weak, women and children.
Zhang Hu's third life and death test was at Yulei Pass. Yulei Pass is known as the "throat of Longshu". During the Three Kingdoms period, Wei general Guo Huai personally led an army to build a city here to attack Shu general Liao Hua (the same Liao Hua who said "there are no generals in Shu, so Liao Hua was the vanguard"). Later, Deng Ai attacked Shu and defeated Jiang Wei at the Yulei Pass Bridge. Jiang Wei abandoned the pass and retreated to Jiange. Zhang Qiguang once wrote the poem "Yulei Pass", in which he used the words "The sky opens a chasm to lock the throat, and controls the two hundred states in the southwest" to describe the danger and military significance of the pass.
Yulei Pass is under the control of Gongchang Prefecture, not far from Hanzhong Prefecture in southern Shaanxi to the east, also very close to Minzhou Wei in the west, and Long'an Prefecture and Baoning Prefecture in Sichuan to the south. If the two prefectures and one guard of Shaanxi Province cooperate with the two prefectures of Sichuan to attack from the north and the south, Zhang Hu will have no chance of survival even if he has three heads and six arms. However, Magistrate Xue no longer dared to step out of Longxi (Gongchang Prefecture). Minzhou Guard and Hanzhong Prefecture did send troops, but they were all in the Chen Bingfu boundary: Minzhou Guard's soldiers and horses garrisoned at Lianghekou, and Hanzhong Prefecture sent troops At Yangpingguan, he "opened the net and waited" and never took half a step forward. He made it clear: "As long as you don't come over, brother, I will never block the way." The most terrible thing - the Sichuan Third Division, which was so close at hand, did not receive any warning! Well, several government guards originally sent messengers, but some injured their feet, some lost their way, and a small team capsized in the Qiang River... When the Sichuan Third Division received the "advance notice" from neighboring provinces, "Police, Zhang Hu's team, which has grown to more than 20,000 people, has already captured Guangyuan and captured Jianzhou (today's Jiange. Jianmen Pass in the Ming Dynasty was also called Jiange, north of Jianzhou)!
The hinterland of the prosperous Kingdom of Heaven has been opened!
*After all, Qiu Yue was named Xianning Bo by the court even though he was scolded bloody due to his great achievements in capturing Shou Ni. Under normal circumstances, counterinsurgency is a very good excuse to commit plunder. However, Qiu Yue did not do that. The people of Ningxia felt his virtue of "not disturbing the war" and built a shrine for General Qiu.
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