Zheng Yiyi's pirate "female emperor" road
In the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean", there was a Chinese female pirate named "Lady Qing":
This person combs his Qing Dynasty hair bun, his whole face is painted white as flour, the sides of his cheeks are painted with blush, and the whole image is ugly and strange, which perfectly interprets the stereotype of Chinese in the West.
Pictured: Lady Qing
Based on our understanding of Lady Qing in "Pirates of the Caribbean", most people think that her face is abominable, but in fact, the image of Lady Qing in history is completely opposite!
The prototype of Lady Qing is called Zheng Yiyi, from the pen of an Englishman.
During the Qing Dynasty, a wealthy British merchant witnessed the various deeds of this group of pirates because he was kidnapped by Chinese pirates, and later he was ransomed and wrote a memoir, and since then, a female pirate named Zheng Yiyi has become famous in the world.
Zheng Yiyi's original surname was Shi, and she was a Cantonese, and her family was doomed to her fate.
Once the ancestors of the Shi family committed crimes, so they were forced to live on the sea for generations, after the birth of Zheng Yijie, because her parents died early, so she went to work as a ship prostitute at a very young age.
Later, she married a pirate leader named Zheng Yi, so she was called Zheng Yi's sister-in-law.
Then speaking of this pirate Zheng Yi, it is also very interesting.
Zheng Yi's family belonged to the Hongqi Gang, the predecessor of which was the remnants of the soldiers left behind after Zheng successfully recovered Taiwan, and later gradually became a different pirate gang in the sea.
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, because the Zheng family grew larger and larger, Zheng Yi naturally became the leader of the Red Flag Gang.
Zheng Yiyi has been wandering on the sea for many years, her skin color is a little dark, but her beauty is very outstanding, plus she has learned a lot of people from a young age, so she quickly got the favor of Zheng Yi.
Because Zheng Yi has a dream of unifying the pirate empire, Zheng Yi's sister-in-law is sympathetic to help her husband to make suggestions, and every time she follows her husband to the sea, she will not let her eyebrows be raised.
Zheng Yiyi is not only brave and strategic, but also familiar with astronomical geography, which gradually makes her husband look at her with admiration, and slowly closes some people's hearts, which is the beginning of Zheng Yiyi's power in pirates.
With each time they went to sea to rob, Zheng Yiyi's plan made them return with great victories one after another, and the pirates admired this woman more and more, and slowly, everyone began to call her Dragon Sister-in-law, and her status rose day by day.
Pictured: Zheng Yiyi's sister-in-law image
If you want to say when she became the female leader of the sea, since ancient times, women have been in power since the death of their husbands, and Zheng Yiyi is no exception.
In 1807, the pirates formed a grand alliance, which was the empire that Zheng Yi and his wife had worked hard to build, but Zheng Yi's fate was not good, and he did not wait to sit on the "emperor" throne, and he died at sea.
After her husband's death, Zheng Yiyi naturally became the leader of the Red Flag Gang and began to gradually rule the pirate empire.
It is said that "the new official takes office with three fires", as soon as Zheng Yiyi becomes a leader, it is natural to establish a prestige first, and from some strict decrees she promulgated, it is not difficult to see that this person is worthy of being a heroic and sassy female Haojie.
First of all, the first order is that if a woman is raped, he shall be sentenced to death immediately; if he steals or robs the people in the countryside, he shall also be punished as a capital offense.
Of course, if we call her a "heroine of the towel" based on this alone, it is indeed a bit reluctant, in fact, these are just the beginning of Zheng Yiyi's life.
Pictured: Zheng Yiyi stills
Neither the Qing Dynasty nor portugal combined to defeat her
When Zheng Yiyi and the Red Flag Gang kidnapped a wealthy British businessman named Graspool, she later said in his memoirs:
Every seemingly cruel ordinance formulated by Zheng Yiyi will be strictly enforced, which is almost unbelievable, and such a strict leader will definitely bring out the "soldiers and horses" that make people feel frightened.
As it turned out, Graspur was right at all.
Zheng Yiyi's pirates are 40,000 people, more than 600 ships fleet, they not only have their own stable territory, but also have a large shipyard.
Zheng Yiyi was a very prescient leader, as early as the Qing Dynasty, she often lamented the Western scientific and technological civilization, she borrowed from it, and many of the weapons used were mainly Western guns.
Zheng Yiyi led the Red Flag Gang to defeat the officers and men of the government in the front, and later to severely damage the Portuguese and Australian fleets. There were not only American mercenaries, when the British were rampant in Chinese waters, Zheng Yiyi had killed several British soldiers and captured British ships, almost frightening the British soldiers.
As Zheng Yiyi's strength gradually grew, she slowly mastered the production methods of Western arms, which made her team almost invincible.
The bravery and well-equipped of Zheng Yiyi's team could not be compared with that of the original Beiyang Marine Division.
If you talk about how the Hongqi Gang developed to the peak of its career, one of the people who have to be mentioned is the famous Zhang Baozai.
The relationship between Zhang Baozai and Zheng Yi's sister-in-law is also very bloody, Zhang Baozai was originally a child abducted by Zheng Yi, but because this person is very agile and intelligent, he is deeply loved by Zheng Yi.
Later, Zheng Yi and his wife adopted Zhang Baozai as a son, that is to say, at the beginning, Zhang Baozai and Zheng Yiyi were originally mother-son relationships.
Later, Zheng Yi fell into the sea and died, Zhang Baozai stayed by Zheng Yiyi's side to give advice, the two got along more and more, and even had a long-term relationship, so Zheng Yiyi and Zhang Baozai simply married as a couple.
At the beginning, Zheng Yiyi was able to quickly stabilize her position after her husband's death, which was inseparable from Zhang Baozai's credit.
The Red Flag Gang inflicted heavy losses on Western armies several times at sea, and even repeatedly robbed Indian ships, and even the original Macau Portugal repeatedly suffered losses at the hands of Zheng Yiyi.
Therefore, the name of Zheng Yiyi gradually passed out, and it became more and more popular, once becoming a nightmare for many Westerners, and soon, Zheng Yiyi became a typical representative of Asian pirates.
Because this pirate team was too strong, the government repeatedly sent the Beiyang Marine Division to suppress it, but after repeated defeats, the Qing Even allied with the Portuguese to form a "Sino-Portuguese Fleet" to eliminate Zheng Yiyi.
Unfortunately, even if the two parties are united, they are still not Zheng Yiyi's opponents.
Zhang Baozai and Zheng Yiyi joined forces to gather hundreds of ships, more than a thousand cannons, and 20,000 troops, and defeated their opponents in one breath, and the admiral of the admiral was killed several times to change officials, and the Portuguese fleet was also severely damaged.
The sea was full of gunfire and smoke, and Zheng Yiyi's team was on the sea, and for a while no one dared to fight with them again, and they could only watch the pirates leave.
It was also this battle that Westerners began to lose sight of Zheng Yiyi. Then the fight and the fight can't be beaten, and the Qing Dynasty has no way to take her, so it can only recruit security.
Zheng Yiyi was already invincible at this time, and naturally would not be willing to accept Zhao'an, so the imperial court came up with a way, they used the Huairou policy, first recruited the Black Flag Gang (one of the pirate alliances), greatly weakened Zheng Yiyi's strength, and then gradually persuaded.
Accept the invitation and be given the title of commandment
At this time, the strength of Zheng Yiyi's sister-in-law had been gradually weakened, coupled with the serious corruption of the imperial court at that time, internal and external troubles, and the people were precarious and the people did not have a good life.
In Zheng Yiyi's heart, now jointly resisting foreign enemies and saving the world's lives is the most important thing, so Zheng Yiyi also began to consider accepting Zhao'an.
Although Zheng Yiyi's heart has loosened, but the imperial court is not taking advantage of the hot iron to negotiate with her, the Qing Dynasty has always been arrogant, even if they have repeatedly lost at the hands of pirates, but this does not affect them or look down on pirates.
The court went so far as to ask the pirates to bow down to them when they accepted the invitation, and when the court was satisfied, when it would give the reward.
For the pirates, to kneel down to their original subordinates, it was a refusal to say anything, so the two sides were in a stalemate for a long time.
It was at this critical moment that Zheng Yiyi watched her strength gradually being reduced, and she was so anxious that she made an arrogant decision: to bring 17 women and children alone to negotiate!
She ran to Guangzhou to meet the governor, and the imperial court wanted to completely absorb her gang and ships and weapons, but Zheng Yiyi certainly could not hand them all over so easily.
At the insistence of Zheng Yiyi, the imperial court promised to let her keep a fleet of ships to ensure that they could make a living, of course, Zheng Yiyi also promised the imperial court that this fleet would not be used for war, but would only sell salt.
In return, the imperial court officially married Zheng Yiyi and Zhang Baozai, and the two knelt down to accept the court's offer.
After that, Zhang Baozai was named a sipin official of the imperial court, Zheng Yiyi was given the title of edict, and her pirates were incorporated into the rebel army, and there was almost no news of Zheng Yiyi at sea.
It is worth mentioning that after the outbreak of the Opium War, Zheng Yiyi not only actively resisted the war, but also advised Lin Zexu, and was a well-deserved female Haojie.
Pictured: The Opium War
In later life, because of Zheng Yijie's pirate status has been criticized by people, but in fact, for her, identity is not the criterion for judging whether a person is good or bad.
Although Zheng Yiyi is a pirate, she punishes evil and promotes good, resists foreign enemies, and does not know how much harm she has defused for the people, calling her a "hero of the towel", which is not exaggerated at all.
Some people once made a hypothesis that if it were not for the pirate gang led by Zheng Yiyi in those years that made many Western countries feel frightened, perhaps the Opium War would have broken out in advance.
After the Opium War, in the list of "top ten most famous pirates in history" rated by Westerners, Zheng Yiyi's name was among the best.
After Zheng Yiyi became famous, Western books, films and televisions about her appeared in an endless stream, and in "Pirates of the Caribbean", she was even ugly into the image of an "old demon", which is enough to see the terrifying image of Zheng Yiyi in the hearts of Westerners.
Of course, after she accepted the edict of the imperial court, she had no merit in the decaying court, so she was obscure and not well known.
Zheng Yiyi was 69 years old when she died, but after her death, her impact on society can still not be underestimated. According to people's research, the popular casino in Macao is still inseparable from Zheng Yiyi's sister-in-law.
After Zheng Yiyi's pirate team accepted zhao'an, some pirates who did not want to submit to the imperial court stayed in Macau, and since then generations have taken root there, because pirates like to gamble, so the gambling trend there has gradually become popular.
In the end, Zheng Yiyi took her son to Macau to open a lot of casinos, so this led to the popularity of Macau casinos.
Pictured: Red Flag Gang image
Zheng Yiyi's life legend is colorful, and the pirate gene in her bones determines that her life will not be ordinary, although she is a woman, she is hundreds of times stronger than those princes and ministers during the Qing Dynasty.
If the generals of the late Qing Dynasty, even if the emperor was like her, how could the Qing Dynasty be humiliated to such an extent?