In July 1864, when Tianjing fell, Li Xiucheng, the King of Zhong, escorted the young king Hong Tianfugui out of the capital in chaos, and later Hong Tianfugui's horse broke his leg, and he gave his horse to Hong Tianfugui, and the two dispersed. Later, Hong Tianfugui was captured by the Qing army for "begging for food". After Li Xiucheng fled to Fangshan, he was also betrayed by local residents. Zeng Guoquan captured him and imprisoned him in the Liangjiang Governor's Palace.
The Ninth Marshal Zeng Guoquan first tortured Li Xiucheng because he hated Li Xiucheng. He hated him for killing his elder brother Zeng Guohua in the Battle of the Three Rivers, and hated him for injuring himself to keep Tianjing safe. In the face of severe punishment, Li Xiucheng did not give in and proudly said 8 words: Each is its own master, why is this?
When Zeng Guofan heard about the arrest of Li Xiucheng, he immediately set off from Anqing to Nanjing and personally interrogated Li Xiucheng. Zeng Guofan was very "friendly" to him, and the tough Li Xiucheng also began to "submit to softness", and even agreed to Zeng's request, and wrote tens of thousands of words of "Self-Statement", expounding his participation in the revolution, the successes and failures of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and commenting on the princes one by one.
Li Xiucheng's self-description was characterized by later generations as 2 words: apostasy.
Li Xiucheng's evaluation of the princes in the "Self-Statement Book" is very wonderful, especially the wing king Shi Dakai.
Yi wang Shi Dakai was interviewed at the age of 16, crowned king at the age of 19, and commanded thousands of troops and horses at the age of 24 to beat the "famous ministers of Zhongxing" Zeng Guofan, Hu Linyi, Peng Yulin and so on and fled into the wilderness, and is recognized as the god of war of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. However, Li Xiucheng's evaluation of him is three sentences.
The first sentence is 8 words: the family is rich in reading, and the literature and weapons are sufficient.
It should be known that Shi Dakai is a reader, with a relatively high cultural level and a good character cultivation, which is very rare in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom camp. It can be seen that he belongs to the "family rich reading".
At the same time, Shi Dakai's governance and war are very good, which can be regarded as "full of civil and military equipment". This is mainly reflected in two aspects: First, military capability. The main manifestation was that Shi Dakai was ordered twice in danger, restrained the military affairs of the Western Expedition, not only reversed the decline, but also took advantage of the victory to counterattack, killing Zeng Guofan and fleeing into the wilderness, pushing the great cause of the Western Expedition to the climax. The second is the ability to govern the country. The main manifestation was the political, economic, and military reforms carried out during the Anqing period of Shi Dakai's overseer, that is, the "Anqing easy system", which was also popularized by leaders such as Hong and Yang. Later, Shi Dakai passed through Jiangxi and directly moved Anqing's set over, and the effect was not bad, and Zuo Zongtang said directly: "Jiangxi's affairs, I am afraid that we cannot do anything", acknowledging that he won the hearts and minds of the people.
The second sentence is 12 words: Looking at both culture and martial arts, there is no great wisdom.
After "praising" Shi Dakai, Li Xiucheng immediately adopted the "Spring and Autumn Brushwork" to vaguely express his views on him, believing that Shi Dakai actually did not have any great wisdom, but was actually a mediocre talent. Li Xiucheng's "Self-Description" said: "The two kings of the North and the Wing are not satisfied, the kings and subjects are not separated, the East wants to be exclusive, and the Later North and the Wing discuss killing the East King." Yi secretly discussed with the Northern King, killing one person in the east and killing three of his brothers, yuan Qing and fu Qing, in addition, they should not kill more. Although Yang Xiuqing, the ninth thousand-year-old king of the Eastern King, was arrogant and arrogant, and had no one in sight, he enjoyed the power of "Heavenly Father's Rumors" and was the spiritual pillar of the worship of God, and once he died, the military and civilian beliefs of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would collapse. Therefore, in the Tianjing Incident, Shi Dakai and Wei Changhui secretly murdered Yang, instead of taking him under house arrest and then trying to deal with it, which in itself was the embodiment of "lack of conspiracy".
More importantly, Shi Da played a little clever, and did not return after being summoned, and Wei Changhui became the gunman of the "Tianjing Incident", which led to the expansion of the incident.
Shi Dakai could not return, Hong Xiuquan did not publish the edict, Wei Changhui District 3,000 soldiers and horses naturally could not do the power in the Jingdong Temple, he could only play "yin tricks", unite with Chen Chengyao, and correct the edict to kill the Eastern Temple Yu Dang. What about Shi Dakai? The incident was almost at the end of the incident, "The King of Yi was in Hongshan, Hubei Province, and knowing that many people had been killed in the capital, he rushed back to Kyoto with Zeng Jinqian and Zhang Suimou, and considered the matter of avoiding killing, but the Northern King suddenly began to kill." Why did the King of the North "kill his heart"? Then we have to see what Shi Da did after returning to Beijing, shi Da drove off the car, directly reprimanded the Northern King for killing innocents, and also protected Yang Fuqing, openly taking the position of the Eastern King Yu Party. Wei Changhui can forgive Shi Dakai for being "late", but he can't tolerate a problem with his position, and if he doesn't kill you Shi Dakai, he will die sooner or later. So he had the idea of starting first and decided to kill Shi Dakai.
If Shi Dakai could stand in the position of the Northern King and force Hong Xiuquan to publish the edict, it is estimated that the "Tianjing Incident" would also end here. Then, a good hand was yellowed by Shi Dakai. After Shi Dakai fled, he directly drew reinforcements from the precarious city of Wuchang to form the "Jingnan Division", and then marched towards Tianjing, threatening to get Wei Changhui's dog head, otherwise "the Banshi would return to the dynasty and attack Tianjing". Later, after Wei Changhui was killed, Shi Dakai also insisted on restoring the "military division responsibility system", continued to want the Heavenly King to be the false head of the throne, and forced him to kill Qin Rigang and Chen Chengyao.
This also led to the Hong Xiu Plenum believing that Shi Dakai wanted to monopolize power, so he made the two straw bag brothers Hong Renfa the Prince of An and Hong Renda the Prince of Fu the King of Fu as kings to contain Shi Dakai. What is even more unexpected is that Shi Dakai actually directly chose to "fly alone" - he wanted to fight jiangshan alone. As he himself said to the generals when he fled: "Or follow the lord general, or the father of the standard, unify the Day of Peace, and invite the heavens to honor." ”
Can it be successful to walk independently like this? The answer is no. Because Shi Dakai did this, he lost the hearts of the people. His departure took most of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's troops with him, which eventually led to the failure of the Taiping Rebellion.
When Li Xiucheng was captured, Shi Dakai had already been linger for nearly a year. However, Li Xiucheng wrote a third sentence in the "Self-Description Book", 8 words: "The Expedition of the Wing King, has not yet returned."
As a member of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and Li Xiucheng was once Shi Dakai's general, Shi Dakai had obviously been dead for so long, why did Li Xiucheng say that he "has not yet returned"? Obviously, it was impossible for him not to know Shi Dakai's news, but he had already "forgotten" Shi Dakai. After all, after he left, he was drifting east and west, the military was scattered, there was no fixed territory, there was no successful battle case, and he was as harsh as the walking dead, in Li Xiucheng's heart, whether he was dead or alive was not so important, and he was not willing to pay more attention.
So, is Shi Dakai a king, a wise man, or a mediocre? What do you think, welcome to leave a message to discuss.