In the drama Towards the Republic, there is such a dialogue, the regent Zaifeng scolded in front of Zhang Zhidong's face: "Are you the regent or I am the regent, are you pretending to be confused or really old and confused, I tell you I am Daqing, there are no more of you, no less than you!" Zhang Zhidong, you old immortal! Give face not face. After listening to Zaifeng's words, Zhang Zhidong, who was in his 60s, was so angry that he laughed madly and then fell to the ground and fainted. This paragraph is almost the same as Zhuge Liang's scolding of Wang Lang, the small editor said that Wang Lang was scolded to death, but Zhang Zhidong was scolded to death. This is one of the important reasons why Zhang Zhidong finally sent the Manchu Qing Empire to the crematorium.
Zhang Zhidong was born in Xingyi Province, Guizhou Province, and was called Zhang Xiangshuai by the world. Zhang Zhidong, together with Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, and Li Hongzhang, was called the four famous ministers of the late Qing Dynasty, and the world regarded "shaving his head" as the head of the four famous ministers, but this was not the case.
In 1895, the Beiyang Fleet, which the Qing Dynasty claimed to be the first in Asia and the ninth in the world, was lost in the artillery fire of the Sino-Japanese War. The Qing Dynasty was defeated by the small East Asian country of Japan. The foreign affairs movement led by Li Hongzhang with the slogans of "self-improvement" and "seeking prosperity" was unveiled by the Japanese as the last disguise, and the weakness of the Qing Dynasty was completely exposed to the eyes of the world. After the defeat of the Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, Li Hongzhang also completely slipped from the peak of power. However, Zhang Zhidong was rapidly rising at this time, and he began to take over the leadership of Li Hongzhang and lead the law change movement in China.
After Zhang Zhidong came to power, he personally designed and implemented the New Deal at the end of the Qing Dynasty, trying to comprehensively modernize the economic, political, judicial and even educational systems from top to bottom. It can be said that this reform is the last "operation" done by Han people with lofty ideals to rescue the Qing Dynasty, and the chief surgeon of this operation is Zhang Zhidong. These efforts of his did not allow the Qing Dynasty to survive for a few years, but accelerated the collapse of the Qing Dynasty.
Zhang Zhidong started as a Qingliu who opposed the Western affairs movement. However, after he took charge of the party, he thoroughly saw that Qingliu could not save the Qing Dynasty at all, and he became more radical than the Westerners. At the beginning of the Penghu ReformAtion, Zhang Zhidong befriended Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and other reformists. However, when the Penghu Reform Law was reaching a climax, he suddenly changed his mind and thought that Liang Youwei and others were just rhetoric and could not save the Qing Dynasty and broke with it.
In Chinese history, there are many people who are known as "prodigies of the imperial examination", such as Cai Yuanpei and Ji Xiaolan, but they are undoubtedly the light of fireworks and haoyue compared with Zhang Zhidong. At the age of 13, Zhang Zhidong was admitted to Xiucai as the first place, at the age of 16, he was admitted to the first place, and at the age of 26, Zhang Zhidong entered the temple examination as the first place in the examination. Because the content of Zhang Zhidong's strategy was too sharp, the reading minister had no choice but to put him in the last 1 of the top three. However, after reading the examination paper, Cixi felt that it was not good to bury talents like this, so she put Zhang Zhidong in the third place of the first division. It is reasonable to say that Zhang Zhidong, who was admitted to the 16-year-old at the age of 16, took 10 years to be admitted to the jinshi? But what everyone doesn't know is that in these 10 years, he helped his father Zhang Ying fight a war. At that time, Zhang Ying was the zhi county of Xingyi Province, and during his tenure, Xingyi Province was surrounded by rebels Zhang Zhidong and led his whole family to the city to kill the enemy, for 3 days and 3 nights. Zhang Ying had planned to break through the "death knot" of the whole family, but he knew that he was guarded by Zhang Zhidong.
Zhang Zhidong was just about to go to Beijing to catch the exam, and Zhang Ying died of exhaustion on the post. He had to keep filial piety for 3 years, and after 3 years he was ready to go to the examination, who knew that there was his cousin Zhang Zhiwan of the Daoguang Dynasty in the examiner team, and he had no choice but to avoid danger. In 1863, Zhang Zhidong was finally able to take the exam and enter the high school as usual. In order to restrain Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and other Han Chinese overseers who held great military and political power, Zhang Zhidong was favored by Cixi. The reason why Zhang Zhidong did not like Zeng Guofan was because Zeng Guofan was superficially incorruptible, but it was very hypocritical to make money when he went to Sichuan to take the main examination, and so was Li Hongzhang. However, after Zhang Zhidong went to Sichuan to take the main examination, he was very honest and did not accept the bribes of thousands of taels. It also left the Zunjing Academy in Sichuan. Later, when Zhang Zhidong left Sichuan, he could not make up 1,000 taels of travel expenses, and sold some books to make the trip.
In the following years, he was promoted to higher ranks because of his outstanding political performance. In 1877, the population of the Ding Pengqi famine in Shanxi was drastically reduced, and the peasants abandoned their homes and fled the famine. Zhang Zhidong was parachuted into Shanxi as an inspector, and he visited various parts of Shanxi to investigate the people's situation and understand the facts, and drove away Shi Baoheng and Wang Ding'an, the two envoys who endangered Shanxi. Then he abolished the "labor fees" and "routine silver" of Yamen and adopted policies to let the people return to their hometowns to cultivate land. When Tsarist Russia plotted against Ili in Xinjiang, he and Zhang Peilun jointly opposed it. In the Sino-French War, he promoted Feng Zicai, the leader of the Black Flag Army from the Heaven and Earth Society, to command the war, and after the victory, he opposed Li Hongzhang's compromise hopes to force peace with war. Later, after taking power in the south, he developed the foreign affairs movement, building railways, building steel mills, and building arsenals, leaving a lot of foundation for China's modernization cause.
But what he did made more Chinese people see the corruption and incompetence of the Manchu Qing, and also made the Xinhai Revolution come earlier. His original intention was to save the Qing Dynasty and be a zhongxing minister.