In the era of feudal despotism, the execution of criminals in the spring of the revival of all things was considered unlucky. Of course, it was not without exception, on the 20th day of the first month of the 21st year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1682), Geng Jingzhong, the king of Jingnan, was punished by the Qing court for Ling Chi. At such a special time, he was punished so cruelly, and the reason was simple, because he had committed a terrible sin.
Geng Jingzhong was the grandson of Geng Zhongming, the King of Jingnan, and a native of the Han Army, who continued to garrison Fujian after the deaths of Geng Zhongming and his son Geng Jimao. He was the leader of Fujian during the San Francisco Rebellion.
In the twelfth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1673), Shang Kexi, the king of Pingnan, requested to return to Liaodong for the elderly and leave his son Shang Zhixin to guard Guangdong, and Kangxi took this opportunity to ask Shang Kexi to "withdraw the soldiers and return home". After Wu Sangui and Geng Jingzhong learned of the news, in order to test the intentions of the imperial court, they pretended to withdraw the domain, but it was self-defeating, and the Kangxi Emperor specially allowed him to ask for it, and sent people to Guangdong, Yunnan, and Fujian to deal with the withdrawal of the domain.
Soon, Wu Sangui raised an army, and party henchmen from all over the country responded one after another. In order to prevent the simultaneous rebellion of the Three Domains, the Kangxi Emperor took measures of division and disintegration, and ordered Geng Jingzhong to remain in Fujian. However, Geng Jingzhong, fearing that the imperial court would move otherwise, imprisoned the governor Fan Chengmo in March of the thirteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1674) and raised troops in Fujian to respond.
After the rebellion of san francisco, the Kangxi Emperor formulated a strategy to focus on attacking Wu Sangui, sending heavy troops to surround and suppress Wu Sangui. For Geng Jingzhong and Shang Zhixin, the two mainly adopted a policy of appeasement. However, at this time, Geng Jingzhong, because he had trapped several cities in a row and pointed directly into the territory of Zhejiang, was very arrogant and did not pay any attention to the court's solicitations. The Kangxi Emperor had to take countermeasures, ordering the three generals Hilgen, Laita, and Gentba to attack from Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Guangdong. At the same time, Kangxi issued an edict to deprive Geng Jingzhong of the throne and imprison his brothers in Beijing.
In June of the thirteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor appointed Jie Shu the Prince of Kang as a general and Gushan Beizi Fu Lata as the general of Ninghai, and led his division to Zhejiang to negotiate. In the autumn and winter of that year, the governor of Zhejiang, Li Zhifang, and the Pingnan general Lai Ta joined forces to attack the Zengyang department of the Geng army, recovering the places of Wu and Chun'an, and then sent an army to defeat the attack of Geng Jingzhong's general Xu Shangchao's 50,000-strong army outside Jinhua Province.
In the first month of the fourteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1675), Jieshu the Prince of Kang sent troops to defeat Sha Youxiang, the commander-in-chief of Geng Jingzhong's army, and retake Chuzhou. In April, the Qing army defeated the attack of 40,000 Geng troops at Raozhou Capital. In August, the Qing army broke through Huangyan, and Zeng Yang's troops fled to Wenzhou overnight, but unexpectedly surrounded them with Fu Lata's troops, suffering heavy losses.
Later, Geng Jingzhong had a conflict with the Zheng clique in Taiwan, and in June of the fifteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1676), Geng Jingzhong suddenly withdrew Jianchang's army in anger because Zheng Jing seized Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. Kangxi seized the opportunity and immediately ordered Jie Shu and others to transfer the army surrounding Wenzhou and take Fujian directly. In July, Jie Shu joined forces with Fu Lata and others in Quzhou. On August 15, the Qing army launched an attack on ma Jiuyubu, a Geng army entrenched in Jiulong Mountain, West of Quzhou.
Ma Jiuyu was attacked by this attack without preparation, and suffered heavy casualties, and the rest of the army fled to Xianxia Pass in a hurry, but by this time the Qing army had reached the pass, attacked by land, surrendered as many people as possible, and forced the Geng army guarding guanguan to surrender. Yue Le, the Prince of An who garrisoned Jiangxi, sent the general Hilgen to lead his troops to defeat Bai Xianzhong's forces and retake Jianchang and Raozhou. In addition, he sent the Jiangning general Erchu to recover Guangxin, and Bai Xianzhong was forced to surrender in isolation.
Geng Jingzhong not only lost one military battle after another, but also fell into a situation of internal and external difficulties politically. With the increasing scarcity of military salaries, Geng Jingzhong had no choice but to go around expropriating and violently, causing resentment among the people, and at the same time, there were cases of non-commissioned officers fleeing and disobeying Geng Jingzhong's dispatches, and Zheng Jing also took advantage of Geng Jingzhong's crisis to enter the void, and half of Fujian fell into the hands of Zheng.
In early October, Jieshu the Prince of Kang led an army to Yanping, and the Geng army guarding the city surrendered. In desperation, Geng Jingzhong surrendered after killing Fan Chengmo, and Zeng Yangsheng also surrendered to Wenzhou. After Geng Jingzhong surrendered, the Kangxi Emperor ordered him to lead his officers and soldiers to follow the Qing army to attack Zheng Jing and atone for his sins. In the sixteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Qing army expelled Zheng Jing from Xiamen and recovered Zhangzhou, Quan and other places.
Geng Jingzhong surrendered to the Qing court on the surface, but in his heart he did not really submit. In November, Xu Hongbi, a staff member of the Geng Army, exposed Geng Jingzhong's intentions of rebellion after his surrender, and listed five incriminating evidence. Geng Jingzhong's younger brother Geng Zhaozhong also went to the Qing court to report Geng Jingzhong, and Kangxi preserved these songs.
In the seventeenth year of Kangxi (1678), Wu Sangui fell ill and died in Hengyang, and Kangxi sent someone to summon Geng Jingzhong to see his majesty in Beijing. In March of the nineteenth year (1680), Kangxi took out his previous resignation and ordered the kings and ministers to discuss the crime of Geng Jingzhong. Geng Jingzhong tried his best to argue that the kings and ministers all thought that he was the most evil and should be executed by Ling Chi. Considering the situation at that time, Kangxi decided to temporarily imprison Geng Jingzhong and put his family and subordinates under the banner of the Zhenghuang Banner Han Army.
In the twentieth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1681), the Qing army pacified Yunnan, and the following year, the Qing court began to deal with the case of Geng Jingzhong and others. Mingzhu and others believed that Geng Jingzhong should be executed as soon as possible, and Kangxi also believed that the matter should not be delayed any longer, and ordered geng Jingzhong and his subordinates Zeng Yangsheng, Bai Xianzhong, Liu Jinzhong, and others to be executed. Prior to this, Shang Zhixin had been given death as early as the nineteenth year of Kangxi, and Wu Sangui was also excavated and broken in the twentieth year of Kangxi, but in comparison, Geng Jingzhong's end was the most tragic, and he was cut into pieces of meat by a thousand knives.