In fact, there has been controversy over the disposal of Hong Xiuquan's body after his death and the burial site. The reason is that many Qing troops involved in the suppression of the Taiping Army have received different answers.
In July 1864, after the fall of Tianjing City, Hong Xiuquan's son Hong Tianguifu once broke out of the city and joined hongren and other rescue troops, but in just two months, the Taiping army that was trying to find another base collapsed under the continuous blows of the Qing army, and HongRen and Hongtian Guifu were captured and killed.
When Hong Tianguifu was captured, he was greedy for life and afraid of death, and he was eager to confess all the information he knew in exchange for a way to live, and on the topic of whether his father Hong Xiuquan died and the burial place after his death, Hong Tianguifu also gave the answer: Hong Xiuquan was dead, and his body was buried on a mountain in the Eastern Ridge of the Yulin Garden.
Since Hong Tianguifu's capture site was in Jiangxi, and tianjing city had already been captured and slaughtered by Zeng Guofan's Xiang army, the Qing general Xi Baotian, who captured Hong Tianguifu, could not confirm his claim, and only recorded this content.
However, two months ago, when the various Qing troops who attacked Tianjing City reported the report, the record of Hong Xiuquan's burial site appeared as follows: Hong Xiuquan's body was buried in a courtyard wall of the Golden Dragon Hall of the Heavenly King's Palace.
In particular, during the excavation process, the Xiang Army's description of Hong Xiuquan's body also left such a record:
The head is bald and hairless, and it must still be fully preserved, and it has been white. Left and right arms, the flesh is still not shed.
Because Hong Xiuquan died on June 1, 1864, on July 19, the Xiang army invaded Tianjing City, and found Hong Xiuquan's body many days later. Due to the passage of nearly two months, Hong Xiuquan's body is naturally already in a state of high decay, especially from the records of Qing military officials, only part of Hong Xiuquan's body is still flesh that has not yet decayed, that is to say, at this time, Hong Xiuquan's body is already in a semi-decayed state, that is, some of it has been white-ossified, and the other part has not yet shown white ossification.
But it was this record that subsequently aroused the doubts of some officials in the Qing Dynasty and the opposition:
1. Since the body has decayed, how did the Xiang army who entered the city confirm that this corpse was Hong Xiuquan?
2. During the excavation process of the Xiang Army, they only mentioned that they found a body in the courtyard wall, but the body itself did not have a coffin, and the burial site could not find any funerary items. Even though Hong Xiuquan is a grass-headed tianzi, after all, he is an emperor of a regime, is there not even a coffin and funerary goods when he is buried?
3. Also answering the above question, when Hong Xiuquan died, although Tianjing City was surrounded by the Xiang Legion, there was still a huge city after all. Why is Hong Xiuquan's burial so sloppy, just simply buried in the courtyard wall? Besides, where is the practice of burying corpses in their own yards?
For these questions, the Xiang Army has also given some explanations. After the body was exhumed, the Qing army took a captured woman surnamed Huang to the scene for identification, because she was a female official of the Tianwang Palace, had seen Hong Xiuquan, and also claimed to have participated in the burial of Hong Xiuquan. According to her confession, the exhumed remains were hong xiuquan himself.
But was she involved in Hong Xiuquan's burial work? And how did she identify a decomposing corpse as Hong Xiuquan himself? Behind Xiang Jun's answer, there seems to be some doubts.
As for the latter two questions, the Xiang army also gave an explanation, because Hong Xiuquan was superstitious about the cult of God, so he did not respect the burial methods of the feudal emperors, and even in the confessions of some captured Taiping Army generals, it was also mentioned that Hong Xiuquan asked not to be buried in a coffin during his death. Since there is no coffin and believes in the religion of God, Hong Xiu's practice of not arranging funeral goods is naturally reasonable.
Of course, even if there were funerary items, they would have ceased to exist long ago in the massacres and robberies carried out by the Xiang army entering the city.
More than 100,000 thieves were killed in three days. Qinhuai River, corpses like hemp, the city from the pseudo palace, the house to pay a fire, burn the house ten thousand rooms, swallow everything.
Judging from zeng guofan's diary, after the city of Tianjing was breached, the massacres and robberies carried out by the Xiang army were no less than those of the Japanese 70 years later. Killing hundreds of thousands of people in three days, the efficiency of killing even exceeds the latter, and at the same time as killing, the houses in the city are destroyed, and all the items that can be grabbed in the city are robbed. If there really were funerary goods in Hong Xiuquan's funeral pit, would there still be anything that survived under such a crazy search and killing by the Xiang Army?
Therefore, some Qing officials suspected that the excavation of Hong Xiuquan's body reported by the Xiang Army was likely to be made up by the Zeng brothers in order to cover up the robbery. Although Hong Xiuquan believed in the Religion of God, but carefully observing his life in the past ten years since he entered the Heavenly King's Palace, This Hong Xiuquan, who shouted that he believed in God, did not demand of himself according to Western religion. There are countless wives, the scale of the Heavenly King's Mansion is even larger than the Forbidden City, and the luxury of Hong Xiuquan's life is far more than that of the Qing Emperor, and it seems a bit unreasonable to ask such an emperor that he did not have funerary goods after his death.
Hong Tianguifu, who can be the son, why is the content he gives controversial with the excavation content of the Xiang Army? This is also a question that future generations really cannot understand, and because of this, there are also different theories about the burial of Hong Xiuquan after his death.
1. Hong Tianguifu is right, Hong Xiuquan is indeed buried on a mountain and has not been found so far.
2, Hong Tianguifu may not have participated in the burial work at the scene, coupled with the fact that he was still young at the age of 16, he had not been out of the Heavenly King's Mansion because he did not understand the geographical situation of Nanjing City and remembered the wrong location, and the remains dug up by the Xiang Army in the Tianwang Mansion were Hong Xiuquan himself.
3. After finding Hong Xiuquan's body, his burial site may really be nothing, zeng guofan then according to the well-known way of handling, hong xiuquan's body was re-cremated, and the ashes were loaded into the cannon and blasted out, a real frustrating ashes.
Or maybe Hong Xiuquan's burial site has a large number of funerary items, and Zeng Guofan looted these items and destroyed Hong Xiuquan's body to completely destroy the traces!