"All the mediocre people in the world, ancient and modern, are defeated by a lazy word; the talents of the ancient and modern world are defeated by a proud word." --Zeng Guofan
In the late Qing Dynasty, a short-lived regime appeared in China, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Speaking of this heavenly kingdom, many people will also think of Li Xiucheng, who is generous and righteous in Tianjing. In addition, Li Xiucheng left tens of thousands of words of self-description before his death.
However, what everyone does not know is that earlier in 1963, Zeng Yunong, the great-grandson of Zeng Guofan, chose to photocopy and publish the "Confession of Li Xiucheng" that had been treasured in his family for a hundred years.
Since many years have passed since Zeng Guofan's death at this time, people want to know why Li Xiucheng's confession was not made public until this time.
Death of Lee So-sung
In the fourteenth year of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Tianjing was completely surrounded, at that time Li Xiucheng was responsible for the defense of the whole city, in order to protect Hong Xiuquan's eldest son Hong Tiangui, so that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom could continue, he led more than a hundred people to stay behind to intercept the Qing army.
Later, for various reasons, Li Xiucheng was exiled to Fangshan, and then was captured by Dong Tao and sacrificed to Xiao Fusi. After Li Xiucheng was captured, he was sent directly to Zeng Guoquan's military camp, and there was a vendetta between the two of them, so Li Xiucheng was tortured all the time.
After the end of his sentence, Li Xiucheng in prison would write a "self-statement" at a rate of 7,000 words a day, and 16 days later, Zeng Guofan sent someone to inform Li Xiucheng that his death date was approaching.
During this period, Li Xiucheng had no fear, and recited ten sentences of desperate poems on the execution ground, and finally calmly became righteous. After Li Xiucheng's death, Zeng Guofan reported the self-reported of the deleted Liu Xiucheng to the imperial court, and the original manuscript was sent back to his hometown to be treasured.
The secret in the confession
Zeng Guofan did not directly hand over the original manuscript to the imperial court at that time, mainly because there were some secrets hidden in the confession. Scholars who study the history of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also said that if Zeng Guofan had announced it early, he would have been wiped out.
Because from the materials that were not photocopied until the 1960s, we can see that at that time, Li Xiucheng carefully analyzed zeng guofan's situation, and then very clearly suggested that zeng guofan support the army and declare himself emperor.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that when Zeng Guofan executed Li Xiucheng, he did not receive an official imperial order from the imperial court, that is to say, Zeng Guofan and his own subordinates should have solved Li Xiucheng privately.
And the reason why he did this was that the rebellion in ancient times was the great sin of the Nine Tribes of Zhulian. In order to avoid the contents of the confession being spied on by people with hearts, Zeng Guofan and others chose to execute Li Xiucheng.
As for the content of the confession, it was too sensitive, and Zeng Guofan did not dare to give it completely to the imperial court, so he would report the deleted version to the imperial court, so that he could save the lives of himself and his relatives as much as possible.
supplement
Many people say that Zeng Guofan is very "foolish and loyal", and he would rather guard a faint dynasty than bring new life to the people with his own ability.
Although Zeng Guofan had been working diligently during his tenure as an official, the vast majority of the people at that time were very dissatisfied with Zeng Guofan.
Of course, the emergence of Zeng Guofan had a far-reaching impact on both the political and military development of the Qing Dynasty and the cultural and economic reforms.
At that time, under his suggestion, China built the first steamship, set up the first military engineering school, and the first batch of students to study in the United States appeared...
And these have actually laid a certain foundation for China's subsequent development, but in the matter of disposing of Li Xiucheng, people are indeed very controversial about this.
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