When it comes to the royal palace in ancient times, we will definitely think of the luxurious adjective "palatial" for the first time. For example, the GongWang Mansion created by He yan is the most luxurious palace in history. However, in the history of our country, there is still a group of people who are not inferior to Hezhen who are keen on wealth and nobility, and they are the kings of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. So how luxurious are these people's royal palaces? Among them, the most simple Zhongwang Mansion, Li Hongzhang did not dare to look at it directly.
At the end of 1850, under the decadent and dim rule of the Qing Dynasty, the people were not happy. In addition, at that time, natural disasters were frequent, and the lives of the people in the liangguang area had completely collapsed, and in order to seek survival under such conditions, the peasant armed forces dominated by Hong Xiuquan launched an anti-Qing uprising in Jintian Village, Guangxi.
The Taiping Army won successive battles, and the Qing army could not turn over for a while, and in 1853 it captured Nanjing, and established the "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" here, renamed Tianjing. This uprising was a large-scale peasant uprising in china's history, and it violently shook the foundation of the Qing Dynasty. But unfortunately, after 14 years of resistance, with the defeat of the last Taiping Army in 1872, the "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" movement ended in failure.
After the study and analysis of later historians, one of the biggest reasons for the failure of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was the decay of the rulers. With the "Heavenly King" Hong Xiuquan as the mainstay, there are five "kings" such as Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai who rule together. With the main purpose of sharing money and wealth, they as leaders unscrupulously used a large amount of money to satisfy their own selfish desires, and Yang Xiuqing was the most important.
Lee Soo-sung is a general who followed Hong Xiuquan in jintian village in an uprising. He was born into poverty, but he studied hard and worked tirelessly, showing outstanding talent in the use of soldiers in battle, and was named "King Zhong" in 1859. In 1860, he led an army to relieve the siege of Tianjing, made a surprise attack on Hangzhou, and in May of the same year, he broke the Jiangnan camp and revived the prefecture, and fought in the Taiping Army.
After Li Xiucheng captured Suzhou, he immediately began to build the Zhongwang Mansion for himself there. Although he was a military general who was very sympathetic to the people's feelings, he had spent a long time with Hong Xiuquan and others, and it was inevitable that he would be contaminated with some corrupt habits. His Zhongwang Mansion is the best proof of this, as it began in 1860 and was not built until 1863 when Li Hongzhang occupied Suzhou. When Li Hongzhang first entered this mansion, he was immediately shocked, and he only said one sentence: "A realm that has never been seen in his life", which was enough to show his surprise and amazement.
In terms of historical records, the Zhongwang Mansion can be described as the most simple of the palaces of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and compared with Yang Xiuqing's mansion, it is simply not worth mentioning. But it is such a "simple" mansion that surprises such a figure as Li Hongzhang, which cannot help but make people feel strange.
Zhongwangfu is located next to the Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou and covers an area of about 8,000 square meters. The whole mansion adopts the Jiangnan style garden design, which has the feeling of "small bridge flowing water". From the main gate to the apse, there are more than 300 exquisite paintings on the 5-entry building. At the same time, there are a large number of Su-style paintings in the house, with 285 squares of baggage cotton, 210 ruyi heads, a total of 495 paintings, of which 3/4 are landscapes, flowers, birds, animals and gorgeous brocades, which is simply gorgeous.
Li Hongzhang described in his family letter that "the Qionglou Yuyu of the Zhongwang Mansion, the Qulan Cave House, the True Immortal Cave House, the Three or Four Gardens, the Two or Three Drama Stages, and the Realm That Have Never Been Seen in a Lifetime." Such a luxurious scene must have been seen only in the palace. A golden crown found in the Zhongwang Mansion was even worth as much as the Crown of the Queen of England, and this kind of luxury was only the most simple existence among the Taiping kings, so the other mansions were simply unimaginable.
The of a thousand miles was destroyed by the ant nest, which comes from the decaying habits of the kings, which is the biggest ant nest of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement. From the extravagance of the Zhongwang Mansion, it can be imagined that in order to build the palaces of the kings, these expenses are already an astronomical amount, how can the fledgling uprising be carried? The failure of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is ultimately the bitter fruit of these kings themselves.