When it comes to the famous Qing general Monk Greenqin, almost everyone who is familiar with the history of the Qing Dynasty knows that his life can be described as a great achievement in battle and a great reputation. Mr. Cai Dongfan praised him: "There is a former marshal in the south, and a monk king in the north, who is a minister of the Great Qing Pillar Stone." I don't know what it was like to have such a tough general finally die under the knife of a sixteen-year-old boy? Who is the murderer? How did you end up in the net? And let me come one by one.
The monk Gelinqin, a left-wing rear bannerman of Mongolian Horqin, the twenty-sixth grandson of Genghis Khan's second brother, and the step-son of the sister of the Daoguang Emperor. In the sixteenth year of Jiaqing (that is, in 1811 AD), the monk Gelinqin was born in a poor family in Mongolia, played a small self-reliance, followed his father Bu and Deliger to herd horses for the landlord, and at the age of twelve was sent to Wenchang Palace in Changtu County to study. In the fifth year of Daoguang, because he was elected as the heir of the county lord, he gradually entered the official field, and in December of the same year, he gave him the imperial front to walk and wear three-eyed flowers, and then moved all the way to the official rank. Thirty years after Daoguang, before the emperor's death, the monk Gelinqin was made a minister of gu orders, and in September he was transferred to Miyun to suppress bandits, and Dazhan Xiongcai eliminated all the bandits, and was appointed by the Xianfeng Emperor as a former minister.
▲ The famous monk Greenqin of the Manchu Qing Dynasty
In the third year of Xianfeng, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom set the capital of Tianjing, and in August sent the Northern Expeditionary Army to attack the Gyeonggi stronghold, and the Xianfeng Emperor gave the monk Greenqin a sword that Nurhaci had used in the past, and ordered him to lead the army to attack. After two years of arduous battles, hundreds of battles, Senggelinqin made outstanding achievements in battle, broke the Northern Expeditionary Army, captured the main generals of the Taiping Army, Lin Fengxiang and Li Kaifang, the imperial conferred the title of "Batulu", crowned the title of Prince of Bodol Katai, hereditary resignation, and rewarded a plate of imperial beads and a piece of four dragons, thus becoming famous in the government and the opposition, known as the "Monk King"!
In the eighth year of Xianfeng, the British army invaded the coast, the Qing army in the Naval Battle of Dagukou in Tianjin was defeated, and the Qing court signed the "Tianjin Treaty" with the British under the suggestion of the lord and the faction.
▲ Scene of the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin between China and Britain in 1858
The following year, the monk king was ordered to go to Tianjin to supervise the defense of Dagukou and Jingdong, and began to reorganize the armaments. Coincidentally, a new British and French minister led a fleet of treaties from Shanghai to the north, and when he reached Dagukou, he despised the Qing army and even disregarded the advice to break into the defensive zone, which aroused the great indignation of the officers and men of the fort, and sanggelinqin was even more angry, he personally supervised the army to order the firing of artillery, destroyed three British warships in succession, killed and wounded 464 British troops, the commander of the navy Hebu was seriously wounded, and finally withdrew and fled, this Dagukou defense battle, since 1840, the Chinese army resisted the Western powers for the first time, the great victory. The Qing court greatly rewarded the monk Greenqin and his meritorious soldiers. However, because of this battle, they angered the British and French allies, and the next year they made a comeback with their ships and cannons, directly invaded Tianjin and Beijing, and burned the Yuanmingyuan. Because the monk king took the lead in provoking the war, the Qing court, in order to apologize to the great powers, ordered the monk Greenqin to be removed from the three-eyed flower plume, and stripped the minister of the yellow banner of the guard and the manchurian blue flag, and finally left only the minister of Chincha a vacant post.
In September of the tenth year of Xianfeng, the Twist army in Shandong and Zhili sprang up, and the momentum was huge. Seeing that the situation was urgent, the Qing court was busy restoring the monk Greenqin County, rewarding him with three eyes and a top, and ordering him to lead 10,000 Qing troops to Shandong to suppress the twist. After receiving the order, the monk king, who was a famous general in a hundred battles, proudly believed that this was nothing more than a cannon hitting mosquitoes, and as soon as the heavenly soldiers arrived, the bandits would be captured immediately, and they would be able to make achievements in a few days.
However, this time, the monk king was wrong, and after the Qing army led by him arrived in Shandong, the Twist army did not confront him head-on at all, but only implemented the tactic of "the enemy comes and I go, and the enemy takes me to disturb" in the movement, which dragged the Qing army into a series of defeats and the army was sluggish. The two sides have been deadlocked in this way The "cat and mouse game" has been in this way for more than several years, and there has been no result. After Xianfeng's death, the Tongzhi monk Gelinqin restrained the soldiers and horses of the five provinces of Lu, Yu, and Zhi, and must completely annihilate the bandits. Although the number of soldiers and horses increased, the twist army was still drifting around, and its whereabouts were uncertain, which made the monk king have a headache.
It was not until May of the fourth year of Tongzhi (1865) that Lai Wenguang, the commander of the Twist army, took advantage of the monk's eagerness to engage in battle and came up with a plan to annihilate the enemy.
It is said that on May 17 of that year, when the monk Greenqin led the army to Heze, Shandong Province, when the sleepy horse was tired, there was a sudden malay report: I learned that the main force of the Twist army was stationed in a high-rise village not far ahead! After hearing this, the monk king was so excited that he could raise his hand and sighed: "I don't want to kill him here for several years!" So he ordered the governor of Cao Prefecture to prepare a thousand pigs and sheep to wait for the army to return to the labor army after being suppressed.
In the early morning of the next day, the monk Greenqin took six thousand cavalry, twenty thousand infantry, and five hundred "red child soldiers" equipped with rifles, and the black cloud crushed the city and killed them towards the high-rise village, walking along, and suddenly saw that there were often small strands of twisters in front of him, which made it more certain that the main force of the twister army was not far ahead, and the monk king was more and more happy, and he let the horse attack the high-rise village with all his might, and never let go of a twister bandit!
After an hour of marching, the army finally reached the high-rise village. When the monk looked around, he saw that surrounded the mountain on three sides, a small road led to a large village, the trenches in front of the village were staggered, the outer ring of the village was fortified, and the willow forest was surrounded, showing a solemn atmosphere. When I was looking at it coldly, there was a sudden sound of artillery in my ears, and then the three laneways in the village shouted out countless twisters, and in the middle were infantry, armed with spears and spears, and the left and right wings were all horses, and the soldiers were equipped with short guns and large knives, and the wind and clouds shouted at the officers and soldiers to kill.
Seeing this, the monk king urgently ordered the troops to also divide into three ways to resist, how nai this path is too narrow, the infantry and cavalry are jammed in one place because of a moment of busyness, it is extremely difficult to show their fists and feet, and the foreign guns and cannons are still behind the team, and when they are anxious, they suddenly hear the outer embankment of the village, the nearby willow forest, and the cries of killing are heard in the near thousands of ditches, and thousands of twisters are wrapped in red scarves, like a swarm of rats drilled out of the ground, and rush over.
The monk king immediately realized that his own men and horses had actually fallen into the heavenly net arranged by the twister army, but it was too late to regret it, and the two sides quickly fought a scuffle, and after half an hour, the Qing army was beaten to the ground, all the cavalry were annihilated, and the monk Greenqin hurriedly dismounted, and the "red child soldiers" with guns escorted by the panicked road fled to the wheat field near the willow forest to the left.
At this time, night falls, and a round of crescent moon hangs high in the dark night. Under the cover of the powerful firepower of the "Red Child Soldiers", the remaining people and horses could have escaped safely. Unexpectedly, countless teams of horses jumped out of the willow forest, some holding torches, some holding a long seedling pole, it seemed that they had been ambushed for a long time. The "Red Child Soldiers" were just about to shoot with their guns when they saw those soldiers holding the Miao Pole rush over on their horses and whips, and before the gunshots could be fired, the tip of the Miao Pole gun had already pierced through the chest, like picking a toad, and stabbed the "Red Child Soldiers" to death.
The ambush battle at Gaolouzhai was over at this point, but when the Twist army counted the corpses of the qing soldiers, no one found any trace of the monk king, and the master general of the twist army, Lai Wenguang, and others could not help but be secretly anxious, if they let go of the monk Greenqin, it would be too difficult to arrest him again. Just at this moment, I saw a childish teenager running in the wheat field, holding a knife in one hand and an official hat in the other, Lai Wenguang took a look at it, and couldn't help but be overjoyed, which was exactly the unique three-eyed flower top worn by the monk Greenqin.
After carefully asking the young Fang Zhi, when he was charging with the army just now, he saw an official stumbling into the wheat field, so he followed closely behind, and then the official seemed to be so tired that he squatted down, so the teenager quickly stepped forward and cut his throat, but he did not know who he was, so he took his official hat back. Lai Wenguang listened, so he relaxed his mind and asked people to carry out the body of the monk Greenqin and burn it on the spot.
So who was the boy who killed the monk king? It turned out that his name was Zhang Pixiu, he was only 16 years old at the time, because he inadvertently killed the monk Greenqin, he avenged the deep hatred for the Taiping Army's chief generals Lin Fengxiang, Li Kaifang, Zhang Lexing and others, and from then on he became famous in the rebel army, and there is still a song in Shandong that sings his song: Zhang Pixiu, really called Qiang, kill the monk king in the wheat barley field!
Later, the Qing court was shocked to hear that the monk Greenqin had been killed, and in anger, he ordered officials from all over Shandong to arrest the murderer no matter what!
After the Battle of Gaolouzhai, because he received a lot of bounties, he soon left the army and returned home to take care of his widow. Later, he changed his name to Ling Yun, and married his wife and had children to open a grain and oil store, but unfortunately, after a drunken drink with a friend, he showed off his former glory, and even told the section of killing the monk king, just when he was heard by the neighboring secret agent sent by Ding Baozhen, the inspector of Shandong, Zhang Pixiu was arrested, and after being arrested in Beijing, he confessed to the killing of the monk king, and then was executed by the Qing court Lingchi, at this time it was exactly eight years after the death of the monk King Gaolouzhai! It was the twelve years of Tongzhi.