When the Xiang army that had besieged the city for three years rushed into the city of Tianjing (Nanjing), the soldiers of the Xiang Army, who had already killed the red-eyed Soldiers, were frantically slaughtering and plundering at the same time, and the most worrying thing was: Where is the vault, the vault of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom?
From the Taiping Army uprising in 1851 to the capture of Jiangning (Nanjing) in 1853 and the change of the capital to Tianjing, in the past 13 years, the Taiping Army in the Southern Expedition and the Northern War has also been accumulating wealth, and has established a gold inventory called the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury in Tianjing City to put all kinds of gold and silver treasures, and according to the Qing Army Eyeline Report, when the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury peaked, it once amassed more than 18 million taels of silver.
At that time, there were rumors from the outside world that "over the years, there have been rumors in China and abroad that the wealth of the flood is reversed, the gold and silver are like the sea, and the department stores are abundant." In this regard, Zeng Guofan, as the commander of the Xiang Army, also instructed his ninth brother, Zeng Guoquan, who was in charge of the siege, to say, "On the day the city is destroyed, the thieves' treasury will be sealed, and most of the property will be in the household department, and the few will be retained to fill the military salaries and help the refugees."
At that time, the Xiang army was in the outer city of Tianjing City for three years, due to the financial embarrassment of the Qing court, the soldiers of the Xiang Army had already been in arrears for many months, so the soldiers had already seen the golden light in their eyes, thinking of rushing into the Tianjing City to make a windfall, although through the wanton slaughter, the soldiers were plundering the pots and bowls, but to the surprise of the Xiang Army, they almost scraped the ground three feet, but they did not find the legendary Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury.
In this regard, Zeng Guofan reported to the Qing court with chagrin:
"To restore the old nest and have no goods at all, in addition to the slightest intention, it is also a rare thing."
Although the two brothers Zeng Guofan and Zeng Guoquan reported this, Empress Dowager Cixi, who could listen to the government, did not believe this at all.
In the view of the qing court leaders headed by Cixi, the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury must have been privately swallowed by the Zeng family brothers and the Xiang army, but at present, the Xiang army with more than 300,000 troops is powerful, and it will not be able to help for a while and a half.
▲ Qing army besieged the Taiping Army.
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In fact, it was not only the top level of the Qing court, after the destruction of the Tianjing City in 1864, at that time, the whole country was generally believed to be the Xiang Army looting and looting the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury.
In 1850, Hong Xiuquan led the people to revolt in Jintian, Guangxi, when Hong Xiuquan demanded that all members of the Taiping Army "have no selfish wealth" and all property "publicly owned". ”
In 1851, after the Taiping Army captured Yong'an, Hong Xiuquan issued an edict saying:
"All the generals of each army and each battalion should be selfish, and they should always have a grass (heart), and they should be close to the Heavenly Father and Brother Heavenly Brother and The Heavenly Brother. From now on, he ordered all the soldiers and generals to kill all the demons and take the city, and the gold treasures, silk veils, treasures, and other items they obtained were not allowed to be hidden privately, and all of them were returned to the heavenly pilgrimage treasury, and those who rebelled against them discussed their sins. ”
After that, the Heavenly Treasury was officially established. At that time, the Taiping Army stipulated that if the private silver was more than 5 taels, it would be punished and even sentenced to death, "The generals of the Tong Army, large and small, shall not hide the gold treasure privately from now on, and return it to the Heavenly Pilgrimage Treasury." If he hides a private belt again, once he finds out, he will be beheaded and displayed to the public. ”
After the Taiping Army established the capital of Tianjing (Nanjing) in 1853, the Shengku system was implemented to the extreme. At that time, the Taiping Army not only confiscated the private property of the residents and put it into the Holy Treasury, but also abolished the family system, and all men and women in the army were organized into battalions, pavilions, and courts according to gender, and implemented consumption supply.
Through this special and cruel search, the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury grew rapidly. According to the report of Zhang Jigeng, a sixth-year soldier of Daoguang who secretly infiltrated the Taiping Army, the address of the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury was located in Shuiximen Lantern Lane in tianjing city, and Zhang Jigeng said in a letter to Xiang Rong, commander of the Jiangnan battalion of the Qing Army, that when the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury was initially established, there were as high as 18 million taels of silver, which could subsidize the huge financial deficit of the Qing court at that time.
However, after that, when Zhang Jigeng was killed by the Taiping Army in 1854, the news about the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury was interrupted, but the Qing army always had this in mind.
After the destruction of Tianjing City in 1864, Zeng Guoquan commanded the Xiang army to attack the city and searched street by lane, and the soldiers focused on searching the Tianwang Mansion where Hong Xiuquan lived before his death, as well as hundreds of palaces and other official residences throughout the city, but they did not find the Heavenly Treasury and the legendary huge treasures.
In order to learn the inside story, after capturing Li Xiucheng, the main general of the Taiping Army, the King of Zhongwang, the Xiang Army, tortured and forced Li Xiucheng to say, "Can the gold and silver in the cellars in the city be pointed out in several places?" ”
But Li Xiucheng's answer was always "there is no silver rice in the national treasury" and "no gold and silver in the family."
Later, Zeng Guoquan personally interrogated Dong Jinquan, the dream king who was originally in charge of the internal affairs of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but also found nothing, and in desperation, Zeng Guoquan had no choice but to report to the Qing court that in addition to discovering the "false jade seal" of the two parties and the "golden seal" of the other side, the gold of the sacred treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was really nothing, perhaps the matter was just a folk rumor.
▲Stills of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
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Zeng Guoquan reported this, the Qing court did not believe it, and the people naturally refused to believe it.
After the destruction of Tianjing City, the "Shanghai New News" at that time reported that when Zeng Guofan's wife returned to her hometown in Hunan from Nanjing, she used more than two hundred ships to escort her belongings, so this could not but make people suspect that the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury was very likely to be swallowed by Zeng Guofan, Zeng Guofan brothers and other Xiang army generals.
In this regard, Li Boyuan, a novelist of the late Qing Dynasty who once wrote "Records of the Appearance of Officialdom", once wrote in the "Notes on the Southern Pavilion": "(Zeng Guoquan) attacked Jinling and destroyed it, searched for the enemy, and entered the Heavenly King's Palace... Wen Zhongxiang (Zeng Guoquan) received tens of millions of dollars in this. Wherever the cover is, it is also where the cellar is located. In addition to a few retributions, the rest are at home. ”
Although Li Boyuan is a famous novelist, his hearsay about Zeng Guoquan's claim that after he attacked Tianjing City, he kidnapped money and "obtained tens of millions of dollars" is still not far away, in fact, Li Boyuan was born in 1867 and died in 1906, and when Li Boyuan was born, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had already been destroyed for three years, so it is really not enough to say how much credibility Li Boyuan's statement can have, but since then, the rumors about Zeng Guoquan's private captivity of the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury have become more and more widespread.
In fact, since joining the Xiang Army in 1856, as the ninth brother of Zeng Guofan, Zeng Guoquan did take a lot of captives in the process of encircling and suppressing the Taiping Army, and at that time, zeng Guoquan, who had a flamboyant personality, "every gram of a city, playing a victory battle, must take leave to return home once, quite in order to ask Tian to ask for self-obscurity." For Zeng Guoquan, the Qing court has always been suspicious of the Han people's support for the army, so Zeng Guoquan also consciously or unconsciously proved to the Qing court that he "had no great ambitions" by plundering money and returning to his hometown in Hunan to buy a field and build a house.
After eight years of construction, in 1867, three years after the fall of the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom, Zeng Guoquan built a magnificent "Dafudi" with an area of 130,000 square meters, a length of 600 meters and a width of 230 meters in Xiangxiang, Hunan Province, which made the outside world even more suspicious of Zeng Guoquan's accumulation of a super wealth by plundering the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury.
But in fact, although Zeng Guoquan was not as incorruptible as his brother Zeng Guofan, and had a lot of corruption and bribery and money plundered through war, it was still seriously exaggerated to say that he had "received tens of millions of dollars".
At that time, the Qing court began to set up a silver treasury from the thirteenth year of Shunzhi (1656), mainly storing gold, silver, money, silver bills and other property, and the Qing Dynasty treasury was divided into the inner treasury and the household treasury. In the forty-second year of Qianlong (1777), the silver deposits of the Qing court household department reached the peak of 81.82 million taels at that time; in the third year of Jiaqing (1798), the silver deposits of the Qing court household department fell to 19 million taels; in the third year of Xianfeng (1853), that is, the third year of the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing court's silver deposits in the household department fell to a pitiful 200,000 taels in the case of a surge in war expenditures.
Six years after the Pacific Heavenly Kingdom was pacified, on the second day of November in the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), Zeng Guoquan, who was jealous of the Qing court and was idle at home, complained in a letter to his eldest brother Zeng Guofan, "Brother Xiang has no left living money and uses his life to live a prosperous life, and gradually has the intention of drying up." ”
A month later, on December 16, the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), he wrote to his eldest brother Zeng Guofan, saying, "Living in the countryside is also a big social reward, and mingchun has the right to live in the provincial city, so as to save money for guests, wine, and meals." ”
In the first year of Guangxu (1875), Zeng Guoquan wrote to his two nephews Zeng Jize and Zeng Jihong: "Eight years of idleness ... The debt is like a sea. ”
Because these letters were of a private nature at that time, they were only made public in later generations, so it can be seen that although Zeng Guoquan bought a field and built a mansion in his hometown of Xiangxiang, Hunan, from his personal letters, his actual wealth was not as generous as the outside world imagined, so he repeatedly became embarrassed and short of money, in order to make money, in 1875, Zeng Guoquan had to go out of the mountains again to become an official, after which he successively served as the governor of Shaanxi, the governor of Hedong River, the governor of Shanxi, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, the shangshu of Bingbu, the governor of Liangguang, and the shangshu of Libu.
After that, Zeng Guoquan served as the governor of Liangjiang for seven years, and in these seven years alone, he had a formal income of 2.1 million taels of silver (including office expenses), so although Zeng Guoquan had a wealth, it is difficult to say how much money he earned by looting Tianjing (Nanjing).
In this regard, Zeng Guofan once complained bitterly for his younger brother Zeng Guoquan: "My brother has gained very little, and the name of 'old food' is all over the world, and it is too unjust." ”
▲ Zeng Guoquan (1824-1890).
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Since it is unlikely that Zeng Guoquan personally plundered the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury, is it possible that the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury was privately looted and divided by the soldiers of the Xiang Army?
According to Zhao Liewen, an aide to Zeng Guofan, after the Xiang army invaded Tianjing, it slaughtered and looted in the city for seven days and seven nights, "ordered those with long hair and new shaved hair to be killed, so they killed more than 100,000 thieves.", in this crazy plunder, the soldiers of the Xiang Army, who had been unpaid for a year, had a crazy plunder mentality about making up for the arrears by looting tianjing, so even if the Xiang army really found the heavenly sacred treasury at that time, it was possible that the soldiers of the Xiang army rushed to frantically divide it, and it was difficult to turn Zeng Guofan. The Zeng Guoquan brothers came to share how much soup.
Due to the embarrassment of the Qing court treasury and the long-term arrears of the Xiang army, the brothers Zeng Guofan and Zeng Guoquan also acquiesced to the plundering of the Xiang soldiers by slaughtering the city and looting the city, otherwise they would not be able to control the hundreds of thousands of long-term unpaid soldiers.
In addition, in addition to the possibility that the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury would be divided and looted by the soldiers of the Xiang Army when the Tianjing City was broken, there was also a possibility that it would be reduced to pieces by the Soldiers of the Taiping Army protruding outside the city and taken out of the Tianjing City.
For example, when Li Xiucheng broke through, when he was recognized and blocked, Li Xiu became a getaway, and he once wanted to bribe the other party and said: "If you can guide me to Huzhou, I am willing to pay 30,000 gold." ”
At that time, even Li Xiucheng's accompanying child servants were "full of gold bars on both arms, and they rode a negative box, all of which were precious things of gold pearls and jade, worth hundreds of thousands of taels of platinum."
In 1864, when Tianjing City was broken, when Hong Xiuquan had died, more than 1,000 elite soldiers of the Taiping Army supported Hong Xiuquan's son, the young king Hong Tianguifu, to break through to Huzhou and temporarily live in the palace of Huang Wenjin, the king of The Blockade, after which Hong Tianguifu broke through to Jiangxi with the army, and was captured by the Qing army in Jiangxi, and then executed by Ling Chi, at the age of 15.
Although Hong Tianguifu died, but the rumors that Hong Tianguifu had buried the gold and silver treasures of the Heavenly Treasury in the Huzhou Blocking Palace did not go away, and the local people in Huzhou were also convinced of this, and a local old man said to the outside world that he had once passed by the alley where Huang Wenjin's old residence was located in Huzhou in 1954, and saw two children playing with a copper coin larger than the palm of an adult's hand, and this copper coin was the town treasury money in the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury. According to the two children, the copper coin was found in a gap in the bluestone slab near the palace, which seems to provide some lateral evidence for the Taiping Army to hide treasure in Huzhou.
In fact, the rumors about the Taiping Army hiding treasures in the old mansion of the Blockade Palace in Huzhou have been widely circulated as early as the Republic of China, and it is rumored that in 1924, two people came to Huzhou from Shanghai, rented an old mansion in the original Blocked Wangfu, and quietly excavated the underground cellar, after which the two people did not quit.
According to this, some people speculate that even if the Taiping Army blocked the old mansion of the royal palace, even if it really hid gold and silver, it is estimated that it was already dug up by these two people.
▲ During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the missionaries painted a certain royal palace in Tianjing City.
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Although the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury has been passed on more and more in later generations, in fact, although the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury did store a huge amount of silver money in the early days, in the later period, whether the Heavenly Sacred Treasury still existed has become a mystery.
Zhang Jigeng, a Qing spy who was once undercover in the Taiping Army, in a follow-up letter to Xiang Rong, commander of the Jiangnan battalion of the Qing Army, urged the Qing army to capture Tianjing city as soon as possible, Zhang Jigeng said that within a few months after the first report of the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury, the holy inventory silver dropped from more than 18 million taels to more than 8 million taels, the reason is that up to Hong Xiuquan, down to the leaders of various princes, have transferred money from the Holy Treasury, and in 1854, before Zhang Jigeng was recognized and killed by the Taiping Army, Zhang Jigeng mentioned in the last secret letter. The holy inventory of silver had dropped to less than one million taels, and at that time, "the Eastern King Yang Xiuqing had more than 10,000 taels of private silver, the Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan had more than 7,000 taels, and the Northern King Wei Changhui had more than 1,000 taels."
After Zhang Jigeng was killed, the Qing army lost its internal eyeliner, and there was no last news about The Holy Treasury since then.
For example, after Hong Xiuquan entered Tianjing, he mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians to expand the original Qing Court Liangjiang Governor's Office into the "Heavenly King's Palace", and after the completion of the Heavenly King's Mansion, "more than ten miles around the city, the height of the city, the inside and outside, the outer Sun City, the inner and outer Golden Dragon City", "exquisitely carved, golden splendor", "colorful, extravagant".
Under the leadership of Hong Xiuquan, hundreds of kings in the Taiping Army also competed for comparison, and then continuously emptied the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury, and since then, since 1853, tianjing city has been under siege by the Qing army, and various war expenses, as well as the purchase of weapons and grain, have greatly consumed the silver stored in the heavenly sacred treasury.
A year before the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1863), when the Qing army attacked Suzhou, the loyal king Li Xiucheng was ready to lead troops from Tianjing to support, due to the lack of military expenses, Hong Xiuquan and his courtiers actually ordered Li Xiucheng to "help pay 100,000 silver", which did not hesitate to extort his own generals, which showed that the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury was likely to have actually died in name at the last moment.
However, after the Xiang army attacked Tianjing in 1864, the upward report that it had not found the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury still made Cixi, who was listening to the government, have great doubts, because the Xiang army at that time had more than 300,000 troops, and the whole country was full of ministers from the Xiang Army, and Cixi could only play a round field to fool the past.
But Cixi kept this in mind.
After successively pacifying the Taiping Army and the Twist Army in the North, and gradually dismantling the Xiang Army, cutting off the left and right arms of the brothers Zeng Guofan and Zeng Guoquan, in 1868, when the Twist Army in the north was largely suppressed, Cixi, who felt that he no longer needed the help of the Xiang Army, immediately ordered Zeng Guofan to be transferred from the Viceroy of Liangjiang to the Viceroy directly under the Prefecture.
In Cixi's view, the transfer of Zeng Guofan away from his old territory of Liangjiang and instead to the direct subordinate area at the foot of Tianzi was to facilitate the Qing court to control Zeng Guofan nearby, and then Cixi immediately ordered that ma Xinyi, the former governor of Zhejiang, be promoted to the governor of Liangjiang.
Just before Ma Xinyi took office, Cixi also issued several secret orders to Ma Xinyi, one was to suppress the forces of the Xiang army in the Liangjiang area, and the other was to secretly investigate the whereabouts of the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury to see if it was really secretly swallowed up by Zeng Guofan, Zeng Guoquan's brothers, or the Xiang army.
Ma Xinyi stayed as governor of Liangjiang for only two years, and in 1870, shortly after the military parade at the school yard that had been renamed Jiangning (Nanjing) from Tianjing, Ma Xinyi was stabbed to death on the spot with the support of many soldiers, known in history as the "Thorn Horse" case.
The "stabbing horse" case shocked the entire Qing Empire, because as the highest military and political governor of the three provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, and Jiangxi in the Liangjiang region, and the most powerful feudal official in the late Qing Dynasty, the governor of Liangjiang was actually stabbed on the spot, and the entire imperial court knew that this matter was by no means simple, so that the officials who were responsible for investigating and handling the case afterwards were cowering and did not dare to take the lead.
For this case of "stabbing horses" that finally failed, people at that time generally suspected that the real murderer behind the scenes should be the work of the Xiang army, but because of the powerful power of the Xiang army in the late Qing Dynasty, which had complex roots, even Cixi could only perfunctory the case in the end.
With Ma Xinyi's assassination, no one in the Qing court dared to openly inquire about the whereabouts of the Heavenly Treasury.
Two years after Ma Xinyi's death, in 1872, Zeng Guofan, the founder of the Xiang Army, also died of illness while serving as the governor of Liangjiang, and by 1890, Zeng Guoquan also died of illness, but the rumors continued in the folk.
▲ Behind the "thorn horse" case that shocked the political arena of the late Qing Dynasty, there is also the shadow of the Heavenly Kingdom Sacred Treasury lurking.
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After the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, in 1912, the newly established local government of Nanjing was hindered by financial embarrassment, did not know the news heard from there, and actually at the end of 1912, an excavation was carried out near the Tongji Gate Tower in Nanjing, but at that time, more than 40 meters of digging did not find the treasure, and finally returned empty-handed.
Some folklore is more divine, there was once a magnificent large garden "Jiang Yuan" in Nanjing, the owner of the garden Jiang Mou is also known as Jiang Donkey, legend has it that this person was originally a famous businessman, often using donkeys to traffic goods. Jiang Donkey once transported military food, and was favored by Li Xiucheng, the loyal king of the Taiping Army, and was appointed "chief of the three lines of donkey carriages".
It is said that when the Tianjing City was broken in 1864, the magnates and concubines of the Inner Palace in the Tianjing City once "gathered thousands of boxes of gold and silver to carry and bury their belongings", and later, these treasures flowed into the hands of Jiang Mou after the Tianjing City was broken, and they became the richest people in Nanjing.
In this regard, it is said that in the late Qing Dynasty, there was indeed Jiang Donkey and his people, but he himself started in business, rather than relying on the legendary relying on some heavenly holy treasury to get rich.
During the Republic of China period, there was a magazine called "Truth", and there was also a story that a Guangzhou man had been a soldier in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and before the fall of Tianjing in 1864, a certain prince of the Taiping Army had ordered him and 46 other soldiers to dig a treasure hole in his home, burying more than 3 million taels of gold and silver, and after the completion of the project, the prince invited them to a banquet in the name of reward, and this Guangzhou man did not go because of the malaria attack. Unexpectedly, after the others went to the banquet, they were all killed by the prince.
Upon learning of this, the Guangzhou man fled Tianjing (Nanjing) with illness overnight, and later, on his deathbed, he gave his son a sketch and instructed his son to "be sure to unearth the treasure to appease my legacy." It is said that the man's son did go to Nanjing to look for treasure later, but as for whether the treasure was found, the "Truth" magazine did not follow.
After that, some people were still unwilling, and some people drained the lake water in the middle and west gardens of the original Nanjing Heavenly King's Mansion, but they also found nothing. In this regard, the relevant parties said that Nanjing's cultural heritage is rich, and digging more than 4 meters deep is already the cultural layer of the Southern and Northern Dynasties period. Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, the ancient city of Nanjing has long been excavated on a large scale due to urban construction and other reasons, but no treasure of the so-called Heavenly Sacred Treasury in the legend has been found.
Although the Scythians have gone, the legend of the Heavenly Treasury may continue to be passed down.
▲The former site of the Nanjing Tianwang Mansion.