Review
The traitor Qin Juniper, the misguided Li Hongzhang.
In 1901, Li Hongzhang and others signed a humiliating xinugu treaty to foreign powers on behalf of the Qing Dynasty, and the whole people were furious and issued such a cry.
Li Hongzhangtang was a generation of late Qing dynasty ministers, who made great contributions to the imperial court and the country, but in his later years he was saddled with the insult of the wrong country, did not control his excitement for a while, vomited blood on the spot and fell ill, and it was not long before Li Hongzhang died.
Empress Dowager Cixi was so distraught that she added the supreme title to Li Hongzhang, and in the ancestral halls set up in the places where he worked, she gave the Li family 5,000 taels of silver for Li Hongzhang's funeral, and also gave all of Li Hongzhang's descendants official positions.
Although the royal family valued him very much, half a century later, Li Hongzhang's bones were actually dug up by posterity and dragged behind a tractor for public display.
What happened to this, and why did the great generation of dignitaries fall into such a fate?
merit
Li Hongzhang studied hard with his father's expectations, lived up to expectations at the age of seventeen, and became a talented person. Zeng Guofan, as his master, was full of praise for him.
During his term of office, he introduced many advanced foreign weapons, strengthened domestic military strength, and made great contributions to the neutrality of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement.
In 1885, Li Hongzhang established China's first modern navy, called the Beiyang Naval Division, which once made China the strongest maritime military in Asia.
During the Foreign Affairs Movement, Li Hongzhang repeatedly set new heights, established China's first telegraph office, the first translation hall, built China's first railway, and sent the first batch of official students. Whether in the industrial aspect, maritime power, or cultural field, Li Hongzhang has made great achievements.
Empress Dowager Cixi called him "the man of Xuanhuang reconstruction", the Japanese prime minister praised him as the only person in the Qing Dynasty who could compete with the great powers, and the German Navy was also amazed when it saw the Beiyang Naval Division established by Li Hongzhang, calling him "Bismarck of the East". In the end, he was also listed as one of the four famous ministers of the late Qing Dynasty.
In the development of the country, Li Hongzhang's contribution is indeed undeniable, but he also has two very prominent stains, which is why people have mixed praise and criticism of him.
Two big stains
During the period when the Qing Dynasty was closed to the outside world, Li Hongzhang came forward to communicate in the face of many foreign negotiations. At that time, he avoided war and was circling between the powers. Some people say that this is his way of avoiding greater losses to the country, and some people say that this is a manifestation of his betrayal of the country and seeking glory in order to maintain his family property.
For example, in the fight with France, the original power of the Beiyang Marine Division was very strong and fierce, and there was also a war with the French army, but Empress Dowager Cixi did not attach importance to it and did not cooperate, Li Hongzhang was powerless, and signed a treaty with France to open the border between China and Vietnam.
For example, with the British, the British army issued a war book to the Qing government as a threat, and Li Hongzhang opened the gateway to Tibet to the British.
The most despised treaty with the world is the Treaty of Maguan, which was signed with Japan on the cession of Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula.
Some people have counted that the number of treaties signed by Li Hongzhang in his lifetime, a total of more than thirty treaties, unequal treaties accounted for a large proportion.
And they have all become a stigmatizing nail in China's humiliating history, and even after we pulled them out later, those marks have remained forever.
Another stain is greed for money. Since ancient times, it has not been uncommon for officials to be greedy for money, and Li Hongzhang can definitely rank in the top few.
Rong Hong once made a rough estimate, after Li Hongzhang's death, his inheritance of 40 million silver dollars, converted to the current exchange rate of up to 10 billion.
Although this data has not been officially confirmed, Li Hongzhang did make a lot of money by relying on the foreign affairs movement, and the folk also spread the phrase "the prime minister of Hefei is thin in the world."
afterward
In 1958, the whole people set off a boom in steelmaking, and I don't know who suddenly mentioned the figure of Li Hongzhang. Some people were very disgusted with him because of the agreement he signed, and some people heard that Li Hongzhang had accumulated a lot of wealth, and there might be rich funerary goods in the cemetery. The superior thought that Li Hongzhang's cemetery area was very large, and perhaps part of it could be set aside to build a factory.
Regardless of what the decision was, in the end they reached an agreement to dig up Li Hongzhang's grave. Thus, dozens of laborers organized by the production team began to work with shovels, hoes and shovels.
After digging for a long time, they seemed to find Li Hongzhang's tomb, because it was very strong, and everyone did not enter for a while and a half, so they directly blew up the tomb.
Everyone carried out the coffins of Li Hongzhang and his wife and opened the coffins.
I saw that next to Li Hongzhang's body was a sword, seven gold coins, and an exquisite box. They opened the box and found that it contained two golden bricks, weighing thirty pounds.
Everyone thinks that Li Hongzhang is greedy for so much money, this must be made of pure gold, but when I asked the professional master, I found that it was actually made of copper.
Because the funeral goods were not as rich as they expected, the crowd did not feel happy, and even tied Li Hongzhang's body with a rope behind a tractor, paraded through the streets, and finally even the skeletons were scattered everywhere and disappeared.
brief summary
Li Hongzhang's tomb was turned into a mess and left unmanaged, until decades later, when the local authorities re-reproduced a Li Hongzhang cemetery, and the Hall of Enjoyment was also renovated and became a tourist attraction today.