On September 24, 1905, the Zhengyangmen Railway Station in Beijing was heavily guarded and lined with sentries.
Xu Shichang, a squire of the Qing court's military department, and five other ministers boarded a special car to prepare to go south to Shanghai to take a boat to investigate the ocean.
There were five carriages, the first two were for the attachés, the fourth was for the servants, and the last was for the luggage, and the five ministers sat in the middle of the third carriage.
Just after eight o'clock, the officials arrived one after another.
The revolutionary Wu Fan carried a homemade bomb in his arms and followed the servants into the fourth carriage. The third section ahead is the carriage where the ministers are located.
Wu Fan moved forward step by step, trying to enter the third carriage. But in the middle passage of the three or four carriages, Wu Fan was stopped by the guards.
"Which adult did you follow?"
"I'm from Grandpa Ze's house." Wu Fan answered according to the excuses he had thought out in advance.
"Grandpa Ze's house?" How come I haven't seen you? "It is very unfortunate that this guard is Zaizawa's bodyguard.
Wu Fan had no choice but to say, "I am new to the house, and I am not familiar with everyone." ”
The guards of the ministers were generally northerners, speaking in a Beijing dialect, and Wu Fan's Anhui accent aroused the suspicion of the guards.
During the entanglement, a few more guards came over, and Wu Fan looked at it and it was difficult to go around any longer, the more he talked, the easier it was to be exposed. Without stopping, he turned his back, took the bomb from his arms, turned around and rushed to the three carriages, ready to throw the bomb among the ministers.
Unexpectedly, just at this moment, the train suddenly started, and under the inertia, Wu Fan stood unsteadily, almost fell, and the bomb in his hand fell to the ground.
With a loud "bang", the bomb exploded at Wu Fan's feet, the huge shock wave tore open a large hole in the carriage, the top of the carriage was blown open with a large hole, and the broken hands and feet that were blown up flew up and then crackled and fell down, which was terrifying and extremely terrifying.
The train stopped, and the carriage was a mess. The ground was full of dead and wounded.
Because the bomb exploded at Wu Fan's feet before it could be thrown out, the ministers of the three carriages were only slightly injured, but they were not lightly frightened, and one by one they went under the seats to cry and cry, and the frightened farts rolled and urine flowed.
Holding up his bleeding left hand, Zaizawa touched his neck with his right hand and asked the people around him, "What about my head?" Did my head fall off? ”
The servants around him were already frightened and said the same thing: "No, no..."
Zaizawa's soul was gone: "My head is gone, gone?" ”
The servants were about to cry: "No, no, the head is not, it is not dropped." ”
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing government was corrupt and incompetent, forcibly levied violent and bloody autocracy at home, bowed to the knees and cut off land and paid compensation to the outside world, and the people of the whole country lived in deep trouble.
Under such circumstances, in order to save the nation from peril, a group of benevolent men and women rose up one after another to launch an armed uprising to save the people from fire and water. However, under the bloody suppression of the Qing government, armed uprisings were repeatedly thwarted.
Thus, the revolutionaries had no choice but to turn the struggle underground, and political assassinations came into being.
Wu Fan, zi Mengxia, a native of Tongcheng, Anhui, lost his mother at the age of seven, and his father was a businessman. Because of his family's relatively good fortune, Wu Fan was familiar with poetry and books from an early age, and was particularly interested in Chinese history.
In 1902, the 20-year-old Wu Fan was introduced by his cousin Wu Rulun to study at the Baoding Higher School.
Wu Rulun's cousin Wu Rulun was a famous Confucian in the late Qing Dynasty, who was enthusiastic about education, and had a very high status in the late Qing Dynasty Shilin, and had a very close relationship with Li Hongzhang.
Influenced by his cousin Wu Rulun, Wu Fan was also fascinated by running schools, and participated in the founding of Baoding Liangjiang Public School, and served as a teacher of Chinese language, geography, mathematics, history and so on.
During his teaching at liangjiang school, Wu Yuguang made friends with revolutionary volunteers from all over the country and got to know Chen Tianhua, Zou Rong, Cai Yuanpei, Qiu Jin, Zhang Rong, and a number of other revolutionaries.
Deeply impressed by the talent and boldness of Zou Rong, Chen Tianhua and others, he decided to follow their example and sacrifice himself to awaken the people when needed.
In November 1904, Wu Fan, Yang Dusheng, Zhao Sheng, and others set up an assassination regiment at Liangjiang Public School, and the head of the assassination regiment, Yang Dusheng, developed his own earthen bombs, and the first target of the assassination regiment was to plan to assassinate Shilang Tieliang, the head of the assassination department. However, due to the strict defense of Tie Liang, he has not been able to succeed.
In 1905, in order to resist the growing revolutionary movement and get out of the crisis, the Qing court deceived the paralyzed public by preparing a constitution, announced the establishment of a political investigation hall, sent royal ministers and others to visit Europe and the United States and other countries, and declared preparations for the implementation of constitutionalism.
Although the Qing government's call for a constitution was extremely loud from top to bottom in the government and the public, Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries had long seen clearly that the Qing government's move was just a trick to conceal the sky and cross the sea and delay time. The League published a large number of articles exposing and criticizing the Qing court's false constitutional fraud and actively prepared for armed struggle.
However, Wu Fan and the members of the assassination group agreed that the armed uprising of the League would be far from quenching the thirst of the near future, and he believed that eliminating the five ministers before they went abroad would completely deal a powerful blow to the Qing government's conspiracy to establish a false constitution.
Wu Fan decided to go north himself and take on the mission of assassinating the five ministers.
The 26-year-old Wu Fan has a fiancée who has been with each other for many years, and the two are about to talk about marriage.
After the assassination decision was decided, Wu Fan knew that he was going to kill more than ji ji, but out of secrecy, he could not tell his girlfriend the truth, so before leaving, Wu Fan lied that he was going to travel for a few days and entrusted all his belongings to his girlfriend.
Arriving in Beijing, Wu Fan disguised himself as a student of the Entrance Examination Academy and stayed at the Anhui Guild Hall, waiting for the opportunity to assassinate him.
After obtaining detailed travel information from the five ministers through the dark line, Wu Fan decided to assassinate him with a bomb at the Zhengyangmen Railway Station.
Before leaving, Wu Fan got help from Qiu Jin, and the two went to the station together to step on the spot and make an assassination plan.
Before parting, Wu Fan handed over a will with the words "If you don't reach the goal, you will not survive" to Qiu Jin for preservation.
On September 23, Wu Fan set up a farewell banquet to entertain friends from all sides. At the end of the meeting, Wu Fan returned to the guild hall to write down the reason for the assassination in detail, stating that his behavior had nothing to do with anyone. The statement is then hidden under the pillow.
On September 24, Wu Fan carried a bomb and arrived at the Zhengyangmen Railway Station early in the morning according to the plan.
At eight o'clock, Wu Fan successfully mixed with the train, but because the bomb that was originally scheduled to be thrown into the third carriage fell at Wu Fan's feet and exploded because the train shook, the assassination operation failed.
Because of the distance, the five ministers did not harm their lives except for minor injuries.
The three chancellor guards around Wu Fan were killed. Because the bomb exploded under his feet, Wu Fan's lower body was blown up, his arms were missing, and his face was blurred with flesh and blood, making it unrecognizable.
After the explosion, the Zhengyangmen station fell into a state of terror, and the ministers and retinues fled for their lives and chaos continued. The military police surrounded the station with guns, and the five ministers who were frightened and scattered fled back to the mansion under the escort of the guards.
Due to the suddenness of the incident, Wu Fan's body could not be identified, so the explosion of the Zhengyangmen Railway Station became a suspense case because the suspect could not be found.
The Qing court police only distributed photos of Wu Fan's body everywhere to look for clues.
One day, the police came to the Anhui Guild Hall with photos. A little girl who was serving tea and pouring water in the guild hall carefully looked at the photos and recognized Wu Fan as the "Wu Gongzi" who lived in the guild hall some time ago.
Therefore, the police followed the guidance of the little girl to Wu Fan's room and found Wu Fan's letter under the pillow, and the military police confirmed the identity of Wu Fan, the perpetrator of the explosion.
After the Qing Dynasty government conducted a large-scale investigation into the Baoding Academy and Liangjiang Public School where Wu Fan studied and worked before his death, it found no evidence of involvement with Yang Dusheng, Zhao Sheng, and others, and finally the Qing government could only identify the murderer as Wu Fan alone, and vaguely closed the case.
When the news of Wu Fan's death spread, the revolutionaries were deeply saddened. Cai Yuanpei, Qiu Jin, Chen Qimei and others wrote poems to mourn.
Yang Dusheng, a member of the assassination group, and others were even more thoughtless and wept bitterly.
Before his death, Wu Fan entrusted his fiancée to his friends to take care of him, however, after Wu Fan's death, his fiancée soon married Bai Chuxiang, who was also a revolutionary. The hero's bones were not cold, and this kind of behavior caused great indignation among the revolutionaries, and Cai Yuanpei and others immediately announced that they had broken off relations with Bai Chuxiang.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Bai Chuxiang and his wife could not resist the temptation and intimidation, and treasoned and surrendered to the Japanese as traitors.
One day, the husband and wife appeared at Jinmen, and were captured by the nephew of Wu Fan, who was then the station chief of the Tianjin Military Command Station, and shot at the jinmen city on the spot.
Although Wu Fan's assassination attempt failed, his heroic feats greatly inspired the revolutionary enthusiasm of the revolutionaries, terrified the Qing government, and had an extremely far-reaching impact on the overthrow of the Qing government's rule.
After Wu Fan, more people participated in the assassination operation, and countless Chinese people woke up and recognized the face of the Qing court's fake constitution.
The death of a hero is heavier than Tarzan!
As Qiu Jin wrote for Wu Fan:
Bursting with the fight to annihilate the thief, the boy patriotic has forgotten himself. ...... The former servant and the successor should be, such as the king is worthy of the Xuanyuan Sun!