At the end of October of the fourteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor received an urgent report from the Inspector of Fujian for 600 Lijia, that Zhangzhou was besieged by Zheng Jing's troops in Taiwan, and the defender Huang Fangdu was killed, and the whole family of more than thirty people was cursed, at the age of 25. The Kangxi Emperor was very sad when he saw the report, and ordered that he posthumously present Huang Fangdu the Title of Prince, Yu Zhongyong, such as the King of Dora County, and send his ministers to offer sacrifices.
Only a few Han Chinese in the Qing Dynasty were knighted, only Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming, and Shang Kexi, the kings of Sanshun in the early Qing Dynasty, as well as Wu Sangui, the king of Pingxi, and Sun Kewang, the prince of Yi. Moreover, these five people are in different times, which is a special case. Who is Huang Fangdu who can actually win the honor of king?
There are hereditary first-class dukes as the paving stone
Huang Fangdu was only 25 years old when he was martyred, which is obviously unlikely to have earth-shattering deeds at this age, but his father Huang Wu was a famous figure in the early Qing Dynasty. Huang Wu was a bitter man, Chongzhen had served as a servant in Pinghe County in the last years, and after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Fujian belonged to the main jurisdiction of the Southern Ming Longwu regime.
The mention of the Longwu regime cannot avoid Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong's father and son, because it was precisely because the Tang King was supported by Zheng Zhilong that he changed his title to emperor, and Huang Wu also defected to Zheng Chenggong during this period, and was appreciated by Zheng and became his inner general.
In the twelfth year of Shunzhi, Shang Kexi, the king of Pingnan, was ordered to send troops to Jieyang, and the Zheng army suffered heavy losses. Huang Wu, who was the forward at the time, was beheaded by Zheng Chenggong for his defeat, but fortunately, the generals interceded, and only then escaped the disaster and took the place of Dai Sin to guard Hai cheng. Zheng Chenggong treats people more harshly, and after Huang Wu escaped from death, he has always been grumpy, even if one day Zheng Chenggong will re-mention the old things, he is determined to sacrifice the city and surrender.
In June of the thirteenth year of Shunzhi, Huang Wu and Su Ming killed the general Hua Dong, and led the generals to more than 80 people and more than 1,700 soldiers, and presented Haicheng to the Qing court. Haicheng was originally a county, but it was an important defensive line for Zheng Chenggong to defend Xiamen, and over the years Zheng Chenggong invested a lot of manpower and material resources in Haicheng to build it into a strong fortress.
After Huang Wu surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, the Shunzhi Emperor ordered him to be the Duke of Haicheng and let him guard Zhangzhou in Fujian. Huang Wu was indeed not a kind person, and in order to invite merit, he personally led someone to dig up the ancestral grave of the Zheng family. Huang Wu worked so hard, and the Qing court was not stingy, adding the official Prince Taibao to the configuration of the foot soldiers, but this move made the Huang family and the Zheng family form a deep vendetta.
Huang Wu was enfeoffed as the Duke of Haicheng in the Shunzhi Dynasty, but the Shunzhi Emperor did not explain what rank the duke was, nor did he emphasize whether he could be hereditary, which made Huang Wu unhappy. In the sixth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Huang Wu made a concert with the imperial court, counted his merits in detail, and finally asked the Kangxi Emperor to clarify the rank of his dukes and the number of inheritances.
After consulting with the four assistant ministers, the Kangxi Emperor finally decided to fulfill Huang Wu's request and make Duke Haicheng a first-class duke and allow him to inherit 12 times, and later the imperial court had new regulations on dukes, and all 12 hereditary appointments were changed to hereditary resignation. Obviously, Huang Wu, the hereditary Duke of Haicheng, had been hard-pressed from the imperial court.
Thirteen years after the Kangxi Dynasty, Huang Wu died of illness in Zhangzhou. His eldest son, Huang Fangdu, inherited the dukedom of Haicheng. The other two sons, Huang Fangsheng and Huang Fangyou, were also given the title of Taichang Temple Secretary by the Imperial Court.
The father owes the son and the son and the grandchild
After Huang Wu's death, Huang Fangdu inherited the dukedom of Haicheng and remained stationed in Zhangzhou. During this period, Taiwan's Zheng Jing repeatedly harassed the interior, and the coastal provinces of Fujian were the hardest hit areas. For Huang Wu's digging of the ancestral grave, Zheng Jing hated it to the bone, so Zhangzhou became a thorn in Zheng Jing's eye.
In May of the fourteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Zheng Jingji gathered heavy troops to besiege Zhangzhou. After many years of operation by Huang Wu, Zhangzhou had thick walls and a large number of soldiers, and the Zheng army had several sieges and setbacks. After two months of siege, it was still impossible to cross the city for half a step, if such a stalemate continued, I am afraid that Zheng Jun would not be able to bargain, not to mention that reinforcements from Guangdong and Zhejiang were gathering in Zhangzhou, and the situation was very unfavorable to Zheng Jing.
When the two armies confront each other, the most feared thing is that they should cooperate inside and outside. Huang Wu had a subordinate general named Wu Shu, who was about to turn against him, and in October of that year, when the food in Zhangzhou City was exhausted, Wu Shu led his subordinates to secretly open the city gate to lure the enemy into the city. Seeing that the general trend has gone, but Huang Fangdu is not greedy and afraid of death, he led his troops to fight with the enemy army, but finally because he was outnumbered, he jumped into a well in the Kaiyuan Temple and was martyred.
The city of Zhangzhou fell, and the Huang family was destroyed. Zheng Jun found Huang Fangdu's body and cut it into several pieces. Huang Fangdu's mother and wife hanged themselves, and his two brothers, uncles, cousins, and more than thirty other people generously died. In addition, Zheng Jun also found Huang Wu's grave and opened the coffin to show the harshest punishment for defectors and retaliators.
After Huang Fangdu's death, the Kangxi Emperor heard the news and issued a decree:
"Huang Fangdu, the Duke of Haicheng, was loyal, guarded the isolated city, killed the rebels, and repeatedly built Qigong. The rebels will trap the city with thieves and martyr the family, so as to fulfill the loyalty and be deeply merciful. He may be given a knighthood, and he will be loyal and courageous, and according to the custom of the king of Dora County, he will send his ministers to offer sacrifices. ”
In the Battle of Zhangzhou, Huang Wu broke the incense and exchanged more than thirty mouths for a prince, and the price was indeed not small. After Huang Fangdu's death, he had no heirs, and the title of Duke of Haicheng was transferred to Huang Wu's nephew Huang Fang. It was not until the 29th year of the Kangxi Dynasty that Huang Wu's nephew Huang Yingmiao was made Huang Fangdu's heir, and he was able to pass it on to the empress.
After the Shunzhi Dynasty, very few Han people were given the title of first-class dukes, and only Huang Fangdu was the only one who was knighted. The title of Duke of Haicheng was inherited until the end of the Qing Dynasty, and was passed down for 10 generations.