Old Beijingers once circulated this passage:
"The charcoal of Jingyunmen, the arrows of Longzongmen, the lions of Tiananmen, and the pots of Pingzemen."
This sentence refers to what Li Zicheng did when he led his troops into the city of Beijing, which means that he stabbed the stone lion in front of Tiananmen Square and shot an arrow at the Longzong Gate.
The most bizarre of these is the legend about the arrow on the Longzong Gate.
Many people do not notice that there is a Longzong Gate on the west side of the Qianqing Gate, and on the plaque of the Longzong Gate is an arrow inserted and has been preserved to this day.
This arrow has stayed on the plaque for more than 200 years, and no one has dared to pull it out so far, so there is a lot of speculation in the folk.
It is reasonable to say that the Forbidden City, as the centralized center of the imperial family, if it is really left by Li Zicheng when he entered Beijing, this is undoubtedly a provocation to the Qing court, why did the emperor of the Qing Dynasty not let people deal with it?
What is the truth of the matter?
Longzong Gate was a very important forbidden gate, that is, no one could easily approach it without the emperor's consent.
Of course, there is no hidden rumor about the reason why this place has become a forbidden gate, but it is actually because longzong gate is an important passage connecting the inner court and the outer court road.
Since the north side of the entrance is the military aircraft, and the west side is the Cining Palace, so this place naturally becomes the top priority of the guard, and after the death of the emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the coffin was welcomed by the Longzong Gate.
Such an important place, it is not difficult to imagine that during the Qing Dynasty, the emperors should have sent extra troops to guard this place, so in the centralized feudal society, who was so bold as to shoot arrows on the Longzong Gate?
Speaking of the story behind this arrow, it is inseparable from the repeated prohibition of "anti-Qing and restoration".
After more than 200 years of the Qing Dynasty, almost every emperor has to face a difficult problem, that is, how to completely eliminate the remnants of the "anti-Qing and restoration" party.
The Ming Dynasty has been extinct for hundreds of years, but there are still rebel armies emerging from time to time to restore the Ming Dynasty, and the emperors of the Qing Dynasty have tried their best to suppress it, but this team is always "spring breeze blowing and growing", each time it stops for a period of time, and within a few days it will come back again.
They repeatedly revolted, but repeatedly failed, and with the suppression of successive emperors, their power was gradually weakened, so these people simply changed their strategy.
If you can't attack strongly, then take it wisely.
They quietly co-opted the forces among the people and hyped up the idea of "anti-Qing and restoration", and many ordinary people were brainwashed and joined their ranks.
Under the development of these people, even the interior of the palace was infiltrated by them, and many eunuch palace women became their internal line, and as this team grew, they eventually developed into an organization, the White Lotus Sect.
The White Lotus Sect is a large organization, and because the White Lotus Sect is spread all over the country, it has slowly developed into many branches, among which the arrow on the Longzong Gate is related to the branch of the White Lotus Sect, the Tenrikyo Sect.
What was even more shocking was that at that time, the Tenrikyo Sect only used 200 people to attack the heavily guarded imperial palace, how did they do it?
During the Qing Dynasty, the imperial palace has always had a tradition, that is, hunting.
Since the Manchus, as an ethnic minority, were the ones who fought on horseback, after they entered the customs, successive emperors maintained this tradition in order to keep the royal descendants on alert at all times.
The royal hunting is not a trivial matter, every year the hunting must send a large number of troops, manpower, first from all over the country to find precious animals into the hunting ground, and then wait until the royal began to hunt, but also to send out heavy troops to protect.
After all, the hunting ground will gather many outstanding royal children, courtiers, concubines, including the emperor himself, etc., once relaxed, it will definitely be a situation of being put in a pot.
During the Jiaqing period, the Jiaqing Emperor took his soldiers and horses to Chengde to hunt as in previous years, and this hunt sent out most of the heavy troops, that is, the forbidden city that was already empty was only guarded by a few soldiers.
At this time, the leader of the Tianli Sect was named Lin Qing, a native of Beijing, who had been preparing for the great "anti-Qing and restoration" activities for a long time.
Lin Qing was a very capable person, he first instigated the people in Beijing, and then gradually infiltrated the imperial court, not only some officials of the court, but even the eunuchs in the palace were rebelled by him.
On this day, Lin Qing received a message from the eunuch in the palace that the emperor was about to leave the Forbidden City to hunt, and Lin Qing's secret path finally ushered in an opportunity.
Lin Qing wrapped his followers' waist and forehead with white cloth, which read, "One Heart And One Heart, Never Separate", and when the Jiaqing Emperor set out, Lin Qing began to act.
They first bought the guards of the Great Qing Gate, and after the guards opened the door for them, Lin Qing led the way to rush in, but before they could run a few steps, they were discovered by other guards.
The guards of the Great Qing Gate closed the gate in time, so only about 200 people entered the palace.
As soon as the believers entered the door, they began to kill in a wild killing mode.
They divided their work and cooperated, separating more than 60 people into Xihuamen and dozens of people into Donghuamen, but they encountered accidents at Donghuamen.
The people of Donghua Gate were opened by eunuchs they had bought, but as soon as they opened the door, they encountered soldiers on patrol, so the eunuch hurriedly closed the door.
Since the Tianli Sect only had time to come in for 5 people, the eunuchs were afraid of revealing their identities, so they bit back, shouted to the guards that there were thieves, and then picked up the wooden stick and began to beat these 5 people, and finally these 5 people did not have time to do anything and died in Huangquan.
Looking at the people who rushed into the Donghua Gate here, there were more than 60 people in total, they first broke into the Internal Affairs Office and smashed their heads, killed the Shangyi Supervisor, looted the place, and then rushed into the Wenying Pavilion, killing all the small officials inside, and then rushed to the Longzong Gate.
They killed all the way to the gate of the Longzong Gate, and we all know that because the Longzong Gate is more special, it is usually heavily guarded.
And in the process of rushing towards the Longzong Gate, the guards in the palace had already been assembled, and when they reached the gate of the Longzong Gate, the guards had already tied up the inside.
Seeing that the Taihe Hall was in front of him, but he could never step on the Longzong Gate, Lin Qing was so anxious that he asked the rebel army to find a wooden stake and began to vigorously hit the gate.
This door was the key to entering the inner court, and if they couldn't open this door, then they would undoubtedly lose today, but unfortunately, the strength of the believers to suckle did not make the Longzong Gate shake half a point.
At this juncture, Lin Qing thought of a way.
Since the gate could not enter, they went over the wall to enter, but in the process of implementing the plan, they were surrounded by the guards who rushed to the scene, and in the process of fighting, Lin Qing shot an arrow, which was just inserted into the door plaque of the Longzong Gate in the confusion.
At this time, Lin Qing saw that there was no progress, and the reinforcements in the palace had arrived under the delay, Prince Zhi arrived with a firearms battalion, the soldiers set up fire bolts on the wall, and the more than 200 people of the Tianli Sect were killed in a short time.
Lin Qing himself also died in the chaos, and the rest of the Tianli Sect did not leave a living mouth, and this farcical uprising ended.
After the Jiaqing Emperor returned to the palace, he heard about the White Lotus Sect's attack on the palace, and they only took more than 200 people to attack the Longzong Gate, and the Jiaqing Emperor was furious.
For the Jiaqing Emperor, this was undoubtedly a great shame, and the white lotus sects that were not in the mainstream of the people almost broke through the imperial palace with only 200 people, which clearly showed that it was a great provocation to the imperial power.
After the Jiaqing Emperor ordered the people to clean up the scene, just when the palace people climbed the ladder and planned to pull out the arrow on the Longzong Gate, the Jiaqing Emperor stopped him.
The purpose of the Jiaqing Emperor was to wake himself up, to work hard in the future, not to covet enjoyment, otherwise there would be thousands of Lin Qing under the sky.
Although this rebellion did not cause any substantial harm to the royal family, because of its deep impact, I am afraid that it will cause turmoil among the people of the world.
Therefore, in response to the White Lotus Sect's intrusion into the imperial palace, the Jiaqing Emperor made an exception and launched a "crime against himself" to the world, and at the same time ordered that no one was allowed to pull out this arrow, which had alerted the entire Qing Dynasty.
Because Prince Zhi had made meritorious contributions to quelling the chaos in time, he was also heavily rewarded, and he was therefore looked at by the Jiaqing Emperor, who passed the throne to Prince Zhi a hundred years later, that is, the future Daoguang Emperor.
To be fair, the Jiaqing Emperor was not a dimwitted monarch, but even an emperor with great ambitions and still diligent work, but unfortunately, the huge family business left by Kangxi and Yongzheng was almost defeated by his father Qianlong.
Many people say that the Great Qing Dynasty went into decline at the hands of Jiaqing, but in fact, in the later years of Qianlong's life, the Great Qing Dynasty was already in serious deficit, and No matter how diligent Jiaqing was, he was not capable of reversing the situation.
To this day, there is no clear record of where the arrows on the Longzong Gate came from, so there are many theories circulating today.
Many people say that the arrows on the Longzong Gate were left behind when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded the city of Beijing, and some people say that they were left by Puyi when he was a child and took the princes to practice archery.
Some people even say that after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, some people deliberately shot arrows here.
However, this statement is obviously untenable, if it is really the result of malicious destruction by posterity, posterity should repair this place at the first time.
Although there is no accurate record of historical materials so far, since it remains on the door plaque of the Forbidden City, it is a part of history, and to this day, the Forbidden City still chooses to remain in its original state, but also out of the idea of protecting cultural relics and respecting history.
The Forbidden City is a miracle in the history of Chinese architecture, Chinese treasure of the people, it represents not only a piece of history, but also a testimony to the trauma of the Chinese nation, which inspires the sons and daughters of China to strive for strength.
Just like the arrow on the plaque of the Forbidden City, it is a wake-up call for future generations.