On July 19, 1864, Tianjing fell, as the last mainstay of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Li Xiucheng, the King of Zhong, accompanied the young King to break through, but during the breakthrough, Liu Xiucheng and the large troops dispersed, and by July 23, Li Xiucheng was captured by nearby farmers and sent to zeng guoquan's camp.
(Portrait of Lee So-sung)
After hearing that Li Xiucheng had been captured, Zeng Guofan rushed from Anqing to Zeng Guoquan's military tent and interrogated Li Xiucheng on July 28.
On July 30, Li Xiucheng began to write a self-report, writing for five or six consecutive days, recalling in detail all the major events of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and begging Zeng Guofan in his self-description.
Zeng Guofan interrogated Li Xiucheng again on August 6 after reading Li Xiucheng's self-report, and after the two had a secret conversation, Li Xiucheng and Li Xiucheng were quickly executed on August 7.
To this day, there is no trace of what Li Xiucheng and Zeng Guofan said in the history books, and Li Xiucheng's self-description has been extensively deleted.
According to the "Letter of Zeng Guofan" and the diary of his aide Zhao Liewen, Li Xiucheng's self-report is about 50,000 or 60,000 words, but at present we can only find 30,000 of them, and the remaining 20,000 words are missing.
To be sure, these cuts were all done by Zeng Guofan, and their purpose was nothing more than to erase some of the statements in the self-description that were unfavorable to the Qing court, the Xiang Army, and the Zeng brothers.
(Portrait of Zeng Guofan)
For example, as a victor, the Qing court deducted all the losses caused during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement on the Taiping Army, which was obviously unreasonable.
What virtue the Qing army is is clear to everyone, the Eight Banner Soldiers need not say more, they are themselves foreign nationalities, when it is to quell civil unrest, there is no mercy at all, often on the grounds of "mixed people and bandits" to kill the common people.
After the Qing court pacified Wu Sangui, the whole of Sichuan was empty, except for tens of thousands of people in Chengdu, and other areas were uninhabited for thousands of miles.
Compared with the Eight Banner Army, the bad deeds of the Xiang Army are also heinous, and atrocities such as slaughtering the city, robbery, and adultery are often seen in the annals of history, and even the Qing court itself cannot look down.
Let's look at the account of Zeng Guofan's own aide, Zhao Liewen:
On the day the city was destroyed, when he saw people, he killed people, burned when he saw the house, and his children's jade veils swept into the Xiang army, which coincided with June, and the corpses were blocked on the road, and the smell was inaudible.
.........
There are many thieves and bandits on all sides of the city, and their old and weak local people cannot pick up burdens and have no cellars to dig, so they can kill them as much as they want. Nine out of ten of the dead along the street are elderly, and their young children under the age of two or three are also killed as a play, creeping on the road.
None of the women under the age of forty were injured, the elderly were all injured, or more than ten knives, and the cries of wailing reached four far away, qinhuai long river, corpses such as hemp chaos, can be fingers.
The above words are from the hands of the Xiang Army's own family, and the credibility is needless to say. And Tianjing's atrocities were just one of the many crimes of the Xiang army, and Li Xiucheng may have revealed more barbarism on the Qing side in his self-report.
As for these unfavorable remarks, Zeng Guofan certainly could not let them spread, so he deleted and revised the word count and sent it to Beijing.
In addition, this self-statement may also have comments advising Zeng Guofan to be emperor, so Zeng Guofan immediately interrogated Li Xiucheng again after reading it. According to the descendants of the Zeng family, Li Xiucheng did persuade Zeng Guofan to be emperor during the second meeting, and Zeng Guofan did not dare to do so.
In fact, Zeng Guofan was very dissatisfied with the Qing court, and the Xianfeng Emperor had issued an edict saying that whoever could destroy the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would be crowned king. However, after Zeng Guofan conquered Nanjing, instead of receiving a commendation from the Qing court, he was reprimanded by the Qing court, and finally only gave a first-class Yi Yong Marquis, far worse than the prince.
Li Xiucheng also knew that the Qing court did not trust the Han people and rebelled against Zeng Guofan, and at this time he may have wanted to use this to persuade Zeng Guofan to persuade him to establish himself as emperor.
However, although Zeng Guofan complained about the imperial court, he absolutely did not dare to rebel. First of all, he established the Xiang Army under the banner of Zhongjun, and if he rebelled, his justice would be greatly reduced.
Moreover, Zeng Guofan did have hundreds of thousands of troops under him, but the Qing court had already made military arrangements around him, and Zeng Guofan's anti-Qing was not successful.
(Zeng Guofan was surrounded by Qing troops who came to spy on him.)
After much thought, Zeng Guofan did not accept Li Xiucheng's suggestion, and in order to avoid giving truth to the population, Zeng Guofan quickly executed Li Xiucheng.
And for Li Xiucheng, is he really begging? Or is it a fraudulent surrender? This question is beyond examination. However, his fate was still good, because if Li Xiucheng was escorted to Beijing, his fate would definitely be executed by Ling Chi, while Zeng Guofan did not torture him, but directly beheaded him, and died a more painful death.