Comrade | Guevara
Before and after the entry of the Qing Dynasty, in order to co-opt the Han bureaucracy and quickly complete the goal of unifying China, five Han generals were successively appointed kings and allowed their descendants to inherit. However, by the time the "San Fan Rebellion" had been put down, the Kangxi Emperor had already issued an edict deposing all Han princes and strictly forbidding future generations to grant Han officials wang titles, so even if the meritorious people such as Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were highly skilled, they would only receive the title of first-class marquis. So the question is, as the last Han prince, and geng Jingzhong, who was the brother-in-law of the Kangxi Emperor, what kind of end did he end up with?
Maki Naka Images
Geng Jingzhong, originally from Shandong, was born in Gaizhouwei, Liaodong Province, and his grandfather was Geng Zhongming, the first king of Jingnan. Geng Zhongming was originally a general of Mao Wenlong, the ming dynasty's left governor and commander-in-chief of pingliao, and after Mao Wenlong was killed by Yuan Chonghuan, he was transferred to the command of Sun Yuanhua, the inspector of Deng Lai. In the fifth year of Chongzhen (1632), Geng Zhongming and Kong Youde launched a rebellion, which was pacified by the Ming officials and troops after more than a year of suffering in Shandong, and after the defeat of the army, he crossed the sea and surrendered to Jin (Qing), was deeply respected by the emperor Taiji and was crowned as the King of Huaishun, when he was in the ninth year of Chongzhen (1636).
In the early years of the Shunzhi Emperor, Geng Zhongming was promoted to the title of King of Jingnan in the sixth year of Shunzhi (1649) because of his great merits in following the regent Dolgun into Guanding Zhongyuan, and was ordered to pacify Liangguang together with Shang Kexi, the king of Pingnan. However, in the same year, Geng Zhongming was questioned by the Qing court for secretly hiding fugitives, and he hanged himself in fear. After Geng Zhongming's death, the eldest son Geng Jimao inherited the title of prince and was ordered to guard Fujian, but died of illness after 22 years on the throne, in the tenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1671). After Geng Jimao's death, his eldest son, Geng Jingzhong, the protagonist of this article, inherited the title of Prince at the age of 27.
Seichu Ying Image
Although Geng Jingzhong came from a family of generals, he did not have much interest in riding and shooting with bows and horses, and his only hobby was to enjoy life in poverty and luxury and change the Fa. During Geng Jingzhong's defense of Fujian, he occupied a large area of commoner land in Fuzhou to build a luxurious royal palace, and the number of workers, the exquisite materials used, and the expensive cost far exceeded the standards of the king of the domain. Not only that, Geng Jingzhong also collected a lot of beautiful women and countless treasures, dogs and horses and good utensils, and reveled in them every day, and his happiness was bursting.
However, Geng Jingzhong's stable and happy days did not last long, and the crisis quietly struck. Originally, after the fall of the Southern Ming Dynasty, except for the insistence of the Zheng regime in Taiwan, the anti-Qing activities throughout the country almost disappeared, and the situation generally stabilized, while the san francisco-Pingxi king Wu Sangui, the pingnan king Shang Kexi, and the jingnan king Geng Jingzhong in the south became more and more of a serious problem for the Qing court. To this end, the Kangxi Emperor made a decision in the twelfth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1673) to abolish the "San Fan".
Portrait of Wu Sangui
As soon as the order to withdraw the domain was issued, Wu Sangui raised an army in Yunnan under the banner of "Xingming to seek revenge". Soon, including Guizhou, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Hunan and other provinces, most of the southern regions responded to Wu Sangui, and Guangdong, which was still guarded by The town of Shangkexi, 4 of the 10 counties also announced that they were "anyway", and the anti-Qing situation was very good for a while. In order to win Geng Jingzhong's opposition to the Qing, Wu Sangui promised him that once the plan to overthrow the Qing Dynasty or rule with the Qing court could be realized, the Geng family would be allowed to divide Fujian for generations.
Geng Jingzhong was both resentful of the Kangxi Emperor's decision to withdraw his domain and misjudged the situation, believing that the Qing court could not eliminate the rebels, because after receiving Wu Sangui's invitation, he decisively joined the anti-Qing rebellion. In March of the thirteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1674), Geng Jingzhong arrested and imprisoned Fan Chengmo, the governor of Fujian, and more than 50 of his subordinates, and immediately announced "anyway" in Fuzhou. In order to show his determination to oppose the Qing Dynasty, Geng Jingzhong ordered the officials and people to cut their hair in braids, make clothes and hats according to the Ming system, and cast themselves "Yumin Tongbao".
Map of the "San Francisco Rebellion"
After Geng Jingzhong raised his troops, he claimed to be the president of the Army, Terracotta Army, and sent troops in three ways: the eastern road attacked The three prefectures of Wen, Tai, and Chu in Zhejiang, the western road attacked Jiangxi Guangxin, Jianchang, and Raozhou, and the middle road attacked Jinhua and Quzhou in Zhejiang. At the same time, Geng Jingzhong also invited Taiwan's Zheng to take coastal counties through haidao to support him and attack Chaozhou and Huizhou in Guangdong. At the beginning of the army, Geng Jingzhong had more than 100,000 elite soldiers, and the battle must be won and the attack must be won, and the military momentum was once extremely strong.
When the Kangxi Emperor learned of Geng Jingzhong's rebellion, he quickly imprisoned his relatives in Beijing, and at the same time advised him to reform himself and promised him to continue to defend Fujian, but geng Jingzhong ignored him. However, due to the apparent separation between Geng Jingzhong and Wu Sangui and Zheng Jing, coupled with the rebels' poor military discipline, they continued to burn and loot along the way, so they quickly lost the hearts of the people, thus providing the Qing army with the opportunity to break through each one.
Portrait of Jay
In August of the fifteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1676), the official army commanded by Jieshu the Prince of Kang had defeated Geng Jingzhong's main force and entered fujian to fight. Two months later, the Qing army pressed for Fuzhou, Geng Jingzhong killed Fan Chengmo to extinguish the mouth, and prepared to lead the water division to flee, but was intercepted in the city by Xu Wenhuan, a close confidant who had secretly surrendered to the Qing. Geng Jingzhong was out of control, so he had no choice but to expose himself and lead the civil and military officials out of the city to meet the landing.
After Geng Jingzhong surrendered, he asked the imperial court to retain his throne and destroy Zheng Jingjun from the conquest to atone for his sins with his military achievements. The Kangxi Emperor, remembering that Geng Jingzhong's wife was his cousin (daughter of Hauge the Prince of Su), and that he really wanted to use it to quell the rebellion, agreed to his request. After Geng Jingzhong was guaranteed by the imperial court, he did indeed lead his troops to defeat Zheng Jing's army, and then marched into Chaozhou to defeat the rebels of Shangzhixin, the king of Pingnan. To be fair, Geng Jingzhong did make great contributions to the cause of counterinsurgency after the qing dynasty, but this was not enough to avoid the disaster of killing himself.
Portrait of the Kangxi Emperor
Sure enough, at the end of the "San Francisco Rebellion", Geng Jingzhong was dismissed from the crown by the Qing court on the charge of "betraying grace and plotting rebellion" and handed over to the judiciary for trial, in the nineteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1680). After the "San Francisco Rebellion" was completely put down, the Kangxi Emperor rushed to sentence Geng Jingzhong and his henchmen Bai Xianzhong, Xu Wenyao, Wang Shiyu and others to Ling Chi's capital punishment in the first month of the twenty-first year of Kangxi (1682). As the last Han king of the Qing Dynasty, Geng Jingzhong finally ended up dead without a corpse, which was really self-inflicted.
Historical sources: "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", "Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty".