In ancient times, there was an important criterion for measuring loyal subjects and traitors, called "the wind knows the grass, and the board knows the loyal subjects." When there was no trouble in taiping, the Manchu Dynasty Wenwu seemed to be loyal and pure subjects who were gentle and frugal, and it was difficult to distinguish between good and evil at a glance. And at the critical juncture of the destruction of the country and the death of the family, who is a loyal minister and who is a traitor, it will come out and the truth will come out. Those who can protect their integrity and be loyal to the old lord regardless of personal life and death can be called loyal subjects. And those who are greedy for life and afraid of death, and who are in danger of renegade, must be traitors.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, it was such a special period. Three hundred years after the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, the emerging and powerful Qing Dynasty quickly established a foothold in the Central Plains, commanded the world, and established a new ruling order. It turned out that the ming dynasty's civil and military masters had to make a difficult choice between the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, choosing to be loyal subjects, like Wen Tianxiang and others, which meant that they were in a different place, but they could live forever, and they chose to be traitors, just like Wu Sangui and others, although they could preserve their fame and wealth, they would be stinked for thousands of years and be scolded by posterity.
However, the world is unpredictable, the Ming Dynasty has a loyal subject, in order to repay the homeland, and fight the Qing Dynasty to the end, and finally sacrificed himself to death, died under the qing soldiers' knife. However, he did not win the approval of the people of the world, not only did he not praise and worship him, but regarded him as a traitor, and even his body was dragged away by the people and fed to the dogs. Among the loyal ministers who have sacrificed their lives for the country in the past, he can be regarded as the one with the worst fate, not only sacrificing his life, but even his reputation has not been saved.
This person was Ma Shiying, the first auxiliary university of the Southern Ming Hongguang Imperial Court. Ma Shiying, an old minister of the four dynasties of the Ming Dynasty, a wanli, tianqi, Chongzhen, and Hongguang four periods, successively served as Hubu Langzhong, Datong prefect, Right Yu du yushi, Xuanfu inspector and other positions, after the Qing army entered the customs, Ma Shiying chose to be loyal to Daming, fully supported the Ming Dynasty's patriarchal Fu Wang Zhu Yousong ascended the throne, and made a great contribution to the creation of the Southern Ming. After the defeat of the Hongguang court, Ma Shiying still refused to surrender to the Qing, defected to the anti-Qing forces in Jiangsu and Zhejiang to insist on resisting the Qing, and was captured by the Qing soldiers in the third year of Shunzhi and was killed without yielding.
The Luqiao Chronicle records that duoduo, the prince of Yu in the Qing Dynasty, went south to Jinling and captured Huang Duanbo, the chief of the Southern Ming Ceremonial Department, who refused to surrender in awe and was finally killed. When Dodo interrogated him, he once asked Ma Shiying's personality: "How is Ma Shiying?" Huang Duanbo immediately replied, "Ma Shiying is loyal to the subject!" It can be seen that Ma Shiying's loyal status is still recognized. But what is shocking is that the "History of Southern Xinjiang" records that after Ma Shiying was captured and killed by the Qing soldiers, the common people hated him to the bone, and "the people of the city cut it to feed dogs" and fed his body to the dogs.
Since Ma Shiying was a loyal vassal loyal to Daming and sacrificed his life for the country like Shi Kefa and others, the result was not only that he was not loved by the people like Shi Kefa and passed on for hundreds of generations, but was on the contrary scolded and destroyed by the common people. It turned out that there was a hidden affair. As a minister of state, although Ma Shiying has achieved great modesty and no loss, he has many problems in terms of personal morality, and is a greedy and profit-seeking celebrity. As early as the Chongzhen period, when he was serving as the governor of Xuanfu, he was deposed because he was impeached for embezzling public funds.
During Nanming's tenure as a first assistant scholar, he even carried out orders as soon as he had power in his hands, wantonly excluded dissidents, appointed Ruan Da yu and other traitors and villains, controlled the imperial program, gained power and bribes, plundered people's wealth, and even developed to the point of selling officials and lords. At that time, the nursery rhyme in Jinling City sang: "Sweep away the money in Jiangnan, fill the Majiakou, ask tian Fang to get Lu, buy a horse is an official", the people used this to express their hatred for Ma Shiying, who was greedy for money and profits, and after Ma Shiying was killed, not only did no one respect and sympathize, but also was fed to the dogs by the common people, which is not surprising.