Author | Fan Deng Reading · Wang Bo
Anchor | Fan Deng Reading · Ah Cheng
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Dear book lovers, good evening
Welcome to Fan Deng's reading character column - "Stars".
Reading the Stars Shine · Experience extraordinary life.
One issue per day, welcome your continuous attention~
The protagonist who appears today is known as "the most legendary person in the Qing Dynasty".
When he was about to be destroyed in the Qing Dynasty, the yin and yang mistakes became the life-saving straw of the Qing Dynasty, extending the life of the Qing Dynasty for more than 50 years.
His philosophy of living in the world is still highly respected today.
Below, let's walk into the "first perfect person in the ancient world" - the legendary life of Zeng Guofan~
An ordinary peasant boy, with not superb qualifications, turned the tide of the tide and helped the building to fall, and was known as the "first minister of ZTE".
He "can write a pen to settle the world, and martial arts can go to Ma Ding Qiankun", creating a mighty Xiang army, and history has cast a mysterious veil on him.
Posterity gave him a high evaluation:
"Li De li said that meritorious service is three immortals, and the teacher will be a perfect person."
He is Zeng Guofan, what characteristics have made him "the first perfect person in the ages"?
As the saying goes: "If a house is not swept, why sweep the world?" ”
Only by doing small things well, developing good habits, self-discipline, and winning at the starting line.
Zeng Guofan was not born with an aura.
He was born in a remote mountain village in Hunan with closed news and backward culture, and even a show talent appeared at least five or six hundred years since his grandfather pushed upwards.
Zeng Guofan was young and not an intelligent person, but he was persistent, and the things he identified must be the best.
Grandfather asked his family to get up early, he couldn't get up, there was no alarm clock at that time, and he overslept.
For the dawn to rise, he thought of a way. When sleeping, put a copper basin next to it, and on top of the copper basin, tie a scale with a thin rope.
An incense stick is lit, and the incense cross is crossed on the rope that is tied to the scale, and the incense burns there and burns the rope.
The scales were hoisted into the copper basin, and this fright, how many sleepy worms were scared away, he began to read seriously.
Over time, develop a good habit of getting up early, persist for a lifetime, lead by example, and then infect your children.
"Early birds have worms to eat." "The solution of the day lies in the morning."
With hard work, he passed two levels in a row on the way to his career, but fate played a joke with him at the next level, and both times he tried to be named Sun Shan.
At this time, the family, which was not rich in the past, was already surrounded by disciples, and it was difficult for him to bear the cost of the examination.
With a heavy heart, Zeng Guofan set off from the capital to return home.
On the way, the entanglement was scattered, and in desperation, my father made friends Yi Zuomei to borrow money.
It was raining, and Zeng Guofan braved the rain to enter the Yi family's living room.
Yi Zuomei was far away from the end, and Zeng Guofan was sitting in a chair and had not moved his feet for two hours.
Yi Zuomei, who was then in Suiningzhi County, Jiangsu Province, went home to see that there were only two watermark marks on the ground, and he directly called this person not simple in the future, and immediately borrowed 100 taels of silver.
It is a small thing, and it is difficult for ordinary people to insist, but Zeng Guofan has done it to the extreme.
In 1838, the 18th year of Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty, Zeng Guofan was a 27-year-old zhongjinshi, and in the same year he entered the Hanlin Academy as a Shujishi, after which he moved seven times in ten years, from the sesame official lian to the tenth rank of the seven pins, becoming a member of the Erpin.
For Zeng Guofan, who was born in the cold door, it can be described as "Chao Wei Tian Shelang, Twilight Heavenly Son Hall." ”
What is his ability to receive such a great honor?
While others were young and slack, Zeng Guofan was studying seriously.
He did not read a single day in his life, and in his later years he read blindly, still uninterrupted.
His poems came out on top and attracted the attention of Mu Zhang'a, a university scholar of the Military Aircraft Division, who repeatedly promoted him.
When others spent the day drinking and walking around in a dashing manner, he sat quietly with his teacher and reflected on his cultivation, writing a diary every day, reflecting on his own method of being a human being and the good way of dealing with the world, and was appreciated by the Daoguang Emperor.
He wrote a diary of his life in brush letters, the day before he died.
He spent his life sculpting himself, enriching himself, and demanding himself, so that the god of luck would come.
It can be seen that how self-disciplined people are, how lucky they are.
The sage Xunzi said:
"Without accumulating steps, there is no way to go thousands of miles; without accumulating small streams, there is no way to become a river and a sea."
Starting from small things and developing good habits of self-discipline is a necessary condition for a person to succeed.
In the second year of Qing Xianfeng, in June 1852, Zeng Guofan was appointed as the chief examiner of the township examination in Jiangxi Province, and was allowed to return home to visit his relatives.
When he walked to Xiaochiyi in Anhui Province, he received the news of his mother's death, boarded the ship from Jiujiang, and hurried home to mourn.
This return to his hometown only became a major turning point in his life, and he began his military career.
He was a scholar and did not know the military, so why did he become a well-known military man?
Zeng Guofan was at home to mourn, and received an edict from the Xianfeng Emperor to put down the rebellion.
Zeng Guofan advocated "grit your teeth and do it." ”
It can be said that many things in the world are forced out, and only by forcing yourself can you give full play to your potential talents and wisdom.
Therefore, he ascended to the heights as a waiter and called out," "Weep for the pain of Confucius of my Mencius in the Nine Springs" to establish the Xiang Army.
Humiliated and frustrated in the process, he could only knock out his teeth and swallow blood.
When he saw with his own eyes that the water division he had painstakingly managed was defeated in the first battle with the Taiping Army, he jumped into the river and committed suicide, but was fortunately rescued by the guards around him.
He experienced the helplessness of people at a low point, the wall falling down and pushing everyone, but he carried it down by his own tenacity.
As he put it:
"I can only do a day's work with a distraction, and as for success or failure, I can't think about it again."
He repeatedly lost battles, repeatedly lost battles, and constantly reflected and summarized in one defeat after another, and finally found a unique strategy to deal with the Taiping Army- "hardening the village, fighting a stupid battle" is to fight steadily and steadily.
No matter how tired they were after each camp, the army had to dig two trenches around the camp, build two more high walls along the trenches, and arrange for shifts to stand guard.
Zeng Guofan fought wars all his life without coveting small profits or seeking strange plots, but was down-to-earth and steady, which was "fighting a stupid battle."
The most extreme application of the method of "hardening the village and fighting a stupid battle" is the "Battle of Anqing" in 1859.
Anqing is different from other cities, there are "ten thousand miles of the Yangtze River this throat" and "Wuchu division of xinjiang first state" beauty reputation, since ancient times is a place of contention between soldiers and families, easy to defend and difficult to attack.
Zeng Guofan joined hands with Hu Linyi and adopted the strategy of "besieging the city and attacking aid", besieging the city first and focusing on reinforcements.
Zeng Guofan ordered his younger brother Zeng Guofan to besiege Anqing and dug two trenches outside Anqing That were five inches wide and two inches deep.
He also sent the Xiang army general Duolong'a to fight for reinforcements and block Chen Yucheng's reinforcements, and although the battle was very hard, Chen Yucheng was gradually defeated and retreated.
Moreover, after countless defeats, Zeng Guoquan's army finally dug a tunnel leading to Anqing City, and used gunpowder to collapse dozens of walls, and the army attacked the city like water breaking the embankment.
The reconquest of Anqing caused the western barrier of tianjing, the capital of the Taiping Army, to be broken, and the Taiping Army to enter the defensive stage against the Qing Army, and to pacify the Taiping Army was a foregone conclusion.
On the contrary, the things encountered are not like to do or will not be done, do not be cruel to themselves, when a monk hits a day's clock, naturally returned to the mediocre generation, nothing can be achieved.
The temptations of power, money, and paper drunkenness are rare that can stand the test.
Therefore, there are very few people standing on the top of the mountain, and many people looking up at the bottom of the mountain, which is the weakness of human nature.
Can Zeng Guofan cross the gully of desire?
The Xiang army attacked Tianjing, the Taiping army was destroyed, and Zeng Guofan's prestige was extremely high, and he was made a first-class marquis by the imperial court, with 300,000 heavy troops in his hands.
His subordinates persuaded him to claim the title of emperor, which was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Some people say that if cao cao or sima yi were replaced, they would have thought of changing the dynasty.
How did Zeng Guofan do it?
He immediately disbanded his army after the war, telling the imperial court that he had absolutely no ideas.
This is in line with his character and thoughts, loyalty to the king and patriotism is his original intention, to nip greed in the bud, how much courage and self-control is required.
Wang Yangming said:
"Man must have the heart to serve himself, in order to be able to deny himself, and to be able to deny himself can he become himself."
People need to have a heart to review themselves, in order to restrain their desires, in order to achieve themselves.
In 1860, Zeng Guofan was appointed the governor of Liangjiang, the "fat shortage", he served for 12 years, never asked for ill-gotten wealth, and never harmed public wealth and private interests.
At that time, his salary was one hundred and eighty-two, eighteen thousand silver, eighteen thousand two ugly rules, and his annual income was equivalent to the current forty million yuan, so much money, but he still borrowed debt to survive.
This is not a show, but a real clean official.
The people who were stuttering knew that Zeng Guofan did not accept money, so he gave gifts, gold and silver jewelry, and household jewelry, and he only received a straw mat, saying that he was tired of reading and could lie down for a while.
What is even more bizarre is that his protégé Rong Hong wants to import machinery from the United States, and Zeng Guofan allocates 60,000 taels of silver. At that time, the custom was that I would give you the money, you had to give me a kickback, and Zeng Guofan only received 20 taels of silver.
You know, at that time, Empress Dowager Cixi repaired the Summer Palace, allocated 600,000 pieces of silver to buy wood, and only spent 200,000 taels, and 400,000 taels were spent on various officials.
In the great Qing officialdom, in the power operation system, he alone cannot compete with all the unspoken rules, and the symbolic closing point will not offend people.
Life is even more simple, his family only employs two servants, the housework is all done by the wife, daughter-in-law, five daughters, spinning hemp, sewing clothes and shoes, he wears, all of which are done by his own family.
Once, he went to a salt merchant in Yangzhou to be a guest.
Facing the table full of mountain treasures and seafood, I just looked down and ate a little thing next to me.
After the meal, his subordinates asked him, "Lord, do you feel bad about this table of rice, but Zeng Guofan said:
"A thousand dollars of food, I can't bear to eat, I can't bear to see."
I ate a thousand handfuls of silver for a meal, and I couldn't bear to eat it and couldn't bear to look at it.
Reluctant to eat and wear, so diligent and thrifty, where did so much money go?
First of all, the Governor's Office hired people, and the salaries of all the staff members were paid by himself, and secondly, he went to Beijing to do some work with various officials.
The feudal governor was also responsible for raising funds for the construction of water conservancy, the relief of disaster victims, and the organization of education, and he could play an exemplary role.
For example, he actively raised funds to support students to study in the United States, and later these international students made great contributions to national construction after returning home.
Such a patriotic and worried Qing official died in Nanjing in February of the eleventh year of Tongzhi at the age of 62.
Before his death he left a will saying:
"If I die, transport my coffin along the canal back to my hometown for burial, refusing all receptions along the way and receiving no gifts."
The Qing Empire gave him the highest courtesy name "Wenzheng", and the Tongzhi Emperor commented on him in the edict as follows: "Loyal in nature, upright and upright".
Throughout his life, whether it was the way of being a man, the way of doing things, or the way of being an official, he was very thorough in his understanding, strict in self-discipline, and rarely made mistakes.
As later generations said, "From politicians to learn from Zeng Guofan, in business you must learn from Hu Xueyan." ”
During his eleven-year military career with the Taiping Army, he was a general who was often defeated, but he could strategize and survive the Taiping Army.
He did not meet talent on the battlefield, but he was very successful as an official, not only extremely capable, but also incorruptible to the point of unimaginable.
He said:
"If you are frugal, you have self-esteem and self-reliance, and you don't ask for others." If you govern your family and be frugal, your family will prosper and never fall. For the sake of official frugality, they should cultivate honesty with frugality, and the bureau is undefeated. ”
"The ancients who have become great causes are not only supernatural talents, but also have the will to persevere" Zeng Guofan was down-to-earth, practicing his ambitions step by step, and using the results to tell us how terrible people with high self-discipline really are.
Kant said: "Self-discipline makes us different, self-discipline makes us live a higher life, and it is self-discipline that makes us have a more free life." ”
Zeng Guofan's self-discipline is beyond the reach of others, and it is this trait that has achieved the honor of being the first perfect person in all eternity.
If we can get him two or three points of diligence and two or three points of self-sustainability, we must be able to do something meaningful!
Click "Watching" and encourage your friends.
Author | Wang Bo, pass on positive energy, write a bright life.
Column Director | Cheng zi
Typography | Zheng to the north
Image | The pictures in this article come from the Internet, and are invaded and deleted
Music | Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty