I smiled at the sky with a horizontal knife and went to leave the liver and gallbladder for two kunluns.
A desperate poem, only two lines, Tan Sitong has overflowed his determination to die heroically.
As the most tragic figure in the late Qing Dynasty, he is not afraid of life and death, heroic and righteous, which is really a manly and husbandly spirit, which is worthy of admiration!
But behind the seemingly simple rhetoric is a more brutal reality.
The emperors of the Qing Dynasty have no successors, as if to indicate that the dynasty has exhausted its strength, the decline is irreversible, and the glory of the past has been in vain.
In the face of imperialist aggression and the inaction of the Qing court, the whole country fell into a state of fiery water, and it was in urgent need of talents to turn the tide and save the dying country.
So Tan Sitong stood up.
Tan Sitong is different from those who revolted in ancient times, he not only has enough to eat and wear warmly, but also can afford to marry his daughter-in-law's parents, and he is not at all forced by life to go to Liangshan to become a good man.
To put it more greatly, he wants to save everyone who is in the limelight under the fallen rule of the Qing Dynasty.
As the son of the Governor of Hubei, he was a veritable "second generation official", and his father had also served as the governor of Huguang, and he could be said to be a general under Cixi, and if he followed his father's arrangement, he would certainly have a worry-free future.
However, Tan Sitong chose another path, not only did he not inherit Empress Dowager Cixi's favor, but he also became a member of the restoration faction and tried hard to change the law.
In the later period of the reform, because they were inferior to the diehard faction headed by Cixi, the reform faction decided to preemptively support Guangxu in power and conspired with Yuan Shikai to "encircle the garden and kill the queen".
As a result, Yuan Shikai defected halfway through, so Cixi acted in advance, imprisoned Guangxu, and hunted down and killed the restorationists.
Hearing the wind, Kang Youwei left his brother and fled to Japan first, and Liang Qichao also persuaded Tan Si to leave with him, after all, if he was dead, even if he did not die, it would become a fantasy.
Kang Youwei
But Tan Sitong refused.
He said: All countries that change the law are caused by bloodshed, and today China has not heard of anyone who has shed blood because of the change of law, and the reason why this country is not prosperous is also not prosperous. If so, please start with the same heir.
In this way, Tan Sitong, Lin Xu, Yang Shenxiu, Liu Guangdi, Yang Rui, and Kang Guangren were arrested and imprisoned.
Before his arrest, in order not to involve his father, Tan Sitong also made a fake family letter, imitating his father's handwriting and writing a letter to scold himself for being rebellious, unfaithful and filial piety, in order to clear his father's relationship with himself.
On Cixi's side, because he failed to catch Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, he was furious and attacked his heart, and he poured all his anger on the sixth prince of Wushu, so he deliberately ordered that a blunt knife be used when beheading.
As the saying goes: the head has lost a bowl of scars.
But "losing your head" is such a simple thing as a sentence.
The knife used in the decapitation is roughly divided into two types, one is a fast knife, the hand knife falls cleanly and neatly, and the other is a blunt knife, which means a very blunt knife.
The greater the crime, the more people use blunt knives, torture prisoners, and play a role in venting anger when the crowd is watching.
This ancient beheading executioner has a unique secret book, cutting watermelons from a young age, and practicing a quick and accurate technique to reduce the pain of prisoners.
However, Cixi hated the sixth prince of Wushu this time, and especially Tan Sitong, who bore the brunt of it, confessed to use the most obtuse knife, the "Great General's Knife", and did not want him to die a painful death, which was almost the same as Ling Chi's punishment.
At noon on September 28, 1898, the mouth of Xuanwumen Vegetable Market was full of people, bustling with people watching the liveliness.
Tan Si and others were locked up in a prison cart, suffering the "baptism" of ordinary people's eggs, rotten vegetable leaves, and swill water along the road, and the insults were endless.
In the face of the ignorance of the people and the dictatorship of Cixi, Yuan Shikai's rebellion Tan Sitong shouted out the last tragic last words: "There is a heart to kill thieves, unable to return to heaven, die where they want, hurry up and hurry."
In the near future, Mr. Lu Xun wrote about Tan Sitong's mood at that time: mourning his misfortune and angering him.
This punishment deeply tormented Tan Sitong, who first watched his companions fall one by one, and then suffered lingchi-like torture.
Hu Qi, who was also a teacher and friend of Tan Si, described this tragic scene in "Tan Si Tong's Witness to Righteousness":
The first knife killed Kang Guangren, and it was the turn of the fifth knife, oh my God! It was our turn on Mr. Tan's head. The knife used to kill officials in the former Qing Dynasty was different from the knife used to kill civilians, and the larger the official, the more blunt the knife. This is not called beheading, it is called sawing head, which is dozens of times more painful than beheading. And for this tragic situation that hurt into the bone marrow, the fifth tortured Mr. Tan, has always been indifferent, cutting more than 30 knives before he lost his breath.
Although Hu Qi said that he had witnessed the whole process, the truth and falsity of more than 30 knives were difficult to find, but no matter what, Tan Sitong's heroic integrity of treating death as a homecoming was genuine!
Even today, there are still ignorant people who laugh at the worthlessness of Tan Sitong's death, and he is using blood to wake up the drunken and dreaming class of scholars, and to awaken those ignorant civilians.
Every drop of his blood is a sweet spring on the difficult road to clearing the feudal system.