The Dutch occupied Taiwan in the 17th century, and in 1661, Zheng Chenggong led his fleet of sea giants to drive out the Dutch. After Taiwan was left alone, the Kangxi Emperor recovered it after resolving various domestic contradictions.
The guardian Shi Lang became the largest chartered duke in Taiwan, and the emperors of the Qing Dynasty had no way to take him, allowing Shi Lang to leave behind a legacy that his descendants could not spend for 200 years.
Shi Lang has mixed reviews in history, some people say he is a national hero, others say he is a national sinner, so what is it?
01
Shi Lang was born in (1621) in a wealthy family in Yakou Village, Jinjiang, Fujian Province, and his father strictly managed Shi Lang from an early age, hoping that he would enter the future as a general.
Shi Lang has liked to learn martial arts since he was a child, does not like to read, has superb swordsmanship, is obsessed with the art of war, and can draw inferences from one example, and is a rare military genius. The young Shi Lang is full of a kind of self-confidence, he has always been eager to go to the battlefield and realize his ambitions.
Ten years after Chongzhen, 17-year-old Shi Lang came to Zheng Zhilong's army with his uncle, wanting to make a good future with his own skills.
At this time, the rivers and rivers were falling, and the wolf smoke was everywhere, and Shi Lang followed Zheng Zhilong to fight the peasant rebel army everywhere and made a lot of merits.
Shi Lang met Zheng Chenggong in the barracks, he was the son of Zheng Zhilong, they had a common hobby and liked to study military affairs, and the two became friends.
He later served under Zheng Chenggong and became Zheng's right-hand man.
Zheng Zhilong had a powerful army at sea, he was a pirate before, he was a pivotal figure in the East Asian seas during the Age of Discovery, and his influence in Taiwan was better than that of the Dutch.
Shi Lang's uncle Shi Daxian was Zheng Zhilong's trusted adviser and had been advising him.
In 1644, the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on Coal Mountain, and the Qing army began to enter the customs. All the people were thinking about their own future, and Shi Daxian persuaded Zheng Zhilong to return to Daqing, believing that Daqing had more prospects for development, and said that he and his nephew were willing to follow him.
Zheng Zhilong's son Zheng Chenggong opposed his father's surrender, but Zheng Zhilong still surrendered, and the father and son turned against each other.
In the third year of Shunzhi, Zheng Zhilong surrendered to the Qing with his men and horses, but they were not reused by the Qing court. Shi Lang, who followed, was disappointed, thinking that he could make a contribution, and he started the idea of returning to Zheng Chenggong.
02
Two years later, Shi Lang found an opportunity to escape back to Zheng Chenggong and work for him. The arrival of the general added weight to Zheng Chenggong and soon became his right-hand man.
In 1650, Shi Lang designed to kill the two forces entrenched in Xiamen and successfully captured Xiamen, giving Zheng Chenggong a rear base.
Shi Lang is a person who has skills, is arrogant and arrogant, and often does not listen to Zheng Chenggong's command, which makes Zheng feel uncomfortable, and the two gradually become disliked.
In 1651, Shi Lang and Zheng Chenggong had a strategic disagreement, and Zheng Chenggong proposed to "sacrifice water to land and raise military salaries by plundering", which Shi Lang opposed, so Shi Lang was cut off from military power and let him return to Xiamen to reflect.
When Shi Lang returned to Xiamen, he was suddenly attacked by the Qing army, and he only had ten soldiers in his entourage, but they rose up and actually repelled the Qing army and saved Xiamen.
Shi Lang was full of joy, thinking that Zheng Chenggong would reuse him again, who knew that Zheng Chenggong, who had always rewarded him with clear punishments, only gave a reward of 200 taels of silver and sent him.
The contradiction between Zheng Chenggong and Shi Lang became deeper and deeper, and the general under Shi Lang's account, Zeng Ming, violated military rules and fled to Zheng Chenggong's account for fear of being killed. Zeng De was a fierce general, and Zheng Chenggong liked him very much, and made him his personal entourage.
Shi Lang ignored it and directly captured Zeng De and killed him. Zheng Chenggong was angry, his generals did not give any face, and they could not command themselves, and this kind of person could not stay, so he ordered the Shi Lang family to be arrested, Shi Lang's father and younger brother did not escape and were killed, but Shi Lang himself escaped.
Shi Lang and Zheng Chenggong became enemies completely, Shi Lang had nowhere to go, and surrendered to the Qing for the second time, and he vowed to take revenge.
03
In the first few years of the Qing dynasty, Shi Lang was not reused, and he lay down and tasted the courage.
Li Baotai, the governor of Zhejiang and Fujian, and others recommended Shi Lang to the Kangxi Emperor, saying that he was proficient in water affairs and that he must be used if he wanted to pacify the maritime affairs. So he was appointed as the general of Tong'an and came to the Fujian front.
In 1662, Zheng Chenggong died suddenly in Taiwan, and was succeeded by his son Zheng Jing. The opportunity came, and in July of that year, Shi Lang was appointed governor of Fujian's navy division, and the imperial court sent people to Xiamen to appease Zheng Jing.
However, the conditions between the two sides were not negotiated, and Zheng Jing only agreed to be a vassal state and broke up unhappily.
Shi Lang wrote to Kangxi at this time, proposing a policy of annihilation and pacification, hoping that the imperial court would give him 20,000 sailors to take Taiwan, and he stated the importance of Taiwan's geographical location.
Kangxi was not yet pro-government at this time, and the auxiliary minister Ao Bai and others were short-sighted and did not agree to this plan. At that time, the problems of San Francisco had not yet been solved, and the Qing did not have the financial resources, and launched several wars at the same time.
Shi Lang sat on the cold bench, he did not stop training troops in Fujian, and under his careful training, the combat effectiveness of the Fujian Navy Division was improved, and it was already higher than that of Zheng Jiajun in Taiwan.
Most of the ministers believed that Taiwan could be appeased, and there was no need to capture Taiwan, and for a time the Fujian Navy Division was dismissed, and Shi Lang returned to the capital to serve.
The negotiations with Zheng Jing lasted from five to ten years of Kangxi's reign, but the two sides never reached a consensus.
In the tenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Kangxi became pro-government, he restored the Fujian Admiralty and began to build warships, Shi Lang was very excited, and his long-standing wish was about to be fulfilled.
In 1673, the San Francisco Rebellion broke out, and Shi Lang's dream was put on hold.
In 1682, Zheng Jing died of illness, and his 12-year-old son Zheng Kecheng succeeded to the throne, and Li Guangdi, a university scholar, and Yao Qisheng, the governor of Fujian, all took up the throne, preparing for unification by force.
In the twenty-second year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Shi Lang, who had been raising obscurity for thirty years, attacked for the fourth time, and the Zheng Jiajun was no longer the army in the hands of Zheng Chenggong in the past, and Shi Lang almost annihilated the Zheng Jiajun, and Taiwan was recovered.
Shi Lang gave the Kangxi Emperor the famous "Gongchen Taiwan Abandonment and Liushu", which introduced Taiwan's rich products and detailed Taiwan's importance, military and political.
This made Kangxi make up his mind and send troops to defend Taiwan, and Taiwan finally returned to the embrace of the motherland.
04
After Shi Lang successfully captured Taiwan, he paid homage to the Zheng Chenggong family temple and promised in public that he would not retaliate against the Zheng family. It left a good impression on the local population.
However, during the ten months of capturing Taiwan, Shi Lang allowed his family and generals to plunder land, and Shi Lang alone forcibly occupied all the land of the Zheng family, as well as half of the land that had been reclaimed in Tainan, and in order to manage these lands, he also established the Shi Gong Rent Museum, and the rent he came from was nicknamed Shi Hou's big rent, and sent to Beijing for the Shi family to squander.
Shi Lang's generals also followed suit, and Tainan alone was invaded and occupied by several of his generals, and the surname Bai went to Yamen to file a complaint.
Shi Lang encroached on 14,250 mu of good land in Anping County, Taiwan, and there are 11 counties in Taiwan, so if he encroaches on nearly 200,000 mu of good land, it will not be a problem for his descendants to eat for two or three hundred years.
Shi Lang and his subordinates acted in Taiwan, robbed land by force, retaliated against peasants, and several cases of forcing people to die.
After pacifying Taiwan, there were several civil revolts on the island, all of which were land invasion so that the people could not survive, and it turned out that the soldiers of the Zheng family also joined the rebel army, which made the Qing army break out in a cold sweat.
After capturing Taiwan, Shi Lang was very selfish, and he advised the Qing court not to contact the sea ban, and the reason for the name was to prevent the pirates from reuniting on the island, in fact, to protect his monopoly interests. The imperial court adopted his opinion, and objectively the strategy caused China to be closed off.
Shi Lang is greedy for how much money, there is no way to count, he built a large-scale garden in his hometown of Quanzhou, which can be seen.
05
Shi Lang is not a perfect person, has done many dishonorable things, even ungrateful.
Shi Lang is small and competitive, and he vividly shows himself in his treatment of his benefactor Yao Qisheng.
Yao Qisheng, the governor of Fujian, was a strange man, and he used his life to guarantee that Shi Lang was able to recover.
After all, at that time, many Manchus were not at ease with this Han who had surrendered and rebelled many times, and pulled him at the trough of Shi Lang's life, giving Shi Lang the opportunity to realize his life ideals.
Unexpectedly, after capturing Taiwan, Shi Lang saw some letters written by Yao Qisheng to Zheng Jing, all of which were to stabilize Zheng Jing, and some bragging about Taiwan's political achievements were in it.
In order to show loyalty to the emperor, Shi Lang sent these letters to Beijing to meet the emperor, which made the university scholar Li Guangdi unable to stand it, and Li defended Yao in front of the emperor to cover up the matter, which shows that Shi Lang is a villain who sees profit and forgetfulness.
Didn't the Kangxi Emperor know about his actions?
The answer is to know, but Taiwan has just been recovered, and only Shi Lang can live in the Zheng family, and he can only turn a blind eye.
During the Yongzheng and Qianlong dynasties, there were ministers who wrote to Shi Lang to invade Taiwan's land, and the imperial court was helpless for a long time.
Shi Lang's private morality is not cultivated, he is good at calculating his own interests, and after returning to Taiwan, he has become the largest chartered public.
Such a person in history, some people regard him as a loyal courtier, and some people regard him as a traitor, and some people compare him with Wu Sangui, what do you think of Shi Lang?
#历史开讲 #