On March 12, 1872, Zeng Guofan, one of the "Four Famous Ministers of the Late Qing Dynasty", died.
From a Confucian point of view, Zeng Guofan can be said to have achieved the ultimate of human subjects. He quelled the Taiping Rebellion and contributed to the Qing Dynasty's Zhongxing, and the family letters he taught his children in the clan are still classic enlightenment readings, and after his death, he received the nickname "Wen Zheng", which Sima Guang called "the ultimate beauty of the Chen".
But behind Zeng Guofan's glamorous coat, there is also a lot of criticism. Some people say that he is self-respecting, ambitious, and colluding with the West, and that he is a "thief of Zeng Guo" and "a former shaved head."
In history, there are many figures like Zeng Guofan who have received bipolar evaluations.
For example, Li Hongzhang, who is also known as a famous minister of Zhongxing, runs foreign affairs and runs the navy, praisers say that he is the only Chinese who keeps up with the world, while critics accuse him of pretending to be public and selfish and ultimately achieving nothing;
Another example is Austria's foreign minister Metternich, who persuaded European countries to unite to strangle Napoleon, some say he brought half a century of peace to Europe, and others criticize Metternich's conservatism.
Portrait of Zeng Guofan
When Zeng Guofan was 30 years old, he put forward his ultimate pursuit in life - to be a saint, and also vowed that "heaven and man desire, never both". How does he achieve his goal of being a saint? Did he really become a saint?
Next, let's walk into Zeng Guofan's life together.
First of all, he is a master of wealth amassing who treats money like dung.
To destroy human desire, we must first eliminate self-interest. However, throughout Zeng Guofan's life, he has always been camping on the word "profit".
There was a bad rule in Qing Dynasty officialdom called "worship", that is, on the way from their hometown to Beijing, Xinke Jin Shi would visit local officials along the way and collect a lot of money from there. On the way to the capital, Zeng Guofan and his successor received gifts worth a total of 1,400 taels of silver, and secretly complained in their diaries about those officials who were particularly critical and unwilling to spend money to honor themselves.
Zeng Guofan, who was new to officialdom, soon found the "wealth code". He took several twists and turns in the capital, and the results were like mud bulls into the sea, so he simply won himself the opportunity to be sent to Sichuan as the chief examiner. Along the way, he accepted bribes from magistrates and test takers, totaling more than 6,000 taels of silver, and triumphantly said in a letter to his family: "After returning from Sichuan, the man has gained weight and is in good spirits."
However, while accumulating wealth, the imitation of saints cannot be stopped. So greedy, how far away from a saint? So Zeng Guofan deeply reflected in his diary: "Money is just a dream thing, how can you drill so camp for money, it is really contemptible and hateful!" Of course, this reflection didn't actually affect him to make money.
But in terms of private morality, Zeng Guofan was really called Qingming among the feudal officials. His inheritance was only 20,000 taels of silver, and the clothes, shoes and socks worn by his family were all affordable fabrics, and most of the income was used to train troops and recruit colleagues. Just as officials paid homage to himself in the past, Zeng Guofan also funded many new science and technology scholars, and these "investments" also became the source of his later fame.
Former residence of Zeng Guofan
Second, he is a murderous Taoist.
Zeng Guofan knew that in the Qing Dynasty officialdom, doing practical things was far more effective than saying big words, and if you wanted to be a saint, you must first set up a persona.
Zeng Guofan's image is somewhat pedantic from today's point of view. In the Xiang Army shogunate, he treated those literati who were well-learned and had a strong sense of morality. He firmly believed that learning could be used in military affairs, and did not like to use intrigue when he started a war, and was satirized by Li Xiucheng, a general of the Taiping Rebellion, as "hardened and stupid in battle", and repeatedly lost battles.
But this pedantry is just Zeng Guofan's external display. For example, Zeng Guofan never showed mercy to Li Hongzhang, who had a poor level of Confucianism and was greedy for money, mocked him for "not learning and no skills", and scolded him for treating others dishonestly, but in fact he was a confidant and privately promoted Li Hongzhang to others, saying that he was "of great use."
The masterpiece of the character master Zeng Guofan is his family letter. Carefully reading Zeng Guofan's family letters, it is not difficult to find that the content of these letters is like a self-conscious message to his family, which is simply a self-image display. In the family letter, Zeng Guofan used a lot of ink to describe how he fought to the end against vices such as smoking, playing chess, and visiting the green building, and constantly cultivated, isn't this the best propaganda for him to emulate saints and save heaven and destroy people's desires?
But Zeng Guofan's behavior was far from the benevolence advocated by the sage.
When the Taiping Army was destroyed, Zeng Guofan sent a letter to Nanjing, saying that surrender would save him from death. However, when Beijing fell, he ordered the disarmed Taiping Army officers and unarmed people of Nanjing to be slaughtered, and there was a poem Yun "Last night the princes and the people of Jiangning were all dead", and he also gained the notoriety of "shaving his head".
Zeng Guofan was a great Confucian of the time, and his calligraphy was also famous.
Thirdly, he is a patriot who gives up halfway.
Whether it is from the criticism of the times or from the nickname "Wen Zheng" given to Zeng Guofan by the imperial court, Zeng Guofan's image before his death can be called a model of loyalty. But in fact, Zeng Guofan and the imperial court were divorced.
For example, when the Anglo-French army attacked Beijing, Xianfeng ordered Zeng Guofan to send the main force of the Xiang army, Qinwang, and Zeng Guofan did not want to cede military power, so he let the troops drag and turn on the road for more than a month; In the horse assassination case, Ma Xinyi, the governor of Liangjiang, was sent by the imperial court to rectify the atmosphere and was assassinated by the local Xiang army general, Zeng Guofan, as the chief judge of the case, in order to shelter his henchmen and ignore the case, he nestled in the study all day to read strange novels, and the imperial court had no choice but to hastily close the case.
Zeng Guofan was separated from the imperial court, first, because he was an extremely powerful courtier, and his personal interests inevitably conflicted with the interests of the Qing Dynasty; Second, because from a Confucian point of view, the corrupt Qing Dynasty is no longer worth maintaining.
It should be noted that for the Han doctors of the Qing Dynasty, there were actually two "countries". Of course, the Qing government is a state, and the Confucian "tianxia" that Gu Yanwu said is also a state.
How to save the "world", this question has troubled Zeng Guofan all his life. He once warned his younger brother, who liked to fiddle with firearms, that foreign guns were all miscellaneous arts, and that he could not give up the eight strands of scripture for miscellaneous arts, and the Xiang army under him always used spears and knives as the main weapons, and the number of muskets could only be separated from the Taiping army.
The Tianjin Lesson Plan that broke out in 1870
But reason also told Zeng Guofan that a total boycott of the West was a dead end. Therefore, in the Tianjin teaching case, he did not conform to the public opinion and favored the countrymen, but severely punished those leaders who killed innocent missionaries and nuns, so he was scolded by the world and regarded as a "national thief", and has since faded out of the political arena.
In the theory of saints, Zeng Guofan's life can be described as a contradiction. He is full of moral articles, but extremely harsh; He had no beginning and no end, and he had been a famous minister for most of his life, but he was not guaranteed his life. His contradiction continues to the evaluation behind him, and people with different positions and values also have very different evaluations of Zeng Guofan, which once again proves the historical law of subjective and objective contradictions.