One day in 1662, Zheng Chenggong was worried about the hopelessness of restoring the country.
At this time, a report suddenly came from outside: "There is a letter from the family, it is a good news." ”
Zheng Chenggong opened it and looked at it, and a smile finally appeared on his face. It turned out that the eldest son, Zheng Jing, sent someone to send it, saying that he had a son with his concubine.
This was the only good news Zheng Chenggong had received in many days, and he decided to celebrate it well.
He rewarded the three armies, set up a banquet in the barracks, sang and danced, and made it lively.
But Zheng Chenggong was not happy for a few days, when he received another letter, which was sent by Tang Xianyue, the former military secretary of the Southern Ming Dynasty.
In his letter, he severely denounced Zheng Chenggong for ruling the family without a way to govern his family, and for not knowing his integrity, and feasting for his grandson born of incest, which was really disappointing.
Zheng Chenggong jumped like thunder after reading the letter, dizzy for a while, and seriously ill.
After that, the body deteriorates day by day.
Feeling that his life was imminent, he called his cousin Zheng Tai over and said to him, "Go back to Xiamen and execute my wife, son, grandson, and nursing mother Chen!" ”
Zheng Tai was shocked when he heard this, thinking that Zheng Chenggong was sick and confused, and this matter must not be handled lightly.
Afterwards, he and Huang Yu and the ministers strongly discouraged him, and Zheng Chenggong attacked his heart in a hurry, almost biting off his finger.
But none of the people he sent out were willing to carry out this order, but Zheng Chenggong would go to the stage every day, holding a telescope and looking into the distance, hoping to see them execute their wives and children in his lifetime.
In the end, he did not wait for the desired result, and died of grief and indignation at the age of 39.
What exactly did Shangshu Tang Xianyue say in the letter of the former military department? Why is Zheng Chenggong so persistent, he has to execute his wife, children, children and grandchildren?
After understanding what happened to Zheng Chenggong, I understood that the reason why he did this was a catharsis of dissatisfaction with reality.
Death of father and mother
Zheng Chenggong was a national hero who expelled the Netherlands and recovered Taiwan, and was the last backbone of the Southern Ming Dynasty.
He had a strong patriotic heart and spent most of his life fighting bloody battles to restore Daming and reclaim the homeland of the Han people.
And his father Zheng Zhilong was far less spineless than him, and in order to get the high-ranking official Houlu, he surrendered to the Qing Dynasty early.
Zheng Zhilong was a merchant at sea in his early years, he was very intelligent and capable, proficient in many Chinese, and good at swordsmanship.
With his extraordinary ability, Zheng Zhilong has become popular in shopping malls and officialdom.
At that time, in the Fuzhou region where Emperor Longwu of the Southern Ming Dynasty was located, the power of the military state was all in the hands of Zheng Zhilong, and the entire Zheng family would be full of doors.
His son Zheng Chenggong was also given the surname Zhu by Emperor Longwu, known as "Xiaoguo surname Ye", which was extremely glorious at that time.
It can be said that the Zheng family is deeply favored by the emperor. In this regard, Zheng Chenggong thanked Dade and vowed to be loyal to Daming in this life until death.
But Zheng Zhilong is a businessman after all, and he looks at the interests in advance.
As the Ming Dynasty ran out of energy, Zheng Zhilong made his own little calculation, if the Qing Dynasty could give him the high-ranking official Houlu, wouldn't it be more promising?
After thinking about it, Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong discussed surrendering to the Qing Dynasty.
Zheng Chenggong was heartbroken, and he tugged on his father's clothes to persuade him bitterly: "Father, you have such a huge force here, you can't easily believe the rhetoric of the Qing army." Once you get out of here and join the Qing army, you can only be slaughtered. ”
Tigers must not leave the mountains, and fish must not escape the abyss; If you leave the mountain, you will lose your weapon, and if you leave the abyss, you will be trapped and killed when you climb the abyss. Father Wu thought twice.
Unfortunately, his father has made up his mind, and Zheng Chenggong can't persuade him with anything.
In the end, he surrendered to the Qing Dynasty and withdrew his troops defending Xianxialing, while Zheng Chenggong was weak and declared defeated. In order to avoid being held hostage by the Qing army, Zheng Chenggong fled to Kinmen, and the Qing army successfully entered Fujian.
Soon came the bad news that Emperor Longwu was martyred and Zheng Chenggong's mother was humiliated by the Qing army and hanged herself.
However, the Qing Dynasty turned its face and did not recognize people, and instead of reusing Zheng Zhilong, they held him hostage and threatened Zheng Chenggong to surrender.
Zheng Chenggong lost the emperor and his mother, and all his internal organs were cracked in pain. Receiving the threat from the Qing army, he cried and said: "If loyalty and filial piety cannot be both, I can only transfer filial piety to loyalty and swear to defend the country to the death." ”
Zheng Chenggong bears the hatred of the country and the family, and his life is only to resist the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming, and the hardships and hardships in it are known only to him.
There is no hope of restoration
After his father left, Zheng Chenggong decided to revive the power of the Zheng family.
He gathered his father's subordinates to reorganize, gathered thousands of soldiers in South Australia, and united with Zhang Huangyan, a general who resisted the Qing Dynasty, and began the great cause of opposing the Qing and restoring the Ming under the banner of "resisting the Qing and restoring the Ming Dynasty".
Young and weak, he took advantage of the weakness of the Qing army not good at water warfare, so that they repeatedly suffered defeats and became a henchman of the Qing Dynasty.
In desperation, the Qing Dynasty negotiated peace with Zheng Chenggong many times. Zheng Chenggong is also very smart, he never directly refuses, but bargains while grabbing land and accumulating energy.
In the end, not only did the negotiations not succeed, but Zheng Chenggong's strength increased greatly and he was able to wrestle with the Qing government.
In 1659, the main forces of the Qing army were transferred to fight against Li Dingguo of the Southern Ming Dynasty, and Zheng Chenggong took advantage of the situation to lead his army to the north.
Zheng Jiajun was in full swing, and after successively winning the Battle of Dinghaiguan, the Battle of Guazhou, and the Battle of Zhenjiang, Zheng Chenggong besieged Nanjing.
As long as Nanjing is captured, it is half of the country.
But seeing that victory was in hand, Zheng Chenggong, who had always been resourceful, made a fatal mistake.
Guan Xiaozhong, the governor of Nanjing, was afraid of Zheng Jiajun and did not dare to face the battle, so he wrote directly to Zheng Chenggong saying that he wanted to surrender, but the time was a month later.
The reason is that the Qing Dynasty had regulations that if the enemy siege defenders did not hold out for a month, the crime of defeat would affect their relatives.
This is clearly a delaying measure, delaying time and waiting for reinforcements. His subordinates advised Zheng Chenggong not to believe it, and to take advantage of the empty strength of his troops, he immediately attacked the city, and there was a great hope of victory.
Perhaps a series of victories washed away Zheng Chenggong's mind, or perhaps Guan Xiaozhong was too good at disguise. In short, Zheng Chenggong was overconfident this time, and he believed that Guan Xiaozhong did not dare to play ghost thoughts.
Zheng Chenggong was self-sufficient and gave the Qing army ample time to prepare. By the time a large number of reinforcements arrived, Zheng Chenggong found out that it was too late.
In the Battle of Nanjing, Zheng Chenggong was defeated, and the anti-Qing cause that had struggled for half his life was lost.
He suffered heavy losses in this battle, and he was so remorseful that he was about to draw his sword on the spot and kill himself, but was dissuaded by his subordinates. You can imagine how depressed he was at that time.
Of course, failure cannot defeat Zheng Chenggong, and what defeats him is mental destruction.
The king died and his father died
After the defeat in the Battle of Nanjing, Zheng Chenggong led his troops and retreated to Xiamen.
He did not lose heart, continued to straighten out the army, waiting for the opportunity to raise troops to attack again.
Zheng Chenggong's existence made the Qing government feel "thorn in the back" and had to pull it out.
The Qing Dynasty seized on Zheng Chenggong's weakness that it was difficult to obtain military food supplies from the sea as a base and implemented the "sea ban" and the "relocation order". A naval blockade was imposed on Zheng Chenggong, merchants and citizens were strictly prohibited from trading at sea, and Zheng Chenggong's grain supplies were cut off.
However, this did not defeat Zheng Chenggong, but forced him to defeat the Netherlands, take Taiwan's treasure island, and practice self-sufficiency in the Tuntian system in Taiwan.
The "sea ban" and "border relocation order" have led to the depletion of financial resources and economic decline in coastal areas, and the displacement of ordinary people and complaints.
In a fit of anger, the Qing Dynasty killed all 11 members of the Zheng family, including Zheng Chenggong's father Zheng Zhilong, his younger brother and nephew.
Although this is the result of the father's own fault, after all, father and son are connected by blood. He can't forget that it was his father who gave him a life of brocade and food and cultivated him into a talent.
He knew that every refusal to surrender increased his father's suffering.
He also knew that if he fought against the Qing Dynasty, his father would die under their butcher's knife sooner or later. Every time he thought of this, his heart ached like tearing.
This day finally came, he was in pain, he wore linen and filial piety, knelt on the ground and beat his chest, hating that he would never have the opportunity to avenge his father again in this life.
To add insult to injury, a few months later, Zheng Chenggong received the news that the Southern Ming Yongli Emperor had been captured and killed by Wu Sangui in Burma, which meant that the desire to revive the Ming Dynasty was completely dashed.
Fate is so unfair, Zheng Chenggong is already a fatherless and kingless person, but God still does not intend to let him go.
Due to the disobedience in Taiwan, he and many soldiers fell ill. Coupled with the fact that they were besieged by the Qing Dynasty and left alone overseas for a long time, the worries and sorrows in their hearts were intertwined, which was already unbearable for him.
At this time, his son did something bad again, which became the last straw that broke the camel's back.
Messy family style
Zheng Chenggong had more than a dozen sons, but the one he had the highest hopes for was his eldest son, Zheng Jing. When he received that Zheng Jing had added a grandson to him, he was overjoyed that there were people to follow.
However, a letter from Tang Xianyue, the former military commander of the Southern Ming Dynasty, pushed him to the abyss of despair.
Tang Xianyue is the grandfather of Zheng Jing's original wife Tang, who is a lady with a gentle personality and dignified manners, but does not like Zheng Jing.
After she got married, Zheng Jing was very indifferent to her, rarely went to her room to spend the night, and was married for many years and still had no children.
On the contrary, it was Zheng Jing's fourth brother's nanny, who looked like a fairy, with a curvy figure and a hooking soul, and Zheng Jing couldn't help but tempt to fornicate with her and gave birth to a son.
Zheng Jing understood his father's character and did not dare to report the truth to him. But Tang was aggrieved in his heart, so he complained to his mother's family.
Grandfather Tang Xianyue was very angry when he learned that Zheng Chenggong also set up a banquet for this grandson, so he wrote a letter to complain about his granddaughter:
"Three fathers and eight mothers, and the nursing mother is also one of them. Ling Lang gave birth to a son, did not pay attention to the rebuke, and added a reward. This rule is not right, can An govern the country? ”
In Chinese ritual law, the nursing mother is one of the eight mothers. The letter reprimanded Zheng Chenggong not to be ashamed of his son's incestuous behavior, but to give a reward, the family can not be cured, what else to talk about governing the country?
This sentence is extremely ironic, Zheng Chenggong was already depressed, and at this moment his emotions suddenly erupted like a volcano.
He became seriously ill and ordered his wife to be executed because she had no way to teach her son. Execute sons, grandchildren, and nursing mothers in a proper manner.
In fact, in that era, although Zheng Jing's behavior was immoral, sin did not lead to death. But Zheng Chenggong was determined to execute them, no matter how much others persuaded them.
But seeing that Zheng Chenggong is about to die, Zheng Jing is the best successor in the future, and everyone is unwilling to carry out this order.
The generals finally decided to adopt a compromise solution and execute only the nursing mother and baby, but Zheng Chenggong kept waiting for the news that his wife and children had been executed.
Until receiving Zheng Tai's letter of refusal, Zheng Chenggong felt completely desperate. He put on the official mansion of the Ming Dynasty and roared hysterically:
"Since the country drifted to zero, there has been a bloody cry for seven out of ten, there has been no basis for progress and retreat, crimes have increased day by day, and now it has been desolate, and it has lost its lives to the world, lost loyalty and filial piety, and died without blindness.
Saying that, his hands frantically scratched his face and choked to death.
From this passage, we can feel the sadness and indignation of Zheng Chenggong's death before his ambition is rewarded.
He insisted on fighting for 17 years, but the final result was both loyalty and filial piety.
He aspired to restore his sight, but even the Southern Ming Dynasty could not be saved, and he took his father's life for this.
He expelled the Netherlands, recovered Taiwan, and finally had a place, but died early. In the end, Taiwan still had to be recovered by the Great Qing, and his own hard work was actually a wedding dress for the enemy.
He was a man of great morals, and his son committed incest with his nursing mother, and he was unable to punish him.
Zheng Chenggong saw himself as a loser, and eventually died with hatred, leaving too many regrets before dying.
But in fact, he is a very great national hero in the eyes of later generations, although he did not succeed, his achievements can never be erased.
Life is also time, luck, and destiny in the world. Some things don't have to be too yourself, just let yourself go, and do your best.