01
In the late Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty was deeply troubled by internal and external troubles, and china began to enter an eventful autumn in 1840. The outbreak of two Opium Wars in succession, the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War and the Eight-Power Alliance's invasion of China, in the face of the Western powers' invasion of national sovereignty by force and the intensification of economic plunder, the Qing court was already overwhelmed.
Coupled with the intensification of domestic contradictions, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Boxer Rebellion broke out successively, and the rule of the Qing Dynasty was hit hard, exacerbating the gradual decline of the Qing Dynasty.
At the same time, due to social unrest, chaos has arisen, resulting in countless strange and unjust cases. Among them, during the late Qing Dynasty at the turn of the Tongzhi Dynasty and the Guangxu Dynasty, the four major strange cases of the late Qing Dynasty that caused a sensation in the whole country occurred, namely, the Yang Naiwu and Xiao Cabbage case, the famous Yang Yuelou unjust case, the Taiyuan Qi case, and the Zhang Wenxiang horse assassination case.
The facts of these cases are complex and tortuous, and they are confusing, especially the Zhang Wenxiang assassination case, which had the greatest impact, and the assassination of Xiaomin by the feudal officials of the imperial court in broad daylight shocked the government and the public, and the whole country paid attention to it, and even Empress Dowager Cixi had to personally deal with this case.
In the early morning of July 26, 1870, in the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), Ma Xinyi, the governor of Liangjiang, went to the school yard near the Governor's Office as usual to inspect the soldiers' exercises. After the parade, Ma Xinyi walked back to the Governor's Office, surrounded by a group of guards.
Halfway to the road, a man suddenly rushed out of the crowd of onlookers on both sides of the road and stepped forward as if he was going to file a complaint. Arriving at Ma Xinyi's side, this person suddenly drew his sharp blade and stabbed at Ma Xinyi's coercion. The Governor of Liangjiang immediately fell to the ground, and the retinue was horrified and hurriedly lifted him up and carried him to the Governor's Office for treatment.
The other guards rushed forward to take the Assassins down. The Assassin did not flee after the assassination, and did not resist when he was captured, but kept chanting "Raise an army for a thousand days, and use it for a dynasty." He claimed to be Zhang Wenxiang, one person doing things and one person, and had no other accomplices.
By noon, Ma Xinyi, who had been stabbed to the point, could no longer speak. The next afternoon, he died of his wounds in the Governor's Office.
02
Ma Xinyi, Zigushan, is a native of Heze, Shandong. Daoguang passed the examination for twenty-seven years and was on the same list as Li Hongzhang. After that, he went all the way up the career. He once served as an envoy of Jianpingzhi County, HefeiZhi County, Anhui Province, Anhui Province, Zhejiang Governor, and Governor of Fujian and Zhejiang.
In September 1868, Zeng Guofan, the commander of the Xiang Army, was transferred from the post of Viceroy of Liangjiang and replaced by the Viceroy of Zhili. Ma Xinyi succeeded Zeng Guofan and was promoted to Governor of Liangjiang and Minister of Trade and Commerce.
Ma Xinyi's dedication to official duties can also be regarded as conscientious and conscientious, and his political achievements have been remarkable. He was known for his diligence in Serving Zhi County in Anhui Province. In the fifth year of Xianfeng, he followed the Qinchao chancellor Yuan Jiasan in attacking the Taiping army in Luzhou and Chaohu. The leader repelled the reinforcements of the other side, and then defeated the Taiping army in Sanhe Town and other places one after another, and after conquering Luzhou, he was promoted to the prefect of Luzhou for his merits.
A few years later, Ma Xinyi was appointed as an envoy to The Imperial Guard, and was defeated by the British king Chen Yucheng during the battle with the Taiping Army, and the city of Luzhou was also lost, and he was once dismissed from his post by the imperial court.
After three years of Tongzhi, Ma Xinyi was promoted to inspector of Zhejiang. At that time, Zhejiang had just been retaken from the Taiping Army, and the people were still struggling. When Ma Xinyi arrived, he immediately wrote to the imperial court to exempt the people from unpaid taxes.
The following year, Ma Xinyi wrote to the imperial court to be allowed to reduce the additional taxes and rice collected by the seven provinces of Hangzhou and Jiaxing, requesting the abolition of many harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes on water transportation, reducing the burden on the peasants, and seeking opportunities for the people of Zhejiang to cultivate and recuperate.
Ma Xinyi also presided over the construction of water conservancy projects such as Haining Shitang and Shaoxing Dongtang to dredge the river channel and benefit one party. He paid attention to local education, restored the colleges of various provinces in time, regarded students who studied coursework as children, and rewarded the outstanding among them with money.
Ma Xinyi
After Ma Xinyi was transferred to the governor of Liangjiang, he stepped up work on river affairs such as the Jiangnan Canal. He often went to the water conservancy site to inspect, and when the canal embankment was completed, he personally went to the acceptance. As for the two Huaiyan administrations, which were also in charge, Ma Xinyi also began to carry out many adjustments that were beneficial to the people.
Then, why did the assassin Zhang Wenxiang kill such a diligent and popular court official Ma Xinyi?
03
The governor of Liangjiang, Ma Xinyi, was stabbed to death, and the Jiangning general Kui Yu immediately reported the case to the capital, and the whole court was shocked and mourned. Empress Dowager Cixi was surprised and said, "Isn't it strange that Ma Xinyi is doing this?" Ordered Kui Yu to severely interrogate Zhang Wenxiang. It is certain that he was a native of Ruyang, Henan, and served in the Taiping Army for several years. Zhang Wenxiang's confession flickered and became more and more suspicious.
There are advisors to the imperial court, be sure to find out the main messenger behind it. Therefore, the imperial court ordered Zhang Zhidong's cousin, Zhang Zhiwan, the governor of Caoyun, to participate in the trial. Ma Xinyi's subordinate Yuan Baoqing and others proposed that Zhang Wenxiang be tortured and interrogated, but they were rejected by Kuiyu on the grounds that the case was serious and inconvenient to sentence him.
The trial of the case was lengthy, and a few months later Zhang Zhiwan and Kui Yusong reported to the imperial court that after many interrogations, according to Zhang Wenxiang's always-insisted confession, the murderer had participated in the Taiping Army and the Twist Army, and later secretly communicated with pirates. When Ma Xinyi was serving as the governor of Zhejiang, piracy was rampant on the border of Nantiandi along the coast of Xiangshan and Ninghai, and it was a scourge for many years. Ma Xinyi sent officers and soldiers to wipe him out, and most of Zhang Wenxiang's accomplices were killed.
And because his wife Roche was abducted. When Ma Xinyi went to Ningbo for an inspection, Zhang Wenxiang had blocked the way to submit a petition but was not accepted, so he held a grudge. New hatred and old hatred prompted him to take risks, and the assassination was purely personal and not directed by outsiders.
The imperial court did not easily endorse this conclusion. Zeng Guofan was then sent back to Nanjing to serve as the governor of Liangjiang, and zheng Dunjin, the head of the Punishment Department, was sent to Nanjing with two Criminal Department Langzhong to jointly review the case.
It was the middle of winter, and the road encountered heavy snow barriers, and it was difficult for cars and horses to travel, so Zheng Dunjin, the minister of Chincha, abandoned the car with his entourage and walked on foot. The day after arriving in Nanjing, the case was tried behind closed doors.
After receiving the order, Zeng Guofan insisted on resigning as the governor of Liangjiang, and requested that he be relieved of his duties on the grounds of illness to recuperate. The Qing court did not approve it and instructed him to take up his post as soon as possible. Zeng Guofan could not shirk it, but he still delayed for a while before leaving for Nanjing to take over.
Zheng Dunjin's review for many days has yielded no results, and Zhang Wenxiang has never changed his confession. Zeng Guofan did not make any progress after his arrival, and the case continued to be tried for several months, although Zhang Wenxiang's confession was full of loopholes, and finally convicted according to zhang zhiwan and Kuiyu's original charge of conspiracy to steal revenge.
In October of the following year, Zhang Wenxiang was executed by Ling Chi, and his heart and liver were taken out and sacrificed in front of Ma Xinyi's spirit. Zhang Wenxiang's son was also executed by Zhu Lian.
The imperial court posthumously awarded Ma Xinyi the title of Prince Taibao, gave him a pension according to the precedent of the governor's death, and entered the "Xianliang Ancestral Hall", a special shrine for the ministers of the state meritorious princes and ministers outside the Di'an Gate of Beijing.
04
A major case of the assassination and death of a feudal official of the imperial court seems to have come to an end, but the truth and motives of the case in the people are confusing, rumors are everywhere, and various claims have been controversial.
One theory that is more widely recognized is that the horse assassination case was a political murder, and Ma Xinyi was a victim of the political struggle between the late Qing court and the local han power faction.
Yan Shizhang, one of the two langs who accompanied Shangshu Zheng Dunjin of the Punishment Department to Nanjing to retry the thorn horse case, wrote a "Diary of a Southbound Journey", which recorded the entire process of going to Nanjing to handle the case. According to Yan's great-grandson, there are "the thorn horse case is related to the Xiang Army" and "there are big people behind the thorn horse case."
From Zhang Wenxiang's words after the assassination, "Raising an army for a thousand days and using it in one dynasty" is also very similar to a murder case.
At the time of the verdict, Sun Yiyan, the candidate of Jiangsu Province, and Yuan Baoqing, the alternate dao of Shandong, who participated in the trial, were extremely dissatisfied and refused to sign and approve the closing chapter.
After the conclusion of the case was submitted to the capital, before the holy decree was issued, Zheng Dunjin, the head of the Punishment Department, left Nanjing with two Langzhong. When he reached Qingjiang, he sent two Langzhong back to Beijing on an errand and claimed to be ill and asked for a vacancy, and without the permission of the Qing court, he abandoned his official and returned to his hometown. There are indications that the case is not so simple.
Nanjing, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was conquered by the Xiang army led by Zeng Guofan's ninth brother Zeng Guoquan. According to folklore, there are huge treasures in Hong Xiuquan's Heavenly King's Mansion, which were captured by Zeng Guoquan's Xiang army and transported back to their hometown in Hunan. However, Zeng Guoquan only said that the Heavenly King's Mansion was destroyed by fire and did not truthfully report the property, and the Qing court was already confused.
After the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Zeng Guofan's Xiang army was arrogant, and the Liangjiang area was regarded as its own territory by the Xiang army. The Qing court was quite jealous, so it had to cultivate the Huai army to contain it, and at the same time tens of thousands of Xiang troops were cut down.
Ma Xinyi replaced Zeng Guofan as governor of Liangjiang, and was a key official specially sent by the imperial court to contain the Xiang army. Ma Xinyi entered Beijing to see Cixi, and when he withdrew, he was sweating profusely and terrified, and his imperial clothes were soaked. Even before going to the post, he also told his family that it was difficult to predict that he would go here, and in case of an accident, he should swallow his anger and swallow his voice in order to protect himself. This shows that this mission is extremely dangerous.
After Ma Xinyi took office, in accordance with the will of the imperial court, he greatly removed restrictions on the Xiang army that indulged in lawlessness. Moreover, the severe suppression of those who wandered around and plundered after being dismissed and killed the people naturally aroused hatred among the Xiang army. The investigation of the whereabouts of the huge treasures of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was even more feared by Zeng Guoquan's Xiang army. Thus buying off the assassin Zhang Wenxiang to attack Ma Xinyi.
After Zhang Wenxiang was executed, a general of the Xiang Army erected a monument to him, which seemed to confirm this.
05
Another widely spread saying is that Ma Xinyi was a "fishing negative friend", which led to the disaster of killing.
It is said that Zhang Wenxiang was originally a twister, but he had long wanted to surrender to the imperial court. When Ma Xinyi was the prefect of Luzhou, he led an army to pursue the Twister army, but instead he was defeated and captured by the Twister army.
Zhang Wenxiang contacted his friends Cao Erhu and Shi Jinbiao in the camp, and the three of them secretly consulted with Ma Xinyi and became brothers, vowing to live and die together. Then pretend that Ma Xinyi regained the lost land and made military merits, so as to deceive the imperial court into climbing to the high position of a feudal official. Later, Ma Xinyi collected the three people who came to join them and their subordinates and established the "Shanzi Battalion".
Soon, Ma Xinyi coveted the beauty of Cao Erhu's wife, had an affair with her, and framed and booby-trapped Cao Erhu. Zhang Wenxiang, who escaped the clutches of the devil, was filled with indignation and determined to avenge his brother, which led to this big case of stabbing horses.
This kind of statement did not go away, and soon appeared in various wild histories, novels and operas, and its influence was so great that it almost became a public opinion.
However, some people are upset with Ma Xinyi, believing that this is a careful plan and fabrication made up in advance by the buyers behind ma Xinyi in order to slander Ma Xinyi. He tried to confuse the public by spreading rumors, and even secretly directed the performance of the opera "The Legend of the Thorn Horse", which was based on this theory.
As for the reasons for this case, there are also several theories: Ma Xinyitong was killed when he returned to the traitorous country, Ding Richang, the inspector of Jiangsu, pleaded unsuccessfully for the son who committed the crime, and bought a fierce stab horse, and Ma Xinyi was bought to assassinate a foreign religion.
The film "Submission" staged a few years ago was written in the version of the "Fishing Color Negative Friend" stab horse case. Making the plot more twisted and bizarre and fascinating is undoubtedly what the film script pursues, of course, this has nothing to do with the historical truth of this strange case at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
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