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Ling Chi, what people call "a thousand cuts", is a very cruel punishment, usually a capital punishment for the most heinous people.
However, in the 31st year of Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty, the last person to be tortured by Ling Chi turned out to be a Qing Dynasty Juren, and there were Westerners watching the execution who took pictures of his face distorted by pain and desperate eyes with their cameras.
So, what crime did this lifter commit? Why was he tortured?
Case
Funing County, Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, was mainly engaged in agriculture and cultivation during the Qing Dynasty, and there was a stable harvest near the Yanghe River, so it attracted many outsiders to settle here, and gradually formed a local landlord family dominated by locals such as Wang, Li, Yang, and Cao.
Among these families, the Wang family was the most prosperous, and the Wang family, which was an alternate official, Wang Weiqin, was particularly prosperous.
In the twentieth year of Guangxu, Wang Weiqin was admitted to the year's lift. In principle, Wang Weiqin at this time should be regarded as an official with a government establishment, but because there are many "donor officials" occupying the "pit", "descendants" like Wang Weiqin can only wait to "fill the vacancy" as an "alternate".
However, Wang Weiqin did not honestly wait at home to fill the vacancy, but "idle" at home and had a problem, his problem was to take advantage of it, and the object of the seizure was the Li family in the same village.
Wang Weiqin
Wang Weiqin is an alternate official, his eldest son works as an errand boy in the capital, and his eldest brother is also the head of the local Seedlings Association, which is considered a powerful family in the local area.
Compared with the Wang family, the Li family is just a rich landlord with some poor laborers. The Wang family, who regarded themselves as scholars, not only looked down on the Li family's background, but also coveted the Li family's property, so they repeatedly provoked and waited for opportunities to extort money.
In the twenty-fifth year of Guangxu, a pig of the Li family ran out of the collapsed courtyard wall and ran into the field of the Wang family and trampled on the crops. This just gave the Wang family a truth, not only asked the Li family for the land and a huge amount of compensation, but also killed the big fat pig in public and distributed it to the Qingmiao Congregation that the Wang family found to support them to eat meat.
Li Jichang, the head of the Li family, sternly refused the unreasonable demands of the Wang family, and scolded Wang Weiqin's brother who came to ask for bribes.
At this point, the two families have completely torn their faces, and the contradiction has completely escalated. The Wang family lost face when they failed to blackmail, so they simply used the government's connections to arrest Li Jichang, falsely claiming that he was a "bandit", and claiming that they would also arrest his family and ask him for the crime.
Originally, in order to prevent people and animals from destroying the seedlings, the people in rural areas spontaneously spent money to hire some people to take care of the crops, but gradually developed into the thugs of the local powerful.
Wang Weiqin's elder brother Wang Weixun has a "diploma" and is also the head of the Seedlings Club, which can actually be regarded as the "captain of the thug team" of the Wang family.
The Li family has no official background, and his sons, Li Chao and Li Zhi, were hidden by the clansmen. The Wang family took the opportunity to constantly come to the door to provoke, and also took the opportunity to tease Li Mashi, the daughter-in-law of Li Jichang's son Li Chao, but Da Li Mashi picked up scissors to defend himself, and then swung the knife to kill himself in a fit of anger.
Someone's killed! It's a big deal!
At this moment, even the people of the Wang family knew that things had reached the point where it was difficult to get out of hand.
Lives
The news that the Wang family had forced Da Li Ma to death immediately spread in the village, and the Li brothers who were hiding did not care about the threat of the Seedlings Association, and ran to the two yamen of Yongping Mansion and Tongyongdao, the higher authorities in Funing County, to beat drums and complain about Wang Weiqin.
Although it was a "violation" to go to the higher level at that time, this was a major matter of human life after all, and the two yamen exerted pressure on Funing County one after another.
The Li brothers were wiser in handling this matter, because the Wang family and the local county government did secretly collude, but under the pressure of the superiors, Funing County still "detained" Wang Weiqin.
However, after all, Funing County has a "strong" relationship with the Wang family, and the county magistrate personally came forward to mediate between the Wang and Li families. In the end, on the premise of releasing Li and Wang, let the Wang family compensate the Li family for 1,700 hanging money, and at the same time, they had to erect a martyr's monument to the Ma family to show their integrity.
Originally, this matter could be regarded as an end, but Wang Weiqin claimed to be an "official" and a "literati", and he was unwilling to let the Li family "steal the limelight" like this, so he sent a blank wordless stele to the Li family on the day of Ma's funeral.
The Li family naturally will not give up on this, and since then, the people of the two families have been fighting constantly, causing bloodshed many times.
Half a year later, there was a "Boxer Fist" in Shandong, and Wang Weiqin used the power of the government to start a "group exercise" in his hometown. Rich, powerful, and with soldiers, Wang Weiqin began a long-planned revenge against the Li family.
In March of the 27th year of Guangxu, Wang Weiqin led people to deceive the three Li brothers into the wilderness, killed them on the spot, and then blatantly broke into the Li family, arrested several children of the Li family, dragged them to the side of the Yanghe River and killed them one by one with guns, even the daughters of the Li family were also poisoned, and Peng and others were strangled to death by the Wang family with ropes at home.
As for the Li family's property, Wang Weiqin asked the "group exercises" who participated in the killing to loot as much as they could, and gave the remaining items that could not be taken away to the county master, and then falsified the scene, claiming that the Li family had fornicated Yihequan and financed all the family's belongings to the "bandits".
In this way, in just one night, 12 members of the Li family, including children under the age of 3, were killed by Wang Weiqin one by one.
The only survivors of the Li family were the head of the family, Li Jichang, who escaped when he went out, and Li Jichang's second daughter-in-law, Xiao Li Ma. At that time, Xiao Li Ma lied that he had a bad relationship with the Li family and often fought, and he would not report to the official for the Li family at all, let alone take revenge.
At that time, Wang Weiqin's cousin Wang Qi saw that Xiao Li Ma was a little beautiful, and suggested that Wang Weiqin sell it for money.
However, what neither Wang Weiqin nor Wang Qi expected was that this woman they ignored ran out while they were not paying attention, traveled hundreds of miles with a pair of small feet, and handed the pleadings to the yamen.
execute
After escaping from the control of the Wang family, she fled to her brother's house with the help of the people in the village, and with the help of her brother, she contacted Li Jichang, who had taken refuge, and jointly wrote a complaint, starting a long process of filing a complaint.
It can be imagined from what the Wang family did before that the Wang family had secret interests in collusion with the prince of Funing County, so when Xiao Li Ma's complaint was submitted to Funing County, he encountered such a ridiculous question as "How could he kill people and rob money because he has been a scholar for generations and is a scholar, and he is from a high background", and the result was naturally inconclusive.
Xiao Li Ma wanted to collect the corpses of the Li family and bury them, but what he saw were the broken bones that had been thrown in the wilderness and eaten by wild beasts, and even the bones of those children were only the braids that were tied together when they were shot.
Xiao Li Ma's heartbreak could not find justice for the dead people of the Li family, but was repeatedly pestered by Wang Weiqin and others, and even threatened her with death to give up and continue to sue, but Xiao Li Ma, who was bent on avenging his family, was determined and continued to sue with a piece of paper.
Xiao Li Ma reported to Yongping Mansion, and the Wang family went to Yongping Mansion for "movement", and Ma reported to Baoding, and the Wang family sent the money to Baoding Mansion.
At that time, Beijing was no longer the actual capital, Cixi and Guangxu fled to Xi'an, and the related affairs of Beijing were actually in charge of Natong, and the Beijing Division Industrial Inspection Bureau, where Ma indiscriminately delivered the paper, was Natong's "direct management department".
At first, Na Tong did not think that he was responsible for this incident, but he saw that the defendant Wang Weiqin was a "classmate" in the same department as him, so he thought it was necessary to carefully check in order to clear the suspicion of this "classmate".
However, when Na Tong saw the weeping little Li Ma and the children's braids, he immediately waved his pen and ordered his subordinates to investigate strictly, and also told Cixi, who had just returned to Beijing, about the matter.
Perhaps out of pity for Ma's fellow women, Cixi, who has always been criticized, was very concerned about this case and urged Na Tong to "investigate to the end".
In May of that year, when Emperor Guangxu checked the new champion of the year, Wang Weiqin, a man from Shandong, had been arrested and imprisoned, and several prefects and Baoding prefects who were fighting for the tiger were also imprisoned, and were transferred to the Criminal Department under the supervision of Natong to "strictly investigate and supervise".
In May of the thirtieth year of Guangxu, that is, in May 1904, Wang Weiqin was pushed onto the crowded streets of Beijing, and the name of that street was "Caishikou".
According to the laws of the Qing Dynasty, "Anyone who kills a family of three or more should be executed by Ling Chi." The property of the sinner is transferred to the family of the deceased; His wife and son were exiled for 2,000 miles. Accomplices are beheaded. ”
To put it simply, Wang Weiqin committed a premeditated intentional murder, and it was a major case with 12 lives, so he was "sentenced heavily" according to Cixi's order.
If according to the past practice, even the criminals sentenced to death had to wait until the "autumn queen beheaded", but Wang Weiqin and others "took great luck", October of that year was Cixi's 70th birthday, and the prisoners who were beheaded after the autumn all died early, so Wang Weiqin and others lived a few months less.
Wang Weiqin was "lucky" because when he was executed with a thousand knives, thousands of ordinary people on the streets witnessed the sharp knives cutting off his flesh piece by piece, and many Westerners at that time also used "smoking photographers" to photograph his hideous face and desperate eyes.
According to relevant records, soon after Wang Weiqin was sentenced to Ling Chi, Emperor Guangxu announced the "abolition of Ling Chi", so Wang Weiqin was also the last person in the Qing government to implement "Ling Chi", and he was written into history because of such a "first".
epilogue
Ironically, not only Na Tong, who presided over the case, was Wang Weiqin's same year, but Ge Yuzhi, who was in charge of supervising the beheading, was also his fellow student.
These three people in the same department, because of their different actions, ended up differently, one was high up as a prison official, the other was nailed to a wooden stake to "enjoy" a thousand cuts, and Na Tong accepted the "Wanmin Umbrella" sent by the people of Funing County.
In the folk, there is still the story of "Li Ma's sue for the royal complaint" in circulation, although the plot of the story has changed, but people's expectations of "good and good repay evil" are unchanged.
This article was originally written by "On History and the Present", and has been opened for the whole network to protect rights, and may not be reproduced without authorization, and infringement must be investigated.