It is hard to believe that the first Manchu Qing minister to die in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom incident was the national hero Lin Zexu.
The late Qing Dynasty scholar Li Yuandu said in the "Outline of Lin Wenzhong's Affairs": Gong (Lin Zexu) has everything in political affairs, and those who are especially concerned about the number of chaos in the world are the most important, and they are the most important, and all of them are the end of the zaizhi ... Treat others with forgiveness, receive people with sincerity, and use them with pleasure.
During the Taiping Rebellion, the imperial court was very sensitive to the rebellion in Guangxi, and the Xianfeng Emperor successively sent several capable ministers to Guangxi to quell the rebellion. The first person to be transferred to Guangxi was Lin Zexu, who had previously made great contributions to the neutrality of "Humen Tobacco Sales". However, at this time, Lin Zexu had accumulated fatigue in years of labor, and his health was deteriorating. However, the holy will was difficult to violate, and Lin Zexu had to drag his sick body out on the expedition and died on the way to Guangxi.
The news of the Taiping Army's victory and defeat kept coming back to the imperial court, and I wondered if Xianfeng, who was overwhelmed by the Taiping Army, would have such an idea: from the eight to twenty-three years of Daoguang, the local officials who had served as the governor of Guangzhou or the governor of The Government of Guangzhou should be pulled out and cut down. If they had been willing to "release water", even if it had given Hong Xiuquan a child's name, it is likely that this rebellion that had been a disaster for fourteen years and affected eighteen provinces would not have happened.
Two major events occurred in 1850 and 1851, with two emperors ascending the throne, Xianfeng and Hong Xiuquan.
In February 1850, the Daoguang Emperor died and Xianfeng took the throne. Less than a month after the new emperor ascended the throne, in the Guangxi region of "Emperor Shangao", Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the "God Sect", decided to gather righteousness and unveil the pole. In just one year, Hong Xiuquan pulled up a team of more than 20,000 people. In March 1851, Hong Xiuquan ascended the throne and established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, competing with the Qing court. Coincidentally, 1851 was both the first year of Xianfeng and the first year of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
At that time, the civil unrest in Guangxi was called "hui bandits" by the imperial court, and the Taiping Army was only one of more than a dozen "hui bandits". At the beginning of the "hui bandits" rebellion, Xian Feng couldn't figure out which of these dozen "hui bandits" was more important or less, and he didn't know which "hui bandits" should be eliminated first. At that time, the "Jintian Bandits" were only a small force, and no one realized that this "Taiping Army" that started with a false religion would develop into a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with endless disasters in the future.
Speaking of which, Hong Xiuquan is seventeen years older than Xianfeng, and he was born into a commoner family in Hua County, Guangzhou Province. Hong Xiuquan's parents were not natives, and the Hong family's ancestral home was in Jiaying Prefecture (now Mei County). When Hong Xiuquan was six years old, he was sent to a private school by his parents, and after eight degrees of cold and heat, he went to the county to participate in the "child test". According to the rules at that time, the "child test" was carried out in three rounds, namely the county test, the government test and the hospital test, if you can take the high school college test, you can become a student, which is what the people often call Xiucai.
In the first year of Hong Xiuquan's participation in the child examination, he stood out in the county examination, but he broke the sand in the government examination. For Hong Xiuquan at this time, falling off the list is nothing, after all, he is only fourteen years old at this time, and the future days are still very long. In 1836 and 1837, Hong Xiuquan came to the examination hall again and accepted this test that a reader must go through. However, fate still did not favor Hong Xiuquan, and his grades were not even as good as those of the fourteen-year-old who first took the child exam.
Three consecutive times in a row, Hong Xiuquan was almost desperate, and he even lost the strength to walk home. After Hong Xiuquan saw the list, he used the remaining money to invite two caravans and carry him back to Hua County. At this time, Hong Xiuquan had passed the age of weak crown, and his aging parents made it impossible for him to continue his studies. As a last resort, Hong Xiuquan could only come to the private school and became a private school, accumulating knowledge while supplementing the family.
At that time, many candidates who were named Luosun Mountain chose to become Mr. Private School, and relied on teaching schoolchildren to eat mixed food, called "tongue cultivation". Six years later, Hong Xiuquan felt that his accumulation of knowledge was enough to cope with the examination, so he stood in front of the examination room again to meet his fate. In the last imperial examination in Hong Xiuquan's life, he was once again named Sun Shan. Standing outside the section, Hong Xiuquan hated the depressed days, and he indignantly released a bold statement:
"One day I will definitely be able to get a doctor myself!"
Coincidentally, Hong Xiuquan saw a book about Christianity at a book stall on the street, which opened the door to a new world for him. In the same year, Hong Xiuquan resigned from the post of master and began to develop believers.
The "hui bandits" in Guangxi made a huge disturbance, and Xianfeng realized that the situation was urgent and must send capable ministers to quell the rebellion. In Xian Feng's mind, several talents had been selected who could be of great use, namely Li Xingyuan, the governor of Liangjiang, Zhou Tianjue, the governor of Caoyun, Cézanne, the minister of military aircraft, and Lin Zexu, who had made great contributions in selling cigarettes in Humen in his early years. After some consideration, Xianfeng decided that Lin Zexu would be responsible for quelling the chaos and ordered Lin Zexu to leave immediately.
Fortunately, Lin Zexu did not fight against the Taiping Army, and the two did not separate between life and death, saving future generations a lot of trouble. Otherwise, the two reliefs of "Jintian Uprising" and "Humen Selling Cigarettes" located on the Monument to the People's Heroes will inevitably make people feel awkward.
Resources:
【History of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" and "Biography of Lin Zexu"]