In Jinhua, there is a thousand-year-old city - Wuzhou Ancient City, which is a famous ancient city in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, known as "the root of the city, the soul of culture". It is said that since the Sui and Tang dynasties, the original Dongyang County was renamed Wuzhou County, so it has been changed for more than 1,400 years, but as the word "city" should be counted by Tang Zhaozong, so it is about 1,100 years. Jinhua's name comes from the allusion of "Venus and Wunu Contending for China", but after checking the encyclopedia, it seems that it is not clear what this allusion is? So I don't want to pursue it. However, the "Wuzhou Ancient City" is a tourist attraction because there is a "national cultural relics protection unit", that is, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Servant King's Palace. In addition, there are 5 provincial-level cultural relics protection units, namely: Eight Wing Building, the former site of the Taiwan Volunteer Brigade, the former site of the office of General Li Youbang, the Yongkang Kaoyu, the former residence of Shao Piaoping, and the Hongji Bridge Wharf. There are more municipal protection units, which will not be repeated here. In addition, there are many historical buildings in the ancient city that need to be repaired and restored.
Our main visit was the "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Attendant King's Mansion". This mansion was the seat of the ancient counties, prefectures, military, roads, roads, provinces, divisions, and governments of Jinhua, which was expanded into a four-step "Thousand Households" during the Ming Dynasty and became a "Trial Scholar's Temple" during the Qing Dynasty. In 1861, after Li Shixian, the attendant king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, conquered Jinhua, the original building was repaired and set up as a royal palace. The entire building of the Palace of the Servants is divided into four parts: palace, residence, garden and logistics, adjacent to the vast military training ground, with a total area of 63,000 square meters, which was the political and military command center of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Zhejiang at that time.
The current "Shiwangfu" scenic spot covers an area of 17,700 square meters, with a construction area of 3,600 square meters, about a quarter of the previous area, and other places have become residential and commercial places.
Introduction: "Shiwangfu" is the place with the most existing murals and painted paintings in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period in China, and 119 murals and 407 painted paintings have been found, as well as more than 500 pieces of wood carving and masonry carvings and other works of art. But the most eye-catching thing we see is a "stone carved dragon" with a diameter of about one meter, which is the most precious historical relics of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period. The entire stone carving is carved from delicate bluestone, and the pattern is very exquisite. Around the border are five flying bats, surrounded by auspicious clouds. In the middle part is a five-clawed golden dragon rolled into a circle, the dragon head is very large, the dragon's eyes are prominent, the mouth is open and bowed, the scales are cocked, the dragon's claws are strong, the fireballs are soaring, it seems to be leaping, and the whole sculpture is hollow and drilled, concave and convex, very beautiful. But what we see is a picture of replicas and authenticities. It is said that the real authentic products are collected in the National Museum, and if you have the opportunity to go to the National Museum, you really have to find the real ones. Local guides say that the carving was previously hung on the gate of the Palace of the Attendant King, and that it was preserved in the 1960s when it was coated with a thick layer of lime and then written with the word "Zhong" in large red. The two cypress trees in the backyard of the Palace of the Attendant King have a history of 1100 years, and according to the five generations of the Wuyue King Qian Wei, they were planted by himself and were included in the list of ancient trees. In order to protect these two ancient trees, cultural relics experts also specially built reinforced concrete frames that penetrate the roof to fix and protect, which is also rare in China. The other decorations in the Palace of the Attendant are imitated from the scenes of that year, and there is nothing special about it.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement took place from the first year of Xianfeng to the third year of Tongzhi, that is, from 1851 to 1864, which lasted for 13 years, and the Shiwangfu was the command center after Li Shixian, the last four years of the Shiwang, attacked Zhejiang.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement is roughly as follows:
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, composed of Hong Xiuquan, Yang Xiuqing, Xiao Chaogui, Feng Yunshan, Wei Changhui, Shi Dakai, and others, took the lead in launching a peasant uprising war against the feudal rule of the Qing Dynasty and foreign capitalist aggression from Jintian Village in Guangxi Province, and was also the largest peasant uprising movement at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
After the First Opium War, the Qing Dynasty had already opened the curtain of decline, and the weak Qing Dynasty signed a series of unequal treaties such as the Treaty of Nanking with the powerful Western powers. On the one hand, the Qing government wanted to compensate a large amount of "war reparations" and caused the national treasury to be completely empty; at the same time, the great powers invaded China, wantonly plundered China's resources and wealth, burned and plundered, and dumped a large number of foreign commodities into China, resulting in the bankruptcy of domestic national industries and handicraft owners. In order to pass on the economic crisis, the Qing government imposed even harsher and harsher taxes and miscellaneous taxes on small handicraft owners, urban residents, and peasants, and levied tyrannical taxes, and the landlord class took the opportunity to annex land and loot the people's anointing, and the people were in deep trouble. On the other hand, the land is barren, natural disasters such as locust plagues, droughts, and floods are frequent, and food harvests are lost. The people's lives were miserable, their families were broken, displaced and desperate. On the other hand, the results of wars and natural disasters have led to a sharp increase in the number of displaced people entering Guangxi and the intensification of human-land contradictions. Under such a background of the times, ethnic contradictions, class contradictions, contradictions between the Qing government and the common people, and so on became more and more intense, so the peasants everywhere revolted and rebelled against the Qing government. The waves of uprisings rose and fell, and the biggest uprising was the "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" uprising led by Hong Xiuquan in Guangxi.
At that time, Hong Xiuquan was attracted by the concept of equality in the Christian "Good Words for Persuading the World", combined the Christian concept of equality with the Chinese peasants' ideological concept of "peace under heaven", and proceeded from the most fundamental requirements and interests of the peasant class, and wrote three books: "The Song of Salvation of the Original Way", "The Awakening of the Original Way" and "The Original Dao Awakening World Training", theoretically to establish a society in which "everyone is equal" under the world. Therefore, the "God Worship Society" was established, and the number of "God Worship Society" increased rapidly, so the contradiction with the landlord class became more acute. At the beginning of 1851, the leading group headed by Hong Xiuquan gathered more than 20,000 people to officially declare an uprising in Jintian Village, Guangxi, and established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, thus opening the prelude to the 14-year war between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the rulers of the Qing Dynasty.
At the beginning, the Taiping Army did not fight well with the Encircling and Suppressing Qing Army, and transferred from Jintian to Wuxuan, and two months later he established himself as the "Heavenly King" in Wuxuan, and appointed several main generals to be the "left, right, front, middle, and rear" five-way army, while resisting the Qing army, while carrying out self-military and political construction, during which they went through several twists and turns, winning and losing. At the end of the year, these lords were appointed as the kings of the "east, west, south, north, and wings", and each king was led by Yang Xiuqing, the eastern king, to fight against the Qing army. At the same time, the strategic decision of "focusing on Jinling and taking the foundation" was made, and the main battlefield was expanded to Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and other places. In two years, the army has expanded to 500,000 people and more than 10,000 ships. The jiajiang river goes down to the east, lianke jiangxi and Anhui, the momentum is like a bamboo. On March 19, 1853, it occupied Nanjing, made it the capital, and changed its name to Tianjing. After that, he marched into Jiangsu and prepared to go north to the Central Plains. At this time, strong resistance from the Qing soldiers' Jiangbei camp and the Jiangnan camp, Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing decided to stick to Tianjing. At the same time, he sent troops to the Northern Expedition to the Beijing Division and marched west to the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The Northern Expeditionary Army arrived in Tianjin at the end of the year, but due to the cold weather, it encountered the main force of the Qing army, and finally ended in the failure of the Northern Expedition. At the same time as the Northern Expedition, the Taiping Army also sent troops to the "Western Expedition" to march into Jiangxi, Hunan, and Hubei, and the war lasted for about two years, basically reaching the expected goal. However, after the Northern Expedition and the Western Expedition of the Taiping Army, Tianjing had been surrounded by the Qing army's Jiangnan and Jiangbei camps, and the situation was critical, and the Western Expeditionary Army had to draw troops back to supplement Tianjing, and it was not until June 1856 that Tianjing was basically preserved.
Prosperity is bound to decline, and peasant armies begin civil unrest, killing each other. In August 1856, Yang Xiuqing was proud of his merits and forced Hong Xiuquan to name him "Long Live", and Hong Xiuquan secretly ordered Wei Changhui and Shi Dakai to return to Beijing to save each other. In early September, Yang Xiuqing and tens of thousands of his subordinates were brutally killed by Wei Changhui. Soon after, Wei Changhui was executed by Hong Xiuquan. He Dynasty Wenwu welcomed Shi Dakai to Jingfu Zheng. Shi Dakai was suspected by Hong Xiuquan and fled in May 1857, leading tens of thousands of soldiers to break away from the Heavenly Dynasty and fight independently. Although it continued to oppose the Qing Dynasty, it was far from the base area and was completely destroyed in June 1863 on the banks of the Dadu River in Sichuan. After this "infighting," the military situation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom continued to deteriorate, and its foundation was seriously damaged. At this point, most of the bases in Hunan and Hubei and Jiangxi were lost, and only the area controlled by the Anhui battlefield was slightly expanded, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom began to decline.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was greatly traumatized by the "Tianjing Incident," but under the influence of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the people's resistance struggle throughout the country was at a climax, and Hong Xiuquan's use of a number of young generals, such as Li Xiucheng and Chen Yucheng, did not develop to the point of deterioration. In early 1858, the Qing army rebuilt the north and south camps and besieged Tianjing again, and the rising stars Li Xiucheng and Chen Yucheng joined forces to break the siege and broke the north and south camps in September. In early 1860, the Jiangnan camp once again besieged Tianjing. Li Xiucheng, the King of Zhong, and Gan Hong Renjie agreed to adopt the strategy of "encircling Wei and saving Zhao" to rescue Jingwei. Li Xiucheng led his army into Zhejiang through Anhui, captured Hangzhou, and lured the enemy to divide his troops to save Hangzhou. When the Qing army arrived in Hangzhou, the Taiping Army immediately abandoned the city and returned north, becoming the outer protective force of Tianjing, and at the same time breaking the southern camp. He wanted to continue to attack Suzhou and Shanghai, but later he could not succeed because of the Resistance of the British and French Forces. Just as the Taiping Army was attacking Shanghai, the Qing army led by Zeng Guofan led 50,000 water divisions to besiege Anqing (Anhui), and Hong Xiuquan had to go west to break the siege. After repeated battles between the two armies, Hong Xiu was finally defeated and Anqing was lost. Li Xiucheng and Chen Yucheng surrounded Wuhan with two large armies in the south and north of the jiangsu river, but they were warned and resisted by the British army, and finally the siege failed, and various returned to their own territory. In 1862, Hong Xiuquan continued to expand the recruitment of troops and horses in an attempt to fight shanghai again, but was jointly resisted by the British and Qing armies, and also ended in failure. In May, the Jingzhou general Duolong'a led the Qing army to attack, Chen Yucheng abandoned the city and went to Shouzhou, lured Miao Peilin, the leader of the regiment, and sent the Qing camp to be killed, and the western defense line of Tianjing collapsed. However, the southeast defensive line was still relatively stable, the Taiping Army captured Hangzhou and most of Zhejiang at the end of the year, Jinhua was completely captured by the Taiping Army at the end of 1861, and the "Shiwangfu" was repaired and expanded into the military command center of Zhejiang during this period.
In 1862, more than 20,000 troops of the Xiang Army set out from Anqing and headed east along the river to Tianjing. Hong Xiuquan also ordered Li Xiucheng and the other thirteen kings to lead 100,000 troops to quickly return to reinforcements, but the fierce battle was still not won for more than 40 days. Li Xiucheng's forces were gradually defeated and retreated in the process of advancing westward, and were eventually besieged by Li Hongzhang's Huai army and the Zhejiang army of Zhejiang Inspector Zuo Zongtang, and Hangzhou fell and formed a siege of Tianjing. Originally, at this time, Li Xiucheng advised Hong Xiuquan to "let the city not go" and find another way to make a living, but Hong Xiuquan did not listen and continued to arrange to hold Tianjing.
In June 1864, Hong Xiuquan died of illness, and was succeeded by the young king Hong Tianguifu. On July 19, 1864, the Xiang Army successfully attacked the city, and the Taiping Army in the city either died in battle or set itself on fire, without a single surrender, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which lasted for thirteen years, was declared extinct. The fall of Tianjing marked the defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Peasants' War, but the hundreds of thousands of Taiping troops scattered on various battlefields in the north and south of the Yangtze River still heroically and tenaciously resisted the attack of the Qing army.
The above is the general process of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The most important attraction of Wuzhou Ancient City is the ruins of the Shiwang Mansion, and there are many other attractions and stories, but the time relationship is not seriously understood.
