【Inscription】 The history of the Ming Dynasty is full of blood, and when writing, I often suspect that my palms are stained with blood.
Portrait of Shi Kefa
One summer in the fifth year of the Apocalypse (1625), the sun was blazing, tormenting everything on the earth. A sad young man, carrying a small bag in his arms, came nervously to the front of the East Factory on the north side of dong'an gate. Obviously, it was a summer day, and between his tightly locked eyebrows, it was as cold as winter.
The jailer stood like a statue in front of the door, and the young man approached timidly and carefully handed him the burden in his arms.
"Here is fifty taels of silver, I heard that the enshi Zuo Yushi has just been tortured, and his life is short, please let me go in and see him..." The words were not finished, and they had already choked up silently.
The jailer saw that he was pitiful and agreed, but he repeatedly told him unassuredly: "Don't stay too long, or we will all die." ”
The jailer collected the money, and under his arrangement, the young man changed into worn-out clothes and trousers, wore straw shoes, carried baskets on his back, and took a long-handled shovel in his hand, and dressed up as a cleaner. He followed the jailers into the prison.
The cells of the East Factory are the bloodiest and most sinister places in the country, where the cries of death row inmates, the pungent smell of fishy smells, and the ghosts of innocent deaths fill every corner here, and prisoners' bleeding wounds enrich bloodthirsty flies. The young man bowed his head, could not bear to look, could not bear to listen, could not bear to think, and silently walked to the depths of the prison. In the depths of the darkness, his mentor Zuo Guangdou was in the middle.
Left Phototo Image
The jailer suddenly raised his hand and pointed, and the young man looked for direction, only to see a man sitting on the ground against the wall, his face was scorched and rotten, he was unrecognizable, his left leg was below his knee, his muscles and bones had fallen off, and the scene was bloody and bone-crushing. That person was Zuo Guangdou.
The young man could not suppress his grief, knelt forward, and held the teacher's knee and cried in a low voice. Because of the torture of the cannon, the teacher's eyes could not be opened, he raised his arm vigorously, with his fingers to open the eye sockets, such as the torch still stared angrily at the kneeling students in front of him, he reprimanded: "Useless slave, what is this place, are you here to die?" The affairs of the country have been corrupted to this point, I am finished, you look at me with no regard for your life, who will support the affairs of the world? Instead of waiting for the adulterer to frame you, I will beat you to death today. While cursing, he touched the torture device on the ground and made a throwing appearance. The young man did not dare to make a sound and quickly ran out. After that day, the teacher died in prison. Young people often talked about this matter with tears in their eyes, and he sighed in admiration: "My teacher's lungs and livers are all forged of iron and stone!" ”
This young man was the famous anti-Qing general and national hero Shi Kefa.
The above story is contained in the Qing Dynasty literary scholar Fang Bao's "Shu Zuo Zhongyi Gong Anecdotes". During the Apocalypse, Zuo Guangdou served as the imperial history of Zuo Du, and was arrested and imprisoned for the impeachment of Wei Zhongxian by Shangshu, and died tragically in prison at the age of 51. When Nanming Hongguang was rehabilitated, he was known as Zhongyi, so he was called "Zuo Zhongyi Gong".
The history of the Ming Dynasty has always been full of cruelty and bloodshed, and in the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang invented criminal laws such as peeling, sucking intestines, piercing hearts, and picking tendons, in order to eliminate the corrupt official Yang Taiping, and all those who embezzled 60 silver were killed. After Zhu Di launched the Battle of Jingnan and usurped the throne of his nephew Zhu Yunjiao, he killed the loyalists: destroyed the ten clans of Fang Xiaoru, killing a total of 873 people; cutting off Tie Xuan's nose and ears and setting them on fire, and forcing him to eat them. Chu Di went mad and eventually chopped Tie Hyun into meat sauce. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, Yang Lian, one of the "Six Gentlemen of Donglin", had offended Wei Zhongxian for offending Quan, first of all tortured him, and later when he was interrogated, he could no longer sit still, and finally pressed his body with an earthen sac and an iron nail through his ears...
The Ming Dynasty began with blood and tears and ended with blood and tears. The skin bags of ordinary people are either stinking or flowing in front of the hot torture devices, and the last court of the Han people has finally ended in a mixture of resentment and regret. 3 years after Zuo Guangdou's death, the Chongzhen Emperor took the throne as emperor, but the rivers and rivers were falling, the general trend was gone, he got up early and greedily and conscientiously governed the country, but finally embarked on the road of breaking the family and destroying the country. In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Li Zicheng attacked Beijing, and the Chongzhen Emperor martyred himself on an old locust tree on Coal Mountain.
After the fall of Beijing, the six ministers of the Nine Secretaries of Nanjing, led by Ma Shiying, the governor of Fengyang, supported the ascension of Zhu Yousong, the Prince of Fu, to the throne, and rebuilt the Ming Dynasty, known as nanming, and Shi Kefa served as a scholar of the Dongge University of the Southern Ming Dynasty and a soldier Shangshu. The Ming Dynasty did not have a chancellor, but set up a scholar of the Imperial Court to assist the emperor, and the scholar of the Imperial Court university was equivalent to the prime minister. Unfortunately, the imperial court to which Shi Kefa was loyal persisted for less than a year perished.
After Zhu Yousong ascended the throne, he had no intention of recovering the homeland of the Central Plains, the first thing he did was to order the selection of beautiful women, and a couplet was hung on the Nanming Palace: Everything is better than a cup in hand, and life is a few times when the moon is in the head. In fact, although Beijing was lost at that time, there was still half of the Southern Ming Dynasty in the South. As long as the imperial court is cheered up, there is really much to be done. Unfortunately, the Emperor and the Emperor were dim and incompetent, betraying the officials and the party, and the "History of Ming" recorded that the people of Nanjing at that time sang a song:
The staff is as lowly as a dog, and they all walk all over the streets. Xianggong only loves money, but the emperor eats wine.
Selling officials has become the norm in society, and the emperor only cares about drinking and having fun, which shows that the imperial court has become corrupt. In this situation, Shi Kefa took The Soldier Shangshu and Crown Prince Taibao as the overseer of Jiangbei, leading thousands of men to guard Yangzhou, while his opponents were the heroic and warlike Duo Duo of Yu and 100,000 Qing soldiers. Such a disparity is tantamount to hitting a pebble with a pebble.
Shi Kefa went to Nanjing several times and begged the imperial court to send rescue troops, but the emperor did not send a single soldier or a pawn. Shi Mu lived in Nanjing, and he worked day and night, but he didn't even have the opportunity to go home to visit his mother.
Standing on the swallow's head, the muddy river waters took on his moonlit tears:
Come home without facing the mother, just a thousand miles away. The head of the rock spilled tears, dripping and sinking to the bottom of the river.
The sad thing is that there is no place for filial piety, and the pain is that the collapse of the imperial court is difficult to have a future. He had personally seen the mourning of Wei Zhongxian's dictatorship during the Apocalypse years, and he had also experienced the chongzhen emperor's efforts to reorganize the imperial program. Now that the situation is like this, what else can he do but sink with the dynasty?
He returned to Yangzhou lonely, waiting for the results he had long anticipated.
Statue of Skofa
Shi Kefa was powerless to return to heaven, and his fierce loyalty could not withstand the fierceness of the Qing army's tigers and wolves.
One night in May 1645, the city of Yangzhou heard the sound of slamming doors and howling. This was the beginning of the destruction of Yangzhou City, and then, there was the tragic Ten Days of Yangzhou.
From the time the Sui Emperor ordered the excavation of the Grand Canal, for more than a thousand years, Yangzhou gathered the gentle prosperity that made the people of the world envious, and the literati bent their backs. Xu Ning favored it: the world was divided into three bright moons and nights, and the two rogues were Yangzhou. Du Mu praised it: who sang the water tune, the bright moon was full of Yangzhou. Su Shi was happily drunk here: Ask the partners of Jiangnan, who is like me, drunk Yangzhou. Zhou Bangyan regarded this place as a paradise: The song of the dress, the lights of the curtain, the scenery like Yangzhou.
However, once heaven was drunk and beautiful, and now hell is full of bells. The once noisy laughter became the cry of the moment, and the once clear canal water filled yangzhou citizens with blood, severed limbs and wreckage. The Qing army that killed the red-eyed Qing army did not seal the knife for ten days, and 800,000 Yangzhou people were slaughtered. In one hundred and twenty hours, Yangzhou became the most decisive place of the Southern Ming Dynasty. If the flowers are cut off at the most beautiful season, it is like the water flowing through the years without moving the mood of despair.
Smoke and rain in Jiangnan, the sky began to rain blood.
Before the city was destroyed, Shi Kefa once confessed to his deputy general, Liu Dewei: I have the heart of dying and martyrdom, if I do not have the courage to commit suicide then, please kill me. Liu Dewei knelt down and cried bitterly: I will not let the adults be humiliated. Shi Kefa said with great satisfaction: I have no children under my knees, and I would like to accept you as a righteous son of a borer." After saying that, he wrote a letter to his mother and recorded Liu Dewei's name in the family tree. As a result, Andy Lau passed on the name Stilwell.
Before the Qing army attacked the city, the momentum was like a bamboo, other cities were busy opening the door to meet the landing, did not expect to encounter resistance in Yangzhou, which became the fuse for slaughtering the city. After the city was destroyed, the generals gathered around Shi Kefa to break through, and when they broke through to Xiaodongmen, the deputy commander of the soldiers and horses, the Taishou of Yangzhou, and the generals were all killed in battle, he personally saw the Qing army like a forest and killed the people to vent his anger, and he deeply felt that he was in a unified battle, and he could not save the people, nor could he defend the mountains and rivers, even if he fled out, it was just a laughing stock.
He immediately stepped forward and shouted at the Qing army: I am also shi gebu.
At the South Gate, Duo Duo, the Prince of Yu, saw the captured Shi Kefa and urged Shi Kefa to surrender. Shi Kefa replied awe-inspiringly: Our minister, who has no heart to surrender, hates not to die early, follows the previous emperor under the Nine Springs, and is now being held, but he wants to die quickly, and there is nothing else to say.
Perhaps, there really is such a way of death in the world, that is, a throbbing but calm, sharp but no regrets, only in this way can it be counted as a way to live a lifetime.
Skofa died, and eventually the remains were not found, and Stilwell buried him in a cloak. Before shi kefa died, he left a last word: I die, when buried on the plum blossom ridge. More than 130 years after Shi Gong's martyrdom, the Qianlong Emperor ordered the construction of an ancestral hall for him, and personally inscribed "Praise for the Faithful Soul", and the Qianlong Emperor warned the Qing Dynasty ministers that they should learn shi kefa and not learn Hong Chengzu. Unfortunately, until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, there was not a loyal figure like Shi Kefa.
Qianlong Royal Pen
I often wonder who Will Skofa think of before he dies?
It should be the Enshi Zuo Guangdou! It must be The Mentor Zuo Guangdou!
Never forget that night of wind and snow, when he was young, he went to Beijing to take the exam and stayed in an ancient temple. Zuo Guangdou, who was the chief examiner, happened to arrive here on horseback with several guards dressed as civilians. At that time, he was asleep in the hut, and there was a newly completed article on the table, and after Zuo Guangdou picked it up and read it, he took off his mink fur and covered him, covered the door for him, and asked the monks in the temple about him.
When it came time for the exam, the small official called Shi Kefa's name, and Zuo Guangdou looked at him with a surprised look, waiting for the exam paper to be handed in, and approved it as the first place in person. From then on, they established a teacher-student friendship, and the teacher summoned him into the house and said to his wife: My sons are incompetent, and he will be the only one who can inherit my ambitions and careers in the future.
Unfortunately, they lived in turbulent times, loyal to a hopeless court. The teacher gave him a name, gave him a future, and set an example for him, even though the end of this example was a path of mortality.
Skofa's crown tomb
Zuo Guangdou died, but he engraved the loyalty and righteousness into the hearts of the students. In the last year of Chongzhen, Liukou Zhang Xianzhong led his troops to the areas of Puchun, Huanggang, Qianshan, and Tongcheng. Skofa was ordered to defend, sometimes not going to bed for months, and at night he let the soldiers take turns resting, while he himself sat outside the tent, replacing the two with each change. In the cold winter, he stood up and shook his clothes every time, and the frost on his robe fell, and his voice was crisp and transparent. His men advised him to rest, and he said, "I am afraid that I will be ashamed of the court at the top and the teacher at the bottom."
In the end, Shi Kefa died as he wished. Zuo Shi's teacher-student relationship, with the righteousness of death and life running through that period of the end times, with the resolute determination to know that it is impossible to do, has achieved a tragic warmth, which is the warmth transmitted by the mink, and it is also the warmth spilled by the blood. Although many people think that the Ten Days of Yangzhou is shi Kefa's fault, Zuo Guangdou is really stupid to hit the stone with a pebble, but to be able to die for faith is ultimately a fortunate thing in life.
The names of the teachers and students are destined to be associated with the call, resistance and integrity of a generation of cultural elites, and with a tragedy of cold wind and blood washing.
Nowadays, when I go to the Shi Kefa Memorial Hall, I can see the statue of Shi Gong in the hall of the museum, wearing a crane to supplement a pint of imperial clothes, and the image is magnificent and handsome, although the main history records that Shi Kefa's appearance is "despicable", saying that he looks black and ugly, but that is just the appearance he has left in the world, and his historical appearance is so instrumental.
Before the pulse disappeared, he must have smiled and silently told the teacher: I did it, I tried my best, and we will soon see each other.
The mighty spirit, the high mountain scenery, they all became the devotees of moralism. Some people say that this pair of teachers and students actually has nothing, and they are a little bit spineless. But on the other hand, if there is no lack of anything, there is a lack of backbone, then it will not become a pile of walking dead?