The political situation in the late Qing Dynasty was full of twists and turns. Cixi, Guangxu, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Yuan Shikai... These great figures have played out one tragicomedy after another on the big stage of history. Kang Youwei's assassination of Cixi was one of them.
"After the killing of the garden" has long been widely known. This was not Kang Youwei's only plan to assassinate Cixi. After fleeing overseas, he ordered Liang Tiejun to lurk in the capital for two years and carry out the plan to assassinate Cixi. The famous scholar of literature and history, Cai Deng, took half a year to finally outline this matter in its entirety through Kang Youwei's secret letter and other historical materials.
Ordered to carry out assassinations
In recent years, the research direction of scholar Cai Denge has shifted from the literati of the Republic of China to the figures of the late Qing Dynasty. He told reporters that Kang Youwei and Cixi were the leaders of the royalists and the de facto supreme rulers of the Qing Empire. The two not only had different political views, the former's younger brother Kang Guangren also died at the hands of the latter. Kang Youwei twice plotted to assassinate Cixi, and it is widely known that after the "siege of the garden", this assassination was later written by Zhang Shizhao in 1961 to disclose it, but the language is unknown. He also interpreted the four secret letters between Kang Youwei and Liang Tiejun before he had a clearer understanding of the whole thing. Mr. Cai wrote his interpretation into his latest book, Love and The End of the Gap: Revisiting The Characters of the Late Qing Dynasty.
Liang Tiejun sent a letter to Kang Youwei to believe in the four links and the disciples of Kangmen
2016 Beijing Kuangshi International Auction Co., Ltd. 100 Years of Ink - 20th Century Famous Calligraphy Special Session
Liang Tiejun to Kang Youwei Letter (Partial)
Liang Tiejun, known as Erxu, former pseudonym Wu Daoming, is a native of Shunde, Guangdong. When he was young, he was a fencing ranger, and after reading, he studied Buddhism and Wang Yangming's teachings. For a long time, he operated the salt industry in Wuzhou and devoted himself to the restoration of the Party. After the failure of the Penghu Reform Law, he abandoned his family to follow Kang Youwei and went into exile abroad for many years. In 1906, after being ordered by Kang To return to China to assassinate Empress Dowager Cixi, Liang Tiejun infiltrated Beijing, set up liaison offices, developed bombs, etc., and collected a lot of intelligence for Kang Youwei. He was arrested on August 7, 1908, and martyred. He was called "The Hero of the Near World".
According to Cai Deng, the originals of these secret letters are at the Hong Kong collector Xu Liping. A few years ago, Xu Liping auctioned the letters at a high price at Kuangshi Auction. After he got the copy from Xu Liping, he asked the calligrapher to read it carefully and then interpret it.
Liang Tiejun, a native of Guangdong, and Kang Youwei are listed in the same lingnan Confucian Zhu Jiujiang Gate Wall. Although the two are brothers, their temperaments are not the same. Liang Tiejun is a man of temperament, a lifelong hero, a martial artist, and likes to talk about Wang Tu's hegemony. Kang Youwei later recalled that Liang Tiejun had forced him to "learn from what he had learned" or else break off relations. Kang Youwei did not comply, and the two really broke off friendship.
But five years later, the two met again, and after talking, Liang Tiejun was impressed by Kang Youwei and followed Kang Youwei all his life.
Mr. Cai said that Liang Tiejun ran a salt industry in Wuzhou, Guangxi Province, with rich assets, and in order to support Kang Youwei, he could be said to have ruined his family. From the bus to the school, the establishment of the society, until the coup d'état, Kang Youwei spent a large part of it from Liang Tiejun.
After the change of law, Liang Tiejun's family followed Kang Youwei and fled overseas together. Because he also knows martial arts, he also serves as Kang Youwei's bodyguard.
Kang Guangren
In 1900, Liang Tiejun was ordered to return to Beijing from Singapore to find the remains of Kang Guangren, one of the six gentlemen of Wushu. Kang Guangren is Kang Youwei's younger brother, who was righteous in the Penghu Incident, and his remains have been missing. This time, Liang Tiejun, with the help of the old servants of the Kang family, found Kang Guangren's remains and brought them back to Nanhai County. In 1920, Kang Youwei saw that the terrain of Maoshan Mountain in Jiangsu Was good, so he bought more than 600 acres of land nearby to set up a farm, and buried the bones of his mother and brother Kang Guangren in Qinglong Mountain under the Jijin Peak of Maoshan Mountain.
In 1900, when the Gengzi Incident occurred, Kang Youwei believed that the royalists had an opportunity to take advantage of it, so he vigorously collected donations from home and abroad in the hope of raising a cause. But this year, his Qinwang movement has failed. So the assassination plan was put on the agenda.
From the perspective of the great historical narrative, the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic of China were themselves an era of rampant assassination. Wu Fan, Wang Jingwei, Chen Taoyi... Both were the main actors in assassinations. As the leader of the royalist party, the first person Kang Youwei wanted to assassinate was naturally Cixi, and the rest, such as Rong Lu, Li Hongzhang, and Zhang Zhidong, were among those who plotted assassination. For this, he spent "tens of thousands of yuan", but nothing came of it. Kang Youwei had discussed the assassination with Liang Qichao. Liang Qichao did not quite agree with Kang Youwei's practice of hiring murderers to plot assassinations, and he believed that those who could be bought with money could not be the generations of Jing Ke and Nie Zheng. Jing Ke and Nie Zheng assassinated all big people who lived in the highest level of the temple, relying not only on a good martial art, but also on their own chivalry.
After abandoning his plan to hire assassins, Kang Youwei decided to use people within the royalist party to carry out the plan to assassinate Cixi. First, everyone hates the same enemy, and second, there is no need to worry about leaking secrets. In this way, Liang Tiejun, who was strong in martial arts and had the spirit of heroism, was pushed to the forefront.
Kang Nanhai Xingle Tu Xu Beihong
Secret Agent Summer Palace
In 1904, Liang Tiejun was ordered to take Chen Mo'an, Liang Zigang, Luo Pushi and others to Beijing.
Before and after this, Liang Tiejun discussed the matter with Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei and others in several letters. There was a reference to financial implications. Liang Tiejun believes that the assassination cannot be accomplished overnight. The most basic assassination operations involve landing in Beijing and exploring the terrain before they can be put into action. Even if it can be successful within half a year, the cost of this six months must be 10,000 silver dollars. However, for this ten thousand silver dollars, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and others could not raise it for a while.
Soon after Liang Tiejun and others arrived in Beijing, they set up a number of organs in Beijing, Tianjin and other places, and they also inquired about the news in the palace. In a letter, Liang Tiejun informed Kang Youwei that he planned to mix people into Cixi's luxury yacht "Little Fire Wheel", so that the assassination was expected.
Liang Tiejun will not only make a one-handed plan. He also went to Japan to learn how to make bombs in preparation for assassination. According to Cai Deng, judging from Liang Tiejun's correspondence, Luo Pushi was sent to Japan, and in addition to making explosives, he also learned hypnosis (which can be used for revolutionary activities such as assassination). However, soon after returning from school, he was arrested and killed due to a power leak.
Liang Tiejun was not idle in Beijing. One was to continue to infiltrate Cixi's "little fire wheel"; the other was to hide the eyes and ears of the people, and at the same time to raise funds, the Toyo Car Company and a photo studio called "Jichang" were opened.
The former had little effect, but the latter opened up a new world for him. In that era, photography was very avant-garde. In the palace, not only Did Cixi like to take pictures, but the eunuchs in the palace also liked to take pictures. They want to be able to hang pictures of themselves in the room. It was through photography and other means that Liang Tiejun befriended many eunuchs, such as Yao Huanqing, Wang Hanzhang, Feng Zhongping, Jianru, Jin Weijiu and others. News from the palace poured into the photo studio.
In the correspondence of Liang Tiejun and others, Cai Deng found that the information leaked by the eunuchs was multifaceted, and on the whole, the royalists were well aware of the living and health of Cixi and Guangxu. For example, on May 24, 1906, Liang Tiejun wrote in a letter to Kang Youwei: The emperor's pulse is breathing, the left inch is closed to the string, the right inch is sinking and slippery, and the liver yin is unreal...
In this letter, there is even a prescription prescribed to Guangxu by the imperial doctor. At the same time, the letter also mentions that Cixi "also fell ill on the 18th and 9th of May, and took wood incense and sand kernels... and other drugs, which have recently been completely healed" and other information.
According to Gao Boyu, the ruler of Hong Kong, Liang Tiejun and a eunuch in charge of the emperor's clothes in the palace almost married Jinlan, and the general manager also took Liang Tiejun to the Summer Palace to circle around and take pictures everywhere.
It can be seen that the penetration ability of Liang Tiejun and others is strong. In time, if things continue as they are, it is not impossible to assassinate Cixi.
However, on June 19 of that year, Liang Tiejun was arrested.
Arrested for failure
According to Cai Deng, there are several theories about Liang Tiejun's arrest.
One is that Liang Tiejun met a fellow villager Zhu Qi on the street. This person is a detective under the seat of Yang Yide, the director of tianjin visiting bureau. He was surprised to find that Liang Tiejun had changed his name to Wu Daoming. After several times of spying, Liang Tiejun's codebook and other secret documents were found, so that the matter was exposed and Liang Tiejun was arrested. But the news Liang Qichao got from Xiong Xiling was a shop guy who reported it, which led to Liang Tiejun's arrest.
Zhang Shizhao visited Zhu Qizhao, then a minister in the Police Department of the Outer City of Beijing. According to him, Liang Tiejun had a close relationship with the eunuchs in the palace, which attracted the attention of the detective team of the Admiral Yamen, and later found evidence in the photo studio. As a result, Liang Tiejun was arrested.
The baohuanghui forged a photo of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and the Guangxu Emperor
After Liang Tiejun was arrested, he was sent to Tianjin where yuan shikai personally interrogated him. Yuan Shikai, fearing that Liang Tiejun would reveal his secret dealings with the reformists, soon put him to death.
Cai Deng said that after Liang Tiejun learned of the news that he was going to be executed, he was silent for a long time and asked the other party to buy poison. As a result, the first time he ate the poison, the reaction was too big and he vomited out, he asked the other party to increase the amount and buy it again, and the second time he drank it, the seven tricks bled to death. The Law Enforcement Department asked someone to bury him in a mass grave outside the South Wai Gate of the Horse Factory.
The day is July 13. On the same day, the Qing court issued a preparatory constitutional edict.
The Qing court's execution of Liang Tiejun was carried out in secret, and there was not much publicity. He also adopted an attitude of indifference toward Kang Youwei. Kang Youwei, on the other hand, abandoned the assassination plan because the Qing court was preparing for the constitution and wanted to take the road of organizing a political party. For Liang Tiejun's sacrifice, while feeling "desperate", he was also glad that "there is no obstacle to the future of our party" and "it is fortunate not to involve the whole region in this way". A year later, Liang Tiejun's son went to England and wanted to discuss Liang Tiejun's aftermath with Kang Youwei, but Kang Youwei did not see him, and Zhang Shizhao sighed: The friendship between life and death is not as good as the city road.
Kang Youwei "Words Peek at the Three Poles, Lakes and Mountains Embrace Hundred Cities"
174×40cm Former Residence of Qiu Jin, Zhuzhou, Hunan
Revisiting Liang Tiejun's assassination of Cixi, Cai Deng had a lot of feelings. He believes that Kang Youwei ordered Liang Tiejun to assassinate Cixi, although it was for the sake of revolution, but there was actually no hidden feeling inside. He analyzed that since the failure of the Wushu Reform Law, Kang Youwei could not save the defeat, and the assassination of Cixi had no substantive significance. However, Kang Youwei has been in exile abroad for many years and has raised a lot of funds, and if there is no action, it is difficult to account to the people who donated money. This was another reason why he ordered Liang Tiejun to assassinate Cixi. Zhang Shizhao also analyzed this in his early years, and he believed that Liang Tiejun's assassination of Cixi was firstly for the royalists to vent their anger, and second, to "set up an expenditure project for overseas Chinese donations, and to create a source of profit for the people." Mr. Cai Deng deeply agreed with Zhang Shizhao's statement.
Text | Zang Lei
Source | Yangtze Evening News
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