Author: Our team Qin Shiyong
The Qing Dynasty has a famous stain, that is, the prison of words, and one of the most well-known is the "Zeng Jing Case" during the Yongzheng period.
It is said that in the sixth year of Qing Yongzheng, Zeng Jing, an unscrupulous scholar in Yongxing, Hunan Province, resented the imperial court because of repeated attempts, and privately listed the "ten major crimes" of the Yongzheng Emperor: plotting for his father, forcing his mother, killing his brother, slaughtering his brother, greed for money, killing good, drinking alcohol, fornicating, slandering, and Ren You. Yue Zhongqi, the governor of Sichuan and Shaanxi who was heavily armed by his disciple Zhang Xi, planned Yue Zhongqi to rebel against the Qing Dynasty.
Rebellion is a major matter related to the life of the family, Yue Zhongqi is good, what kind of rebellion? He quickly played Yongzheng, and started from Zhang Xi, followed the vine to touch the melon, and caught Zeng Jing.
In order to survive, Zeng Jing wrote the "Gui ren lu" of repentance and praise according to Yongzheng's request.
Yongzheng ordered officials to compile all the "Shangzhi" on the case, combined with Zeng Jing's confession and the "Guiren Record", to synthesize the book "The Mystery of the Great Righteousness", which was published and distributed in a big way, and distributed to all schools in the country.
Yongzheng's meaning is to let the people of the world know that Zeng Jing's accusations against him are all false, completely eliminate the bad influence, and consolidate his throne.
This public case, in Tang Guoqiang's classic TV series "Yongzheng Dynasty", was played very vividly. In particular, Teacher Tang's Yongzheng, holding the case file, vomited blood and cried bitterly, and the audience in front of the TV set was very distressed. In addition, there is Jiang David's Hong Kong drama "Da Nei Qunying", the personable Jiang star portrayed by Zeng Jing, gorgeous transformation into a martial arts master, with the Yongzheng Emperor and Lv Siniang, around this text prison, a good interpretation of a love-hate vendetta, but also really earned the attention of mainland female fans. It is said that when Jiang David came to the mainland to perform, there were little girls screaming everywhere he went, and the male god Fan was full.
Whether it is a heart-wrenching or a male god, a fact is universally acknowledged: this absurd text prison case, whether at that time or today, is very influential, basically as long as they know Yongzheng's friends, there are few who do not know this matter.
But few people know that this so-called literal prison case was only a thread in the Qing Dynasty, and then it broke out, but it was another major case that was extremely cruel and bizarre hidden under the touching bridges and gossip stories.
Moreover, there was a county scholar in Huilai County, Guangdong Province, named Qu Minghong, who, when he issued the book "The Mystery of the Great Righteousness" in accordance with the requirements of the imperial court, studied it with his heart and read the text in the book that Zhang Xi confessed to admiring, "Mr. Qu Wenshan" in Guangdong, and his heart fluttered.
It turned out that Qu Minghong's father's name was Qu Dajun, weng shan, and he wrote books such as "Weng Shan Wen Wai" and "Weng Shan Shi Wai", and Qu Minghong suspected that Zhang Xi's "Mr. Qu Wen Shan" was a mistake of "Mr. Qu Weng Shan", so he shuddered.
To be honest, Qu Dake was a famous figure in Lingnan in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and together with Chen Gongyin and Liang Peilan, he was called the "Three Greats of Lingnan". Before and after the Qing army entered Guangzhou, Qu Dajun participated in the anti-Qing struggle of his division Chen Bangyan, Chen Zizhuang, and Zhang Jiayu, the "Three Spirits of Guangdong", and he also presented the "Six Great Classics of Zhongxing" to the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty, hoping that Daming could drive out the Tartars and restore the rivers and mountains.
However, the anti-Qing struggle was ultimately unsuccessful, so Qu Dajun gave up his hands on the cliff, cut his hair and became a monk, and the name of the law was "Death Temple", and the place where he lived was titled "Death Temple", and a copper coin of the Eternal Calendar was hung on his chest with yellow silk to show that he did not forget the dead Ming. A few years later, Qu Dajun was still in the dust, and he drifted north alone, first to Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, secretly worshiping the Ming Tomb, and then to Jingshan in Beijing to cry and worship the Chongzhen Emperor. Later, he left Shanhaiguan in the east, surveyed Liaodong and Western Liaoning, paid attention to the dangers and obstacles of mountains and rivers, and conspired with Gu Yanwu, Li Yindu, Zhu Yizun and others to try to restore the Qing Dynasty.
He also went to the city of Ningyuan, where his fellow villager Yuan Chonghuan fought, to write poems and hang himself. After returning to Guannei, he actively contacted the Taiwan anti-Qing hero Zheng Chenggong, and guided Zhang Huangyan to lead his army up the river, Kewu Lake, Hui, Ning, and Xiazhou County for more than thirty years, but soon after the army was defeated. Wu Sangui started an incident in Yunnan, and Qu Dajun gladly rushed to Yunnan to devote himself to the anti-Qing struggle. However, after figuring out that Wu Sangui was only using the name of anti-Qing to dominate and divide the territory, he felt that there was no hope of regaining his sights, so he went back to his hometown of Panyu and immersed himself in writing the "Records of Chengren of the Four Dynasties of the Emperor and Ming Dynasty", which established a biography for the loyal and righteous soldiers of the four dynasties of Chongzhen, Hongguang, Longwu, and Yongli, and finally did not come back and died of illness in the thirty-fifth year of Kangxi.
Thirty-four years had passed from the thirty-fifth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1696) to the eighth year of Yongzheng (1730), but Qu Minghong was terrified in his heart, and hurried to the Guangzhou Provincial Cloth Administration Department to pay the seal, and then automatically and consciously surrendered himself to the Guangzhou government.
Qu Minghong said that his father, Qu Wengshan, was lawless, rebelled against the words of the text, and committed a heinous crime. It was only when his father died, he was still young, ignorant and ignorant, his father's poetry and periodicals were stored at home, he had not been aware of it, he read the "Mystery of the Great Righteousness", went back to self-correction and self-examination, only to find that the text and content of his father's poems were disorderly and abnormal, so he personally submitted his head to prison and asked for canonical punishment.
Inspector Fu Tai of Guangdong hurriedly consulted books such as "Weng Shan Wen Wai" and "Weng Shan Shi Wai", and sure enough, there were "many words of disobedience, hiding depression and unevenness", so he went to the imperial court and said that Qu Dajun "had a heart for dogs", "rites and righteousness were lost", "did not know the deep grace of the heavens and the earth, and vainly wantonly wolf barked wild words, slandered the holy pilgrimage, and stole micro names".
According to Fu Tai's report, the Punishment Department requested that Qu Dajun be killed according to the great law of rebellion, and his relatives would sit as usual.
Fortunately, Yong Zheng was proud of his "masterpiece", "The Mystery of the Great Righteousness", and said that Qu Minghong could surrender himself, and could be reduced to the punishment of his father's corpse, and only Qu Minghong and his second son were exiled to Fujian and burned Qu Dajun's poetry works.
That's the end of it.
Forty-two years later, that is, in the thirty-seventh year of Qianlong (1772), the Qianlong Emperor specially set up the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" to prepare a compilation of the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" with great fanfare, and at the same time "forbidden to be levied", and ordered the local governments to collect suicide notes and testaments scattered among the people, but there were anti-Qing words in the books, so they took this opportunity to confiscate them, delete and modify them if they could, and destroy them if they could not delete them.
After a great action of "forbidding the conquest", the imperial court harvested fruitfully, seizing more than 3,000 kinds of banned books and more than 150,000 books, and burning more than 700,000 books in total, and the forbidden books were almost as many as the books collected in the "Four Libraries".
In the thirty-ninth year of Qianlong, the two counties of Nanhai and Panyu in Guangdong seized the "Wengshan Wenwai Collection" held by Qu Yongzhen and Qu Zhaosi of qu Dajun people, and Li Shiyao, the governor of Liangguang, and Debao, the governor of Guangdong, borrowed the title to play, saying that Qu Dajun had "barked wildly and his sins were evident", and wrote to the imperial court, suggesting that Qu Dajun's descendants and Qu Yongzhen, Qu Zhaosi, and others who had collected reverse books be decided.
In fact, Qu Yongzhen only knew a little about literature and ink, and Qu Zhaosi was illiterate, both of them were the great-nephews of Qu Dajun, who had produced five clothes, and did not know what rebellious words were in Qu Dajun's books.
In order to recruit and lure books, the Qianlong Emperor handled the case in a style of "winning the trust of the people", exonerating Qu Zhaosi and Qu Zhaosi from the crime, and only burning Qu Dajun's poems.
Qu Dajun's descendants, including Qu Lingzhen and Qu Zhaosi, retrieved a life from the ghost gate before closing, thanked him profusely, and thanked him.
But it's not over yet.
One day, on a whim, Qianlong idly flipped through Qu Dajun's poems, and found that there was a sentence that read, "Yuhuatai buried the crown of clothes", and he could not help but be angry from the heart, evil to the side of the bold, and shouted: "Such rebellious relics, can be left behind?" "Immediately ordered Gao Jin, the governor of Liangjiang, to go to Yuhuatai to find the crown tomb and destroy it.
Gao Jin received the order and gave the task to Min Yanyuan, the commander of the Jiangning Domain.
Min Yanyuan searched back and forth in the Yuhuatai, and he couldn't find the crown tomb in Qu Dajun's poem!
Gao Jin was shocked and felt that the incident was not trivial, so he had to go out on his own horse. In the end, Gao Jin also gained nothing. He had no choice but to report to Qianlong according to the facts.
Qianlong was overjoyed, and pulled him down, saying, "If you have nothing to do, you can already hear." ”
The Inspector of Guangdong, Debao, felt that Qianlong was still tired of a crown tomb and did not dare to be sloppy, so he hurried to find Qu Dajun's grave in Panyu County, advocating the restoration of the Yongzheng Emperor's forgiveness of the corpse of the corpse, "still file his corpse, in order to please the people's hearts, in order to apply the law of the country." ”
Qianlong had already downplayed the matter and instructed, "There is no need to do it." ”
In this way, a half-century-long text prison case has come to an end. But from the Case of Qu Dajun, it can be seen that the Chinese nation epitomized a mutation in the Qing Dynasty: the decline of integrity. Qu Dajun was born in the chaotic era of the Ming and Qing dynasties, but he was extremely national. In the decades after his death, he was still able to level the ground with a huge thunderclap, which shocked the Yongzheng and Qianlong dynasties, banned his books, and lifted the prison of words. However, when his son Qu Hongming arrived, he was a person who stole fear of death, so he did not hesitate to expose his deceased father to the Qing court in exchange for his life. From this, we can see the fierceness of the Qing Dynasty's literal prison, which makes people endanger themselves to the point that the morality of fathers and sons and the integrity of the nation can be completely abandoned.
The so-called "prosperous era of Kangqian" is nothing more than an era of terror.