In the third year of Tongzhi (1864), on June 25th, just ten days after ji zi Camp invaded Tianjing, the capital of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Zeng Guofan, commander-in-chief of Xiang Army in Anqing, arrived at Shimonoseki Pier in Jiangning by boat.
Standing on the ruins of Tianjin, looking at this devastated and sorrowful city, the 54-year-old commander-in-chief Xiang could not restrain his inner joy. Since joining the army, Mochu has been travel-stained for more than ten years, and now he has finally achieved something.
Soon, Foucault Tianjing's meritorious memorial was put on the imperial case of the Forbidden City, but some of its contents made the Empress Dowager of the two palaces disappointed and even doubted the authenticity of the memorial.
Yes, according to Zeng Guofan's report, Hong Xiuquan, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for eleven years, tried his best to build a "Little Paradise on earth", but it was an empty city with nothing.
Then, did Tianjing City, the eve of the 1864 attack, contain huge wealth as rumored, and how many benefits did the Tseng brothers get after this final decisive battle?
With these questions, let's walk into today's article together.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, which had been contending with the Qing Dynasty for more than ten years, failed. Xiang Jun's achievements are comparable to the suppression of the "San Francisco Rebellion" in the early Qing Dynasty, which brought great prestige and glory to Zeng Guofan and Ceng Guoquan.
However, due to the unknown whereabouts and whereabouts of the huge "thief dirty" in the "bandit nest", the Zeng brothers were caught in a huge whirlpool of public opinion for a long time after the war.
In particular, Ceng Guoquan, commander-in-chief of auspicious words camp, directly commanded and participated in the whole process of Tianjing Campaign. After the war, it was once rumored that he "received tens of millions of funds".
Although rumors are not based on real evidence, they are by no means groundless. The reasons for this criticism are mainly based on the following three reasons:
The first one is illogical.
According to historical records and practical experience, an ideal country, especially a country's capital, will keep a certain amount of gold, silver and property when it is breached.
1 127 During the Jingkang Revolution, the capital of the Song Dynasty in Tokyo was solved, excluding the treasures of the Northern Song Dynasty and the Forbidden Palace looted by the Jin people. Enemy at the Gates and Qin paid war reparations as high as gold1378,000 taels, silver12,402,000 taels and silk10,040,000 horses.
/kloc-in 0/644, Li Zicheng invaded the capital of Ming dynasty, and King Chuang also collected more than 77 million yuan of military expenses in Beijing.
Although the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can't be compared with the Song and Ming Dynasties, as a separatist regime that ruled the richest area in China for eleven years, it is really hard to imagine if Zeng Guofan said that the capital had no wealth.
Secondly, Ceng Guoquan adopted the iron drum tactics of encircling Tianjin for a long time. Almost a year before the city was broken, that is, in the autumn of 1863, Tianjing had completely cut off contact with the outside world, and there was basically no possibility of transferring a large amount of property to the outside world.
Only the Xiang army participated in the whole campaign. After the war, the entire capital of Tianjing was almost destroyed, including Tianwangfu, Zhongyi Wang Fu and other places that might contain huge wealth, and they were all set on fire.
How can this practice of keeping secrets from others in advance and not telling secrets afterwards satisfy the master, make the courtiers not suspicious, and block the world?
Finally, Ceng Guoquan can't be as mean as his brother Zeng Guofan.
The so-called wealth is not exposed, but Ceng Guoquan not only spent a lot of money after the war, but also sent people to Beijing to buy stationery, which made the capital boil, and even built many buildings in his hometown in Hunan, as if he were afraid that others would not know about it.
Even his niece once admitted that Uncle Jiu "had to ask for leave to go home once every gram of a famous city and a Capgemini performance, which was quite embarrassing for him".
And this style of doing things, accusing him of being greedy for ink, also gives people a reasonable imagination.
Of course, the speculation about corruption in Ceng Guoquan should first be based on a basic premise, that is, Tianjin does have amazing wealth.
As mentioned above, Tianjing has been surrounded for a long time, and it is difficult for the outside world to know how much gold and silver are in it. The rumors about Jinling City that "gold and silver are like the sea and department stores are full" are mostly inferred from past experience.
But there is no doubt that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom adopted a "sacred treasury" system in which property was turned over to the public and daily necessities were evenly distributed from 65438 to 0850.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom officials also made clear regulations on the management of the sacred library. In the first year of Xianfeng, Hong Xiuquan made a special edict: All the gold, silver and silk treasures obtained by killing demons and seizing the city should not be kept in private, and they should all be handed over to the Hajj treasury, and offenders will be convicted.
If this system is strictly implemented, then the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's gains from more than ten years of war and the confiscated property paid by hundreds of millions of its subjects are indeed an immeasurable wealth.
However, the "sacred library" system actually only existed for six years. 1856 After the Tianjing incident broke out, it was seriously damaged and existed in name only.
After the civil strife, Hong Xiuquan monopolized the power. With the departure of Shi Dakai, his clan took full control of the state affairs.
Unregulated power is bound to breed corruption. Hong Xiuquan did not "take Qian Weimin from the holy library", but took it out at will to build pavilions and pavilions to satisfy his extravagance.
The nature of the "holy treasury" changed from "public money" to "private possession". The heavenly king Hong Xiuquan took the lead in destroying this system, and the generals in the Taiping Army followed suit.
One is to intercept all the hard currency such as gold and silver treasures obtained in the war, and pay ordinary items such as cattle and sheep in Gu Mi into the holy treasury.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has been in war for years, and the holy library has to cope with the huge consumption of war and maintain the daily expenses of Tianjing. The income of real money is decreasing, while the expenditure is increasing. Making ends meet for a long time will inevitably lead to the gradual depletion of the state treasury.
When Li Zicheng went to Beijing, even in the Ming Dynasty, which had a huge family business in 276, the national treasury was only 372,000 yuan to cope with the peasant uprising and the invasion of the northern Jurchen. By analogy, how can the sacred library of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom be filled?
At the most difficult time when Tianjing was besieged, Li Xiucheng, a loyal gentleman, earnestly advised him to "cooperate with civil and military officials", "never leave any money" and "buy rice".
It also shows that it was common for Taiping generals to hide money at that time, and the holy treasury was empty, and even the basic grain reserve could not be guaranteed.
1In September of 863, Tianjing was besieged for a long time, and the situation became increasingly difficult. At the same time, Suzhou, the stronghold of Li Xiucheng, was besieged by the Huai army. Zhongjun begged him to leave Beijing for help, but Hong Xiuquan asked him to "help 100,000 soldiers" on the grounds that "the state treasury has no money".
Imagine that if the "holy treasury" was not stretched and unsustainable, Hong Xiuquan would never let the commander-in-chief of the Tianjing Defence War leave at the most critical moment of the empire's life and death because of only100,000 silver.
Therefore, it is true that there was "gold and silver like the sea" in the holy treasury, but when the city was broken, "no goods and no money" seemed to be the truth.
Of course, Zeng Guofan didn't tell the truth completely in his memorial, and the sacred library was exhausted, which only reflected the financial situation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom from the national level.
In fact, throughout the capital, there are many palaces and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. How much wealth is implied in this, and how much windfall the Xiang army earned from it, Mr. Zeng knows better than anyone else, but he deliberately kept silent in the throne.
According to Ceng Guoquan's aide, Zhao Liewen, later recorded in the Diary of a Quiet Life, "On the day when the city was broken, the whole army looted and no one took care of the overall situation".
Under the psychological hint of Tianjing that "gold and silver are like the sea, department stores are full", greed makes Xiang army go crazy collectively. "When you see people, you kill them, and when you see houses, you burn them. Your children are rich and expensive, and you know that you are in the Xiang army."
The ground was looted, and they began to dig three feet, dig graves, break coffins and destroy bodies. In order to search as clean as possible, they can say that they are doing everything they can.
Tianjing City has gradually become a scorched-earth ruin, while the Shuiximen near the river is very lively. A large number of robbed timber and utensils were hoisted by Chengtou day and night, and then transported back to Hunan by ships moored on the shore.
All the above information comes from the diary of Can Live a Quiet Life. As Ceng Guoquan's political adviser, Zhao Liewen experienced the whole process of Tianjing's fall, and its authenticity is beyond doubt.
Xiang's entry into the city is not a normal regime change and the handover of the city defense, but a looting of Nanjing, a thousand-year-old ancient capital, from top to bottom and from inside to outside.
Therefore, whether the national treasury of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is empty or not, the Xiang army must have made a fortune by looting Tianjing.
Of course, the Zeng Guofan brothers not only knew about Xiang's crazy behavior, but also acquiesced. Local armed items are not supported by the central government, and military supplies are almost entirely raised by themselves. Therefore, after the city was broken, it was already an unwritten rule within it.
At this point, two questions can be roughly answered. First, before the capital of Tianjing was breached, the central financial system of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had collapsed. At least there are no rumors and imaginary huge property in the sacred library.
Second, the treasures from the palaces and the folk wealth of the people's homes are amazing, and they are all obtained by the Xiang army.
Then, the final key question is, did Zeng Guofan, commander-in-chief of Xiang Army and Ceng Guoquan, commander-in-chief of former enemy, gain amazing wealth in Tianjing Campaign?
Zeng Guofan's suspicion was well removed, because since the battle of Tianjing, this person has been sitting in Anqing base camp for remote command until the tenth day after Tianjing was broken. At this time, Jinling City has been looted, and Commander Xiang has a sufficient "alibi".
Moreover, he has always taken the standards of saints as his words and deeds, self-denial, honesty and integrity, and is unlikely to take the opportunity to take bribes and bend the law during the war.
And Ceng Guoquan, as the main force of the siege of Tianjing and the head coach of the auspicious word camp, is always directing operations at the front line, which seems hard to escape.
But when to break the city is obviously uncertain for both sides. On July 1864 and 19, Ceng Guoquan was in Yuhuatai camp on the outskirts of Tianjing.
There is a special explanation about Ceng Guoquan's appearance in Diary of Calm Down. When the city was broken, Zhao Liewen witnessed the Xiang army burning, killing and looting, and angrily went to Yuhuatai Camp, asking Ceng Guoquan, the coach of auspicious words camp, to take charge of the overall situation.
However, "Dassault for three days" is the hidden rule after the Xiang army broke the city. Secondly, Ceng Guoquan made every effort in this decisive battle. After hearing that Tianjing was suddenly solved, he was tired, didn't pay attention to Zhao Liewen, and fell asleep.
Moreover, in his first letter to the imperial court, Ceng Guoquan roughly explained the situation of skyshatter Beijing, and it was precisely because of "the tide was gone and he decided to defect to the old camp" that he was reprimanded by the Qing court.
It was not until three days later that the manager of the auspicious word camp came to town. At this point, the climax of looting Tianjing has passed, and even Tianwangfu was set on fire by Ceng Guoquan expert Xiao Fusi after the looting.
Therefore, when Ceng Guoquan breached Tianjing for the first time, he was definitely not directly involved in the robbery. As for whether he instigated his subordinates to participate, there is no clear historical record and it is impossible to speculate.
However, The Quiet Diary has repeatedly emphasized that "Yuan Shuai (Ceng Guoquan Fu Yuan) has nothing to do, but no one can live up to Yuan Shuai's ears" and "Yuan Shuai is tired of people doing nothing! In fact, children have nothing to do with jade. "
As a member of Xiang Army, Zhao Liewen can truthfully record the criminal acts of looting, killing and arson after Xiang Army entered the city. This straightforward writer's shide is still trustworthy.
But if Ceng Guoquan is innocent, where did the rumor of "tens of millions of funds" come from and where did the funds for its post-war construction come from?
Ceng Guoquan's Notes on Historical Materials of the Late Qing Dynasty claimed that he embezzled huge property of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the most representative of which was Li Boyuan's Notes on Nanting.
Ceng Guoquan's greed for ink is well documented in this book, which describes in detail that Commander-in-Chief Xiang got four big dome lamps in the Yuan Dynasty, a finger-sized gourmet East Pearl, and the "Emerald Watermelon" in the old collection of Yuanmingyuan, which is a rare treasure, and further infers that "Zhong Xiang (posthumous title) got tens of millions of yuan here".
As soon as this article came out, followers of later generations followed suit. Ceng Guoquan acted in a high-profile manner and made no secret of it. His name of "gourmet" spread like wildfire.
In fact, Notes on Nanting can only be regarded as a reading method of unofficial history's romance, and the authenticity of its historical materials has been criticized by later scholars. Even the first sentence at the beginning, "Jinling is broken, Ceng Guoquan enters the Heavenly Palace", is quite different from the facts.
Regarding the concept of "ten million funds" in Ceng Guoquan, here are a few sets of data for simple comparison:
In the 19th year of Jiaqing, the bank kept 654.38+024,000 taels of silver; After 30 years of Daoguang, the inventory is more than 8 million yuan; In the first year of Xianfeng, the state treasury still had more than 700 million taels of silver. However, due to the peasant uprising led by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, by the third year of Xianfeng, Qing's financial resources were only 1.69 million.
It is really hard to imagine that Ceng Guoquan can gain ten times or even dozens of times more wealth than the national treasury through a predatory war, which is obviously unreasonable.
So where did Ceng Guoquan get the money to buy land and luxury houses in his hometown?
Let's look at Ceng Guoquan's actual assets. Xing Wen, his eldest grandson's daughter-in-law, once revealed that "behind Zhong Xiang, there are only 6,000 mu of land, two Changsha houses and one Xiangxiang house.
These properties are converted into cash, which is about two million yuan. Compared with ordinary kings, they are of course extremely rich, but they are far from being as rich as their enemies. Ceng Guoquan, in particular, has been a provincial government official for more than ten years, so it is not difficult to save this wealth.
However, the fields are only a hundred hectares and there are only three houses. It is really difficult to get in touch with the "gourmets" who are rumored to be greedy for the assets of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
Ceng Guoquan did build a magnificent "Dafudi" in his hometown in Hunan, but in fact, the house was not built after Tianjing was laid, nor was it a one-time investment. The initial construction started at 1859, and then it was gradually expanded and rebuilt, and it took eight years to complete.
After the war, the Tseng brothers made great achievements, and Ceng Guoquan was a spendthrift and extravagant man, so it was natural for him to return to his hometown in clothes, but such a move inevitably caused speculation and criticism from others.
In fact, Ceng Guoquan joined the army for many years, and later he was included in his government. Someone has done statistics. He has been in charge for six years, and his salary 1.2 million yuan. Later, he served as governor and governor, with a salary of more than two million yuan. Even if it is not a gray income, his formal salary is enough to support the cost of buying land and building houses.
At this point, we should be able to draw the conclusion that Ceng Guoquan did not participate in the looting after the war, nor did it gain huge property rumored by the outside world from the war.
However, as for whether his generals have served in the army, and whether they have given back to this coach after a lot of money, I think there should be, but these windfalls can't reach tens of millions anyway.