China knows everything for 5000 years

Chapter 62

Feng Yunshan later came to the Zijing Mountain area in Guiping County, Guangxi. The terrain here is dangerous and there are many people who have suffered.Feng Yunshan soon became acquainted with the local people, and many people joined the God Worship Church, among them, Yang Xiuqing and Xiao Chaogui became the backbone of the God Worship Church.They helped Feng Yunshan make the power of worshiping God grow stronger.A few years later, Hong Xiuquan also came to Bauhinia Mountain.At this time, there were more than 3000 members of the Church of Worshiping God.When Hong Xiuquan arrived at Zijing Mountain, he immediately won everyone's support and became the leader in people's hearts.From then on, the influence of the religion of worshiping God became greater and greater, and even Wei Changhui and Shi Dakai, who were born landlords, also joined the religion.Hong Xiuquan saw that the team was growing and felt that the time was ripe for an uprising.One day, Hong Xiuquan called a meeting of the key members of the God-worshiping Church.As he was talking, he suddenly passed out.When the people around were wondering what to do, Hong Xiuquan let out an "ah" and came back to life. He sat up again, as if he had just woken up from a dream.In fact, all this is deliberately pretended.He looked at everyone and said solemnly: "The heavenly father (God) called me just now and told me that the time has come to liberate the people. His old man told us to prepare for the uprising immediately." Therefore, the preparations for the uprising were intense and intense. unfolded in secret.

On January 1851, 1, in the square of Jintian Village, Guiping County, Guangxi, groups of rebel soldiers of the Han, Zhuang, and Yao ethnic groups lined up in square formations with red scarves on their heads and swords and spears in their hands.Hong Xiuquan stood majestically under an apricot-yellow banner, with Yang Xiuqing, Xiao Chaogui, Feng Yunshan, Wei Changhui and Shi Dakai standing on either side.All around, countless women and children held colorful flags and were very happy.Hong Xiuquan looked at the neat team, raised his fist, and solemnly announced: "The Church of Worshiping God has officially launched an uprising today! Our goal is to overthrow the corrupt imperial court, kill all harmful monsters, and let all the people in the world live a peaceful life." .Our country is called 'Taiping Heavenly Kingdom'." The soldiers and the surrounding women and children cheered together. "We must kill all the monsters!" The loud slogan echoed in the valley...

The rebel army of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom set out from Jintian, moved to Guangxi, won successive victories, and captured Yong'an City (now Mengshan Mountain, Guangxi) in one fell swoop.Here, Hong Xiuquan formally reorganized the growing team.Hong Xiuquan proclaimed himself King of Heaven, and made Yang Xiuqing the Eastern King, Xiao Chaogui the Western King, Feng Yunshan the Southern King, Wei Changhui the Northern King, and Shi Dakai the Wing King.Among the kings, the Eastern King has the greatest power, second only to the Heavenly King, and is directly in charge of military command.

Emperor Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty was exhausted by the internal and external troubles of the past few years.When the news of the Jintian uprising reached his ears, the fatuous emperor could no longer stand such a blow, vomited blood, and died.After Emperor Xianfeng came to the throne, he immediately mobilized troops from all over the country to besiege the Taiping Army.Under the command of Yang Xiuqing, the Taiping Army went northward after breaking through the siege in Yong'an.Although Feng Yunshan and Xiao Chaogui died in the attack on Quanzhou and Changsha, the Taiping Army grew stronger day by day.After occupying Wuchang, the number of Taiping troops reached more than 20.

Afterwards, the Taiping Army divided into land and water routes and attacked Nanjing directly along the Yangtze River.With overwhelming momentum, the Taiping army frightened the Qing army to retreat steadily, and finally captured Nanjing in one fell swoop.Surrounded by the Taiping Army, Hong Xiuquan was welcomed into the city by the masses.Hong Xiuquan renamed Nanjing Tianjing and made it the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.After the capital was established in Tianjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom posted a recruitment list to recruit civil and military talents, and also promulgated the "Tianchao Tianmu System", which stipulated that "there are fields to be cultivated together, rice to be eaten together, clothes to be worn together, and money to be used together. There is no inequality everywhere. No one is hungry."The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime was formally established.

●Second Opium War
In 1854 AD, Britain asked the Qing court to revise the Treaty of Nanking in an all-round way to further expand its rights and interests in the Opium War. This move was supported by France and the United States.The Qing court rejected the request to amend the treaty.As a result, Britain and France each looked for an excuse to launch a war against China.

In 1856 AD, Britain created the "Yarrow Incident" and sent Elgin and his British warships to break into Humen Haikou brazenly and start a war.At the same time, France also used the excuse of the "Father Ma incident" to send Gros as the plenipotentiary envoy to lead troops to China to cooperate with the British army.The Second Opium War begins.

On December 1857, 12, the British and French allied forces bombarded Guangzhou, landed and attacked the city, and Guangzhou fell.Subsequently, the British and French allied forces went north. In May 28, the coalition forces bombarded the Dagukou Fortress in Tianjin, and the guards fought back, killing more than 1858 enemy soldiers.However, because the officials of the Qing Dynasty fled in front of the battle, the Qing army did not reinforce in time, so the defenders of the forts fought alone, and finally all the forts fell.The Qing court immediately sent a scholar, Gui Liang, and others to Tianjin to negotiate a peace.In June of the following year, the Sino-British "Tianjin Treaty" and the Sino-French "Tianjin Treaty" were signed respectively, and the British and French allied forces withdrew from Tianjin.

In 1859, the United Kingdom sent Prussia to China as a minister and exchanged contracts.Prussia and the French envoy Bourblon led the fleet and Marine Corps to Dagukou.Pruss's unreasonable request that the Qing court dismantle the Baihe defense and that the British army can lead troops into Beijing by ship was rejected by the Qing court.On June 6 of this year, the British fleet raided the Dagu Fort.The defenders rose up to fight back and fought fiercely all day and night, sinking and injuring more than ten British and French warships, killing and injuring more than 25 invading troops.The coalition forces were defeated and escaped from Dagukou in embarrassment.

The British and French allied forces were defeated at Dagukou, which greatly angered the British and French governments.Elgin and Gero became plenipotentiaries again, leading the British and French troops to attack China. In September 1860, British and French warships landed in Beitang, occupied the Dagukou Fort, and took advantage of the victory to occupy Tianjin.The Qing court immediately sent people to Tianjin to beg for peace.The Anglo-French allied forces ignored it and pressed on to Beijing.Emperor Xianfeng ordered his younger brother, Prince Gong Yisu, to stay in Beijing and take charge of the peace process, while he fled from the Old Summer Palace to Rehe in a panic.When the British and French allied forces attacked Beijing, the Russian envoy Ignatiev provided the situation of Beijing's defense to Britain and France. On October 9, the British and French allied forces broke into the Old Summer Palace and burned it down after looting.Soon, the Qing court signed the "Beijing Treaty" with Britain, France, and Russia for land cession and indemnity.So far, the Second Opium War ended.

●England and France burn the Old Summer Palace
In 1709 AD, the construction of the Old Summer Palace began.After more than 150 years, it was basically completed, covering an area of ​​more than 340 hectares, with a construction area of ​​16 square meters. The art of gardening is the best in the world, and it is known as "the garden of ten thousand gardens".The Old Summer Palace is also a treasure house, which contains calligraphy and paintings of famous people, ancient books of the secret government, bells and tripods, gold and silver jewelry and rare cultural relics, which concentrates the essence of ancient Chinese culture.

In 1860 AD, after the British and French allied forces occupied Beijing, they entered the Old Summer Palace and looted it wantonly.After 4 days of looting and destruction by the British and French allied forces, the British envoy Elgin sent the first division of the British army to set fire to the Old Summer Palace in order to cover up his robbery and to publicly insult the Qing emperor. into ruins.

●Westernization Movement is not Westernization
After 1860 AD, during the joint suppression of the Great Peace Movement by Chinese and foreign reactionaries, a group of comprador bureaucratic warlords gradually formed in the Qing court.They believed that the contradictions between the Qing government and foreign invaders could be reconciled, and they could jointly suppress the resistance of the domestic people, and they could also adopt some capitalist production techniques to achieve the purpose of maintaining the crumbling feudal rule.Among these people are Yixin, the Minister of State Affairs of the Prime Minister, as well as Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang, Zhang Zhidong and others who hold real power in the local bureaucracy.And the series of reforms they adopted are known as the "Westernization Movement" in history.The Westernization Movement used to be called "Tongguang New Deal".

The Westernization Movement involved military, political, economic, and diplomatic aspects. However, the military industry established by the Westernization Movement was basically a feudal modern industry, and the civilian industry was basically a capitalist enterprise based on profit and market.The result is that the modern productive forces do not match the decadent feudal management system, and are especially constrained by the feudal system and the oppression of the aggressive forces, which makes the Westernization Movement difficult and has little effect.It can be said that the Westernization Movement is not Westernization!

● Yung Wing promotes students studying in America
Yung Wing, the first Chinese who graduated from a famous American university.When he was still in the fourth year of college, he began to brew a grand plan: to persuade the Qing government to send overseas students to the United States, so that more Chinese teenagers could go to the United States to receive education like himself.In order to implement his "study abroad plan", Yung worked for nearly 10 years before the Qing government agreed to send overseas students.

When recruiting foreign students, the plan stipulates that the age of the students should be 13 to 15 years old. Because they almost have to start from elementary school when they go abroad, the course of study is set as a good year.There are four batches to go abroad, with 30 people in each batch each year.But people regard going to a foreign country as exile, and they have to sign life and death certificates. Many families are not willing to take this risk.Yung Wing tried his best in Shanghai, but finally had to go south to Hong Kong to recruit students. It took a lot of effort to get 30 students, most of whom were from poor families.

In 1872, the first batch of Chinese government-sponsored overseas students took a boat from Shanghai to the United States, which opened a precedent for the modern Chinese student movement.The person in charge of the supervision of studying abroad is Chen Lanbin, a member of the Imperial Academy who does not know a foreign language but has a proper background, and Yung Wing, who is in charge of it, acts as his deputy.After the four batches of overseas students went abroad, among the students, "there are very few northerners, and most of them are Cantonese, and most of the Cantonese are from Xiangshan. The 120 official fee students are eight or nine out of ten from the Central South."This matter has been criticized and blamed a lot before and after, and has since ended hastily. Ten years later, due to the U.S.’s ups and downs, there was a lot of opposition in the country. Only a few students completed the course, and most of them gave up halfway and returned to China early.

But Yung Wing's painstaking efforts were not in vain. These international students studied hard, got good grades, and behaved well, and they were well received by Americans.After returning to their home countries, most international students have achieved success in their studies.Among them were Zhan Tianyou, who became the "father of China's railways", Tang Shaoyi, the first prime minister of the Republic of China, and more became pillars of the military, academic, and business circles.

●Li Hongzhang signed the treaty of selling the country
The French have always coveted Southwest China. They first occupied Vietnam, which has always been a vassal state of China, in an attempt to use Vietnam as a base for invading China.The Vietnamese military and civilians cooperated with the Liu Yongfu Black Banner Army stationed on the Sino-Vietnamese border, and defeated the French invading army twice in 1873 and 1883.

In August 1884, the French fleet suddenly attacked the Fujian Navy in Mawei Port, Fuzhou.Due to the compromise of Beiyang Minister Li Hongzhang, the Fujian Navy suffered heavy losses. 8 warships were sunk, and more than 11 navy officers and soldiers were killed or injured.The Qing court was forced to declare war on France.The war was fought on land and sea.In terms of sea routes, the French fleet successively launched attacks on Taiwan and Zhenhai, Zhejiang, but was stubbornly resisted by the Chinese army and the people, and the commander of the French fleet, Guba, was killed.In terms of land, the French army attacked Lang Son, an important town in northern Vietnam in 700, and went straight to the Sino-Vietnamese border.Pan Dingxin, the governor of Guangxi who was greedy for life and afraid of death, burned down Langshan City and returned to Zhennan Pass (now Guangxi Friendship Pass). He still felt unsafe and ran to Longzhou 1885 miles away.The French army occupied Zhennan Pass with ease, and attempted to invade China through it.Feng Zicai, a nearly 140-year-old veteran, commanded the Anti-French Army, wiped out more than 70 enemies, and reversed the entire battle. This is the victory at Zhennanguan.On the western front, the Black Banner Army also defeated the French army at Linchao and recovered more than ten counties.The great victory of the Sino-Vietnamese military-civilian war against France dealt a heavy blow to the French invading army and forced the French Jufery cabinet to collapse.However, at this moment, after obtaining the consent of Cixi, the traitor Li Hongzhang took advantage of the victory to close and negotiated a peace.Empress Dowager Cixi issued an order to withdraw the Qing army and negotiate peace with the French.

In June 1885, Li Hongzhang signed the Sino-French Treaty of Tianjin with the French, turning Vietnam into a French colony. He also agreed to open ports (wharfs) on the Sino-Vietnamese border in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces for trade. opened.As soon as the news spread, the whole country was extremely dissatisfied with the traitorous behavior of Li Hongzhang and Cixi. Some wrote poems to satirize these traitors, and some assassinated them.

●The First Sino-Japanese War
After the Meiji Restoration Movement in the middle of the 19th century, Japan began to actively seek opportunities for outward expansion.It first annexed China's Taiwan, and then sent troops to China's vassal state North Korea as a springboard for a full-scale invasion of China.

In the spring of 1894, the peasant uprising of the Donghak Party broke out in North Korea, and North Korea asked the Qing government to send troops to help suppress it.The Qing court sent Ye Zhichao, the governor of Zhili, and Nie Shicheng, the commander-in-chief of Taiyuan Town, to lead 2500 Huai troops to the court.Japan also sent troops to North Korea, and Japanese Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu authorized Minister Keisuke Ohtori to provoke a war of aggression.When China and Japan sent troops to North Korea, North Korea and the rebel army of the Donghak Party had signed a truce.North Korea asked China to withdraw its troops on June 6 in order to eliminate Japan's excuse for sending troops.The Qing government demanded that Japan withdraw its troops at the same time, but Japan was determined to expand the incident and continued to send more troops to North Korea, and proposed a so-called joint plan to "reform" North Korea's internal affairs.On the 13th and 19th, Keisuke Ohtori coerced the North Korean government to abolish the Sino-North Korean trade treaty and expel the Chinese troops out of the country. On the 20rd, the Japanese army captured the royal palace of Joseon, detained King Li Xi, and established a puppet government headed by Daewon Lord Li Shiying. On the 23th, Ohtori Keisuke ordered Taiwon-kun to announce the abolition of all commercial agreements between China and North Korea, and authorized the Japanese army to expel the Qing troops stationed in Asan.On the same day, the first guerrilla fleet of the Japanese Combined Fleet suddenly attacked the two cruisers of the Beiyang Navy, Jiyuan and Guangjia, in the waters of Teshima, provoking the Battle of Teshima. On August 25, the Qing court declared war on Japan at the same time.8 was the Jiawu Year of the lunar calendar, so it was called the "Jiawu War" in history.

The Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1895-1 mainly included land battles and naval battles. The land battles were mainly the Battle of Pyongyang, and the naval battles were mainly the Battle of the Yellow Sea.In the Battle of Pyongyang, the Qing army was defeated, and the Japanese army occupied the entire territory of North Korea.After the Battle of the Yellow Sea, the Japanese army won the dominance of the Yellow Sea.Subsequently, the Japanese army captured Dalian and Lushun, and carried out a tragic massacre.In January 2, the Japanese army surrounded and attacked the Beiyang Fleet, which was moored in Weihaiwei under the order of the traitor Li Hongzhang.Under the leadership of Ding Ruchang, the Beiyang Fleet fought back vigorously. On February 12, the Japanese army occupied Liugong Island, and the entire Beiyang Fleet was destroyed.On April 1895, 4 AD, the Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War ended with the "Treaty of Shimonoseki" signed by traitor Li Hongzhang and Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi, which humiliated the country.

After the war between the Qing court and Japan in the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing army was defeated and the Beiyang Fleet of the Qing court was wiped out.Under the attack of the Japanese invading army, the traitor Cixi who was in power of the Qing court was terrified.In order to seek a truce, Cixi hastily appointed the traitor Li Hongzhang as the peace negotiator and plenipotentiary, and went to Japan to seek peace at any cost. In March, China and Japan held negotiations in Shimonoseki, Japan.

On April 1895, 4, Li Hongzhang and Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi signed the traitorous "Treaty of Shimonoseki".Its main contents are as follows: the Qing court recognized North Korea's "independence", which actually recognized Japan's control over North Korea; the Qing court ceded the Liaodong Peninsula, the entire island of Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands to Japan; Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou are treaty ports; Japanese can invest and set up factories in treaty ports.After the signing of the treaty, because Russia, Germany, and France were dissatisfied with Japan's monopoly of the Liaodong Peninsula, they forced it to return it to the Qing court. For this reason, the Qing court paid Japan another 17 million taels of silver.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki was an epoch-making unequal treaty, especially allowing the Japanese to set up factories in China, which set a precedent for imperialism to export capital to China.Since then, the great powers have set off a frenzy to carve up China.It put new shackles on the Chinese people, and Japan gained a huge amount of money through the treaty, developed rapidly, and became a powerful country in Asia.

●Kang Youwei wrote a letter to the bus
Kang Youwei was the leader of the reform movement. He founded the Wanmu Thatched Cottage to propagate bourgeois reformist ideas and advocate the road of improvement to make the country prosperous and strong.During this period, Liang Qichao also voted under his sect.

In 1895, the provincial candidates who gathered in Beijing to take the exam heard that the traitor Li Hongzhang had signed the "Treaty of Shimonoseki" with Japan, which humiliated the country and humiliated the country, and there were many discussions.Most of these juren had a patriotic heart. They were very angry when they learned that the Japanese invaders had gained too much from the Qing court, and hated the Qing government for being so corrupt, weak, and incompetent.

Therefore, Kang Youwei organized a joint letter from Guangdong, and Liang Qichao organized a joint letter from Hunan, declaring that they demanded that the Qing government refuse to agree to the contract and fight the Japanese invaders to the death.Kang's and Liang's actions aroused the response of juren from all provinces, and juren from other provinces also jointly signed a letter.Kang Youwei decided to unite Juren from 18 provinces to write a ten-thousand-word letter.In Wan Yan Shu, Kang Youwei discussed the current national crisis, stated the sharp domestic contradictions, and pointed out that if the terms of the "Treaty of Shimonoseki" were ratified, domestic contradictions would definitely be intensified, and the situation that the country would fail to exist was likely to occur.Kang Youwei analyzed the serious consequences of signing the contract, and then put forward the idea of ​​"rejecting the contract, moving the capital, and reforming the law" in order to achieve the goal of "enriching the country and enriching the people".Kang Youwei's Wanyan Letter attracted the attention of juren from various provinces. These juren, who were worried about the country and the people, signed it one after another. In a short period of time, more than 1300 people signed it.In history, this matter is called "the public car submits the letter", and "the public car" is the synonym for the examinee.But the corrupt Qing court didn't take these people's suggestions seriously at all, and ignored them.

●China's first bank

(End of this chapter)