How many friends will associate Nanjing, which has become a purgatory on earth, with Zeng Guofan, a famous minister in the late Qing Dynasty?
On June 1860, a letter was published in North China Pioneer Weekly (also known as Good News of North China and Pioneer News). The letter wrote:
"On the second day of the occupation of Taicang, around eleven o'clock in the morning, a large number of prisoners were escorted to the Qing camp near Weikangxin. This group of Taiping soldiers, men, women and children, from newborn babies to elderly people in their 80s, from pregnant women to girls aged 10 to 8. The Qing army handed these women and girls over to a group of hooligans for rape, and then dragged them back to be executed.
Some girls, the executioner turned them over, tore off their clothes and cut them straight to the chest with a knife.
These executioners can perform laparotomy without hurting the five internal organs, reach into the chest and take out a steaming heart. The victims stared at them and watched them do such inhuman things. There are many babies who are nursing, and they are also taken away from their mothers by caesarean section.
Many prisoners of Taiping Army were not only disembowelled, but also tortured in the middle of the year. Their clothes were stripped, and everyone was tied to a stake and subjected to the most meticulous and cruel torture. All parts of their bodies were stabbed into the arrow family, bleeding profusely. This kind of torture could not satisfy the evil thoughts of those prisoners, so another method was adopted. The executioners cut pieces of meat, sometimes stuffed them into their mouths, and sometimes threw them at the noisy audience. It's unbearable to watch these poor people roll painfully for hours.
At about sunset, they were taken to the execution ground by an animal executioner of the Qing army. This guy, with a knife in his hand, is eager to dye his hands with blood, just like the incarnation of the devil. He seized these unfortunate victims, dragged them majestically to the front, laughed at and insulted them, then chopped and sawed them with a knife, and finally cut off a large part of their heads, finally ending their suffering. "
North China Herald Weekly is an English newspaper, founded by a British businessman and headquartered in the British Concession in Shanghai. Therefore, this newspaper dares to publish such a letter directly, telling the world what happened recently on the land border that was originally occupied by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and broken by the Qing army. Zeng Guofan created these human purgatory.
In the first year of Xianfeng (1850), Hong Xiuquan was in jintian uprising, Guangxi, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement broke out. In the following years, the Taiping Army was in full swing and even threatened North China all the way. The Qing army had to invest a lot of troops to wipe out the thieves.
In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), after Tian Pingjun acquired Nanjing (called Tianjing in Taiping Heavenly Kingdom), the Qing army set up base camps in Jiangnan and Jiangbei, and began an eight-year bitter battle against Nanjing.
In the eighth year of Xianfeng (1856), the base camp of the Qing army in Jiangbei was breached by the Taiping Army. Two years later, the stronghold of Jiangnan was also destroyed by Taiping Army. Seeing that the Qing army was about to be helpless to the Taiping Army, Zeng Guofan, together with Hu Linyi, the governor of Hubei Province, led more than 50,000 Xiang troops to attack Anqing (now Anqing City, Anhui Province), the important place where the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom guarded Nanjing.
Zeng Guofan ordered his third brother Ceng Guoquan and prefect Yang Zaifu to lead more than 10,000 people to attack the city, and ordered deputy prefect Duo Long and provincial judge Li Xuyi to lead more than 20,000 people to support him. As the Qing army approached, a large number of Taiping troops also marched westward from Nanjing to Anqing to confront the Qing army.
The two armies have been deadlocked since the tenth summer of Xianfeng (1858). It was not until the following autumn that the Qing army used a large number of firearms to tear down the Anqing city wall, and the situation showed a one-sided trend. In this more than ten months, Zeng Guofan ordered the Qing army to try its best to trap the Taiping Army in the city, with the intention of weakening the fighting capacity of the Taiping Army. And after the city was broken, he ordered Ceng Guoquan and others to "kill more in the city, don't be hypocritical and miss the big event".
As a famous star, Ceng Guoquan felt that his brother's behavior was really extreme at this time. However, Zeng Guofan advised: "Since you are leading troops, you are determined to kill thieves. Why do you regret killing more people? " Since it is to destroy it, there is no reason to kill a few more to regret it. Generally speaking, Ceng Guoquan would never have thought that this sea of blood in Anqing was just some waves caused by the death of Taiping Army.
After Anqing was captured by the Qing army, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom defense line west of Nanjing gradually collapsed. In the first year of Tongzhi (1862), Zeng Guofan ordered Ceng Guoquan to lead an army against Nanking. At this time, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had declined, and the manpower and material resources were not comparable to those of the Qing court. Therefore, during the war between the two armies, Li Xiucheng, a loyal monarch of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, put forward the suggestion of "keeping the city from going". However, Hong Xiuquan thought that Nanjing was the foundation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and could never be ceded, so he flatly rejected Li Xiucheng's proposal.
However, in February of the third year of Tongzhi (1864), the Qing army attacked Tianbao City, the fortress of Taiping Army in Zhongshan (now Xuanwu District of Nanjing), and the whole of Nanjing was surrounded by the Qing army. Hong Xiuquan wants to retreat to no way back.
In July, the Qing army captured the bunker city near the Dragon Neck on the high-lying Fu Gui, and shelled Nanjing city day and night from here. Soon after, the Qing army attacked Nanjing by capturing Anqing. They dug a tunnel at the foot of Zhongshan and put explosives in it. /kloc-in July of 0/9, a wall more than 20 feet east of Nanjing Taiping Gate collapsed with a loud noise, and the Qing army swarmed in.
After the Qing army entered the city, most Taiping troops either died or set themselves on fire, and some fled through tunnels or disguises. However, some Taiping military foreign guns competed with the Qing army at the commanding heights, shouting "Leave half a piece of rotten cloth in the city and have fun with the demon!" In the face of the unrepentant and unscrupulous Taiping rebels, Zeng Guofan also relentlessly condoned the greedy Xiang army's wanton slaughter.
At that time, "nine out of ten people who died along the street were old people, and those whose children were under two or three years old thought they were playing and crawling on the road." There are no women under the age of 40, and their elders are all injured. They are still dozens of knives and dozens of knives, and the cry reaches four miles away. This kind of chaos is outrageous. "Finally, Ceng Guoquan, who couldn't stand the death of Nanking, ordered the Xiang army to be strictly disciplined, and they were not allowed to run amok again.