From the Taiping Rebellion in 185 1 year to the capture of Jiangning (Nanjing) in 1853 and its capital in Tianjing, the Taiping Army, which fought in the south and fought in the north, began to accumulate wealth continuously from 13 year, and set up a vault called the Heavenly Kingdom Holy Library in Tianjing City to store all kinds of gold and silver treasures.
At that time, there was a rumor that "wealth has been scattered at home and abroad for many years, gold and silver are like the sea, and department stores are full". In this regard, Zeng Guofan, as the commander-in-chief of the Xiang army, also instructed Ceng Guoquan, the ninth brother in charge of the siege, to say, "On the day when the city was broken, the thieves' storehouse was sealed up, and most of the property obtained went to the Housing Department, and the rest was reserved for refugees. "
At that time, Xiang was in the outer city of Tianjing for three years. Due to the financial distress of the Qing court, Xiang soldiers have been in arrears for more than a month. Therefore, the soldiers have long been dazzled and thought of rushing into Tianjing City to make a fortune. Although they were wantonly slaughtered and plundered, to their surprise, they almost scraped the ground three feet, but they just didn't find the legendary sacred vault.
In this regard, Zeng Guofan regretted to report to the Qing court that:
"Restoring the nest without any wealth or goods is something I have never heard of."
Although Zeng Guofan and Ceng Guoquan reported it, Empress Dowager Cixi, who could listen to politics, didn't believe it at all.
In the view of the high-level officials of the Qing court headed by Cixi, the sacred library of heaven must have been seized by the Zeng brothers and the Xiang army, but now the Xiang army with more than 300,000 troops is so powerful that it can't help at the moment.
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In fact, after the capital of Tianjing was breached in 1864, it was not only the top of the Qing court, but also the whole country at that time. Public opinion generally believes that the Xiang army plundered the sacred library of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
1850, Hong Xiuquan led a crowd in jintian uprising, Guangxi. At that time, Hong Xiuquan asked all members of the Taiping Army to be "rich and selfless" and all property was "made public". Under the call of fighting local tyrants and balancing the rich and the poor, the Taiping Army team expanded rapidly. "Because of this system of equal production, the number of people has increased, and everyone is ready to abandon their families at any time."
185 1 year, after the Taiping Army captured Yongan, Hong Xiuquan's imperial edict said:
"All the troops and all the soldiers in the camps should be for the public, not for the private, and there will always be a grass (heart) close to the Father and me. Since then, it has ordered all soldiers and generals not to keep treasures, silk, treasures and so on. They got it from killing demons and seizing cities, but they should all be handed over to the pilgrimage library, and those who don't obey them will discuss crimes. "
Since then, the sacred paradise library has been formally established. At that time, the Taiping Army stipulated that private possession of more than five taels of silver would be punished and even sentenced to death. "All the soldiers, from now on are not allowed to possession of treasures, pilgrimage library. Hide the private belt again, and once it is found out, chop it. "
1853 After the Taiping Army made Tianjing (Nanjing) its capital, the Shengku system was implemented to the extreme. At that time, the Taiping Army not only confiscated the private property of residents and put it in the holy library, but also abolished the family system. All men and women in the army are organized into camps, gymnasiums and offices according to their gender, and provided for consumption.
Through this special and cruel search, the sacred paradise library has grown rapidly. According to a report by Zhang, a scholar who secretly sneaked into the Taiping Army for six years, the address of Tiansheng Library is located in Denglong Lane, Shuiximen, Tianjing City. Zhang said in a letter to the commander-in-chief of the Jiangnan battalion of the Qing army that when Tiansheng Library was first established, there was as much silver182,000, which could subsidize the huge financial deficit of the Qing court at that time.
However, since then, with the killing of Zhang Yu by Taiping Army in 1854, the news about the Temple of Heaven has been interrupted, but the Qing army has been obsessed with it.
1864 After Tianjin City was breached, the Xiang army was ordered to attack the city and search street by street. The soldiers mainly searched the Tianwangfu, where Hong Xiuquan lived before his death, and hundreds of houses of Wang Fu and other officials all over the city, but failed to find the sacred vault and the legendary huge treasure. As a result, the crazy Xiang army tore down houses and dug ponds everywhere in Tianjing City, and did not hesitate to dig three feet and found no treasure.
In order to know the inside story, Xiang army tortured Li Xiucheng after capturing Li Xiucheng, the main commander of Taiping Army, and said, "How many places can the gold and silver in the cellar in the city be divided?"
But Li Xiucheng's answer is always "no silver in the treasury" and "no gold and silver at home".
Later, Ceng Guoquan personally asked Dong Jinquan, the dream king in charge of the internal affairs of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but found nothing. In desperation, Ceng Guoquan had to report to the Qing court that except for the discovery of the "fake decree" and the "golden seal" of both sides, the gold hoarded in the sacred library of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was really nothing. Maybe this is just a folk rumor.
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Ceng Guoquan reported this, but the Qing court didn't believe it, and the people naturally refused to believe it.
After the fall of Tianjing, the then Shanghai New Newspaper reported that Zeng Guofan's wife was escorted by more than 200 ships when she returned to her hometown in Hunan from Nanjing. Therefore, it is doubtful that the sacred vault of heaven was probably used by Xiang generals such as Zeng Guofan and his brothers.
In this regard, Li Boyuan, a novelist at the end of the Qing Dynasty who once wrote official notes, once wrote in the Notes of the South Pavilion: "(Ceng Guoquan) attacked Jinling, searched for the enemy, and entered the Heavenly Palace ... Wen Zhongxiang (Ceng Guoquan) made tens of millions of dollars in this matter. No matter where the cover is, it is hidden. Except for a few times, the rest are at home. "
Although Li Boyuan is a famous novelist, his rumors about Ceng Guoquan's plundering of wealth after its invasion of Tianjin spread like wildfire. In fact, Li Boyuan was born in 1867 and died in 1906. When Li Boyuan was born, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had fallen for three years, so it's really not worth talking about how credible Li Boyuan's statement can be, but since then,
In fact, since 1856 joined the Xiang army, as the ninth brother of Zeng Guofan, Ceng Guoquan really plundered a lot in the process of encirclement and suppression of the Taiping Army. At that time, Ceng Guoquan, who had a flamboyant personality, "once asked for leave to go home, it was quite embarrassing to ask for help." As for Ceng Guoquan, the Qing court always had doubts about the mercenaries of the Han people. Therefore, Ceng Guoquan intentionally or unintentionally robbed money and went back to his hometown in Hunan to buy land and build a house, proving to the Qing court that he had "no ambition".
After eight years of construction, 1867, and three years after the collapse of the Kingdom of Tian Ping, Ceng Guoquan built a magnificent "Great Blessed Land" in Xiangxiang, Hunan Province, covering an area of 130 square meters, with a length of 600 meters and a width of 230 meters, which made the outside world more suspicious that Ceng Guoquan had plundered the sacred library of the Kingdom and accumulated a super-sum.
But in fact, although Ceng Guoquan was not as incorruptible as his brother Zeng Guofan, there were many cases of corruption, bribery and looting of money during the war. It is still a serious exaggeration to say that he "received tens of millions of funds".
At that time, the Qing court set up a treasury from the 13th year of Shunzhi (1656), which mainly stored gold and silver, coins, silver tickets and other property. The treasury of the Qing Dynasty was divided into internal treasury and household treasury. After forty-two years of Qianlong (1777), the deposit of silver in the Qing court reached its peak, which was 81822,000; In the third year of Jiaqing (1798), the deposit of silver in the Qing court decreased to19 million Liang; In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), that is, the third year of Taiping Rebellion, with the surge of war expenditure, the deposit of silver in the Qing court dropped to more than 200,000 yuan. In this embarrassing situation, if Ceng Guoquan really plundered money, it would be unacceptable to the Qing court.
Six years after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was pacified, on the second day of November in the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), Ceng Guoquan, who was suspected by the Qing court and lived at home, complained in a letter to his eldest brother Zeng Guofan: "My brother used to spend a lot of money without leaving any living money, and gradually he was exhausted."
A month later, on December 16th, the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), he wrote to his eldest brother Zeng Guofan, saying, "Living in my hometown is also a great entertainment. I have the right to live in the provincial capital next spring, saving the guests money for meals and sedan chairs. "
In the first year of Guangxu (1875), Ceng Guoquan wrote to his two nephews, Zeng, saying, "Eight years of idleness ... debts are like the sea."
Because these letters were private at that time, they were not made public until later generations. Therefore, it can be seen that although Ceng Guoquan bought land and built a mansion in his hometown of Xiangxiang, Hunan Province, judging from his personal letter, his actual net worth was not as rich as the outside world imagined, so he was repeatedly caught in a situation of embarrassment and lack of money. In order to make money, in 1875, Ceng Guoquan had to be an official again. Since then, he has served as governor of Shaanxi, governor of Hedong and governor of Shanxi.
Since then, Ceng Guoquan has served as the governor of the two rivers for seven years. During these seven years alone, he earned 265,438+22,000 silver (including office expenses). Therefore, although Ceng Guoquan has wealth, it is hard to say how much money he made by robbing Tianjing (Nanjing).
In this regard, Zeng Guofan once complained for his younger brother Ceng Guoquan: "My brother has gained very little, and the name of' Gourmet' is all over the world, which is unfair."
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Since it is impossible to plunder the Temple of Heaven privately, is it possible for the Temple of Heaven to be privately plundered by the Xiang army?
According to Zhao Liewen, Zeng Guofan's chief of staff, after the Xiang army entered Tianjing, they slaughtered and looted the city for seven days and seven nights. "Those who saw long hair and shaved their hair were ordered to kill, so they killed hundreds of thieves." In this crazy looting, Xiang soldiers who had been in arrears for one year plundered Tianjing City to make up for their arrears, so even if Xiang really found the Temple of Heaven, there were some.
Due to the embarrassment of the Qing court treasury and the long-term arrears of the Xiang army, Zeng Guofan and his brothers also acquiesced in the looting of the Xiang soldiers in the form of massacre, otherwise they could not control the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had been in arrears for a long time.
In addition, in addition to the possibility that the sacred vault of heaven was collectively divided and looted by Xiang soldiers when Tianjing was broken, there is another possibility that it was scattered by Taiping soldiers outside the city and brought out of Tianjing.
For example, when Li Xiucheng broke through, after being recognized and intercepted, Li Xiucheng tried to buy off the other side in order to get away, saying, "I am willing to pay 30,000 gold to lead me to Huzhou."
At that time, even Li Xiucheng's accompanying servants were "two arms full of gold bars and boxes and baskets, all of which were precious things, worth hundreds of thousands of platinum".
1864 When Tianjing was broken, Hong Xiuquan was already dead. Taiping Army/KLOC-More than 0/000 soldiers supported Hong Xiuquan's son, and the young king broke through to Huzhou and stayed in the king's palace. Later, Tianguifu Hong broke through Jiangxi with the army, was captured by the Qing army, and was executed by Ling Chi at the age of 15.
Although Tianguifu Hong died, the rumor that Tianguifu Hong buried the gold and silver treasures of Tiansheng in the blocked palace in Huzhou spread like wildfire, and the local people in Huzhou also believed it. A local old man told the outside world that he saw two children playing with a copper coin bigger than the palm of an adult when he passed the blocked alley of Wang Laozhai in Huzhou 1954. This copper coin is the town treasury money of Tiansheng Institute. According to the two children, this copper coin was found in a crack in the bluestone slab near the blocked Wang Fu, which seems to provide some side evidence for the Taiping Army to hide treasure in Huzhou.
In fact, as early as the Republic of China, rumors about the Taiping Army blocking the old house of Wang Fu in Huzhou were widely circulated. It is said that in 1924, two people came to Huzhou from Shanghai, rented an old mansion that was originally blocked in Wang Fu, and then quietly dug the underground cellar. After that, the two left without saying goodbye.
It was speculated that even if the Taiping rebels blocked Wang Fu's former residence, it was estimated that the two men had dug it up.
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Although the later generations have become more and more enlightened about the vault of heaven, in fact, although the vault of heaven did store a huge sum of money in the early stage, it has become a mystery whether the vault of heaven still exists in the later stage.
In a follow-up letter to the commander-in-chief of the Jiangnan camp of the Qing army, Zhang, a Qing spy who had been undercover in the Taiping Army, urged the Qing army to capture Tianjing as soon as possible. Zhang said that within a few months after the first report, the sacred library of the kingdom of heaven had dropped from180,000 to more than 8 million, because all the princes from Hong Xiuquan had money transferred from the sacred library. By 1854, before Zhang was found out and killed by the Taiping Army, Zhang mentioned in his last secret letter that the holy bank had fallen to less than two million. At that time, "East Wang Yang privately paid more than 10,000 taels of silver, North Wang Hong Xiuquan paid more than 7,200 taels, and North Wang Wei Changhui paid more than 1,200 taels".
After Zhang was killed, the Qing army lost its internal eyes, and there was no last news about Shengku.
In fact, the silver deposit in the sacred vault of heaven can be seen from the extravagance and waste of Taiping Army. For example, after Hong Xiuquan entered Tianjing, he used tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians to expand the former Governor's Office of Liangjiang in Qing Dynasty into "Tianwangfu". After the completion of Tianwang Palace, "the city is surrounded by more than ten miles, and the city is dozens of feet high. It is also called outside the sun and inside the Jinlong City" and "finely crafted and magnificent"
Under the leadership of Hong Xiuquan, hundreds of kings of Taiping Army also competed with each other to keep up with the competition, and then the sacred sky was constantly hollowed out. Since then, from 1853, Tianjing City has been under the siege of the Qing army, and all kinds of war expenses, as well as the cost of buying weapons and food, have greatly consumed the deposits of the sacred vault.
One year before the collapse of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1863), the Qing army stormed Suzhou, and Li Xiucheng, a loyal soldier, prepared to send troops from Tianjing to support it. Due to the shortage of military expenditure, Hong Xiuquan and his courtiers even made Li Xiucheng "pay 100,000 soldiers" and extorted his generals. It can be seen that at the last moment, the sacred library of heaven is likely to exist in name only.
However, after the Xiang army captured Tianjing in 1864, it was reported that the sacred vault of China had not been found, which still made Cixi, who was listening to politics, have great doubts. Because the Xiang army had more than 300,000 soldiers at that time, and both the DPRK and China were ministers of the Xiang army, Cixi could only fool the past with one trick.
But Cixi always remembers this.
When the Taiping Army and the northern Nian Army were successively pacified, Xiang Army was gradually abolished, and Zeng Guofan and Ceng Guoquan's right-hand men were patrolled. 1868, when the northern Nian Army was largely eliminated, Cixi, who felt that she no longer needed the help of Xiang Army, immediately ordered Zeng Guofan to be transferred from the governor of Liangjiang to the governor of Zhili.
In Cixi's view, Zeng Guofan was transferred from the former Liangjiang area to the Zhili area at the foot of the emperor, just to facilitate the Qing court to control Zeng Guofan nearby. Subsequently, Cixi immediately ordered that Ma Xinyi, the former governor of Zhejiang, be promoted to the governor of Liangjiang.
Just before Ma Xinyi took office, Cixi gave Ma Xinyi several secret orders, one was to suppress Xiang's influence in the Liangjiang area, and the other was to secretly investigate the whereabouts of the Temple of Heaven's sacred library to see if it was really secretly taken away by Zeng Guofan, his brother or Xiang.
Ma Xinyi served as Governor of Liangjiang for only two years. 1870, shortly after the school parade, Ma Xinyi was stabbed to death on the spot with the support of many soldiers. The school parade was renamed Jiangning (Nanjing) from Tianjing. This is the well-known "horse stabbing case".
The "horse stabbing case" shocked the whole Qing empire, because as the highest military and political chief of Jiangsu, Anhui and Jiangxi provinces in the Liangjiang area and the most powerful government official in the late Qing Dynasty, the Governor of Liangjiang was stabbed on the spot. The whole court knows that it is not simple, so that the officials in charge of investigating the case dare not take the initiative. In desperation, Cixi could only let Zeng Guofan return to the post of governor of Liangjiang again to appease the dissatisfied Xiang army, which was suppressed by Ma Xinyi everywhere.
At that time, people generally suspected that the real behind-the-scenes murderer should be someone in the Xiang army, but because of the complex and powerful power of the Xiang army in the political arena in the late Qing Dynasty, even Cixi could only perfunctory.
With the assassination of Ma Xinyi, no one in the Qing court dared to openly ask about the whereabouts of the sacred vault.
Two years after Ma Xinyi's death, Zeng Guofan, the founder of Xiang Army, also died in 1872 when he was the governor of Liangjiang, and Ceng Guoquan died in 1890, but rumors have been circulating among the people.
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After the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, in 19 12, the newly established Nanjing local government did not know the news from there because of financial difficulties. 19 12 At the end of the year, it did carry out an excavation near the Tongji Gate Building in Nanjing, but at that time, it dug more than 40 meters and found no treasure, and finally returned empty-handed.
Some folklore is even more bizarre. There used to be a grand garden "Jiang Garden" in Nanjing. Garden owner Jiang, also known as Jiang Donkey. It is said that this man used to be a famous businessman and often used donkeys to traffic goods. Jiang Donkey once delivered rations, which was favored by Li Xiucheng, a loyal soldier of Taiping Army, and was appointed as the "Third Line Manager of Donkey Cars".
It is said that when Tianjing was broken in 1864, the dignitaries and concubines in Tianjing once "collected thousands of boxes of gold, silver and buried objects". Later, after the fall of Tianjing City, these treasures flowed into Jiang's hands, making him a rich man in Nanjing.
It is reported that there was a donkey named Jiang in the late Qing Dynasty, but he started his own business, and he didn't make a fortune by the legendary pilgrimage library.
During the Republic of China, there was a magazine called Truth, which once wrote a story solemnly, saying that a Guangzhou man had been a soldier in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. 1864 Before the fall of Tianjing, a prince of Taiping Army ordered him and 46 other soldiers to dig a treasure hole in his home and buried more than 3 million gold and silver. After the project was completed, the prince rewarded him in the name of reward.
Guangzhou people fled Tianjing (Nanjing) overnight after learning of this incident. Later, when he was dying, he gave his son a sketch and told him to "dig up the hidden treasure and appease my legacy." It is said that this man's son really went to Nanjing for treasure hunting, but as for whether he found the treasure, the truth magazine lost the following.
Since then, there are still people who are unwilling. Some people have drained the lake of the Chinese and Western Gardens of the former Tianwangfu in Nanjing for excavation, but nothing has been found. According to relevant sources, Nanjing is rich in cultural relics. Digging more than 4 meters is already the cultural layer of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Since the late Qing Dynasty, due to urban construction and other reasons, the ancient city of Nanjing has long been excavated on a large scale, but the legendary so-called sacred treasure of heaven has never been found.
Although the people of Sri Lanka have gone, the legend about the sacred paradise library may continue to spread.
References:
Dong Jia: Modern History without Textbooks, Zhonghua Book Company, 20 1 1 Edition.
Bai: The Mystery of the Treasure of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Modern Express.
Be prepared for danger in times of peace: A hero cuts his wings —— On the reasons and influence of Zeng Guofan's disarmament, Literature and History Monthly, No.9, 20 12.
Ding Rui: Xiang Army and the Transformation of Modern Social Control, Journal of shandong youth university of political science No.2, 20 14.