Opening statement: The content of this article is written with authoritative sources combined with personal opinions, and the source and screenshot of the literature have been marked at the end of the article, please be aware.
Preamble:
In 1977, Zuo Zongtang's cemetery was ruthlessly vandalized, and General Wang Zhen was furious when he learned the news, and immediately started a fire in his office.
Then he personally issued instructions to repair Zuo Zongtang's grave, so why was Zuo Zongtang's grave destroyed? Why was General Wang Zhen so angry?
Zuo Zongtang was born at a time when the White Lotus Rebellion had just broken out in the Qing Dynasty, the treasury was almost depleted, and the people were not able to make a living.
In the sixth year of Daoguang, 14-year-old Zuo Zongtang took the children's examination and ranked second in Changsha Prefecture, and just when he was about to go to the gold list in one go, the bad news came: his mother suddenly became seriously ill and needed him to go home to take care of him.
In this way, Zuo Zongtang had to give up the exam and go home to take care of his mother, but what people didn't expect was that Zuo Zongtang went for six years, it turned out that his mother died of serious illness shortly after he went home, and according to the habit at that time, Zuo Zongtang needed to keep filial piety at home for three years.
Three years later, when Zuo Zongtang was about to re-enter the examination room, his father died in this year, and Zuo Zongtang had no choice but to keep filial piety for three years again.
Six years later, Zuo Zongtang, who was already 20 years old, felt that if he wanted to take the exam step by step, then he would probably be far away if he wanted the title of the gold list, so he borrowed some money from someone to directly buy a show talent directly up and down the official department, and then passed the exam.
Next, as long as he passes the palace exam, he will be able to achieve his ambitions, but who would have thought that he would be defeated for six consecutive years, which made him quite devastated. Immediately, he decided to bow his head to reality, return to his hometown, concentrate on studying, and study the art of war, and gave himself the nickname "Hunan Peasant".
Soon after, the Taiping Rebellion broke out, and Tao Shu, the governor of Liangjiang, recruited him as a staff member after hearing of his talents, during which Zuo Zongtang was finally appointed governor of Shaanxi and Gansu by the Shunzhi Emperor at the age of 55. Since then, he has been on the stage where he can show his strengths.
In 1847, with the support of the British, Aguba brazenly invaded Xinjiang, and Tsarist Russia saw this situation and sent troops to forcibly occupy Yili under the guise of expelling Aguba.
At this time, the border of the Qing Dynasty was in danger, and Zuo Zongtang, who was 66 years old at the time, immediately wrote to Cixi hoping to send someone to take back Xinjiang.
At that time, the Qing ministers were divided into two factions, one was the coastal defense faction led by Li Hongzhang, who advocated that the limited silver of the Qing court be used to invest in the navy and continue to build the Beiyang Fleet.
However, the defense faction led by Zuo Zongtang argued that Xinjiang was the gate of the Central Plains, and once it was lost, the Qing court would face a two-sided attack, and the consequences would be unimaginable.
At that time, after listening to the remarks of the two factions, Cixi did not make it clear which side she supported, but handed over most of the silver to the Beiyang Fleet in a harmonious manner, leaving only 5 million taels of silver for Zuo Zongtang to recover Xinjiang.
At that time, this silver was a drop in the bucket for the recovery of Xinjiang, and in desperation, Zuo Zongtang could only raise his own military expenses, and after all the preparations were completed, he led the 60,000 Hunan children to carry the coffin and set out on the expedition, and finally successfully recovered most of Xinjiang except Ili in 2 years, greatly safeguarding the unity and integrity of the country.
And this is not the end, in 1886, after complete preparations, Zuo Zongtang commanded a large army to launch an attack on Tsarist Russia, and after fierce battles, Tsarist Russia was forced to sign the Sino-Russian Ili Treaty.
On the way back, Zuo Zongtang ordered his subordinates to plant willows along the way to mark the future generations, and some people praised him with poems at that time: the general has not yet returned the border, and the children of Huxiang are full of Tianshan. The newly planted willow is 3,000 miles, attracting the spring breeze to Yuguan.
Soon after the reconquest of Xinjiang, Zuo Zongtang began to fight fires again, and in 1883, when the Vietnamese side fought again, Zuo Zongtang again asked for orders to go to the local army to supervise the army.
It's a pity that Cixi didn't agree to his request this time, but only asked him to strengthen the border defense in the southeast, and finally the mainland won a great victory at Zhennan Pass, but Cixi ignored the advice of the court ministers and signed a peace treaty with France, and directly put herself in the position of the vanquished.
Zuo Zongtang could only shake his head and sigh at this, and died in Fuzhou soon after, when the Empress Dowager Cixi gave him the highest standard burial.
She first posthumously presented Zuo Zongtang as the crown prince in the name of Emperor Guangxu, gave him a mercy according to the rules of scholars, gave him Wenxiang, and enshrined him in the Zhaozhong Temple and Xianliang Temple in Beijing, and then ordered Hunan and various meritorious provinces to build ancestral halls to worship.
Many years later, General Wang Zhen led people into Xinjiang again, and the route they took was the same as Zuo Zongtang's back then, so that later General Wang Zhen praised Zuo Zongtang: "The credit for recovering Xinjiang cannot be extinguished."
In 1975, in order to repair the road, Baizhu Village, Jumping Horse Town, Yuhua District, Changsha City, sent people to check the terrain near the tomb of Zuo Zongtang, and they found that building a road in the middle of the tomb of Zuo Zongtang was the best plan, saving money and time.
So they directly divided Zuo Zongtang's cemetery into two and built a road in the middle, so Zuo Zongtang's tomb suffered the first man-made damage.
Two years later, the local government was preparing to build a bridge here, but due to the lack of materials, they were ready to blow up Zuo Zongtang's tomb and use local materials. According to the memories of local villagers, the construction team brought more than 100 catties of explosives at that time, and directly blew up a big hole in Zuo Zongtang's tomb.
Seeing this, the onlookers rushed directly and wanted to rush in to find Zuo Zongtang's burial treasure, but who would have thought that after they turned the whole tomb upside down, they didn't see anything from before except for a few tattered clothes.
When Zuo Zongtang's tomb was destroyed, Huang Zhiqing, a nearby villager, was working in the fields, and when he told his mother the news, her mother said to him: "Lord Zuo is a great official of the imperial court and has contributed to the country." Now that the corpse is exposed, I am afraid that the ghost will not disperse. Go and level the soil, rebury the bones of Lord Zuo, and kowtow a few times! ”
Huang Zhiqing agreed, and that night when the night was dark and the wind was high, Zuo Zongtang's body was collected and buried nearby.
Soon after, the news of the destruction of Zuo Zongtang's tomb reached the ears of General Wang Zhen, who first felt heartbroken, and then shouted at the table in a rage: "Nonsense! Who gave them the guts! ”
As a general stationed in Xinjiang, General Wang Zhen has always cherished Zuo Zongtang, so he immediately contacted the Hunan Provincial Party Committee and asked them to immediately repair the tomb and rebury Zuo Zongtang's bones.
Finally, under the care of General Wang Zhen, the tomb of Zuo Zongtang was restored as before, and in 1996, it was rated as a provincial cultural relics protection unit.
Zuo Zongtang is a national hero and deserves the respect he deserves, and no matter what the reason, his cemetery cannot be vandalized.
Reference: He led his troops to recover Xinjiang, but his children and grandchildren no longer served as officials
CCTV.com-Zuo Zongtang carried the coffin out of the customs