Tongzhi On June 16, 1864 (7.19.), at noon, the commander of the Jizi Camp of the Qing army, Zeng Guoquan, gave an order: ignite! A shocking sound broke down a section of the Taiping Gate wall of Tianjin (now Nanjing) about 20 meters. More than 400 soldiers of Zhu Hongzhang, who served as pioneers, were also blown up because they were too close to the detonation point. The brave men from each battalion behind them rushed by the body and took the opportunity to rush into the city along the gap. A fierce street battle began immediately. The Taiping Army in the city has been cut off for a long time, and everyone is so hungry that they are no one looking. How could they be the opponent of the Qing army who is like a wolf or a tiger and is red-eyed? The corpses in the city were in a mess and blood flowed into a river. At about 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, the nine gates of Tianjing were all captured by the Qing army, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was declared to be destroyed.
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 The Qing army had been owing wages for a long time, so the generals accused the soldiers of looting property to make up for it. The Qing army searched and robbed everywhere, and set fire to the house after the robbery. Wherever the Qing army attacked, the fire would burn. By the evening of the battle, the whole city had fallen into a sea of fire. In addition to using fire as a weapon for attack, the Qing army soldiers also used fire as a means of extinguishing traces. According to records, whether it was the Heavenly Kingdom’s palace, official office or private house, after plundering it, it was burned to eliminate all the evidence of the crime and then left it. Therefore, after the Qing army captured Nanjing, it robbed every day and set fire every day. The flames burned for nearly 10 days. It was not until the heavy rain fell on the 24th that the fire was completely extinguished. After this catastrophe, the prosperous city of Nanjing has become a hell on earth since ancient times (the Taiping Army also burned and killed Nanjing when it attacked Nanjing, causing relatively great damage).
In this catastrophe, women were the most humiliated. While burning, killing and robbing women, the Qing army officers and soldiers also wanted to humiliate and plunder women. The witness and witness of the incident, Zhao Liewen (the aide of the Zeng brothers) truthfully recorded in "Neng Jingju Diary": Qing soldiers randomly broke into private houses and raped women, and even openly "pulled (forced) women on the street in broad daylight, and could not bear to hear the wailing sound."
"Xiangxiang County Chronicles" records that after the collapse of Jinling City, Huang Shuhua was raped back to Hunan by Qing soldiers. She once told people about her tragic experience:
"In June this year, the official army returned to Jinling . I (I) just came out of water and fire and climbed up to the mat. Who would have thought that the second day after the city was defeated, there were chaos soldiers coming, and killed the two brothers in the courtyard, and then entered the Kuo (Sei Kuo) rooms. A strong man asked me for me, took them out, and my brother took them out, and my mother knelt down and mourned him. He said angrily, "Those who follow the thief will be killed without mercy, the commander will be ordered." So he killed my mother and brother. When the eldest sister-in-law arrived, he killed him again and plundered me. But Zhong's sister-in-law (Sei Kuo) didn't know where to go. I cried and mourned me and asked to die quickly. He laughed loudly and said, "I love you, but I don't kill you (I like you, and I won't kill you). So I was (bound) and moved to the boat and went up the river."
and Huang Shuhua were forced to take the boat to Hunan. Two other Nanjing girls were transported to Jin and Zhang. On the way, Miss Jin took advantage of the unpreparedness and jumped into the river and died. Therefore, the Qing soldiers did not dare to threaten Huang Shuhua too much, so they were lucky enough to keep their chastity. When the boat arrived at Xiangxiang , Huang Shuhua secretly wrote two copies of the unfortunate encounter, one hidden in her close place, and the other was posted on the wall of the inn, and wrote a poem next to it to express his determination to die. The next day, Huang Shuhua, who had a strong personality, designed to kill the Qing soldiers surnamed Shen and another bandit who killed their family and raped her, and avenged her blood. She then committed suicide by hanging herself.
It can be seen from this that the corpses along the street mentioned in Zhao Liewen in his diary are all old people, and the rest are young children under two or three years old. The phenomenon of "no one under the age of 40" is completely a tragedy caused by the Qing army's unscrupulous robbery of property and forcibly abducting women. Most young and middle-aged women under the age of 40 were robbed by these murderers, including Huang Shuhua's lost contact "Zhongsao". The possibility of these women escaping from the clutches is very slim.The elderly were killed by the Qing army probably to save their daughters or daughters-in-law, while the infants and young children were likely to be killed because their mothers were unable to separate from each other when they were captured by the Qing army.
After the Qing army invaded Nanjing, they almost did not distinguish between the targets of burning, killing, looting, and killing. They would be killed without discrimination. Even those who opposed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and supported the Qing army were rarely protected and rarely survived. Huang Shuhua was disgusted with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and supported the officers and soldiers, but they were still poisoned. There were still many people in the same situation. History records. One month and eight days after Nanjing was captured, the city was still in chaos. The Qing army was still burning, killing, and looting, and even digging three feet into the ground to search for property. "The army in the city is still in chaos, and the soldiers and brave men plunder each other, and there are (fire) killing and injuring each other."
[Illustration comes from the Internet]
