1898 9 28 Death of the Six Gentlemen .

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About the "Six Gentlemen of Wuxu".

We should be familiar with each other.

But behind these six generous heroes.

There may be some stories that we may not be familiar with.

September 28, 1898

The "Six Gentlemen of Wuxu" are righteous

September 28, 1898, the thirteenth day of the eighth lunar month.

At the entrance of the vegetable market outside Xuanwu Gate in Beijing, many people have gathered one after another since early in the morning.

By noon, the entire entrance to the vegetable market had been surrounded by water - but everyone in old Beijing knew that every time such a situation occurred, it must be because someone's head was going to fall to the ground.

Not long after, six people who were tied up by Wuhua were escorted to the entrance of the vegetable market in a prison car.

There were all kinds of voices in the crowd: laughter, laughter, shouting, exclamations......

The prison beheader is the resolute of the red man in front of the Empress Dowager Cixi, and according to the rules, it is necessary to verify the integrity of the six condemned prisoners.

The six people are, in order:

Kang Guangren, Yang Shenxiu, Tan Sitong, Lin Xu, Yang Rui, Liu Guangdi.

There was a discussion in the crowd:

Galeries Lafayette wants to kill their heads, because they are the remnants of the Kang Party, right? ”

This sentence is also true and incorrect.

The imperial court wants to kill the heads of these six people, given the sex, indeed because they are "Kang Dang".

But these six people, who were called the "Six Gentlemen of Wuxu" by later generations, in a sense, are not all "Kang Party".

In a sense, they're not even all the way.

Let's talk about Kang Guangren, who ranks first.

He was listed as the head of the "Kang Party", and he said that he was not wronged or wronged, and he was wronged and wronged.

Because he is Kang Youwei's younger brother.

Kang Guangren

Kang Guangren once commented on his brother Kang Youwei:

The scale of the uncle is too wide, the ambition is too sharp, the package is too much, the comrades are too lonely, and the holding is too big. ”

It should be said that Kang Guangren used five "too" to describe Kang Youwei, and calmly analyzed a background of "going up and having no power", and his vision is still relatively accurate.

Kang Guangren had actually seen the weakness of the reformists in the face of the stubborn forces, so he had been persuading Kang Youwei to leave the capital first, open a museum in Guangzhou, cultivate reform talents, and then wait for the next wave of reform changes. But Kang Youwei never listened.

The Restoration failed, Cixi issued an arrest warrant, and Kang Guangren once thought that he didn't need to run away - I didn't do anything, just help to draft documents and the like, and make a soy sauce.

But he is Kang Youwei's younger brother after all. In the case that Kang Youwei has already taken the lead in escaping, he must be used to "cushion the knife head".

According to the later accounts of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, Kang Guangren has always been loyal and unyielding.

However, according to the recollection of Liu Yiming, the jailer who guarded them at the time, Kang Guangren hit his head against the wall when he was locked up in prison and cried bitterly

Oh, my God! The brother's affairs should be borne by the brother. ”

Of course, this memory was relayed to him by Wang Jingwei and Liu Yiming, and the authenticity needs to be examined. But even if it is true, it is not a stain on Kang Guangren's life, it is just human nature, and he sighs.

However, from the perspective of Kang Guangren's brother being killed, it is indeed a bit unjust.

Then let's talk about Yang Shenxiu, who ranked second.

Yang Shenxiu ranked second in the "Kang Party", in fact, it is a bit strange: he is not related to Kang Youwei like Kang Guangren, nor is he like the remaining four, they are all the "Military Aircraft Four Zhangjing" personally promoted by Emperor Guangxu.

He's just a royal history.

He was included in the list of "beheaded", on the one hand, because he did advocate the Restoration, but more importantly, because he offended a person who should not be offended the least.

Yang Shenxiu

In the spring of 1898, Yang Shenxiu met Kang Youwei, and because he had always advocated "reforming and changing the law", he and Kang Youwei quickly became like-minded.

Although Emperor Guangxu thought about changing the law for a long time, the excerpt on which he officially ordered the change was Yang Shenxiu's excerpt ("If you judge the changes of the times, you must change the law"). In the "100-day Restoration", Yang Shenxiu folded a total of 17 pieces, fully defending the reform and reform, and even did not hesitate to obstruct the people who changed the law - it must be admitted that the planner and even the drafter behind many of his excerpts are actually Kang Youwei.

But Yang Shenxiu is not Kang Youwei's "brainless microphone", just because Kang Youwei's ideas are consistent with his own ideas, he is indeed in favor of the reform from the bottom of his heart.

However, although Yang Shenxiu is the oldest among the "Six Gentlemen", he is quite radical, and some of his words and deeds have laid the disaster for himself.

At that time, there was another imperial historian named Wen Yi, who appreciated each other with Kang Youwei at the beginning, and later attacked Kang Youwei because of disagreement with his views, which mentioned that Yang Shenxiu was "bewitched" by Kang Youwei, and "actually told the slave to say that he did not dare to speak".

What exactly is "what you dare not say"? It is reported that one day on duty in the palace, Yang Shenxiu said to Wen Yi:

In the Eight Banners Sect, if there is Xu Jingye and others, I am Luo Chengyi! ”

Luo Cheng" is King Luo Bin, when King Luo Bin helped rebel Xu Jingye wrote a famous battle article, denouncing Wu Zetian, who ascended the throne and became the emperor - in the court at that time, who was "Wu Zetian", everyone knew it.

Not only that, when the reform and reform were in danger and Cixi was preparing to "settle accounts after the autumn", Yang Shenxiu was not only unwilling to scatter birds and beasts like others, but also wrote to Cixi to "withdraw the curtain and return to government" ("Qing Historical Manuscript" quoted by Kang Liang), and even contacted the army that was willing to "be loyal to King Qin", and was deeply involved in the plan of "encircling the garden and killing the queen".

Things have come to this point, even if Yang Shenxiu has a hundred heads, he can't keep it.

When he was imprisoned in prison, Yang Shenxiu was indeed iron-clad, and once inscribed a poem on the wall, the last sentence was:

In the end, I really don't complain, and I don't know who will ask for Changying. ”

The only ones who wrote inscriptions and poems in prison were him and Tan Sitong.

The person I want to talk about next is the youngest of the "Six Gentlemen", named Lin Xu.

Lin Xu, who was born in 1875, was actually a young man, and according to the perspective of the time, he should have a bright future.

Lin Xu is a native of Fujian, known as a "prodigy" since he was a child, intelligent, studious, well-read and memorable, and has always been favored by everyone. When it was time to get married, under the auspices of his elders, Lin Xu married Shen Queying - Shen Queying's grandfather was Shen Baozhen, a famous minister in the late Qing Dynasty, who was the governor of Liangjiang and was posthumously awarded the title of "Prince Taibao" after his death.

As Shen Baozhen's grandson-in-law, when Lin Xu traveled to Wuchang with his father-in-law Shen Yuqing, he got acquainted with Chen Baozhen, the governor of Hunan, and it can be said that he had a prominent family group and circle of friends at that time.

Lin Xu

At least in 1897, Lin Xu was still a little "deliberately distancing" from Kang Youwei, because Lin Xu was not lacking in family connections, and the insights of Chen Baozhen and others were actually more sophisticated and far-reaching than Kang Youwei. But in 1898, Lin Xu happily worshipped Kang Youwei as a teacher and became his student.

This is not because Kang Youwei was deeply appreciated by Emperor Guangxu that year, and Lin Xu had the idea of "speculation", but because Lin Xu supported the reform of the law from the bottom of his heart.

Lin Xu actually had a big advantage at that time: he later became a staff member of Rong Lu, the powerful minister of the court, and was recommended by Rong Lu to serve as the "Military Aircraft Zhangjing".

"Military Aircraft Zhangjing", known as the "small military aircraft", can be said to be the follower of the Minister of Military Aircraft, but although the official rank is not high, the position is extremely important, in the context of Cixi's control, this set of staff can be said to be the most relied on by Guangxu, if you do well, everyone knows that the future is immeasurable.

Rong Lu put Lin Xu into the team of "Military Aircraft Zhangjing", and naturally there was also the consideration of "inserting" eyeliner, and Guangxu was willing to accept Lin Xu, first, he also needed to take care of Cixi's emotions and balance the relationship between Manchu and Han in his own team (Rong Lu was Cixi's cronies and Manchurian), and second, Lin Xu was indeed talented.

One of Lin Xu's big problems is that although he is young and talented, he is a little in a hurry.

Because of his talent, Lin Xu often made his own ideas, and was quite disrespectful to some old-timers in the military aircraft Zhang Jingli, and once even commanded his predecessor Jichang to draft a draft, but Jichang was humiliated and made a big fuss about the military aircraft department, and finally relied on Rong Lu to come forward and make peace on both sides. For this reason, Rong Lu also wrote a special letter to persuade Lin Xu to "ask questions with humility".

Although Lin Xu was very passionate about changing the law, because his edge was too exposed, he left a "young and frivolous" evaluation in front of the Military Aircraft Department and a group of old ministers, and this atmosphere was actually very dangerous for him.

When the change failed, Lin Xu still hesitated about whether he should run away: he only participated in the change of the law and tried to become stronger, and had no intention of rebelling, and even when he discussed countermeasures with his fellow villager Zheng Xiaoxu, he felt that he might not be considered a "Kang Party".

In the end, there was still no suspense: Lin Xu and the other three "military aircraft Zhang Jing" were imprisoned.

According to the memories of the jailer Liu Yiming: Among the six people who were arrested, Lin Xu was the youngest and the most handsome, and he was still smiling all the time in prison.

It's not that he has any confidence in his family background or connections, but he is ready to accept his fate calmly.

Indeed, as Rong Lu's staff, Rong Lu never interceded for Lin Xu from beginning to end.

Next, let's put the two people together and say: Yang Rui and Liu Guangdi.

The reason why these two people are put together is because the two of them have a lot of similarities:

They were all recommended to enter the Military Aircraft Department, and many of them seemed to be quite wronged at that time -- first, they had been in the Military Aircraft Department for a short time, and second, as the "Kang Party," they actually did not agree with Kang Youwei's views and practices.

Let's talk about Yang Rui first. Yang Rui was born in 1857, a native of Sichuan, and his brother Yang Cong are known as "Su Shi and Su Zhe" in Sichuan. He was a student of Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Liangguang, and entered the shogunate of Zhang Zhidong very early, and was deeply appreciated and became Zhang Zhidong's most trusted cronies.

Yang Rui

Yang Rui supported the change of law and tried to become stronger, and also took the lead in participating in the "Book on the Bus", but he was not used to Kang Youwei, and opposed many of his views, and once wrote to Zhang Zhidong, calling Kang "Miao Delusion" (Zhang Zhidong once admired Kang Youwei, and later called Kang a "thief").

Even for his own colleagues, Yang Rui also has an opinion. He once privately commented that Tan Sitong was a "ghost" - Tan Sitong and Kang Youwei always wanted to avoid him and Liu Guangdi; called Lin Xu a "ghost" - thinking that he was young and frizzy. Yang Rui and Tan Si have had many public disputes.

The law change failed, and Yang Rui was arrested as a "Kang Party", which made Zhang Zhidong anxious.

Unlike Rong Lu, Zhang Zhidong almost fought for his life as a close confidant: he pleaded for Yang Rui with all the connections he could trust, and personally called Rong Lu on the evening of September 27, willing to guarantee the lives of more than 100 of his family members: Yang Rui is not a "Kang Party".

However, due to the speed of questioning and slashing, Zhang Zhidong still failed to keep people under the knife.

Let's talk about Liu Guangdi.

Liu Guangdi was born in 1859, his family was poor since he was a child, he studied hard, and finally won the Jinshi - he and Yang Shenxiu were the only two Jinshi in the "Six Gentlemen".

However, because Liu Guangdi is honest and upright, he doesn't like to drill camps, so he has always lived a clean air, and his official luck is also very average, and he has served as a sixth grade ** in the Criminal Department for many years, but he has not been promoted.

Liu Guangdi

After entering the core layer of the reform, Liu Guangdi gradually found himself involved in a struggle between the "imperial party" and the "post-party", and he believed that the "reform of the law" was actually degenerating into a party struggle between the "old and new parties", and he himself did not belong to any faction, but just wanted to participate in the reform of the law and try to become strong.

Liu Guangdi also did not agree with Emperor Guangxu's practice of bypassing the Minister of Military Aircraft and directly discussing with the "Military Aircraft Zhangjing" at that time, believing that this would deepen the contradictions, but he had no way to change it.

As for many of Kang Youwei's views and practices, Liu Guangdi also disagrees, but he has done one thing quite uprightly:

At that time, a group of old-fashioned elements in Hunan fabricated charges and demanded that Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao be killed. That day, Tan Sitong and Liu Guangdi happened to be on duty at the Military Aircraft Department, and Tan Sitong refuted the folds one by one, and finally was willing to guarantee with the signatures of 100 members of his family. Although Liu Guangdi usually does not fully agree with Kang Youwei, and he has also had disagreements with Tan Sitong, he took the initiative to apply for his own name as a guarantee, which made Tan Sitong impressed at that time.

After the defeat of the law change**, Liu Guangdi was not Zhang Zhidong's cronies, so no one vigorously rescued him, but he was still relatively calm. There is a reason for this, and it is also because Liu Guangdi has worked in the Criminal Department for many years and is well versed in the laws of the Qing Dynasty

He believes that even if he wants to kill his head, he must be interrogated before, and without interrogation, it is impossible to be executed.

For this reason, he also specially comforted Kang Guangren.

Unexpectedly, what awaited them was an execution without trial.

Afterwards, the imperial court sent people to the house of Liu Guangdi, the "Kang Party", and found a letter that Liu Guangdi had not finished writing before.

That's a ** Kang Youwei twist and turn.

In the end, it was the turn of the person we are most familiar with, Tan Sitong.

If you stand from Cixi's point of view, then among the "Six Gentlemen of Wuxu", Tan Sitong is indeed the most "unjust": from beginning to end, he wants reform, even revolution.

Tan Sitong was born in 1865 and was the best family among the "Six Gentlemen of Wuxu" - his father was Tan Jixun, the dignified governor of Hubei.

About Tan Sitong's story, everyone is actually very familiar with it: this "second generation official" did not want to inherit the family business well, and despite the lack of a candidate prefect in Jiangsu, he ran a school, advocated reform, and sought to change the law, until August 1898, recommended by Xu Zhijing, a bachelor of Hanlin Academy, was recruited into Beijing by Guangxu and became a member of the "Four Chapters of Military Aircraft Beijing".

Tan Sitong

Tan Sitong secretly found Yuan Shikai, hoping that he could raise troops to kill King Cixi Qin, and Yuan Shikai weighed it again and again, and finally told Rong Lu that the East Window incident occurred, and Tan Sitong and the entire Restorationists fell into a situation from which they could never recover.

According to Liang Qichao's "Biography of Lin Xu", Lin Xu once advised Tan Sitong not to believe Yuan Shikai and wrote a poem to him: "I am willing to sing a thousand miles of grass for the public, and those who are primordial should not speak lightly." "Ben Chu" is the word of Yuan Shao, the hero of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and "Qianlicao" means Dong - Lin Xu means that he would rather go to Dong Fuxiang, who commanded the rear army of Wuwei at that time, than believe Yuan Shikai.

But Tan Sitong still made a desperate bet.

What happened later, everyone is familiar with through middle school textbooks, and Tan Sitong did two things that made people feel emotional.

One thing is that he had a clear chance to escape, but he refused, leaving that sentence:

Another thing is that Tan Sitong was calm in prison and left those two famous verses on the wall:

I smiled at the sky with my horizontal knife, and went to leave the liver and gallbladder two Kunlun. ”

Note: According to the research of historian Huang Zhangjian, the original sentence should be "Throwing a European knife to the sky and laughing, leaving the public crime for posterity", which was later changed by Liang Qichao).

In fact, although Tan Sitong is the most hardcore "Kang Party" in the "Six Gentlemen of Wuxu", his thinking is actually further than Kang Youwei:

Kang Youwei pinched a "royalist" hole card to death, and Tan Sitong's vision had already gone beyond the so-called "Qing Dynasty" and placed it at the level of "China".

Now, let's turn our attention back to September 28, 1898, at Caishikou in Beijing.

The time for the execution has come.

There is a pharmacy in Beijing, called "Crane Year Hall", and the shopkeeper Wang Shengyi has always secretly admired the Restoration, and out of humanity, he prepared "Crane Peak Blood" that will make people numb after taking it, and let people distribute it to these six people.

But none of the six accepted.

The first is 32-year-old Kang Guangren.

He seemed to want to shout something to the warden Gangyi, but he didn't shout because his throat was so tightly choked by the rope. The executioner's hand rose and fell, his head fell to the ground, and blood gushed out.

Some of the onlookers sighed, and some cheered loudly.

The second is 33-year-old Tan Sitong.

He stepped out of the prisoner car and questioned Gang Yi:

What is the crime of changing the law? Why don't you be judged and beheaded?! ”

Resolute did not answer, and ordered the executioner to do it manually.

Tan Sitong's last sentence was:

If you have the intention to kill the thief, you can't return to the sky, and you will die as you deserve, quickly! Hurry! ”

The third is 23-year-old Lin Xu.

Because Lin Xu is Shen Baozhen's grandson-in-law, he got the only preferential treatment: he can wear official clothes and be sentenced. Before the execution, Lin Xu hoped that Fortitude would make him say a few words, but Fortitude did not allow it, so Lin Xu no longer insisted, his face did not change color, and he calmly took justice.

The fourth is 49-year-old Yang Shenxiu.

Yang Shenxiu didn't say a word, and went to die.

The fifth is 41-year-old Yang Rui.

Yang Rui also asked the same question: "Why don't you interrogate?" Resolute did not answer. Yang Rui then said:

Dying in a daze, it's really blinding! ”

The last one is 39-year-old Liu Guangdi.

Before leaving, as the original criminal department, Liu Guangdi still issued the questions that everyone had repeatedly raised before:

According to the ancestral system, even if the robber shouts before leaving, he must be re-tried. It doesn't matter if we die, what about the national body? What about the ancestral system? ”

The executioner asked Liu Guangdi to kneel, but Liu Guangdi insisted on not kneeling, and shouted before leaving:

I am dead, and righteousness is exhausted! ”

So far, the "six gentlemen" are all righteous.

Finally, there is an epilogue: how the remains of the "Six Gentlemen" were collected.

After Kang Guangren was righteous, the corpse was violently sacrificed for two days, and finally the "Guangren Shan Tang" in Guangzhou was buried for it, and a righteous grave was erected in the deserted suburbs. It was not until the Eight-Nation Coalition entered Beijing and Cixi took Guangxu to "hunt in the west" that someone carved a line of words on the original wordless tablet: "The Tomb of Kang Guangren in the South China Sea".

Yang Shenxiu's body was collected by his eldest son with the help of fellow villagers in Shanxi, and it took eight stitches to stitch up the head and body. Because Yang Shenxiu was an honest official, the Yang family could not afford to bury him, and finally buried him hastily in his hometown.

The bodies of Yang Rui and Liu Guangdi were collected by Sichuan villagers, Li Zhengyong, then Minister of Mines and Commerce of Sichuan, and Yu Shi Shunan bought coffins on their behalf, and paid for them to be sent all the way back to their hometown in Sichuan.

Lin Xu's body was transported back to his hometown of Fuzhou by his uncle, and due to local customs, it was temporarily parked in the Dongmen Dizang Temple, but it was besieged by many people in Fuzhou, and some people even stabbed the red-hot iron bars into the coffin. His widow, Shen Que, was supposed to spend her days in tears, and finally died of depression in 1900. Her father eventually buried Shen and Lin's bodies together.

After Tan Sitong was righteous, his body was separated, but his eyes were always open. Liu Fengchi, the housekeeper of his family's "Liuyang Guild Hall", had been at the scene, and quietly carried Tan's body back to the guild hall at midnight when no one was around, and bought a coffin to collect it. The next year, Tan Sitong's body was transported back to his hometown in Liuyang, Hunan.

Tan Sitong's father, Tan Jixun, did not come forward to do anything during his son's ** period, but finally made an elegy for his son:

The rumors are all over the world and nine continents, which is nothing more than scolding;

Zhaoxue is in the eternal world, I don't know. ”

(End of text).