After Zeng Guofan arrived in Tianjin, the Manchu court actively cooperated with him, and Cixi issued a holy decree to Zeng Guofan in the name of the emperor, appointing him as the minister of the Qin Mission, with full authority to deal with the Tianjin teaching case. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Zeng Guofan's prestige in the Manchu Qing Dynasty was extremely high, and the local officials did not dare to disrespect him, and no one among the smart Manchu officials wanted to be involved in this kind of trouble, so when they arrived in Tianjin, everyone happily listened to Zeng Guofan's decision.

After Zeng Guofan arrived in Tianjin, he listened to the accounts of various people that the reason why thousands of ordinary people suddenly rose up to besiege the church was that in April and May, there were several cases of missing children in Tianjin. In June, an epidemic broke out in Tianjin, and many babies died in the nursery of some foreigner churches in Tianjin that adopted orphans, and the churches went to the suburbs every day to bury people.

The common people saw that the foreigners kept burying the baby's corpse, and soon a long-standing saying spread, saying that the foreigner's nuns killed the child for medicinal purposes. At this time, the government caught a child trafficker, and the trafficker confessed that he had sold the child to the church.

All of a sudden, the people of Tianjin were angry, and they had no good impression of the church, especially the Catholic Church, and those priests were eager to preach, so they did not distinguish between the believers, and everyone wanted good and bad.

At the same time, Catholicism is a strict organization from the pope to the priests, from history, they have been more extreme, not to mention all kinds of other religions, even Protestantism they have suppressed, there has always been a kind of self-respecting arrogance, plus the foreigners of this era are relatively strong, there is a kind of arrogance in front of other civilizations, so there are often church priests using extraterritoriality to protect their followers.

But most of these people who easily abandoned the traditional culture and took refuge in the church were a group of ruffians, who were used to bullying people, and joined the church to bully others, and as a result, everyone transferred the hatred of these hooligans to the church.

The common people had a bad impression of them, but now they believe that they are trafficking and mutilating children, so the church has been besieged.

So far, it has only been a mass incident, and there has been no violent conflict, and there is still room for resolution. If the Qing court actively came forward to investigate at this time, it can also be explained. However, the officials of the Qing court have long been accustomed to passing the buck, and the sense of responsibility of scholars and doctors has long been far away from them. So all the prevarications.

The foreigners are used to being strong, the French minister Feng Daye asked the local government to expel the people, and the local government repeatedly prevaricated, especially after a dispute with the county order, Feng Daye actually shot directly, and the county order escaped, but the servant was killed.

The arrogance of the foreigners made the Qing government angry, and then the common people attacked the church, killed priests and nuns, entered the consulate, and killed diplomats.

At this point, the lesson plan really gets out of hand.

After Zeng Guofan understood what happened, he believed that the first problem was to find out whether foreigners really had to use children as medicine. In fact, Zeng Guofan didn't understand how unreliable this matter was, and the smart officials of the Qing court also understood this truth, so no one came, and they all watched Zeng Guofan step by step into the torrent.

Zeng Guofan invited the local famous squire, and everyone went into the church to search, and did not find any rumored phenomena, on the contrary, they saw that the abandoned children were given the best care here, they were given food, they were healed, and the only thing that made them not very satisfied was that the church had been educating these children to believe in God.

But those rumors full of absurdity, none of them, nothing to make medicine with human eyes. Of course, there were no such things, and Zeng Guofan knew that these things could not exist before he came. But he still has to come to investigate, on the one hand, with the eyes of himself and these famous squires, to help the common people witness it, and tell everyone the truth through their mouths. He believed that ordinary people, at least those who read, could distinguish between right and wrong. On the other hand, Zeng Guofan mainly wanted to investigate the fact of abducting children, he did not believe that foreigners used children as medicine, but he suspected that foreigners really abducted children here for education.

There are no facts, and the foreigners do not even have the act of abduction, but the foreigners do have the situation of giving money to the traffickers, and they told Zeng Guofan truthfully, and also took out their record book for Zeng Guofan to see, and they told Zeng Guofan that because there is often the phenomenon of abandoned babies, they give a little reward to the enthusiastic people in order to encourage everyone to send the abandoned children to the church to raise. It is this reward that encourages some criminals, who do not pick up abandoned babies, but directly sell children.

Zeng Guofan is a sincere person, this is his inner belief, it is the support of his spirit, he will not go against his spirit, so he recognized the foreigner's statement.

He then issued an "Edict to the Tianjin Shimin" to the people of Tianjin, first praising "the people of Tianjin are all righteous and upright", and then criticized them for not having "the conclusive evidence of abduction and the actual evidence of gouging out their eyes", so they "relied on rumors in vain, that is, they thought about it to vent their anger", and educated the people of Tianjin that "either they are righteous but unreasonable, or they are strong but have no foresight, all of which are enough to cause chaos." ”

In fact, it is to advise the people of Tianjin not to make trouble unreasonably and cause trouble for the country.

Then Zeng Guofan refused the French request to execute Chen Guorui, the governor of Tianjin, and Zhang Wenzao and Liu Jie, officials of Tianjin Prefecture and County, to resist their lives, and only put Zhang and Liu back to their hometowns to avoid the limelight in the name of recuperation, and Chen Guorui was sent directly to the capital.

It stands to reason that Zeng Guofan's choice to calm things down is actually very much in line with the golden mean, the major thirty boards, raised high and gently put down, if both sides give a step and turn a blind eye, forget it. In particular, Zeng Guofan believed that if the officials of his own country were arbitrarily executed in the course of negotiations with foreigners, it would only blow the prestige of the imperial court, and at the same time cause officials to be afraid of the situation in contact with foreigners and dare not argue on the basis of reason, which is actually very common in Shanghai and other ports. Therefore, Zeng Guofan refused to kill the officials.

However, the Qing court was too panicked that the French would send troops, especially the internal strife was too serious, and although Zeng Guofan was famous, the more famous the official, the greater the attack, because attacking this kind of person was the most convenient channel for those Qing gossip officials who were famous for impeaching people.

In particular, a group of diehards have always wanted to exterminate the people without reason, and they claimed that the people of Tianjin killed the foreigners in order to protect the officials, which shows that the people of Tianjin were afraid of the officials and not afraid of the people, and they just used public opinion to exterminate all the foreigners in the capital. So they ignored Zeng Guofan's investigation at all, and insisted that the people of Tianjin had found the eyes of children poked out by foreigners in the church, and Zeng Guofan intended to cover up.

Seeing the attitude of the diehards, Cixi also sent a letter to Zeng Guofan to inquire, but Zeng Guofan clearly reported that he had not found out. Cixi was in a hurry to close the case, for fear that the matter would expand due to the diehards.

But at this time, the French did not agree at all, not a single person who caused the accident was punished, let alone the French, and Russia and the United States could not agree to the dead.

Seeing the resolute attitude of the foreigners, Cixi and other high-level officials were afraid of the end of the Anglo-French alliance entering Beijing again, and were eager to solve the crisis.

Zeng Guofan couldn't, so he could only send someone to retrieve Zhang and Liu, record their confessions, and escort them to the Criminal Department. In the end, the Criminal Department sentenced Zhang and Liu to be sent to Heilongjiang to atone for their crimes, and the Criminal Department did not dare to kill their own officials for the sake of foreigners.

But for the small people, Zeng Guofan was not polite, and hurriedly arrested 20 murderers and sentenced them to death, the reason why it was 20 people, because the foreigners also died 20 people, Zeng Guofan completely planned to use the way of life to solve this problem, obviously Zeng Guofan was familiar with the classics, but he did not understand the law. And he played a trick and arrested these 20 people, most of whom were death row inmates in prison.

Zeng Guofan's approach not only failed to satisfy the foreigners. The court officials continued to scold him, this time by the gang of Qingliu, who scolded Zeng Guofan for not only punishing his own officials to flatter foreigners, but also killing his own people, who was simply a traitor and a traitor.

Not to mention, this kind of nationalist invective has a big market in China. For a time, it caused a huge shock, and the common people of the whole country, mainly scholars, squires and other social elites, suddenly had a huge dissatisfaction with Zeng Guofan. How much they expected Zeng Guofan before, and now how much they hate Zeng Guofan. How much they revered Zeng Guofan in the past, and how much they despise Zeng Guofan now.

Zeng Guofan as a Hunanese, before he was the pride of the whole Hunan, so the Hunan people who do business in other places are very proud of Zeng Guofan's hometown, the Hunan Chamber of Commerce in various places, all ask Zeng Guofan to inscribe, Zeng Guofan in order to raise military expenses before, but also happy to inscribe to the businessmen, those words are made into a plaque and hung high above the hall.

Now Hunan guilds all over the country have smashed Zeng Guofan's plaque.

When the common people of Tianjin, with the support of officials, smashed the churches of foreigners, the vast majority of scholars applauded, they have always regarded the entry of foreign religion into China as a disaster for Confucius and Mencius, and believed that the rebellion of the elders of Tianjin against foreign religion was the same noble cause as Zeng Guofan who led the children of Huxiang to fight against Changmao, and according to their minds, this kind of thing has to be commemorated by a monument.

As a result, Zeng Guofan actually said that the foreigners did not gouge out the eyes of children and did not abduct children.

It doesn't matter what the facts are, the important thing is how can you Zeng Guofan say that, in fact, what the scholars who have lost their minds want is not the so-called facts of Zeng Guofan, they just want an answer that they think is correct, they only want their idol Zeng Guofan to stand with them.

But Zeng Guofan's statement obviously made them dissatisfied, and even difficult to accept. Everyone in the world can say this, why do you Zeng Guofan also say this?

So the scholars also stood up and scolded Zeng Guofan, and the other places only scolded traitors and thieves and the like, and the Hunan scholars were particularly angry, they used to be proud of Zeng Guofan, but at this time, they held meetings one by one to announce that they did not recognize Zeng Guofan's fellow countrymen, and announced that they would expel Zeng Guofan's provincial nationality, and they no longer recognized Zeng Guofan as a Hunanese.

Zeng Guofan didn't expect that he showed his sincerity, and he was slandered by everyone, the diehards suspected him of accommodating foreigners, Qingliu mocked him for flattering foreigners, businessmen were ashamed of his inscriptions, and the scholars in his hometown did not recognize him as a Hunanese.

For a while, Zeng Guofan felt that there was no place for him in the heavens and on the earth, and he couldn't help but fall ill under the depression.

In fact, what he didn't know was that the reputation he enjoyed before was too great, and he was not allowed to make a slight mistake under the fame, and the reason why so many people scolded him was because a banner in the hearts of those people, a spiritual idol, suddenly collapsed.

This impact is so big, even more than the defeat of the two opium wars, more touched the hearts of the majority of readers, some people have become more stubborn, more hateful to foreigners, and some people, but began to change their mentality, began to reconsider the world, these people who began to adapt before the great changes in the world, in fact, are the real national elite, in the following decades, this group of people will fight in the Westernization movement, industry to save the country and other great causes, but unfortunately they also failed in the end, because their allies are too few, and there are too many people who refuse to be flexible.

Zeng Guofan felt that he could not serve for the time being, and after explaining his reasons to the Qing court, under the protection of Li Hongzhang, the Qing court dispatched Zeng Guofan's right-hand man, Ding Daily, who had been the governor of Jiangsu, to assist Zeng Guofan.

At this time, Zeng Guofan, a great Confucian of science, the effect of the collapse of the Confucian spiritual idol has spread to the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Jinglun doesn't care how painful those conservative scholars who worship Zeng Guofan, he can't care about the schools that Zeng Guofan just established, they may be smashed.