There have been countless famines in Chinese history, and the more dynastic you are, the more likely you are to encounter such super-famines. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

The climate is not controllable by man, but it is always the last dynasty that breaks out in the catastrophe, but it cannot be explained by coincidence.

The ancients did not understand these truths, and blamed them all on superstitions such as God's condemnation. To explain with a scientific attitude, in fact, it is not that the last dynasty always encountered a catastrophe, but that the last dynasty had the weakest control over society, so it did not have the strength to fight against natural disasters, which led to the destruction of disasters was particularly serious.

At the end of the Qin Dynasty, the end of the Han Dynasty, the end of the Tang Dynasty, the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and the end of the Ming Dynasty, these dynasties all fell in the face of the turmoil caused by this disaster.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, a famine broke out, starting from 1876, until 1879 did not end, after four years, the disaster area covered Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, Zhili, Shandong five provinces, affected to northern Jiangsu, northern Anhui, Longdong, northern Sichuan, this famine is called Ding Xuqi famine in history, because 1877 to 1878 two years are the most serious, 77 years for Ding Chou, 78 years for the year of Xuyin, hence the name.

The reason why this famine is called a strange famine is that in addition to its wide coverage, hundreds of millions of people have suffered disasters, a large number of deaths, and tens of millions of people have died, it is strange that such a large famine has occurred, and there has been no peasant uprising that has lasted for a long time in history, not a single one that has affected the entire north, and not even an uprising that can cause a huge shock in the disaster area.

Some people believe that the most important reason why there was no great uprising in the disaster area that shook the world in the face of this great catastrophe is that nationalism has been on the rise.

Some scholars cite quite a few examples, such as the squires of northern Jiangsu who organized themselves to go to Shandong to rescue children, and the leader was a Suzhou squire named Xie Jiafu, who had just helped the government send the victims who had fled to their hometowns back to their hometowns, only to see foreigners on the road providing disaster relief.

Xie Jiafu was greatly touched, not because of gratitude or emotion, but because of a sense of crisis and guilt, he wrote in his diary: When he heard the news of the foreigners' disaster relief, he was deeply afraid of the enemy's favor and heresy, so he could not remain indifferent. Gu Yicai's strength is meager, irretrievable, and it is difficult for him to speak.

Obviously, the behavior of the foreigner touched the feelings of the family and country in the heart of this squire, he did not start from a personal point of view, but from the point of view of the country, and it is difficult for foreigners to understand the psychology of Chinese scholars who are obviously just a small people, but are always willing to worry about the country, because they do not understand Fan Zhongyan's spirit of being a scholar who worries about the world first and enjoys the joy of the world after the world.

Xie Jiafu is not worried about people starving to death, this kind of thing is too common in Chinese history, how can people not die when they are affected by disasters, what he is worried about is that someone will do this and set off a monstrous riot, if it is the Chinese's own uprising, then become a king and defeat Kou, but he saw the foreigners, he couldn't help but worry that the foreigners wanted to buy people's hearts through disaster relief and plot against China's rivers and mountains.

After that, Xie Jiafu began to write letters to some of the gentry of northern Jiangsu who he knew, telling them that they must take measures against the disaster relief activities of foreigners in China. No, there will be endless troubles: "The Westerners are fighting for disasters in Shandong, under the guise of disaster relief and compassion for their neighbors, and secretly doing a conspiracy to clean up people's hearts. If measures are not taken, I am afraid that it will lead to the loss of popular support, the rampant spread of pagan religion, and eventually a great disaster for China. ”

Under the impetus of Xie Jiafu, the squires in northern Jiangsu launched an action of "tracking relief", where foreigners went to help, they followed wherever they went, and competed with foreigners for the initiative in disaster relief, and they wanted to fight disaster relief with disaster relief.

But the power of these squires is limited, even if their appeal has been supported by the squires in northern Jiangsu, and the wealthy businessmen and squires in Shanghai have also actively donated money and materials, but the power of the people is limited after all, Xie Jiafu often feels that his financial resources are not good, and the master sighs: After the soldiers, there is a fierce year, and the national economy and people's livelihood are pitied? Ander gave 300,000 yuan in relief, and the discipline overwhelmed Mu Weilian (a missionary)!

In the case of poor financial resources, Xie Jiafu and other squires could not compare with the powerful foreign churches, but they refused to give up, and after finding that they could not fully compete for the hearts of the victims, he began to turn to the treatment of children, they believed that children were immature and easy to be bewitched by foreigners, and put an end to the demagogy of foreign religions.

Xie Jiafu began to call on the squires to rescue the children, and was supported by the majority of scholars and doctors in the Jiangnan area, and someone wrote back to him: "If the Westerners want to adopt the orphans of the famine, it is absolutely impossible." …… If we can adopt one more, we will have one less person to join the Church, and the merit will be especially great. Others said, "It is a trivial matter for a child to starve to death, but it is a big deal to lure him away from the Catholic Church, and whether or not he can be lured out of the church should be considered, but it is very good." They not only took the initiative to rescue orphans, but also hoped to free those children who had been rescued by foreigners. Xie Jiafu himself has told his friends many times that he launched the disaster relief not for the relief itself, "My brother's behavior is hostile, not for relief." Relief is to be benevolent, should be close to the people's intentions, the enemy only knows the righteousness, although the donation of elk heels, there is no resignation".

He believes that his behavior is "enemy Yi", that is, against foreigners, which is a more important righteousness than promoting benevolence and benevolence.

In addition to Xie Jiafu, there are countless squires like him.

The gentry of Henan, who were the most seriously affected by the disaster, also mobilized, calling on the people not to accept the relief of foreigners, and making all kinds of propaganda brochures to tell the people that foreigners' disaster relief was buying people's hearts, and as a result, a large number of people would rather starve to death than accept the relief of foreigners.

The Shanghai report was extremely emotional, and they reported that "the hungry people in Henan were very puzzled, and refused to receive the silver given by the priests, which means that the Western priests intended to buy and convince the hearts of the people and lure people into the Church, so they specially gave me such money and beware that they would not fall into their practice." and no one of them will accept each other. ”

When the residents of Kaifeng heard that the missionary Hua Guoxiang and others were coming to provide disaster relief, they posted confessions in advance, calling for "it is better to eat Yiqi than to eat Yisu", and some academies put up classes to declare that they "want to fight with the Westerners", this battle was of course not a white-knuckle confrontation, but a cultural confrontation, and the Henan gentry resisted the cultural invasion of foreign missionaries, and finally the missionaries had to give up disaster relief in Henan.

These evidences are enough to prove that the purpose of these scholars is not to save people, but to fight against foreigners, and regard this as a war in the spiritual field, Confucianism is not a well-organized religion, but the belief deeply rooted in the hearts of scholars, once inspired, will not lose to any religion at all, Zeng Guofan was in the Ming Dynasty under the banner of building a school to block foreign religion, and it is an example that he can encourage so many squires.

Xie Jiafu is not as famous as Zeng Guofan, and he is not as strong as Zeng Guofan's appeal, so he can promote such a great enthusiasm for defending humanity, and it can only be said that Confucianism and Taoism have spread in China for thousands of years and have not died out, but because it has extremely strong vitality.

However, it is not true to say that Ding Xuqi's famine was only due to the outbreak of nationalism among scholars, and all his attention was focused on confronting the foreigners, and he did not participate in the peasant uprising, and organized the spontaneous behavior of eating big households into a large-scale uprising.

At least to Timothy Lee, the most famous missionary involved in disaster relief, this is not the truth at all, at least not the whole truth.

It has come to June, there was no rain in the whole year last year, but this year the drought continues, at the turn of spring and summer, it is the time when the old grain is exhausted, the new grain is not ripe, and the green and yellow are not harvested, so from May, a famine began to break out in Qingzhou, Shandong.

"Yesterday I saw a group of women flock into a rich man's house, occupy it, make a fire there to cook, and then flock to another house to eat the next meal. The men saw that this method was very good, and they formed a group of more than 500 people. Plundering and looting from village to village. ”

Timothy Lee had been in the disaster for a month, and he wrote to a friend describing the situation of large households in the disaster area.

Timothy Lee had just put down his pen when someone suddenly asked to see two Chinese dressed as readers.

As soon as they arrived before Timothy Lee, they knelt down and hoped that Timothy would take them as disciples.

Timothy Lee questioned them for a long time, and then he realized that these two men wanted to lead them to rebel, and the two of them were elected by a large group of people to invite Timothy Lee out of the mountain.

Timothy Lee was shocked to see them off politely.

He immediately wrote down these things in his diary:

"Today, I was visited by two scholars, both Xiucai, between the ages of thirty and forty, one from Shouguang and the other from Yidu. As soon as they entered, they knelt down and asked to be my disciples. After talking, I figured out that the two of them were representatives of a large group of people who wanted me to be their leader and riot because the authorities couldn't provide food and they couldn't survive. They have already arranged the house, and there are countless people ready to take my orders. I told the two representatives of the people that I had never thought of doing such a thing, because it would only increase the suffering of the people. Once the riots began, no one knew how they would end, but there was no doubt that there would be mass bloodshed. I advise them to take a constructive approach and not to improve people's situation through destruction. ”

What Timothy Lee saw and heard seems to prove that not everyone who reads books hates foreign religions so much, and it seems that there are still some scholars who want to do something in this troubled world, but they lack a strong leader, so they want to find Timothy Lee, a foreigner who is famous for his local disaster relief and is feared by the government, to be their leader.

Ding Xu is strange, this is also a strange.

Zhu Jinglun, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, did not have the leisure to deduce the reason why the peasants did not form a major uprising, and he was more concerned about how to survive in this catastrophe that was comparable to a three-year difficult period.

However, the Manchu scholars did not want foreigners to interfere in disaster relief, and the Manchu government was also secretly promoting, organizing local gentry, and the Qing court instructed local governments to "enlighten and try to dissuade" when they encountered foreign missionaries going to disaster relief, and tried to get rid of these people by all means.

They were not worried about foreigners, worried that foreigners would buy people's hearts, but they were more worried about the Ming Dynasty buying people's hearts, especially the Manchu court, they directly rejected the Ming government's proposal to participate in disaster relief, saying that the court would be sympathetic to the people.

But Zhu Jinglun knew that the Manchu court had neither the heart nor the strength, and all kinds of improper measures in disaster relief, and even corrupt behavior, inefficient government agencies, and finally tens of millions of people starved to death.

The attitude of the Manchu Qing made Zhu Jinglun very disgusted, if it was peacetime, he would not easily start a war with the Manchu Qing and let the common people fall into war, but if it was for the lives of tens of millions of people, Zhu Jinglun thought it was necessary to start a war.

Therefore, after the Manchu Qing Dynasty clearly refused the Ming government to send a capable team to the disaster area for relief, the Ming fleet raised its fire and went north, directly entering the Bohai Bay to coerce Beijing and Tianjin.