There were landlords and gentry who supported the Qing army, and naturally there were gentry who supported the Ming army.

Xiangshan is a place of humanities, since the establishment of county governance in the Shaoxing period of the Southern Song Dynasty, more than 500 years have produced 36 Jinshi, more than 200 people, and the talent is countless. According to Liao Ruixiang's statistics, there are currently more than 70 township schools and private schools in Xiangshan, including 2 Jinshi in the township, 16 people and 79 talents. This number is second to none among the prefectures and counties in Guangzhou, and the successive Xiangshan priests have also been commended by the imperial court for their outstanding academic and political achievements under their rule, and most of them have been promoted.

Scholars can become officials when they have fame, and they can become gentry when they retire, and they can exert great influence in both the court and the opposition. However, most of these scholars enjoyed the privileges given to them by the imperial court in peacetime, but in order to keep their privileges in times of national crisis, they shook their heads and tails at the Hu people of different races, acting as their lackeys and accomplices. Xiangshan's township jinshi Meng Dayuan and Liu Guodao are such people, when the Qing army came, they did not organize resistance, but spared no effort to help the Qing army fight the Ming army. It was these two people who indirectly killed the murderers of the late crown prince Zhang Jiayu and Chen Zizhuang, a scholar of the Eastern Pavilion of the Yongli Dynasty, who directly led the Qing army to arrest and kill Chen Bangyan, the director of the Yongli Dynasty's military department.

It's a pity that Meng Dayuan and Liu Guodao fled before the Taiping army came, which made Zhou Shixiang always angry and regretted that he couldn't avenge the three national heroes Zhang Jiayu, Chen Zizhuang, and Chen Bangyan.

Zhang Jiayu, Chen Zizhuang, and Chen Bangyan are undoubtedly the most famous scholars in the Xiangshan area. After seizing Renhoufang, Zhou Shixiang specially asked Liao Ruixiang to take the historical materials about the three for him to consult, and after reading the deeds of the three people, Zhou Shixiang could not calm down the waves in his heart for a long time.

Unlike Chen Zizhuang and Chen Bangyan, who were loyal and loyal throughout their lives, Zhang Jiayu once betrayed. In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, Zhang Jiayu was admitted to the Jinshi and was awarded the title of Jishi of the Hanlin Academy. In March of the following year, Li Zicheng invaded Beijing. Zhang Jiayu, as a minister, took the initiative to submit a letter to Li Zicheng, wishing to be the new minister of Dashun. As a result, Li Zicheng was driven out of Beijing by the Qing army only a few dozen days after entering Beijing, and seeing that Li Zicheng was difficult to achieve a big thing, Zhang Jiayu switched to Emperor Hongguang, who ascended the throne in Nanjing, but after he arrived in Nanjing, he was arrested and imprisoned by Shi Kefa on the charge of having renegade and surrendering to Li Zicheng.

In the first year of Hongguang, due to Shi Kefa's incompetence in the four towns of Jiangbei, the Qing soldiers easily broke through the Huai River defense line garrisoned by the four towns of the Ming army and entered Nanjing in one fell swoop. Zhang Jiayu did not defect again this time. Instead, he fled to Fuzhou and was appointed by Emperor Longwu, who succeeded to the throne, to supervise the army and rescue the Southern Ming army that was besieged in Fuzhou, Jiangxi. After the Qing army captured Fuzhou, Zhang Jiayu was injured and defeated and led his troops to retreat to Fuzhou, and was immediately appointed as the governor of Guangxin, the governor of the right capital.

In the first month of the second year of Longwu, in the battle to defend Fuzhou City, Zhang Jiayu fell from his horse and broke his arm due to an arrow, but fortunately Dusi Linxiong risked his life to rescue him. Later, he was ordered to go to Chaozhou and Huizhou in Guangdong to raise salaries and recruit troops, and was appointed as the "supervising premier" of the new army, and he recruited more than 100,000 peasant troops in Chaohui, and selected 10,000 of them to form five battalions. Soon. Emperor Longwu was killed in Tingzhou, and the newly established new army was gone due to the general trend and lack of food, Zhang Jiayu had no choice but to disband the new army and return to his hometown in Xiangshan in August.

After the Qing army broke through Guangzhou, Tong Yangjia, the governor of Liangguang in the Qing Dynasty, sent people to Zhang Jiayu's house many times to persuade him to surrender, but he sternly refused. Not only that, Zhang Jiayu also made an appointment with Chen Bangyan, Chen Zizhuang and others to gather troops near Guangzhou to resist the Qing army. He first led the righteous army to invade Xiangshan County and captured Zheng Jun of Qingzhi County alive. Appointed Zhang Jue, the former Confucian instructor of Dongguan in the Ming Dynasty, as the magistrate. Li Chengdong, the governor of Guangdong in the Qing Dynasty, heard that Zhang Jiayu was against the Qing Dynasty in Xiangshan, so he led a large army to attack. Zhang Jiayu led the righteous army to fight with it successively in Wanjiang rent and Daojiao, and went to Xixiang without defeat. His grandmother Chen, mother Li and sister Shi Baoju committed suicide by throwing themselves into the water; His wife Peng was held and died unyieldingly, she was really full of loyalty, and the woman was also a hero!

October. Li Chengdong concentrated his army to pounce on Zhang Jiayu's garrison Zengcheng, the two sides fought for ten days, Zhang Jiayu was hit by nine arrows, was seriously wounded, and did not want to be a prisoner so he threw himself into the pond and died. martyred at the age of 33.

After Zhang Jiayu's death, the Yongli court posthumously awarded him the title of Prince Taibao, Wuyingdian University Scholar, Zengcheng Marquis, and "Wenlie".

If it doesn't work, the sky will too; The enemy is invincible, and the momentum is also.

Knowing that the army would die, he knew that he would die, but he wanted to raise the army, which in Zhou Shixiang's view was the manifestation of Zhang Jiayu's loyalty and national integrity.

Zhang Jiayu's apostasy in Zhou Shixiang's view is a manifestation of his adherence to national righteousness - Li Zicheng's Dashun is the Han regime, but the Qing Dynasty of Manchuria is the Hu regime, since ancient times, Hu and Han are not separated, Zhang Jiayu can descend to the Shun of the Han people, but not to the Qing of the Hu people, he is the bottom line of the Chinese Han civilization.

The roots are there, the home is there;

The country is there, the nation is there;

Zhang Jiayu is eternal!

Chen Zizhuang, who raised troops with Zhang Jiayu, was also a tragic national hero, and in the battle with the Qing army, he sacrificed his eldest son Chen Shangyong. After Zhang Jiayu's death, he and his second son Chen Shangtu led the remaining 500 rebels and the Qing army to continue to fight bloodily, and finally all the 500 rebels were killed. Chen Zizhuang and his second son Chen Shangtu were captured by the Qing army and escorted back to Guangzhou.

In the face of the surrender of the Qing court, Chen Zizhuang, like Zhang Jiayu, chose not to surrender, and after being escorted to the execution ground, he still laughed and scolded freely, and was sawed alive by the Qing army with a big saw. It is said that after the Qing army sawed Chen Zizhuang's body in half, Chen was not dead for a while, but he did not cry out in pain. Yin, but he still couldn't stop scolding Li Chengdong for turning his back on his ancestors, which made Li Chengdong greatly irritated, and it had an impact on his future return to Ming anyway.

Chen Bangyan is a native of Longshan, Xiangshan, a Shen national disaster, Chen Bangyan, who is forty years old, wrote the book "Zhongxing Political Essentials" 10,000 words, participated in the Nanming Guangdong Township Test, raised people, promoted to the head of the Ministry of Soldiers, was sent to Ganzhou by the Yongli Imperial Court to participate in the military, and later returned to his hometown to organize righteous teachers to resist the Qing Dynasty with Zhang Jiayu and Chen Zizhuang. Tong Yangjia, the governor of Guangdong appointed by the Qing court, raided Shunde by despicable means, captured Chen Bangyan's two sons and Chen's concubine who had taken refuge in Longshan, and tried to take them hostage to surrender Chen Bangyan. As a result, Chen Bangyan replied awe-inspiring on the surrender letter: "The concubine is humiliated, and the son is killed, all of them are fateful." As a loyal minister, he disregards his wife. ”

After the defeat of Zhang Jiayu and Chen Zizhuang, Chen Bangyan led the remnants to continue to resist the Qing Dynasty in Qingyuan, but unfortunately failed, and was captured by the Qing army in Guangzhou and killed by a thousand knives.

Before his death, Chen Bangyan was in prison and composed "Five Days in Prison Without Food":

The song says: How difficult it is to make the sky, and the river of the minister is also unruly. Scholars talk about soldiers, and I don't have to. What's next for me? I'm alone. Yashan has many loyal souls, and it has been illuminated through the ages!

After the death of Zhang Jiayu, Chen Zizhuang, and Chen Bangyan, the Yongli Imperial Court posthumously rewarded the three of them, and the people of Guangdong, especially the people of their hometown Xiangshan, praised their deeds, which made Zhou Shixiang decide to use the deeds of the three heroes to call on the people of Xiangshan to support the Taiping Army.

The plaque of "Lingnan Sanzhong" was written by Zhou Shixiang personally and hung on the gatehouse of the east gate of Zhizheng in Xiangshan County.

In addition to writing the plaque of "Lingnan Three Loyalties", Zhou Shixiang asked Liao Ruixiang to organize people to write the deeds of the Three Princes against the Qing Dynasty into a script, and ordered the opera troupe of Xiangshan to tour all over the territory. At the same time, Zhou Shixiang asked the Taiping troops stationed in the hometown of the Three Princes to collectively observe filial piety for the Three Princes for seven days to show their condolences. (To be continued.) )