Inscription background of the monument to the 300th anniversary of Ming Sizong's martyrdom.

Shen Jia1March 644 19, the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen, died in Jingshan Park under the threat of Li Zicheng peasant army, marking the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

After the late Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng also had an emperor addiction in Jindian. However, it was not long before the Qing army entered the customs. After several struggles, the peasant army in Li Zicheng was defeated, and Zhengshuo in China finally fell into the hands of Manchu. The neighboring ethnic minorities came to the Central Plains again, and the history of China opened a new scene.

Dingge in Ming and Qing Dynasties is an important event in the history of China, and it also left rich historical experience and lessons for later generations. Therefore, since the early Qing Dynasty, the study of the history of the Ming Dynasty, especially its demise, has been highly valued by intellectuals. From Gu and Huang Zongxi to Zhang Taiyan, Liu Yazi, Huang Jie and even Guo Moruo, a Marxist historian in China, they have all discussed why the Ming Dynasty perished and why the Qing Dynasty flourished from different angles. Why can't the peasant army in Li Zicheng shoulder the historical responsibility of dynasty replacement?

Sixty years ago, in the last year of Shen Jia, that is, 1944, Guo Moruo published the "Three Centennial Festival of Shen Jia", which explored the root of the Ming Dynasty's demise and the shortcomings of the peasant army in Li Zicheng from the perspective of Marxism, and thus mapped and criticized the Kuomintang's anti-Japanese policy.

Guo Moruo's book attracted the attention of all parties. The Kuomintang quickly organized relevant scholars to put forward fierce counter-criticism on Guo Moruo's views, while the China * * * Production Party in Yan 'an sincerely admired Guo Moruo's views, and Mao Zedong even listed this historical and political theory as required reading material for the ongoing rectification movement at that time.

In the same year that Guo Moruo published Shen Jia's Three Hundred Years Sacrifice, another Sichuan scholar, Fu Zengxiang, also wrote the Memorial Card of Ming Sizong's Martyrdom in Beiping, replacing the Memorial Card of Ming Sizong's Martyrdom just established in 1930. The issues discussed in Fu Zengxiang's article are basically the same as Guo Moruo's, and it is also the fundamental reason for analyzing the demise of the Ming Dynasty during the rule of Emperor Chongzhen, who was diligent and loved the people. However, due to their different writing backgrounds, not only their value orientations are quite different, but also their practical concerns are fundamentally different. Generally speaking, Guo Moruo aimed at mapping and criticizing the Kuomintang's anti-Japanese policy, while Fu Zengxiang complained that the Kuomintang authorities simply ignored the lives of the people in the occupied areas and retreated blindly. At the same time, he also warned the Japanese colonial rulers in North China and those traitors in high positions to remember the historical lessons of Emperor Chongzhen, be people-oriented and be prepared for danger in times of peace.

Everyone is familiar with Guo Moruo's situation, but Fu Zengxiang's experience as a non-professional worker cannot be described in detail because of the evolution of political history in the 20th century. In order to accurately understand the true meaning of Fu Zengxiang's important works, it is necessary to briefly review his experience.

Fu Zengxiang (1872- 1949), a native of Jiang 'an, Luzhou, Sichuan, is a fellow countryman with Guo Moruo. His real name was Runyuan, and later he was renamed Uncle Yuan. Because of the possession of Zi Jian in the Southern Song Dynasty and Zi Zhu in the Yuan Dynasty, he was called "the owner of the double sword building". Because he built a "Tibetan Garden" as a library in the West Forty Old Lady Hutong in the west of Beijing, and he also called himself the "Tibetan Garden Old Man" and so on. As a teenager, Fu Zengxiang traveled with his father in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, and settled in Tianjin on 1880. 189 1 year, I entered the Lianchi Academy in Baoding, Wu Rulun, where I gave lectures, and got to know a number of political and academic celebrities, including Yuan Shikai. 1898, he entered imperial academy as Jishi Shu. /kloc-joined the Yuan Shikai shogunate in 0/902, and was able to make friends with important figures of Beiyang Department, such as Feng and Duan. In fact, he became a more important scholar in Beiyang Department. After the outbreak of the Revolution of 1911, Fu Zengxiang was appointed by Yuan Shikai to participate in the peace talks led by Tang. 19 17 12, joined the cabinet of Beiyang department as the chief of education for one and a half years. During this period, the president changed, the prime minister changed, and Fu Zengxiang remained. 19 19 When the May 4th Movement broke out, the Beiyang government wanted to hold Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University, responsible for inciting and shielding students, and forced Cai to leave. Fu Zengxiang, the director of education, had no choice but to resign.

Fu Zengxiang, who resigned as the chief of education, has no intention of re-entering the officialdom. Although he has been the official director of the Palace Museum since then, he is basically limited to cultural leisure posts. Almost all his interests are concentrated on the collection and research of books. After decades of accumulation, Fu's collection was unique at that time and enjoyed a good reputation at home and abroad. Only the Song and Jin versions have more than one species. Later, the Bibliography of Rare Books of Beijing Library recorded more than 280 kinds of rare books collected by Fu, which was the most personal collection in the same period.

Maybe it is because it has too many books, maybe it is because it has lived in the north for a long time and is not used to the soil and water in the south, maybe it is because it is old and weak. In short, after the 1937 Lugouqiao Incident, Fu Zengxiang did not go south with a large number of intellectuals, but stayed in old Beijing with dozens of old literati, and continued to collect and sort out ancient books.

Since he left politics and stayed at home, Fu Zengxiang really, as he himself said in "Reading in Seventy", "ignored political ways" and no longer cared about politics. But what is Fu Zengxiang's mood in the face of Japanese and puppet rule? So how did this emotion dominate him to write this important historical and political article?

In fact, like all the old literati stranded in enemy-occupied areas, they may have the feeling of "prisoners" that Zhou Zuoren said at the beginning of the incident. Since we can't escape to the rear area with the troops of the National Government and the Kuomintang, and since we want to stay in the enemy-occupied areas as "prisoners", we must live, even if this life is "unbearable", but life will continue. Therefore, they may not cooperate with the Japanese puppet government for the time being, but with the development of the war, it is impossible to see when China's army can be restored, so it is impossible for the Han people who have experienced 300 years of alien rule in the Qing Dynasty to confront the Japanese colonists for a long time. Especially with the establishment of Wang's puppet regime, after all, it was ruled by Han people. As for their support from the Japanese, is the Chongqing regime without American background and the Yan 'an regime without Soviet support? So after a period of running-in, not only did Zhou Zuoren, a new scholar, finally get into the water, but even Fu Zengxiang, who had not asked politics for many years, could not escape the cooperation with the Japanese puppet government. This change in mentality can also be seen in Fu's Seventy Readings. He said: "In recent years, wars have continued. Yanbei is the old capital and a new bureau has been set up. The government is a group of people, and salt is an old friend. Hebei, Buhui collection, * * * seeks the country, and tells each other. Fortunately, the Netherlands saw the original work. " There are indeed a large number of Fu Zengxiang's old friends and classmates among the members of the puppet government, which can be clearly seen from the attendance list of Fu Zengxiang's seventieth birthday held in Huairentang on August 27th. 194 1. At the top of this list is Wang, whose position at this time is the "Chairman of the North China Government Affairs Committee" appointed by the Nanjing Wang Jingwei government.

Based on such complicated interpersonal relationship and living environment, Fu Zengxiang went into the water one year earlier than Zhou Zuoren. 1938, first attended the Japanese-controlled East Asian cultural agreement conference, served as vice president, and then served as president of the conference. However, Zhou Zuoren joined the East Asian Cultural Agreement one year after its establishment. He is only the director and assessor of the association. However, there is a slight difference. After all, Zhou Zuoren was an administrative post of a puppet government, and Fu Zengxiang was at best a social sage in Peiping at that time.

Of course, this does not mean that Fu Zengxiang is a person without national solar terms. Although he has long been divorced from politics, he is an old politician who has experienced the Reform Movement of 1898, participated in the Revolution of 1911 and intervened in the May 4th Movement. Therefore, in his bones, in the depths of his thoughts, he still has a strong national consciousness, which can be obtained from his "Daming 300 Anniversary Card".

The change of dynasties between Ming and Qing Dynasties once gave China intellectuals a great shock in thought. Han intellectuals have a strict ideological tradition of "distinguishing between foreign countries and summer" and are unwilling to be ruled by ethnic minorities in any case. During the more than 200 years of Qing dynasty, the conflict between Manchu and Han accompanied the whole process of Qing dynasty. By 19 165438, when the Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Qing Dynasty, its most attractive slogan was ". This shows how tenacious the Han intellectuals are in their national mentality. This ideological tradition has also profoundly influenced intellectuals like Fu Zengxiang, so at the beginning of this monument, I particularly emphasized that "I have tasted all the historical records, and the best person under the three generations of the world is Ming" (see Zhang Fuqiang's article "What is the meaning of the three-hundred-year memorial card of Ming Sizong's martyrdom", published in the Journal of the Forbidden City Society in China. If we look closely at the meaning of the following passage, it seems that we can get some enlightenment from it: "Gai Taizu set out in cloth to drive away the Mongols, sweep away the heroes, recover China, and start a business with the Han Dynasty. "This is obviously an affirmation of the orthodox historical position of the Ming Dynasty from the standpoint of nationalism.

In the eyes of China intellectuals since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Ming Dynasty died at the hands of Manchu in order to subjugate the country. However, if the Ming Dynasty died at the hands of Li Zicheng, it was only a struggle between Han people, but a change of dynasty, and Zhujiajie became a dynasty named Li. Therefore, while hating the Manchu rulers, these Han intellectuals deeply regret that the peasant army in Li Zicheng has achieved nothing, and constantly sum up and reflect on the fundamental reasons why the peasant army in Li Zicheng failed to complete the dynasty replacement.

Li Zicheng's peasant army was not enough to undertake the historical mission of dynasty replacement, because many of its policies did not conform to the general trend of historical development at that time, especially its tendency of rogue made it have no consolidated rear, so once the Qing army entered the customs and the army was besieged, Li Zicheng's peasant army was vulnerable and dispersed in a hubbub after a short occupation of Beijing. This is from the perspective of the peasant army.

As for the dominance of the Ming Dynasty, the last monarch of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen, was a rare monarch in the Ming Dynasty, especially in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and a rare diligent and loving Lord. However, his 17 mourning did not save the demise of the Ming Dynasty. He is the most unusual monarch in the history of China. For this, Fu Zengxiang felt deeply sorry in this inscription he wrote. He wrote: "So far, he has shipped foreign wine in four cases, resolutely sacrificed his life for the country, and made a suicide note to plead for the people. His tragic mind has been deeply rooted in people's hearts and has been worshipped for thousands of years. Therefore, although the Ming society has been around for a long time, its significance is almost British, and it did not die with the breaking of mountains and rivers. This man is a just man and should be respected by future generations. With blood, we stayed in the forbidden park for a long time. We are afraid of our own eyes and would rather not miss it and not think about it, so it doesn't matter if we spread virtue? " His remorse and resentment are beyond words.

The demise of the Ming Dynasty has its inevitable logic. According to Fu Zengxiang's analysis in this inscription, it is self-evident that after Wanli, the rulers of the Ming Dynasty who enjoyed the peaceful and prosperous times for a long time did not make progress, but enjoyed the inheritance created by their ancestors. Ming Shenzong actually lived in the palace for decades. Regardless of state affairs, separating the monarch from his subjects failed in discipline and discipline. Following the short life of Ming Guangzong, the cowardice of Ming Xizong, the party and Yan Temple alternately played politics, poisoned loyalty, dispersed people's hearts, and suffered from internal and external troubles, one after another for a while. The Ming dynasty has reached a critical moment when luck runs out. At this time, Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty inherited the unification, purged the political affairs, called on the old people to get rid of traitors, rebuild military discipline, and strive to make great achievements. Unfortunately, the political vitality of the Ming dynasty has been declining for a long time, and the general trend has gone. Disputes within the imperial court broke out one after another, and the surrounding ethnic minorities, such as Nuzhen, took advantage of the ineffectiveness of the Ming Dynasty in recent years and began to consciously win the Central Plains. Coupled with years of famine, tax revenue is not reduced, people are in dire straits, bandits are everywhere, and crises are everywhere, leading to catastrophic deaths. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty, whose luck had run out, did not survive because of the wise Emperor Chongzhen. Emperor Chongzhen only slowed down the demise of the Ming Dynasty at best. So Fu Zengxiang couldn't help sighing: "Oh dear! With diligence and love for the people, I have been worried about my work for 17 years, and I have not been able to escape. It is sad that he died in a crowd of three feet, but his ambition is fierce! "

Then, Fu Zengxiang also raised a meaningful question. He said: "When Shen Jia was old, Lingwu and Datong fell one after another. When Li Jiantai invited him to move south, the emperor summoned his ministers and said, "The monarch is dead. What shall I do?"? "Know, patriotism, already settled. Besides, there is a saying that any thief will not hurt the people. The purpose of fan Mencius' "people are more important than kings" is to show eternal righteousness. The death of one of the emperors can boost the loyalty for a while and inspire the immortal people. Therefore, at that time, many people generously went to righteousness, but those who climbed the Long Live Mountain and caressed the trees of the former dynasty never felt sorry for the old days and wanted to knock nine shovels, but they also expressed their grief. " If we know a little about the history of the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, we can see that when the so-called party and state leaders at that time fell in succession in the three northeastern provinces and North China, who, like Emperor Chongzhen, refused to move the capital and persisted in resisting, and did not hesitate to inspire all the people to rise with their own lives? What's more, when did these so-called anti-Japanese leaders who fled to the rear give care and comfort to countless compatriots who could not escape from their homeland? So in this sense, if we must say that Fu Zengxiang's inscription has any practical significance, it is that he expressed his protest against the Kuomintang government's non-resistance policy through rather obscure words, and expressed his indignation and contempt for the Kuomintang army's retreat in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, regardless of the lives of the people. His ideal anti-Japanese leader should at least adhere to the spirit of local anti-Japanese war like Emperor Chongzhen, and should not leave the people and flee to the rear area. Second, like Emperor Chongzhen, when his subjects have to be "prisoners" of the enemy, he has to express the belief to the enemy in different ways that the land can be occupied by you at will, but I hope you won't hurt my people.

Unfortunately, history did not happen as expected by Fu Zengxiang. Fu Zengxiang and other cultural old people who stay in old Beijing can only live according to their own logic. Maybe they didn't think that China's Anti-Japanese War would end after eight years because of the changes in the international situation, not to mention that their behavior in the occupied areas was regarded as a cultural traitor. Through Fu Zengxiang's "Memorial Card for the Three Hundred Years of Ming Sizong's Martyrdom", we can see the depressed mood of a cultural old man in the occupied area, which also provides a new reference for us to re-understand the mentality of China cultural people during the Anti-Japanese War.