How terrible was the "Ding-E-Qi Famine" between the first year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty and the fourth year of Guangxu?

In the feudal society of more than two thousand years, in addition to the spell of three hundred years, there was a similar phenomenon at the end of the dynasty, that is, natural disasters. At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, in addition to wars, floods, locust plagues and droughts continued year after year in the Central Plains. In order to promote the productivity of the Central Plains, Yongle immigrants appeared.

There were also disasters in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and even a mysterious natural disaster broke out. Big bang at the maharaja factory? The dead were all naked, so among the three unsolved mysteries in nature, but the biggest drought and famine occurred in the late Qing Dynasty? The famine in Ding Wuqi? .

Ding Wu famine was a rare drought and famine between the first year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1875) and the fourth year of Guangxu (1878). The disaster affected Shanxi, Zhili, Shaanxi, Henan, Shandong and other provinces, causing100000 people to starve to death. Ceng Guoquan, then governor of Shaanxi Province, called it? A disaster that hasn't happened in more than 200 years? .

This strange disaster happened because the Westernization School developed in the middle and late 1970s in 19? Westernization Movement? The tax increase was urgent. Before that, a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement broke out. The Qing government transferred troops from all over the country to reward the three armed forces, and agriculture lost its labor force.

Coupled with taxes and wars, grain production has been continuously reduced, but after the first opium war, the circulation of opium has not been eliminated. Instead, local officials openly allowed opium cultivation to enrich themselves. In order to meet the food demand of the province, officials stipulated that only food could be imported, but not exported.

1875, after the drought began, the provinces watched the fire from across the bank, and the disaster situation further expanded, affecting even the capital, and the disaster situation in North China was even more serious. Ceng Guoquan said at the memorial service. There are thousands of miles of bare land and five or six million hungry people, which is a catastrophe that has never happened in ancient times.

The court gave a solution, that is, porridge, but even the porridge farm set up in Beijing could not keep up with the birth speed of the victims. In order to control the flow of victims, all provinces are closely monitoring. Even so, compared with the rich south of the Yangtze River, millions of victims poured in, and riots broke out again after the surge of refugees.

Li Hongzhang, who has always advocated foreign aid, also accepted foreign aid for the first time and began to vigorously rescue the disaster, but all of them were mainly based on military pressure. In less than a year, I ate everything I could eat, even Guanyin soil. As the disaster continues to expand, people become food.

At first, the victim only used the deceased as food. In order not to let their loved ones be eaten, they even dare not be buried. In the third year, walking but weak living people became food. In just three years, North China has become a hell on earth. According to "Yonghe County Records", young women are neglected, and the beautiful ones are only 1000 yuan, and the inferior ones are worthless, and their lives are not as good as chickens and dogs.

It is difficult to make great efforts in disaster relief. It is also because the Qing government spent all the money from the national treasury on the Westernization Movement and the daily expenses of Cixi. There was a famous couplet about Li Hongzhang at that time. Hefei, the prime minister, is thin and Changshu, the farmer, is barren? .