At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Xinjiang has also been in turmoil. Before Zuo Zongtang regained Xinjiang, the Qing dynasty basically lost control of Xinjiang. In the past ten years, Agubai from Central Asia has established the "Hongfu Khanate", which has caused disaster to Xinjiang and the people of all ethnic groups have suffered greatly.
When the demons were dancing wildly, Xu Xuegong, a descendant of the Shubian soldiers, led the masses of all ethnic groups to build their own vigilante groups, saving more than 100,000 people from poison and persisting until Zuo Zongtang recovered Xinjiang. It also eliminated the armed caravans sent by Tsarist Russia and prevented the Tsarist conspiracy to invade Xinjiang.
Xu Xuegong's ancestral home was Wuwei in Gansu Province, his grandfather was a Qing army garrison, and his family was in Nanshan Tuntian to provide food for the Qing army. Xu Xuegong practiced martial arts from an early age, and his father was an officer, so he had a lot of prestige in the township.
Beginning in 1864, Xinjiang was in turmoil, and the rebel generals Suo Huanzhang and Tuo Ming established themselves as kings and launched an attack on Dihua, or Urumqi. The remaining Qing army was unable to protect the people at all, and seeing that Nanshan was about to be slaughtered and plundered by the rebels, Xu Xuegong stood up.
He formed vigilante groups of Tunding and refugees to build fortifications and repelled many rebel attacks. Fortunately, the tunding civilians often practiced martial arts, were no strangers to the use of weapons, and even had their own cavalry, which had quite strong combat effectiveness.
Refugees of all ethnic groups who could not bear the oppression of the rebels came to Nanshan one after another, and the total number reached more than 100,000. Xu Xuegong expanded the vigilante group to thousands of people, became an armed force to be despised, repeatedly defeated the rebels, and enabled hundreds of thousands of refugees to survive.
In 1867, when Agubai entered Xinjiang from the Kokand Khanate in Central Asia, he first invited Xu Xuegong to attack the rebels in Dihua in the name of counterinsurgency, promising to hand over southern Xinjiang to Xu Xuegong. Who knows, as soon as Dihua was defeated, Agubai revealed his original face and established the so-called "Hongfu Khanate".
This khanate was only the hongfu of Agubai, but it was the nightmare of the broad masses in Xinjiang, and under his dictatorship, Xinjiang fell into an unprecedented dark rule, and even the Russian consul felt that it was a hell on earth.
Xu Xuegong did not give in and engaged in a long battle with Agubai, making it impossible for Agubai to control the whole of Xinjiang. In 1871, Xu Xuegong joined forces with several other armed forces to attack Dihua and rescue a large number of people in the city.
For Tsarist Russia, although Agubai is an illegal regime, it is certainly easier to deal with than the Qing Dynasty, which is conducive to the next step of the plot. Therefore, the Russians ostensibly did not openly support Agupa, but secretly gave a lot of ammunition. Caravans were also sent to probe the truth.
Xu Xuegong was well aware of the Tsarist Russia's thoughts and led his men to eliminate their reconnaissance caravans, making it impossible for the Tsarist Russia to deeply interfere in the situation in Xinjiang.
In 1876, Zuo Zongtang marched into Xinjiang, Xu Xuegong was appointed as a guerrilla in Changji, actively cooperated with the left army, counterattacked the Agubai rebels from the rear, killed its marshal He Lu, and alleviated the pressure on the frontal battlefield.
After the recapture of Manas City, Xu Xuegong took on the heavy responsibility of providing military food and protecting the grain routes until Zuo Zongtang completed the great cause of recovering Xinjiang.
In these more than ten years, Xu Xuegong, like Zhang Yichao's rebel army, cared about the country and protected hundreds of people from surviving the chaotic world. The action against Tsarist Russia eventually brought Xu Xuegong to be dismissed from his post and returned home, and only reinstated more than a decade later.
References: Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, Volume 454, Biography of Xu Xuegong