Chen Yichuan
In August 1884, Gu Ba led the French fleet to invade the anchorage of the Luoxing Pagoda on the Minjiang River, completely annihilated the Fuzhou Ship Administration And Marine Division, and successfully withdrew from the minjiang river mouth, which has always attracted wide attention because it was the real beginning of the Sino-French War and the first foreign operation of the modern coastal defense force in the late Qing Dynasty. However, the current discussion of the French fleet fighting with the Fuzhou Ship Administration And Marine Division or the Minjiangkou Battery is almost always a "one-sided" narrative of the French army's great victory and the Qing army's fiasco, and few people have noticed that the Nagato Battery at the mouth of the Minjiang River in this battle also injured a French warship; and in the operation of the French Marines landing to occupy the Qing battery and blow up the artillery, only the Nagato Battery successfully blocked the French attack, becoming the only fort at the mouth of the Minjiang River that was not completely destroyed after the war. Naturally, the battle of Nagato Fort could not rewrite the fact that the Qing army suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Minjiangkou, and it was far from the "killing of the lone pull" in various rumors; however, a careful review of the performance of Nagato Fort in this battle may lead to a further understanding of the reasons for the defeat of the Qing army.
Construction and equipment of modern forts at the mouth of the Minjiang River before 1884
First, let's trace the construction history of the modern fort at the mouth of the Minjiang River. After the Opium War, until 1874 (the thirteenth year of Tongzhi), no new forts were built at the mouth of the Minjiang River; thereafter, in response to the Sino-Japanese military confrontation caused by the Japanese invasion of Taiwan, the construction of the fort at the mouth of the Minjiang River was put on the agenda. In a note on July 6 of that year, Li Henian, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, Wen Yu, the general of Fuzhou, and Wang Kaitai, the governor of Fujian, described their plan for the defense of the Minjiang estuary: The plan was to build forts at The Hujiang River, Ma'anshan, Nagato, JinpaiZhai, and the north and south banks (i.e., the Min'an Waterway) at the Hujiang River, Ma'anshan, Nagato Mountain, and the north and south banks (i.e., the Min'an Waterway) under the responsibility of Lin Shoutu, who had been in charge of military affairs in Zuo Zongtang's army.
The shape of these forts can be found in the investigation materials of the British army at that time. There is a "dark fort of 4 guns" in the drawings of the British investigation data, and through its written records, it is judged that it is the existing Xiangyu Fort in Xiangyu Village, Monkey Island Township, Changle District, Fuzhou, and the structure of the fort is also in line with the "Cave of The Mountain of Qi" mentioned by Li Henian and others in the recital. According to these image materials and the existing Xiangyu Fort, it is not difficult to see that the fort built at the mouth of the Minjiang River during this period is called "Western-style", and the design is actually quite primitive. Xiangyu Fort only has four vaulted triple tunnels with a depth of about 5 meters to install artillery, and there is no room for artillery rotation. The guns of these forts were also mainly front-loading smoothbore guns, which posed almost no threat to modern warships.
The 1870s Min'an Waterway Fort in British survey materials
Xiangyu Fort, that is, the "4 Gun Battery" in the lower left of the picture above (the author took a photo)
The emergence of a truly modernized fort at the mouth of the Minjiang River was not until 1876 (the second year of Guangxu) when He Jing took over as the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang. Roughly from 1880 (the sixth year of Guangxu), the second round of construction of forts began at the mouth of the Minjiang River, which were also the main force against the French fleet in 1884. Regarding the specific situation of these forts, in addition to the French report after the war in 1884, the more detailed records seen so far include W. Lang, a British naval officer who later joined the Beiyang Navy. M. Lang) reported on January 24, 1882, and He Jing's recital on the twenty-fourth day of the first month of the ninth year of Guangxu (1883). Lang Weili's report mentioned that at this time, most of the second batch of forts built at the mouth of the Minjiang River were nearing completion, but artillery had not yet been installed. He Jing's recital is a very clear record of the location, number and construction time of this batch of forts:
"On February 15, 196, Guangxu built two dark forts at the iron mouth on the south bank of Min'an, three dark platforms in the cross-island area, a new iron cannon gate dark platform on the north bank, a black platform in the iron mouth, a military room, a medicine storehouse, a wall, and a trench... On November 16, 1966, the construction was also started, and a semi-revolver Mingtai Gate, four iron core dark platforms, five dark platforms on the top of the dark platform, and one door of the Mingtai on the top of the sub-library and a medicine storehouse, a soldier's room, and a wall were built in Nagato... All works were completed on 26 September 2007. ”
The document also records the fujian authorities' purchase and distribution of artillery for the Minjiangkou Fort: "In addition to the cannons purchased by the Shipbuilding Bureau and the Armament Bureau, the huge cannons should be used and measured, and the German minister Li Fengbao was entrusted to cast four Meidang cannons and one Meidang cannon with twenty-one lives and set up medicinal ammunition at the German factory. It has been distributed to Hong Kong and Shanghai, and the fujian distribution ship will go to pick it up. According to Zhang Peilun's subsequent recitals and French reports, all 5 Krupp guns were equipped with Nagato Battery.
In his report, Lang Weili said that the gold medal fort opposite Nagato Fort was still an old-style battery, and He Jing's compromise did not mention the construction of the fort in the gold medal area. The acting minister of shipping, Zhang Peilun, mentioned in the guangxu decade (1884) leap may 25 that "only Nagato has five German cannons and two gold medal cannons", and the post-war French report also mentions that "the gold medal battery on the opposite shore underwent an important transformation at the beginning of this year (referring to 1884), especially it had two 17 cm Krupp guns that could block the river surface together with the White Fort (referring to Nagato Fort)." It can be known that the gold medal battery equipped with two 17 cm Krupp guns was just completed in early 1884, and in the summer of the same year, the Battle of Minjiangkou broke out.
Despite the construction of a number of modern forts in the Min'an and Jinpai waterways, the firepower of the Minjiangkou Forts before 1884 was still relatively weak. According to the post-war French report, the forts on both sides of the Gold Medal Waterway during the Battle of Minjiangkou had a total of 7 Krupp rifled guns (the same as the historical records of the Chinese), and the batteries on both sides of the Min'an Waterway had about 15 rifled guns of various types, of which only a 21cm Krupp gun of the old Nagato Fort of more than 20 centimeters and a 21cm Armstrong gun of the Min'an Tianluowan Battery (probably an 8-inch front-loading rifled gun, similar to the guns of Taiwan's Anping Yizaijincheng). The specific types of rifled guns equipped with the gun emplacements in the Min'an area are not recorded in the Chinese materials, and He Jing only said that "the cannons purchased by the Shipbuilding Bureau and the Military Uniform Bureau were placed separately." According to post-war reports, the forts were equipped with a number of front-loading rifled guns produced by the British company Fawcett & Preston.
Fawcett-Prieston, a long-established foundry company in Liverpool, England, used a patent from British artillery designer Alexander Breukry during the American Civil War to mass-produce pig iron gun bodies, pig iron or wrought iron reinforced hoops for export to the Confederate Army. Although the report of The Orphan Pull is isolated evidence, judging from the fact that the Fujian authorities acquired a large number of various old artillery pieces due to the Sino-Japanese confrontation during the Li Henian era, it is not impossible for the Minjiangkou Fort to be equipped with such artillery. If this is the case, then the true power of these pig iron wire rifled guns from more than twenty years ago is highly doubtful. In 1882, after investigating the Minjiangkou Fort, Lang Weili concluded that "a small group of warships has every hope of successfully occupying Fuzhou", and it can also be seen that the firepower of the Minjiangkou Fort is quite weak.
As for the protagonist of this article, Nagato Fort (to distinguish it from the Nagato Denkoyama Fort, which was built in 1890 and preserved to this day, hereinafter referred to as the Nagato Old Fort), it is an outlier among the Minjiangkou Forts, which are generally weak in firepower. It not only monopolized 5 of the only 7 large-caliber Krupp guns in the mouth of the Minjiang River before the Sino-French War, but also had a relatively good defensive power. A 1882 report by Luang Ville stated that it was "made of about 6 feet (1.83 m) thick concrete, with four dark gun positions for heavy artillery, but no artillery is currently installed." The Post-War French Report of 1884 also gave it a fairly positive assessment, stating that "the White Fort (i.e., the Old Nagato Fort) on the north side of the Gold Medal Waterway is the most feared and best protected battery along the entire Minjiang River; its main armament is a 21 cm Krupp gun mounted on the exposed battery and four 17 cm rifled guns installed in a dark battery near the riverbank, which can block the passage between Ile de la Passe and Ile de la Salamis." Its dark turret is made of a very strong concrete". The relatively strong firepower and defensive power of the old Nagato Fort may also be an important reason why it was able to perform in the Battle of Minjiangkou.
Nagato Fort at the Battle of Minjiangkou
The Battle of Minjiangkou from August 23 to 28, 1884 ended in the complete defeat of the Qing army, the Fuzhou Ship Administration Fleet was almost completely destroyed, and the Minjiangkou Battery failed to sink the French ships, but the old Nagato Fort in this battle was not lacking in positive performance. First of all, Nagato Battery injured the French cruiser La Galissonniere on the 25th, and this incident can be found in almost all Chinese and foreign historical sources, such as He Ruzhang, Mutushan, and He Jingzhi on july 17 of the lunar calendar of the Guangxu Decade: "Nagato Battery destroyed an imported French warship on the fifth day of the first month, that is, it sailed out of the exit"; on August 30, 1884, the lone telegram: "On the 25th, ' The La Galisania had been shelling each other with that white battery, and its front main gun was hit by a 21-centimeter shell, which exploded a large hole in the superstructure, forcing it to move its anchorage. ”
Perhaps because the defeats of the Qing forces at the Battle of Majiang and the Battle of Minjiangkou were too difficult to accept, the results of the old Nagato Fort in injuring French ships have since been exaggerated and interpreted in various official documents and folklore. The curriculum vitae of the late Qing dynasty officer Kang Changqing (Kang Changqing served as the pipe belt of the Nagato Battery gun team in the Battle of Minjiangkou) in the National Museum's "Jin Ou Without Defects - Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of Taiwan's Restoration", which describes the results of the old Nagato Battery in injuring the French ships as "the import of the French ship Ke Ne Xinni ironclad ship, which was repelled with Nagato cannons, and injured more than thirty of its helmsmen and sailors", which is still an exaggeration of the number of French casualties on the basis of facts; and Yang Jinbao, a gunner of Nagato Battery (or Gold Medal Battery) who appeared after the Republic of China, used the "Missing Mouth General" The legend of the shelling and killing of the lonely man has already belonged to the pure novel interpretation.
Compared with the legendary results of the wounding of the French ships, the fact that Nagato's old battery successfully resisted the french Marines' attack on August 28 seems to have attracted much attention in both civilian and academic circles. From the time the French fleet left the Ma River on the 25th, the French ships sent marines to disperse the Qing troops along the Minjiang River, occupy the forts and blow up all the artillery, so as not to prevent the Qing forces from using them to bombard the French ships sailing under them, and also to demonstrate to the Qing court. On the morning of the 25th, 26th, and 27th, the French captured various batteries in the Min'an waterway relatively smoothly and blew up the artillery; but when the French ships marched to the Gold Medal waterway, they encountered more fierce resistance.
The 1885 American issue of Purchases of United States Naval Institute, Vol. 11, No. 2, translated a paper published by French naval officer Chabaud-Arnault in the French journal Revue Maritime et Coloniale, "The Battle on the Min River," which detailed the situation of the French and Qing forces at the Gold Medal Waterway. According to the records in the text, the rifle fire of the Qing army near Nagato and the Gold Medal Fort was very accurate, and the French army spent a lot of time cleaning up the wooden ships that the Qing army sank in the Nagato waterway to block the French ships, resulting in French casualties. The highest-ranking French officer killed at the Battle of Minjiangkou, Lieutenant de vaisseau Bouët-Willaumez (son of French Admiral Louis Élua Buette-Vilaumets), was killed with rifles by Qing soldiers hiding around the gold medal battery on the right bank of the gold medal waterway on the 27th by the gunboat Vipère.
Captain Buette Vilomez, the most senior officer killed by the French army in the Battle of Minjiangkou
Despite some casualties, the French Marines managed to capture the Gold Medal Battery and blow up the artillery. However, at the old Nagato Fort on the left bank, the French were not so lucky. Chabaud-Arnault recounts: "On the left bank [of the Gold Medal Waterway], the landing squad destroyed some of its artillery, but soon fell into danger: the landing sites were covered with electric shock mines, and the enemy stragglers occupied extremely favorable terrain, and the fire from the warships could not completely destroy them." Our troops withdrew from the ship and failed to complete the task of destroying the battery. ”
The old Nagato Fort thus became the only fort in the Minjiangkou after the Battle that was not completely destroyed. Peking University Library's "Map of the Two Forts in Fujian Province" in the "General Map of the Forts in Minkou" records: "During the Battle of Majiang in July, the French ships came out from the inside and attacked with all their might, and our cannons were all outward and could not be attacked, so that they were destroyed, but the Nagato Fort was fortunate to survive, but the gun port was injured in the twenty-first life, and the outer triad wall was also damaged." ”
In fact, the vast majority of French casualties in the Battle of Minjiangkou occurred during the battle with the Minjiangkou Fort on August 25-28. Some Western sources, especially the book "The French at Foochow", written by U.S. naval officers, which are often quoted in discussions about the Battle of Minjiangkou, state that "it is clear that the French army has destroyed every fort." In addition, the report did not explicitly state that the old Nagato Fort was not occupied, so the battle of the Old Nagato Fort on the 28th was often ignored. This also led to the erroneous claim that all the forts at the mouth of the Minjiang River were occupied and destroyed by the French army often appeared in the relevant discussion of the Battle of the Minjiang Estuary.
However, although the French did not occupy the old Nagato Battery, the French ship's shelling accurately hit and rendered the 21 cm Krupp gun installed on the exposed battery and rendered it ineffective. Chabaud-Arnault mentions in the paper: "'Duguay-Trouin' and 'Triumph' (Triomphante) (... Mute and destroy the fort equipped with two 14cm guns (should refer to the gold medal battery, the caliber of the gun is wrong - citation note), punched a large hole in the ironclad dark battery of the white fort (i.e., the old Nagato battery), and destroyed all the guns installed on the adjacent exposed battery, including a 21 cm caliber Krupp gun. Also in the face of the shelling of the 19cm and 24cm naval guns of the "Dujusluin" and "Triumph", the four 17cm Krupp guns in the dark platform of the old Gun Fort of Nagato after the war were "four guns as before", but the 21cm Krupp guns installed on the exposed battery had been damaged, and the difference in the protective power of the exposed battery and the dark battery was evident.
The 21cm Krupp gun of Nagato Reidai (i.e. Nagato Old Fort) photographed during the Republic of China period may have injured "La Calisania" (1931 Naval Journal, Vol. 3, No. 7)
From "Dark Platform" to "Bright Platform": Reconstruction of Nagato Fort after the Sino-French War
After the Battle of Minjiangkou in 1884, the Qing authorities feared that the French fleet would attack again, and quickly started the reconstruction and addition of the fort. According to zhang Peilun and others on the third day of October of the same year, at this time, the old Nagato Fort and the Gold Medal Fort had been rebuilt or rebuilt, and the Otter Fort near the Gold Medal Fort and the Factory Stone Fort (also known as the Yashi Fort, that is, the Wenshi Mashan Fort in Wenshi Village, Tantou Town, Changle District) were added to block the Meihuagang waterway on the south side of Langqi Island (also known as Wuhu Island). In addition, Yang Changtao, then the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, also mentioned in his recital on June 20 of the eleventh year of Guangxu (1885) the reconstruction of the fort on the north and south banks of Min'an, the gold medal fort, and the construction of the loach port fort. Since then, many forts have been added in the Minjiangkou area, including the Electric Light Mountain Fort equipped with two 28cm Krupp cannons, and the firepower is no longer the same as in 1884.
The damage to the old Nagato Fort was relatively mild in the Battle of Minjiangkou, and Zhang Peilun and others mentioned in the compromise of July 28 of the 10th year of Guangxu that the old Fort of Nagato "although the cannon is damaged, it can still be repaired; the four second cannons are the same." The more detailed image data of the old Nagato Fort found so far were all drawn or taken after the Sino-French War, including the Nagato Light and Dark Fort Map (painted around 1886) in the "Map of the Two Forts in Fujian And Xiamen", the sketch attached to the 1887 Russian Naval Investigation Report, and the two original photographs of the old Nagato Fort collected by the author (one taken in 1899, the other taken at an unknown time). All the details of the old Nagato Fort in these images are identical, proving that the old Nagato Fort was not remodeled from 1886 until the end of the nineteenth century. Judging from the more detailed "Map of the Two Forts in Minxia", the old Nagato Battery after the Sino-French War was, from west to east, two 17cm Krupp guns installed separately on two exposed batteries, two 17cm Krupp guns installed side by side on the exposed turrets, a dark battery with four guns, and a 21cm Krupp gun installed on the exposed turret. Compared with the previous records of the old Nagato forts in the Sino-French War, the dark batteries of the four guns in the eastern half and the exposed batteries with a 21 cm Krupp gun should be the existing buildings before the Sino-French War, while the three exposed batteries in the western half were added after the war. After the end of the Qing Dynasty, the old Nagato Fort also undertook the function of firing salutes at warships of various countries on the Minjiang River, so it was also called "Salute Platform".
The original photograph of the old Nagato Fort in the author's collection: (left) The Salute Cannon of the Old Nagato Fort, taken in 1899; (right) The shooting time is unknown
Part of the original photo, the dark fort of the old Nagato Fort
Interestingly, not all of the four 17cm Krupp guns on the newly built exposed battery of The Old Nagato Fort were new, and two of them were actually moved from the Dark Fort. On July 28, 28 of the 10th year of Guangxu, Zhang Peilun and others mentioned that the old Nagato Fort was "only the old built dark platform is outward-looking, focusing on a corner, and it is impossible to lose the magic of the foreign cannon spinning four... Now that the sand is stacked, it is proposed that two statues are still dark, and the mouth door will be changed less to make the left and right flexible; and the two statues will be changed to the Bright Platform, so that they can look at the three sides." Two months later, Zhang Peilun and others reported the results of the renovation of the old Nagato Fort in a compromise on the third day of October: "The gun mount of the Nagato gun position is also flexible for repair. The cannon of Nagato was initially rotated to thirty-five degrees, and then changed to a rotation of more than 100 degrees. The two Western French artillery pieces were far less than a hundred feet and were vulnerable to enemy attacks. Originally, there were four artillery joints, but now the two Mingtai are still close together, although they are limited to the terrain, they are not comfortable in the end. The so-called "old dark platform" and "original four-gun joint" obviously refer to the four gun emplacements built before the war.
From the subsequent public opinion maps and photos, it can be inferred that Zhang Peilun's so-called "changing two statues to bright platforms" did not remove half of the original dark forts, but drew two of the four 17cm Krupp guns installed in the dark forts and installed them on the newly built exposed forts. Around 1886, the "Map of the Two Forts in Fujian And Xiamen" and the 1889 Sa Chengyu's "Illustration of the Haikou Forts in the North and South Oceans" also confirmed that only two 17cm Krupp guns were left in the dark battery of the old Gun Fort in Nagato after the transformation. In addition to the two guns removed from the dark battery, the other two 17 cm Krupp guns on the exposed battery should have been added in 1885-86, but no relevant records have been found.
The construction and renovation of the old Nagato Fort between 1880 and 1886 is also reflected in the model of the fort's guns. According to the "Map of The Forts of the Coastal Provinces Along the River" written by Ye Zujue, commander of the Beiyang Navy from 1899 to 1900, the equipment of the old Nagato Fort at this time included "four light guns of the seventeenth special caliber of the twenty-five times the caliber of the long Kelubu" and "two of the seventeenth special caliber of the twenty-five times the caliber of the long Kelubu breech heavy artillery". Check the list of 19th-century Krupp artillery sold by the EssenKrupp Foundation in Germany, which can be seen in "17cm schw. The K. L/25, C/80, Küsten (17 cm25 caliber C/80 heavy coastal cannon) exported only 6 guns to China in 1884, while the "17 cm K. L/25, C/80, Küsten" (17 cm 25 caliber C/80 coastal cannons, without the word "heavy") exported 6 to China between 1880 and 1881. From this, it can be inferred that the "Seventeen Special Caliber Twenty-five Times Caliber Body Long Kelubu Breech Heavy Artillery Two Statues" of the old Nagato Fort were installed after 1884. The old Nagato Fort is now nowhere to be found, and only the remains of the walls and triad fragments that may have belonged to the fort can be found on the walls of some houses in Nagato Village, Lianjiang County; the original position of the fort is roughly close to the pier of the Nagato Special Bridge across the Minjiang River.
epilogue
After the Battle of Minjiangkou, there was a striking agreement between Chinese and foreign commentators on the reasons why the Qing army failed to play a greater role in the battle, believing that the angle of fire of the dark battery was limited and it was difficult to shoot at the French warships sailing from upstream. For example, the "Map of the Two Forts in Fujian And Xiamen" said that "the French ships came out from the inside and attacked with all their might, and our guns were all outward, and they could not be attacked around, so that they were destroyed." Zhang Peilun, the acting minister of shipping who personally experienced the Battle of Minjiangkou, went a step further, believing that "the Changjin Fort was fortified by the mountains, and the disease was that the territory was too narrow and the work materials were not strong, whether it was not in line with the Western style, nor did it conform to the Chinese style."
In fact, the advantages and disadvantages of dark and exposed forts were also a highly controversial topic in Europe in the 1860s and 1870s, and there were not a few countries that adopted both designs. Sir William Jervos, Britain's most famous military engineer of the 19th century, mentioned in his 1868 academic report "The Application of Coastal Defense and Iron Components in Military Fortifications": "The advantage of the chest wall battery (that is, the exposed battery) is mainly due to its wide horizontal firing range. Whether to trade the gunner's safety for a wider horizontal firing range, or to accept a narrower horizontal firing range and higher defensive power, is a matter of opinion and often differing views. Judging from the performance of Nagato Fort in the Battle of Minjiangkou, although it is true that "our artillery is outward and cannot be attacked around", this battle also reflects the defensive power of the Dark Fort than the Exposed Fort. The argument that the defeat at the Battle of Minjiangkou completely negates the design of the Dark Fort is inappropriate. The failure of the fort to play a greater role in this battle was at least an equally important reason than the problem of its own design. Like the Fuzhou Ship Administration and Marine Division in the Battle of Majiang, the gap in the quality and quantity of artillery between the Qing and French sides has long determined the outcome of the duel between the Minjiangkou Battery and the French warships.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhong Yuan
Proofreader: Luan Meng