In 1864, with the Xiang army led by Zeng Guofan and Zeng Guoquan capturing Tianjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was overthrown.
However, after that, there were still many armed forces active in various places and continued to fight against the Qing army. The largest armed force is the Twister Army. The Twister Army emerged in the north in 1852 and was not pacified until 1868. In the past 15 years, there have been many famous generals in the Twist Army. The most famous of these was Zhang Zongyu, the King of Liang.
One
Zhang Zongyu was a native of Bozhou Yanheji (雉河集, in present-day Woyang County, Anhui Province), and a nephew of Zhang Lexing, the founder of the Twist army. Zhang Zongyu's family environment is good, although it is not a rich and noble family, but there are still more than 1,000 acres of good land at home. In 1852, after Zhang Lexing launched the "Eighteen-Paved Juyi" at the Pheasant River Collection, Zhang Zongyu gave up studying and defected to Zhang Lexing, becoming his master and advising him.
Obviously, Zhang Zongyu is not a person who is satisfied with being a master in the rear. Soon, Zhang Zongyu charged into the front-line battlefield and was repeatedly promoted with bravery and good fighting, becoming an excellent general who took on one side.
At that time, the Taiping Army was mainly active in the south, and the Twist Army was mainly active in the north. They maintained close contact with each other, and had cooperated in many battles, and Zhang Zongyu also received the title of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for his outstanding performance. In the spring of 1864, when Tianjing was in danger, Zhang Zongyu was ordered to lead his troops to the south to support, but unfortunately he was intercepted by the Mongol cavalry of Prince Senggelinqin, as well as the E, Yu, and Anhui armies, and failed.
After the fall of Tianjing, Zhang Zongyu led the Twist Army and the remnants of the Taiping Army, inheriting the legacy of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and fought bravely in the north.
In order to show that he was in line with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Zhang Zongyu used the era name and title of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and was given the title of King of Liang. In addition, Lai Wenguang was made the King of Zun, Zhang Yujue was made the King of Youwo, and Ren Zhu was made the King of Lu.
Two
The Qing court dispatched troops in an attempt to annihilate all of Zhang Zongyu's troops. In 1865, Prince Senggelinqin led the Mongol cavalry to launch a fierce attack on Zhang Zongyu's troops. The monk Gelinqin was a fierce general who had experienced hundreds of battles, and once captured the famous generals Lin Fengxiang and Li Kaifang of the Taiping Army, and was known as "the last prince on horseback of the Qing Dynasty".
In the face of the monk Greenqin, Zhang Zongyu did not panic, nor did he fight with him hard, but took advantage of the strong mobility of the twist army and adopted the "siege tactics" to gallop across the northern plains, inducing the Mongol cavalry led by the monk Greenqin to follow behind him and run for his life. Zhang Zongyu was very clever, and after entering the Shandong Campaign, he deliberately ran to the border of the Zhili region, which frightened the Qing court for a long time. The Qing court was worried that Zhang Zongyu would repeat the scene of the Taiping Army's Northern Expedition that year, and blamed the monk Gelinqin for not fighting well, and twisted the north.
The monk Greenqin jumped violently, lost the calm that a commander should have, and led an elite cavalry to chase and beat Zhang Zongyu wildly, so that the main force was far behind. Zhang Zongyu saw that the time was ripe and set up an ambush in Caozhou, Shandong Province, to ambush the monk Gelinqin. In this battle, the monk Greenqin's entire army was destroyed, and he himself was beheaded in a wheat field by a young general of the Twist army, Zhang Pixiu.
The death of the monk Greenqin made the Qing court feel like a mourner. After that, the Qing court lost the last of the Eight Banner Army to rely on, and had to rely on the Xiang army of Zeng Guofan and the Huai army of Li Hongzhang.
Three
In 1866, the Qing court, after unsuccessfully dispatching Zeng Guofan to attack, appointed Li Hongzhang as the minister of Qincha, and unified the Xiang army and the Huai army to besiege Zhang Zongyu together. Zhang Zongyu and Lai Wenguang decided to act separately. One, led by Zhang Zongyu, entered the Shaanxi-Gansu region for the Western Twister Army; the other, led by Lai Wenguang, still fighting in the Central Plains, was for the Eastern Twister Army.
After Zhang Zongyu led more than 30,000 Western Twister troops into the Shaanxi-Gansu region, he faced the Xiang and Huai armies, which were superior in weapons and equipment and numbers, calmly coped with them, and did not lose the wind at all, but instead teased Li Hongzhang on the palm of his hand, and was embarrassed.
In 1868, the Eastern Twister Army led by Lai Wenguang was attacked by the Huai Army and was struggling. Seeing this, Zhang Zongyu, with the strategy of "encircling Wei to save Zhao", immediately marched eastward, crossed the Yellow River, and came straight to the capital, and the soldiers arrived in Baoding, Hebei, as far as the Lugou Bridge. The Qing court panicked and urgently mobilized various large armies to enter the capital Qinwang.
Unfortunately, due to the defeat and capture of Lai Wenguang's army and the collapse of the Eastern Twister army, Zhang Zongyu's military operations became meaningless, but instead he was in danger of falling into the siege of the Qing army, so he had to go south to Shandong.
In this battle, Li Hongzhang was severely interrogated by the Qing court, and in order to rescue the poor, he removed his eyes, stripped off his yellow coat, and stripped him of the title of lieutenant.
Four
After that, Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang raised their spirits and besieged Zhang Zongyu. In June of that year, Zhang Zongyu fought several battles with the Xiang and Huai armies in Shandong, but failed. On June 28, Zhang Zongyu encountered liu mingchuan, Guo Songlin, and Pan Dingxin, the main forces of the Huai army, on the way to retreat, and suffered heavy casualties. Zhang Zongyu only led more than 20 people to break through the siege.
After the war, Li Hongzhang reported to the imperial court that Zhang Zongyu had fallen into the water and died. However, Zuo Zongtang was tit-for-tat, saying that Zhang Zongyu fell into the water and died lacked evidence. The two argued about this for a long time.
According to the Qing History Draft, Zhang Zongyu's whereabouts are unknown: "In the Battle of Chiping, the whole army was defeated. (Zhang Zongyu) led more than ten horses to break out, and did not know the end. The "Cangxian Chronicle" says that Zhang Zongyu lived for more than 20 years in anonymity nearby: "After the defeat of Chief Zhang, he fled to Kongjiazhuang in the northeast of Yizhi, changed his name to Tong Zishi, and died of illness more than twenty years later, that is, buried in Qizhuang, and the soil still exists." When he was dying, he told people: 'I Zhang Zongyu also. ”
Which statement is more accurate?