The "new army" at the end of the Qing Dynasty was not very strong, and although it was scum externally, its internal combat strength was still strong. The contribution of the "New Army" in China's history is mainly the role of promoting the evolution of China's political map and the Xinhai Revolution. The forces of the "New Army" were mainly Yuan Shikai's Beiyang New Army and Zhang Zhidong's Hubei New Army.
The "New Army" is the Beiyang New Army, the two major forces
The contribution of Yuan Shikai's "New Army" in Chinese history was mainly in politics, the impact on the civil war, and the impact on military development, and the study of his "New Army" in the use of Western weapons and the training methods of Germany and Japan. Taken together, new weapons and new training methods. All these have provided reference for the reform of China's military strength in the future.
After his death, Duan Qirui and others, who were cultivated by his military education ideology, also made great contributions to China's territorial integrity. For example, Xu Shuzheng sent troops to Outer Mongolia.
However, the ideas it teaches are all traditional zhongjun thoughts, especially mixed with the traditional concept of "righteousness". The characteristics of Yuan Shikai and Li Hongzhang are very similar, and their minds are relatively new and their thinking is advanced, but in fact, the core old ideas are still in the head. For example, learning the western set of political terms and ideas is nothing more than a model.
Both he and Li Hongzhang understood that it was difficult to rely on the old set of political methods and terminology to earn a rapid rise in status. Only with new ones can you quickly improve. For example, with the so-called political reform, Yuan Shikai's faction quickly seized power in the three eastern provinces. At the same time, the "New Army", like the "Beiyang Forces", got the biggest share of the military cake.
The main characteristics of the Beiyang New Army and the Hubei New Army in military training
In the process of training the army, Yuan Shikai's main purpose was to cultivate personal power and make it a tool for the rise of personal power.
Yuan Shikai was much worse as a person. However, it is undeniable that Yuan Shikai's political sense of smell is very sensitive, and in the more than ten years of Korea, he has fully demonstrated his talents, but through the performance before and after the "Sino-Japanese War", Yuan Shikai is a person who absolutely does not "take risks".
Before the "Sino-Japanese War", he returned to China, worked as a logistician during the war, and proposed to train troops at small stations after the war. At every critical moment, Yuan Shikai can choose the right path. Moreover, the image of "private use of troops" is very strong, which has built the Beiyang New Army into "its own world" and shaped the capital for the future seizure of power.
But it was also because Yuan Shikai's political sensitivity was particularly strong that he finally misjudged that China needed an emperor, thus distinguishing the general situation in the world, causing the Beiyang warlords to begin to act independently and lose their centripetal force.
Zhang Zhidong's military training in training, the main teaching of soldiers to understand why to be soldiers, more is how to resist foreign insults. The ideas of the professors are how to strengthen the country, how to resist foreign invaders, and so on.
Therefore, after Zhang Zhidong, the "new army" was actually occupied by "revolutionary ideas". Zhang Zhidong became a tanhua at the age of 26, entered the official field earlier, and in the Sino-French war, Zhang Zhidong and Zuo Zongtang cooperated sincerely, and their performance in the fight against France was very good.
In terms of military resources, Yuan Shikai was half reorganized from the old army, and two-thirds of the new army recruited by Zhang Zhidong were recruits and student soldiers. Therefore, Zhang Zhidong's new army became the vanguard of overthrowing the "Qing Dynasty". Yuan Shikai's new army became mainly a personal political tool.
Why did the Beiyang New Army and the Sichuan New Army embark on the road of opposing the revolution?
The two most reactionary new armies in the new army in the whole country are the Beiyang New Army and the Sichuan New Army.
There are many members of the Alliance in the Sichuan New Army, all of whom are in power. The result? The Sichuan New Army was not soft on dealing with the Road Protection Movement and various revolutionaries. Similarly, the Beiyang New Army was also the backbone of the Qing government's response to the Hubei New Army. So, why did the Beiyang New Army, the most powerful of the new armies, become the ones who were most opposed to the "annihilation of the Qing Dynasty"?
The fundamental reason for this is Yuan Shikai's way of running the army: only attaches importance to weapons, only attaches importance to loyalty and righteousness, and especially prevents the entry of revolutionary ideas and the entry of members of the new army who are students (most of whom are revolutionaries).
You know, who was most likely to be a revolutionary party at that time, all Qing officials knew--those who stayed in school, who went to new-style schools. Therefore, the main leaders of the Beiyang New Army, such as Duan Qirui, Cao Kun, and so on, were not such people.
74% of the leading group of the Beiyang New Army are from the Tianjin Wubei Academy, and you can't insert students with revolutionary ideas at all, and the teaching characteristics of the Wubei Academy are to be loyal to the king and prohibit Western political ideas from entering.
The Armed Forces Academy and the Beiyang New Army require officers and soldiers to do the same as long as they do the same: you can study weapons well, do a good job in military training, and improve military skills.
At the same time, in terms of battalion system and life, Yuan Shikai's new army adopted the characteristics of the Xianghuai Army. Physical surveillance is a little more intense, and you can't spread new ideas between people who aren't very close.
At the same time, why the Beiyang New Army was eventually classified into warlords of various factions was also caused by Yuan Shikai's conscious cultivation of factional ideology during the New Army period, and they could not be united. With factions, it is even more difficult to form a unified mind between factions, and they are all mutually defensive. Only Yuan Shikai is a leader of the faction.
At the same time, the whole atmosphere between the north and the south is different, and the revolutionary thought, anti-Qing ideology, and loyal monarchy ideology in the south are particularly strong, and the north is relatively much worse.
To sum up, because of the above reasons, if you have a revolutionary party and revolutionary ideas, you will also be "pickled to death." So, basically, the role is very limited. The revolutionary party personnel in the Beiyang New Army were limited to the role of delivering intelligence and talking. Instead of forming an organizational system like the Hubei New Army, there are as many opportunities to publicize various anti-clean-up ideas in peacetime.