Few people should have heard the name Bai Qiwen, because he was an American, because his father was a French officer at the beginning, so he was also very interested in war, and he used to travel all over the place, until the Qing Dynasty, he liked it here, because he liked war, and the Qing Dynasty was frequently in war at that time.
In fact, he is somewhat similar to the current mercenaries, because he can get a lot of benefits from it, he also served as the captain of the foreign gun team, helping the Qing government to attack the Taiping Army, when the Qing government was already struggling against the Taiping Army, and should have been grateful for his help.
Under the leadership of Bai Qiwen, the foreign gun team won many victories in the battle with the Taiping Army, which played a key role in the battle situation, but he was also ignorant, because he looked down on Chinese, whether it was soldiers or officials, he looked down on them, probably because of the successive defeats of the Qing Dynasty.
He and Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and other people are very big contradictions, the most important thing is that the Qing government owed them military salaries, resulting in Bai Qiwen more dissatisfaction with the Qing court, and later he and many officials of the Qing Dynasty were very poor relations, he also repeatedly asked Yangfang of Songjiang Daotai for military salaries, but he has not been successful, and finally snatched 40,000 taels of silver in anger.
Li Hongzhang was furious when he heard the news, and immediately dismissed Bai Qiwen from his official post, and he certainly would not stop there, because he was not willing, and after finding that there was no opportunity for the official to be reinstated, he decided to defect to the Taiping Army, and as a result, the Taiping Army was defeated miserably, and Bai Qiwen was arrested in the process of fleeing, and Li Hongzhang naturally took strict care of him.
In order not to give him a chance to escape, he also specially sent Bai Qiwen to Suzhou, but in the storm that suddenly encountered on the way to escort, Bai Qiwen fell into the water and drowned, Li Hongzhang meant this in the report, but Bai Qiwen's death was actually very suspicious, and many people suspected that Li Hongzhang designed to drown him.
At that time, the Qing government signed many unequal treaties under the coercion of various countries, including one article, that is, the Americans enjoyed consular jurisdiction over crimes committed in China, that is, the Qing government had no right to punish Americans for crimes committed in the Qing Dynasty, and their own consuls must be responsible for handling this matter.
And Bai Qiwen naturally knew this, so he was worried even after being arrested by the Qing court, and even took this opportunity to make a big fuss in the prisons of the Qing Dynasty, saying that he was an American and that you had no right to detain me. Li Hongzhang was also a heavy minister of the Qing Dynasty, and he could not bear to hear this sentence.
He wrote to the imperial court that the thief was plotting to kill China and that bai Qiwen would be executed, and in the end he also used this excuse to successfully get rid of his suspicions.