The Survival Wisdom of the Beiyang Era (241): The ass determines the head.
In the winter of the twenty-first year of Guangxu, Li Hongzhang received the latest war report and knew that the day of the final decisive battle was coming. The Japanese army even took the old ben, the sword pointed to Shandong's expeditionary combat army to draw the only two remaining army divisions in the mainland, Rongcheng Bay as a landing place, fifty troop carriers under the escort of the combined fleet transported more than 34,000 Japanese troops to this place, after all, thirty kilometers away in Weihaiwei, moored the Qing Dynasty's daunting Beiyang Marine Division, this is a replica of the attack on Lushun, but the target of the hunt made the Japanese army feel weak, that is, the Qing Dynasty once ranked among the world's top ten Beiyang Marine Division. In the face of the oppression of the large army, the Qing Dynasty temple also reacted quickly, and there were more than 20,000 troops in shandong defense, but according to the inherent characteristics of the Qing army, they were under the jurisdiction of two people, namely Li Hongzhang's jurisdiction over 5,000 people stationed on Liugong Island and Weihai Weijun Port, and the other 16,000 Qing troops were under the control of Li Bingheng, the governor of Shandong, as a new sharp figure in the Guangxu camp, which was Li Hongzhang's real opponent.
In fact, before the Japanese army moved, Li Hongzhang received information that the Japanese army would land in Rongcheng Bay, so he pulled down his face and asked Li Bingheng to send troops, and asked Lord Li to strengthen his defenses in a deliberative tone. After all, Li Hongzhang had the support of Cixi, although he protected his own concubines, but there was nothing he could do about Li Bingheng's troop deployment, Yantai released nine thousand people, Laizhou released four thousand people, even Penglai also put three thousand people stationed, as for Rongcheng Bay, no one. Wouldn't Li Bingheng know the importance of Rongcheng Bay to Weihaiwei, but it was his Responsibility to lose Weihaiwei, and if he lost Yantai, it would be he who would be the inspector of Shandong who washed his neck and waited to be questioned.
After receiving Li Hongzhang's telegram, Li Bingheng sent fifteen hundred people over, not so much as soldiers, but rather civilian workers, these so-called river defense troops, each battalion of three hundred people, have a common weapon, either bird wrench, or carry a gun, and the flat burden and hoe are the most, which belong to the equipment level of dragging legs in the Qing army. At this juncture, seeing that Li Bingheng was still perfunctory, Li Hongzhang could only think of his own way, the Qing army of the Weihai Land Fort squeezed out three hundred people to rush to the garrison, eighteen hundred people faced with the pressure of the Japanese army, it was obvious that it was a cup of water, five days later, the Japanese army landed, more than thirty thousand army plus the combined fleet, the destruction of the Beiyang Marine Division was nothing but a beast.
In the end, if the Qing Dynasty has always boasted of the impregnable Gyeonggi Coastal Defense, why there are no soldiers to defend at a critical juncture, the question is also very simple, because the Qing army has been transferred, which is also the robber logic that buried the Beiyang Marine Division, that is, the dead are more important than the living. The vast majority of these Qing troops, who should have been stationed on the coast of Shandong, were transferred to Fengtian, so that the Fengtian Defense Line gathered more than 100,000 elite Qing troops, although the strength of the Japanese army was several times that of the Japanese army, but still did not dare to mobilize a soldier and a pawn, because this place was the qing Dynasty's mausoleum. Therefore, although the Japanese army took a defensive position in Fengtian and was far enough away from these mausoleums, a group of military ministers of the Qing Dynasty also knew that Shandong urgently needed the help of the Qing army, but no one was willing to look for scolding, after all, in the eyes of the Qing Dynasty temple, these dead people in Fengtian were far more important than the living people of the Beiyang Marine Division in Shandong, which was the bandit logic of the Qing court.