Sun Tzu said: "Soldiers, the great affairs of the country, the place of death and life, must not be unaware", this sentence, as the first sentence of Sun Tzu's art of war, emphasizes the importance of the army in the country. As a traditional land power state in history, China's feudal government has always paid attention to the construction and development of the army, in the brilliant history, a variety of advanced military ideas and new tactics have emerged in an endless stream, and the army has also experienced from weak to strong to large group operations, forming a development strategy based on riding and shooting.
▲ Eight Banner Soldiers
However, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, this traditional core idea of the army was challenged, and China's cold weapons had no ability to fight back in the face of the developed hot weapons in the West and the cannons of the ship, and could only fall into a passive situation. Under the circumstance of deepening imperialist aggression step by step, people of insight in China have been forced to change their thinking from attaching importance to technology to attaching importance to institutional changes, and the gap between China's military thinking and the West is also narrowing.
▲Situation diagram
This article will analyze the characteristics of the late Qing Army in the process of modernization from the perspective of army reform, and bring its own summary and reflection.
I. Passivity in the Process of Army Modernization
The changes in China's army in the late Qing Dynasty were closely related to the social status quo of semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and their changes were not carried out consciously and actively, but were carried out passively and gradually under the stimulation of domestic and foreign wars, especially anti-aggression wars. Western scholar Fairbank's shock response model applies precisely to the late Qing Army revolution, arguing:
China's traditional order has always been relatively stable, but the powerful shocks of the West have inevitably altered China's economy and politics, injecting China with the power to modernize and lead to permanent change. In the face of this shock, China's response has been to gradually introduce elements of "permanent change" while abandoning the traditional "cyclical" model of change and embarking on the road to modernization.
This thesis is reflected in China's military reform, which has a more historical vertical and holistic sense. The decaying Eight Banners and Green Battalion soldiers could not resist the fierce offensive of the Taiping Army, so they formed the Xiang Army in a hurry, and after the Xiang Army became large, it became a trend of great tailing, and then formed the Huai Army, and the formation of the local army opened a precedent for army reform.
▲ Local army - Xiang Army
When the Qing army, including the Eight Banners of the Beijing Division, was defeated by the British and French combined forces, and the local troops were stronger than the central authorities, forming a situation of strong branches and weak cadres, the Qing court decided to carry out the training of the whole army, and in the Eight Banners of the Beijing Division, the training army formed by the Green Battalion, and the defense army renamed from the Yong Battalion, it was equipped with foreign guns and cannons, carried out Western-style training, and carried out partial modernization.
After experiencing the disastrous defeat in the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, the Qing army woke up like a dream and realized that only foreign guns and cannons were introduced and Western-style exercises were carried out, and that the army's organizational structure and the quality of officers and men could not achieve the goal of strengthening the army and insulting the army without abandoning the old and making new changes. Therefore, it was decided to comprehensively reform the old military system, imitate Western law, and train a new type of army, and finally realized comprehensive modernization. The reason for this situation is mainly due to the modernization of China as a whole, which is a social transformation that has taken place passively under the impact of colonialism and the influence of the international environment. This passive social transformation, which lacks the impetus for self-adjustment, determines that the army as the state apparatus can only passively and gradually modernize under the stimulus of war, especially the anti-aggression war.
▲The Battle of Jiawu Sea
Second, the resistance of feudal society and the dynamics of change are intertwined
Under the influence of the compromise and ignorance of the late Qing government, the degree of China's semi-colonial and semi-feudal society continued to deepen, and the late Qing army naturally encountered a lot of resistance in the process of transforming into modernization. However, under the huge national crisis, if there is no change, if the army is not strong, the country will be uneasy, and under the vigorous promotion of some people of insight, the reform of the army in the late Qing Dynasty is also dynamic, and the interweaving of the two contradictions has formed the characteristics of the army reform process.
▲ Military reform training in the late Qing Dynasty
(1) The financial conditions of the Qing government continued to deteriorate, but a strong army was still the consensus of people of insight
In the process of army formation, it is necessary to recruit soldiers, pay food and provide logistics, all of which are in the final analysis only one word: "money". According to relevant documents, Yuan Shikai planned to recruit 30,000 more soldiers and purchase the required ammunition, and asked for about 6 million taels of silver. According to this estimate, the standing army of one town needs at least 2 million taels of silver, while the formation of the 36-town army in the whole country requires at least 72 million taels of silver. Such a huge military expenditure is indeed difficult for the central and local governments to bear when their financial resources are exhausted and they cannot make ends meet. Economic backwardness and financial constraints were actually the main reasons why the 36-town army training plan could not be completed.
▲Beiyang New Army
However, in the face of economic constraints, the whole country, the governors of the provinces, and even the central government of the Qing court still regarded the reorganization of the army and the economy as the top priority of "constitutional reform." In 1903, the Qing government established the Training Department to strengthen the leadership of the new army, and in September of the following year, the training department formulated the "Army Camp System And Salary Charter" with reference to the Western system. At the local level, Zhang Zhidong used the strength of the whole province to set up a self-strengthening army, and the army adopted Western-style exercise methods to train multiple arms into an army. In the late Qing Dynasty, the formation and training of the new army, although it was resisted by layers of resistance, was still implemented, which became an important symbol of the army's complete removal from the traditional battalion system and the comprehensive realization of modernization.
▲The former site of the War Department of the Qing Government
(2) The backward industrial system and scientific and technological strength restrict the modernization speed of the army
In the late Qing Dynasty, the self-sufficient natural economy was still dominant, the industrial base was very weak, and the science and technology were quite backward. Although the Westerners have established a number of modern military industries, most of them are small in scale, lack of rudimentary equipment and raw materials, and weak in technical strength. Therefore, in the production of arms, not only is the quantity limited, but the quality cannot catch up with the level of the advanced Western countries and cannot meet the needs of the troops. Therefore, it is still necessary to import a large number of new guns and ammunition from foreign countries, so that silver flows out and is held hostage by foreigners.
(3) Cultivate new-style talents, but military talents are still stretched thin
In the face of unprecedented changes in the past three thousand years, although the leaders of the Western-style faction attach importance to modern military education in line with the guiding ideology of "the whole army is insulted and the talent is the first," they have successively opened a number of military academies and sent military students to Europe and Japan for further study to cultivate military talents. However, due to the strong resistance of feudal society and the influence of various factors, the number of military academies and the dispatch of military students is limited; although military school graduates and cadets who remain in the new army account for a considerable proportion, there are still a number of old officers who are born in the military and lack modern military qualities who hold important posts and do not meet the requirements of military training and combat.
▲Beiyang Wubei Academy
Third, it is limited and bound by the ideological level
In the late Qing Dynasty, although the Qing government was constantly impacted by industrial civilization from the West, it still adhered to the Confucian traditional Taoist ideology and pursued feudal and stubborn theories such as "the sky is unchanged, the Tao is unchanged", which is reflected in the reform of the army, and its influence is obvious. The Qing government's adherence to traditional thinking in military training not only played a role in controlling the army, but also dragged down the process of its modernization.
(1) The influence of the guiding ideology of "secondary school as the body, Western learning as the use"
Needless to say, the guiding ideology of "using Chinese bodies for western purposes" pursued by the Western-style faction has played a positive role in promoting the resistance of the troops to the introduction of foreign guns and cannons and in carrying out Western-style exercises. However, the leaders of the Western-style faction believed that the "middle body", including the army establishment system, was unnecessary and unchangeable. As Li Hongzhang said:
"China's civil and military system is far above the Westerners in everything, and it is impossible to reach the firearms alone."
▲Li Hongzhang
Therefore, when part of the green battalion was reorganized into a new army, it turned back to adopting the Xiangjun camp system of the Qi family army originated from Qi Jiguang. In addition, the Huai Army and some Xiang Armies already had infantry, cavalry, artillery, and similar engineers, but they did not change to a composite army system and stuck to a single battalion system for a long time. It was not until after the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War that the Qing government realized that it was necessary to change the old organizational structure, but during this period it had lost twenty or thirty years of precious time, which was far behind the Japanese Army, which began to modernize almost at the same time.
(2) Deeply influenced by the ideas of feudal emperors
In China, the poison of feudal imperial thought is extremely deep, and there is no shortage of people who covet the emperor's throne, and in the late Qing Dynasty, Yuan Shikai is one of the representatives. When he was training the newly built army and the Beiyang standing army, he always regarded the feudal patriarchal thinking as the basis for building and managing the army. He also formed gangs, cultivated private parties, and created a cult of personality for him, so that the Beiyang Army had a strong feudal and private nature, and eventually became a tool for Yuan Shikai to oppose democracy and republicanism and restore the imperial system.
▲Yuan Shikai
The New Army in the South, because it accepted a group of students with democratic and republican ideas as officers and soldiers, through their propaganda and education, gave the army a certain bourgeois character, acted as the vanguard of the burial of the Qing Dynasty, and wrote a glorious page in China's modern history. However, a considerable number of the generals who commanded these armies could not shake off the influence of feudal imperial ideology and the influence of Japanese militarist ideology, and later degenerated into local warlords, dragging the army into the abyss of years of melee, casting a shadow over the modernized armed forces, losing their way, and ruining their future.
▲ Southern New Army
rethink
The modernization of the late Qing Army was essentially influenced by a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and thus had the characteristics of tortuousness, arduousness and complexity. In the face of the crisis of the enemy coming from the sea, people of insight have realized the weak combat effectiveness of the Chinese army and are in urgent need of change. However, in the process of army reform, these people still insist on using the traditional idea of loyalty to the king and patriotism to carry out spiritual control, so that the modernization of the army is obviously with a strong personal color, and its maintenance has become a powerful weapon of feudal rule. In the end, the incomplete transformation of the army formed a consistent character, and everyone regarded the army as their own gun rather than the guardian of the state, leading to a pattern of warlord melee.
On the other hand, Japan, which also faced Western aggression, could not compete with the Qing Dynasty in terms of land, population, and financial resources, but under the unified action of the state, the army was the army of the state rather than the army of the individual. The Qing court was not wrong to train the new army in terms of military system, the key was the lack of restraint and restriction ability for the army, making it a force that developed according to its own logic without restriction, and eventually became a gravedigger of the Qing government.
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Draft History of the Qing Dynasty
The Complete Works of Zeng Wenzheng
The Complete Works of Li Hongzhang
"Qing Shi Lu"
Compilation of Imperial Political Codes
"The Beginning and End of the Preparation of Yi Affairs"