Officials have no strength to unite, have less courage to do things, lack patriotism, and cannot be encouraged even when the opportunity is critical.
In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion broke out, their slogan was "Fu Qing and Destroy the Ocean", the Boxers demolished churches and slaughtered foreigners, which immediately caused dissatisfaction among the Western powers.
The Western powers made many negotiations with the Qing Dynasty, but they did not get satisfactory results, so the Western powers formed the Eight-Power Alliance and launched a war of aggression against China.
On the surface, they wanted to eliminate the Boxers, but their actual purpose was to invade China and gain more benefits. When Cixi heard that the Eight-Nation Alliance had invaded China, she began to flee with the Guangxu Emperor, leaving only the ministers to discuss things with the Western powers.
During the invasion of China, the Eight-Nation Alliance naturally encountered resistance from the Qing army, but the Qing army suffered heavy losses, and the Eight-Nation Alliance directly hit the Forbidden City, and they sat on the emperor's dragon chair to take a group photo.
The Eight-Nation Alliance was robbing treasures and money in the Forbidden City, and they inadvertently opened a vault door, which they thought was gold and silver jewelry, but it was full of weapons.
Italian Admiral Simon counted these weapons and found that they were the most advanced weapons in the world at that time, such as the 70 mm caliber Krupp gun and the Loudenfeld rapid-fire machine gun.
Simon also found that the weapons were so new that none of them had ever been used. At this time, a doubt arose in Simon's mind, when the Qing army fought with them, it did not use these advanced weapons, but used old-fashioned weapons, and even used large knives and spears.
After the Opium War, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty believed that the fundamental reason for the defeat of the Qing Dynasty was that weapons were not available, so the Qing Dynasty began to set up a foreign affairs movement, develop weapons, and even buy the world's most advanced weapons to equip the Qing army.
However, the Qing army took advanced weapons and always lost battles, which was not a matter of martial arts, but of the Qing Dynasty itself. The advanced weapons purchased by the Qing Dynasty from the world were not placed in the hands of the Qing army and played its value, but were piled up in the arsenal of weapons and became a pile of broken copper and rotten iron.
Even when the country is in danger of survival, these weapons have not been used, and the reasons behind this are really thought-provoking!
The Englishman Puland commented on this: "Officials have no strength to unite, have less courage to do things, lack patriotism, and although things are in danger, they cannot be encouraged by constant cowering." ”
What he meant was that the Qing army had no ability to unite, just like a scattered sand, afraid of death in battle, and had no patriotic heart, so it always lost the battle.
The rulers of the Qing Dynasty believed that they had lost the battle because weapons were not good, and now that they had weapons, they did not use them, did they not consider their own problems? The Qing Destroyers were not the Eight-Nation Alliance, but themselves!
References: Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, Boxer Rebellion, etc