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The Second Battle of Dagukou in the ninth year of Xianfeng (1859) was a rare victory of the late Qing Dynasty over the great powers, and it occurred during the Second Opium War.
In 1856, Britain and France sent troops to China under the pretext of the "Yaro" and "Horse Priest" incidents, respectively. On May 20, 1858, Dagukou Fort was captured.
Dagukou is the gateway to Beijing and Tianjin, the fort, the Qing army collapsed in its entirety, the British and French allies almost did not resist on the 6 days after the army came to Tianjin City, June 22 and June 27, the Qing government signed the "Tianjin Treaty" with Britain and France.
The Treaty of Tianjin did not satisfy the appetite of Britain and France, and a year later, Britain and France took the opportunity of the exchange of treaties to provoke war again, and the Second Battle of Dagukou broke out.
The Anglo-French forces dispatched a total of 11 ships to cover the landing of more than 1160 marines, planning to quickly seize the battery and drive straight in as the last time.
It should be known that in the first Battle of Dagukou more than a year ago, the British and French allies only took more than 2 hours to occupy the fort, and the Qing army fell to the ground, and only paid the price of more than 10 people killed.
From 3 p.m. when the first artillery sounded a fierce battle to midnight the next day, the coalition army paid 94 people killed, 369 people were wounded, the ships were sunk 4, 5 were seriously wounded, and 2 were captured at a huge cost, but the result was a big defeat and loss, not only failed to occupy Dagukou, but was defeated by the Qing army on both land and water, all the way to Hangzhou Bay, the Qing army only 32 casualties, the exchange ratio of more than 1:10.
The result of the war was reversed, the Qing army seemed to be possessed by the great powers, and the invincible British and French allied forces became simmering stove cats.
What is the reason that the Qing army, which is a layman in foreign wars, suddenly rises up and defeats the old powers that dominate the world.
It boils down to two sentences: the importance of the Qing Dynasty and the light enemy of Britain and France.
The importance of the Qing Dynasty
The first Battle of Dagukou was a brittle defeat for the Qing army, which made the Xianfeng Emperor determined to rectify the defense of Dagukou, after all, the gateway land of Beijing and Tianjin could allow the enemy to land at will, and no dynasty would allow such a thing to happen.
It was a matter of choosing which minister to be responsible for, and XianFeng set his sights on the monk Greenqin, the prince of Horqin.
Why did he choose the monk Greenqin, one is that he was born in Horqin Banner, Mongolia, and was the prince of Horqin Zasakro County in 1825. The Emperor of the Qing Dynasty was not only the Great Khan of Mongolia, but also the royal family had intermarried with Mongolia for a long time, which could be regarded as a family.
At this time, the qing dynasty's clan disciples could hardly pick out any decent talents, and Qishan, Yishan, and Yijing during the First Opium War disappointed the imperial court, and the monk Gelinqin was already outstanding among the eight banner disciples.
Second, even if it is selected among manchu officials, this prince can be regarded as capable. The monk Gelinqin made many meritorious achievements in the battle against the Taiping Army, and defeated Lin Fengxiang and Li Kaifang. In the fourth year of Xianfeng, the monk Gelinqing had been promoted to the title of "Prince of Bodol Katai" by military merit, and was given the title of "Turkdo Batulu", and his prestige was shocked in The Sea.
In this way, the monk Greenqin became the best candidate, appointed as the new minister of Chincha, supervised military affairs, and was fully responsible for the defense of Dagukou.
The monk king was a man who understood military affairs, and after some inspection, he could not help but be frightened, the soldiers of the Dagukou Fort were tired and weak, the defense was not repaired, and if the enemy attacked again, he would not be able to resist at all.
When the new official took office with three fires, he immediately rectified it, and built thirteen forts on the east and west banks of the higher-lying Shuanggang port, equipped with a number of artillery pieces, including six heavy guns, two weighing 12,000 pounds and four weighing 10,000 pounds.
The original forts on the north and south banks of Dagu have been destroyed, and the monk king ordered them to be rebuilt and reinforced, and two 12,000-kilogram heavy artillery, six 10,000-kilogram heavy artillery, and two 5,000-pound heavy artillery were installed.
In this way, Dagu and Shuanggang Forts can echo each other, much more elaborate than the original.
Then it increased its strength, increasing the number of defenders of the fort from 1,600 to 3,000, and at the same time transferring 5,000 men of the Eight Banners and Horses outside Guanwai as a mobile force to enrich the defenders' defenses.
With soldiers and artillery, training was indispensable, and the monk Greenqin had strict requirements for training, requiring soldiers to meet the standards he required within a time limit. It was also stipulated that the Admiral must live in Taku from February to October every year, and must be on the front line in time of war. Other guerrilla, metropolitan, garrison, and qianzong officers must accompany the battalion to conduct defense.
After the actual battle, the British and French coalition forces admitted that "the Chinese was comparable to the well-trained European army in terms of aiming and shooting and operating artillery", which was somewhat excessive, but the combat quality shown by the Qing army in the Dagukou Battle was indeed far beyond the past.
In actual combat, it is also necessary to see the commander's on-the-spot command ability.
In order not to give the British and French the excuse to enter the army, the Xianfeng Emperor had a ban on "don't shoot first, in order to take into account the overall situation", this order was like a tight curse on the heads of the Qing generals, and the reason why the first Battle of Dagukou was crisply defeated, the forts did not dare to take the initiative to open fire was one of the reasons.
The situation on the battlefield is changing rapidly, and the enemy has to wait for the other side to fire first, and the first hand has been lost, especially for the Qing army, whose equipment and soldiers are inferior to those of the opponent. In the First Battle of Takukou, british and French warships such as the batteries first shelled and then fired their cannons to resist, but it was too late.
The Second Battle of Dagukou was different, and the monk king also sent a note to the British and French commanders and asked them to follow the arrangement and land at Beitang. However, the British and French forces refused, drove the ships directly into the river, and began to break down the barriers in the river where the Qing army was located.
If they had waited for the demolition to be completed, aimed at the fort and fired before returning fire, the first hand would have been gone.
The monk king immediately made a decision, decisively ordered the firing of artillery, and adjusted the position of the cannon, gathering fire on the flagship of the commander of the enemy fleet, Hebu, after several rounds of shelling, the flagship was sunk, Hebu was seriously injured, the formation of the enemy fleet was disrupted, and the defeat was exposed.
Even if the commander was wounded, the Coalition forces were not willing to lose, and they sent marines under artillery fire to forcibly land in an attempt to take the battery and reverse the defeat.
At this time, the commander-in-chief personally saw the practical results when he came to the front line, he personally led 2,000 Mongol cavalry to supervise the battle, galloping back and forth in the rain of bullets and bullets, and none of the officers dared to slacken off or dare to escape.
In the past, as long as the coalition army charged, most of the Qing army lost the courage of close combat, dropped their weapons and turned their heads and ran, this time it was different, under the supervision of the monk king, the officers and men fought hard to defend the fort, even if the direct subordinate admiral Shi Rongchun and the deputy general of the Dagu Association, Long Ruyuan, were martyred in the fierce battle, they refused to give in a little, and the British and French coalition forces were terrified.
In the Second Battle of Dagukou, the prince of Horqin, The monk Greenqin, was appointed to the defeated army and was ordered to be in danger, and a series of measures effectively boosted the defense of Dagukou and won a rare victory against the great powers.
Another important reason for the victory of the Battle of Takukou was that the Anglo-French coalition itself, if they were not proud of the enemy, would not have ended up in such a disastrous defeat.
The Combined Anglo-French Fleet had several cruisers and was powerful in firepower. However, when the Coalition attacked, the mouth of the Baihe River, where the Tagukou Fort was located, was very shallow and could not be accessed by large and medium-sized warships, so the British only sent 11 shallow-water warships to attack.
These warships are actually gunboats, all belonging to the British Crimean type, although the rank is different, but the largest of them, the Hunter, only has a displacement of more than 1,000 tons, while 9 of them are small Crimean gunboats with a displacement of about two or three hundred tons.
These small gunboats can actually be called gunboats, they themselves are shallow water gunboats designed for the Crimean War, the wooden structure is not protected, the main purpose is to provide near-shore fire support, originally not used to bombard the gun emplacements, in the face of land battery fire, only under the cover of large and medium-sized battleships can survive effectively.
The French did not even send gunboats, only marines.
If the reason why only the gunboats were sent dared to attack the batteries that were waiting for a tight line was due to conditions, then Major General Hebu's choice of flagship can be seen as his light enemy. Instead of choosing the 860-ton Cormorant or the 1,042-ton Hunter as flagships, he raised his commanding flag on the Woodpecker.
The Woodpecker is 32.3 meters long and 6.7 meters wide, and is a small gunboat with a displacement of only 284 tons, which means that if it is hit, it is likely to suffer heavy losses.
Heb ignored all this, and in the early morning of June 25, he took the lead on the Woodpecker and led 10 other gunboats into the mouth of the White River.
Hebu may have wanted to take advantage of the cover of night to launch a surprise attack, but the Qing army had been strictly waiting to say, the key British and French coalition forces themselves did not understand the hydrological conditions of the estuary in advance, and the Qing army had already laid many chains and wooden stakes in the river to block it.
The Allied fleet could only stop and break through the obstacles, the operation had long been detected by the Qing army, and the battery group was patiently waiting for the fighters.
Clearing these obstacles took an antian-French morning, and in the process two gunboats had run aground.
The monk Gelinqin also sent officials with a note to see Hebu and persuaded them to obey the arrangement and land from Beitang, but they were still refused.
At this time, the situation was that the arrows had to be fired on the string, and if they did not take the people first, they would suffer casualties first, so the monk king ordered that "all battalions of large and small gun positions should be bombarded and shelled."
First and foremost was the Woodpecker, a small boat proudly at the front of the queue, with a "blue square flag" representing the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy's "Chinese Contingent".
This is tantamount to telling the defenders: Hit me, you hit me!
Needless to say, two rounds of artillery bombardment came down, and a cannon fired from the South Battery hit the Woodpecker, and the solid shells cut the captain, Lieutenant William Hector Larson, into two pieces on the spot.
The Qing general dispatched the batteries to gather fire on the Woodpecker, and the small gunboat hit several more cannons, and another shell killed The Staff Officer Colonel McKenna beside Hebu, causing Hebu to be injured.
The Woodpecker could not hold on and began to sink, and his men transferred Hebu to the Possum, but the Possum immediately encountered a fire, the mast was broken, and Hebu was crushed by the collapsed mast, and fell into a coma on the spot.
In the fierce battle for a day and night, 4 British gunboats were sunk, 2 stranded and captured, and the remaining 5 were also damaged, 93 dead and 368 wounded. The US warship was originally watching the battle from the side, and when it saw that the situation was not good, it shouted that "blood is thicker than water" and ran to pull the frame, but the shells did not have long eyes, and they also paid the price of one death and one injury.
It can be seen that in the second Battle of Dagukou, the mistake of the Anglo-French coalition army was that commander Hebu misestimated the situation, thinking that the Qing army would collapse like last year, and the psychology of pride and light enemy led to his great defeat.
The Qing Dynasty won a rare victory, so from this point of view, the British and French coalition forces are not invincible, as long as the Qing army tactics are effective, up and down, even if it is not a sure victory, it can also cause no small casualties to the enemy and affect their decision to move next.
The Second Battle of Taku Kou was a battle of Taku Kou, but more than a year later, the victory and defeat changed hands, and the impregnable Dagu Kou Fort a year earlier was easily conquered by the British and French forces in August 1860. This time, the casualty ratio turned around, more than 700 Qing troops were killed, and only 32 British and French troops were killed.
The reason was actually similar to the second time, the pride after the last victory, coupled with the internal efforts to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, made the Qing Dynasty ignore the defense of Haikou.
The British and French allies learned the lessons of the last time, dispatching more than 17,000 troops and more than 200 ships to attack the back road of The DaguKou Fort in the south after landing in Beitang.
Although both the government and officials had warned the monk Greenqin to prevent the enemy from copying the back road, the monk proudly believed:
"Although Beitang was not guarded, and the left and right were salt flats, there were currently battalions of horse teams on the back road of Beitang, and the Yi could not directly attack the rear of the fort. There are 30,000 Yi soldiers, and now the horse infantry troops, coupled with the layer-by-layer arrangement, are sufficient to resist", which not only overestimates themselves, but also does not pay enough attention to the defense of Beitang. This led to the defeat at the Third Battle of Takugukou.
Judging from the Second Opium War, the equipment and combat ability of the Qing army were indeed not the opponents of the British and French allies, but if they could have the correct leadership of strong generals and adopt the correct tactics, they would not be so defeated.
Unfortunately, the monk Greenqin was already the most skilled general in the clan at that time, and after winning the victory, he still could not avoid the enemy. Of course, for the Qing Dynasty, the most serious threat at this time was not Britain and France, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The former wanted money, the latter wanted death, which was an important reason why the Qing army was vulnerable to the whole in the Second Opium War, and it was also the fundamental reason why the three battles of Dagukou were lost first and then won and then defeated.
Well, today's sharing ends here, and we'll see you next time