What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Speaking of China's wars, only modern wars are particularly painful. Only those wars at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic of China made the Chinese people deeply aware that "backwardness means being beaten." Before the eighteenth century, China was still ahead of the world in an all-round way, but since then, both the ideology and culture of the Qing Dynasty and the economic level have been far from what a world power should look like.
In the war of Aggression against China, the most obvious thing is the lack of war materials and the overall backwardness of weapons. The soldiers of the Qing Dynasty took large knives and spears to the battlefield, and they were bombarded by Western artillery and guns to suspect that it was just a dream. In addition to the human factor, weapons are the best companions of the "executioners".
In World War II in the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese "38 Big Cover" rifle slaughtered millions of chinese people, and as far away as Western Europe, their nightmare was the German Walter Ppk pistol. In the history of the world, the first automatic weapon to use gunpowder was the Maxim heavy machine gun.
Invented in 1883, the Maxim heavy machine gun weighs 27.2 kg and requires wheels or other carryings when used. But its caliber is 11.43 mm, and people who do not know much about firearms can feel the power of its firepower just by looking at the caliber.
The Maxim heavy machine gun also has a particularly pleasing advantage for war maniacs, that is, "rapid burst of fire". Before the invention of the Maxim heavy machine gun, the firearms used by people could only be shot with one shot at a time, and the speed was particularly slow. However, the Maxim heavy machine gun can fire 600 rounds per minute, and it can also adjust the speed, the slowest is 100 rounds per minute.
The Maxim heavy machine gun was initially bulky and was left out in the cold at the beginning of World War I. But by 1916, the German Army had fully equipped the heavy machine gun, and the confrontation between Britain and Germany was completely suppressed—12,500 Maxim heavy machine guns killed and injured 60,000 British soldiers in one day. At this time, people finally realized its power, so it became the protagonist of the war.
However, before this, the Qing Dynasty had already witnessed its strength, but it passed by it. On August 2, 1896, Li Hongzhang went to England to visit The Maxim, the inventor of the Maxim heavy machine gun. Ma Qin attached great importance to Li Hongzhang and personally demonstrated to him the power of Ma Qin's heavy machine gun. At that time, Li Hongzhang saw the divine power of the Makqin heavy machine gun for the first time, and his mood was also excited and complicated.
He was naturally impressed, but he thought to himself that a Maxim machine gun cost more than 300 pounds, and at that time, the salary of an ordinary teacher was only 30 pounds a year. If you count the price of the bullet, you add an extra £130 per minute. Li Hongzhang did not ask any questions about the Maqin heavy machine gun, but sighed: "The gun is good, but can the Qing Dynasty afford it?" ”。
In the end, Li Hongzhang still paid money to buy dozens of them back, after all, if he wanted to win the war and wanted not to be beaten, he had to strengthen his armaments. But Li Hongzhang still spent the money in vain. What the Qing army lacked was not only something that these dozens of heavy machine guns could save.
And at that time, often due to improper command, each time the war was over, and the weapons that were heavily ordered were transported to the battlefield, and the so-called heavy machine guns became a joke. To this day, Chinese will laugh at themselves: "People have developed cannons with gunpowder, but Chinese have taken them to set off fireworks." Although this sentence is a joke, it is also full of heartache and helplessness towards the weakness of the Qing Dynasty.