To answer this question, we must explain the background of the Qing government's formation of the new army (including the Beiyang New Army), and to talk about this issue without the background of the establishment of the Beiyang Army, we cannot analyze the real reasons for it.
The Qing government was not a newly established regime, it had existed for more than two centuries and had its own military system. Then why should it leave its original army instead of using it, but must start a new army, the Beiyang Army?
On the surface, it is because since the Opium War, the gates of the country have been opened by the ships of the great powers, beaten again and again, and the land has been cut off for compensation. The glory of the past has become a passing cloud, and the majesty of the past has disappeared. The Qing rulers realized the gap between China and the West and understood that the reason for the beating was because the army was backward, so they spent a lot of money to form a modern army at any cost, learning from the West, hoping to reverse the passive beating situation.
This was the original intention of the Qing court to form the Beiyang Army.
But in the eyes of the Manchu elite, especially the Han elite, it was too late for the Manchu government to make amends.
If we say that the Sino-British Opium War, the Second Opium War, and a series of conflicts between China and Russia, the Chinese government cut up land and paid compensation because its national strength lagged behind that of Western countries, and it was forgivable to be beaten by foreigners; and China's defeat in Korea and its beating by neighboring Japan in the Sino-Japanese War cannot be explained by the confrontation between China and the West, and we cannot win the reason of others.
Seriously, every ethnic group in the world has the psychology of worshipping the strong, and the Han nationality is no exception.
As an ethnic minority, the Manchu Qing dynasty was able to rule a Central Plains region with a population of tens of times more than itself, and the main reason was that it was strong in combat.
Everyone obeys nothing, just serves the fist.
In the eyes of the Central Plains people, the Qing Dynasty army is brave, that is, fierce, or invincible, and we do not listen to who he listens to.
However, the invincible Qing court army was not only beaten by the Taiping Army, beaten by Britain, France and Russia, and beaten to the ground to find teeth, but also by the small eastern country of Japan.
After the Sino-Japanese War, the lofty image of the Qing court in the hearts of the Han people collapsed suddenly, and the legitimacy of the Manchu Qing regime was also in question.
In the past, the Han people would feel that being ruled by the Qing court was natural and unquestionable. Because people are mighty and powerful, they should be the legitimate representatives of China.
However, now that you are not only bullied by foreigners, but also squeezed by the Japanese, what about your greatness, what about your correctness? Are you still qualified to be the boss of China?
The common people are not so terrible when they raise this question, they are afraid of the eagle dogs and running dogs of the Qing court, and they also feel that the Qing court has no qualifications to be the boss, the ruler is no longer sacred, no longer wise, no longer terrible, and they are even ashamed of having such a boss. Once this happens, will the Qing court's army and qing court generals still be dead set on the Qing government?
On prestige, on strategy, on character, Yuan Shikai is just a second-rate character, to Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang are far from the previous one, but why is it not the three of them who dig the grave for the Manchu Qing but Yuan Shikai?
In any period, there were power struggles, there were factional struggles, there were control and anti-control struggles, why the Beiyang Army almost became Yuan Shikai's private soldiers, and the relationship with the Qing court evolved into a contradiction between the enemy and ourselves, irreconcilable, the reason is that there is a crisis in the legitimacy of the Qing court's ruling power, and the Han courtiers in the Qing court have a crisis of trust in their masters.
For example, a bunch of little brothers follow a boss, and the boss is afraid of him, and others are afraid of him, so everyone is happy and sincere with him. But then I gradually found that others were no longer afraid of him, but he was often beaten by others to beg for forgiveness, would you still approve of him being the boss? You must say, look at his virtue, what qualifications are there to be the boss, I am definitely better than him when I am the boss.
Especially in the Gengzi National Disaster, the eagle dogs of the Qing court saw their masters after the arrival of the great powers, terrified, crying fathers and mothers, and fleeing like bears, who still had the slightest fear for him?
Most damningly, the Qing rulers hoped that the newly built army would inject fresh blood, appoint students who had returned from japan, and let them take on the heavy responsibilities of the army, serving as pipe belts and standard commanders, in an attempt to weaken Yuan Shikai's influence.
However, the backbone of the Beiyang Army not only learned advanced military knowledge in Japan, but also advanced ideas.
Many of those students who had stayed in Japan accepted the democratic ideas of Sun Yat-sen's League, and the idea of loyalty to the king in their heads was uprooted, and one by one they became "chaotic courtiers and thieves" with no kings and no fathers.
At this time, the Beiyang Army was not easy to control, and the reason was not a problem of one person, but that the soldiers' position was shaken and their thinking was chaotic.
In this way, the Qing rulers were exhausted, Yuan Shikai was slaughtered, and he could not control the Beiyang army.
When the Manchu rulers felt that this army was controlled by Yuan Shikai, their de-Yuan hua action was not insignificant, and as soon as they made a move, they dismissed Yuan Shikai's arm in the Beiyang Army and the post of Zhao Guoxian, the commander of the sixth town, and Duan Qirui, who succeeded the commander of the sixth town, was promoted and secretly demoted because he was reported to be the viceroy of northern Jiangsu.
After changing the two rulers in a row, the Qing court made the loyal Wu Luzhen take on the heavy responsibilities in the army, but the officers at all levels of the army were very reluctant to Wu's arrival until finally assassinated Wu Luzhen.
Although Wang Shizhen and Feng Guozhang, the rulers of the remaining towns, kept showing loyalty to the Qing court, they also ate inside and out, and they were in Cao Ying's heart in Han.
Therefore, the Beiyang New Army, which the Qing government had painstakingly built, sent itself to the grave. It is not that the rulers of the Qing Dynasty are not skillful, but that the times have changed, the thinking of the soldiers has changed, and there is no longer the concept that the king is the father in the mind; the trend of the times is mighty, cannot be adapted, and is doomed to be swept into the garbage heap of history.