The Xiang and Huai armies in Chinese history were both produced in the late Qing Dynasty to resist the Taiping Rebellion, and were both armed with Han Chinese recruiting township heroes. After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was suppressed, Zeng Guofan took the initiative to petition the imperial court to request the abolition of the Xiang army, resulting in a sharp decrease in the number of Xiang troops. Although the Huai army, which was "born at the same root", also received the will of the imperial court to abolish it, the number of the Huai army did not decrease but increased, and after eliminating the Twist army, it became the main force in the national defense of the Qing court, and the political factors in this are self-evident.
Tongzhi Emperor stills
So who is Ye Zhichao? Ye Zhichao was a famous general in the Huai Army, nicknamed "Ye Da Nerd", he was not afraid of death in battle, and in the process of suppressing the Taiping Army and the Twist Army, he always took the lead and charged into battle, and made a lot of military achievements, and was awarded the title of Etuhun Batulu by the Qing court. So why would such a general who was in the storm on the domestic battlefield and dared to fight a hard battle be defeated on the Korean battlefield and abandon the city and flee? There was a personal element of Ye Zhichao in this, and of course, it was also the need of the political struggle at that time.
Portrait of Li Hongzhang
When the Dongxue Uprising broke out in North Korea, and the North Korean authorities asked the Qing Dynasty to send troops to help suppress it, Ye Zhichao, who was then directly subordinate to the viceroy, was not the first candidate. Li Hongzhang, who was then the governor of the direct subordinate and minister of Beiyang, originally wanted to send another general of the Huai Army, Liu Mingchuan, but Liu Mingchuan at that time had already resigned his post and returned to his hometown under the repeated exclusion of the imperial court. The Qing court also summoned him back many times, but Liu Mingchuan always said that he was ill and did not want to serve as the governor of the Qing army that entered the DPRK, and Li Hongzhang had no choice but to send Ye Zhichao to lead his troops to Korea.
In fact, Ye Zhichao was not willing to go, after the corrosion of wealth and pleasure, coupled with his advanced age, he was no longer the tiger general who dared to lick the blood on the knife edge. Ye Zhichao also entrusted people to intercede with Li Hongzhang, but Li Hongzhang's reply was: "It may not be easy to fight, he is timid!" ”。 Ye Zhichao reluctantly rushed to the Korean battlefield, which was inseparable from his later negative combat thinking.
Huaijun Office
Ye Zhichao was poor and had not read any books, and with the help of the Platform of the Huai Army, he could be promoted all the way to such a high-ranking official as the Directly Subordinate Viceroy, which was inseparable from Li Hongzhang's appreciation and promotion. At the same time, as Li Hongzhang's confidant, he naturally understood the great significance of the existence of the Huai Army to Li Zhongtang in the imperial court. If he led the main force of the Huai army to fight bloody battles on the Korean battlefield, the victory would be won by the Qing court, and it was the emperor's grace and national prestige. If the HuaiJun's family base had been spelled out there, how could Lord Zhongtang, a Hanchen, still have weight in speaking at the imperial court in the future.
Just like the monk Greenqin at that time, he and the Qing imperial family were still related to each other, but in the Battle of Bali Bridge, they fought out their Mongolian iron horses, and finally they only ended up being stripped of their princely titles and three-eyed flowers, and they died on the battlefield in old age. Therefore, Ye Zhichao's defeat and escape of Korea is, to some extent, also the result of a game between the Qing court and the warlords.
Pictures of the Battle of the Yellow Sea
The next major defeat of the Huai army was the Sino-Japanese Battle of the Yellow Sea. Whether it was the Battle of Toshima or the Battle of Dadonggou, the Beiyang Naval Division created by Li Hongzhang without exception failed. Especially in the Battle of Dadonggou in the Yellow Sea, the Beiyang Fleet was severely damaged, many warships were sunk or captured by the Japanese army, and Ding Ruchang, the admiral of the Huai Army, committed suicide and martyrdom, and the first navy in modern China disappeared. Since then, the power of the Huai army has gradually declined, and the repeated defeats have also made the Qing court lose confidence in the Huai army and begin to plan to form a new military force. After this, the new army established by Yuan Shikai's military training at Tianjin Xiaozhan replaced the status of the Huai Army as the national defense force of the Qing Dynasty, and the Huai Army became a secondary patrol and was no longer noticed.