Speaking of famous figures in the late Qing Dynasty, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang, Zeng Guofan, and Zhang Zhidong have to be mentioned. The four of them were also known as the "Four Famous Ministers of the Late Qing Dynasty". Among them, Zeng Guofan is the head of the four, he is a famous courtier of the late Qing Dynasty, and is a very famous politician, strategist and writer in modern history.
And he is most well known for creating the most effective unit in the late Qing Dynasty------ the Xiang Army. This army, under the leadership of Zeng Guofan, quelled the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in the late Qing Dynasty for many years, and pushed the time of the fall of the late Qing Dynasty backwards for several decades.
However, just as the so-called "no one is perfect", Zeng Guofan also made a mistake, when attacking Jinling City, which is now Nanjing, he had no choice but to use the tactics of the enemy general, and after being recognized, he suffered a crushing defeat.
After Li Xiucheng saw that the grass on the ground was abnormally colored, he ordered it to be poured with hot soup, and then the sound of misery was everywhere.
The deeds of Zeng Guofan
On November 26, 1811, Zeng Guofan was born in An ordinary farming family in Xiangxiang Township, Changsha, Hunan Province, Zeng Guofan's ancestors made a living from farming, and their lives were relatively rich, although their grandfather had no culture, but his experience was extremely rich, and when his father Zeng Linshu came, his grandfather strongly supported his father's learning career, and Zeng Linshu later became a teacher.
Zeng Guofan, as the eldest grandson of his great-grandfather, received the ethical education of his grandfather and father, he completed the "enlightenment" at the age of 5, entered the family school "Toshimisai" at the age of 6, and in 1826, at the age of 15, he went to participate in the township examination and ranked seventh in Changsha Province.
In 1833, he successfully passed the Xiucai examination, and then successfully passed the provincial examination and the temple examination to become a jinshi. From then on, he embarked on a career path and became a proud protégé of the Military Aircraft Minister Mu Zhang'a. With the help of his teacher, his career was smooth, and he was promoted seven times in a row in ten years, jumped ten levels, and successfully rose to the position of second grade official.
In 1851, Hong Xiuquan started an incident in Guiping, Guangxi, and Zeng Guofan said in his face: "Today's urgent business, the first is to employ people." He wrote "Respecting Chen Shengde's Three Ends to Prevent Fraud", in which he forced The fault of Emperor Xianfeng of Chen, and was "angrily thrown to the ground" by Emperor Xianfeng, but later Emperor Xianfeng still adopted Zeng Guofan's suggestion.
Later, Zeng Guofan returned home to mourn, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement had swept half of China, and although the Qing government had gathered officers and soldiers from all over the country to deal with the Taiping Army, this decadent army was not at all an opponent of the Taiping Army. To this end, the imperial court issued an order to reward regimental training, that is, to encourage local landlords to form armed forces to curb the development of the Taiping Army.
In November 1952, the Qing government ordered Zeng Guofan and Hunan Governor Zhang Liangji to form a regiment training, the Qing government was eager to curb the invasion of the Taiping Army, Zeng Guofan in his hometown of Hunan, relying on his various relationships to establish a local regiment training, this regiment training, is the prototype of the later Xiang Army.
In February of that year, the Xiang army was already extremely large, and in February of that year, the Xiang army was dispatched under the orders of the imperial court, and Zeng Guofan published the famous "Begging for Cantonese Bandits", through which he characterized the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement as a bad act of "poisoning the living beings" and "killing the people", and he himself was carried out by heaven and stood on the commanding heights of morality. He called on literati and scholars from all over the world to join the fight against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement.
Subsequently, Zeng Guofan began a vigorous battle to suppress the Taiping Army.
Zeng Guofan's "Xiang Army" won more and lost less
During these years of fighting, he used high pressure to treat the Taiping Army, brutally suppressing and killing all the captured Taiping Troops, and it was also because of his behavior that he was called "Zeng shaved his head".
In the ensuing battle, he led a large army of more than 17,000 people on land and water to attack the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to the east, and then successfully conquered Xiangtan, Tianjiazhen and other places, and the Xiang army under his leadership had already approached Jinling City, but Jinling City could not be attacked for a long time.
Li Hongzhang had already recovered Suzhou, zuo Zongtang had also recovered Hangzhou, and under such pressure Zeng Guofan felt that he would soon be urged by the imperial court.
Sure enough, after the emperor recovered Suzhou and Hangzhou, he wrote to Zeng Guofan: "Jinling City is big and strong, and it is not easy to besiege ... Zeng Guofan could personally supervise it in order to quickly achieve results. ”
Zeng Guoquan has spent two years to conquer Jinling City, there has been no progress, Zeng Guoquan is Zeng Guofan's brother, the two brothers have always had a clear division of labor, Zeng Guoquan is responsible for the front line command, Zeng Guofan is responsible for the overall commander, their division of labor has fought a lot of victories, from Changsha to Jinling, the Xiang army has been winning more than losing.
But the Xiang Army has a fatal weakness,
There are no large explosive cannons.
Zeng Guofan has always believed that people on the battlefield are the most critical and that the revolutionary will can overcome everything, but the times are different, and both Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang have successfully won the battle with the help of these advanced weapons.
At this time, Zeng Guofan realized that his idea was wrong, and he could only sigh: "The city that was bombed and bombarded by the artillery can actually be climbed on horseback, which is ten times better than the cave." ”
The reason why he thinks like this is actually that Zeng Guofan thought of using the method of "digging holes in the ground", but in fact, this is a bad move.
The shame of Zeng Guofan
The "cave battle" that Zeng Guofan thought of had actually been used by Li Xiucheng, the defender of Jinling City, and when Li Xiucheng attacked Zeng Guoquan, he had once attacked with the tactics of using holes, but the effect obtained was not great, but it was always countered by Zeng Guoquan.
Zeng Guofan knew that Li Xiucheng was an expert in this tactic, so he actually did not approve of this tactic, but the imperial court was really pressed, "no way but also", he had to order the troops to dig the hole in the ground in an all-round way.
Li Xiucheng was the first user of this tactic,
Of course, if you dig a hole in the ground, the color of the grass on the ground will change.
Therefore, he would watch from the city wall every day whether the color of the grass had changed,
As soon as he saw that the grass was not the right color, he ordered someone to cut open the tunnel, pour poisonous smoke or pour boiling soup, and then he heard screams one after another.
In fact, Zeng Guofan knew that the hole must be dug deeper, but the executioner of the army felt that if it was dug too deep, the bomb would not be powerful enough to blow up the city wall.
Therefore, when they really excavated, they did not dig very deeply, which affected the stems and roots of the flowers and grasses on the ground, and the color of the flowers and grasses changed, and They were caught by Li Xiucheng.
Afterwards, Zeng Guofan knew that the tactics of the cave would not work at all, and could only temporarily put an end to the flag. Later, Li Hongzhang led an army to besiege Nanjing, and Hong Xiuquan ordered the Taiping army from all over the country to return to Jinling City, but there were contradictions within the Taiping Army, and eventually the Xiang Army conquered Jinling City under the leadership of Zeng Guofan, and after the Xiang Army conquered Tianjing, it slaughtered and plundered the civilians.
brief summary:
Zeng Guofan's defeat proves one thing, that is, the general who wins is not victorious in every battle, Zeng Guofan is extremely confident in his army, but he forgets that overconfidence is conceit, and the consequence of self-conceit is failure.
Later, the imperial court ordered the dismantling of the Xiang army, and Zeng Guofan accepted the order to lay off 25,000 people. Zeng Guofan made great contributions to the Qing Dynasty, and he served as the governor of Liangjiang and a scholar of Wuyingdian University, and in March 1872, Zeng Guofan died of illness at the age of 61.