On September 21, 1860, the Qing Dynasty fought a decisive battle with the British and French forces. In the Battle of Bali Bridge, the Qing Dynasty was full of elites, and 30,000 of the 60,000 troops were cavalry, and 10,000 of them were Mongol horse teams from Chahar, and the commander was the general Horqin Prince Senggelinqin. This is the trump card of the Qing army and the pride of the nomadic people, who once galloped on the grassland and were invincible.
The Qing dynasty knew that the coalition forces were strong, but they believed that this powerful cavalry could bite a piece of the flesh of the coalition forces. However, when the war broke out, what was presented to the Qing Dynasty was the fiasco of the Qing army. The sound of cannons, gunshots, the roar of warhorses, all this is like the sad sound of the Qing Dynasty before the collapse of this empire.
In the Battle of Bali Bridge, the Qing Dynasty used more than 20,000 of its most elite cavalry to duel 8,000 men of the coalition army. However, the result of this battle was that the Qing Dynasty lost 3,000 cavalry and 7,000 infantry, and the coalition army only lost more than a dozen people. It was a one-sided crush, and some on the Coalition side didn't even think it was a victory, because it simply couldn't be called a "war."
Why was the last trump card of the Qing Dynasty in the Battle of Bali Bridge so vulnerable, because of the weakness and incompetence of the Qing army? Obviously not, the performance of the army in the last years of the Qing Dynasty was indeed disappointing, but to be fair, the Qing army in the Battle of Bali Bridge deserves the title of "soldier". In this battle, although the Qing army suffered heavy losses, they did not lose the courage to fight, they showed great bravery, and even their opponents affirmed this.
Paul Varan recorded in the Book of Conquest: "Chinese and the Tatars, known for their courage and composure, performed particularly well in the final stages of the battle... None of them retreated, and all died in the line of duty."
Count Drisson also has this description in the Translator's Notes: "The enemy has been repulsed twice, but he has not yet conceded defeat, and is preparing to cross a heart to fight for the passage." ...... Our shells have caused massive amounts of damage. Death did not stop for a moment, but it did not frighten these inflexible, but brave fighters, who did not retreat. ”
From the records of the Allied officers who experienced the war, it can be seen that this Qing army was not a ragtag group, they had a high enthusiasm for fighting and the courage to fight without fear of sacrifice.
However, the flesh and blood body is not the opponent of the steel torrent after all. Although the army of the Coalition Army is not a torrent of steel, their equipment is really an era ahead of the opponent. The Allied armies were equipped with bayonet-equipped breech-loading flintlock guns and smoothbore guns, and some were even equipped with the latest rifled guns and rifles that had just been invented. Their guns have sights and are powerful.
The Qing army is mainly equipped with large knives, spears and other cold weapons, even if there are firearms, it is mostly a small number of imported and imitation of the old smoothbore guns, homemade domestic shotguns, gun lifting, gun lifting, mountain splitting cannon, etc., they have low accuracy, slow rate of fire, short range, small power. Therefore, when this army launched a charge against the Allied Forces, it was like the Polish cavalry against the German tanks in World War II, although heroic, but there was no counter-attack.
However, the fiasco of the Qing army was not only because of the backwardness of weapons and tactics, but also an important reason for the failure of the Qing army. First of all, the Qing army should not have fought a field battle with the coalition forces. Taking out his best cavalry and engaging in a field battle with the advanced troops of the coalition forces was a huge tactical mistake. Scholar Hu Shiyun wrote in the article "A Brief Discussion on the Main Warring Faction in the Second Opium War": "Senggelinqin already knew in the Third Battle of Dagukou that cold weapons could not resist new weapons, so he should not lead the horse team to a field battle with the coalition army, because his ignorance and mistakes made the officers and men pay a heavy price..."
In the war, the tactics used by the Qing army were also far behind those of the coalition forces. The Allied forces in the Battle of the Eight Mile Bridge were an elite division, tempered by the Napoleonic Wars and baptized by the Crimean War, the quality of this army was world-class at the time. In the face of the Qing cavalry charge, the coalition army used the latest tactics such as hollow phalanxes and three-row arrays of battle column infantry lines. This tactic was jokingly referred to by many as "line-up shots", but in fact, it was one of the most advanced tactics at the time. Soldiers stand on the "red line" set by their commanders, and everyone dies in their place, even if they die. The quality of the legions under this tactic is inferior to that of the ancient nomadic cavalry, but their overall combat ability is far superior to that of the other side.
When the battle began, the Qing army charged towards the coalition army, they were heroic, they were fearless, but they fell in groups under the guns of the other side, under the cannons, they rushed over the mountains and the sea, but they could not rush to the other side's position. Senggelinqin also found the weak point of the coalition army, that is, the combination of the two armies, and he commanded a large army to rush here, trying to divide the battlefield. But when the Mongol cavalry was about to rush to the other side's position, the opposing cavalry moved.
Yes, even in the clash of cavalry, the Qing army lost very thoroughly. The fifteen-hundred-man cavalry consisted of the most elite cavalry regiments of the two countries, and their horses were physically strong and explosive, far surpassing the horses of the Mongol cavalry. When the Allied cavalry charged, the Mongol cavalry scattered, still adopting the ancestral wandering tactics, not fighting the enemy in close quarters, trying to use bows and arrows to destroy the other side. Genghis Khan used this tactic to conquer the world, but hundreds of years later, this tactic has fallen behind. The allied cavalry rushed like a torrent to the Mongol cavalry, which had not yet dispersed.
The backwardness of weapons and tactics made this elite Qing army ace a group of lambs to be slaughtered in front of the coalition forces. The Allied forces won the war with crushing momentum, and when the French general Montourn, who commanded the battle, returned home, the French Emperor proposed to make him "Count of the Eight Mile Bridge" and give him a reward of fifty thousand francs, but most of the parliamentarians were firmly opposed, believing that this was nothing more than "a laughing battle" "During the whole battle, only twelve of us were killed, and it is not worth giving him such a high reward!" ”
This was a great sadness for the Qing army that died on the Bali Bridge and for the Qing government at that time. When the world mentioned this war, people only had "courage and praise" for the Qing army even if they racked their brains, but behind this, there were countless sacrifices, the beginning of China's hundreds of years of humiliation.
Therefore, looking back at the Battle of Bali Bridge, the defeat of the Qing army was a failure of military science and technology, a failure of military tactics, and a failure of ideology, economy, and other aspects. This war, every moment, reminds us that if we do not face the world with an open mind and blindly stand still, we will eventually encounter failure.
Resources:
"The Book of Conquest"
Translator's Notes
"A Brief Discussion of the Main War Factions in the Second Opium War"