Presumably, everyone has heard the stories of "Cao Cao's Barefoot Greeting Xu You" and "Xu You's Death". Xu You was originally a subordinate of Yuan Shao, but after defecting to Cao Cao, he turned the tide of the Battle of Guandu and made Cao Cao the victorious side. However, Xu Youju was proud of his merits, and after his meritorious service, he did not pay attention to Cao Cao and Cao Yingzhong, and repeatedly made wild remarks, and as a result, he was killed by Xu Chu.
And the protagonist of the story we are talking about today has a somewhat similar personality to Xu You, but also a little different. This person was an American soldier hired by the Qing Dynasty, named Bai Qiwen, born in North Carolina in 1836. From 1853 to 1855, the famous "Crimean War" broke out on the European continent, in which Bai Zivin joined the French army.
In Chinese parlance, Bai Qiwen was born in a "family of warriors", influenced by his father, Bai Qiwen's boldness is particularly large, and he likes to run around the world to find opportunities for development. At that time, the Qing Dynasty was facing internal and external troubles, the great powers regarded the Qing Dynasty as a piece of cake, and came to divide it, Bai Qiwen carefully compared for a long time, and decided to go to the Qing Dynasty to show his skills.
When the Taiping Rebellion broke out, Zeng Guofan created the Xiang Army, and Li Hongzhang took the initiative to recruit Huai Yong, who was organized into the "Huai Army" in Anqing in 1862. These two armies became an important force in the Qing court's suppression of the Taiping Army, but the Taiping Army was very powerful, so at that time, there were also ministers of the Qing court who funded the recruitment of foreign mercenaries, and Bai Qiwen was a deputy leader of the Shanghai "Foreign Gun Brigade".
In the process of development, this "foreign gun team" recruited Chinese as soldiers and changed its name to "Changsheng Army". Bai Qiwen followed the captain and commanded the soldiers to attack the Taiping Army, winning and losing, and Bai Qiwen was also wounded in the war. After the captain's unexpected death, Bai Qiwen became the commander-in-chief of the "Changsheng Army", and cooperated with Li Hongzhang's Huai army to win the battle in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas.
However, Bai Qiwen went out to fight in order to obtain a rich reward, he pretended that he was from a foreign country, and he looked down on the Qing army and the Qing dynasty ministers in his heart, and Li Hongzhang did not pay attention to him. Once, Bai Qiwen actually beat the Daoist Yang Fang half to death, and also snatched away 40,000 taels of silver in Yang Fang's hand, and Li Hongzhang was very angry when he learned about it.
Li Hongzhang believed that although this person had made some contributions to the imperial court, he had come purely for profit, and when he had made meritorious deeds, he was lawless, looked down on Chinese, had an extremely bad attitude, and behaved no differently from a robber. Therefore, Li Hongzhang had already saved the heart to make Bai Qiwen look good, and just when the imperial court heard about the things that Bai Qiwen had committed, he ordered Li Hongzhang to deal with it with full authority, and Li Hongzhang removed Bai Qiwen from his original post.
Bai Qiwen, who had lost his job, was ashamed and annoyed, and ran to the Beijing division to ask for reinstatement, but was also stopped by Li Hongzhang. In a fit of rage, he ran to the Taiping Army, hoping to be reused, but he did not succeed, and finally had to surrender to the "Changsheng Army". Afterwards, Bai Qiwen was sent to Japan twice to recuperate, but he still wanted to come to China to make a big profit, and quietly ran back.
Bai Qiwen's plan was to continue to defect to the Taiping Army, but he was captured by the Qing court halfway through. Because of Bai Qiwen's special status, many people wanted to keep him, but Li Hongzhang really couldn't stand this person, ostensibly saying that he was going to escort Bai Qiwen to Suzhou, but in fact, He was secretly repairing the zhan dao, and in the middle of the road, he sent someone to drown him, so that the Americans could not find loopholes. Therefore, Bai Qiwen's death, to a large extent, has similarities with Xu You, all of which are due to arrogance.