"Poor indeterminate river bones, like people in the dreams of spring girls."
These short 14 characters, from the Tang Dynasty to the present, have been circulated in Chinese history for more than a thousand years. It does not directly describe the cruelty of war, but cuts from the wife of a soldier who died in battle, rendering the tragedy and pain of an entire family brought about by war through the strong contrast between white bones and the good man in the dream.
And every war represents the occurrence of countless tragedies.
In June of the ninth year of Yongzheng, the Qing army was defeated by the Dzungar army at Hetongpo, losing more than 7,000 people, including 14 senior generals. The elite of the 18,000 banners that once strode high and majestically, vowing to level the Dzungars, were able to escape home without dying, and only more than 2,000 people were able to escape home. The cries and cries lasted for a long time.
The Battle of Hetongbo, also known as the Battle of Tongnur, was the most costly foreign war in the history of the Qing Dynasty for more than two hundred years, the most significant and tragic military disaster in the process of the Qing Dynasty's unification of Mongolia and the expansion of its territory, and the biggest regret of Yongzheng's reign for 13 years. Why did the Battle of Tongpo become the biggest disaster for the Qing army in the past two hundred years?
I. How did the Battle of Hetongpo take place?
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the three major tribes of the Mongols, Mo nan, Kulkha and Erut, successively submitted to the Qing court and recognized and accepted the rule of the central government of the Qing Dynasty. Until the 10th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, there was a coup d'état in Dzungar, which was subordinate to the Erut Ministry, and Gardan seized the right to rule and established himself as a Han.
Unlike his predecessors, the ambitious Kaldan embraced the end of the security corner, and his goal was to expand his power and eventually lead his people to establish a complete, independent state. Soon, with the support of Tsarist Russia, he became the largest separatist force in the northwest region of our country at that time by constantly attacking neighboring departments and expanding his power. And often in the Qing border areas to harass trouble.
In order to quell the rebellion and consolidate the northern frontier, the Kangxi Emperor had three pro-conquests of Pingzhun, and these three pro-conquests ended in great victories, and in the thirty-sixth year of Kangxi, Gardan committed suicide in desperation.
Since then, the two sides have ushered in a period of relative peace. But soon, as the Dzungars recuperated and regrouped, the people in the frontier areas began to be overwhelmed again.
After Kaldanze zero succeeded to the Khan's throne, the Dzungars' provocations against the Qing Dynasty and the nuisance of other Mongol tribes reached a climax. He took in the Mongol generals who defected to the Qing court, and also sent troops to attack the Qing Tunshu army and the Kulkha Mongols, who always attached themselves to the Qing Dynasty in a submissive manner and were under the rule and protection of the Qing court.
Moreover, Ce Zero organized an army to spy on the Qing Dynasty's borders, revealing the intention of competing with the Qing Government for territory, which seriously threatened the Qing Government's rule over the northwest frontier region, which made Yongzheng decide to continue Kangxi's alignment strategy and continue the previous war between the Kangxi Dynasty and the Dzungars.
2. What was the state of the Battle of Hetongpo?
In June of the ninth year of Yongzheng, Yongzheng ignored the obstruction of some ministers, and under the foundation and support of the state treasury income increasing year by year and saving more than 30 million yuan in silver, he decided to send Yue Zhongqi as a general and Fu Erdan as the commander to lead a total of more than 10,000 elite Eight Banners to launch the second war during the Yongzheng period.
For this war, Yongzheng once made the following assumptions:
The Qing army divided into two roads, west and north, fighting steadily and steadily, with the help of strong financial resources and strong troops, while building a city, advancing at the same time, and finally encroaching on and destroying the Dzungar Khanate.
But the ideal is full, but the reality has many variables.
On June 19, 1999, Fu Erdan made an order to step up the march and directly kill the Dzungar base altai on the basis of a series of news that was conducive to the Qing army, such as "the civil unrest in Dzungar" and "the son-in-law of Ce Zero led more than 10,000 people to defect from the army". Along the way, the Mongol armies encountered by the Qing army were as vulnerable as Fourdan had hoped.
The Qing army was invincible, like entering no man's land. But it may have been that everything had gone so smoothly that it was unreal, and after arriving at Bokto Ridge, Fu Erdan smelled ominous breath, and he suddenly realized that he had been caught in the plan, and he had been caught in the opponent's plan to lure the enemy deeper.
So Fu Erdan urgently called for the battalion to move to the direction of Hetongbo, but it was too late, and the Rear Guard of the Qing Army had been ambushed by the enemy and suffered a fierce attack.
On June 21, the Qing army that had moved to retreat to Hetongpo was intercepted in front of the more than 20,000 Dzungar troops in Hetongpo, and led the army to ambush the place of Da celing dun dobu, which was firmly biting behind the Qing army, and surrounded the Qing legions. And taking advantage of the terrain, condescending to shell the Fourdan army,
After three days of desperate fighting, Changlu, Basai and other generals were all killed, Andrain, Dingshou and others also committed suicide, and the battle loss rate of ordinary soldiers was as high as 75%. It was not until July 1 that Fu Erdan led more than 2,000 wounded soldiers to Flee to Kobdo. The victorious Dzungar soldiers, with a large number of captives, happily "sang hu songs and returned."
Before the war began, as early as the sixth year of Yongzheng, the Yongzheng Emperor specially selected two thousand young men from Sauron and Dahuer Zhuangding under butha yamen as Ming-style shotgunners, and gave them enough time to train without distraction. The rest of the infantry, archers, cavalry, etc. are all elite, but it is such an army composed of the proud sons of heaven, which is known as a good war, but it has personally experienced the biggest disaster of the Qing army in more than 200 years?
Third, the reason for the disastrous defeat of the Qing army in the Battle of Tongpo
The root cause of the fiasco in the Battle of Hetongpo lies in Yongzheng. As a clapper, the Yongzheng Emperor rashly made an army plan before collecting a series of information that would affect the battle situation, including the internal situation of the Dzungars, the number of the Dzungar army, the weapons, the combat strength, and the personality and ability of the main general Kaldan Ce Zero. In other words, the risk assessment is not done.
Secondly, As the main general, Fu Erdan also had a great responsibility, and he did not learn the lesson of Yongzheng's eight years, the Dzungars pretended to seek peace, paralyzed the qing court's nerves, and suddenly sent 20,000 troops to defeat the Qing army, and still made meritorious contributions. Just because of the one-sided words of a few captives, he credulously believed in the "god-given opportunity" of the "civil strife" of the Dzungars, and gave birth to the absurd illusion of "taking advantage of his illness and taking his life".
In fact, long before he ordered the march, the deputy commander-in-chief around him had already reminded him: there may be deception, and it is imperative not to trust the captives and rush to march. However, Fu Erdan, who had long been blinded by the fantasy of victory and honor, could not listen to it at all, and he insisted on going his own way and rushing to achieve quick success, which directly led to the total destruction of the Qing army and the loss of blood.
Of course, the defeat of this war also has force majeure factors such as the rugged terrain of the Altai Mountains and the changeable weather. When Fu Erdan led his army to move the camp and retreated to Hetongpo, the Qing army was still able to barely maintain the basic formation and fight the enemy while retreating.
But at that time, the sky was overcast, and soon the torrential rain mixed with hail poured down, and the Qing army and the Dzungar army were mixed with each other. The low terrain made the Qing army worse, and soon, the Qing army, which could not retreat in time due to the weather, was wrapped in dumplings by the Mongol army and reduced to a situation of being slaughtered.
Finally, there is a lesser-known reason, that is, the weapons in the hands of the Mongol army are far more advanced than those in the hands of the Qing army. The Dzungar Khanate was located at the junction of Inner Asia and East Asia, and the Dzungar people, with their geographical advantages, were able to gain more access to new foreign technologies and trade with foreign countries more conveniently.
As a result, their army had more advanced firearms than the Qing army- artillery and heavy muskets. At that time, the guns held by the Qing army were Ming-style shotguns that had long been eliminated by the West. Therefore, if the encircled Qing army wanted to break through the heavy encirclement, it had to break through the fire network built by European artillery, a large number of Turkish muskets, etc., which was an almost impossible task.
Faced with such a desperate situation, the Qing generals committed suicide one after another, and finally only a few escaped and passed through the po, fled to the city of Kobdo, and fled back to Beijing. During the Qianlong period, the Qing court learned a lesson and equipped the Qing army with arquebusiers, and finally completely defeated the Dzungars and won the final victory.
Text/Miss Hongguo
Resources:
1. "Several Problems in the Yongzheng Ping quasi-war", Zuo Shuchen
2. "The New Research ——— of the Battle of Hetongpo centered on the Soldiers of Heilongjiang", Zhang Jian