In the late Qing Dynasty, due to various reform movements, a large number of famous courtiers emerged, including Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and so on. Among them, Li Hongzhang was also known as the "Oriental Spleen Simai" by posterity, and his contribution to the Great Qing dynasty is self-evident, so Cixi also called him the person who "recreated Xuanhuang". In the Tianjin Teaching Case Incident, he led a large army to the northwest, beginning the most brilliant twenty-five years of his life.
He was forty-seven years old at the time, and he had already made remarkable achievements before that. At the age of thirty-nine, he took the position of governor, and in a short period of time he was awarded the posts of Earl, Prince Taibao, and University Scholar. At the time of the incident, he was sitting in the position of governor of Huguang, and for the sake of the imperial court, he personally led the troops to quell the rebellion.
During the expedition, because the imperial court issued an order to transfer troops, he immediately led his troops back to the vicinity of Gyeonggi, and after some preparations, he was ready to fight with the French army at any time. After the incident gradually calmed down, the governor of Liangjiang was assassinated by the gangsters, and this assassination immediately caused an uproar in the whole country, and its implications were also very widespread. There were many very sensitive issues, from the army to the civilian population, from the imperial court to the localities, and even among foreign Catholic schools. The explosion of these problems forced the imperial court to order Zeng Guofan to take up the post of governor of Liangguang at an early date.
However, the position of directly subordinate governor was thus vacant, and Li Hongzhang naturally took over the position of teacher Zeng Guofan. In 1968, he officially took over the position of teacher, which was the second time he succeeded Zeng Guofan. He came to Tianjin and went to Zeng Guofan's mansion to meet him.
The two of them have been in a close teacher-student relationship for many years, so they already know Li Hongzhang's character Zeng Guofan completely. Seeing that Li Hongzhang was in a hurry to find him during this time, he did not wait for Li Hongzhang to speak, so he first asked him: "Now that you come to Tianjin, your existence has become the key to the diplomacy of the Qing Dynasty." However, today's national strength is indeed much worse than before, foreigners are looking at our country with their eyes on the tiger, even if you make a small mistake, it may become a fatal factor in the overall situation because of the butterfly effect. In the future, you will inevitably have to deal with foreigners, do you have any ideas in this regard? ”
When Li Hongzhang saw the teacher open the door and said this matter, his heart was also very happy, saying: "The students came this time for this matter!" Zeng Guofan smiled and nodded, "Since you have already come, it is certainly not without any plans, so you should tell me what you want in your heart." Li Hongzhang said, "Actually, I don't have any special plans in my heart, that is, I think that when I deal with them foreigners, no matter what they do, I just play with them." "The cavity of the leper" refers to the meaning of the slippery tongue of the greasy mouth.
Zeng Guofan didn't immediately continue, but only pondered for a moment before he said, I don't know how you want to beat the, now can you first hit me? Li Hongzhang also thought about it for a while, and when he found that something was wrong, he immediately apologized to Zeng Guofan: "The students are just talking nonsense, and they still hope that the teacher will teach them." ”
Looking at his proud disciples, it took a long time before he said, "In my opinion, when you contact them, you still have to be honest, and I think foreigners are actually honest." Moreover, the sage once said that loyalty and honesty are things that can be promoted in the barbarian times, and this sentence is always true. If there is no strong support behind it, no matter how pretentious you appear on the surface, once people see through it, it will have the opposite effect. Therefore, it is better to be honest with each other, although in doing so we cannot take advantage of foreigners, but we will not let them take advantage of us. ”
After receiving Zeng Guofan's teaching, Li Hongzhang also suddenly realized, and quickly agreed: "The teacher is right, and the students will definitely follow the teacher's guidance in the future." This record of his conversation with Zeng Guofan was told to his subordinates in his old age, and his subordinates recorded it in detail and included it in his works.
Through this dialogue, it also caused different evaluations of them by later generations, some of whom felt that Li Hongzhang was far inferior to his teacher in terms of character and other aspects, but some people felt that Li Hongzhang's smoothness and penetration were higher than his teachers, and everyone had different views on this.
Li Hongzhang once expressed his reflection on his subordinates: "After learning from the teacher, I really can't get by on the face." However, after calming down and thinking carefully about what the teacher said to me at that time, I felt that what the teacher said was indeed very meaningful. So later, when I negotiated with Britain, France, Russia and other countries, I always paid attention to a 'sincerity' word taught to me by my teacher, and later this was really as the teacher said, it was a wise move, and sometimes there were even some unexpected surprises. The ancients said 'I can practice for life', and it is true, if it were not for the teacher pulling me back from the lost, I don't know how many mistakes I would have made! I may not be able to do something that misleads the country and the people, but I don't know it. ”
Both Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were important pillars of the country in the late Qing Dynasty, and the depth of their thinking was not something that ordinary people could figure out. If these two shrewd and powerful politicians had not been negotiating with the foreigners, I am afraid that the Qing Dynasty would not have been able to support it for fifty years by relying on its own strength, and it would have been divided up by the great powers long ago, and history might have been another face.
However, Li Hongzhang wrote a "dying poem" before his death, and the content of the poem also showed that they were actually clear in their own hearts, no matter what kind of effort they made and what kind of sweat they paid, everything was too late, no matter who came, they were afraid that they would not be able to return to heaven, and the Qing Dynasty was doomed to perish in the end.