Text/Fishing Boat Singing Anhui
Zhang Lexing's former residence is located in Zhanglaojia Village, northwest of Woyang County, Bozhou City, Anhui Province, a low-walled low-walled house, although covered with pine and cypress, but it is not remarkable, and it is simply "not worth mentioning" compared with the former residence of the Qing Dynasty feudal officials in his contemporaries.
but
It is
In these humble huts, its owners plotted a war that stirred up the Qing Dynasty for 18 years, the Twister Rebellion.
The cause of the Twister Rebellion
Among the many factors why the Twister Army revolted, one of the most sought after, the American anthropologists Valerie Hedson and Andrea Temple, in their book "The Singles Crisis: The Security Implications of Overpopulation of Men in Asia", attributed the "Twister Movement" that originated in the mid-19th century to a peasant unrest caused by a gender imbalance, and many scholars in China regard this conclusion as a guideline, summarizing it as the biggest cause of the Twister Uprising as a huge "Singles Movement", which is indeed refreshing. However, when pushed carefully, it is suspected of being partial to the whole.
The Chinese peasants had a very high degree of patience with the rulers, but those who stuttered would not do the work of pinning their heads to the waistband of their pants. Northern Anhui has been plagued by floods since ancient times, and the peasants' lives are extremely difficult. In 1855, five years after the Qing Dynasty, the Yellow River's copper tile box was diverted, and the Yellow River broke its banks for thousands of miles, at this time the Qing government was fighting fiercely with the Taiping Army in the Yangtze River Basin, and had no time to take care of it, resulting in starvation in many downstream provinces.
At the same time, the Qing Dynasty's policy of "running the sea" made civil unrest in northern Jiangsu, Shandong, Anhui, Hebei and other regions from then on. Since the Taiping Army occupied Nanjing in 1853, it has brought a fatal blow to the Grand Canal water transport that connects the north and south of China, and the coastal cities such as Yangzhou in Jiangsu and Linqing in Shandong have declined rapidly, and the direct impact of the cut off of water transport is that millions of water transport practitioners along the coast have lost their livelihoods, and some of the unemployed boatmen have joined the Taiping Army, some have joined the Qing Army, and the larger part has directly become refugees and bandits.
The twister rebellion and growth have a direct historical background reason, among which reasons such as population gender imbalance and serious land annexation are common diseases at the end of the feudal dynasty, but compared with the late Ming dynasty, the late Qing Dynasty, whether it is a natural disaster or the degree of land annexation, cannot be compared with the end of the Ming Dynasty. To sum up, the direct cause of the rise of the Twister Army is the "butterfly effect" brought about by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, while the indirect reasons are multifaceted, the class differentiation in the late Qing Dynasty is becoming more and more serious, and the people at the bottom are not happy, which is the most fundamental reason why the peasants took up arms to resist, and Western scholars summed it up as a gender imbalance, which is really shameless and absurd.
Early twist army
If you want to understand the Twist Army, it is mainly divided into two parts, simply put, the Early Twist Army and the Later Twist Army, although the same Twist Army, but the two have essential differences in organizational form and the goal of struggle.
The meaning of the word twisting refers to the use of fingers to pick cotton wool to make it a rope, in the northern Anhui dialect "twister" refers to a strand, a group, a group of meaning, just as the northern Anhui dialect refers to young men as half a pile, which is not difficult to understand.
The activities of the "twister" began to show more signs in 1851, when its manifestations were mostly armed salt trafficking and armed tax resistance, the organizational form was mostly centered on clans and polders, there was no sign of large-scale rebellion, mostly for the purpose of self-preservation, the Qing court did not use regular troops to attack, and the two sides maintained a certain delicate balance.
In the autumn of 1855, hundreds of leaders of the Twist Army would ally in Bozhou (present-day Woyang County, Anhui), publicly promoting Zhang Le as the leader of the alliance, known as the "Great Khan Ming King", and establishing the "Five Flags Military System" of yellow, white, blue, black, and red, for the first time in terms of organizational form, there was a nominal unification, at this time the total number of the Twister Army had exceeded 100,000, and initially formed combat effectiveness.
In the early stage, the Twister Army had a strong clan color, and the various flag Twister Armies did not belong to each other, and lacked effective communication and management, which was one of the fatal shortcomings of the Early Twister Army. In the early struggle between the Twist army and the Qing army, although the Twist army was numerous and powerful, it was difficult to exert its numerical superiority, but it was broken by the Qing army, and the Pheasant River Set, which arose, was lost five times in repeated pulls.
In 1856, Zhang Lexing led his troops to occupy the huaihe river town of Sanhejian (present-day Sanhejian Town, Gushi County, Henan Province), and for a while the soldiers surrounded the earthquake and accepted Hong Xiuquan's title, but in fact it was "listening to the seal and not listening to the tune", which the Tianjing side acquiesced to, but at this time in Hongxiu Quan's heart, the Twister Army was just a group of rabble-rousers, and did not take it to heart.
In 1857, the "Change of Liu Hungry Wolf" was a major setback in the early twisting army movement, Liu Hungry Wolf was originally named Liu Yongjing, originally the owner of the blue flag of the twisting army, and there was a big difference with Zhang Lexing in the future development direction of the twisting army, Zhang Lexing believed that it was necessary to follow the Taiping Army to hire Jianghuai and attack the city strategically, while the banner owner headed by Liu Yongjing believed that he should return to Huaibei and stick to his hometown.
It is not difficult to understand that there is such a difference between the two or the forces behind the two, after the rise of the Twister Army, the major banner owners and leaders have looted a large amount of wealth and materials, and in the hearts of most of the Twister Leaders at this time, not returning to their hometown at this time is like a brocade night. This vision was undoubtedly short-sighted, but it did not have a long-term political and strategic vision among most of the leaders of the Twister Army at that time, which also doomed most of them to a short-lived tragic end.
For the differences, Zhang Lexing chose to wield his butcher knife, after killing Liu Hungry Wolf, did not change the fact that the Twist Army split in the early stage, most of the Twister Banner Owners still chose to return to Huaibei with a large amount of looted property, for which Zhang Lexing had no choice.
After the split of the Twister Army in the early stage, Zhang Lexing and Gong Deshu, the chief white banner commander of the Twisting Army, and others chose to accept the leadership of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and join forces with the Taiping Army to fight in Yu, Anhui, Su, Lu and other places. In 1860, Zhang Lexing led his troops to conquer the capital of Qingjiangpu (present-day Huai'an, Jiangsu), which made tianjing see the true strength of the twist army, and Hong Xiuquan promoted Zhang Le to the main general of the northern conquest, and Xianfeng eleven years later, that is, in 1861, he was crowned king of Qiwo.
In May 1862, after the Qing army captured the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom towns of Anqing and Luzhou (present-day Hefei, Anhui), Tianjing gradually fell into a multi-faceted siege of the Xiang, Huai, and Chu armies, and the Twist Army led by Zhang Lexing also lost its foothold in the Huainan region. At this point, Zhang Lexing's nephew Zhang Zongyu led a twist army westward to join Chen Decai, the northwestern general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and Zhang Lexing led his troops back to Huaibei Woyang.
In the autumn of 1862, the Qing court Prince Horqin monk Gelinqin led the Mongols and the Eight Banners cavalry to attack northern Anhui in a large scale, and the Twist army lost one after another in the field battle, and then most of them held on to the Qing army in Weizhai.
In 1863, the Siege of Tianjing entered the stalemate stage, and the early Twister Army in northern Anhui also entered the final moment, in March 1863, the monk Greenqin attacked Bozhou Yanheji, Zhang Lexing was betrayed by traitors, the whole family was captured, and then Zhang Lexing and his second son were executed by the Qing court Lingchi, slashed 3600 knives alive, the execution lasted three days, Zhang Lexing was fifty-three years old.
The vicissitudes of the sea, the true colors of heroes. As an excellent general of the peasant rebel army, although the people he led had obvious class defects, Zhang Lexing rushed back and forth for more than ten years, dealing a heavy blow to the corrupt rule of the Qing government and accelerating its demise, and history has never given this peasant army general a fair evaluation.
Since ancient times, kings have failed, as a loser, it is inevitable that they will become small sheep in the history books, such as Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong at the end of the Ming Dynasty, in the records of the Qing History, they are naturally a demon king who kills people without blinking, and with the passage of time, this understanding has become more and more ingrained. The purpose of our reading history is to be as undaunted as possible from the floating clouds to cover our eyes, and to emit a little thought and opinion of our own in the layers of fog.
After Zhang Lexing's sacrifice, Tianjing also fell. The fall of Tianjing marked the complete defeat of the 13-year-long Taiping Rebellion, but the rest of the struggle did not stop.
Late Twist Army
In 1864, after the fall of Tianjing, the old department of the Twist army led by Zhang Zongyu, Ren Huabang, and Zhang Yujue joined forces with the old department of the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom led by Lai Wenguang and Chen Decai, and the Twist Army accepted the leadership of Lai Wenguang, and the Twist Army entered a new historical stage.
After Lai Wenguang joined the Twister Army, he actually brought a completely new change to the Twister Army, began to fundamentally eliminate the influence of clan forces on the Twister Army, and changed the mode of operation, changing the combat method of the Twister Army in the early stage of sticking to strong fighting, changing it to mobile combat, walking like the wind, coming and going without a trace, and the Qing Army suffered greatly.
In May 1865, the monk Greenqin led his troops to chase the Twister Army to Caozhou (曹州, in present-day Heze City, Shandong) in GaolouZhai, where he was ambushed and the elite Qing army was completely destroyed, and the Monk Greenqin was also beheaded by the Twister army. Since the conquest of the Mongolian steppe by emperor Taiji, the Mongolian steppe has been peaceful for a long time, the armament is in ruins, and the cavalry temporarily pulled up by the monk Grinqin is more like a group of herdsmen through and through. However, it is undeniable that the monk Greenqin ruled the army with the way, which was the last pillar on which the Qing court relied, and the accidental death of the monk Greenqin dealt a huge blow to the Qing court, and the military power of the Qing court inevitably slipped into the hands of the Han people.
In the "Battle of Gaolouzhai", the main force of the Qing army was greatly destroyed, making the twist army a large town for a while, the north of China was shaken, and the beijing and Tianjin were under martial law. After the death of the monk Gelinqin, the Qing court began to use Zeng Guofan to deal with the Twisters, and zeng Guofan, in view of the characteristics of the Twister army's proficiency in mobile operations, implemented the strategic principles of "static braking" and "river defense and encirclement", in an attempt to eliminate the Twister Army by implementing key fortifications and encirclements in the areas where the Twister Army was regularly active in the four provinces of Henan, Anhui, Suzhou, and Lu.
However, Zeng Guofan's river defense plan was soon discovered by the twist army, in mid-September 1866, Lai Wenguang and Zhang Zongyu's department gathered in The area of Yuzhou and Xuzhou, taking advantage of the fact that the embankment wall north of Zhuxian Town to kaifeng had not yet been built, and then went out, through Wei Shi and Zhongmu to the north, carried out a surprise attack, and then broke the wall to the east, and went thousands of miles, Zeng Guofan's river defense strategy was also declared bankrupt, and then Li Hongzhang succeeded Zeng Guofan in full authority to preside over the twisting matters, which also made the Huai army overshadow the military front desk of the Xiang army officially towards the end of the Qing Dynasty. In the subsequent historical process, the Huai Army will play a key role, which is not listed here.
After breaking through from Henan, in October 1866, according to the needs of the situation, the New Twister Army decided to divide into the East and West Twister Army, and the East Twister Army was led by Lai Wenguang and Ren Huabang to fight in Hubei and the Central Plains. The Western Twister Army, led by Zhang Zongyu, led by more than 30,000 people, aimed to "advance to Gansu and Shaanxi and unite with the hui people" and establish a new base, preparing to unite with the local Hui rebel army in the west to shaanxi and Gansu, in order to form a horn with the East Road Twister Army. However, history proved afterwards that the division of the Twist army did not achieve the above strategic objectives, but weakened the combat effectiveness of the Twist Army, laying the groundwork for the defeat of the Twist Army in Hubei Province.
At the beginning of 1867, the Twist army led by Lai Wenguang was attacked by the Huai army and the Xiang army at the Yinlong River in Hubei Province, and the Twist army won first and then lost, losing more than 20,000 people, and then led the army to retreat north, and the Huai army followed the siege and blockade.
In June 1867, Lai Wenguang led his troops into the territory of Caozhou, Shandong, and was intercepted by the Huai Army and the British and French foreign gun brigades, and Lai Wenguang was defeated and left south to Jiangsu. In November, the East Road Twister Army was defeated again and again, and by early 1968, the East Road Twist Army was again defeated by the Huai Army at Wayaopu in Yangzhou, and Lai Wenguang was wounded and captured.
At the beginning of 1867, Zhang Zongyu led the West Road Twister Army into Shaanxi, the Qing court ordered Zuo Zongtang to take control of the enemy, both sides had victories and defeats, but the West Road Twister Army gradually gained the upper hand, just as the Twister Army was preparing to show its hands and feet in northern Shaanxi, Zhang Zongyu received the east twisting emergency aid, so he led his troops to the east, through Shanxi into the direct subordinate rescue of the eastern twist, Zuo Zongtang led the troops to pursue.
At the beginning of 1868, the Western Twister entered the Beijing and Hebei, and the Beijing Division was shaken, which was a strategy to encircle Wei and save Zhao, but at this time the Eastern Road Twisting Army had been destroyed, the Huai Army went north to encircle the Western Twister with Zuo Zongtang's troops, Zhang Zongyu led his troops south through Tianjin to Shandong, and finally at Chiping, Shandong, the Qing army was encircled, and the entire army was destroyed, while Zhang Zongyu disappeared at the time of the rebellion. In view of Zhang Zongyu's final outcome, there are many different theories, some saying that he became a monk, some saying that he died by throwing water, and some saying that he fell into the refugees, and various theories are inconclusive, this is a historical mystery, and the truth may be hidden in the long river of history forever.
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The Twister Rebellion, which originated in northern Anhui, lasted nearly 18 years and affected 10 provinces and regions such as Anhui, Lu, Henan, Suzhou, and Shaanxi, although it brought a heavy blow to the rule of the Qing Dynasty, it also brought deep disasters to the people in the north. According to the "General History of Chinese Mouth", during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the population loss of the Qing government was about 75 million, coupled with the population loss caused by the Twister Rebellion and the Huimin Uprising, from 1850 to 1970, the population loss of the Qing government in 20 years was more than 100 million, which directly changed the population structure of many regions.
But it is extremely irresponsible to place the historical responsibility for the loss of population on the peasant insurrectionists, and wherever there is oppression, there is resistance, and in the final analysis it is the oppression of the people brought about by feudal rule.
Judging from later generations, although the Twister Rebellion achieved some military victories, it did not achieve corresponding achievements politically, which was inseparable from the lack of long-term political vision of its leaders; for a long time it failed to form a centralized and unified leadership and command, militarily practicing rogueism, neglecting to establish a consolidated base area, and in the later period, it divided the troops into operations, and the operational guidance was blindly moved, resulting in being broken up one by one by the Qing army, and finally ending up with the total annihilation of the army.
【References】
"A Thousand Sails Racing Across: A Study on the Transformation of Rivers and Seas in Qing Dynasty Water Transport"
"Lai Wenguang's Self-Description"
Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
Tales of the Twister
"Huaijun Pingtuo"
History of the Huai Army
"The Twister Army"
Singles Crisis: Safety Implications for Overpopulation of Men in Asia
Biography of Zhang Zongyu
Draft History of the Qing Dynasty
Article diagram: Network
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