Author: World War II Pretty Girl (Without permission, please do not copy the full text of the move!) ）
As we all know: in the middle and middle period of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom War, more and more officers and soldiers of the Taiping Army surrendered to the imperial court! For example, high-ranking generals of the Taiping Army like Wei Jun, Cheng Xueqi, and Miao Peilin also became traitors to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom!
At that time, there were only three reasons for their surrender to the Qing court: one was to covet glory and wealth; the other was because of serious civil strife in heaven and had to find another way out; and the third was because they surrendered to the Qing army after falling into a desperate situation.
However, in fact, surrendering to the Qing army is a profound "art", and the timing of the choice is very important: the people who surrendered to the Qing army in the early days were generally treated well! Many taiping generals who surrendered to the Qing army in the later period were very miserable: for example, after the "Eight Kings" of the Taiping Army surrendered, they were directly executed by Li Hongzhang.
But what many people don't know is that during the entire Taiping Heavenly Kingdom War, the number of Taiping army generals who surrendered to the Qing army was very large. But on the other hand, there were almost no high-ranking Qing generals who surrendered to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom! As for the middle and lower-ranking officers of the Qing army who surrendered to the Taiping Army, even if there were, there would definitely not be many of them.
So, why is this strange phenomenon happening?
If you carefully analyze it, it is not difficult to find that the reason why the Qing generals did not have any "surrender impulse" to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at that time was probably because of the following three reasons:
First: The Qing generals had a great "psychological obstacle" to the concept of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the theory of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's "worship of God" was very disgusting to them and difficult to accept. At that time, both the cultural circles and the bureaucratic circles of the Qing court unanimously believed that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a "cult"! Must be wiped out.
Second: There were great problems with the Taiping Army's policy of captivity and surrender, and the top level of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did not have the political ability to absorb all kinds of rivers. They have always regarded the Qing army and the imperial court as "Qing demons", and since they are "demons", then they basically have one word for captives: "kill", and they will not think of surrendering.
Three: The political prospects of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were not favored by everyone, although Hong Xiuquan was set to be the capital of Tianjing. However, the subsequent series of defeats of the Taiping Army made the Qing generals see the congenital inadequacy of the Taiping Army, and they did not think that the Taiping Army had the strength to dominate the world.
Therefore, the Qing generals were not stupid, and they did not dare to rush to surrender to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. After all, not only will he be discredited, but even his relatives and families will be brutally liquidated by the imperial court. After thinking about it, the Generals of the Qing Army all thought that it was wise to concentrate on "loyalty" to the Qing Dynasty.
However, it is interesting that although the Qing generals who surrendered to the Taiping Army at that time were "rare", there was a general of the Qing army camp who was very eye-catching! This man was a senior general of the Qing Dynasty's foreign mercenaries: H. Bai Qiwen. A. Burgevine）。
After Hua Erzhan's death, Bai Qiwen and Li Hongzhang repeatedly clashed, and they resolutely surrendered to the Taiping Army.
In the Xianfeng Decade (1860), after the Taiping Army conquered Suzhou, in order to protect their interests in Shanghai, The British and Americans and other Western powers recruited some foreign outlaws to help the Qing army defend Shanghai together. This foreign mercenary army was equipped with advanced guns, led by a man named Wahl, which was the famous "foreign gun brigade" in history.
The then 24-year-old Bai Qiwen was also in the Yankees team, and because he had participated in the Crimean War and had a wealth of practical combat experience, he was appointed by Wahl as the deputy leader. When the Taiping Army attacked Shanghai, this foreign gun team cooperated with the British and French regular armies and the Qing army, and made great achievements.
After several major battles, the Qing government was very important to this foreign gun team, so it gave this foreign gun team the name of "Changsheng Army", and the commander Hua Er was also named a deputy general of the Qing government as a four-pin general.
In August 1861, the "Yankee Brigade" began to be reorganized, and the officers in the team continued to be Europeans and Americans, but on the other hand, they began to hire a large number of Chinese replenish the supply of troops.
In September 1862, when Wahl led a foreign gun team to attack Zhejiang with the British and French troops, he was seriously injured by Li Xiucheng's troops, and he was killed soon after. After Wale's death, Bai Qiwen was ordered to take over the second captain of the Yankees.
In fact, Bai Qiwen's command ability will not be much worse than Huaer's, so after he led the "foreign gun team", he still defeated the Taiping Army many times, and he himself was seriously injured in the Battle of Xiaotang, but fortunately in the end, he saved his life .)
However, Bai Qiwen has low emotional intelligence in the official arena, and because of his violent personality, he will not think calmly like Wale when encountering things. As a result, Bai Qiwen often had friction with some local officials of the Qing government, and even had several direct conflicts with Li Hongzhang.
Li
In particular, in that case of "unpaid wages", Bai Qiwen believed that Li Hongzhang deliberately made it difficult for his own foreign gun team, so he angrily and arsonated and plundered 40,000 taels of treasury silver. As a result, this "money grab" incident made Li Hongzhang hate Bai Qiwen to the bone. In order to punish this trouble-making foreigner, Li Hongzhang quickly announced that Bai Qiwen would be relieved of all his duties, and a reward of 50,000 taels of silver was offered to arrest him.
In the case of complete hopeless reinstatement, Bai Qiwen was so angry that in July 1863, he led dozens of his foreign soldiers to snatch a small gunboat of the "Gaoqiao" from the Qing army, and sailed to the Taiping Army's territory at full speed with a large amount of ammunition: Suzhou.
At that time, the general of the Taiping Army who was guarding Suzhou was Tan Shaoguang, the King of Mu, and his surrender to this foreigner general was naturally "ecstatic"! And Bai Qiwen did not disappoint Tan Shaoguang, he quickly relied on the little foreign soldiers in his hand to prepare the first "foreign gun team" for the Taiping Army.
Helping the Taiping Army establish a foreign gun team, Tan Shaoguang's series of practices also made Bai Qiwen grateful!
The reason why Bai Qiwen chose to defect to the Taiping Army was that he planned to give Li Hongzhang a little color to see! Therefore, he later sneaked back to Shanghai several times, trying to gather his former old department to Suzhou to conspire for major events. Although this move had little effect, it won Tan Shaoguang's great favor with him.
Tan Shaoguang thought that Bai Qiwen was "loyal and commendable", so he selected more than two thousand people from his own troops to give to Bai Qiwen for training. However, due to the limited number of instructors, only about a thousand people were trained in the end. In order to quickly expand the strength of the foreign gun team, Bai Qiwen went to Tianjing to meet li Xiucheng, the king of loyalty, hoping that he could completely control a foreign gun team by himself and have the right to act independently.
Although Bai Qiwen showed great "loyalty" in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Li Xiucheng still seemed to have some distrust of him, so he did not agree to Bai Qiwen's request. Therefore, the foreign gun brigade formed by Bai Qiwen for the Taiping Army has always faced the problem of few personnel and poor equipment.
Moreover, later, as the war situation was very unfavorable to the Taiping Army, the attrition of the "foreign gun team" of this Taiping Army became more and more serious! The few remaining soldiers were either wounded or sick, and they also demanded to leave. In desperation, Bai Qiwen had to apply to Tan Shaoguang for some severance pay, so that these old subordinates who had followed him for many years could leave on their own.
Soon after, Bai Qiwen himself had a recurrence of old injuries and prepared to return to Shanghai for medical treatment under the care of Tan Shaoguang. As for Bai Qiwen's departure, to tell the truth, the person who was most reluctant to him was Tan Shaoguang. After years of getting along, Tan Shaoguang and Bai Qiwen can be said to have established a brotherly friendship!
On the day of departure, Tan Shaoguang used his palanquin and guards to escort Bai Qiwen all the way to the intersection of the two armies. Fearing that Bai Qiwen would be reprimanded by the Qing government in Shanghai, Tan Shaoguang also wrote a handwritten letter to the commander of the "Changsheng Army" at that time: Gordon.
In the letter, Tan Shaoguang expressed the hope that Gordon could temporarily put aside the "enemy and us", remembering that Bai Qiwen was also an American, in the spirit of "humanitarianism": let Bai Qiwen, who was injured and sick, be treated well in Shanghai. And Gordon actually did it after receiving the letter, after all, he didn't like Li Hongzhang very much.
Gordon and Li Hongzhang
Especially after the Qing army "killed and surrendered" in Suzhou, Gordon thought that Li Hongzhang was too "perfidious", and he even used a gun to go around to ask Li Hongzhang for explanations. Later, Li Hongzhang, who consciously managed the loss, entrusted someone to deposit 10,000 yuan in Gordon's foreign account with a reward fee, and the matter was put to rest.
And Tan Shaoguang's "heart-warming" actions undoubtedly made Bai Qiwen grateful! As soon as he returned to Shanghai, he immediately published an article in the Beihua Jie Bao, stating that he had "until this moment, there was still no intention of betraying the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom."
As a result, as soon as Bai Qiwen's statement was issued, it almost scared the American consul in Shanghai half to death! The U.S. consul hastened to transfer Mr. Bai to Yokohama, Japan, to be healed and ordered him never to return to China. But where Bai Qiwen listened, after recovering from his illness, he secretly ran back to Shanghai twice, only to be caught by the American consul and forcibly sent back to Japan.
Ending: Did he die in an accident, or did Li Hongzhang kill him?
In 1864, when "Tianjing" was in danger, Bai Qiwen heard the news and secretly sneaked back to China from Japan again. This time he did not go to Shanghai, but landed from Ningbo instead. Once ashore, he began to secretly recruit troops and buy arms, hoping to rent a steamship to relieve the siege of Tianjing.
However, the Qing court also quickly learned of Bai Qiwen's actions, and Li Hongzhang, who was greatly panicked, ordered the direct capture of Bai Qiwen. In the spring of 1865, Bai Qiwen prepared to go to Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, to defect to Li Shixian, the attendant of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. As a result, as soon as he arrived in Xiamen, he was captured by the Qing army and then escorted to the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang: Zuo Zongtang.
After all, people are Americans, and even Li Hongzhang himself has no right to dispose of it! Therefore, Li Hongzhang ordered bai qiwen to be escorted to Suzhou for custody, and then handed over to the US consul for disposal. However, when escorting the convoy to Lanxi, Zhejiang Province, it encountered a big storm, and Bai Qiwen and the Chinese officers and soldiers escorted by the convoy all "drowned in the boat"!
In this way, this foreign general who had always been loyal to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Bai Qiwen, who was 29 years old at the time, actually died violently due to an "accident". But many people think that Bai Qiwen did not actually die in an accident! It was the Qing officials, especially Li Hongzhang, who were determined to kill him.
Fearing that the U.S. government would blame Bai Qiwen after killing him, Li Hongzhang deliberately asked his subordinates to escort him to Suzhou by boat. But in fact, he had secretly ordered: halfway to drown Bai Qiwen in Lanxi, Zhejiang, and then announce that he had "accidentally drowned" to the outside world.
The United States may have taken into account the series of moves after Bai Qiwen surrendered to the Taiping Army, and has caused too much trouble for itself. The United States also did not want to affect its own interests in China for the sake of a White Qiwen, so after the drowning of Bai Qiwen, the US government did not delve into the truth and said that it voluntarily gave up consular jurisdiction.
Bai Qiwen is indeed a different "color" in the history of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom! Perhaps even in the eyes of The Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan, he would never have dreamed that one of the most loyal generals to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would actually be an American "foreigner"! This has to be said to be a very interesting historical anecdote.
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