In the late period, the four provinces of Anhui, Suzhou, Lu and Henan north of the Yangtze River became a battlefield for all kinds of soldiers and horses. The protagonists of the battlefield are the Qing Army and the Taiping Army, and there is also a supporting role twist army. In addition, there is also a "dragon set" with a lot of drama, he is Miao Peilin's Miao Family Army.
Miao Peilin is a native of Fengtai, Anhui Province, and his origin is very similar to Hong Xiuquan, both of whom are poor families and want to change their fate by relying on the imperial examination, but they are ruthlessly attacked by reality. Compared with Hong Xiuquan's repeated failures, Miao Peilin was not much better, he was only made a student member of Fengtai County at the age of forty, and it can be said that he had no connection with him when he became an official.
Miao Peilin had great ambitions in his heart, he had read the book of soldiers, and he thought that the time of great chaos in the world was the day when heroes such as him and other heroes would die. But the reality is very bone, after the twist army started, Miao Peilin responded to the call of the imperial court and recruited township heroes in his hometown, but he was poor and had no identity, and no one paid attention to him at all.
Miao Peilin saw that the official government did not accept himself, and the landlord looked down on himself, so he voted for Zhang Lexing, the leader of the Twist Army, and relied on his own half-hanging cultural level to mix the identity of a master. However, the attitude of the Twist army towards Miao Peilin was lukewarm, and he gave advice and advice in the army, but he never won an official and a half-post, and his heart was very depressed.
The poor peasant army life made Miao Peilin unable to bear it, and not long after he joined the twist army, he broke away from the twist army. Miao Peilin found Shouzhou Zhizhou Jin Guangzheng and claimed that she could train the township regiment for him, on the condition that he be named the boss of the regiment, and Zhizhou's reply had only one word: roll.
Miao Peilin, who touched a nose of ash, had to work as a teacher in a small school in Lu'an to earn some money to support her family. But there were still a few people studying in the chaotic world, and Miao Peilin was so poor that he couldn't even afford to eat. Miao Peilin looked up at the sky and sighed, lamenting the injustice of the heavens.
Just when Miao Peilin was cornered, the turning point in his life came. In the sixth year of Xianfeng (1856), the Twist army held an alliance and joined forces, and the combat effectiveness was greatly enhanced, and the regimental training of Fengtai and the landlords were beaten by the Twist Army. At this time, the landlords and squires remembered miao Peilin, who recited the six-character policy of "building a village", "accumulating millet" and "governing soldiers" every day, so they invited him out of the mountain.
Miao Peilin did have some ability, as soon as he came out of the mountain, he was a three-plate axe, first he gathered with his fellow villagers Haojie to form an alliance, recruit troops and buy horses, and then divided the troops into five banners of yellow, green, red, white, and black, formulated military discipline, and made a look. Several times in confrontation with the Twist Army, Miao Peilin's regimental training was victorious, and he suddenly made a name for himself and became a local party strongman.
With soldiers and grain, Miao Peilin began to want to be king, he saw the smoke in the world, he felt that the Qing Dynasty would perish sooner or later, so he was unwilling to fight for the Qing Dynasty. Chen Yucheng, a general of the Taiping Army, led his troops to attack Shouzhou, and Shouzhou asked Miao Peilin for help, Miao Peilin only felt funny, he was burning and looting in the rear of the twist army, doing things to bully men and women, where there was time to relieve the siege of Shouzhou. What's more, it was Chen Yucheng who attacked Shouzhou, and even the Xiang Army couldn't take him, and Miao Peilin knew that relying on his own miscellaneous card regiment to practice, it could not be his opponent.
Therefore, Miao Peilin strictly implemented his six-character policy of "building a village," "accumulating millet," and "managing the army," and managed his own acres and three points of land well. However, Miao Peilin's six-character policy sounds good, quite like Zhu Yuanzhang's feeling of starting a soldier, but in fact, he did only one thing: burning and looting.
In the chaotic world, people's lives are as cheap as grass, the Qing court and the Taiping Army and the Twist Army are inseparable, and where there are still people who care about the lives and deaths of the common people. Miao Peilin, in the name of suppressing the twister, carried out the plunder, and his troops were even more like the bandit army than the twist army, and it was not an exaggeration to say that there was no grass wherever he went.
After Miao Peilin's power was huge, he could not move along the stronghold, at a distance of tens of miles at a time, and plundered the people, whether it was the families of the Twister Army or the innocent civilians, he did not spare it. In order to loot money, Miao Peilin also gathered all the captive women and forced them to become prostitutes, and the money they earned was used as military pay to expand the army. The local people hated Miao Peilin so much that even children sang the song "Don't kill Miao Thief and Don't Give Up".
In this way, Miao Peilin occupied one side, he sat back and watched the Qing soldiers and the Twist Army fight and lose both, and when the imperial court was in a hurry, he pretended to send an old, weak, sick and disabled force to attack the Twist Army, and the elite troops were all used to expand the territory and occupy the city. By the time of the Xianfeng Decade (1860), Miao Peilin's Miao family army had reached hundreds of thousands of people and had become a warlord who divided the side.
Miao Peilin is said to be a warlord because he is different from the Taiping Army and the Qing Army, he does not want to do things for the Qing Dynasty, nor does he want to work for the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, and his goal is only one: to claim the king and dominate and occupy the territory. And that's what characterizes warlords.
After the Anglo-French army invaded the Jing Division, and the Xianfeng Emperor fled to Rehe, Miao Peilin realized that the time had come, and he rebelled, calling himself "King Tianshun of Hebei" and occupying the city of Shouzhou. At that time, the Taiping army was powerful, and Miao Peilin regarded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as Zhengshuo and expressed his willingness to assist Chen Yucheng in battle. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in order to show its sincerity, named Miao Peilin as the "King of Song".
Chen Yucheng thought that Miao Peilin was a righteous soldier who jointly resisted the Qing, but he did not know that he was just a villain who fell with the wind. Nicknamed "Little Zhou Yu", Miao Peilin regarded Cao Cao as his idol and compared himself to a soldier like "Zhuge Liang", but he did not have any of the personalities and qualities of the three. Chen Yucheng treated Miao Peilin with a pure heart, but Miao Peilin was already planning to retreat.
With the decline of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Twist Army, Miao Peilin began to secretly communicate with the Qing army, saying that he had only gone astray before and was willing to wear the crime and make meritorious contributions. The Qing court summoned Miao Peilin, but the imperial court was disgusted with this two-faced and three-bladed bandit. Miao Peilin felt the court's suspicion of him, and in order to show his loyalty, he prepared to attack his brother.
Miao Peilin designed to trick the king Chen Yucheng and then hand him over to the Qing army. Miao Peilin did not dare to see Chen Yucheng and let his nephew go to persuade him to surrender, Chen Yucheng scolded: "Uncle Er is really a rogue villain, there is a grass on the wall, the wind blows on both sides, the dragon wins to help the dragon, the tiger wins to help the tiger, and in the future even the name of a thief will not fall!" (Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Materials)
Before Chen Yucheng died, he said that after I died, Miao Thief would not live long. After Chen Yucheng was killed, the Qing court immediately began to target Miao Peilin, asking him to disperse his troops and return to the field. Miao Peilin was unwilling to give up his glory and wealth, and second, he was afraid of being liquidated by the Qing court, and he could not disband his own Miao family army.
In the face of the Qing army's step-by-step approach, Miao Peilin did not stop and once again rebelled against the Qing. However, the wise and courageous warriors such as Chen Yucheng were not opponents of the Qing army, and how could Miao Peilin's rabble-rousers be able to oppose the Qing army?
Soon, Miao Peilin's Miao family army collapsed, and the Qing army unloaded and killed the donkey, not only killing Miao Peilin, but also slaughtering his entire family. In this way, this warlord group that lasted for more than ten years was destroyed. Miao Peilin was capricious and only wanted to divide one side and become a tu emperor, and because of this, he was considered "the first warlord in modern Chinese history" (Cambridge History of China's Late Qing Dynasty). From this point of view, Chen Yucheng was wrong, Miao Peilin still left a name, but it was only a name that had been left behind for thousands of years.
Resources:
Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Information
The Cambridge History of Late Qing Dynasty China