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Text/Xu Chenyuan's study
Nowadays, the types of TV dramas are emerging in endlessly, and historical costume dramas have captured the hearts of many audiences, among which the costume dramas about the court life of the Qing Dynasty are very hot.
But if you look closely, you will find that in fact, there are not only "soldiers" on the clothes, but also three other kinds, namely "Ding, Yong, and Paw", why are they all soldiers, and there are differences in official uniforms, and what do these four words mean?
In fact, don't underestimate these four words, although they don't seem to be special, but in fact, the meaning they carry almost represents four completely different destinies, just a word difference, but it shows the difference between people.
Eight Banner Soldiers: Highest Rank
We know that the Qing Dynasty was a regime established by the Manchus, so the Eight Banners can be traced back to the Manchus before the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, which was a social organization created by the Qing Taizu Aixinjue Luo Nurhachi, which is characterized by the "unity of soldiers and people", and has played an important role in political, military and economic production.
Therefore, the Eight Banners were also called the Manchurian Eight Banners at the earliest, it adopted the hereditary system, and was also divided into eight flags, including yellow, yellow, white, white, blue, blue, red, and red, and a flag was a unified organization.
As a nation that established power on horseback, the Eight Banners of the Manchurian period were extremely good at cavalry archery, and under the leadership of Nurhachi, they won many victories in the war with their superb combat skills and physical fitness, and gradually disintegrated and crushed the military strength of the Ming Dynasty, and it can be said that in the process of destroying the Ming Dynasty, the Eight Banners Army played a vital role.
After the establishment of the Qing Empire, the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners Army was incorporated into the Han Army and became an army directly under the state.
For example, tens of thousands of acres of land were allocated to the soldiers of the Eight Banners and their families, and the Han people who once lived in these lands were reduced to slaves and tenant farmers and distributed to various families, in addition to which they had many conveniences in business and politics.
Although the Qing Dynasty army later joined the Eight Banners of the Mongols, the Eight Banners of the Han Army, and the Green Banner of the Han Army, their status and treatment were much worse than the original Eight Banners of Manchuria.
After the Qing government set the capital in Beijing, the Eight Banners Army shouldered the responsibility of defending national security, as well as the tools of suppressing the people, and the Qing Dynasty also specially divided special areas for its stationing and defense, these areas were forbidden to the Han people to enter, so it became a dominant situation, at the beginning as a symbol of the face of the Qing Dynasty army, or strictly accepted management and training, but in the later period it was only concerned with greedy pleasure.
Due to the Qing Dynasty's different management of the Han and Manchu people, the area occupied by the Eight Banners of Manchuria was extremely vast, and the area was full of luxury houses, while in the opposite Seoul, the common people lived in dilapidated earthen houses, and the oppression of the people by the Eight Banners Army was not only in the encroachment of land area, but also in the exploitation of taxes and forced labor.
Over time, due to the flood of these Eight Banner soldiers, they became a burden on the imperial court, and they did not have enough energy to carry out management training, and the whole army presented a situation of greedy for pleasure and discouragement, and the soldiers who were originally brave and good at fighting also became low in combat effectiveness, which can be said to have become a hidden danger in the late Qing Dynasty.
Therefore, during the Taiping Rebellion, the armies supported by these countries could not even defeat the peasant soldiers who were spontaneously organized, and they were eventually invaded by the West, and the fall of the Qing Dynasty became a natural result.
Pawn Soldier: The Life of a Grassroots Official
In Qing court dramas, we often see such scenes, those prison guards who are responsible for guarding and managing prisoners, sitting around drinking and playing cards all day long, seem to be very leisurely, is this really the case?
It is the lowest-ranking soldier in the Qing Dynasty, as a kind of ordinary soldier, they usually come from the countryside and the bottom of society, and are recruited as grassroots soldiers in order to support their families, and are managed by superior officers and soldiers, and perform tasks according to instructions, but they have no say in politics or military, and are in a relatively marginal position.
In real life, they are indeed the same as portrayed in the TV series, when they are not particularly busy, they can even sleep secretly when they are on duty, as long as they ensure that the prisoners in custody are obediently in prison.
Sometimes, when the family members of the prisoners want to visit or bring food, these prison guards can also take this opportunity to knock on a sum of money and collect some bribes, so even if the working environment is in prison, they can still get some small favors on a daily basis.
In addition to the jailers guarding the prison, there are also officials, although the two are full-time personnel of government departments, but there are differences in the specific work content, for example, the jailer uses the current position to make a comparison, which is equivalent to a prison guard, and the daily work is to manage the prisoners, and the officials are mainly responsible for maintaining social order and carrying out daily patrols.
Because the status of pawns in the entire government system is very low, the corresponding salary is also very low, but as grassroots officials, they are the positions that deal with the people the most, and the people will find them first when doing things, so they also breed a lot of corruption and oppression.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the entire Qing government was already in a state of corruption and darkness, the officialdom was pressed layer by layer, and the exploitation and oppression between the upper and lower levels were serious.
The fate of the cannon fodder of the village bravery
Yong and soldiers are actually almost the same, they all belong to the country's regular army, but the soldiers are organized, when joining the soldiers, you need to sign a contract for service, and regularly receive military salaries, live and train in a specific military camp on weekdays, and eat military food, most of the soldiers are the children of the Eight Banners, some are full of Eight Banners, some are Mongolian Eight Banners, they are basically hereditary.
The Yong is basically composed of Han soldiers, in the early stage, the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners still accounted for a certain number, but when the Manchurian government ruled the Central Plains, the local soldiers were completely insufficient, so they began to recruit Han soldiers on a large scale to supplement the army.
Strictly speaking, Yong is the militia and local armed forces in the Qing Dynasty army, so it is also called the Volunteer Army, they do not belong to the regular army, they are the spontaneous formation of the people in various places, mainly used in self-defense wars and actions to resist foreign enemies, for example, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, during the Taiping Rebellion, the army responsible for suppression, that is, the Han Green Battalion and the Xiang Yong from the locality, as well as the Hunan Army led by Zeng Guofan, the Huai Army and the Chu Army led by Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang respectively, are all local regiments to practice Xiangyong.
Because it is a spontaneous and voluntary militia organization, Yong is not professional enough in organization and training, has poor discipline, and has very simple armed strength, but it still plays an important role in defense and resistance in many local battles.
During the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government was in a difficult situation at home and abroad, and at that time it was in urgent need of a large number of troops to participate in the battle as a supplement to the army.
However, because almost all of the members of the Xiangyong were poor people from the bottom, they not only had poor physical fitness, but also had no fighting skills or good weapons, and the entire organization was in a state of chaos and rudiment, and could not play any role in the war, at most they could only make up their heads.
Many brave soldiers, who were originally croppers in the fields, were forced to lose the fields they relied on for their livelihood due to the situation of war and strife, and lived a life away from their hometowns.
The most work done every day is to be responsible for carrying grain and grass, cleaning toilets and stables and other physical work, and when they are on the battlefield, these low-level soldiers can only become the first cannon fodder, and countless military achievements have been seized by the Eight Banners.
So in general, the difference between the Eight Banners and the Xiangyong is not only that one is a soldier of the regular army and a self-organized militia, but also that it is reflected in the difference in identity class, combat ability and organizational specialty.
Ding Soldier System
Like the brave soldiers, the T-shaped soldiers also come from the bottom, and they are also the objects of the Zhuang Ding, they are the main labor force in the family, but due to the need to fill the army, they are forcibly taken away, and there is no pay, so these families usually die because of this, very pitiful.
As a logistics branch, they will not participate in formal battles, and their daily work is mainly to manage the granaries of the government, some people know how to count, and they will be asked to work in the account room, and some people will also be responsible for escorting and transporting grain and grass, running errands and transmitting official documents, etc., the work content is very miscellaneous, but there is no danger.
In fact, the Qing Dynasty also had a system for Ding, commonly known as the Ding soldier system, first of all, adult men in the country must be compulsory for military service within a certain age, and be conscripted into the army according to household registration, these are Ding soldiers, in addition to the peasants at the bottom, some are merchants, and some are craftsmen.
The service period of the Ding soldiers usually has a few years, and when the time comes, they can be discharged, and some will become the type of long-term service, they will be incorporated into the standing army, those who have served for a long time are different from the miscellaneous personnel, they receive the same strict and formal training as the Eight Banner soldiers, and will be sent to the front line to participate in combat missions during the war, which can be said to be one of the backbone forces to protect the home and defend the country.
Therefore, the words "soldier", "pawn", "brave" and "ding" are not only different in name, but also reflect the development and change of the military composition and strength of the entire Qing Dynasty.
Bibliography:
Baidu Encyclopedia - "Eight Banners System"
Baidu Encyclopedia - "Qing Dynasty Costumes"
Baidu Encyclopedia - "Qing Dynasty"
Shenyang Evening News - "During the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing Dynasty's Xiangyong Army's Weapons and Equipment Outperformed the Regular Army (Picture)"