As we all know, the famous dispute between the fortress defense and the coastal defense in history is represented by Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang.
Zuo Li has always had a discord, but it can be seen that Zuo Zongtang was not effective in suppressing the twist, and Li Hongzhang also helped Zuo Zongtang to exterminate the Western Twist Army?
01
The Twist Army revolted
The Twist Army appeared slightly later than the Taiping Army, and was mainly active in parts of Anhui, Suzhou, Shandong, and Henan provinces north of the Yangtze River.
The Twist Army Rebellion lasted for 15 years, from 1853 to 1868. In 1864, after the Hunan army led by Zeng Guofan captured Nanjing, the Twist Army became the greatest enemy of the Qing court.
The Twist Army revolted
02
The young man of the twisted army killed the monk Grinqin
Friends who like Stephen Chow's movies should know that the iron hat king monk Grinqin, the historical monk Grinqin died at the hands of the twisted army. In May 1865, Monk Greenqin was lured to Caozhou, Shandong (now Heze, Shandong) by the Twist Army, and Monk Greenqin's department was completely annihilated, and Monk Greenqin himself was beheaded by a 16-year-old Twist Army teenager Zhang Pifang.
The death of Monk Greenqin shocked the government and the opposition. Monk Lingqin was killed in battle, and the Eight Banners Army also lost its real commander, and the Yongying armed forces of Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang and others began to gain more military control and became the main military force of the late Qing Dynasty.
Seven days after the death of Seng Lingqin, on May 25, the Qing court appointed Zeng Guofan as the minister of the Qin Mission, and went north to supervise the division and suppress the twist, and Li Hongzhang was the acting governor of Liangjiang, responsible for the transfer of troops, raising salaries and other logistics matters.
Monk Greenqin's Beijing Monk's Palace
In September 1866, Zeng Guofan was dismissed by the imperial court because of his ineffective suppression, and Li Hongzhang succeeded him.
03
Zuo Zongtang's ineffective twisting caused Li Hongzhang to be dissatisfied
From October 1866, the Twist Army was divided into two armies, the Eastern Twist Army, led by Lai Wenguang, continued to operate in the Central Plains, and the West Twist Army, led by Zhang Zongyu, entered the Shaanxi and Gansu regions.
Li
The Qing court immediately made a clear division of labor for the East and West Twist Army, with Li Hongzhang responsible for attacking and suppressing the East Twist Army, and Zuo Zongtang responsible for attacking and suppressing the West Twist Army.
At the end of 1866, according to the complex situation in Shaanxi and Gansu, Zuo Zongtang put forward the strategy of "suppressing the twist should be urgent, and the suppression should be slow", and decided to first exterminate the twist army, and then suppress the Shaanxi-Gansu Hui uprising. He believed that the threat of the Twist Army was greater than that of the Hui Army, and that after the Twist Army was pacified, the Hui Army would also be deterred.
Different from Li Hongzhang's "stranglehold and suppression", Zuo Zongtang adopted the strategy of "encirclement and suppression in a long circle", hoping to gradually reduce the scope of activities of the Western Twist Army and eventually encircle and annihilate it in northern Shaanxi.
In December 1867, Li Hongzhang led the Huai army to encircle and annihilate the East Twist Army in Shouguang, Shandong. Lai Wenguang broke through to Yangzhou and was captured, and in January 1868, Lai Wenguang was executed by Ling Chi.
In December 1867, in order to rescue the East Twist Army, the West Twist Army crossed the Yellow River by crossing the Yellow River in the Hukou area east of Yichuan by means of the Yellow River's ice seal, and successfully entered Shanxi, breaking Zuo Zongtang's plan to encircle and annihilate the West Twist Army in northern Shaanxi.
After Li Hongzhang exterminated the East Twist Army, Zuo Zongtang was competitive, chased and fought fiercely, and the West Twist Army was forced to take risks, went north to Baoding, and sent a small force of the Twist Army to sneak into the suburbs of Beijing, appearing in the area of Lugou Bridge, and suddenly the Forbidden City fell into a panic, and Cixi angrily dismissed the Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang's officials.
Zuo Zongtang was frightened and angry when he learned that the West Twist Army was going north, and quickly waved his army into Beijing to protect him.
Li Hongzhang had exterminated the Twist Army but was dismissed because of Zuo Zongtang, and expressed his dissatisfaction and anger at Zuo Zongtang in a letter to Zeng Guofan. In the letter, Li Hongzhang mentioned: "The destruction of Zhang Twist this time is a combination of time, place, and people, and only one left public to the end." ...... The true colors of Ah Pu (Cao Cao) are revealed here, and I don't know why Hu Wenzhong (Hu Linyi) pushed it as promised that day. ”
04
Li Hongzhang helped Zuo Zongtang suppress the Western Twist Army
The Qing court urgently ordered the provinces under the direct command to suppress the official army, which was under the command of Zuo Zongtang, and Li Hongzhang cooperated. However, Zuo Zongtang still pursued the main force of the Twist Army according to the tactics of "long circle encirclement and suppression", but he was never able to annihilate the main force of the Twist Army.
Later, the main force of the Twist Army suddenly moved to Shandong, and the Qing court ordered Li Hongzhang to lead all departments, and ordered Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang to completely exterminate the Twist Army within a month, otherwise they would be severely punished.
Li Hongzhang combined with Zuo Zongtang's "long circle encirclement and suppression", and then used the Zhilu Plain in the middle of summer to have heavy rain to limit the power of the cavalry of the Twist Army, as well as the internal strife of the Twist Army, in August 1868, Li Hongzhang set up a set to annihilate the West Twist Army, and the leader of the West Twist Army, Zhang Zongyu, "wore the water and did not know what to do".