After the defeat of the First Sino-Japanese War, Li Hongzhang once laughed at himself as a pastemaker, that is, he made up for the broken house and turned it into a clean room, but he could not withstand the wind and rain, but in fact it was a false appearance. However, Li Hongzhang was neither the originator of the "pasting theory" nor the highest level of holding this theory, and the real initiator was Emperor Daoguang. In the eyes of the world, Daoguang was diligent and loved the people, practiced frugality, and was a virtuous ruler who followed the rules, but why was such a ruler with noble qualities associated with pasting politics and became the actual gravedigger of the Qing Dynasty?
Daoguang Emperor
The Opium War was a fiasco, after the debate between the river and the sea
China's Grand Canal is not only a waterway, carrying the centralized transportation of north-south logistics, but also an extremely important military traffic artery, in the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered Xu Da to go on a northern expedition, that is, along the canal port all the way to Beijing, which required military food and materials are also consigned through the Grand Canal.
After the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, in order to prevent Zheng Chenggong from connecting with the coastal ports, they blocked the shipping from Zhejiang to Fujian, and transferred foreign trade to Guangzhou. Extending from Beijing to Guangzhou, the Grand Canal played an important role as a bridge, and the grain and salt for the royal family were delivered through Cao Transport, so it can be said that the smooth passage of the Grand Canal is related to the lifeblood of the empire.
However, after Qianjia, the Yellow River flooded, and the dense sediment blocked the canal line from Shandong to Beijing. In the Ministry of Industry, due to the different division of interests, the main body is divided into two camps, the maritime faction and the river transportation faction, and the two sides have their own opinions, and they compete to the death for the interest groups behind them.
For the river transport faction, the Cao Yun system produced a power network headed by the governor of Cao Yun, which included a huge and complex force including Beijing officials, local governors, and Jianghuai salt merchants, and the number of people involved reached more than 10,000. And with the increasing corruption of Caoyun in the last years of Qianlong, the river transport group has gained more and more benefits, and has developed into an unshakable force.
Taking Zhejiang Province as an example, the governor of the river accepts 3 million taels of silver from the central government every year, but only 300,000 taels are used for serious purposes, and the rest of the money is used to settle the relationship between the upper and lower levels, and enrich his own pockets with the salt merchants of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. If the imperial court implements sea transportation, the river transport group will not only not be able to obtain gray income, but will also face the risk of being overhead. Therefore, in the dispute between the river and the sea, the river transport faction took the lead in ignoring the facts and blindly attacking the high cost and high risk of shipping.
Gusu prosperous map
In the face of the aggressiveness of the river transport faction, the shipping faction was not to be outdone, and they seized the characteristics of the Daoguang Emperor's "pasting politics" and vigorously advocated frugality, proposing that there was no need to build another ship by hiring merchant ships for shipping, and that the shipping funds could be borrowed from the original river transport part, and there was no need to raise additional funds. But because of this, the conflict between interest groups has gradually intensified.
The only way to do this is to temporarily suspend river transportation and hire sea vessels to facilitate transportation with funds for river control. "Imperial History Edit"
At the time of the dispute between the two sides, Emperor Daoguang's attitude towards shipping became increasingly clear, and he advocated the use of sea transportation for the time being, and at the same time allocated a small amount of silver taels every year to the restoration of the river, and then observed the results after three years.
The maritime transportation system is temporarily trial, and in the future, the river will be fully open, and it should still be transported by river. "Qing Shilu"
Although the shipping faction defeated the river transport faction and achieved the first victory of the Qing Dynasty's grain shipping, problems followed, in the eyes of Daoguang, shipping was just an expedient measure to save money, and once the river transportation was unblocked, then it would naturally cease to exist. In addition, Daoguang's lack of clarity on maritime positioning allowed China to connect with the rest of the world, and not only did it fail to become the beginning of the expansion of its maritime power, but it was stopped after a few years.
Caoyun
In the Opium War 20 years later, British warships advanced from the Yangtze River, severed the connection between Yangzhou and Zhenjiang, blocked the canal port, and the grain could not be transported to Beijing. Therefore, Daoguang was obsessed with minor repairs and small repairs, and refused to spend huge sums of money to repair the canal, and when the Grand Canal was not repaired, he rashly stopped shipping, so that the Qing Dynasty could only rely on the broken river to maintain traffic, and finally the British army grasped the Achilles heel and became the key to a decisive victory.
Complacency after signing an unequal treaty
Before the outbreak of the Opium War, Daoguang adhered to the national prestige of the Celestial Empire and was sure that the British army would not dare to attack rashly, so he resolutely asked the Qing army not to avoid fighting. In the edict to Lin Zexu, the eight words "Don't provoke the border, and resound the laborer" have appeared many times, which means that Daoguang applied the pasting theory to his foreign strategy, but Yingyi, who came from afar, did not comment at all.
When Emperor Daoguang assigned Lin Zexu to carry out the Humen gunsmoke, the British army took advantage of this to provoke a war and invade Dinghai, which constituted a naked invasion. But when Lin Zexu advocated the War of Resistance, Daoguang not only refused to approve it, but also reprimanded it bitterly, thinking that the British army was just here to state their grievances, and how could I not avenge Zhaoxue, so I immediately dismissed Lin Zexu from his official position and handed it over to the officials to reconsider the crime.
However, how could Emperor Daoguang not know the situation that Lin Zexu could observe, the reason why he tried his best to oppose the war was only to save money, and tried to punish the feudal officials in exchange for the silence of the British army. In this way, the situation can be stabilized by filling temporary loopholes.
Daoguang: The British army will fight endlessly, and I do not want to consume the soldiers and civilians of the mainland and the wealth of the country. "The Beginning and End of Preparing for the Destruction of the Empire"
Speaking realistically, if Daoguang had applied the "pasting theory" to domestic political affairs, it would not have caused a serious crisis, but the British army was not good at coming, and had already hatched a series of colonial plans, so how could it be easily bought by a little petty profit.
Therefore, after Lin Zexu was dismissed and locked, Britain sensed the Qing Dynasty's desire to avoid war, and immediately launched a larger-scale war of aggression. Daoguang was forced to send troops to counterattack as a last resort, but due to the serious consumption of money and food, and the British army attacked everywhere they went, he wanted to plug the gap by temporarily compromising.
Opium war
In order to satisfy the British, Emperor Daoguang issued two edicts in succession, entrusting Qishan, Qiying and others to carry out the policy of restraint, hoping to give up profits to a greater extent in exchange for the pacification of the war.
From the ancient way of control, there is no external restraint, benevolence and sage rest with the people, and Yaode does not observe the army, and it does not hurt the national body. "The Beginning and End of Preparing for the Destruction of the Empire"
A dramatic scene happened, even after losing the war of aggression and signing a series of unequal treaties, Daoguang was still overjoyed, after all, he thought that he had filled the loophole of the giant ship of the Qing Dynasty, and did not damage the lifeblood of the country (economy). It can be seen that the practical purpose of Emperor Daoguang's "pasting theory" believes in turning big things into small things, and taking things to calm down as the main purpose, just as Lin Zexu said in "Soft Dust Private Discussion": After the peace negotiation, the capital is still full of joy, and there is a great sense of forgetting the thunder after the rain.
After using the people to control the people, they lost the hearts of the people
After the end of the First Opium War, the Qing government was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which stipulated that the British should be compensated 21 million silver dollars, and the ensuing huge debts caused the central government to quickly dry up, which touched the economic bottom line of the Daoguang Emperor. How to avoid a frontal military conflict and subdue the unruly Yiren has become an urgent problem to be solved by the imperial court.
Sanyuanli resisted the British
In the Battle of Sanyuanli, the angry Cantonese people refused to allow the British to enter the city, and fought to the death, eventually achieving a great victory. Daoguang was keenly aware that if he could use civilian forces to resist the invasion of the British army, he would not only be able to save huge defense expenditures, but also fill the loopholes of weak coastal defense.
The people of Guangdong, who are the most difficult to intimidate and subdue, also have the right to subdue the people of eastern Guangdong, and the people of eastern Guangdong can be subdued. "The Beginning and End of Preparing for the Destruction of the Empire"
As a result, the policy of "using the people to control the country" came into being, and the governors in various places carried out regimental exercises, asking the landlords and gentry to hire volunteers and soldiers to fight against the British army. For a time, local regimental training sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and even replaced the green battalion as the main auxiliary defense force.
In 1848, the British minister Wen Han tried to lead his troops into Guangzhou, and Ye Mingchen, the governor of Guangdong, immediately called on the villagers to resist and intercepted hundreds of British troops without breaking a single soldier or firing a single arrow. The victory of this anti-British campaign greatly excited Daoguang, who was far away in Beijing, and he thought that he had found a way to crack the British war, but this was only to cover up the loopholes on the surface.
Although the Qing court established the policy of "using the people to control the people," there was still a relatively serious idea of preventing the people, and besides, there was a conflict of interests between the landlord class and the peasant class, and it was impossible for them to cooperate together. Therefore, the Daoguang monarchs were afraid that the power of the people would grow stronger and stronger and threaten their own rule, so they took precautions against it in every way.
The number of people is large, not everyone may have the courage to know, blindly believe in it, I am afraid that it will be temporarily frustrated. Records of Qing Xuanzong
What is even worse is that in the process of the confrontation between the people and the Yi, if there were British casualties, the Qing government would often abandon the rights and interests of the people in order to curry favor with the British, which not only greatly strengthened the people's centrifugation of the Qing government, but also laid the groundwork for the later anti-imperialist and anti-feudal.
Daoguang reading a book
In fact, Daoguang's paste-like politics of tearing down the east wall and making up for the west wall can only stay at the stage of treating the symptoms but not the root cause, and cannot change the predicament of the Qing Dynasty being invaded at all. It is absolutely impossible to achieve ultimate victory by simply relying on restraint and concession and using the people to control the country to fill the loopholes, without thinking about enhancing national strength and reforming the irrational social system.
Conclusion:
For about 20 years, from the First Opium War to the Second Opium War, the Qing court was guided by Daoguang's pasting theory, trying only to fill the superficial holes, while allowing the internal poisonous sores to continue to expand. Thirty years later, in the late Qing Dynasty, Cixi and Li Hongzhang took charge of China, and they perfectly inherited Daoguang's theory of paste, and in the face of imperialist aggression, they only wanted to "settle once and for all" by reparating land and reparations, without considering the "huge project" such as reform and reform, and finally sank the precarious giant ship of the Qing Dynasty.