On February 24, 1841, the British issued an ultimatum to Guan Tianpei, the admiral of the Guangdong Admiralty, demanding that Guan Tianpei surrender and abandon the forts in the horizontal gear.
Guan Tianpei of course refused.
The Qing Dynasty military, recognized as the best coastal defense general, is about to usher in the final battle of his life.
Guan Tianpei had also made preparations for this life-and-death war. Among the generals of the Qing Army, it can be said that there is no one who can have so many confrontation processes with the British army like Guan Tianpei and have such a deep understanding of the combat effectiveness of the British army.
But even so, the previous outbreak of the Battle of Shajiao once again refreshed Guan Tianpei's cognition. Originally, he only thought that the British ship guns were powerful, but the Battle of Shajiao told him that the British land warfare level was the same fierceness, whether it was the ability of white-knife warfare to fight bayonets, or the killing and injury of musket salvos, they were more than one grade ahead of the Qing army. In particular, the mysterious flank enveloping landing tactics have opened the veteran's eyes.
This opponent from afar was now standing in front of the Qing army with a desperate strength.
What is even more desperate than this is the morale of the Qing army itself on the verge of collapse, the Qing soldiers who have personally seen the strong combat effectiveness of the British army, many of them have been frightened, many people have deserted and run away, and what is even worse is that some soldiers have no ability to fight a war, but the level of strike is extremely professional, obviously the enemy is at present, but it is a group to make trouble to pay money, and if the salary is not raised, there will be no war.
For Guan Tianpei, who has been in the battlefield for a long time, this moment is the most difficult moment in his military career.
At this critical moment, the savior who helped him in time appeared: Qi Shan.
Qi Shan and Guan Tianpei, the duo in many patriotic film and television dramas, are the standard big enemies. According to some films, Guan Tianpei's old general heroic life, but when he arrived home, he was sent home by this old and treacherous Qi Shan pit, the soldiers were transferred away, the cause of resisting the enemy was destroyed, and even later the British soldiers came to Humen, and Qi Shan, in order to engage in surrender, had to sit and watch Guan Tianpei martyr the country without saving. From start to finish, bad things are done.
However, the real historical facts tell us that if there were no Qi Shan, the great enemy, I am afraid that the old general Guan Tianpei would not even have the opportunity to fight the last bloody battle in this life, and the birds and beasts would have dispersed early.
After learning about the situation in Humen, Qi Shan did not hesitate, and squeezed out money between his teeth, and sent it to Guan Tianpei to help him make up for his military salary and finally stabilize his morale.
But what is more important is that guan Tianpei has won time to prepare for the battle. Qi Shan racked his brains at the front line, and did not forget to secretly send troops to Guan Tianpei to replenish the source of troops on the front line. Many people have said that he secretly sent troops, saying that this is another proof of Qi Shan's traitor to the country, but the truth is that if Qi Shan had swung to reinforce Guan Tianpei at that time, Yi Lu would have attacked brazenly, and the most precious time for combat readiness would have been simply not available.
It was also with the full support of Qi Shan that Guan Tianpei was able to free his hands and feet and make the most adequate preparations for this final decisive battle.
One of the most important things he did was to build hidden forts on the upper crossbar island.
This incident fully shows that Guan Tianpei is worthy of the title of famous general, born in the Qing army in the seventeenth century with a tactical level, but he also quickly understood the strength of the British flank enveloping tactics and responded quickly. Although the time was tight and the task was heavy, under the cover of Qi Shan, the hidden battery was finally repaired, and it was much more difficult for the British army to replicate the flanking enveloping tactics of capturing the Shajiao Fort.
On the 25th, the famous Humen Artillery Battle broke out.
This was the largest battle in which the British had invested the most troops since they arrived in Guangzhou, and in addition to various light ships, there were also warships HMS Willis, HMS Branham, HMS Malverley, HMS Toru I, HMS Empress, HMS Magalska, and 4 transport ships.
To Guan Tianpei's surprise, the British army did not copy the tactics of attacking Shajiao Fort, they bypassed Guan Tianpei's heavily guarded Upper Hengdao Island, but instead camped on the undefended Lower Hengdao Island of the Qing Army.
The British army built fortifications on the lower cross-stall island in a big way.
Taking advantage of the opportunity at night, the Qing army quickly launched an artillery attack, intending to destroy the British fortifications.
This idea is very full, but the helpless reality is too bone: the quality of the Qing army's artillery is too poor, it can not hurt the British military fortifications at all, just in the Qing army's artillery roar, the British engineers easily work overtime and quickly complete the fortifications.
It was not until dawn on the 26th that Guan Tianpei understood that easily putting the British into the lower cross-stall island was a more serious consequence than letting them cover the flank of the upper cross-stall island. The British army built not simple fortifications on the lower crossbar island, but terrible field artillery positions.
This artillery fire roared, raining down on Guan Tianpei here, and no matter what the loss of the fort, even the Qing army's military camp was instantly beaten into ruins.
If it was an ordinary Qing army, when it encountered this situation, it would have collapsed immediately, such as the Qing army in Dinghai.
Guan Tianpei proved with excellent performance that he was by no means ordinary. Even though it was covered by British artillery fire and suffered heavy losses, the upper cross-stall island where he personally sat still fought back. Although the Qing artillery was too poor to hit the Chinese and British troops, the sound of artillery continued to stop.
But not everyone can be as heroic as Guan Tianpei. The Yong'an Fort keeper Qingyu, the horizontal platform guard General Dabang'a, and the horizontal platform guard Liu Dazhong felt that it was better to "preserve strength for the future" instead of sitting on the island and eating shells, so they fled in a boat.
For the tragic war situation, these few acts of instigation can be called a falling stone.
At 11:30 a.m., the British warships began to start, and the HMS Branham, HMS Melverly, the ship Queen and 3 rocket boats attacked Mount Ya niang shoe (Wushan). The Melverly aimed its side guns at the Weiyuan Fort and jingyuan forts.
Such a confrontational scene, placed on the battlefield, the lethality is one-sided.
The artillery of the Qing army basically could not hit the British army, and the British army bombarded it with a heavy bombardment. In this way, the morale of the Qing army was finally on the verge of collapse. Large numbers of soldiers chose to flee.
When the British raised their shiny bayonets and prepared to swing their victory, what they saw was a sight they would never forget.
Covered in blood, Guan Tianpei personally commanded the battle at the Weiyuan Fort, and beside him, there was a large piece of silver scattered on the ground, which was all his family property, sold and spread out on the fort, and told the soldiers in a loud voice that if they killed an Englishman, you would have a share of this money.
Sadly, even if you fight to this point, you can't save the soldiers from running away. The soldiers scattered like birds and beasts, waiting for the British army to approach the last Jingyuan Fort, and only more than twenty soldiers led by Guan Tianpei were left.
Faced with the inevitable final battle of his life, the old general was bloodied to the end, and finally fell under the fierce fire of the British. "The body has been martyred by dozens of wounds, and the world is in pain."
His grandeur and indomitability were not only painful to the Qing Dynasty, but also admired by the British. When Guan Tianpei's family took his body, the British specially fired cannons to pay tribute to the old general.
Just look at the course of the battle and you'll see why respect. Compared with the collapse of several Qing army fortresses, Humen held out until four o'clock in the afternoon of the 26th, which was already the fiercest resistance that the Qing army had ever encountered.
But compared with this magnificent process, the embarrassing is still the casualty ratio: the Qing army killed three hundred people, captured thousands of people, the number of escapees is even more incalculable, and on the British side, only five people were injured.
The coastal defense line, which was known as the strongest coastal defense line of the Qing Dynasty, was easily destroyed in such a disparity in casualty ratio.
Theoretically, in the Humen defense system, there is a third portal, the Great Tiger Fort. However, after the fall of Humen, the Great Tiger Fort was useless and was voluntarily abandoned by the Qing army.
This also means that from this time on, the British army can break into the Pearl River at any time, and then drive straight into the provincial capital of Guangzhou, as long as they want to do so. And righteousness is planning to do just that. (The above is an excerpt from Qin Shiyong and Zhang Lan's long popular history book "Seventy Years of Wind and Thunder", for the contextual content, please go to the column to read the whole book)