In the ninth year of Xianfeng (1859), Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang felt that the current life was really difficult.
Zeng Guofan was heartbroken when he remembered the fiasco in Sanhe Town at the end of last year. In that battle, the Taiping Army annihilated the elite 6,000 Xiang army under his command. At present, two young generals of the Taiping Army, Chen Yucheng and Li Xiucheng, are fighting with him in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and they are extremely fierce and cunning. Zeng Guofan and his Xiang army were very difficult to face them.
Zeng Guofan
Li Hongzhang was also not happy. 5 years ago he was still a clerk in the central government, and then the Taiping Army made trouble, and he felt that the opportunity to make meritorious achievements had come, so he threw himself into the pen. At the beginning, Li Hongzhang went to his hometown in Anhui to organize the militia regiment training, gradually accumulated experience, and later grew rapidly in the course of fighting with the Taiping Army, and had many meritorious achievements. However, because his background was not hard, his credit was too great, he offended many colleagues and leaders of the Qing army, and caught up with Ding You to go home, and suddenly returned to the pre-liberation period. As a result, the Taiping army soon came to attack his hometown, and Li Hongzhang fled with his whole family to Jiangxi and stayed with his brother Li Hanzhang. This could not help but make him lament his "fate".
Li
In this year (1859), Li Hongzhang was recommended by his brother and defected to Zeng Guofan. Zeng Guofan had always felt that there was a shortage of talents under his staff at this time, and after meeting Li Hongzhang, he found that he was indeed not an ordinary person, so he appointed him as a staff member.
The two worked well together at first, with the 48-year-old Zeng Guofan being angry, thoughtful and cautious; the 36-year-old Li Hongzhang, who was sharp and decisive. When Zeng Guofan hesitated in the face of key matters, Li Hongzhang could always put forward pertinent opinions on the side, so that Zeng Guofan could quickly make up his mind.
However, even the best subordinates have times when they disagree with their leaders. In the second year of cooperation, the two men caused a series of disagreements over the issue of military deployment. Li Hongzhang also ran to Zeng Guofan and quarreled with him, and the result was that Li Hongzhang rolled up and left under the gamble.
Later, Zeng Guofan felt that he could not do without Li Hongzhang, so he repeatedly summoned and entrusted people to say good things, so that Li Hongzhang could return to his side to do things, and he valued Li Hongzhang more than before.
At this time, the Xiang army won and lost against each other in the process of fighting with the Taiping Army. Zeng Guofan's talented younger brother Zeng Guoquan led his troops into a bloody battle and conquered an important military town in the hands of the Taiping Army in the western front (along the Yangtze River in southern Anhui), closer and closer to the "bandit capital" Tianjing (Nanjing), while the Taiping army defeated all the Qing troops in the Zhejiang region of the eastern front, and the troops pointed directly at Hangzhou and Shanghai. Hangzhou was a bustling metropolis in China at that time and had a long history. Shanghai is one of the foreign trade ports opened by the great powers in recent years, not only foreign foreign masters invest and do business here, but also the landlords and gentry of the Qing Dynasty also set up industries here, making Shanghai also extremely prosperous.
Late Qing Dynasty Shanghai
Knowing that the Taiping Army was about to attack, the wealthy Chinese and foreign merchants in Shanghai were so frightened that they rushed to ask for reinforcements everywhere, and especially expected Zeng Guofan's Xiang army to come to the rescue (because the local troops of the Qing army near Jiangsu and Zhejiang were poorly combat effective, and the xiang army's record was far and wide).
However, at this time, the main goal of Zeng Guofan's Xiang army was to attack Nanjing, which needed to go all out, and Shanghai was too far away, so Zeng Guofan did not want to divide the troops to rescue.
The shanghai gentry representative saw that Zeng Guofan did not agree, so he found Li Hongzhang, who was his most important. These people complained loudly in front of Li Hongzhang while quietly handing over silver tickets. Li Hongzhang is also a person with vision, in addition to the temptation of interests, he also knows that Shanghai is a place where international trade is relatively developed and there is a lot of money, and if the Taiping Army takes Shanghai, it is equivalent to giving them an extra channel of strategic resources, which will be more difficult to deal with in the future. And if it can fall into the hands of the Xiang Army, it will be able to obtain a cash machine for military salaries.
Therefore, Li Hongzhang found Zeng Guofan, Chen complained about various interests, and finally impressed Zeng Guofan and agreed to send troops to the rescue.
At the beginning, Zeng Guofan, with the guiding ideology of "fertile water does not flow into the fields of outsiders", planned to let his younger brother Zeng Guoquan lead the army to support. But Zeng Guoquan was very reluctant.
In Zeng Guoquan's view, laying siege to Nanjing and capturing Hong Xiuquan alive is "a great cause throughout the ages." As for going to save the group of local tycoons and foreign devils in Shanghai, it seems that there is really no attraction.
Zeng Guoquan
And Zeng Guofan was also a bit difficult, because the Xiang Army team mainly relied on the people of his hometown hunan to support the field. From the beginning to the present, with the continuation of the war, it is becoming more and more difficult to recruit people from the hometown in Hunan, and the source of soldiers is tight. If a large number of troops are forcibly divided to support Shanghai, then there is no chance of victory in attacking Nanjing. Therefore, he was willing to let Li Hongzhang assist Zeng Guoquan in recruiting soldiers and organizing reinforcements. Because in Zeng Guofan's view, Li Hongzhang's hometown is not far from the Xu and Huai areas, where the people's customs are very strong, suitable for recruiting troops, and it is relatively close to the Shanghai area, so that there is no need to separate the Xiang army troops, and it also avoids the risk of long-distance marching. This is also in line with Li Hongzhang's idea, he has long been unwilling to be only a staff member, especially hope to have the opportunity to "stand on his own door".
Therefore, in the eleventh year of Xianfeng (1861), Li Hongzhang was ordered by Zeng Guofan to go to his hometown of Anhui to recruit soldiers. Because he had conducted regimental training here before, and because the connections in his hometown were relatively mature, Li Hongzhang spent a few months to form a "private unit" that "imitated" the Xiang Army, the Huai Army, with thousands of troops.
In fact, At this time, Li Hongzhang was nominally only serving as Zeng Guoquan's deputy general, and he had to wait for Zeng Guoquan to come and personally lead them to aid Shanghai. However, at this time, Zeng Guoquan was still fully committed to the various actions of besieging Nanjing, and the urging of his brother Zeng Guofan was shirked. In desperation, Zeng Guofan decided to put Li Hongzhang in charge of commanding the Huai army to support Shanghai.
Since then, Li Hongzhang's fate has made great strides along the trajectory of rising up.
In April of the twelfth year of Xianfeng (1862), Li Hongzhang led the Huai army to Shanghai. Subsequently, under the strong recommendation of Zeng Guofan, the imperial court appointed Li Hongzhang as the acting inspector of Jiangsu (the former inspector was deposed because he was evaluated by Zeng Guofan as "greedy for comfort and did not actively suppress bandits"), and soon turned right, and concurrently served as the minister of trade and commerce who dealt with foreigners, from a small staff member to a local official.
However, Li Hongzhang, who was the governor at this time, was still a subordinate of Zeng Guofan (Zeng Guofan was at this time the Crown Prince Taibao, representing the Central Committee of the Qing Dynasty to supervise the military affairs of the four provinces of Su, Anhui, Zhejiang, and Gan, and had great power). But it doesn't matter, because at this time Li Hongzhang himself also has the power and resources in his hands, and has accumulated strength for doing great things in the future. Most importantly, Li Hongzhang grasped Shanghai, the "cornucopia of the times.". Because of his assistance in the defense of Shanghai, he not only won the favor and support of rich officials and gentry, but also won the favor of foreigners, which gathered strong political capital and financial resources for him to ensure that in the future, he would be "prosperous in official fortunes" and "powerful in the imperial court" in the future.
In contrast, Zeng Guoquan, who risked his life at this time to fight the Death of the Nanjing Taiping Army, did not know that his fate trajectory had slipped into a sad downhill road.
When Li Hongzhang led the Huai army to Shanghai, Zeng Guoquan, in order to achieve the "first merit" of conquering Nanjing, did not listen to Zeng Guofan's instructions, and did not wait for other friendly and neighboring troops to act according to plan, so he led his troops to rush into the army. Along the way, it was smooth, and a series of cities were captured in succession, and at the end of May 1862, he came to the city of Nanjing and camped at Yuhuatai outside the city.
Zeng Guofan advised him to retreat and wait for help, but he said: "The so-called rich and noble seek in danger, we must do this." Worried, Zeng Guofan wanted Li Hongzhang to send the Huai army to come to his aid, but he firmly opposed: "We must not share the credit with outsiders." ”
In the era of wars and chaos, "seeking wealth and wealth in danger" is indeed correct, and Zeng Guoquan's fierce role is also very suitable for this kind of principle. He performed well, relying on his own troops of about 20,000, repelled the reinforcements of the Taiping Army that came to relieve the siege and were far more numerous than his own, and surrounded Nanjing deadly, not relaxing for a moment.
At this time, Zeng Guoquan's victory was already very dazzling. But the problem was that these feats were all his own, and they were achieved in the case of "subjective adventurism", and the Manchu generals did not benefit at all, even when the "Changsheng Army" formed by the foreigners wanted to come to his aid, he also refused. Zeng Guofan saw his brother's "danger" and advised him to withdraw his troops and wait until his teammates were on the line before starting to fight, but Zeng Guoquan could not listen.
Therefore, in the eyes of everyone, Zeng Guoquan did not suppress bandits for the sake of Kuangfu Sheji, but for the sake of making meritorious contributions alone, for personal self-interest, and for the sake of being able to "make meritorious contributions to the Lord".
In fact, no one knows whether Zeng Guofan (including Zeng Guofan) had relied on the prestige of destroying the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and zhongxing Sheji in his heart to carry out a plan to change the dynasty and take charge of his own home. Anyway, the actual situation is that Zeng Guoquan "played with his life" to eat Nanjing.
Despite the multiple blows of plague, war damage, lack of food and unstable military morale, Zeng Guoquan was unusually tenacious in "dying to the end". With the arrival of various people and horses under the dispatch of Zeng Guofan, the destruction of Nanjing City was a nail in the coffin.
After 2 years of siege, Zeng Guoquan's men and horses took the lead in blowing up the walls of Nanjing, and the Xiang army rushed in, and the soldiers of the Xiang Army, who had been hungry for a long time, burned and plundered with the acquiescence of Zeng Guoquan. Hong Xiuquan committed suicide, and the remaining officials and troops of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were either killed or captured. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom collapsed. Zeng Guoquan, who died nine times, was made Crown Prince Shaobao and a First Class Earl by the imperial court. The prestige did exist, and his own pockets and his own pockets were also stuffed with the wealth of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Imperial City. However, with this came the suspicion of the imperial court and various officials.
The imperial court issued a decree, first, accusing him of conniving at his men to kill and set fire to people after the destruction of the city, second, accusing him of not encircling and suppressing him and letting thousands of bandits escape, and third, accusing him of not handing over the wealth of Hong Xiu's entire treasury. At this time, other officials also took the opportunity to "make small reports" to the imperial court and made various satires and rumors about Zeng Guoquan.
On the contrary, the experienced and sleek Zeng Guofan "pushed" the credit and benefits to the emperor, the Manchu nobles, and his subordinates, so the imperial court almost scolded the xiangjun generals and generals, only praising Zeng Guofan for "being cautious and always keeping the name of the lord".
Seeing that his brother was "blessed with misfortune", Zeng Guofan quickly said to the imperial court, "My brother is very ill, very serious, and he has to go home and rest for a few years." Zeng Guoquan then temporarily withdrew from politics, avoiding the catastrophe that might be incurred.
After Zeng Guoquan went home to "recuperate", he was extremely depressed, and the result was really a serious illness. He may not understand that he desperately defeated the city of Nanjing, destroyed the Taiping rebels, and won the first merit, but the result was not only no official luck and prosperity, but almost "finished the calf". I don't know if he compared himself to Li Hongzhang: li hongzhang's Huai army also fought several vicious battles with the Taiping army in the Shanghai area), Li Hongzhang was vigorously praised by the landlord bureaucracy and foreign devils, and the imperial court also liked it, but Zeng Guoquan ended up full of hatred and went home to treat his illness. Think about it and estimate that you can get angry liver pain.
Unfortunately, many people lack the vision to see the general trend of the times. Li Hongzhang could see clearly, so he chose Shanghai and won the support of the real "behind-the-scenes boss" of the Qing Dynasty, the Western powers. And Zeng Guoquan, his choice is not wrong, but he is blinded by his excessive desire to "get ahead", and he is not aware of the killing opportunity buried in the dirty official field, at that time, there was neither a "Ming Jun" nor a "good minister", and some were just corrupt imperial courts that played with power and tried to be comfortable. His brother Zeng Guofan was clear in his heart about this, but his younger brother did not listen to advice.
Two years later, Zeng Guoquan made a comeback and served as an inspector in three provinces, and his main achievement was to provide relief to disaster victims. In 1884, he was named Rebbe Shoshu and Viceroy of Liangjiang. He died in 1889.
Li Hongzhang participated in the campaign to suppress the Northern Twister Army, and the strength of the Huai Army was further expanded, and because of its outstanding achievements, it was prosperous. At the same time, he actively participated in the foreign affairs movement, opened mines and factories, formed a new army, and created the Beiyang Marine Division. Because he can be a person, can do things, and has a good relationship with foreigners, he became a red man of the times and eventually grew into the humerus pillar of the imperial court.
Zeng Guoquan rejected Shanghai that year and achieved Li Hongzhang. Facts have proved that if you want to do great things, you must clearly see the trend of the times and keep up with the trend of the times.