Eight Mile Bridge
In early May, the land of Tongzhou is sunny and green. I walked along the beautiful Tonghui River to see the Bali Bridge, which once caused a sensation in the world.
The Tonghui River is a canal channel excavated in the Yuan Dynasty and built by Guo Shoujing. From the 29th year of the Yuan Dynasty (1292) to the completion of the 30th year of the Yuan Dynasty (1293), the Yuan Dynasty named the river Tonghui River. In the Yuan Dynasty, after the opening of the Tonghui River, the last crux of the Grand Canal shipping was solved, so that the grain and various goods transported by Cao were transported directly from Tongzhou to the pond in the capital. At its peak, it can transport two million quintals of grain a year. The river was maintained during the Ming and Qing dynasties until the early 20th century.
There is a three-hole stone arch bridge called Bali Bridge on the Tonghui River, formerly known as Yongtong Bridge, which was built in 1446 AD, the middle hole is very high, it is specially designed for the operation of boats, and the two holes next to it are low, can not be boated, and are used for flood discharge. It is a necessary place on the avenue from Tongzhou to Beijing, eight miles from Tongzhou in the east and thirty miles from Beijing in the west, and it is the throat point from Tongzhou to Beijing. On the north side of the Bridge Tokyo-Tsu Highway is a "Imperial Tongzhou Stone Monument" erected in the eleventh year of Yongzheng (1733), which records the construction of the Chaoyang Guanwai Stone Road in that year. On the south bank of the river, more than 200 meters to the east of the bridge, stands a tall stone monument. The stele is more than five meters high, and the left side of the stele is Manchu and the right is Chinese. This is the Imperial Stone Road Monument of Yongzheng, that is, Yongzheng deliberately erected a monument here to commemorate the construction of the road from the capital to Tongzhou by the Great Qing Dynasty.
With the vicissitudes of time, a stone bridge of more than 570 years quietly spans the Tonghui River, it is like an elderly man, although the dragon clock is old but solemn and simple, and now the stone bridge has been closed due to imminent maintenance. Bali Bridge is a national key cultural relic and has been included in the World Cultural Heritage List. Not far away, a modern bridge flies over the river, and cars from south to north rush by.
By the Tonghui River, the willows are yiyi, a beautiful scenery of the water town, and the ancient stone bridges and stone monuments have added to my nostalgia for the past. This has always been a holy place to walk. In the Qing Dynasty, rulers regularly went to the Qing Tombs in Zunhua, Hebei Province, to worship their ancestors, which was a must-visit place. 161 years ago, there was a large-scale Sino-foreign war in this important place of Gyeonggi, and Chinese suffered a defeat on their own doorstep, and Bali Bridge became famous.
In 1860, the Second Opium War broke out, and the Anglo-French army marched to Tongzhou, and the troops were directed at Beijing. During the Tongzhou negotiations, the British side sent Pasha Li to lead a delegation to participate. The Qing government was very strange, and under great pressure, it agreed to all the unequal conditions proposed by the Anglo-French coalition, but it did not budge on the issue of etiquette, requiring Pasha To kneel when he met the emperor. Pasha Li refused to accept the request to bow down and fled, and the Xianfeng Emperor issued an edict ordering the monk Gelinqin to take 39 of Pasha Li and his party as hostages. From the detention to the release of just over a month, this incident has become the focus of world diplomacy. The Qing government took the lead in this incident, and the emperor's brother Yi Xin returned the hostages to the British and French forces under the pressure of force, but of the 39 hostages, only 18 survived, and the rest were all the remains, of which the bodies of the British Times reporter were divided into seven or eight pieces, thus leading to the burning of the Yuanmingyuan incident - this is the last word.
On September 17, Britain and France made a strong response to the Qing government's seizure of Pasha Li and others, and at noon that day, the Qing army was defeated at Zhangjiawan in Tongzhou, and a few days later the two sides fought a decisive battle at the Bali Bridge in Tongzhou.
The Qing army was on the north side of the bridge, with a strength of 30,000 troops; the British and French allies were in the south of the bridge, with a strength of 8,000 troops, and the two sides were facing each other across the Tonghui River, and the focus of the war was focused on the battle for the Bali Bridge. The Qing army used the bushes and jungles around the Bali Bridge to build earthen fortifications and trenches here, preparing for a decisive battle here. At 4:00 a.m. on September 21, the British and French troops advanced from the front of the eight-mile bridge with cavalry.
At 5:30 a.m., Yaman led two French artillery companies and staff members, and Collino led a French artillery company in the center, becoming the vanguard unit, and the British army was behind.
Senggelinqin commanded the Mongol iron horse to rush to the British and French coalition forces, they were not afraid to face the British and French allied artillery, because the musket equipment was very small, most of them held spears, bows and arrows, with a passion to meet the British and French coalition forces, batch after batch of attacks, once broke through the British and French coalition defenses. The British and French allies used three rows of infantry lines: the front layer was on the ground, the middle layer was slightly tilted, the rear layer was standing, the front layer was fired first, the middle layer was followed, and the rear layer was followed.
From 7 a.m. to 12 p.m., the fighting was fierce. Although the Mongol cavalry braved the enemy's dense guns and artillery fire during the battle, repeatedly rushed to the enemy camp, showing extraordinary bravery, the Qing army horse team was blocked by the dense fire of the allied infantry and the bombardment of the enemy's artillery and howitzer shells, and suffered a large number of casualties, and the war horses were frightened and rushed forward, and almost could not form an army.
Who is Sangh Gelinqin? Let's look at the aura on him: King of Zasak Doro County, Imperial Walking, Imperial Minister, Imperial Minister, Consular Guard, Blue Banner Mongol Governor, White Flag Manchurian Governor, and other positions. He was favored by the Daoguang Emperor, and the Xianfeng Emperor personally awarded the sword used by the Qing Taizu Nurhaci to the monk Greenqin. In the fifth year of Xianfeng (1855), he led his troops to defeat the Northern Expeditionary Army of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and captured lin Fengxiang and Li Kaifang, the brave and warlike generals of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. In the past two years, after hundreds of battles, the monk Gelinqin has been famous in the sea, and he has been crowned as the Prince of Zasak Bodol Katai, with great military achievements, and is known as the "Pillar of the Country".
The Mongol cavalry was once the most powerful army in the world, destroying everywhere it went, like an autumn wind sweeping away leaves, it swept through Eurasia and hit the Danube River Valley in Europe. He is good at using machetes and bows and arrows, galloping on horseback, and is often eliminated by the other party before they can react. The Mongol cavalry's bows and arrows were very good, strong bows and crossbows, and the arrows shot could penetrate the armor. In the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court implemented the policy of Manchu-Mongolian marriage for many years, and always regarded the Mongolian Eight Banners as its main force.
However, the monk Greenqin did not know the weapons of this Anglo-French coalition army, and he felt that even if eight thousand foreigners were armed with guns and guns, it would take time for the guns to be changed, and the Mongolian iron horse would have time to break up the coalition army and catch them off guard.
We watched the movie "Burning the Yuanmingyuan" that year, and the Qing army cavalry in front of the Bali Bridge killed the heavens, repeatedly charged and killed, people turned over on their horses, and corpses were all over the field, and after watching it, my heart was very uncomfortable.
The Compendium of the Translator of the Count of France wrote: "There, the Emperor's Tatar Janissaries, the essence of the Imperial Army, are gathering at the gates of the capital. In the middle of the bridge, braving a hail of bullets, one of their officers stood in front on horseback; he waved a yellow flag as a sign of challenge, and though the rumbling of the cannons overshadowed everything, he was still shouting loudly. Around this heroic officer, the marble blocks of the bridge railings were scattered, and our shells caused a lot of casualties. Death did not stop for a moment, but it did not frighten these inflexible, but brave fighters, who did not retreat. ”
The Battle of Bali Bridge is a classic battle between modern armies and feudal armies. The Anglo-French coalition had already been tempered by the Napoleonic Wars and the tests of the latest Crimean War, and the soldiers were compulsory military service plus professional officer corps. It was equipped not only with bayonet-equipped breech flintlock guns and smoothbore guns, but also with the newly invented rifled guns and rifles. Tactics are based on the latest tactics such as hollow phalanxes and three-row arrays of battle column infantry lines. The Eight Banner Army is a mixed infantry and horse army with mixed use of hot and cold weapons, and the Green Battalion Army is equipped with a small number of imported and imitation old smoothbore guns, homemade shotguns, lifting guns, lifting cannons, splitting mountain cannons, large knives, spears and other cold weapons. One of the cannons was forged in Amsterdam in 1674, and the accuracy of fire was very poor, and most of the shells fired by the large-caliber cannons lined up on the riverbank of the Qing army did not hit the Allied positions, and were soon destroyed by the Twelve Howitzers commanded by The Allied Colonel Batesman.
Senggelinqin's army was calm and easy to deal with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but the Battle of Bali Bridge suffered more than 1200 casualties, while the British and French allies only died 12 and wounded 47.
Ma Dingsheng, a Hong Kong military commentator, said that the Battle of Bali Bridge led by Senggelinqin is a decisive battle between the two eras of China's thousand-year-old cavalry attack cold weapon melee and the West's artillery-centered firepower warfare after the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution.
On October 6, the British and French troops entered the Yuanmingyuan to seize the treasure, and on the 17th, the cavalry regiment set fire to the garden, and the Yuanmingyuan was a sea of fire. On October 18, 3,500 British soldiers armed with torches re-entered the Yuanmingyuan and lit it everywhere, and more than 300 eunuchs, palace women and craftsmen in the garden were buried in the sea of fire. UNESCO data shows that As many as 1.64 million cultural relics have been lost in China, which are collected by 47 museums around the world.
A building that has been in operation for more than 150 years, synthesizing the achievements of Chinese and Western architectural art, gathering ancient and modern art treasures and books and classics of past dynasties, and rare magnificent palaces and gardens in the world, was destroyed after being plundered and burned by the invading army, and it also had to pay 8 million taels of silver to Britain and France.
Pu Songling said that every step of the Son of Heaven is concerned with the lives of the people. The Qing government's seizure of negotiators is rare in the history of modern Chinese and foreign wars and diplomacy, and it is a common international practice for the two countries not to cut off their troops, but the Xianfeng Emperor detained the entire enemy negotiating delegation as soon as he was unhappy, and under the circumstance that the enemy was obviously strong and weak at that time, this practice did not benefit China at all, but it only provided an excuse for the aggressors to carry out atrocities. The Pasha Li incident was the direct cause of the burning of the Yuanmingyuan.
After returning home, the French general who commanded the battle, Montoban, was named "Count of Bali bridge" by the French Emperor Napoleon III, and made him a senator. The Emperor offered to give him a further annuity of fifty thousand francs as a reward, but was opposed by the majority of the deputies. The parliamentarians believed that what took place at the Eight Mile Bridge was nothing more than "a battle that made people laugh", saying that "only twelve of us were killed during the whole battle, and it is not worth giving him such a high reward!" ”
Greater China could not defeat the Anglo-French coalition of a few thousand men. The defeat of Bali Bridge and the tragedy of the Yuanmingyuan shocked the Chinese of knowledge, led to national awakening and progress, and in 1861, the Foreign Affairs Movement to learn the introduction of advanced foreign technology began.
Standing by the river, look at the ancient Bali Bridge, the blue waves under the bridge, and the green grass on both sides of the river. The calm Tonghui River, the wide river surface without a boat, the river is flowing slowly, some anglers are focused and motionless on the riverside - it is a peaceful place.
161 years have passed, standing at the head of the Eight Mile Bridge, in a trance, the jingo iron horse that bravely attacked the platoon of guns and artillery with its flesh and blood, and the figure that stood still waving the apricot yellow flag, appeared in front of him again. The ground in front of the Bali Bridge is exceptionally flat, but I know that the soil under the greenery is soaked in the blood of Chinese soldiers, which the Chinese nation can never forget.