preface
On July 27, 1885, a very ordinary day, because a person in Fuzhou City died, the land of Shenzhou fell into grief. Early in the morning, a 74-year-old man said goodbye to the world. Since then, the old man who scolded Li Hongzhang for "mistakenly exhausting his life will end up in an eternal name, and for China, ten French generals are not as bad as a Li Hongzhang" has become eternal. What he left to the Qing Dynasty and the Chinese nation was only full of national dignity, and all he left behind was the good story of carrying the coffin out to levy and restore Xinjiang, but what the Qing Dynasty let him take away was to compromise with the French army under the condition of taking advantage of absolute superiority, so that Li Hongzhang signed the "Sino-French New Covenant" with endless sorrow and regret! This old man is Zuo Zongtang, the last afterglow of the Qing Empire! Today, the author will give you a detailed introduction to Zuo Zongtang, the old man who really achieved a generation of things that should be done well in a generation of people in the late Qing Dynasty.
Bumpy road, into the excess to eat soft rice
In 1812, Zuo Zongtang was born into a family of scholars in Xiangyin County, Hunan Province. Although the Zuo family is known as a scholarly family, in fact, its life is not much better than that of the average peasant family, because the Zuo family has not been a high official for three generations, and his father can only rely on farming and teaching to barely maintain such a living. Zuo Zongtang studied the Four Books and Five Classics at the age of six, studied the Eight Strands of Literature at the age of nine, took the county examination at the age of fifteen and won the first place, took the government examination at the age of sixteen, and became a showman with the second place, and four years later, Zuo Zongtang went to the city of Hunan Province to participate in the township examination and became a lifter. However, the reason why Zuo Zongtang was able to pass the township examination and become a lifter was not relying on some hard power, but was completely lucky. The reason for this is that his exam papers were brushed off in the first round without being seen by the examiner. Good luck because that year was the fiftieth birthday of the Daoguang Emperor, the emperor ordered the admission of a few more people, surprises are everywhere, just before the deputy examiner fell ill and died, the chief examiner Xu Fajie alone needed to see four or five thousand brushed off the test papers, the age was old, looking at it was very annoying, suddenly saw Zuo Zongtang when the test paper found that his article was written well, compared with the previous one, it made people look brand new, so Zuo Zongtang was recorded as a lifter. Perhaps in response to the saying that "heaven is fair", Zuo Zongtang failed to pass the entrance examination in the next few examinations, and his luck was used by the front. Until more than thirty years later, the sixty-two-year-old Zuo Zongtang suddenly had to take the exam to make up for his regrets over the years, and Cixi could not help him, so she gave him the status of a jinshi.
After the township examination, Zuo Zongtang returned home, and the townspeople thought that he would pass the exam smoothly like the previous times, but he did not expect that he would fall behind, and naturally all kinds of ridicule and contempt were overwhelming. After Zuo Zongtang got married, because his family was too poor, he lived in his daughter-in-law's house, and his wife was born with food, clothing, shelter and transportation, and began to eat soft rice for many years. Later people who could have imagined how the life of Governor Zuo When he was young could be described by a "miserable" word!
The reputation is not out of the mountains, but it is familiar with all kinds of books
As we said earlier, Zuo Zongtang was able to pass all the exams he took before the township exam, but why did he repeatedly hit a wall in the subsequent exams and failed to pass? Naturally, it is not because the test paper has become difficult, nor is Zuo Zongtang's talent only there, it is because Zuo Zongtang's thinking has gradually changed, and he feels that reading the eight strands of text will only imprison his own thinking, can not solve the problems encountered in reality, and does not have much practical use, so Zuo Zongtang began to be obsessed with reading extracurricular books, among which he loved to read geography books the most. Compiled by He Changling and Wei Yuan, the Imperial Dynasty Classics collection of essays on the classics of the ages was extremely influential on Zuo Zongtang and fundamentally laid the ideological foundation for the rest of his life, after which Zuo Zongtang began to collect a large number of extracurricular books to read. After the age of seventeen, Zuo Zongtang read Gu Yanwu's "Book of National Interests and Diseases in Tianxia County" and Qi Zhaonan's "Outline of Waterways", and while reading it, he commented and excerpted, and gained a deep understanding of the dangers of mountains and rivers and customs and customs in various parts of China. After several failed examinations, Zuo Zongtang simply gave up the imperial examination and concentrated on studying geography at home, personally drawing maps and sorting out more than a dozen atlases. In addition, he also spent a lot of time studying farming problems, collecting and studying a large number of agronomy books, personally going to the land to do experiments, and concluded that he wrote a "Guangqu Field Mapping Theory" to publicize the idea of how to cultivate the land scientifically.
Zuo Zongtang went to visit He Changling when he was eighteen years old, and He admired the young Zuo Zongtang's thoughts very much, so he introduced him to his friends Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan, and then the Xiangjun representative Hu Linyi had a good relationship with Zuo Zongtang, and communicated with so many celebrities frequently, making Zuo Zongtang famous, but he had never been born to manage and concentrated on studying various books. In addition, Lin Zexu once left an evaluation of Zuo Zongtang: He is the only one who is willing to do so, and he is only Zuo Junhu!
Participated in the pacification of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Twist Army
In 1852, the Taiping Army besieged Changsha, and at this critical moment, Zuo Zongtang went out of the mountains at the request of Zhang Liangji, the governor of Hunan, and threw himself into the camp of defending the Qing Dynasty, under the leadership of Zuo Zongtang, the Taiping Army besieged Changsha for three months, so he withdrew to the north. In 1854, Zuo Zongtang was invited by Luo Bingzhang to enter the Shogunate of Hunan for the second time, when the Taiping Army was in its heyday, the Qing Dynasty's rule was in jeopardy, and the Taiping Army rushed to northern Hunan and captured many cities around Changsha. Zuo Zongtang assisted Luo Bingzhang in rectifying the internal affairs of Hunan and providing foreign aid to the five provinces, and not only did the military and political situation in Hunan turn dangerous into security, but also the success of the battle in the province was frequently reported, and other work was also orderly. Zuo Zongtang assisted Luo Bingzhang in defending Hunan, and his reputation was outstanding, and it was said that "the world cannot be without Hunan for a day, and Hunan cannot be without Zuo Zongtang for a day.". In 1856, Zuo Zongtang assisted Zeng Guofan in defeating the Taiping Army and capturing Wuchang; in 1860, Zuo Zongtang recruited 5,000 soldiers in Hunan to form the Chu Army, and fought against the Taiping Army many times in Jiangxi and Anhui; in 1861, Zuo Zongtang served as the inspector of Zhejiang, and the following year, he formed the Sino-French Mixed Army, and at the same time expanded the Sino-British Mixed Army, capturing Jinhua, Shaoxing and other places; from 1864 to 1866, Zuo Zongtang attacked the Taiping Army's Li Shixian Department. In the years when Zuo Zongtang participated in the pacification of the Taiping Army, he also led his army to fight against the Twister Army at the same time, and in 1868, he besieged the Western Twister Army in the area north of the Yellow River and the canal in Shandong Province.
The main blockade defense, the recovery of the entire territory of Xinjiang
In 1864, uprisings broke out across Xinjiang, when there were many separatist regimes in Xinjiang. There was constant infighting among these separatist regimes, and one of them began to ask for help from the outside because it was inferior during the struggle. In this way, Agubai, who was entrenched in Central Asia, led an army into Xinjiang and began to occupy Xinjiang. After Agubai entered Xinjiang, he eliminated many separatist regimes and established the "Zhedeshar Khanate". By 1870, Agubai had occupied almost all of Xinjiang. At this time, Tsarist Russia also took the opportunity to send troops to occupy the Ili region. In this way, the whole of Xinjiang fell.
After the internal strife of the Qing Dynasty was settled, it was particularly important to solve the Xinjiang problem, and on whether to recover Xinjiang, two voices appeared in the imperial court, the first faction was Li Hongzhang, who advocated abandoning Xinjiang, and as for the reasons for abandoning Xinjiang, I described in detail in Li Hongzhang's article. The second faction is the main battle faction headed by Zuo Zongtang, who believes that Xinjiang is the northwest barrier and is of great significance to the northwest border defense, losing Xinjiang means losing Mongolia and Beijing, the number of people needed for border defense will not only not decrease, but will increase, even if Xinjiang is abandoned, military expenditure will not increase at once, because at that time the arrears of military salaries in the northwest army have reached eight million taels, and only one or two months of wages can be paid a year. In March 1875, Zuo Zongtang wrote a letter entitled "Restoring the Situation of Defending the Coastal Defense of Chen and suppressing the Grain Transportation Situation outside the Guanwai", and the final result was that the Sai Defense faction led by Zuo Zongtang won the victory.
Without Zuo Zongtang's insistence, the Qing Dynasty would not have decided to retake Xinjiang so quickly. In 1875, the Qing Dynasty appointed Zuo Zongtang as the minister of Chincha in preparation for the recovery of Xinjiang. Everything looks like it's going well, as long as the army enters Xinjiang. In fact, this matter is not so simple at all, even if the Rulers of the Qing Dynasty agreed to give priority to the defense of Sai, the next difficulty was that the military salary was needed for the expedition, and the military salary needed silver. The Qing Dynasty initially allocated Zuo Zongtang two million taels of silver, but this was far from enough. Later, he transferred three million taels of silver to Zuo Zongtang from various provinces, and gave Zuo Zongtang a total of five million taels of silver. But these are far from enough, and the rest needs zuo Zongtang to find his own way. In 1877, Zuo Zongtang was allowed by the Qing Dynasty to borrow five million taels of silver from HSBC as a guarantee from local customs. A total of 10 million taels. Although the money was not enough, the army still entered Xinjiang. As for the problem of food shortage, Zuo Zongtang cheated a part of it from Tsarist Russia, and the weapons problem also took advantage of the contradiction between Britain and Tsarist Russia and also bought it at a low price from both sides. In 1878, Agubai was destroyed, and the real enemy had just arrived, Tsarist Russia had long coveted Xinjiang, and Russian troops occupied Ili. In the face of the Tsarist forces, Zuo Zongtang let the soldiers build a coffin for themselves before the expedition, and carried the coffin out of the expedition, the purpose of which was to tell the Tsarist Russia that if it did not withdraw from Xinjiang, the Western Expeditionary Army could only wrap the body of Ma Ge! In 1881, the Qing Dynasty and Tsarist Russia signed the Treaty of Ili, and Ili was officially recovered, and the Xinjiang problem was fully resolved. In 1884, the Qing government established a province in Xinjiang, with Liu Jintang, a subordinate of Zuo Zongtang, as the first governor. The following year, the Sino-French War had just ended, and Zuo Zongtang died!
One of the leaders of the Western affairs movement
Zuo Zongtang was one of the main leaders, supporters and participants in the foreign affairs movement, founded the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau, trained and trained shipbuilding technology and naval talents, and the establishment of the Fujian Marine Division was inseparable from Zuo Zongtang. He made great contributions to the late Qing Dynasty.
He saw that most of the Qing Dynasty's defeats in the war with the Western powers at that time were due to military defeats, because the Western powers had a strong military force. Therefore, he followed the Western methods to create the Western affairs movement, strengthened the development of China's modern advanced industry, and also strengthened China's military strength, although it did not fundamentally change the face of China, but accelerated the process of China's modernization.
Finally, the author will summarize the life of Zuo Zongtang.
Looking back at Zuo Zongtang's life, in addition to recovering the whole territory of Xinjiang, many things he did were not too successful, the purpose of the foreign affairs movement was to strengthen the military, but the Fujian Water Division did not have too many brilliant achievements in foreign wars, but it was destroyed before the Beiyang Water Division. Like Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan, he also participated in the suppression of peasant uprisings, but he also failed to waste many lives for the late Qing Dynasty, and he also made compromises and concessions under the strength of the great powers. However, ideologically, he had completely surpassed li Hongzhang, a feudal bureaucrat, and would only make money from the peasants, Li Zhongtang left more than 40 million taels of silver to future generations, while Zuo Zongtang only left 40,000 taels of silver for a few children after his death. Zuo Zongtang reigned for twenty or thirty years, with almost no scandals, no nepotism, and no pursuit of promotion and wealth. Or to borrow the phrase towards republicanism, as a generation of powerful people, Zuo Zongtang is worthy of this land and this country, and truly achieved that a generation should do a good job in a generation!
Someone once said: A few more Zuo Gong may not be able to give the Manchu Qing a long life, but at least it will not be so humiliating!
bibliography:
Draft History of the Qing Dynasty
Zuo Zongtang's western expedition to raise funds and the Qing court's wartime financial regulation
Zuo Zongtang's international vision in the campaign to retake Xinjiang
A preliminary study of Zuo Zongtang's research
A new theory on the dispute between the left and Li Saifang and coastal defense
Zuo Zongtang and the Treaty of Ili