(TV series "Qianlong Dynasty")
In January 1766, the Burmese army invaded Yunnan again, and Liu Zaowen hurriedly mobilized 7,000 or 8,000 people from the Green Battalion and Tulian to meet the enemy in three ways. In accordance with his orders, the generals He Qiongzhao, guerrilla Minghao, and garrison Yang Kun led more than 600 Green Banner soldiers to cross the river to help the front.
He Qiongzhao's army had no military discipline to speak of along the way, especially He Qiongzhao personally led the troops, and also bundled all the weapons and carried them, while the personnel scattered on foot, and there was no talk of fortification, as a result, they were ambushed by the Burmese army shortly after crossing the river, the troops collapsed, and the whereabouts of several generals were unknown.
In this battle, the Qing army, except for He Qiongzhao's road, also lost the other two roads. Afterwards, Liu Zao did not verify the details, and reported that He Qiongzhao and others were all killed, Ming Hao was wounded, and more than 600 people returned to the camp with only more than 100 lives, and said that the Qing army had broken seven enemy camps, not without small victories.
Seeing that He Qiongzhao's army had suffered heavy losses, Qianlong was quite depressed and asked Liu Zao why he did not report the situation quickly at the first time: "If such a military plane is so strong, why not use six hundred miles to fly?" At first, he was quite pleased to break through the enemy's camp clouds, but when he compared the map again, he found that the order of the place names reported in Liu Zao's chapter was inconsistent with the map, and there were contradictions, which made him suspicious, suspecting that either the map was wrong, or liu zao's report was not true, and the two must be one of them.
Not long after, He Qiongzhao, Ming Hao, and others returned to the camp one after another, and 455 soldiers also returned one after another. After He Qiongzhao returned to the camp, he also for the purpose of relieving his responsibilities, saying that he had fought with the enemy with a rattan card, and because the war horse he was riding was cut down, even the people with the horse fell into the river before surviving. Liu Zao did not understand military common sense, and actually played it unchanged.
Qianlong was good at riding and shooting, and immediately found the flaws in it, and he asked Liu Zao, "Do you think about it, can you fight with a rattan card on a horse?" He also pointed out that since He Qiongzhao's army returned to the camp with more than a hundred people immediately after receiving the battle, plus the number of soldiers who returned this time, it was enough to prove that their combat attrition was extremely limited, and they almost collapsed without a fight.
Qianlong immediately issued a punishment order, bringing He Qiongzhao, Ming Hao, and Yang Kun to justice. Although Liu Zao made mistakes again and again, considering that he was a scholar, did not understand the military, and lied about military information, he was only incompetent, and he was not purely intent on deceiving the imperial court, so he was demoted from a light haircut to the governor of Hubei, and his post as governor of Yungui was taken over by Yang Yingju, a scholar of Dongge University and the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu.
Before Yang Yingju arrived, Liu Zao was still fully responsible for the front-line military, and he was anxious to save the defeat in order to break the merits, so he urged all officers and men to launch an attack on the Burmese army, but Shusheng was still a shusheng after all, and there were many mistakes in dispatching, the officers and men were suddenly withdrawn, there was no discipline in chaos, and it was difficult to organize the offensive immediately. Soon, the officials proposed to dismiss Liu Zao from his post and stay in dian service, Liu Zao was embarrassed and burdened, and at night he sat silently in the mansion with a lamp, and on the fourth day, after sending the attendants out of the house, he put the Zhu Batch folding and the paper package sent by the court that he had received that day on the table, and then used the paper cutting knife on the table to kill himself.
Although the wound in the throat was extremely serious, the suicide did not die on the spot, but "turned between the beds". When his colleagues heard the news and rushed away, Liu Zao could no longer speak, but only waved his hand and wrote: "Jun En is difficult to repay, and the sins of the subjects are dead, please ask Inspector Chang (should refer to Inspector Chang Jun of Yunnan). Seven days later, Liu Zao, who was sixty-five years old at the time, finally died.
Upon learning of Liu Zao's death and his words and deeds, Qianlong was very unhappy, believing that Liu Zao's mistakes were repeated and that his punishment was not too heavy, but he was so pretentious that he was about to commit suicide, which was tantamount to punching the emperor and the imperial court in the face. Qianlong ordered Liu Zao to be sent back to his hometown for burial, but as punishment, he could only be buried as an ordinary person, and the Liu family was not allowed to establish a tombstone, and it was also strictly forbidden to establish a biography and record his career experience.
In the final Qing Dynasty, Liu Zao rarely appeared in the history books and was closely related to Qianlong's holy will. People in the world have evaluated Liu Zao's death as too tragic and Qianlong's punishment too harsh, but this is also the characteristic of the evaluation of officials after the middle of the Qianlong Dynasty, that is, strictness is not lenient, and only performance and performance are looked at, and everything else is exempted from discussion.
Qianlong Dynasty ¥63.9 Purchase