Text/Kingdom Building
One day in 1853, a soldier of Xiang Rong, the former viceroy of Guangxi, made a shocking decision to sell his wife Wei Juying to the old Guanggun Ma boss for 200 taels of silver. After the husband and wife hugged the headache and cried, they reluctantly separated. The man then threw himself into the Hunan regiment to train under Zeng Guofan, starting from ordinary soldiers, with more than 500 battles and 108 back wounds, and was promoted to the posts of chief soldier and admiral because of his merits. After his discovery, he did not forget his wife's great kindness, redeemed his wife with heavy money, and gave birth to a good life, which was passed down as a good story by the people of the time. The general of the Xiang Army who counterattacked at the grassroots level was Bao Chao.
Bao Chao, born in 1828, was originally a character in Chunting, later changed to Chunting, a native of Anping Lotang (now Fengjie, Chongqing). Since his father died of illness at an early age, his mother Liu Shi made a living as a nurse for a wealthy local family. Bao Chao did not read a book, and when he was younger, he collected cattle and horse manure to make fertilizer for farmers in exchange for food, and then helped workers pick up charcoal in the salt field.
At the age of 15, Bao Chao went up the mountain to become a Taoist boy and learned a good martial art. It was only his short temper that he lost his hand in a dispute with his colleagues and killed people, and was forced to live in the rivers and lakes.
In 1852, the Tianping Rebellion broke out. The poor people who had been oppressed by the Manchu Rulers for a long time rose up in response, and the officers and soldiers of the Qing court were defeated and retreated. The viceroy of Guangxi, Xiang Rong, recruited soldiers in Hubei to suppress the rebel army, so Bao Chao, who was excellent in martial arts, joined his command and became Xiang Rong's personal soldier. Unfortunately, when Xiang Rong led his troops back to Guangxi to fight, he was repeatedly defeated by the Taiping Army and lost soldiers. Bao Chao was seriously injured and fled to the home of a Zhuang surnamed Yiwei to recuperate. Because she was grateful for the meticulous care of Wei Juying, the daughter of the Wei family, she was hired as a wife.
At the beginning of 1853, Bao Chao took his wife to Hunan to defect to Xiangrong, but he did not think that at this time, the Taiping Army had invaded Hunan and could not find anyone at all. Bao Chao and his wife had no relatives and no reason in Hunan, and they were in a state of chaos, and they could not even pay for the money to stay in the inn. After the owner of the inn Ma repeatedly recovered the house money without success, he proposed to let Bao Chao sell his young and beautiful wife Wei Juying to him. After some discussion, the husband and wife reluctantly accepted the reality. After the old single stick horse boss bought Wei Juying for 200 taels of silver.
After Bao Chao sold his wife, he joined the Hunan regiment in early 1854 to train the envoy Zeng Guofan. Because of his bravery in battle, he made great achievements and gradually grew into a senior general in the Xiang Army.
Bao Chao was illiterate, so the leader of the army made a lot of jokes. Once besieged by the Taiping Army, he needed to write a letter to Zeng Guofan for help, but Bao Chao even had difficulty writing his own name, how to write a distress letter in a short period of time? But this was not difficult for Bao Chao, so he wrote a big Bao character on the letter, let the back circle it with a circle, and let the pro-soldiers and horses give it to Zeng Guofan. The staff who received the letter did not react at once, but Zeng Guofan said loudly when he saw the letter: "Old Bao is surrounded, quickly send rescue troops!" When he went to Wuchang to rescue Hu Linyi, Bao Chao was only a battalion officer, and after the siege was lifted, Hu Linyi, in order to express his gratitude to Bao Chao, promoted him to Dusi (正四品武官). However, Bao Chao didn't know what Dusi was, so could he lead his troops to fight?
In 1856, the Xiang army recaptured Wuchang, and Bao Chao was promoted to the rank of commander-in-chief, and later promoted to general. In December of the same year, he was wounded in the Battle of Koikeguchi, first by a rolling log wound in the left arm, and then by a musket on the head, bleeding profusely. However, Bao Chao did not retreat from the battle, and after being rescued, he was in a coma for several days.
In 1857, the Xiang Army general Li Xubin and 6,000 soldiers were completely destroyed in the Battle of Sanhe Town. The Taiping Army had the upper hand in the strategic situation. The Xiang army was momentarily panicked and did not dare to fight. Bao Chao stepped forward and fought with Chen Yucheng for dozens of days, frustrated the morale of the Taiping Army, and defeated the main force of the Taiping Army on December 25 of the same year. He was promoted to the rank of Viceroy (from Yipin Military Attaché).
In 1859, Bao Chao assisted Zeng Guoquan in defeating Chen Yucheng and Li Xiucheng, the King of Zhong, in the Taiping Army, and regained the military town of Anqing. Since then, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has begun to decline.
In 1862, Bao Chao led his 13,000 men to fight on the outskirts of Tianjing and assisted the Zeng Guofan brothers in besieging Tianjing. In 1864, Tianjing was besieged by the Xiang army, and the Taiping Army frantically rushed to the aid of Tianjing, and Li Xiucheng alone led 200,000 troops from Jiangsu and Zhejiang to return to help. Bao Chao was so powerful that he intercepted the Taiping Army reinforcements in Jiangxi, defeated the Taiping Army Kang Wang Wang Haiyang, and forced the landing of more than 60,000 people from Wang Chen Bing's Wen Department, effectively supporting the siege of Tianjing. Li Xiucheng's army of more than 200,000 people, when he entered tianjing city, there were only a few thousand people left, and the battle situation was already incompetent. In July of the same year, Tianjing fell, and the vigorous Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement failed. The Qing court rewarded Bao Chao with a first-class light vehicle lieutenant and a dazzling eye. Until this time, Bao Chao's life was relatively settled. In order to fulfill his promise to his wife, Bao Chao personally ransomed Wei Juying with a heavy amount of money.
Bao Chao later also participated in the encirclement and suppression of the Twist army, the suppression of the Hui uprising, and the Sino-French border war, and made great achievements for the Manchu Qing government. He successively served as the viceroy of Hunan and Zhejiang.
In 1885, Bao Chao, who had just returned from a border war in Yunnan, was impeached and resigned in anger. He died the following year (1886) at the age of 58. The Qing court was buried in Ranjiaping, 12 kilometers north of his hometown of Fengjie County.