Last week we shared the situation facing the Qing Dynasty and the situation in East Asia before the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, as well as the comparison of Sino-Japanese military strength. This week we will walk into the Sino-Japanese War and look at the beginning and end of this war that has profoundly affected China's history.
The Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War can be divided into two wars, foreign and domestic, and from the battlefield, it can be divided into naval and land wars. Since the trigger of the war was that Japan set up a puppet government in Korea and abolished all the rights and interests of the Qing Dynasty in Korea, the main battlefield in the early stage of the war was also in Korea.
1. The Korean battlefield was gradually defeated
In January 1894, a rebellion broke out in Korea, and in July, under the pressure of the Japanese army, the Guangxu Emperor repeatedly ordered more troops to be sent to Korea, nominally working with Japan to stabilize the situation in Korea. Li Hongzhang, under pressure from all sides, finally ordered the Huai army to be stationed in Korea.
In mid-July, more than 2,000 people from 29 battalions of the Huai Army took the Beiyang Fleet's "Jiyuan" and "Gaosheng" to prepare to garrison Asan in Korea. At 7:00 a.m. on the 25th, the day after the puppet government set up in Japan announced the cancellation of all privileges of the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese army suddenly launched an attack on the warships transporting the Qing army. The escorting Jiyuan escaped with Fang Boqian, leaving the Gaosheng, full of Qing troops, only a wooden gunboat to cover.
In the end, surrounded by the Japanese navy, the 700 Huai troops aboard the Gaosheng counterattacked, refused to surrender, and were bombarded by the Japanese artillery, and none of them survived. Only the wooden gunboats remained captured. On the 29th, the Japanese army attacked Cheng Huan, where the Qing army was stationed in the Dprk, and Nie Shicheng was outnumbered and retreated to Gongzhou. On August 1, China and Japan declared war on each other.
But until this time, the Qing government was still not ready for war. Li Hongzhang, who was very clear about the domestic and international plight of the Qing Dynasty, was unwilling to escalate the war, and he was even more unwilling to let the Huai army he personally cultivated suffer too many casualties. So his focus remained on the hope that the Western powers would intervene and use diplomacy to force Japan not to upset the balance in East Asia. Therefore, the Qing Dynasty army lacked a specific operational policy and strategy, and the whole army passively responded to the battle.
Under the influence of this sentiment, the operational efficiency of the Huai army was not so efficient that at the end of July, the 20,000 Huai army troops ordered by the Qing government to be reinforced all arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea in late August.
At this time, Ye Zhichao, who had escaped from the Battle of Asan before, was appointed as the commander-in-chief of the front line, and the generals of the Huai Army who lacked the concept of the state were bent on not defending the family and defending the country, but how to safeguard the interests of the Huai Army group. As a result, the Qing Dynasty wasted in vain the excellent fighters of the Japanese army that lacked soldiers, food and ammunition after the Battle of Asan.
On September 15, the slow-moving Japanese army launched a general attack on the Qing army, and Ye Zhichao insisted on abandoning the city and fleeing despite the opposition of his generals. So on the 16th, 20,000 troops did not fight with the Japanese army, they crossed the Yalu River in a hurry, and the emperor returned to the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty has since completely lost control of Korea.
2. Defeat in the Battle of the Yellow Sea
On the morning of the 17th, the day after the Japanese expelled all the Qing troops, they launched a non-stop attack on the Beiyang Fleet stationed at the mouth of the Yalu River, in an attempt to cut off the sea escape route of qing officers and men.
On the Japanese side, twelve warships and torpedo boats were dispatched, and fourteen were dispatched from the Beiyang Fleet of the Huai Army. However, the Japanese Navy was far superior to the Beiyang Fleet in terms of armament and equipment performance.
Last week we shared that due to the Qing army squeezing out british advisers, the Beiyang Marine Division was neglected in training, the modernized navy's combat mechanism and combat command system were almost zero, coupled with the Qing Dynasty's annual deduction of the Beiyang Fleet's military salaries, resulting in almost all the ship equipment being seriously aging, and even the boilers of some warships were close to scrapping, and even the military coal was all inferior coal. What is even more unfavorable is that the Huai Army, as an armed force representing the nature of local regions, did not have the courage and conviction to fight for the country, and as soon as the war began, the Beiyang Fleet was passive everywhere.
What was even more unfavorable was that not long after the war began, the commander-in-chief Ding Ruchang was injured. Due to neglect of training and lack of study and understanding of the concept of modern naval warfare, Ding Ruchang did not set up a designated agent or agent flagship in front of the station as required. As a result, the Beiyang Fleet lost its "operational chain of command" after Ding Ruchang was injured, and the warships had no unified command and were in a chaotic mess. Although Ding Ruchang still insisted on commanding the battle after being wounded, the overall operational efficiency was greatly reduced.
But even so, the balance of luck suddenly fell to the Qing Dynasty. At 2:40 p.m. on September 17, 1894, the Saikyo Maru, aboard the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Navy, was besieged by the Qing warships Pingyuan and Guangbing and torpedo boat Fulong, and broke away from the fleet formation. Although the Qing army did not know who was sitting on the ship, it was bent on sinking the enemy ship and reducing the enemy's combat effectiveness.
Soon the torpedo boat Fukuno caught up with the "Saikyo Maru" and fired two torpedoes in a row at a distance of 400 meters from the ship, but the first one was changed by the waves drawn by the bow of the "Saikyo Maru" and brushed to the right, and the second one was just 3 meters from the stern. After two missed hits, fulong quickly changed the direction of attack, and fired the last torpedo from a distance of 40 meters from the warship, using a torpedo tube in the tail, with the correct direction and speed, but drilled through the bottom of the ship and did not hit the target.
If one could hit, the Japanese Navy would be greatly reduced by the loss of its commander-in-chief, and the history of this naval battle would most likely be rewritten. However, it was only because the Beiyang Marine Division made the usual training a formality and even mistook the depth set by the torpedo, that the fighter in hand was lost.
The naval battle was fought from morning to evening. Generally speaking, except for a small number of officers and men of the Beiyang Fleet who fled in fear of the enemy, most of the officers and men were able to stick to their posts and fight bravely. In the end, at the cost of 5 warships of the Beiyang Marine Division being sunk and 1,000 dead and wounded, the Japanese 5 warships were seriously injured and more than 600 people were killed and wounded, and the Japanese Navy was forced to withdraw from the battlefield, completing the escort task of the Huai Army's sea evacuation.
After this war, in order to win the support of the Western powers and at the same time use the forces of all sides to balance Japan, Li Hongzhang actively negotiated with britain, Russia, France and other powers on the one hand, and on the other hand, he vigorously restrained force and avoided the escalation of the war. Although he believed that Japan would not openly oppose the great powers, he did not grasp the real international situation. At this time, the great powers were all watching, waiting to reap the benefits of the fisherman. Therefore, Li Hongzhang unilaterally insisted on avoiding war, and ordered the remnants of the Beiyang Fleet to retreat to Weihaiwei and wait for the results of the mediation of the great powers.
Soon, what Daqing and Li Hongzhang did not expect was that Japan did not put away its troops, and the level of war was upgraded.
3. The Qing Dynasty was defeated again and again
On October 24, 1894, the Japanese army launched an attack on the Liaodong of the Qing Dynasty by land and sea.
On the land side, the Japanese army suddenly crossed the Yalu River, and the 40,000 Huai army collapsed at a touch and fled at the sound of the wind. On the 25th, except for Ma Jinxu and Nie Shicheng, who led their troops to repeatedly defeat the Japanese army, most of the Huai army withdrew to the south. After successfully blocking the Japanese army for a day, on the 26th, due to the final outnumbering, Jiulian City and Dandong fell one after another.
Then, the Japanese army took advantage of the victory to expand the results of the battle, occupying Phoenix, Changdian, Kuandian and other places, and it took only more than twenty days for all parts of the Eastern Frontier Road to fall.
After that, the Japanese army continued to attack to the east and west without stopping, directly entering the hinterland of Liaodong and capturing Haicheng, and the troops pointed directly at Liaoyang.
By sea, the Japanese navy almost went out of its nest, and more than 30 warships transported officers and men to land from The Garden Pass in Jinxian County, an important town in northern Dalian, and attacked the Liaodong Peninsula to the south.
In early November, the Lushun defender Xu Bangdao led his troops to reinforce Dalian, but the Dalian defender Zhao Huaiye only wanted to escape, leaving Xu Bangdao, who came to support, to fight alone for two days and two nights, and finally retreated to Lushun due to more than half of the casualties. On November 7, Zhao Huaiye abandoned the city and fled, without firing a shot, and the Japanese soldiers occupied Dalian without bloodshed.
After the occupation of the port of Dalian, the Japanese army received a large amount of armament replenishment. On November 18, the Japanese army, which had been recuperating for more than ten days, concentrated its forces to attack Lushun.
The generals stationed in Lushun, except for Xu Bangdao's lone army, almost all the Huai army retreated to Yantai by boat. After three days of bitter fighting, the Japanese finally took Lushun at the cost of more than 300 deaths, including fourteen officers and men of the rank of general who died.
In order to retaliate against the Qing Dynasty, the angry Japanese army carried out indiscriminate slaughter of the Qing residents of Lushun for several consecutive days. According to the Englishman Zilhuland, "four days in a row, the brutal massacre of non-combatants, women and children". History calls it the "Lushun Massacre".
At this time, Li Hongzhang was still pinning his hopes on diplomatic means and ordered the Beiyang Fleet to sit on Weihaiwei and not to attack without authorization.
In late January 1895, the Japanese army suddenly attacked Weihaiwei from land and sea at the same time. On February 2, Weihaiwei's Southern and Northern Forts were captured, and Weihaiwei was lost. The Beiyang Fleet was caught in a situation of being attacked from the belly and back. The sea was besieged by the Japanese Navy, and the Japanese army on land used cannons to compress the living space of the Beiyang Fleet.
In a desperate situation, Ding Ruchang organized the Beiyang Fleet to carry out a counter-offensive, fought with the Japanese artillery for more than ten days, and sank 7 Japanese warships. However, there is no foreign aid on land except for the Huai Army, and it is a lone army on the sea. With the sinking of the capital ships of Dingyuan, Laiyun, Weiyuan, and Jingyuan one after another, the general trend of the Beiyang Fleet has gone, and the defeat has been decided.
At this time, Niu Changbing, who was later known as a traitor, and others launched a mutiny, put Ding Ruchang under house arrest, and forced him to surrender to the Japanese army by hanging a white flag to save the lives of officers and soldiers. Ding Ruchang refused, ordering the entire army to sink ships or hit the Japanese with warships. After discovering that the order had not been carried out, Ding Ruchang took poison and committed suicide.
After Ding Ruchang's death, Niu Changbing and others hung white flags and surrendered to the Japanese army, and the Beiyang Fleet was completely destroyed.
In fact, from the autumn of 1894, Li Hongzhang's gradual defeat and retreat made Li Hongzhang lose his former grace. In order to support Li Hongzhang's Huai army, the Qing court had ordered the Xiang army to move north, and ordered the general of the Xiang army to command the Xiang army and more than 60,000 people of the Huai army to support the Liaodong battlefield. However, the Qing army, which lacked the concept of state and nationality, was unsympathetic and had low combat effectiveness. In Tianjin alone, the Xiang army delayed for a month and was unwilling to fight alongside the Huai army.
Therefore, after the collapse of the Beiyang Fleet, the Japanese army fought against the Qing army from February 28 to early March, Lianke Niuzhuang, Yingkou and Sizhuangtai. In just over a dozen years, the 60,000-strong army of the Hunan and Huaihuai armies was completely defeated, and the entire territory of the Liaodong Peninsula was occupied by the Japanese army.
Hearing that Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty, who had been defeated in the Liaodong War, had hurriedly sent people to the Japanese Emperor to negotiate peace, and when Japan proposed that Li Hongzhang or Prince Gong, who was well versed in modern international political rules, must come forward to negotiate before agreeing to the peace, Li Hongzhang, who had been snubbed, was once again activated and went to Japan to start the process of Sino-Japanese peace talks.
Well, this week's sharing is here, I hope to enlighten you to understand the history, next week we walk into the Sino-Japanese "Maguan Treaty" to share the sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War on the late Qing Dynasty society and politics brought profound impact. This is the 580th article to share with you, you are welcome to read it, we will see you next week.