Prince Gong Yixin was an indispensable and important figure in the entire movement to pacify the Taiping Rebellion in the late Qing Dynasty!
Although he did not personally command the battle on the front line, his influence lasted throughout the entire war. He was not a general but a general in the temple!
What he cares about is not the gains and losses in one or two battles. What he cares about is only the composition of the generals of each army, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what their personalities are, what their weaknesses are, and which force they belong to!
While ensuring victory in the war, he also had to ensure the permanence of the Qing Dynasty, and finally the expansion of his own power!
This is a more mentally demanding job than fighting. Not to mention that just memorizing so many generals’ files requires a good mind!
Guiziliu knows very well that if you want to use someone, you have to understand him. You have to know all his details, both good and bad!
Gordon has come to Beijing. It is obvious that he is Zai Chun's best friend, and there is British power behind him. He is an important role that he cannot bribe!
But doesn’t Gordon have any way to restrict it? The answer was obviously no. Guiziliu immediately thought of the person Gordon disliked the most, and that was Li Hongzhang!
To talk about the conflict between these two people, it’s a long story!
The earliest leader of the foreign gun team was American Wall. However, during their attack on Zhejiang, Wall was seriously injured and died. He was eventually replaced by American Bai Qiwen!
This Bai Qiwen was a complete scoundrel. Not only did he plunder and plunder, he also beat Qing officials. Unable to bear it, Li Hongzhang dismissed him!
This Bai Qiwen is also a ruthless character. When he saw that the Qing Dynasty did not retain him, he directly brought dozens of his confidants, adventurers from Europe, and turned to join the Taiping Army!
That is, after Bai Qiwen surrendered to the Taiping Army, Gordon became the third commander of the Foreign Gun Team!
Bai Qiwen was not reused under the Taiping Army. At most, he was allowed to lead more than a thousand soldiers! In anger, Bai Qiwen defected from the Taiping Army to Gordon again!
That is to say, the Qing government was afraid of foreign devils and did not want to cause diplomatic disputes by killing people, so it did not kill the rebellious Bai Qiwen, but sent him back to his country to settle the matter!
When Bai Qiwen arrived in Shanghai, the American consul in Shanghai was extremely angry with this troublemaker. He finally ordered him to go to Japan for recuperation and treatment. He was not allowed to come to the Qing Dynasty again without an order!
I thought that Bai Qiwen would just flip the page, but I never expected that this guy was so stubborn that he secretly left Japan and moved to Shanghai within a few months.
When he arrived in Shanghai, he was caught by the American consul, but he was sent to Japan again!
Unwilling to be reconciled, Bai Qiwen still wanted to take risks in China, but ended up smuggling from Japan again. Instead of going to Shanghai, he went straight to Fujian!
Who will he turn to? It was Li Shixian, the leader of the Taiping Army in Fujian!
Sigh... This prince of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is very familiar to the Chinese people, because the Taiping Army in Iquique, South America, and most of the Taiping Army veterans in Southeast Asia are actually subordinates of the Prince Li Shixian!
It's a pity that Bai Qiwen was unlucky. When he smuggled himself to Fujian, it was already 1865. This was the end of the war when the Qing Dynasty had complete dominance!
Nanjing was conquered, and Xiao Letian became famous in the imperial capital because of his "Journey to the West" manga!
It is conceivable that Zuo Zongtang's men caught Bai Qiwen as soon as he smuggled into Xiamen!
Fujian was Zuo Zongtang's sphere of influence, and Li Hongzhang was the governor of Jiangsu and Zhejiang at that time. Zuo Zongtang was too lazy to use force against the foreign devils. When he saw that he was an old subordinate of yours, Li Hongzhang, he handed it over to you!
Just like that, Bai Qiwen fell into Li Hongzhang's hands!
The unruly Bai Qiwen had a very bad reputation in Jiangnan officialdom. This man never respected Qing officials and even beat local officials and robbed local officials' treasury!
Coupled with the back and forth rebellion, Li Hongzhang became angry and said, "I obviously can't kill you, so I can always create an accident!"
Li Hongzhang ordered Bai Qiwen to be drowned alive in Lanxi, Zhejiang. He claimed to the outside world that he drowned accidentally. The U.S. government had no choice but to suffer the consequences of being dumb!
But after this incident reached the ears of Gordon, who had returned to China at that time, it aroused Gordon's extreme disgust!
Because the relationship between Bai Qiwen and Gordon is still very good, and Gordon has always believed that Bai Qiwen cannot assassinate even if he is guilty, Li Hongzhang's behavior is really rude!
Is this just a contradiction? In fact, this is not the case. The two of them had conflicts before!
In the spring of 1863, Li Hongzhang led the Huai Army and the "Eternal Victory Army" to successively capture Changshu, Taicang, Kunshan, Wujiang, Jiangyin and other places, and prepared to attack Suzhou in mid-November.
The Taiping garrison in Suzhou City fought bloody battles under the leadership of Mu Wang Tan Shaoguang, repelling the Qing army's attacks again and again.
The Taiping generals guarding the city under Tan Shaoguang include the "four kings" of Na Wang Gao Yongkuan, Kang Wang Wang Anjun, Ning Wang Zhou Wenjia, and Bi Wang Wu Guiwen, as well as the "four generals" of Zhang Dazhou, Wang Huaban, Wang Youwei, and Fan Qifa. Controlling three-quarters of the troops in Suzhou City and four of the six city gates.
This can also be regarded as a feature of the late Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, that is, the crazy kingship. In order to ensure the loyalty of his subordinates and make them fight with their lives, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the later period granted countless kings!
Gordon learned through the foreign soldiers led by Bai Qiwen, who defected from the Changsheng Army in Suzhou City, that the four kings and four generals were at odds with King Mu, and that Gao Yunguan still wanted to surrender.
It can be seen that Bai Qiwen has provided a lot of help to Gordon!
Li Hongzhang bribed eight Taiping rebel generals including Gao Yongkuan in Suzhou City, and promised to induce them to surrender with the help of a second-grade military attaché. Gordon, the British leader of the Ever-Victorious Army, served as a guarantee and formed an alliance with him.
As expected, these eight Taiping Army generals did not break their promise. They killed Tan Shaoguang and opened the Suzhou City to welcome Li Hongzhang's army into the city!
After Li Hongzhang's Huai army entered the city, they massacred thousands of Tan Shaoguang's cronies, and finally took complete control of the entire city!
Just when the Eight Kings were dreaming of promotion and wealth, Li Hongzhang set up the Hongmen Banquet the next day!
The eight kings were invited to a banquet. During the banquet, Li Hongzhang asked the eight military officers around him to hold military uniforms with red tops and flower collars and hand them to the eight people. When Gao Yongkuan and others were about to accept them, the military officers immediately drew out their waist knives and killed them. Gao Yongkuan and other eight generals were demoted.
What followed was a general purge of the eight kings' subordinates. According to unofficial statistics, Li Hongzhang killed 20,000 people in Suzhou at that time!
Gordon still has the spirit of European medieval chivalry in his heart, and he is also a devout Puritan. How could such a person be used to what Li Hongzhang did!
The angry Gordon even broke into Li Hongzhang's camp with a pistol, insisting on asking for an explanation, but was finally stopped by many officials.
And Liang Zi was buried at that time. After Bai Qiwen was drowned, it can be said that the two had no friendship at all, and what was left was all hatred!
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