From ancient times to the present, every country and regime has regarded the control of the military as its top priority. Military power is the foundation of a country's stability!
The Eight Banners of the Qing Dynasty took advantage of the historical opportunity of the peasant uprising in the late Ming Dynasty and relied on the Eight Banners system of military alliance to conquer the Central Plains. Such a dynasty understood the importance of military power very well!
Since the founding of the Qing Dynasty, military power has been in a process of gradual concentration and recovery. During the San Francisco Rebellion, the Qing government took back military power from the hands of Han warlords.
The continuous centralization of power during the Kangxi, Yongzong and Qianlong dynasties concentrated all the military power in the hands of the Eight Banners in the hands of the emperor!
Only then did the Qing Dynasty have absolute military strength to expand externally. Outer Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan... many territories were conquered at that time.
However, this absolute centralized power situation completely collapsed due to the Taiping Rebellion. The decadent Eight Banners had lost their combat effectiveness. The helpless Emperor Xianfeng could only use Han troops to control the army.
Starting from the Xianfeng Dynasty, a very huge force appeared in the political situation of the Qing Dynasty, and that was the Han warlords!
Facing the rise of Han warlords, the Qing Dynasty was already nervous and restless like ants on a hot pot. How to weaken the strength of these Han officials has become the top priority of the court.
Under such circumstances, how could they still allow foreign devils to take over military power? A victorious army can fight, but the more capable an army is, the greater the threat.
Wall, Bai Qiwen and Gordon developed a foreign rifle team that initially only had 700 people into an elite team of 5,000, forcing the court to form a separate army, a victorious army!
On the surface, this is honor, but in fact it is all about killing moves. From the moment the honor was awarded, the court had already begun to think about how to kill people!
After Li Hongzhang entered Shanghai, the imperial court brought the Ever Victorious Army under his command. One of the important tasks was to ask Li Hongzhang to secretly disband this army!
This is a top secret mission and will never appear in historical records! It was precisely because of this secret benefit that Li Hongzhang dared to deal with these foreign adults like this!
Hua Er was dying and died on the battlefield before Li Hongzhang could take action himself. This saved Li Hongzhang a lot of energy!
Bai Qiwen is a complete idiot. He cannot see the approaching danger at all. Of course, a young man in his twenties who has not received any advanced education cannot understand this level of intelligence.
Li Hongzhang just took advantage of his temperament and deliberately provoked him, making him exposed bit by bit and losing popularity!
Deliberately owing you a few days of salary, deliberately creating some friendly-military friction, and using a young and energetic child to provoke the general... Anyway, he easily made Bai Qiwen irritable and irritable, and soon offended a large number of people, and then offended many military law!
There were too many clues, and a thick pile of evidence fell into Li Hongzhang's hands. When it was thrown in front of the foreign ambassadors, they were too embarrassed to plead for mercy!
It was precisely because of this momentum that the final removal and power seizure took place, including the subsequent drowning!
One link within another, this is a big network formed by most of the Qing officialdom from Beijing to Marshal Zeng’s staff and then to Li Hongzhang’s command, with the purpose of destroying the ever-victorious army controlled by foreigners!
Bai Qiwen was only 29 when he died, and Hua Er was only 24 when he recruited him!
Moreover, this child has not received higher education, and his parents are not veterans immersed in political struggles, so it is impossible to teach their children these skills!
And who is he facing? Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Guiziliu, Cixi, Ci'an... are the old foxes who have practiced for thousands of years in the entire Qing Dynasty!
Death is the inevitable outcome. Bai Qiwen's tragedy is that he did not understand the situation. He did not know that these senior Chinese officials never wanted him to make meritorious deeds!
Li Hongzhang gave him a chance to live. When he defected from the Taiping Army, the Qing Dynasty did not kill him but gave the American government a face!
The American Minister also knew that Bai Qiwen had gone too far, so he was directly sent to Japan!
Shouldn't I regret it? Shouldn't I regret that Bai Qiwen was so greedy for profit and so ambitious that he went to Fujian to seek refuge with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom when it was at the end of its rope!
This was the final cause of his death!
Li Hongzhang looked at Gordon and said calmly, "Bai Qiwen and Hua Er can't do it... They are just a group of European and American adventurers who came to China to try their luck!"
"Only you! You, Gordon, are the smart one! I have studied your family background! You are indeed from a noble family, and the education you received since childhood is much better than those two!"
"The most important thing is that through your family and work experience, you have already understood how the political forces in the officialdom fight!"
"You have been observing with a cold eye. You have understood this game a long time ago, right? So in the end you accepted 390,000 taels of silver from me and then agreed to disband the Ever Victorious Army!"
"What a smart person you are! You made the right choice back then. Why are you so unwise now?"
Gordon broke out in a cold sweat. The telegram in which he was criticized by the British was still in his mind, and he had not forgotten every letter!
Yes, the Ever Victorious Army did not retain its establishment in the end, but was disbanded and integrated into the Huai Army to undergo reorganization!
Those Chinese soldiers directly became the backbone of the Huai Army, and the foreign officers were sent home with a large severance package as a gift!
Gordon himself received 190,000 taels of severance pay, plus the 200,000 taels of hush-money paid to him by Li Hongzhang after he killed prisoners in Suzhou.
Gordon received a total of 390,000 taels of silver from Li Hongzhang!
In addition to the money he had collected in the Qing Dynasty over the years, as well as the money from hacking Wall and Bai Qiwen, Gordon took away more than 800,000 taels of silver when he returned to the UK!
With the operation of this money, he became prosperous in London official circles. Originally, the British government wanted to hold him accountable, but in the end, nothing happened!
You must know that the British government has high hopes for the ever-victorious army. This is the first nail for British forces to break into the Qing army!
It's a pity that this great situation was ruined by Gordon himself!
Why is this happening? In the final analysis, it was because Gordon understood Li Hongzhang's purpose and knew that he must have been authorized by the top officials of the Qing Dynasty!
Gordon is also afraid of death! He knew that if he refused to cooperate with Li Hongzhang's withdrawal plan, he would definitely be the next to die after Bai Qiwen's death!
After much deliberation, life is still important, and money is also very important! Li Hongzhang was not stingy with him at all!
The experiences of Gordon, Bai Qiwen, and Wall are actually the stories of early European and American adventurers in China!
It is full of bloodshed, full of weirdness, and everyone is trying their best to gain wealth and rise and fall in the tide of the times! Either he is a master, or he is just a pile of corpses!
It was Gordon who had the last laugh, but will Gordon still have the last laugh when he comes to China again? Seeing Li Hongzhang like this, I'm afraid it's a bit difficult!
Note: There should be, maybe, maybe, probably... there will be three updates today!
