Chapter 23 Section 1 Corruption in the Military Camps of the Late Qing Dynasty

On the seventeenth day of the twelfth lunar month in the second year of Xianfeng, only thirteen days away from the New Year, the travelers who went out returned home one after another.Zeng Guofan, who kept filial piety for his mother in his hometown in the countryside, bid farewell to the lotus leaf in a hurry and left home. A few days ago, an urgent order from Emperor Xianfeng reached Heye.It turned out that not long ago the Taiping Army sent troops to the north, and all parts of Hunan were corrupted.In desperation, Emperor Xianfeng ordered Zeng Guofan to help local officials set up "tuanlian" or "militia" to defend the village.

From the time Zeng Guofan joined the army, from the end of the second year of Xianfeng to the fall of Tianjing in June of the third year of Tongzhi, he spent eleven and a half years of military career fighting the Taiping Army. During the Beijing official period, although Zeng Guofan made a solemn oath of "not relying on being an official to make a fortune", it was a bit empty-handed.Because he wants to get rich and has no chance.However, starting from this trip, Zeng Guofan's oath will be really tested, because everyone knows that leading troops is the easiest way to make a fortune.In the late Qing Dynasty, the national army was highly corrupt, and there was an atmosphere of "looking at money" from top to bottom in the army.Especially military officers, almost all of them are immoral, desperate to make money, perverting the law for personal gain, and doing everything.Zeng Guofan once said that the national regular army in the late Qing Dynasty had become a soulless army: "Guofan has hated the habit of military camps over the years, and Wu Bian has no conscience beyond self-defense!" .

So, to what extent was the army corrupt in the late Qing Dynasty?This will take a little ink. Let's put aside the officers and let's take a look at ordinary soldiers. A strange situation in the military barracks in the late Qing Dynasty was that soldiers generally had their own second jobs, either in business, or in farming, or in some crafts. Among the Eight Banners troops stationed in various places, quite a few soldiers do business in private.For example, Wen Ying'a, an ordinary Eight Banners soldier stationed in Taiyuan, secretly opened a hotel in Wuhan, and even accommodated illegal personnel: "Wen Ying'a in vest opened a rest store (that is, a hotel) in Seoul, and all the small people hid in it."

The green battalion soldiers are even more aggressive, and they are blatant and open-minded.For many green battalion soldiers, doing small business or handicraft work is their main job, and being a soldier is their "second job."They spend most of their time opening shops and setting up stalls, or working as carpenters, tailors, etc., and only go to the camp for a day when it is their turn to be on duty. According to Wang Qingzhuang, who was a close friend of Yao Huaixiang, the magistrate of Dinghai County during the Opium War, half of the green battalion soldiers in Dinghai Town were actually barbers, pedicures, and servants.

Even the emperor was very aware of this situation.Emperor Jiaqing said in his last edict that the lack of military skills of the soldiers was due to the fact that the soldiers of the green battalion "may have learned their crafts outside the country, their training was sparse, the battalion was slack, and their care was not meticulous." So, how could soldiers who used to fight as their profession become "hawkers" and "craftsmen"? This is also the fault of the "low salary system" in the Qing Dynasty.It turned out that the "low salary system" in the Qing Dynasty was not limited to civil servants, but also applied to the army.

The average monthly income of green battalion soldiers in the Qing Dynasty was one, two, three, six cents of silver, and three buckets of rice.We should note that this is not a person's income.Because soldiers also take on the task of supporting their families, this is the total income of a soldier's family.There is another ironic regulation in the Green Camp in the Qing Dynasty, that is, the main weapons and equipment and even the uniforms and horses of the soldiers must be borne by the soldiers themselves. In the early Qing Dynasty, commodity prices were very low, and the monthly salary of a green camp soldier could barely support a family.However, with the gradual rise in prices in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, this military salary was not enough.What's more, the military pay of the green battalion soldiers in the late Qing Dynasty was greatly reduced on this basis.Because they also face layers of deduction by officers.

Like soldiers, green battalion officers were underpaid.With a total of four grades and one thousand, the total annual income is only more than one hundred and fifty taels.From the admiral of the first rank, plus the Yanglian silver, it is less than a thousand taels.How can this meet their daily living expenses?What's more, the official positions of many military officers are bought with money.The search targets of military officers are far less extensive than that of magistrates, and they can't pluck their hair everywhere.The only ones they can exploit are their subordinate soldiers, so their search methods are even more varied.It is the slightest form of corruption for officers to treat soldiers as if they were their own servants, to run errands and build houses for themselves, without paying them anything.They put all office expenses into their personal pockets, and all expenses in the military camp are apportioned from the soldiers' salaries.After military officers arrive in office, they buy office supplies, send gifts to their superiors and colleagues at weddings and ceremonies, travel expenses for soldiers on business trips, weapon repair expenses, and even buy candles and refreshments in daily life. Shou, Qian, and funerals for red and white weddings, escorting salaries and silver bills for soldiers, repairing scattered military uniforms and equipment, getting up early, oiling wax, and serving refreshments are all apportioned for soldiers' salaries." Even the military officers' door bags when they visit their superiors have to be apportioned for soldiers' salaries.The Qing government itself admitted: "The soldiers and generals from all walks of life often pretended to cheat, filled their own pockets, and even took and carried them arbitrarily, without any scruples, causing the soldiers in the line to suffer from hunger and cold."

After layers of exploitation, it is very pitiful that the military salary can finally fall into the hands of soldiers.For example, the green camp in Fujian "only pays three cents per soldier per month, which is not enough for one person to eat. Don't look for small capital economy, or have other skills, and save money for things."More than 70% of the silver of one, two or three renminbi will be deducted. When the "imperial food" can't fill their stomachs, it is natural for soldiers not to find a living.Thus, there was a widespread wave of business in the military camps in the late Qing Dynasty.Soldiers wandered around the shops, doing small businesses, doing handicraft work, and earning a living.Under such circumstances, some local military officials simply took the initiative to encourage soldiers to go out to do business individually, embezzling half of the soldiers' salaries themselves, and only distributed half of the soldiers' salaries to the soldiers.This situation has gradually become a semi-public institution in some places.Therefore, the main energy of the soldiers is to make a living, and they hide from the daily drills whenever they can.Whenever there is a parade in the camp, most of them hire people to replace them.During the drill, "soldiers and others are often not available, and they hire people to replace them privately, in name only."

At the same time, since the soldiers of the Green Battalion have to buy their own weapons and supplies, most soldiers will not buy these things if they can't buy them, and those who can't replenish them after damage will not replenish them.In addition, the forage allocated by the superiors to raise the army horses was never enough. "Soldiers and horses are required to pay forage, and there are many shortages." to bear the indemnity.Therefore, in the army, "the horses are all upright, and the spurs are not moving forward. The equipment, such as bows and arrows, knives, armor, firearms, etc., are all blunt and decayed. As for the raincoats and bows and arrow covers in the tents and dens, they have never been prepared."

Such an army, what is the combat effectiveness? The "low salary system" of the military and the "low salary system" of civil servants are both based on the selfishness and short-sightedness of the traditional financial system with imperial power at its core.From the perspective of the emperor, adopting the "low salary system" not only saves worry and effort, but also saves a lot of financial funds for the country. Indeed, due to the large number of regular troops in the Qing Dynasty, military expenditure was a heavy burden for the government.On the day of peace, the cost of raising soldiers accounted for about half of the national income of the Qing Dynasty.The financial pressure during the war is even more conceivable. "Never add Fu" is the "ancestral law" that the Qing Dynasty is proud of.If it is necessary to meet the actual living needs of soldiers, the general's salary standard will be at least doubled, which is simply beyond the financial revenue of the late Qing Dynasty.Therefore, the attitude of the emperors of all dynasties is muddling along, delaying every day is a day.

But in fact, the low salary system in the military is the same as the low salary system for civilian officials. The first serious consequence is that the training level of the army has declined, and the combat effectiveness is almost zero. The Eight Banners are known for their bravery. At the beginning of the establishment of the Green Camp, they also experienced many vicious battles.But by the time of Zeng Guofan, both armies had basically lost their combat effectiveness due to serious corruption. In the autumn of the 29th year of Daoguang, Russian diplomat Kovalevsky visited the annual firearms drill of the Eight Banners Army by the Marco Polo Bridge.He described what he saw in his travel note "Peeping the Forbidden City": Originally, the cannon viewing ceremony was an important event in the military circles of the Qing Empire, with a grand scale and a high level. "Even if the emperor couldn't come in person due to his advanced age, he still had to send cronies and important officials to observe it."Therefore, Koch believed that the soldiers participating in the exercise would be as energetic and well-groomed as in the major military parades in the West.But after arriving at the scene, Koch was surprised to find that the officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners were in a very disorganized state of mind. Mending trousers for the next day. Nobody seemed to care about the upcoming drill." The drill process was even more perfunctory and not serious: "The drill started...a leader... made a strange pose, waved the flag in his hand, and the shooting began. He put down the flag, indicating that the shooting complied with the Regulations... But this shot was shot very inaccurately, and the shell fell right next to the cannon, making the judge's body covered with mud. The armor didn't seem to care, he just wiped his eyes and walked to the other cannon .” After observing, Koch concluded: "China's artillery is naturally incomparable with that of Europe. The only thing that is the same is the sound of the artillery. They also cannot be compared with the artillery of several other eastern powers, such as Turkey and the yet to fall. Rahal in the hands of the British or the Egyptians . . . the Chinese artillery has no merit." Compared with the Eight Banners, the situation of the Green Camp in the late Qing Dynasty was even worse.In the winter of the 14th year of Daoguang, Lu Kun, Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, inspected the Guangdong Navy.Each battalion selected elite soldiers and generals to appear in front of the governor.Unexpectedly, after one test, there were 78 people who didn't even hit a shot or an arrow, and 226 people who only got a shot or an arrow, which surprised Lu Kun. Such an unprofessional army is not only vulnerable to the strong ships and guns of the West, but also vulnerable to the peasant army whose weapons and equipment are far behind their own. When the Taiping Army first started in the 30th year of Daoguang, the imperial court ordered Zhou Tianjue to be the governor of Guangxi to lead troops to suppress it.In a letter to relatives and friends, Zhou Tianjue described the performance of the Qing army in front of the Taiping army: When they set out for the expedition, the soldiers were like pigs and sheep hovering at the gate of the slaughterhouse. On the way, a hundred officials were recruited like stone moats, and they cried before they left." During the battle, each one of them was hesitant to move forward, leaving him with nothing to do: "It's a pity that one hundred of our soldiers are like birds at sight, and one hundred of our soldiers are like sheep bound with feet. None of them move. Shoot and kill two people, but there is no answer. It is easy to shake the mountain, but it is difficult to shake the army of the Yue family. Unexpectedly." Two years have passed, and the "rabble" of the Taiping Army did not become as popular as the Qing court imagined, but became stronger as they fought.The imperial court began to change coaches constantly, and specially dispatched Wu Lantai, a Guangzhou firearms expert, to the front line to help in the battle as the deputy capital commander.When Wu Lantai arrived at the front line, he was surprised to find that the troops of the Guizhou Green Camp assigned to him had no training and no military knowledge.During the Battle of Du'ao Mountain in Zhongping in May of the first year of Xianfeng, these Guizhou soldiers did not know how to dig trenches and build fortifications when they faced the enemy. Facing the seven Taiping soldiers who charged over, a thousand officers and soldiers collapsed without fighting. Beatings, that is, the slaves themselves frightened and shouted to kill, but they dared not leave the camp, and their cowardice did not kill them, which can be seen in general." The low salary system not only led to a decline in the training level of soldiers, but also led to the extreme corruption of officers' moral integrity. The Qing Dynasty knew that such a low salary was not enough to support the life of officers, so it could only maintain a high tolerance for corruption by officers.They consciously put a considerable degree of autonomy in the hands of officers, letting them fend for themselves and solve problems by themselves. This is the wise choice of the emperors.They also know that officers will break through the boundaries of discipline, but they still hope that they will self-discipline, self-monitor, and stop when enough is enough.But the characteristic of corruption is that once it opens its mouth, it will be unscrupulous and omnipresent.Therefore, all kinds of bizarre corruptions in the army in the late Qing Dynasty are really unimaginable today. The first, of course, is to eat empty quota. The shortage of military officers is the biggest drawback of the Chinese military throughout the ages, and the rulers of the past dynasties are helpless to deal with it.During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Kangxi had a whim and simply legalized the "empty quota" as a subsidy for military officers.In the forty-second year of Kangxi, the emperor and the generals agreed that in addition to the salary given by the state, the military officers would publicly stipulate how much food each person could eat, which was called "supply food".It wasn't until the Qianlong period that the emperor felt that this practice was not in line with the dignity of the Qing Dynasty, so he changed "supplying food" to "raising integrity".However, like the local system of raising honesty and banking, the military officer did not change the bad habit of sitting and eating empty food because of the special fund for raising honesty, but changed from legal to illegal, and continued secretly as usual. In the late Qing Dynasty, eating empty quotas became an open secret in the army.The military pay embezzled by generals at all levels is a black account that will never be traced.The Emperor Xianfeng admitted in 1852 that "the empty quota ... is the same in all provinces."Hu Linyi, who used to be the prefect of Guizhou, wrote to a friend in a private letter: Guizhou "generally lacks more than half of the soldiers in the green camps, and only one-sixth of the soldiers in the remote camps". In 1853, the right servant of the Ministry of Officials stated: "There are more than 21,000 armored soldiers in the infantry camp of the capital, and it is rumored that more than half of the quota is now empty." The second is the deduction of military pay as mentioned above. The third is to develop the tertiary industry and do business on a large scale.The specific methods are as follows: One is to use military equipment to do business.Some navies rent warships to merchants to sell goods, and keep all the income in their own pockets.According to the records of Zhang Jixin, who was in charge of the Tingzhang Dragon Road in Fujian during the Opium War: "There is a military factory outside the city of Zhangjun, and the governor is sent every month to build a warship for driving patrols. In fact, the navy took the boat away, or Lease with merchants to sell cargo rice, or lease with merchants for errands in Taiwan; occasionally go abroad, but only send them to the seashore, and there have never been many seizures of foreign robbers." The second is to lease out military land.For example, Zhejiang Eight Banners and Green Camp rent out a large number of playgrounds and pastures, so that the length and width of each school ground are less than one mile. Not only cannons, but also cannons (a simple firearm used by two people) cannot be used for shooting.The lack of grounds and horses reduced the number of soldiers to train, and there were even fewer live-fire drills with shotguns and artillery. The third is illegal crimes, smuggling and protecting private interests.The army of the Qing Dynasty played multiple roles such as the National Defense Force, the Internal Guard and the Police.Customs anti-smuggling and setting up cards to seize smuggled salt are also one of its functions.However, some corrupt Qing army officers and soldiers wore the cloak of law enforcement officers, but they were engaged in corruption, smuggling, smuggling, and self-protection. The most hated aspect of the late Qing army was its role in opium smuggling.Beginning in the first half of the 19th century, sailors used their power to accept bribes and allowed opium to flow into the interior, and sometimes even participated in it themselves, escorting the transportation.Before the Opium War, naval officers and soldiers colluded with opium dealers, and a complete set of practices for the distribution of bribes from naval admirals to ordinary soldiers had been formed, the so-called "rule rules" and "local rules".As Du Yanshi, the supervisory censor of Shaanxi Province, pointed out: "The reason why the barbarian boats are parked without taboo is because of the bad rules of the sailors. Each boat gets 400 yuan or 600 yuan. Covering and selling." "Once the barbarian ships arrive there, they will be worth tens of millions, and they will be handed over to the navy sentinel ships to trade on their behalf." During the ban on smoking in Guangdong, Lin Zexu vigorously launched anti-smuggling activities, but did not receive actual results.Later, he revealed the reason to his friends and said: "Navy divisions are the best in the Guangdong camp. One percent of their annual income can be paid for food and salaries, and ninety-nine percent of those who can get local regulations. If smoke and soil are prohibited, other troops will go to other places." Even if you have won 99% of the items, you still want them to contribute their efforts to reject the British and barbarians, which is unreasonable." The above-mentioned corruption behaviors are already an open secret known by the government and the public, but they have been practiced for many years and it is difficult to ban them.The reason is nothing more than that these incomes have become the main source of daily entertainment funds in the military, and are also part of the fixed and semi-fixed income of officers. If they are banned, it will inevitably affect the "stability" of the army.Therefore, these practices have acquired a certain "legal" or "semi-legal" status over the past dynasties.From the emperor's point of view, these practices seem to have solved the difficulty of the country's insufficient funds for a while, and it can even be said to improve the treatment of officers and soldiers to a certain extent. It is a "clever" way to maintain a large number of troops without increasing fiscal revenue. .Therefore, the emperors kept one eye closed for a long time, and on the surface they occasionally issued decrees to reiterate the prohibition of invading, otherwise they would "seriously punish the crime" and "use the government to suppress the government" and other disciplines, but most of them threatened in vain and did not enforce the law. No practical measures. However, while satisfying the inertia of the system, the harm these actions have brought to the military is catastrophic. As a result, the military loses its basic combat capabilities and cannot perform its functions normally.Officers at all levels use all their energy to make money. "I have heard recently that the battalions of the provinces, such as Ti and town officials, blindly pamper and treat themselves well, and do not practice hard work at all." "The so-called training and defense are all in name only."In the first year of Xianfeng, when Zeng Guofan was summoned to make a statement, he published a "Discussion on the Elimination of Soldiers", which summarized the situation of the national army at that time as follows: The situation of the soldiers varies from province to province. The fierce soldiers in Zhangquan usually fight with thousands of weapons;Others smoked opium and gathered in casinos, all provinces.Generally, if there is nothing to do, you will do your best; if you have something to do, you will hire scoundrels to fill it in.Zhang Zuo has repeatedly stated, and edicts have been repeatedly ordered, so we can't change the customs a little bit. In view of the above situation, Lin Zexu said: "Although Zhuge Wuhou came, he was helpless."