Chapter 8 Three Soldiers and Officers

Weapons and military strength are undoubtedly the two most important factors that indicate the strength of military power.However, if only this can judge the outcome of a war, then the history of human wars will be as monotonous and boring as the addition and subtraction in mathematics, and lose its due brilliance.In history, battles where the weak prevailed over the strong occurred from time to time, and the decisive factors were people and the strategies and tactics formulated by them. The complexity of people lies in their thinking, and the strategies and tactics formulated by people are ever-changing, and it is difficult to concentrate and summarize.Therefore, I will discuss the experiences, thoughts, strategies and tactics of the high-level people in the Opium War in the following chapters in conjunction with the war process. This section simply describes the main body of the Qing army’s operations—the general situation of soldiers and officers.

One of the main shortcomings of Chinese historiography is that the field of vision is focused on the upper class, and many writers of historical materials ignore the lives of the lower class people around them because they do not have the nature of anecdote.When I explored the general life of the officers and soldiers of the Qing army at that time, I was embarrassed by the lack of materials, so I could only piece together a rough but not precise picture from the scattered materials scattered around. The military service system in the Qing Dynasty was a deformed recruitment system.The early Eight Banners was a system of military and civilian integration. After entering the customs, the number of people multiplied and the number of soldiers was fixed. It gradually evolved into a fixed number of men selected from each banner and each leader to fill the army.Green camp soldiers are recruited from fixed military households.Compared with civilian households, military households can be exempted from money, food and taxes after they are born.In actual operation, especially during wartime, the soldiers of the green battalion were recruited not only from soldiers but also from other members of society, and there were all kinds of people.

What is the specific implementation of this method of recruitment?We can borrow the personal experience of Feng Yuxiang, a famous general during the Republic of China, to help readers understand: Feng Yuxiang's father was a sentry officer, and Feng Yuxiang joined the Huai Army, which is different from the Eight Banners Green Camp during the Opium War.Feng Yuxiang joined the army at the age of 11, which is also an exception, so Feng felt that it had special significance and wrote it in his autobiography.We cannot treat Feng's case as a common phenomenon, but the recruiting procedure revealed here is the consistent system of the Qing Dynasty.

Once a soldier of the Qing army was recruited, it became a lifelong profession.At that time, there was no fixed and clear decommissioning system.Although the Qing army (mainly the green battalion) sometimes had the action of "removing the old and the weak, and replenishing the strong", it never stipulated how old is old or weak, let alone how many years to carry out the action of rejuvenation.Therefore, the ages of Qing soldiers vary. In July 1840, during the first battle of Xiamen between China and Britain, the Qing army killed 9 soldiers, and their personal information was left in the file:

These nine soldiers all belong to the so-called elite Fujian Navy Tibiao.Judging from this file, their age ranges from 22 to 59 years old. Most of them are married and have children. Most of their mothers are still alive, but there are few records of their fathers.We don't know whether his father was a deceased Green Battalion soldier, and whether they filled the vacancies because of his father. The families of soldiers of the Qing army lived in the camp with the army, or rented houses to live nearby. It is not like today's military camps, where soldiers live together 24 hours a day.Soldiers at that time performed tasks like today's policemen, and their lives went to and from get off work like today's policemen.Except for going out to fight, the barracks are not open, and the soldiers all go home to eat.Once the practice duty is too late to go home, the family members will send meals there.Around the practice site, their wives and children are often watching.Having meals with his wife and children during the break is another scene compared with the performance.In his autobiographical novel "Under the Red Flag", the famous writer Lao She described the daily life of two banner soldiers, a Xiaoqi cavalry school, an assistant leader, and a member leader.Although this novel written in the 1960s and describing the 1890s cannot be used as historical materials to support the scenes of the Opium War, it provides us with a close observation position after all.Among them, Lao She described the life of the father who wore a red flag vest and carried a "yellow face and no need" badge to guard the imperial city as follows:

Lao She's home is in today's Huguosi area of ​​Beijing, not too far from the imperial city where he works.The vest was already in his 40s when he got the later famous son, and he died in the battle of the Eight-Power Allied Forces two years later. As I explained in the previous section, the vast majority of soldiers in the Qing army were stationed scattered, with a few, a dozen, or dozens of soldiers in each place.And these scattered soldiers and their families live in the places where the flood ponds are located in the market. Except for the drills and duties, their daily life is not much different from that of the surrounding households.

Soldiers in the green battalion and garrisoning the Eight Banners of the Qing army are divided into three types: cavalry soldiers, warrior soldiers, and guard soldiers;Its standards are: The cavalry is the cavalry, the soldiers are the soldiers who go out to fight, and the guards are the soldiers who defend and defend. The original duties are clear.However, during the Opium War, due to the reduction in the scale of the war, many cavalry soldiers had lost their horses and other expenses, and became horseless cavalry soldiers, and the responsibilities of fighting and guarding soldiers became increasingly blurred.Due to the difference in food and pay, in actual operation, guards, warriors, and horsemen became the ranks for soldiers to be promoted.In addition to food and salaries, soldiers of the Eight Banners also had banner land, each about 30 mu. However, during the Opium War, mortgages and sales were very common.

Just looking at the numbers, it is not easy to find the problem. Let us compare the income of the soldiers with the living index at that time. In 1838, Lin Zexu, governor of Huguang, said: Based on this calculation, one person needs 15 taels to 36 taels of silver a year.The salaries of soldiers in the Qing army ranged from 12 to 24 taels, and the annual ration was 3.6 shi, which was more than enough to feed the soldiers themselves. But soldiers in the Qing Dynasty had family members.Judging from the materials of the 9 soldiers who were previously quoted by the Fujian Navy for bidding, each soldier needs to support at least 2 to 5 people (because daughters are not included).Of course, military households in the Qing Dynasty were often multi-person soldiers, but even with a family of three as the standard, the food and salaries of Qing army soldiers were obviously difficult to maintain the family.

The food and payment standards of the Qing army were formulated by the Shunzhi Dynasty.This is when the economy is recovering and prices are extremely low.After the development of the three dynasties of Kang, Yong and Qian, inflation has risen to a considerable extent.Although the food and salary standards have been adjusted many times, they are mainly for the officers, and since the late Qianlong period, the Qing Dynasty’s finances have been in trouble, and the income of Qing soldiers has not and cannot be greatly increased. The low income can only reduce the standard of living and cannot live without it. In order to make a living, soldiers of the Qing army had to find other sources besides the regular income.Therefore, helping others, renting land, running small businesses, etc., became a common phenomenon at that time, just like today's "second job" is as prosperous.For example, Zheng Yu, a long follower of the Youying Guerrilla in Fubiao, Hunan, and Chen Yulin, a soldier, invested 27,000 yuan to sell the "Shuangmei Tea Room" on Qingshi Street in Changsha, Hunan, which was about to close down. After half a year of operation, it changed hands in Soldier Cai Buyun and others.When such business activities conflicted with on-duty drills in terms of time, Qing soldiers often hired people to replace them.

Although the income of the soldiers of the Qing army was not high, they still had a fixed amount of "hardcore crops" that ensured the harvest from droughts and floods.Many people spend money to entrust others to replenish their troops. After making up the replenishment, they should be on duty when they are on duty and performing exercises, and they still carry on their old jobs at other times.Wang Qingzhuang, an undercover agent of Yao Huaixiang in Dinghai County, Zhejiang Province, revealed that the soldiers of the Qing army in the area were "half of them lowly servants" who paid 30 to 40 yuan in silver to enlist in the army.For these people, being a soldier has become a "second job".

Although the above ways of generating income did not comply with the regulations of the Qing army, they did not directly harm the country and the people after all. Officials opened their eyes and closed their eyes because they tied the lives of soldiers or obtained benefits from them, and they were generally not held accountable. In fact, the soldiers of the Qing army also had another source of income, that is, extortion and bribery.This kind of corruption will be described later with the officers. There are two main sources of officers in the Qing army: one is from the army, such as Yang Fang, Yu Buyun, Chen Huacheng and others who were important generals in the Opium War, all rose from soldiers to first-rank officials; Famous generals Guan Tianpei (Wu Juren), Ge Yunfei (Wu Jinshi), Wang Xipeng (Wu Juren) and others in the Opium War were promoted step by step from junior officers.In addition, there are world jobs, shadow students, and donors, but they are a minority.Those who were born in the army are easy to understand today, but some introductions are required for the military examination. The imperial examinations in the Qing Dynasty were divided into civil and military examinations.Martial arts is like liberal arts. It is divided into four levels of examinations: children's examination, township examination, general examination, and palace examination. Those who pass the examination are also titled Wu Tongsheng (Wu Xiucai), Wu Juren, and Wu Jinshi.The difference between martial arts and liberal arts lies in the fact that the exam is divided into an outfield and an infield.In the outfield, there are riding and shooting, foot shooting, bow drawing, stone lifting and knife dancing.After passing the outfield, enter the infield, examine strategies and discuss two articles, with the "Seven Books of Martial Arts" ("Sunzi", "Wu Zi", "Sima Fa", "Wei Liaozi", "Tang Taizong Li Weigong Questions and Answers", "Three Strategies", "Six Secret Teachings") as the topic. Just as it is absurd to think that stereotyped articles can rule the world, the examination items of the military imperial examinations in the Qing Dynasty are completely different from the requirements of modern warfare.Regardless of the fact that the "Seven Books of the Martial Arts" is not suitable as a textbook for junior military officers, the only infield exam related to strategy was changed to "Seven Books of Martial Arts" during the Jiaqing period because the examinees made many mistakes. Write more than a hundred words of "Wu Jing" silently.As a result, the infield has become a fake, and the outfield has become a real competitive place.Emperor Daoguang even made a clear decree: "The establishment of martial arts should be based on the outside field", and the ranking of martial arts examinations should be concentrated on one item, that is, to draw a strong bow.They use physical strength as the criterion for selecting officers, and some Chinese-style officers can't read at all. It is very likely that the officers selected in this way are not useful. In the Qing Dynasty, the army background was regarded as the "right path", followed by the subjects. This situation is exactly the opposite of the civil service.The promotion of military officers in the Qing Dynasty, in addition to military merit, required the test of bow and horse skills. If they failed to pass the test, they would not be promoted.Being strong and skilled in horse gait is still one of the most important conditions. From today's perspective, this method selects only an excellent soldier, not an officer who leads the army.In the era of cold weapons, the bravery of officers was a great inspiration. After the emergence of firearms, this brave style has been relegated to a secondary position.Regardless of confronting the British army, a modernized army, even in the battle against the traditional enemy of the Qing Dynasty in this period, this method is not advisable. Therefore, in the minds of people at that time, an officer was just a reckless warrior, and "ignorance and incompetence" became the basic symbol of an officer.The status of a soldier is despised by the society, and "emphasizing literature over martial arts" has become a social fashion. This kind of social recognition of the status of an officer also determines the flow of social talents.The first-class young people are dedicated to the civil and imperial examinations, and the army has become a place for people with physical strength but no talent.When the Opium War was coming to an end, Qiying, the imperial envoy, and Yilibu, the deputy governor of Zhapu, went to the British ship to visit the British plenipotentiary. They saw a group of young people on the ship, that is, military trainees in uniform. Shock.Iribe commented on this: There are two other things worth noting: First, officers, like soldiers, do not have a reasonable retirement system.According to the system of the Qing Dynasty, officers below participating generals can serve until the age of 63, while those who directly lead the troops can extend their service to the age of 66.The admiral and the commander-in-chief have no express regulations, and their rest comes from the holy order.We know the ages of Jiangnan Water and Land Admiral Chen Huacheng, Zhejiang Admiral Zhu Tingbiao, Fujian Navy Admiral Chen Jieping, Fujian Land Admiral Yu Buyun, Hunan Admiral Yang Fang, and Guangdong Navy Admiral Guan Tianpei are all in their 70s or nearly 70.The second is that the high-level command of the Qing army is not in the hands of generals, but in the hands of civilian officials.The military commanders of the provinces are actually governors.These civil servants were born in stereotyped articles and traveled in official circles. Before they were promoted to governors, they did not command troops and were not familiar with the military. Their military knowledge was limited to a few ancient books.This unreasonable command system of civilian officials and generals also reflects the low quality of Wu Bian. Another reason for the low social status of military officers is their economic status.The monthly salary of the officers of the Green Camp of the Qing Army is: In terms of numbers, the income of military officers is not lower than that of civilian officials, and their rank is even higher than that of civilian officials: But when it comes to actual power, civil servants are much higher than military officials.Regardless of whether the governor of the second rank can justifiably control the admiral of the first rank, that is, the Taoist of the fourth rank with the title of "Bingbei", he can control the green battalion within the jurisdiction. soldier.In terms of economic income, civil servants govern the people and manage money, enjoy a lot of bad rules and the contribution of lower-level officials, and the statutory income is only the smallest part of their total income. "Three years of the Qing magistrate, one hundred thousand snowflakes of silver", this well-known folk proverb shows that the actual income of civil servants (although it is somewhat exaggerated) far exceeds their statutory income, and the rank of the magistrate is only lower than that of a first-level military officer in the Qing military camp. (Participant, Guerrilla, Capital Division, Defense) is the lowest level of defense, which is only slightly higher. Judging from the income level of Qing army officers, there is absolutely no risk of hunger or cold.But the extravagant fashion of the officialdom at that time made all the officers look like "poor men".Since the late Qianlong Dynasty, the administration of officials has been badly damaged.The purpose of being an official is to make a fortune.Officials who live only on their salaries may not be able to find them with a magnifying glass. However, civil servants have people who can be searched (a magistrate county has tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people), and there are ways to search (such as collecting grain and taxes, presiding over imperial examinations, etc.); while military officers have only a limited number of soldiers (A battalion has 200 to 1,000 soldiers under the jurisdiction of the officers). As mentioned earlier, the life of the soldiers is already hard, and there is not much oil and water. The narrowness of the search channel does not prevent the actions of the searchers, but leads to the moment of search methods.The main means of military attache are: This well-known method of cheating was almost as public as bad practices at the time.There are many discussions among the people and the memorials of officials, but few people actually investigate and deal with it.Because this is a bad habit that all officials do, it forms an unbreakable protection net between officials and officials, which cannot be investigated and dealt with at all. Because of this, there has never been a strict statistics on the number of empty quotas, but many data show that it seems to depend on the greed and courage of the officials.Hu Linyi, a former magistrate and Taoist priest of Guizhou, said in private that during the Daoxian period, there were generally more than half of the vacancies in the green camps in Guizhou, and even only one-sixth of the quota in the remote camps.This may be an extreme exaggeration, and Guizhou is a remote province.In 1853, Airen, the right servant of the Ministry of Officials, publicly stated that the capital "had a total of more than 21,000 armored soldiers in the infantry battalion, and it is rumored that more than half of the quota is now empty", which is inevitably shocking. Generally speaking, in major cities, due to the large number of errands in the Qing army, the number of officials who ate vacancies was relatively small, but the means of consuming vacancies were refurbished.The "officer" in the fifth battalion of the capital's patrol is one of them.In order to cope with inspection tours, Guanbian often hires temporary replacements. This is also the traditional way of officers cheating.The food and pay of the soldiers of the Qing army, for example, included deduction for construction, interception, deduction by friends, payment of money, and deduction of color, which also created opportunities for officers to cheat.Of course, there are also some military officers who directly withhold their salaries without using any name at all.There are plenty of historical materials about such situations, so I won’t cite them one by one here. In addition, various expenses in the military camp are often divided into the military salary by the officers.For example, Fujian Green Camp: What's more, officers will see their superiors' door bags, and they will also be paid for them. As mentioned above, the life of soldiers is already tight, and the addition of such deductions will undoubtedly make the situation worse.In the Qing Dynasty, there were frequent incidents of soldiers fighting for pay, which was a resistance to the various exploitations of military officers. The above-mentioned eating quota and restraining military pay are just ideas on the military expenditure of the Qing Dynasty.However, the military expenditure of the Qing Dynasty was limited after all, and many people then turned their attention to the society, looking for opportunities to make a fortune. However, if the army is taken from society, it will inevitably play a role that is contrary to its duties. It is originally a guardian of the law, and at this time it will not hesitate to break the law for money.This kind of behavior is often joined by officers and soldiers, and the tricks are endless: Zhejiang officials sell shortages of soldiers, and Guangdong green camps charge for gambling. Lease for various errands to and from Taiwan. In fact, the most important and the simplest way of corruption is to directly extort and accept bribes when performing official duties. As mentioned earlier, the police functions in modern society were undertaken by the Qing army at that time.Guarding prisons, assisting in the collection of food, patrolling the ground, arresting criminals, arresting smugglers... Under their operation, they all become money-making businesses.Over time, the bad rule of prison and robbery has been formed, one is to pay money, and the other is to let them go. Regarding such misdeeds, there are too many historical records, and it is impossible and unnecessary to cite them one by one.Fortunately, there are many treatises on this.Here, I just want to cite one piece of material that is closer to the theme of this book: In 1841, Lin Zexu, governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, was ordered to go to the Zhejiang military camp after being dismissed.When passing through Hunan, this senior official who had personally experienced the defeat revealed to Bao Shichen, a celebrity at the time: "Native regulations" refer to the bad practices of opium smuggling.The one percent and ninety-nine percent mentioned here should naturally be regarded as literary language rather than quantitative analysis.But no matter how strong the exaggeration is, Lin Zexu and Bao Shichen compare these numbers to see the seriousness of the problem. When power goes on the market like money, it immediately produces an extremely powerful social corrosive agent. When the army enshrines the statue of the God of Wealth as a battle flag, corruption is irreversible.There are 10,000 kinds of crimes in the world that can be safe and sound, but only one is deadly: law enforcement and breaking the law.Zhang Jixin, who used to be the Tingzhang Dragon Road in Fujian, asked Lin Zexu, who was famous for his "rectification", how to change the situation of the Fujian Navy's soldiers and bandits. Lin said to him: And Zeng Guofan, who later supervised the training of the Hunan Army, hit the nail on the head: The above description is quite suspicious of exposing the darkness.In fact, for the fairness of my research conclusions, I searched thousands of times for the light, but the light was always far away from me.I can't help but come to the conclusion that the Qing army during the Opium War was originally a dark world where light was rarely seen. Will my conclusion be biased?Just look at what people said at the time.People at that time commented more painfully because of their more real experience, and they were even blunt in their memorials to the emperor.Huang Juezi said: Qiying said: Zeng Guofan said: Isn't the overall impression of the Qing army that can be drawn from these descriptions exactly dark? As for the slack in training and the loss of military discipline that resulted from this, there were even more people talking about it at the time, and there is no need for us to discuss it further. Therefore, in the Opium War, the Qing army was often defeated in battle, a large number fled, and very few persisted in resisting.Under such circumstances, it seems groundless to talk about the fact that human factors can change objectively unfavorable conditions. Therefore, regarding the failure of the Opium War, people at that time and later came to the same conclusion: the Qing army was corrupt. However, in the various treatises on the Opium War that are currently popular, on the one hand, they admit that the Qing army has been corrupted, and on the other hand, they use vague but clear statements such as "the vast number of patriotic officers and soldiers fought bravely". This should be responsible, and the lower-level officers and soldiers have no responsibility at all.Their example is a small number of soldiers who died in the resistance.Regardless of the logical errors of this overgeneralization method, as far as the mentality of the advocates of this statement is concerned, it has more or less the flavor of Ah Q.