Chapter 17 Five Humen Wars

In the era of colonialism where the weak preyed on the strong, the voice of diplomacy does not depend on whether it is justified, but depends on force.The Battle of Humen in the Opium War is a typical illustration of the gap in military strength between China and Britain. Humen is located in today's Dongguan City, Guangdong Province.It is not a point concept, but generally refers to the 8-kilometer-long section of the Pearl River and the nearby areas on both sides of the Lingding Ocean, which is connected to the Shizi Ocean (see the following figure for details).It is the gateway of Guangzhou.Its strategic position is self-evident if it is to resist the invaders coming from the sea.

Because of Humen's strategic position and geographical situation, the rulers of all dynasties paid attention to the fortification of Humen, and its earliest fortifications can be traced back to the Wanli Dynasty of Ming Dynasty.After the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, defenses continued to be built, and the scale of the fortress gradually formed. In 1810, Emperor Jiaqing added the Admiral of the Guangdong Navy, whose government office was located in Humenzhai (now Taiping Town) behind Wushan Mountain, and directly commanded the defense here. However, the key period for the construction of the Humen defense project was from 1835 to 1839, and its chief designer was Guan Tianpei.

First, in 1834, when Lawrence came to China, he ordered two British ships to break through the Humen Fortress, and went all the way to Huangpu, threatening Guangzhou.The Humen Qing army tried their best to open fire on it, but only killed 2 British people, injured 7 people, and the British ship only suffered some minor injuries; but their own losses were quite heavy.Emperor Daoguang was furious when he heard the news, and dismissed Li Zengjie, the admiral of the Guangdong Navy, and transferred Guan Tianpei, the commander-in-chief of Susong Town, to succeed him, ordering him to wash away his old habits.

Guan Tianpei, a native of Shanyin (now part of Huai'an), Jiangsu Province, supplemented the general general of the Qing army with martial arts talents, and moved to the general of the Qing army with more than 20 years of experience.The turning point in his life was his first sea voyage in 1826.At that time, as a general of the Wusong Camp, he escorted 1,254 grain ships out of the Yangtze River and sailed northward. Although more than 300 ships drifted to North Korea due to wind and tide, they all found their way back.When the mighty fleet sailed into Tianjin, the millions of stones of grain and grain were unscathed, and all 30,000 sailors were safe.Emperor Daoguang was overjoyed when he heard the news, and promoted Guan Tianpei to the deputy general, and not long after, he was promoted to the chief soldier. In 1833, Guan Tianpei went to Beijing to meet with His Majesty, and Emperor Daoguang still did not forget the incident, and expressed his comfort with warm words.

At the end of 1834, Guan Tianpei took over his new post.He inspected the geographical situation of Humen in detail, and put forward the defense concept of three gates: 1. The Shajiao and Dajiao forts were too far apart to form crossfire, so they were changed to Xin forts.Once an enemy ship sails in, the two places will send a letter to notify the defenders of the upstream forts to prepare to meet the enemy.This is the first portal. 2. The geographical situation on the front line of Shanghengdang Island is advantageous, and it is a key defense area.In the East Waterway, he rebuilt the Nanshan Fort on the west side of Wushan, renamed it Weiyuan Fort, installed 40 cannons, reinforced the Zhenyuan Fort with 40 cannons to the north of Weiyuan Fort, and reinforced the 40 cannons on the east side of Shanghengdang Island. The Hengban Fort is intended to control the Hengban East Waterway with a total of 120 artillery pieces from the Weiyuan, Zhenyuan, and Hengban Forts.In the West Waterway, he built a new Yongan Fort on the west side of Shanghengban Island with 40 cannons, and a new consolidated fort on the east side of Luwan with 20 cannons. west waterway.This is the second portal.

3. Reinforce the 32-bit Tiger Fort on the southeast side of Dahushan Island.This is the third portal. In 1835, Guan Tianpei, with the support of Lu Kun, Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, spent about 10 months transforming the Humen defense system according to the above concept, and the project was completed by the end of the year. Two years later, in 1838, when Matalon came to China, the British ships approached Humen, and Guan Tianpei was forced to surrender (see Chapter 2, Section 1 for details).Afterwards, with the support of Deng Tingzhen, governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, Guan Tianpei strengthened his defense capabilities again based on the flaws in the Humen defense system exposed by this incident: 1. A new Jingyuan Fort was built between the Zhenyuan Fort and the Weiyuan Fort, and the 60 bit.This was the strongest fort with the most powerful firepower in the territory of the Qing Dynasty at that time.2. On the west side of Fanluopai and Shanghengban Island, set up two chains to Wushan to slow down the speed of enemy ships.

In 1839, the expansion project was completed, and Humen became the most powerful coastal defense fortress in the Qing Dynasty.When the imperial envoy Lin Zexu went to Humen to sell cigarettes, he was ordered to inspect the quality of the project and expressed his satisfaction with the Humen defense system designed by Guan Tianpei. Guan Tianpei's idea of ​​triple gates focuses on the second gate, which is the line of Shanghengban Island, especially the East Waterway of Hengban, where most of the forts and artillery are located.

Beginning in 1835, Guan Tianpei formulated the regulations for the Humen Qing Army's Spring and Autumn Exercises, which were later revised according to the expansion of defense.The so-called Spring and Autumn Exercises refer to exercises in spring and autumn.The charter is actually a challenge plan for future operations.According to Guan Tianpei's charter: the forts in Humen usually have 590 guards, with an average of 2 artillery for every 3 soldiers. During the exercise, an additional 670 Xieji soldiers will be sent, about 1 artillery for every 4 soldiers; 10 ships, each with 12 guns, 64 soldiers and sailors, a total of 120 guns, 640 soldiers; during the exercise, swimming soldiers, mid-water counter-machinery soldiers, mast-climbing soldiers, deep-water soldiers capable of masts and other underwater soldiers were transferred. More than a hundred soldiers fought.A total of 2,028 Qing troops participated in the exercise.This number is the Humen wartime establishment.

According to Guan Tianpei's regulations: when an enemy ship breaks into the end of the Humen Gate, the defenders at Shajiao and Dajiao will fire signal cannons after discovering them, and notify the rear; The four artillery turrets on the horizontal row bombarded it, and the enemy ships were blocked by the chains, so they would not be able to pass through suddenly, and they would have to stay for a long time. , and also came to cooperate with the fort to fight; if the enemy ship sailed into the west channel of the crossbar, bombard it with the two forts of Yong'an and Consolidate, and the Qing army division ships and soldiers in the water also came to cooperate with the enemy; if the enemy ship broke through the line of the crossbar Defensively, continue to go deep, and reject it with division ships and Tiger Forts.

This is a complete combat plan, but it was formulated based on the experience of the Humen battle when Lawrence came to China in 1834. Its essence was to block the enemy ships from passing through Humen and approaching Guangzhou.However, if the enemy ships did not rush through the Humen, but directly attacked the fort, then the triple gate would become a separate and helpless stronghold for the triple gate.Guan Tianpei's wartime establishment of 9 units, 10 ships, 426 guns, and 2,028 men was also determined based on the number of British ships that came to China twice in 1834 and 1838.In other words, the defensive capability of Humen designed by Guan Tianpei is only a few enemy ships. In 1841, the British army adopted the tactics of directly attacking the fort, and the number of ships was several times the design capacity of Humen!Due to the misjudgment of the enemy's situation by Lin Zexu and others, it was too late to modify Humen's defense system before the battle, and only added some soldiers and artillery.

It can be seen that the Humen defense system that the Qing Dynasty relied on as the Great Wall was an unreliable lame duck, just as the Great Wall built by the Ming Dynasty failed to prevent its ancestors from invading several times. Some commentators attribute the failure of the Battle of Humen to Qishan's withdrawal or refusal to send aid. I have briefly mentioned this in the introduction, and I will make a further analysis here. According to Lin Zexu's memorial, when the Opium War began in June 1840, there were more than 3,000 Qing soldiers in Humen.This is more than 1,000 more than Guan Tianpei's wartime establishment.Four months later, in October 1840, Yiliang, the governor of Guangdong, said: "There are tens of thousands of soldiers at the pass inside and outside Humen. Less than 2,000 names." The "inside and outside of Humen" referred to here refers to the defense of Kowloon outside Humen, Macau and Shiziyang in Humen, and of course, Humen is also included.Yiliang's "10,000 people" and "removal of more than 2,000 people" are unreliable numbers.Even if it is calculated by "10,000 people", referring to Lin Zexu's previous memorial, there are about 3,000 fortified soldiers in Macau, and more than 1,000 fortified soldiers in Kowloon, so Humen's soldiers are no more than 6,000 at most.Although this number is three times that of Guan Tianpei's wartime establishment, it is only half of the actual force during the Humen battle. Existing research has proved that all kinds of records about Qi Shan's withdrawal are unreliable.Because of the widespread rumors at the time, Qishan was specifically asked about this point during the interrogation after he was dismissed and arrested.If it is said that Qishan hesitates to answer other questions in order to show that he has a good attitude towards confession, then he can only categorically deny this matter without hesitation.Disarming is not like accepting bribes, it can be done in secret, so why hide it from others?If Qi Shan really had something to do with withdrawing his defenses, why would he dare to lie during the interrogation where his family and life were at stake? On the contrary, there are well-documented facts about Qi Shan sending troops to reinforce Humen bravely.This can be seen not only in Qishan's memorial at that time, but also in the records of the British side.After the battles of Shajiao and Dajiao, the British side agreed to a temporary truce. One of the conditions was that "all work on the fort that is being built now should be stopped, and no additional armaments should be made."However, the work of increasing troops and defenses on the front line of Humen's second gateway has not stopped.On January 11 and 13, 1841, Bome sent two notes to Guan Tianpei, Admiral of the Guangdong Navy, asking for an explanation, otherwise force would be used immediately.Guan Tianpei replied immediately, saying that "the platoon chain is no longer safe", the tents set up in the mountains were "all removed", and the newly added officers and soldiers could not retreat immediately because the hired boat "couldn't arrive quickly".Judging from the later facts, Guan Tianpei's reply was a tactic to delay the attack, and he did not implement it except for the chain. Through the efforts of Qishan and others, by the time of the battle, the total number of Qing soldiers in the Humen area had reached more than 11,000, and the British claimed that they had captured more than 660 artillery pieces in the Humen area.Comparing the number of soldiers and cannons with the previous ones, we can only draw one conclusion, that is, Qishan did not weaken Humen's defensive power, but strengthened it. There are also some commentators who criticize Qishan's ineffective reinforcement, that is, not sending more soldiers to strengthen the defense of Humen.I think this needs to be analyzed in detail. As far as the military system and quota of the Qing Dynasty are concerned, it is not an easy task to deploy troops.In a small area, more than 8,000 soldiers were sent bravely, and Qi Shan seemed to have done everything he could.From a national perspective, during the Opium War, the soldiers and artillery in the Humen area surpassed all key coastal defense areas, ranking first. As far as military science is concerned, it is meaningless for Humen to increase its military bravery at this time.For example, Weiyuan Fort has 40 cannons, 60 guards in peacetime, and 160 in wartime. When the battle is fought, the number of soldiers on the platform increases to 327, and 91 soldiers are hired.So far, many soldiers can no longer increase combat effectiveness, but have become living targets.Judging from the regulation and construction of the fort, it can no longer accommodate more soldiers.Qi Shan also said, "The fortress is full of people" and "there is nothing left to do." Of course, it must also be explained that although Qishan has made the above efforts on the defense of Humen, he does not believe that these efforts will be effective. On December 26, 1840, when he increased his troops for the first time in Humen, he said: "Using bluff to let the caiyi know that I am prepared, and on the other hand, he prepared a document to enlighten him in detail." The increase in troops is not for war. It's just "bluffing", and the purpose is still to "enlighten".As for his subsequent increase in troops, the situation is naturally different, but from his memorials, we can smell that he had to do something to deal with Emperor Daoguang's strict decree of "suppression". So, what is the real reason for Humen's defeat? The first battle of the Battle of Humen was the Battle of Shajiao and Dajiao. In the early morning of January 7, the British warships Gallop, Hai'a Xin, and Lahn (52 guns in total) entered the front of the Shajiao Fort and bombarded the fort to attract the defenders; 4 British armed ships towed small boats , transported a total of 1,461 ground troops, and landed at Chuanbi Bay, about 4 kilometers behind the fort, to carry out a roundabout attack.At 10:00 in the morning, the British landing force occupied the first horizontal mountain and built a field artillery position with three cannons.Under the cover of their field artillery, the ground troops of the landing British army attacked the temporary barracks of the Qing army on the mountain.Although the defenders fought back with artillery fire, they were unable to resist the condescending British field artillery. The barracks caught fire and burned the barracks, and the barracks fell.After sending the landing troops, the two British ships maneuvered again, chose favorable terrain, and bombarded the small fort on Shajiao Mountain to suppress its firepower.The British ground troops who captured the Qing army camp on the mountain took advantage of the momentum to capture the small fort on Shajiao Mountain, and continued to attack the Qing army camp in the valley.At this time, the four armed ships of the British Army had all entered the front of the Shajiao Fort, and participated in the bombardment of the Shajiao Fort by the Gallup and other three ships.At this time, the defenders of the fort could no longer withstand the fierce artillery fire of the British army, and more than half of the soldiers were killed or injured.After the landing British army captured the Qing army barracks in the valley, they moved again, attacking the Shajiao Fort from the side and rear.The defenders were attacked by the enemy, the deputy general Chen Liansheng died in battle, and the fort fell. In terms of tactics, the Battle of Shajiao should be an eye-opener for the Qing army.These cunning "Niyi" did not make a frontal attack, but sneaked around behind the fort and hit their unprotected soft abdomen.However, the tactics of the British army's warships attacking the front and the army's plagiarism behind it reflect modern military academics.In particular, its landing troops seized the commanding heights, supplemented by field artillery, and successively attacked the military camp on the mountain, the small fort on the mountain, the military camp in the valley, and the main fort. They fought continuously and defeated each one. The attack route was smooth and orderly.The Qing army was extremely passive.In Guan Tianpei's design, Shajiao originally belonged to the letter fort, and the enemy ships would be meaningless if they did not sail inside.At this time, Guan Tianpei, who was on the front line of the rung, was only three or four kilometers away from the battlefield, doing nothing, watching one of his troops being eaten by the British army.The flaws in the design of the triple portal were fully exposed. The Battle of Shajiao failed, but if the Qing army realized that the British army was better at land warfare, it could be said that it lost something.However, in the intelligence system of the Qing army, this genuine "Yi" army, which was clearly divided into the 26th and 49th regiments of the British army, the 37th madras indigenous infantry regiment, and the sailors of the navy, was inexplicably captured. mistook them for traitors.Some people even infer that these exiles driven by the "barbarians" were originally Shui Yong who was dismissed by Qi Shan! At the same time as the battle started at Shajiao, the British ships Samaran, Dulu 1, Columbine, and Mortises (with 106 guns in total) entered the front of the Dajiao Fort and fired fiercely with their guns. bombard the defenders.In terms of quantity, the naval artillery of the British army is more than four times that of the Qing army. In terms of quality, the difference is huge.Pieces of fort fortifications collapsed during the shelling. Although the defenders fought back, it didn't work. Instead, they had nowhere to stop and hide under the enemy's artillery fire.When the British army basically defeated the resistance of the Big Horn Fort, the sailors of each ship took small boats to land on both sides of the fort, and attacked the fort from the gap opened by the blast.The defenders had no intention of fighting again, and retreated to the back hill one after another, and the fort fell. In addition, when the Battle of Shajiao was about to end, the British armed ships led the small boats attached to each ship to attack the division ships and hired ships of the Qing army moored in Yanchen Bay.In surface battles, the Qing army was no match.Although the British army did not use regular warships, they still defeated the Qing army.The British army defeated a total of 11 Qing warships and seized 82 large and small artillery pieces from the ships. Different from the previous battle of Dinghai, the Qing army had made full preparations before the battle of Shajiao and Dajiao, and also showed high morale and extraordinary sacrifice spirit in the battle.A total of 277 people were killed by the Qing army, 5 people were seriously injured and 462 people were injured, a total of 744 people.In the Opium War, apart from the Battle of Zhenjiang, we can't find any place where the Qing army could have such a desperate resistance.However, the use of their lives is still not immune to devastating failures.In exchange for such a huge casualty, 38 British soldiers were injured and no one died! The reality of war is so cruel, and it does not take care of the just side at all. After the battles of Shajiao and Dajiao, the British fleet went up the river, approached the line of Hengban, the second gateway of Humen, and besieged Shanghengan Island.The situation is critical. On January 8, Bohmer, the naval commander of the British Expeditionary Force, released the prisoners of war and asked the prisoners to send a note to Guan Tianpei, claiming that if the Qing side had "reasonable peace talks", the British side would also agree to a truce. Guan Tianpei softened his attitude in this critical situation, and replied immediately, saying that Bomei's note had been forwarded to Qishan, and asked the British side to wait for a reply, "Can it be discussed again?" Things".Obviously, Guan Tianpei had no intention of fighting at this time, and was more inclined to negotiate. He even used the vague promise of "nothing is impossible" to ask the British side to withdraw its troops, and made the withdrawal a prerequisite for peace talks. After receiving this note, the British side immediately stopped military operations and proposed five conditions for an armistice to Guan Tianpei.Soon after, Qishan and Yilu resumed negotiations, and the British army withdrew from Humen. Although Guan Tianpei intends to resolve the Sino-British dispute through negotiation at this time, as a military officer, he has no authority over the peace talks and can only pin his hopes on Qishan; and under the frequent threats of war by Yilu and others, His duty required him to strengthen the defense of Humen and prepare for another battle.However, there are two urgent and thorny things in front of him at this time: 1. The Battle of Shajiao exposed the emptiness behind the Qing army's fort.Based on this lesson, Guan Tianpei disregarded the limitation of "no additional armaments" in the armistice conditions. With Qi Shan's support, he began to build a concealed fort with 80 cannons in the Sanmen waterway behind Wushan to prevent the British from fighting. The old military tricks were repeated; sandbag forts were urgently built on the south side of the Weiyuan Fort, Shanghengdang Island, etc.;Seeing the situation, Bomei sent two notes to Guan Tianpei to criticize him, but Guan Tianpei only expressed obedience in the reply, and the actual work did not stop. 2. After the battles of Shajiao and Dajiao, the morale of the Qing army was severely damaged.Some soldiers made a fuss about rewarding money, otherwise they would disperse.In order to appease the soldiers to stay on guard, Guan Tianpei had to mortgage the clothes and gave each soldier 2 yuan in silver.Qishan also appropriated 11,000 yuan in silver for this purpose and distributed it to Guan Tianpei and others to motivate soldiers' morale. However, Guan Tianpei's hopeful Qishan-Yilu's Guangdong negotiations are now a lamp that has run out of fuel, and the light flickers and will eventually go out; Take military action. On February 23, 1841, the British armed ship Nemesis and some attached boats broke into the Sanmen Waterway from Yanchen Bay, drove away the Qing army ships and soldiers who were fortifying there, and destroyed the unfinished fort.The next day, the Nemesis and the boat re-entered the Sanmen Waterway and demolished various facilities blocking the waterway. The fight resumed.A battle of unprecedented scale unfolded on the front line of the key crossbar of Guan Tianpei's fortification.There are six forts in Weiyuan, Jingyuan, Zhenyuan, Hengban, Yong'an and Jianjian and two chains.So far, although the first chain has been destroyed, the strength of the Qing army there has been greatly strengthened: 1. In the three forts of Zhenyuan, Jingyuan and Weiyuan in the Wushan area, the number of artillery pieces has increased to 147; in the south of Weiyuan Fortress, there are 2 sandbag forts with 30 small artillery pieces; on the mountain behind the fort, there is a barracks , stationed with soldiers bravely, in case the British army plagiarized the rear. 2. On Shanghengang Island, in addition to the original two forts of Hengban and Yong'an, the fort on Henggang Mountain was repaired; sandbag forts were built in the north and south of the island; Landing British troops to engage in battle.The number of artillery on the island was increased to 160. 3. In the Luwan area, in addition to the original solid fort, a military camp was built behind the mountain to garrison soldiers bravely.There are a total of 40 artillery positions in the artillery positions and barracks. In short, on the front line of the crossbar, the Qing army had a total of 8,500 soldiers and 377 artillery pieces in front of them. On February 24, Bohmey, the naval commander of the British Expeditionary Force, issued an ultimatum to Guan Tianpei, requesting that all the front-line Qing army positions be handed over to the British army to "guard", but no reply was received. On February 25, the British army began to move.First of all, Xiahengdang Island was occupied, and a field artillery position with 3 heavy artillery pieces was set up at the commanding height of the island. In the early morning of February 26, the British field artillery of Xiahengtai Island fired at Shanghengtai Island, hitting the Qing army's fort and barracks on the island many times.Since the artillery of the Qing army was mostly placed at the east and west ends of the island, and the Jianying field artillery was condescending, it was difficult to fight back and they were passively beaten. The island gradually fell into chaos.Seeing that the situation was not good, some generals of the Qing army left the island in a small boat and fled northward. The angry soldiers fired the first shots not at the British army, but at the fleeing generals. At around 10 am, the wind picked up and the British ship started.Branham, Melville and the armed ship Queen, each carrying 74 guns, attacked Wushan together.In order to avoid the fire from the forts such as Hengban and Weiyuan, the Luying ship sailed along Yanchen Bay.The sandbag fort and Weiyuan fort of the Qing Army located in the southeast of Weiyuan Fort opened fire on the British ship. However, the artillery of the sandbag fort was too small and the shooting angle of Weiyuan Fort was too large to pose a threat to the British ship.Branham and Melville anchored 360 meters and 540 meters southwest of Weiyuan Fort respectively, and bombarded Wushan Three Forts with heavy artillery fire.The Jingyuan and Zhenyuan Forts of the Qing army were unable to function due to the limitation of the shooting angle, and the horizontal fort was suppressed by the lower horizontal Daoying field artillery, and only the Weiyuan Fort fought back alone.After a long period of bombardment, the British ships basically destroyed the combat capabilities of the Weiyuan, Jingyuan and sandbag forts. 300 sailors took advantage of the momentum to land in small boats and attacked the forts.By 2:00 p.m., all the forts around Wushan fell, and Guan Tianpei and more than 20 soldiers were killed in battle (compare the Battle of Shajiao and Dajiao), and most of them fled in battle.The soldiers of the Qing army stationed on the mountain behind the fort did not take the initiative to attack, but were dispersed by the British army. While the Branham and other ships were moving, the Willis Leigh with 74 guns, the Dulu One with 44 guns, and 4 light warships were on the other side, attacking the horizontal west channel.The Wellesley and the Dulu 1 anchored in the middle of the West Channel, and fired at the Yongan and Fortified Forts on both sides of the strait at the same time with string guns on both sides, while the light ships Gallup, Samaran, Pioneer, and Brimstone Then cross the West Channel, anchor in the weakly defended northwest part of Shanghengdang Island, and bombard the island's forts and barracks.The Qing army on Shanghengdang Island had been bombarded by the British field artillery on Xiahengdang Island for several hours. At this time, under the attack of more than 200 artillery pieces from the 6 British ships, it was difficult to support them.By 1:00 p.m., the two forts of Yong'an and Jianjian were both defeated and stopped firing.The British ship Nemesis, which had already maneuvered to the south of Xiahengang Island to avoid artillery, took the opportunity to transport the army to land on the west end of Shanghengang Island.After occupying the Yong'an Fort, the British army developed an offensive to the east, and successively occupied the Qing army barracks in the middle of the island, the Hengdangshan Fort and the Hengdang Fort at the western end of the island.Since the Qing army had nowhere to escape, 250 people were killed in battle, more than 100 were injured, and more than 1,000 people became prisoners of the British army. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the sailors of the Wellesley landed at the fortified fort in ships and boats.The fort has been destroyed by the British army, and the defenders have already fled.After the British army occupied and consolidated the fort, they continued to attack the Qing army barracks in Houshan, dispersed the defenders, and burned the barracks. By 5 p.m., the fighting was all over. The British army adopted the tactics of avoiding the real and attacking the virtual in the front-line battle on the horizontal line. The main force was not placed on the east waterway, which was relatively well-defended by the Qing army, but made a breakthrough in the relatively weak defense of the west waterway; Most of the British ships turned to attack the northwest of Shanghengban Island, which was weaker in defense; the powerful Hengbanshan Fort and Hengjian Fort in the east of the island, like the Shajiao Fort, were attacked from behind by the British army; The British warships in the waterway did not go deep, and only focused their attack on the Weiyuan Fort, thus avoiding the powerful firepower of the Hengban, Zhenyuan, and Jingyuan Forts.Because of this, the British army suffered almost no losses in this war, and only 5 people were slightly injured! Guan Tianpei's tactics designed before the battle were originally to block the enemy ships' entry layer by layer, especially through the east waterway.Encountering this group of enemies who had no intention of crossing over but actually attacked directly, in fact, he had no tactics to speak of.Although he built sandbag forts and added defenses before the war, these temporary facilities were almost useless in actual combat. Here, it is also necessary to explain the undefended problem of the lower crossbar island that the British army felt strange. The lower crossbar island is located to the south of the upper crossbar island. From the perspective of modern tactical principles, it is a key to attack the upper crossbar island.However, Guan Tianpei's original purpose was to block it layer by layer. From the perspective of geographical situation, it is not as good as Shanghengdang Island, and can be more closely integrated with Wushan and Luwan. Lower rung island.And before the start of the war, he still did not deploy defenses on Xiahengban Island because he still did not understand the Western tactics of seizing the commanding heights and using field artillery, even though the British army had already used these tactics in the Battle of Shajiao.From the details of the lower crossbar island, we can see the gap between Chinese and Western tactical thinking at that time. Guan Tianpei died heroically.People praised him for his loyalty to the country.When his remains were taken away by his servants, the British ship also fired a salute to show respect for the martyrs.He has no chance to sum up his experience and lessons, and later generations just praise him blindly to inspire people to follow him and die for the country without hesitation.For a soldier who died heroically, any criticism does not belong to the category of right and wrong, but rises to the level of morality, and accusing him is synonymous with immorality.However, when we leave this value orientation, we will find in the next few chapters that Guan Tianpei's mistakes were still repeated by people at that time. I don't know whether Guan Tianpei's spirit in heaven would like people to praise his bravery, or would he like people to criticize his mistakes so as not to make mistakes again and again? From the above boring military academic review, it is not difficult to draw a conclusion: the defeat of Humen has nothing to do with Qishan being in charge, and changing the presidency of any one of the Qing Dynasty will not change the fate of defeat.This is because the reasons for the defeat are almost all military, which are determined by the strength of the military forces of both sides and the level of technical and tactical standards. However, Emperor Daoguang didn't see it that way.He did not witness the force of the British army with his own eyes, and he always felt that he was somewhat certain in military affairs.What he was worried about was not the weakness of the Qing army's force, but the cowardice of the commander Qi Shan, so he took Qi Shan's blunt remarks about the Qing army's defeat by the British army as symptoms of his cowardice, and ignored it. On January 30, he used Yishan to preside over the military affairs of Guangdong, which shows that he has not yet seen the reality clearly, and regards this as a matter of the coach's personal courage and ability. On February 20th, he received Yiliang's secret letter about Qishan's private promise to Hong Kong, and immediately ordered Qishan to be dismissed and sent to Beijing for trial. The nature of the problem seems to have been transformed into the moral quality of the coach.The summary of the military lessons of the Humen Battle was delayed. Qishan, who was struggling to survive in the gap between Yilu and Emperor Daoguang, was attacked by Yilu and Emperor Daoguang at the same time.He knew in his heart that he was just a servant of Emperor Daoguang, and his honor, disgrace and life were all in the hands of Emperor Daoguang, so he could only turn unequivocally to adapt to Emperor Daoguang's taste. On February 14, 1841, when he reported the casualties of the Qing army in the Battle of Shajiao and Dajiao, he used his previous extremely slanderous whitewashing technique, declaring that the officers and soldiers of the Qing army did not care about their own lives, "were fighting for four hours", "a total of Suppress and kill more than 600 barbarians and traitors" and so on.Just as Iribu was mentioned in the previous section, this kind of words not without the intention of welcoming the emperor even triggered the fury of Emperor Daoguang. Zhu commented: And Zhu criticized: