Chapter 21 Chapter 20 Boxer Rebellion

Since the Opium War, due to the corruption and incompetence of the Qing government, it tolerated and retreated again and again against the aggression of foreign powers. Treaties of humiliation and humiliation were continuously signed under the threat of the gunboats of the powers. With a heavy burden on their backs, their lives fell into dire straits, and the conflicts between Chinese and foreign nationalities became more and more acute. Finally, the Boxer Movement broke out to destroy foreign countries and rejuvenate the country. The Boxer Organization was first formed on the basis of the White Lotus Sect.After the failure of the White Lotus Sect uprising during the Jiaqing period, the various branches of the White Lotus Sect continued to spread secretly for decades.In Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi and other provinces, there are secret associations of Bagua, Jingyang, and Ronghua, all of which belong to the White Lotus system, of which Bagua is the most widely spread.According to the official regulations of the Qing Dynasty, anyone who spreads the Eight Diagrams will not only be punished and banned, but the leader will be sentenced to death.Under this kind of high-pressure policy, the gossip believers use traditional boxing techniques to hide themselves.

During the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1899-1895, in some areas of Shandong Province, there were activities organized by Boxer Boxing.The Daohui, which was active in Lunan for several years after the war, was also related to the Yihequan organization.This kind of organization has had names such as "Boxing Club", "Red Boxing Club" and "Yihe Boxing Club".Most of the participants in Boxing are farmers and handicraftsmen. They usually do their own productive work at home, and practice martial arts together after work.To join the boxing organization, one needs to perform a ritual: when practicing boxing, one must first kneel on the ground and kowtow to the master, face south and swear, and chanting incantations.The master told his apprentices that as long as they continue to practice in this way, they will develop a "magic boxing", which can avoid the shooting of guns and cannons, making them invulnerable and invincible.This kind of fantasies and superstitions caused by the barbarism of Western artillery had a great appeal to the ignorant people at that time, and people joined the ranks of Boxing one after another.In Shandong, due to the German army’s invasion of Jiaozhou Bay, the German church intensified its exploitation, and the church’s power continued to expand. It ran rampant in the countryside, exploiting the common people, and finally aroused a large-scale peasant anti-imperialist patriotic movement.

In October 1898, the Yihe Fist in Guan County, Shandong raised the banner of righteousness, which opened the prelude to the Boxer Movement.At the junction of Liyuantun in Guanxian County and Jingjinwei County, the Catholics here, under the instigation of French missionaries, competed with the villagers for the foundation of the Jade Emperor Temple for a long time. In the spring of 1897, the church was rebuilt on the old temple foundation. Wow, the crowd resisted."Villagers Yan Shuqin, Gao Yuanxiang, etc., nicknamed "Eighteen Kui", led the crowd to expel the Christians, demolish the church, and rebuild the Yuhuang Temple.They also invited Zhao Sanduo, the famous plum blossom palm leader in Wei County, to come to protect the temple. Zhao Sanduo led the boxers to set up a factory in Liyuan Tunliang Boxing.The missionaries threatened the Qing government to suppress the boxers. Zhang Rumei, the governor of Shandong, sent troops to suppress them, and at the same time suggested that the Qing government "list the boxers in the township regiments, let them defend themselves and help each other."Therefore, in October 1898, Zhao Sanduo and others led an uprising in Jiangjiazhuang, Guanxian County, and erected the banner of "helping the Qing to destroy the foreign", and renamed it the Boxer, and led the crowd to attack the Hongtaoyuan Church. The army fought many times, and the team grew to more than a thousand people.Subsequently, the uprising army was divided into two groups, one led by Yan Shuqin, and continued to attack the church forces in the border area of ​​Shandong;

When the Liyuantun Boxer Rebellion rebelled, Boxers in Changqing, Gaotang, Yucheng and other prefectures and counties in Northwest Shandong also actively fought against foreign religions under the leadership of Zhu Hongdeng and others. In the autumn of 1899, Li Jinbang, a villager from Lizhuang, a carpenter in Pingyuan County, oppressed Li Changshui, the leader of the boxers, and colluded with Jiang Kai, the county magistrate of Pingyuan, to arrest six boxers on the charge of "provoking" and offending foreigners. Zhu Hongdeng led a team from Eping to rescue them.In October, Zhu Hongdeng led the boxers to repel Jiang Kai's attack, and then defeated the Qing army who came to suppress them at Senluo Temple in Pingyuan County, and their reputation was greatly shaken.The Shandong Boxer Movement rose rapidly.

The Boxers became a prairie fire with a single spark, which aroused great panic from the Qing government. They declared the Boxers as "evil religion" many times and strictly prohibited them.The "main suppression faction" represented by Yuan Shikai and others sent troops to suppress and encircle and suppress it many times.In this environment, famous generals such as Zhu Hongdeng led the Boxers to block the east and west without fear. On the one hand, they resisted the Qing army's continuous suppression and killing, and on the other hand, they beat the Western church forces hard to remove the heavy pressure from the people.They demolished stations and railways in Gaobeidian, Zhuozhou, Liulihe, Changxindian, Fengtai and other places, which greatly alarmed the Western embassies.

During the uprising process, the Boxers put forward views that reflected the interests of ordinary people, and because they were well commanded and orderly, and never harassed the local residents, the poor people supported and supported the struggle of the Boxers.The movement developed extremely rapidly. In just a few months, tens of thousands of large-scale peasant uprisings formed in various places.At the same time, the Boxer Regiment's slogan of "assisting the Qing Dynasty and destroying foreigners" won the support of some patriotic officials, gentry, and patriotic soldiers of the Qing army, which made the movement unprecedentedly high.Cixi and others were also afraid that blindly "suppressing the office" would "radicalize the revolution", so they adopted the method of "appeasing" to acquiesce in the existence of this organization, attempting to use and incorporate this armed force.The Boxer Group invisibly gained legal status in the struggle, and soon developed rapidly near Beijing and Tianjin.

With the massive development of Boxer Regiments in counties near Beijing, groups of 30 to 50 members from other counties poured into the capital one after another.The Boxers were guarding and monitoring all the yamen and residences of princes and princes in the Qing government, and set up sentries at important intersections, inner and outer city gates, and almost all soldiers from the Manchu and Han battalions, such as Shenji Battalion and Wuwei Houjun, etc. The Boxer Regiment.Boxer posters were everywhere in the capital: "Give me back my country, give me back my rights, the swords and fires and seas dare to drill, even if the emperor obeys, he will never stop killing foreigners." At this time, the power of the prime minister's office plummeted. The Boxers were directly controlled, but the Boxers had a growing political influence in Beijing.

The Boxer Movement made the western powers panic, and the powers began to lead the invading army to attack Beijing. The British navy admiral Seymour first led the invading army with more than 1,800 people from Tianjin to attack Beijing by car, but was intercepted by the Boxers along the way, and fled back to Tianjin in embarrassment. . At this time, the Qing government was deeply in a dilemma in the face of the armed invasion of Western powers and the increasing rise of the Boxer Rebellion.The result of the severe crackdown on the Boxers for several months was "no pawns", and the foreign invaders, who were terrified by the movement of the rebel army in Beijing, attempted to prevent the development of the movement by massacres.The crime of massacring hundreds of innocent people by the guards of the embassy aroused the great anger of the people in Beijing, and was also met with a heroic counterattack by the Boxers.The Xishiku Church was besieged by the Boxers for 63 days under the protection of foreign troops and church armed forces.At the same time, they also attacked the embassies of various countries and taught the Western powers a severe lesson. The secretary of the Japanese embassy Sugi Bin and the German minister to China Klind were killed.

Faced with such a huge momentum of the Boxers, Cixi dispatched the Second Battalion to protect the Summer Palace, and at the same time appointed Zai Xun as the minister in charge of the Boxers, officially recognizing the legal status of the Boxers.Cixi issued an order to declare war on the outside world, sent the Qing army to cooperate with the boxers to attack the embassy, ​​and continuously transferred the Beijing boxers to Tongzhou, Tianjin and other places to resist foreign aggression. On June 10, 1900, more than 20,000 Allied Forces of the Eight Nations, led by Vice Admiral Seymour of the British Navy, attacked Beijing in batches from Tianjin by five trains.The Boxers blocked the railway by destroying the railway, so the invading army had to advance while repairing the road. The entire train journey from Tianjin to Beijing was only three or four hours away. As a result, it took the invading army more than 80 hours to reach Langfang Station, which is still half the distance from Beijing. In July 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces captured Tianjin.At the beginning of August, the commanders-in-chief of the invading armies of various countries held a meeting to discuss attacking Beijing.On August 4, about 20,000 invading troops set out from Tianjin. The invading armies of the United States, Britain, and Japan marched along the west bank of the canal, and the invading armies of Russia, Germany, France, Austria, and Italy marched towards Beijing along the east bank.

At that time, there were still tens of thousands of Qing troops between Beijing and Tianjin, but Cixi did not want to resist and began to beg for surrender from the invaders.While urging Li Hongzhang to go north to negotiate peace with the foreign powers, she ordered people to notify the commanders of various countries, begging for an armistice.With the advance of the invading army, the Qing army fled, only a few troops resisted, and the Boxer soldiers along the Beijing-Tianjin line fought tenaciously.Wherever the invading army went, there were Boxers blocking it. On August 5th, the Eight-Power Allied Forces arrived at Beicang, which is only ten kilometers away from Tianjin.Stationed in Beicang was the Qing Wuwei Right Army led by Ma Yukun who had withdrawn from Tianjin, and the rest of Nie Shicheng's former Wuwei Army guarded Han's villa on the west bank of the canal.After the invading army arrived in Beicang, they encountered Ma Yukun's troops.Thousands of people from the Boxer Regiment brigade immediately rushed from nearby places to join the Qing army and stop the invaders.In the early morning of the 5th, the invading army launched an attack on Beicang. The Boxers and the Wuwei Youjun dug trenches on both sides of the canal, fought tenaciously, and launched a bloody battle with the enemy.Boxers also dug canals and released water to deter the enemy.When the two sides fought fiercely, the Eight-Power Allied Forces turned to attack Hanjiashu when they saw that they could not take down Beicang. There were few Qing troops guarding there. In the Cang position, the Boxers and the Qing army were flanked by the enemy. Ma Yukun's army retreated in the melee. A large number of Boxer soldiers died heroically, and Beicang fell.The Beicang blockade was the most tenacious resistance encountered by the Eight-Power Allied Forces on their way to attack Beijing. The Boxers and some officers and soldiers of the Qing Army fought bravely and wiped out more than 1,300 invading troops.

Afterwards, the Eight-Power Allied Forces drove straight in and approached the city of Beijing. The Qing troops led by Ma Yukun and others could not resist the attack of the foreign soldiers and withdrew into the city.The foreign soldiers were stationed outside the city and fired artillery into the city. Stray bullets flew everywhere. Many houses were destroyed and countless civilians were killed or injured. In the early morning of August 14, 1900, Empress Dowager Cixi fled Beijing with hundreds of people including Guangxu, and Beijing was captured by the Eight-Power Allied Forces.Then the Qing army began to suppress and kill the soldiers of the Boxer Regiment. Under the joint suppression of the Eight-Power Allied Forces and the Qing soldiers, the Boxer Movement was soon suppressed.Finally, the Qing government signed another traitorous treaty with the Eight-Power Allied Forces—the "Xin Chou Treaty". The Boxer Rebellion was a mass struggle against Western powers, and it demonstrated the indomitable fighting spirit of the Chinese people.One of its important flaws is that there is no unified organizational leadership, and it is basically a battle of dozens to thousands of people, which undoubtedly affects its development and success.Regarding its failure, it is very pertinent to use a passage in the telegram of the Russian Army Lieutenant General Surotekov to the Minister of War at that time. He said: "China has now shown what a huge contribution it can provide to the ethnic struggle." Troops, money and energy, all that is lacking is organization and organizers." This is a profound lesson.