Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang are the two most important ** in the late Qing Dynasty, their relationship is complex and delicate, from the teacher-student relationship, the relationship between superiors and subordinates to the relationship between colleagues, and finally to Li Hongzhang's status and prestige even surpassing Zeng Guofan. How did this change in relationship come about?Li Hongzhang helped Zeng Guofan clean up the mess three times, which can be glimpsed.
Li Hongzhang was first and foremost a student of Zeng Guofan. His father, Li Wen'an, and Zeng Guofan were Jinshi in the same year, and they had a friendship of "the same year", so Li Hongzhang and Li Hanzhang both worshiped under Zeng Guofan's door successively. In 1845, Li Hongzhang went to Beijing to take the examination, and the result was Sun Shan, under the introduction of his father, Li Hongzhang visited Zeng Guofan as a son of the Nian family (the younger generation of those who were called young friends in the imperial examination era), and admired Zeng Guofan's moral knowledge very much. In the second year, Zeng Guofan suffered from lung disease and recuperated in Baoguo Temple in Beijing, and Li Hongzhang served him as a ** and officially became Zeng Guofan's **.
Later, during the Taiping Rebellion, Zeng Guofan conducted group training in his hometown Hunan, and Li Hongzhang also conducted group training in his hometown Anhui as a Hanlin at the beginning. Although the record is good, but because he is young and vigorous, and the limelight is too strong, Li Hongzhang has been repeatedly excluded and hated, and once wrote a poem and sighed: "I am a homeless goose, who can have a house and a stable house." In the end, Li Hongzhang, who was very unhappy, decided to defect to his teacher, so he became a staff member of Zeng Guofan in 1852.
Under the account of Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang was mainly engaged in the work of paperwork, copying and writing at first, and later writing manuscripts. Although Zeng Guofan recognized Li Hongzhang's talent very much, saying that he "Shaoquan's talent is the closest to that of the public, and the letters of consultation and approval are all great, and the achievements in the future are extraordinary, or they are out of the blue, it is not known." And how could Li Hongzhang, who has always been known to help the difficult times and clarify the ambition of the world, be willing to be only a staff member?He has always been eager to take the lead in battle. However, Zeng Guofan may have felt that Li Hongzhang was more adept at manipulating the sword and pen than in marching formation, so he rejected Li Hongzhang's initiative several times. Li Hongzhang also once had a disagreement with Zeng Guofan, and ran away when Zeng Guofan was trapped in Qimen, and wandered out for more than a year before returning to Zeng Guofan's door, which made Zeng have the impression of "hardship and hardship" with Li.
Li Hongzhang's opportunity finally came, and it came very suddenly. In 1860, after the Taiping army broke through the camp in the south of the Yangtze River, the spearhead turned to Shanghai, which was in danger. In panic, the gentry, landlords, and merchants of Shanghai organized a group to ask Zeng Guofan for help and brought a huge amount of money. However, Zeng Guofan had no plan to help Shanghai at this time, and his generals were all fighting fiercely, and no one could send them. After receiving a letter of urgency from Jiangsu, the Qing court asked Zeng Guofan's younger brother Zeng Guoquan to send troops to the rescue. Zeng Guofan also had this intention, after all, "brothers in war". But Zeng Guoquan, who besieged Tianjing, was very stubborn, and he was bent on capturing Tianjing and establishing the first merit, and he didn't go to other places. Zeng Guofan also sent a letter to Chen Shijie, the general of the Hunan army, but Chen Shijie was a dutiful son, and resigned on the grounds that the "mother elder" wanted to lead troops to defend his hometown.
There is no general in Shu, Liao Hua is the vanguard", in desperation, Zeng Guofan had no choice but to send Li Hongzhang out of the mountains to lead troops to aid Shanghai. Li Hongzhang finally waited for the opportunity, and soon recruited 7,000 Huaiyong soldiers when he returned to his hometown, and Zeng Guofan selected several battalions of soldiers as congratulatory gifts to Li Hongzhang. In March 1862, Li Hongzhang led his troops to rent a foreign ship in Anqing to transport troops, "through the thief road for more than 2,000 miles, arrived in Shanghai, and specially raised an army, which was for the Huai army." After the Huai army arrived in Shanghai, he was ridiculed as "called Huazi soldiers" because of his shabby clothes, but Li Hongzhang soon rose to prominence with his ability and the foreigners, foreign guns, and a lot of wealth in Shanghai. The Huai army won successive battles and became famous, and soon after it was tied with Zeng Guofan's Hunan army, Li Hongzhang was soon officially appointed by the imperial court as the governor of Jiangsu, and Zeng Guofan's position as governor of Liangjiang was only one step away, completing the transformation of the relationship between him and Zeng Guofan from teachers and students, staff to subordinates.
After Li Hongzhang took charge of Jiangsu, he basically pacified Jiangsu in Changshu, Kunshan, Suzhou and other places. Zeng Guoquan, who was besieging Tianjing, finally lived up to his wishes and led his army to capture Tianjing in June 1862. The fall of Tianjing and Suzhou marked the end of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, which had been vigorous for more than ten years, soon collapsed. With the decline of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the greatest enemy facing the Qing court turned to the Twist Army, which was causing trouble in the north. Many Taiping troops also defected to the Twist Army, and the Twist Army became more and more powerful, and the prince Monk Greenqin, who was responsible for exterminating the Twist Army, was defeated repeatedly, and finally was killed by the fifteen or sixteen-year-old Xiao Twist Tong in 1865. After the death of Seng Lingqin, the important task of exterminating the Twist army was none other than Zeng Guofan, and the imperial court soon issued an edict ordering "Zeng Guofan to go out of the provincial capital to suppress ......No minor delay is permitted". Zeng Guofan, who took the initiative to reduce the Hunan army, was "surprised and angry" and was very unhappy, and went to the recital five times in a row to state that he was physically and mentally exhausted, and asked for another commander to be sent to exterminate the Twist army. However, at present, the great enemy could not tolerate the maneuvering of Zeng Guofan, and the Qing court resolutely refused to allow the invitation.
In desperation, Zeng Guofan had no choice but to sigh and drag the sick body to the north. After taking office, Zeng Guofan adhered to the consistent style of "hardening the village and fighting a dumb battle", but because the Twist Army was good at cavalry erratic, he rarely attacked Zeng's camp and almost never captured the city, which made Zeng Guofan's magic weapon invalid. Later, Zeng Guofan decided to divide his troops to guard his own territory, and built a river defense to use the Grand Canal as a defense line to intercept the Twist army. Unexpectedly, the river defense he had painstakingly managed was easily torn apart by the Twist Army, and another Twist Army bypassed the various armies of Hebei and appeared on the Lugou Bridge under the city of Beijing. Zeng Guofan, who was exhausted, was depressed and discouraged, and had been repeatedly scolded by the imperial court for failing to do so, so he took leave from the imperial court on the grounds of illness, and asked the imperial court to send Li Hongzhang to preside over the military affairs of the East Road.
The Qing court also saw Zeng Guofan's inability or even inwillingness to fight, and soon issued an edict to exempt Zeng Guofan from the task of controlling the armies of the northern provinces, and appointed Li Hongzhang to be responsible for exterminating the East Road Twist Army and Zuo Zongtang to be responsible for the extermination of the West Road Twist Army. Although Li Hongzhang had previously ridiculed Zeng Guofan's river defense strategy, saying that "there was a great wall of 10,000 miles in ancient times, and now there is a long wall of 10,000 miles, but Qin Shi Huang met the prince and other people as a bosom friend after a thousand years", but after taking over, he basically followed the strategy set by Zeng Guofan. It's just that Li Hongzhang's ability to command troops to fight is indeed stronger than Zeng Guofan, and the main force responsible for exterminating the East Road Twist Army is the Huai Army he created, coupled with some luck factors such as the rebel generals of the Twist Army, Li Hongzhang finally wiped out the East Road Twist Army for more than a year, and the West Road Twist Army was quickly wiped out by Zuo Zongtang.
Longevity is humiliating", Zeng Guofan, who served as the governor of Zhili, would not have expected that Tianjin would be his Waterloo. In April and May 1870, there were a number of cases of missing and kidnapped children in Tianjin, and at this time, dozens of orphans in the church nursery fell ill and died. On June 20, 1870, a man named Wu Lanzhen was sent to the government because he was suspected of being involved in the disappearance and abduction of children, and his confession was implicated in the parishioners Wang San and Wanghailou Catholic Church. The next day, Liu Jie, the magistrate of Tianjin, took Wu Lanzhen to the church to confront him, and found that there was no Wang Sanqi in the church, nor did there be a tent fence provided by Wu Lanzhen. But at this time, the crowd was so angry that it didn't matter whether it was true or not, more than 1,000 people surrounded the church and threw bricks at each other with the church staff.
On the way to the church, Feng Daye, the French consul in Tianjin, met Liu Jie, the magistrate, and opened fire in anger, wounding Liu Qi, a distant nephew of the magistrate. The people of Tianjin were completely enraged, and first killed Feng Daye and his secretary Ximen, and then killed 18 foreigners and more than 30 Chinese Christians, including nuns, priests, French consulate personnel, French nationals, ** expatriates, etc., and also burned down the Wanghailou Catholic Church, the Church of Mercy, the French Consulate and four other ** churches in the local area.
So many French people were killed, of course, they would not give up, so on June 24, 1870, they sent ** to Tianjin, and united the ministers of the seven countries to the Prime Minister Yamen**, demanding that the Chinese related ** be executed, otherwise the war would start. The Qing court then sent Zeng Guofan, the governor of Zhili, to investigate and deal with the matter. After investigation, Zeng Guofan believed that there was no abduction and harm of children in the Nursery, and at the request of France, he decided to execute 20 of the first murderers, exile 25 people, dismiss Zhang Guangzao, the prefect of Tianjin, and Liu Jie, the prefect of Tianjin, and compensate the foreigners for the loss of 460,000 taels of silver, and then send a special envoy to France to apologize. This decision was bitterly scolded by the "patriotic youth" at that time. Zeng Guofan was pointed out by thousands of people, and almost the whole country wanted to kill him, and even the "fellow villagers of Beijing and Hunan" who had always been proud of him were also "especially cited as a great shame of the villagers." The plaque of the official of the Zeng State Domain was "destroyed" in the Beijing Hall, and his name was stripped away, that is, he was no longer recognized as a native of Hunan, and the gentry of the old family in Hunan smashed his house in anger. Zeng Guofan, who carried the black pot for the imperial court, was also angrily reprimanded by Xi, "Zeng Guofan took the lead to fake him, but he really didn't know what to do." If you use excuses to avoid it, the law of the country is there, how can you be forgiven!Eventually, in August, the imperial court ordered Zeng Guofan to be transferred back to the post of governor of Liangjiang, and Li Hongzhang took over as the governor of Zhili, continuing to deal with the "Tianjin Teaching Case".
Li Hongzhang, who took over the lesson plan, originally wanted to change the handling decision, and did not have to "take one life for another." But after handling the case, he soon found that this road was not working, and he had to follow Zeng Guofan's plan, and in the end, it was just because 4 of the foreigners were **, and **as long as the high economic compensation was not resisted, Li Hongzhang just changed the original sentence of 20 people to 16 death sentences and 4 people were suspended, and the rest remained unchanged. At this time, because the Qing court was anxious to end the matter, ** had also vented, Li Hongzhang's decision was quickly passed and implemented, and did not cause much opposition. "The merit of killing thieves is high, and the rest of the battle is truly blessed;He Rong is a big sin, and dying three years early is a perfect person. After the Tianjin lesson plan, there was a couplet so sarcastic about Zeng Guofan. Indeed, the unlucky Zeng Guofan was ruined because of this incident, and suddenly changed from a famous Zhongxing minister admired by thousands of people to a "**thief" referred to by Qianfu. And because of this incident, he annoyed Cixi, lost his trust, and suffered the torment of "being ashamed of the outside world, guilty of the gods, forbearance and remorse, and the iron of the six states cannot cast this mistake". Two months later, when he was governor of Liangjiang, it was reported that another anti-church crowd had knocked on the door of the office, and Zeng Guofan collapsed to the ground in fright. From then on, Zeng Guofan was physically and mentally broken, depressed, and passed away two years later.
In contrast, Li Hongzhang was much luckier, his decision to handle the case was actually similar to Zeng Guofan's, but he was not attacked, which can only make people sigh that he was lucky. At this time, Li Hongzhang had replaced Zeng Guofan as the first Hanchen, and since then, he has been in full swing, and even covered the sky with one hand and was powerful for more than 20 years. But the strange thing is that in the end, Li Hongzhang was also saddled with the infamy of "losing power and humiliating the country" and "* thief", and it was much more serious than Zeng Guofan's scolding, and he was forced to sign by the ** minister before his death on November 7, 1901. From sending troops to Shanghai for Zeng Guofan, receiving Zeng Guofan's extermination of the Twist Army, and handling teaching plans on behalf of Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang's status gradually rose from the rising sun to the red sun and then to the sky, and the relationship between him and Zeng Guofan gradually changed from a teacher, a student, and a staff member to a subordinate and a colleague, and finally his status and prestige surpassed Zeng Guofan. Among them, there are Li Hongzhang's ability factors, and there are also many fate factors. Life is made by oneself, and fortune is determined by heaven.