The rise of the Hunan army was inseparable from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement.
In the summer of the thirtieth year of Daoguang (1850), Hong Xiuquan rebelled in Jintian Village, Guangxi, and then named the country Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and proclaimed himself the king of heaven. In the beginning, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had only about 20,000 people, and its members were basically oppressed peasants. Hong Xiuquan took this team that was similar to a rogue, running while fighting, and never fell in love with war. It was not until after conquering Yuezhou, Hunan (now Yueyang City) that he obtained the armory left by Wu Sangui, and his strength increased greatly.
In 1853, the total strength of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom reached its peak, with an army of about 600,000 men. Conquer Nanjing in one fell swoop.
At that time, the basic plate of the Qing Dynasty was in the north, and since Hong Xiuquan had such a large number of troops, he wanted to rely on the Yangtze River to rule the Qing Dynasty by crossing the river, and then Xu Tu Central Plains.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom thus shifted from a war of movement to a war of position.
Hong Xiuquan only had 20,000 troops when he first started the army, but the Qing **, who had 800,000 troops, was helpless against it. At this time, more than 200 years have passed since the founding of the Qing Dynasty (1636), and the Eight Banners Army, which was the arm of the Qing Dynasty, was deeply angry, and the officers and soldiers lacked training and did not dare to work hard, and it was completely corrupted and unusable. As early as the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods, where there were swords, the main force must be the Han green battalion. However, the center of the Qing Dynasty did not have a high degree of trust in the green camp, and was always worried that the green camp would form a big tail, so it fell into a strange circle of "use but not belief". Over time, the Green Battalion Army also complained, and its spirit was gone.
But no matter what, at this time, the control of the Eight Banners and the Green Battalion is still firmly in the hands of the **, it is the country's army, not someone's private arm. Before the advent of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, no feudal official dared to support his own troops. If you don't master the armed forces, you naturally don't have the confidence to argue with the imperial court.
Thanks to the untouched cornerstone of "military power", although the Qing Empire faced many problems, it was dying, rotten and immortal for many years.
Who would have thought that Zeng Guofan, who set an example for later generations with his loyalty and high morality, would become the first person to pry the cornerstone of the Qing Dynasty.
The officers and soldiers of the Eight Banners and the Green Battalion of the Qing Dynasty were rotten, and the cats did not catch mice, resulting in bandits running rampant in society. In order to protect one's property and life from bandits, group training was popular all over the country at that time. The regimental training was to arm the peasants to resist the attacks of the bandits. In times of chaos, they are soldiers, and in times of peace, they are farmers. The regimental training was originally loosely organized and had low combat effectiveness, which was not suitable for participating in wars in the regular sense.
However, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom developed too rapidly, and the performance of the officers and soldiers was too stretched. In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), the emperor ordered Zeng Guofan, a waiter in the Ministry of Rites in his hometown of Xiangxiang, Hunan, to assist Zhang Liangji, the governor of Hunan, in organizing a regimental exercise to resist the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
Zeng Guofan took over the local regimental training force in Xiangxiang, relying on etiquette and religion, and paid close attention to ideological construction. Because the soldiers were all Hunan natives, everyone especially helped each other. Zeng Guofan's salary to the Hunan army was twice as high as that of the green battalion, and he purchased a large number of advanced firearms and equipment troops.
Because of the above reasons, the combat effectiveness of the Hunan army was particularly strong, and it became a sharp weapon for the Qing Dynasty to deal with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
When the Hunan army was first formed, there were only about 17,000 people, and it expanded while fighting, reaching more than 200,000 at its peak.
If this is the case, the appearance of the Hunan army will only benefit the Qing ** and will not do any harm. But this is far from the truth.
At the beginning of its establishment, the Hunan Army abandoned the world military system that the Qing Dynasty had always pursued, and adopted the conscription system. The conscription system is that individuals recruit troops, the commander selects the commander, the commander selects the battalion officer, the battalion officer selects the sentry chief, the sentry commander selects the chief, and the commander selects the soldiers.
This method of recruiting subordinates on their own will inevitably lead to the phenomenon that most of the soldiers in the same battalion are fellow villagers, relatives, and mentors, and it is easy to form a group. The linear management mode in which the subordinates are recruited by the superiors determines that the subordinates are more obedient and responsible for the superiors. The Hunan army's food and salary were also self-raised, so the independence of the entire army was extremely strong.
This created a situation in which the whole army was only controlled by the commander-in-chief Zeng Guofan. The soldiers only knew their commanders, but did not know the imperial court, and the Hunan army actually became the private army of Zeng Guofan.
The failure of the imperial court forced ** to pinch his nose and beg Zeng Guofan to come out to do things, at this time, the imperial court really couldn't live without Zeng Guofan.
Since the Hunan army belonged to the nature of a private army, the food and salary must be raised by Zeng Guofan personally, which shook another national capital of the Qing Dynasty - financial power. In the past, no matter how big the official, he had neither private armed nor independent financial power. But now, the emergence of private armies corresponds to the transfer of financial power to the owners of private armies. Otherwise, who can afford to raise an army of more than 200,000 people?
Although the Hunan army was disbanded by the Zeng Guofan, who bravely retreated from the torrent after the suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Huai Army, and later the Beiyang Army and other private armed forces appeared one by one. The roots of the later warlord melee are more or less related to the Hunan army, the originator of the Qing Dynasty's private army.
Private armies were popular, and the military power of the imperial court gradually changed from the control of the military department to the control of the governor. The governors and governors with heavy armies became the feudal officials in the true sense of the word. In the last years of Guangxu, the Qing court even relied on the superintendent for the transfer of a soldier and a pawn.
The establishment of the Hunan army gave a head to the private armed forces, and then forced the delegation of financial power to the governors. After losing the two cornerstones of the founding of the country, military power and financial power, the Qing Dynasty will inevitably lose the right to personnel next.
An empire that can't even issue official hats is destined to perish in the vast twilight.