In 1894, the Donghak uprising broke out in Korea, but the Koreans** were unable to suppress the uprising, and they had to ask the suzerain, Daeqing, for help.
At this time, although the Qing Dynasty itself had crossed the river, it still had to have the posture that it should have as a suzerain, so it hurriedly sent troops to North Korea.
But what surprised both the Qing Dynasty and Korea was that Japan, which had already taken the opportunity to send troops to Korea, intended to provoke a war with the Qing Dynasty.
After the Meiji Restoration, Japan moved to the capitalist road, and due to its lack of resources, it actively sought aggression and expansion abroad, and the ultimate goal of their aggression was China.
On the other hand, the Qing Dynasty at that time was just a backward empire that had returned to the light through the Westernization Movement, and naturally it was not an opponent of Japan, and the civil strife in Korea just gave Japan an excuse to send troops.
After Japan sent troops to Korea, it immediately went to war with the Qing army, and the Battle of Toshima broke out with the Qing **, which marked the official outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan.
Because Japan had been planning for a long time, the Qing Dynasty rushed to the war, and the war ended in the defeat of China, and the Beiyang Naval Division, which was finally armed by the Qing Dynasty, was also wiped out in this battle.
The war changed the situation in Asia and brought about a serious national crisis for the Chinese nation, while Japan became even more powerful with huge war reparations, laying the foundation for even more frenzied aggression in the future.
In the First Sino-Japanese War, there was a very respectable figure, his name was Ding Ruchang, in the Battle of Weihaiwei, he commanded the Beiyang Fleet to persist in resisting the siege of the Japanese Navy.
The Japanese Navy also wrote a "letter of persuasion" to Ding Ruchang, the contents of which are still food for thought.
In the sixteenth year of Daoguang, Ding Ruchang was born in Lujiang Stone Town, Anhui Province, and during the Xianfeng period, the family moved to Gaolin Town, Chaohu City, Anhui Province.
Ding Ruchang studied in a private school for three years, and then had to drop out of school at home, in order to subsidize the family, he herded cattle for people, and also helped people drive ducks.
When he was fourteen or fifteen years old, he was sent by his father to an apprentice at the home of an uncle of the same clan, thinking that he would learn the skill of grinding tofu and gain a foothold in society in the future.
It's just that the heavens did not fulfill people's wishes, and there was a very serious famine in the local area, Ding Ruchang's parents died of illness one after another, and his uncle's tofu shop was also unsustainable, so Ding Ruchang could only struggle to survive.
In the third year of Xianfeng, the Taiping army occupied Lujiang, and Ding Ruchang was conscripted into the army and became an ordinary Taiping army under Cheng Xueqi, and was arranged to be stationed in Anqing.
In a blink of an eye, after 8 years, the Hunan army besieged Anqing, and in a hurry, Cheng Xueqi took Ding Ruchang and others out of the city to surrender to the Hunan army in the middle of the night.
Zeng Guoquan, the general of the Hunan army, did not trust Cheng Xueqi, and in the subsequent battle against Anqing, he always let him take Ding Ruchang and others to charge into battle, and after breaking Anqing, Cheng Xueqi was rewarded with Hualing for his merits, and Ding Ruchang was also promoted to the general manager of Qian.
Later, when the war in Shanghai became urgent, Zeng Guofan ordered Li Hongzhang to form the Huai Army, and Ding Ruchang was transferred to Li Hongzhang's command.
In the first year of Tongzhi, Ding Ruchang followed Li Hongzhang to Shanghai, and cooperated with Liu Mingchuan and the Taiping army in a fierce battle at the mouth of the four rivers.
In the subsequent battle with the Taiping Army, Ding Ruchang was promoted to the chief soldier for his merits, and was also awarded the Xieyong Baturu Yong by the Qing court.
In the thirteenth year of Tongzhi, the Qing ** decided to disarm, Liu Mingchuan thought about taking Ding Ruchang to the knife, Ding Ruchang wrote **, Liu Mingchuan saw that he didn't know the current affairs, so he thought about getting rid of it quickly, Ding Ruchang saw that the situation was not good, and immediately ran back to his hometown to avoid trouble.
A few years later, Li Hongzhang had been promoted to the governor of Zhili and the minister of Beiyang trade, and Ding Ruchang went to take refuge, Li Hongzhang had always admired him, so he reactivated Ding Ruchang at the moment of organizing the navy.
It's just that Ding Ruchang is not a senior talent in the navy, and all this laid the groundwork for the subsequent demise of the Beiyang Navy.
In the thirteenth year of Guangxu, the Qing ** ordered the governors to look for admirals, at this time Ding Ruchang, who was already quite famous in the navy, was once again protected by Li Hongzhang, after the Beiyang Navy was formally established, the naval yamen according to Li Hongzhang's nomination, Ding Ruchang was appointed as the admiral of the navy.
Ding Ruchang worked hard during his tenure, but he was too much to look at Li Hongzhang, and the Beiyang Navy became Li Jiajun under his leadership.
After the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, Ding Ruchang led the fleet to bravely block the Japanese army, but the fleet's equipment was too old and was not the opponent of the Japanese army at all.
WhileAs the commander, Ding Ruchang also made many mistakes in this battle, not only did he not explicitly determine his own ** person and ** flagship, but also did not take any remedial measures in the engagement, so that he did not play his command function on the battlefield, and the whole team was in a passive situation where the dragons had no leader to respond to the battle.
In the end, Ding Ruchang led the fleet into the encirclement of the Japanese army, and at this time, the commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Ito Sukehiro, delivered a letter of surrender to Ding Ruchang.
The destruction of the Beiyang Navy was a foregone conclusion, but Ding Ruchang, who received the letter of persuasion, was unmoved, and the content of the letter of surrender was as follows:
After reading the letter of persuasion, Ding Ruchang decided to fight to the death, and entrusted his last words to his family:
I am a country.
After that, in order to show his will, he also ordered someone to hand over the letter of persuasion to Li Hongzhang, Li Hongzhang was full of emotion after reading it, he already understood that Ding Ruchang had made up his mind to die.
Under the fierce attack of the Japanese Navy, Ding Ruchang's Dingyuan ship suffered heavy damage, and he had to transfer to the Zhenyuan ship to command, after damaging two Japanese **, the Zhenyuan ship was also sunk, Ding Ruchang planned to sink with the ship, but was saved by his subordinates at the risk of death.
In the successive persuasions of the Japanese army, Ding Ruchang only wanted to be loyal to the country with a generous death, and on the third day after he was rescued, he committed suicide by taking opium to thank the countrymen.
With the death of Ding Ruchang, the Beiyang Navy was also wiped out, becoming a lingering cloud in the history of the Qing Dynasty.
When we go back and take a closer look at the letter of persuasion written by Japan to Ding Ruchang, it is still thought-provoking.
This letter starts from China's imperial examination system, combined with Japan's own history, talks about the importance of reform, and analyzes the inevitability of the decline of the Qing Dynasty layer by layer.
The building will fall, and it is not ...... that can be supported by a single tree
Ding Ruchang naturally understood that Japan's letter of persuasion was indeed true at that time, but this did not change his belief in being loyal to the country, because at any time, there were always some people who knew that they could not do it.
They did not hesitate to pay tribute to their faith with their lives, and the Chinese nation has also been alive and well because of the existence of these people.
Today, although we have lived a good life, the humiliation of the past cannot be forgotten, and those sad pasts are the best medicine to inspire us to move forward.
References: "Qing Historical Manuscript", etc.