How effective are the peasant soldiers in the Battle of Gaolou Village? Much higher than the grassland soldiers of the Qing government
The Battle of Gaolouzhai was a famous battle in which the Nian army annihilated the Senggelingqin tribe in Gaolouzhai (today's Gaozhuangji), Heze, Shandong, in April of the fourth year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1865). .
The Qing government troops were commanded by Seng Gelinqin. Seng Gelinqin: The 26th grandson of Habtu Hasar, the second brother of Genghis Khan, the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, the 10th generation Zasak of Horqin Left Wing Rear Banner, the king of Zasak Dororo of Horqin Left Rear Banner, Borzigit surname, a famous general in the late Qing Dynasty, was a native of Horqin Zuohou Banner (now part of Shuangsheng Town, Kezuohou Banner, Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region). He was the adoptive son of Emperor Daoguang's sister. In the fifth year of Daoguang (1825), he succeeded to the throne of Horqin County and served successively as imperial minister, governor and other posts.
Seng Gelinqin received systematic military education from an early age and grew up in the army. He was a senior professional officer and was highly regarded by the Qing government at that time. In charge is the main Mongolian Eight Banners. In May 1858, he was the most effective among the Qing government troops in the battle against the British and French forces in the Second Opium War.
The commander-in-chief of the Nian Army was Zhang Zongyu, a farmer in Zhangdazhuang, north of Zhiheji in Woyang, Anhui. Zhang Zongyu became a monk halfway and participated in the Nian Army Uprising in 1852. He followed the leader of the Nian Army Zhang Lexing as a master and was responsible for literature and calligraphy. , followed Zhang Lexing to fight in Huaibei and Huainan. After years of combat practice, he has grown into a leader with excellent military qualities.
Seng Gelinqin was born in 1811 and was 54 years old in 1865. Zhang Zongyu's birth and death dates are yet to be determined. Based on unscientific speculation based on limited information, Zhang Zongyu should have been under 20 years old when he participated in the uprising in 1852, and under 33 years old in 1865.
The participating troops, Qing government troops: 6,000 cavalry and 24,000 infantry. Nian Army: Lai Wenguang and Qiu Yuancai's Taiping Army had 2,000 to 3,000 people, and Zhang Zongyu and Ren Huabang's Nian Army had 2,000 to 3,000 people. There is not much information on weapons, but this is what I found online: the Qing army had rifles, spears, sabers, bows and arrows, and they should have had cannons.
The Nian Army was the same generation as the Taiping Army, and its equipment was lagging behind that of the Taiping Army. In the late Taiping Rebellion, Li Xiucheng’s troops in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were equipped with a large number of foreign guns and cannons. The Nian Army still mainly used cold weapons, mostly using swords and spears. The spears were eight to eight feet long, and the cavalry also used long swords. Later, there were also updated foreign guns, but they were not in large numbers and were not widely used.
The result of the battle: The Nian army annihilated more than 7,000 people under Seng Gelinqin and captured more than 5,000 horses. Someone witnessed it and recorded: "The Nianzi horse team galloped continuously for a full twenty miles." "After the battle, the Qing government was panicked and urgently transferred Zeng Guofan as the imperial envoy and ordered him to lead the Hunan and Huai army north to attack Nien. This battle is of great significance in the history of East Asian wars: it marks that the East Asian steppe cavalry that has been galloping across the Eurasian continent since the Song Dynasty has been eliminated by the times.
This battle played an important role in the collapse of the Qing government: from then on, the ruling group of the Qing government no longer trusted the combat effectiveness of the Manchu and Mongolian soldiers. After this battle, local regiments and peasant armed forces no longer looked at the Manchu and Mongolian troops in the Qing government. The Mongolian soldiers had no effective combat effectiveness, and the central government of the Qing government no longer had the ability to check and balance the local Han regiments and armed forces, and could only rely on limited financial and political means to check and balance the local Han regiments and armed forces.
When looking up the age of Zhang Zongyu, I saw the age information of military greats in the late Qing Dynasty. Zeng Guofan: born in 1811, Zuo Zongtang: born in 1812, Li Hongzhang: born in 1823, Li Xiucheng born in 1823 , Shi Dakai: born in 1831, Zhang Zongyu: speculated to be born in 1831, Chen Yucheng was born in 1837.
These military geniuses in modern Chinese history and the leaders of the Nian Army in the mortuary obviously have an age advantage. If the Qing government could recruit these outstanding professional officers at that time, there would be no one available by the time of the Sino-Japanese War of 1884-1894.
The defeat will not be so miserable! Not to mention that it can serve as one of the balancing forces of the Hunan-Huai Army. The civil war discovered how many outstanding military leaders our nation had! However, they were wasted in the civil war, and it is a pity that what remained were only a group of sub-level leaders. Nian Army Jiang Guiti (born in 1843, later joined Seng Gelinqin, performed well in the Sino-Japanese War of 1888-1894, and entered Beijing to command the Imperial Guard in 1900.
On December 15, 1912, he was awarded the title of Army General. Specially awarded General Zhaowu on June 30, 1914). Dong Fuxiang (born in 1840) surrendered to Zuo Zongtang in northern Shaanxi in 1864 and fought bravely in the battle in 1900. After the war, during the peace negotiations between the Qing government and the Eight-Power Allied Forces, the foreign invaders demanded Dong Fuxiang be executed, but the Qing government refused and was dismissed. He was imprisoned at home and died of illness in Jinjibao, Gansu Province (now Wuzhong, Ningxia) in 1908.