<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > "retired" veteran inadvertently won the most rare foreign war in the last years of the Qing Dynasty</h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" feng zicai, who > "retired", why was the French army forced to stop the war, and how to lose undefeated? </h1>
In China's modern history, there have been endless incidents of losing teachers and humiliating the country, but in 1885, Feng Zicai and others in the War of Resistance against Vietnam in Zhennanguan (now Friendship Pass) to Lang Shan in Vietnam achieved brilliant results and made great achievements in the war of resistance against France. At that time, Feng Zicai was nearly seventy years old, "retired" at home, there was not a single veteran around, and most of the old departments were scattered. He lived in Baishuitang Village, six miles outside Qinzhou, often wearing short shirts and straw shoes, and working in the fields with his family. No one who did not know him could have imagined that such a simple "old farmer" was a veteran who had been in the battlefield for a long time. The veteran is in the countryside, still worried about the safety of the country. He led his sons and nephews to work hard, not forgetting to learn martial arts and maintaining the true character of a soldier. After 1883, when he saw the French invasion, the whole country was panicked, and his mood was very unstable. He once wrote to Zhang Zhidong, the new governor of Liangguang, saying: Instead of being beaten passively, it is better to preemptively attack. He demanded that the Qing government give him fifteen thousand troops and let him enter the third battlefield in northeastern Vietnam from Chin State to contain the invading army. However, the Qing government only gave him a false name of "supervising the regimental training of the four provinces of Gao, Lian, Lei, and Qiong", and did not give him either grain or weapons, and the local officials and gentry also violated the yin and yang, making it difficult to carry out the work. For this reason, he also wrote a letter to Li Chen bitterly, saying: "Zi Cai is a sick person, and he can't bear to urge him personally. There is nothing else to fund, but it is only literate. ”
Later, due to the urgency of the situation, Zhang Zhidong allocated 50,000 taels of silver and asked Feng Zicai to recruit ten battalions of troops. Feng Zicai immediately assigned more than ten battalion officers to Qinzhou City, Jiulong, Dasi, Xiaodong and other places to recruit troops. When the people of the four townships heard that Feng Zicai wanted to raise troops to defend his family and defend the country, they all enthusiastically joined the army. Within a few days, four or five thousand people were raised. Among them, most of the officers above the sentry officer level had fought with Feng Zicai and had certain combat experience and organizational skills. This new army was soon formed, named after Feng Zicai, called Cui Jun. The military salary is tight, the monthly salary of the soldier is three or two or six dollars, and the weapons are some large knives, spears, and a small number of bullet-firing lock guns that are temporarily made up. Heavy weapons had several cannons with wooden barrels. The army did not have cotton clothes, except for a vest gown each person, which was written with the word "courage" on it as a number coat, and the clothes and pants worn by the soldiers were all brought by each person himself, and the style and color were not uniform.
After only a few days of training, the troops were taught how to fire guns and how to make "pioneer pots" (earthen grenades with bottles and cans as shells), and then they went to the front. Pan Dingxin, the inspector of Guangxi, saw that this team was "not strong and strong", and felt that it was unable to bear the frontal defense, so he taught them to leave Zhennanguan and return to the East Road, and soon Zhennanguan fell.
Pan Dingxin abandoned his army and fled, the former enemy's command organ was paralyzed, and the generals pushed Feng Zicai as the commander of the former enemy. He accepted the appointment of "deputy" on the march and recruited eight battalions of recruits, from which he undertook the task of confronting the French invading army head-on.
Considering that the contrast between the weapons of the enemy and us is very large, Feng Zicai and others decided to choose a strategic policy of favorable terrain and winning in close combat. Therefore, four kilometers after the south pass of the town, the high mountains on the east and west sides were used to build a fortification, and a three-mile long wall was built with earth and stone, which crossed the valley to connect the mountains on both sides and block the main road for the French army to invade the interior. A deep trench was dug four feet wide outside the long wall. Not far behind the long wall, a parallel long wall was built. There were heavy troops stationed between the two walls, and there were several gates on the wall, ready to wait for the enemy shelling, the enemy brigade approached the wall, and then suddenly opened the shed to kill, in close combat hand-to-hand combat.
He sent people to Longzhou and Qinzhou to make a large number of large knives and stepped up the training of the big knife team. The large knife team crouched on either side of the gates. Each person prepared a homemade pioneer pot filled with gunpowder and used sandpaper as a rope to prepare for hand-to-hand combat and to boost the momentum. In the whole process of preparation, Feng Zicai took the lead everywhere and encouraged morale. The three armies were excited and "swore to coexist and die with the long wall."
After the defense preparations were ready, Feng Zicai dispatched some troops to take the initiative to attack, and the surprise cuts and night attacks on Wenyuan, the initial victory in the battle, greatly boosted the morale of the three armies, and even the Scattered Soldiers of the Gui Army, who had originally lost the battle and fled, also had many requests to join the Ping Army to resist the enemy.
After being beaten several times, the French decided to retaliate and sent a large force to attack the Camp of Guanqian Pass, where the Ping army was located, in two ways. This is the Great Armageddon that the Ping Army is waiting for. In the face of the arranged bag-shaped positions, the situation was favorable to the Ping Army and unfavorable to the French Army. However, relying on the fierce artillery fire, the French army successively captured three camps on the East Ridge and seized several small stone hills at the southern end of the basin valley in the west, and the two armies faced each other, and the battle was very fierce, and the French army that occupied the three camps in the East Ridge continued to compete for the fourth camp on the one hand; on the other hand, it fired at the long wall with dense artillery fire from the high ground, covering the French army on the pass from the front to attack the long wall. Suddenly, the cannon fire inside and outside the long wall was flying, and the bullets were like rain. Most of the soldiers in the Ping Army were recruits who had not fought in regular warfare. In the face of such fierce artillery fire, it is undoubtedly a severe test. At this critical juncture. The manager's every move will have a great impact on the whole army. The French shells flew unceasingly to Feng Zicai's side, and even his battalion was destroyed. He always stood on the position, not even bending his waist. This demeanor of a general who commands Ruoding adds strength to the troops.
It was not until early the next morning that a group of infantry braved the morning fog to run up the East Ridge for reinforcements, only to stabilize the position of the fourth battalion and launch a counterattack against the French troops who occupied the third camp, weakening the artillery fire of the French artillery unit bombarding the long wall. Feng Zicai grabbed the fighter and ordered a full-scale counterattack. Several gates of the long wall opened at the same time, just like the reservoir opened the floodgates, and tens of thousands of warriors rushed out in a surging force, with a loud and earth-shattering momentum. The old general Pa Shou was short-clothed and sloppy, wielding a sword, personally leading the large knife team, shouting and jumping out of the wall, and his sons Xiang Rong and Xiang Hua jumped out with it, guarding left and right. Rush together. The warriors saw that the commander was so brave, and they did not hesitate to fight. Several preset ambush troops also came from all directions at the same time, dividing and encircling the French army.
The battle in the valley had just ended, and the army was advancing towards the eastern ridge. The French fled in a hurry, and all the troops behind the palace were annihilated.
The Battle of Zhennanguan, commanded by Feng Zicai, was completely victorious on March 25. On the 26th, he led the Cui army out of the pass, and Wang Xiaoqi's Qin army and Wang Debang's Dingbian army actively cooperated and advanced rapidly. It only took eight days, even Ke Wenyuan, Donkey Driving, Langshan, Weipo, Weijie, Bushan, Shanzhuang, Gusong, Tangjia, Tunmei, Guimenguan, Guanyin Bridge, Lamu, Jianlao, and the soldiers pointed directly at Langjia and the bow of the ship. If it were not for the forced armistice of the Qing government and the faction, the battle to pursue and annihilate the remnants of the enemy would certainly have achieved even more brilliant results.
The significance of the zhennanguan self-defense counterattack is not limited to military victory; its political gains are probably not expected even by Feng Zicai, the supreme commander. When the news of the french defeat reached Paris, the war-torn working people of France shouted slogans such as "against all conquest" and "against war criminals", setting off a movement against the Joffrey cabinet. The Reactionary French politician Ruférie, who had started with the suppression of the Paris Commune, finally stepped down. This war of anti-aggression also taught other capitalist aggressors that they were invincible Chinese people. As the imperialist Hurd admits: "If China can really fight to the end, it will win." The Sino-French War ended with China's "undefeated and defeated", but after the victory of Zhennanguan, the Qing government signed a humiliating treaty with France. For the people of Chinese, stimulated by this great shame and humiliation, they hated the corruption of the Qing government even more. Since the defeat of China and France, Sun Yat-sen decided to overthrow the Qing court and create the Republic of China. Many of the patriotic soldiers who were dismissed after the Sino-French War later directly participated in the anti-Qing uprising.