The Great Victory of Zhennanguan was a famous battle in March 1885 in which the Qing army defeated the French invaders in Nanguan, Guangxi, in the Sino-French War. Feng Zicai, a veteran general who was nearly seventy years old, charged forward and killed the French army and lost its armor. Since then, Feng Zicai has become a national hero forever in the annals of history. In this battle, there is another national hero that cannot be forgotten, and he is Liu Yongfu. It was Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army and Feng Zicai who joined forces to resist the French to achieve victory.
At the age of twenty (1857), Liu Yongfu participated in the Heaven and Earth Society to oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty, founded the Black Flag Army in 1866, and after the defeat of the rebel army, led his troops to operate along the Sino-Vietnamese border in Guangxi and Yunnan. In the autumn of the twelfth year of Tongzhi (1873), Liu Yongfu was invited by the King of Vietnam to lead the Black Flag Army into the Vietnamese Resistance Against France, and killed the French commander An Ye in the attack on the French army in Hanoi, Vietnam. In the ninth year of Guangxu (1883), he achieved a great victory in paper bridges that shocked China and foreign countries, killing the French admiral Li Weili. According to the article "National Hero of the Late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty: Liu Yongfu", Liu Yongfu was very poorly equipped when fighting the French army, but he was always able to severely damage the French army, which made the French army feel frightened, and even the French general Gu Ba was shocked and said: "The heroism of Liu Yongfu and these people is really amazing!" ”
The good war between Liu Yongfu and the Black Flag Army was the driving force for the Qing dynasty to declare war with France, and the edict of the Qing government declaring war on France reads:
Although Liu Yongfu was loyal, Vietnam was ignorant of the people and did not promote them. This officer, who was originally a Member of China, could be adopted for my own use, and with the name of the Admiral, he would be rewarded with a flower plume, and the commander of the unit would be surprised to win and restore the legal person's occupation of the cities of Vietnam. ”
In the eleventh year of Guangxu (1885), Liu Yongfu was summoned to lead 3,000 Black Flag troops into the customs and returned to China. Liu Yongfu's brilliant achievements in the War of Aiding Vietnam and Defending the Border guard were given a yellow coat by the Guangxu Emperor and the imperial letter "Fu" given by Empress Dowager Cixi.
It was unlikely that the Qing Dynasty would reuse a rebellious general like Liu Yongfu, and most of his Black Flag Army was cut down and only 300 people remained. If it were not for the Sino-Japanese War, Liu Yongfu might have been at home for a long time.
Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Liangguang, supported Liu Yongfu and the Black Flag Army during the Sino-French War, enthusiastically praised his achievements in resisting france, and praised him as a strange man who "breathed for thousands of years of China". During the Battle of Jiawu, Zhang Zhidong called Tang Jingsong, on the one hand, to encourage yuwu; on the other hand, he suggested that Liu Yongfu, the general of the Hundred Battles, should be used, and at the same time, he called Liu Yongfu, suggesting that he "endure small and big responsibilities, work together in harmony, and establish Qigong." Zhang Zhidong's vision is not wrong, Liu Yongfu created an anti-Japanese miracle in Taiwan.
In April 1895, after the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Maguan with the Japanese government, and Taiwan was ceded to Japan. When the news reached Taiwan, the people of Taiwan "if there is a midnight riot and thunder... Running to tell each other, gathering in the city, night and day, crying reached the four wildernesses. The people were indignant and wrote to Tang Jingsong: "All the people swear to disobey the Wo, cut and die, refuse to die, and prefer to die at the hands of the rebels first than at the hands of the Wokou." ”
In June 1895, the Japanese army landed in Taiwan and forcibly took over, and The Inspector of Taiwan, Tang Jingsong, ordered Liu Yongfu to concurrently serve as the commander-in-chief of the Taiwan Town, and Liu Yongfu replied to his wish to "survive and die with Taiwan." Liu Yongfu drafted the "Covenant" in Tainan and issued a call for joint resistance against Japan. It is said that in order to defend the country, "the year will be sixty, and the death will not be resigned", "even if there is a piece of land left, a line of extension, it should also be preserved, not to make the Widow".
The people of Taiwan hated the incompetence and abandonment of the Qing Dynasty and wanted to elect Liu Yongfu as president. However, Liu Yongfu took reunification as a great cause, insisted on not resigning, and still took the post of deputy of the Great Qing Dynasty to lead the Taiwan people in the War of Resistance.
Liu Yongfu led the desperate resistance of the Taiwanese military and people, so that the Japanese army could not occupy Taiwan on time. Helplessly, the Japanese army put pressure on the Qing court, intimidated and threatened the Qing court, saying, "If the Qing army and armed personnel continue to march to Taiwan in various ways to confront the imperial army, then the Japanese Second Army in Liaodong will march to Beijing." Empress Dowager Cixi was frightened and panicked, "All the provinces in the coastal interior are not allowed to send every shot, bullet, soldier or pawn to Taiwan!" The greatest tragedy of the anti-Japanese heroes is not the failure, but the betrayal of the traitors and traitors.
In his January 1895 letter to The Prime Minister, Liu Yongfu said: "Grain and munitions are all very important," and "Taiwan is isolated overseas, and there are many ports ... If there is no food, how can we recruit troops? As for this, I can't help but cry bitterly. The key point is that the Qing government did not dare to offend Japan, and strictly ordered the governors and inspectors of the coastal provinces to "not take the slightest help to Taiwan." The Qing government also issued an edict to all coastal areas: "There is no way to deal with Taiwan affairs, and all grain and equipment should not be solved again, resulting in branches." He also strictly ordered Tan Zhonglin, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, to "strictly prohibit Haikou and Guanben" and did everything possible to blockade and sever all ties and assistance from the mainland in the War of Resistance against Taiwan. Li Hongzhang sat in Shanghai and intercepted a large number of mainland officials and people to aid Taiwan's War of Resistance.
With neither foreign aid nor food, Liu Yongfu fought completely alone. Even so, Liu Yongfu dealt a fierce blow to the arrogance of the Japanese invaders. According to Japanese historians, "The Japanese army invested 49,835 troops and 26,214 accompanying soldiers, paid the price of the death of 4,642 people under the commander of the Guards Division, Prince Kita-Shirakawa Miya, and the commander of the Second Guards Brigade, Nobunari Yamane, and it took four months to reluctantly occupy Taiwan." ”
Liu Yongfu's anti-Japanese record should be said to be unprecedented, surpassing the entire Qing Dynasty. Look at the Sino-Japanese War to know how great Liu Yongfu's achievements are, according to Japan's own statistics, in the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, the number of deaths in Japan is about 13488 people, it is unbelievable that among so many deaths, 11894 people died of illness, and only a thousand people died in battle, and even Japanese officials are embarrassed to admit this set of data. Let's see how many pockets the Qing Dynasty had.
In Liu Yongfu's spirit of resistance, the Japanese cannot help but lament that since the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War with China, "real resistance has only begun to be encountered in Taiwan" and that "although he is an enemy, his bravery is really worthy of admiration, and he can be called a brave soldier who has never been seen since the Sino-Japanese War." ”
Although Liu Yongfu dared to fight and was able to fight, he was powerless to change the degeneration and corruption of the Great Clear, and finally left Taiwan under the condition of running out of ammunition and food, sighing: "It was the imperial court that misled me, not Liu Yongfu who mistook Taiwan!" ”
Liu Yongfu is a national hero, and the hero is not perfect. Liu Yongfu once negotiated peace with the Japanese army, mainly to save the Taiwanese military and people from suffering the scourge of war again, rather than surrendering; he left Taiwan to cross the border because of objective conditions and was unable to do so. We cannot be harsh on the ancients, as long as he sincerely resists Japan and resolutely resists Japan, he is a national hero. His final failure was not his personal failure, but actually the failure of the Qing Dynasty, and could a stubborn, corrupt, incompetent, and boneless imperial court not fail?
Liu Yongfu was completely disappointed by the corrupt and incompetent Qing court's act of surrender and treason, accepted revolutionary ideas, and became a pioneer of the democratic revolution. During the Xinhai Revolution, At the request of Hu Hanmin, the governor of Guangdong, Liu Yongfu served as the chief of the Guangdong Provincial Militia League, restraining tens of thousands of people's troops in Guangzhou, and making major contributions to consolidating the newborn revolutionary regime.
In 1915, Liu Yongfu heard that Yuan Shikai signed the "Twenty-One Articles" traitorous treaty with Japan, and the 78-year-old hero summoned his family to the ancestral hall of the Sanxuantang to denounce it, "Resisting the Northern Court, please fight with the war", willing to use the "old and decaying body" as the vanguard, and fight with the old enemy to the death, "die without regrets".
In 1917, when Liu Yongfu was dying, he still did not forget to warn his descendants: "When the battle is not afraid of death, the officials do not want money... However, in the end, he did not take pride in his official titles, but only knew how to defend the society and not let foreign countries deceive China as his responsibility... Do not hesitate to cast mountains and rivers with iron blood, a powerful race! ”