120 years ago, also in this hot and dry July, the last general of the Qing Dynasty was martyred, and he died on the battlefield he was most familiar with. The south of the Blue Blood City was dyed with battle armor, wielding a sword and drinking horse fingers in the sky. The general who had lived a lifetime of military horses died on the battlefield, and the last hope of the Qing Dynasty came to an end. General Nie rode his horse in a yellow coat to the small bridge in front of the battlefield, in front of the army of 6,000 foreign powers, behind him was the country he was desperately defending, and he had no way to retreat.
"This is my deadly place, beyond this step is not a husband" Guns rained down, and the sound of cannons shook the sky. In the midst of enemy fire and the backstabbing of his compatriots, Nie Shicheng resolutely rushed to the front line...
His death became the last vestiges of the empire, and his army was called "China's strongest army" by the enemy.
Nie Shicheng was born in a martial arts family, his mother was a "practicing family son", it is said that when he was nearly ancient, he could lift dozens of pounds of stone locks, and his temperament was also famous for his fierceness. And this fierce mother only taught Nie Shicheng two principles of life in her life: one is that you must never beg people with your palms up, and the other is that those with the surname Nie must not be a provocateur. ("The Nie family's palms are not upward; the Nie family has no seeds.") ”）
Nie Shicheng always remembered his mother's teachings, and it was precisely by relying on this spirit of self-reliance and backbone that he cultivated his tough and optimistic nature to face difficulties, and also laid a solid foundation for him to become an iron-boned patriotic warrior in the future.
Nie Shicheng lost his father at an early age, and under the strict teaching of his mother, he has been practicing chivalry and righteousness since he was a child, and loves to fight and hug injustice. When he was young, a trader surnamed Xia was hunted down and killed, and Nie Mu saw the situation and hid him in the grass stack of his home to avoid the disaster of killing. After Nie Shicheng went home to understand the situation, he treated each other warmly, and the two became friends. Later, this merchant surnamed Xia abandoned the merchant to join the army, stationed at LinhuaiGuan, and wrote a letter inviting Nie Shicheng to join the army.
In 1862, the 26-year-old Nie Shicheng, with the encouragement of his mother, joined the army at the invitation of Xia Zhi and joined the army under Yuan Jiasan (Yuan Shikai's uncle's grandfather), the regimental training minister of the Luzhou military camp.
Nie Shicheng started from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom suppression movement, and in the first year he was promoted to battalion commander, because of his excellent performance, he directly sealed the top of Wupin to wear hualing. Later, yuan sanjia retired, and he followed the second big man, Liu Mingchuan, a famous general of the Huai Army.
In 1884, the French Navy invaded Taiwan, and Liu Mingchuan, the inspector of Taiwan, stubbornly defended Taiwan and launched an eight-month defense war against Taiwan. At that time, when the French army once forcibly landed and occupied Keelung, and many people were reluctant to go, Nie Shicheng took the initiative to ask for help, led 800 people to charter the British ship "Wesley" to land from Tainan, reinforced Liu Mingchuan at a critical moment, fought a decisive battle in Keelung, and drove the French out of Taiwan Island.
In 1894, the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War. Nie Shicheng led an army to support Korea with Ye Zhichao, and Nie Shicheng led his army to block the Japanese army in front of The Sky Ridge when the enemy was outnumbered. He made full use of the advantages of the terrain, and was good at setting traps, launching surprise attacks, leading the army to fight one beautiful battle after another, and was the only army that the Qing army won against Japan. Until the end of the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese army did not conquer the Skyscraper Ridge guarded by Nie Shicheng.
Nie Shicheng was 26 years old when he joined the army, and it can be said that he has spent most of his life on horseback, and he has reached the age when he should ask where the time has gone.
In 1899, the Qing Dynasty formed a new army, and Nie Shicheng's Wuyi Army was also organized as the Wuwei Front Army. Since then, Nie Shicheng has embarked on the top of the official road military path: directly subordinate to the Viceroy, but this year, he is already 63 years old.
And in the year that Nie Shicheng took charge of the "Wuwei Front Army", a society initiated by the poor people at the bottom began to rise in Shandong. This society was the Boxer Rebellion, and the composition of the Boxer Rebellion was rather complex, including poor people, craftsmen, urban poor people and small traders, as well as some officers and soldiers, rich gentry, and even princes and nobles, and in the later period, many hooligans and scoundrels were mixed.
Nie Shicheng looked down on the Boxers from his heart, although he stood up recklessly, but in his view, the Boxers were a group of rabble-rousers. Although under the banner of "supporting the Qing Dynasty and destroying the foreign countries," what they are doing is all work that disrupts the foundation of the country.
In April 1899, the Boxers destroyed the Baoding Railway, and Nie Shicheng was ordered to protect the railway and went to quell the boxers, but his men were killed and wounded by dozens of Boxers. Nie Shi's cost depended on the boxers' unpleasant eyes, who could bear this nest of anger, simply led the army, suppressed the Boxers once, killed hundreds of Boxers and even showed the Boxers' "master brothers" to the public. At this time, Nie Shicheng can be regarded as a beam of harmony and unity. After Cixi learned of this, she quickly asked Rong Lu to send a message to Nie Shicheng: Don't oppose the Boxers. As a result, Nie Shicheng replied: "The bandits harm the people, Shicheng has the responsibility to defend the land, there are bandits in the territory, it is reasonable to eliminate, after the facts, although he was severely punished, he fled to his death!" ”
Originally, none of these conflicts were major, but the problem came: the great powers had increased the pace of aggression against China, and the Eight-Power Alliance was close at hand. In the face of a strong enemy, the imperial court felt that the Boxers were "available to the people", and the Boxers were willing to accept the solicitation of "supporting the Qing dynasty and destroying the Yangs", but they put forward a condition: Nie Shicheng must die.
Although at that time, many people urged Cixi to conform to the will of the people and recruit the Boxers, Cixi did not take a stand. Of course, she was not confused: if a war really started, it would still depend on Nie Shicheng and his Wuwei vanguard. Therefore, Cixi's final attitude was: Dai Sin and Make Meritorious Deeds.
In June 1900, the Eight-Power Alliance captured The Dagu Fort with the powerful firepower of 37 warships and then marched towards Tianjin. In July of the same year, the Japanese troops in the Eight-Power Alliance occupied Jijiazhuang from the south of Tianjin, while the british and Russian forces broke through the left flank of Nie Shicheng's forces. As the only and last elite force of the Qing Empire in the Gyeonggi region, Nie Shicheng's troops were compressed into the narrow Balitai and surrounded.
The Eight-Nation Alliance had already reached the city, and Nie Shicheng knew that with the national strength of the Great Qing, it was impossible to fight with one, but soldiers should take obedience to military orders as their natural duty.
In the early morning of July 9, Nie Shicheng led the remaining thousands of soldiers to fight for eight days and nights, and fought a decisive battle with the Eight-Nation Alliance at Balitai near Tianjin. At this time, the Eight-Nation Alliance, whether in terms of weapons and equipment or in terms of troop strength, far surpassed the Qing army, and Nie Shicheng had no hope of victory at all.
During these eight days, Nie Shicheng was almost desperate--instead of cooperating with Nie Shicheng to defend against foreign enemies, the Boxers took advantage of the great war between the two armies to release cold arrows in their backs, burned and looted through the chaos of the war, and even abducted his eighty-year-old mother, wife and children in order to threaten Nie Shicheng. When Nie Shicheng sent soldiers back to hunt down and kill the Boxers, trying to save his family, the Boxers even shouted: "Nie Shicheng has rebelled!" ”
How difficult and how absurd?
Nie Shicheng had been a pedantic man all his life, and he was by no means a pedantic person, but at this moment, he looked around at a loss, but found that his situation was so embarrassing: the Boxers wanted to kill him, the imperial court wanted to blame him, and the foreigners wanted to kill him.
He rode on his beloved war horse, wearing the yellow coat given by the emperor, and personally came to the small bridge at the forefront of the position to supervise the battle, allowing bullets to fly and shells to explode, but Nie Shicheng was motionless on the small bridge. The Qing soldiers were in tears, because wearing yellow coats on the battlefield only meant one thing: death!
"The upper does not forgive the imperial court, and the lower sees the boxers, and there is no way to explain oneself unless one dies."
Nie Shicheng, dressed in a yellow coat, became the most conspicuous target on the battlefield. Soon, Nie Shicheng's war horse fell, and he changed into another one, and then poured, and then changed, a total of 4 war horses. By the time he reached the 4th horse, Nie Shicheng's legs had been broken, and he barely rode on his horse, his legs swaying in the air.
Shrapnel from a shell cut through his abdomen, and his intestines flowed out. But he continued to ride on his horse and direct the charge until he was hit by three bullets: one in his mouth and out of the back of his head; one through his chest; and one that hit his temple.
Nie Shicheng fell, and the Balitai was lost.
After Nie Shicheng's death, the Boxers wanted to kill him in revenge for the day. It may be that the soldiers felt sorry for each other, and a German general beat the Boxers to scatter and flee with a burst of random guns, which avoided the body of General Nie from being humiliated. The enemy army showed the greatest respect for the heroes who died in battle, and they wrapped Nie Shicheng's body in a red carpet and sent it back, and also gave the army that insisted on resisting the title of "China's strongest army", rather than the Wuwei Right Army in Shandong, which signed Yuan Datou for mutual protection in the southeast.
This soldier who did not understand politics could not understand the sinister deception of the court, but he could clearly distinguish between right and wrong. Looking back on the past, the people of the past are gone. In the end, Nie Shicheng fell on this land he loved, and it remained in people's hearts forever.
Nie Shicheng is the last sunset of the Qing Dynasty.
Before his death, he also left the last ancestral precept: requiring Nie's descendants not to go abroad in the future, let alone do things for foreigners.
More than 100 years later, Nie Shicheng's descendant Nie Xianhui was interviewed by reporters and determined that this matter was true, and the old man said that the descendants of the Nie family were almost not involved in the two terms of business and politics, and they all became business experts and technical backbones in ordinary posts, and none of them went abroad.