How did the foreign gun team of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom come from? How did it end?
Speaking of it, this foreign gun team of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is quite related to the foreign gun team formed by Wall.
1862, Hua 'er's foreign gun team was awarded the title of long by the Qing Dynasty, and Hua 'er himself won four titles for it, and he joined Bai Jiwen, the vice captain, to formally become a China citizen.
At this time, Wall's career and reputation reached the peak of his life.
However, in September, the scenery of the foreign guns team remained the same, but Wall's brilliance disappeared-he was hit by a shell in the battle between the foreign guns team and the Taiping Army and died soon after.
When Walter died, the foreign gun team he founded was leaderless, and the ownership of the foreign gun team became a concern at that time.
Among them, the United States, Britain and France are all fighting in the dark.
Finally, the diplomatic activities of American envoy Pu. Bai Jiwen, who is originally from the United States and is currently the deputy team of the foreign army gun team, took over the stick.
H.A. Burgeevine, a native of North Carolina, was once an officer under the French emperor Napoleon. Like Walter, he participated in the Crimean War, traveled to the western United States, Australia and India, and then went to China and Shanghai.
Bai has also made a lot of efforts to form a foreign gun team. He is a veteran of this unit. Bai also made many contributions in the process of the foreign gun team fighting the Taiping Army. Among them, he was wounded in the battle to capture Gao Qiao town, and was seriously injured in the battle of Xiaotang two months later.
Bai's ambition is bigger than Walter's. As a teenager, he had the dream of opening an empire of his own in the East.
After Wall's death, Bai, who was dying, took over as the second captain.
To create your own empire, you must first create your own army. In this sense, Bai won the command of the foreign gun team and took a step towards his ideal.
Bai Jiwen's fighting ability is really no worse than Wall's. He led the foreign gun team and the British, French, Qing and Huai armies to occupy Jiading again, and defeated the Taiping Army in Baihegang and Qingpu Sanjiangkou.
Bai's shortcoming is that he is irritable and impulsive, not as calm as Wall.
With the continuous victory of the foreign guns team, the reimbursement reward originally agreed with the China Chamber of Commerce is a bit backward.
Bai is a person who abides by the principles of western life. Where can he tolerate such arrears? So he has been looking for Yang Fang, who has been working as a platform in Songjiang, to beg for arrears.
This discussion caused a big mistake.
At the end of February in 65438+ AD, Zeng Guofan ordered a concerted attack on Tianjing.
Bai Jiwen refused to obey the order, saying that he would not leave until he received the arrears, and went to see Yang Fang again. Yang Fang resisted a little, and Bai Jiwen gave him a big mouth, and then ordered his men to openly rob the treasury silver and took away forty-two thousand pieces of silver.
Li Hongzhang, governor of Jiangsu Province, and some local officials have long been dissatisfied with the arrogance of dialogue. Moreover, the foreign gun team was already the national army of the Qing Dynasty in terms of the payment of military salaries, the structure of soldiers and the equipment of weapons. Bai Jiwen's excessive behavior completely angered Li Hongzhang.
Li Hongzhang immediately summoned the court, relieved Bai Jiwen from his post, and was temporarily replaced by British officer Ogalen.
White fierce as fire, how can he eat this dumb loss? Jumping up and down, yelling, going to Beijing to ask for reinstatement. This move was stopped by Li Hongzhang.
Besides, after Ogalen took over Chang, his performance was disappointing. Defeated in the battle of Taicang, 190 people were killed and 174 people were injured.
Therefore, Li Hongzhang reached an agreement with the British troops stationed in Shanghai: Chang was paid by the Huai Army to become the official army of China, and through the British commander Steve Lai, he sponsored the Englishman Gordon to be the third commander of the foreign guns team.
Gordon is different from Walter and Bai. He is not an adventurer, but an ordinary officer. He was a British major and participated in the Second Opium War. He is an excellent commander. After Gordon took over, the conductor often won many battles, which made great contributions to the Qing court's successful crushing of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. He was appointed as the prefect by Emperor Tongzhi, wearing a yellow jacket and peacock feathers. The British media unanimously called him Gordon from China.
In this way, it is completely hopeless for Bai Qiwen to get his hands on it.
In a rage, he gathered a group of people who were often expelled from the Party and left the party automatically for supporting him, raised a group of foreigners' vagrants in Shanghai, robbed a steamboat near Songjiang, and sailed straight to Suzhou to go to Tan Shaoguang, king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
Tan Shaoguang was overjoyed by Bai Jiwen's surprise and gave a big banquet.
Since then, Bai has officially become a member of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
Of course, Bai will not be satisfied with this. His boyhood dreams have not disappeared.
To this end, he must first devote himself to forming his own army.
As a result, he sneaked back to Shanghai several times and gathered old employees to go to Suzhou. He also rebelled against Zhong Si, the captain of Gao Qiao, a small gunboat of the Qing army, and robbed Gao Qiao, a small gunboat in Qingpu with several other soldiers, and successfully sailed back to Suzhou.
In the long run, Bai Jiwen won the favor of Tan Shaoguang.
Tan Shaoguang thought that everything Bai Jiwen had done was running for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and pitied his newly formed foreign gun team, so he generously selected more than 2,000 people from the Taiping Army to train him.
In Bai Jiwen's eyes, these two thousand people are still too few.