When we mention the three famous ministers in the late Qing Dynasty, we will think of Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang and Zeng Guofan.
However, what the world is not familiar with is that there is a closer relationship between Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan, that is, he was Li Shi. Zeng Guofan did something he regretted very much in his life. In order to make up for it, he asked his favorite disciple Li Hongzhang to remedy for himself in his later years. Unfortunately, Li Hongzhang did not fulfill his last wish and indirectly led to the demise of the Qing Dynasty. What was this?
Zeng Guofan's life, the proudest and most humiliating things are related to the "Xiang Army".
In other words, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement was vigorous in those years, but due to the lack of correct guidance, after the Tianjing Incident, the kings were crippled and their strength plummeted rapidly. In the face of the enemy with greatly reduced strength, the morale of Xiang army was high and sweeping, and their leader Zeng Guofan naturally became a person with power in the imperial court.
However, fortunes depend on each other. As a courtier of the Han nationality, Zeng Guofan holds the strongest military power in the country, while green camp of the Manchu people is really empty-handed, and Cixi is naturally uneasy, so she has been planning to dissolve the Xiang army.
But Zeng Guofan is not a man who only thinks about power. He has strong political thinking and can understand Cixi's concerns. However, at this time, the Xiang army was encirclement and suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. At the same time, the Nian army had not been completely pacified, and the Jianghuai area became the most unsafe place. It is called the granary and Qian Ku, and it is also connected with the main roads in the west. It is necessary to arrange a strong army as the rear.
At this time, Zeng Guofan had already thought of a good candidate in his mind-disciple Li Hongzhang. I hope that he can train an army with extraordinary ability.
Li Hongzhang was born in the south of the Yangtze River, where he has a certain prestige. At the same time, he is also his own staff. Once the Xiang Army is dissolved in the future, Zeng Guofan can unite with him to develop the Huai Army and reserve some strength for the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, at Zeng Guofan's suggestion, the Huai Army was founded under the leadership of Li Hongzhang.
Later, the Xiang army really faced the fate of disarmament, but Zeng Guofan found that everything was different from what he thought.
He once met Empress Dowager Cixi after returning to Beijing, but during the conversation, he found that Empress Dowager Cixi regarded disarmament as a first-class event. She didn't care about other national affairs, but kept asking Zeng Guofan how much disarmament was going well. This woman only cared about whether her power would be threatened again, and she didn't have any ability to govern the country at all.
After meeting Cixi, Zeng Guofan wrote a diary:
Prince Gong "has Xiao Zhi", but he was suspected by Cixi, "wandering around can't stand"; Wen Xiang people are very decent, "and narrow in scale", and they don't know how to recruit virtuous people to help themselves; Woren's conduct is still good, and he is maverick, "but he is thin and short-sighted"; The rest of the people are even more mediocre, especially the queen mother, who has no talent for governing the country.
at this time, Zeng Guofan regretted cutting off the Xiang army, which almost made the last strength of the Qing dynasty a cloud. So at this time, he can only pin his hopes on Li Hongzhang's Huai army, and try his best to tell Li Hongzhang to train the Huai army well before he dies, because only having enough military power can defend the country, which is also the only hope of saving the country.
However, Li Hongzhang once again let him down.
According to historical records, Zeng Guofan had such an evaluation when referring to the Huai Army:
Huai Army is rich and arrogant, and it is generous to enjoy Hefei as a country. It is quite bitter to regard the discipline of officials and Confucianism. When it comes to scheduling, there are many people who obey the rules. When Wen Zhengshi and his relatives wrote a book, there was a matter of withdrawing the Xiang army, and the Kyushu Railway could not cast a wrong word.
In this way, Zeng Guofan passed away with regrets for the Qing Dynasty and his own remorse. On his deathbed, he told Li Hongzhang to continue to develop the Huai Army, which was the last chance of the Qing Dynasty. Unfortunately, Li Hongzhang took orders from the fatuous Cixi and used military materials to build the Summer Palace for Cixi. Under the corruption, the Beiyang Navy was vulnerable and was wiped out in the Sino-Japanese War. China was also carved up by the great powers step by step because of insufficient troops.
If Zeng Guofan hadn't abolished the Xiang Army, or if Li Hongzhang had listened to his teacher's wishes, perhaps the Qing Dynasty could have lasted for some time.
However, if Zeng Guofan does not abolish the Xiang Army, he will be accused of being a traitor and a traitor, and he can only pin his hopes for saving the country on Li Hongzhang before he dies. However, Li Hongzhang abandoned it, which led to decades of humiliation in China.