Mengshan Army

On the seventh day of February in the 25th year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing Empire, just as the breath of spring descended on the land of Qilu, a small but far-reaching war broke out.Yuan Shikai, the newly appointed acting governor of Shandong Province, sent his cronies, and Cao Kun, the new governor of Caozhou, led the three battalion elites to split eastward and go straight to Caozhou.When Cao Kun's troops arrived at Mengshan Mountain in the southwest of Mengyin County, they suddenly divided into multiple groups and encircled the high mountain. Under the guidance of the Yizhou garrison, all the roads out of the mountain were blocked by the officers and soldiers.

The mission of Cao Kun's department is to completely wipe out the bandits in Mengyin, Feixian and Sishui counties for more than ten years.

At the beginning of the year, Yuan Shikai, who was rewarded by the Ministry of War for his meritorious service in training the new army at the small station, was promoted to act as governor of Shandong.

This is the real job Yuan Shikai dreamed of.So he led more than [-] elite military guards trained by himself to go south to Shandong. While vigorously expanding the strength of this army that was destined to support his great cause, the first major event in Yuan Shikai's policy program was to suppress bandits.

Suppressing bandits is a major event that every local official will not take lightly.But suppressing bandits requires capital, and that is a powerful army.In this regard, Yuan Shikai has unique conditions. He has more than [-] troops equipped with all foreign guns and cannons and has undergone complete Western-style training. He has a very high loyalty to him. The arm makes the finger.However, Master Yuan Shikai’s attitude towards the banditry in Shandong was completely different from that of his predecessor, Yu Xian. The Boxer Regiment, which had risen in Shandong and spread to Zhili, was by no means the connivance of his predecessor who was dismissed by the imperial court under the pressure of foreigners. To gain prestige in Qilu, which is adjacent to the important area of ​​Gyeonggi, the attitude towards Boxing is to resolutely suppress and ban it.Even if the Boxer Boxing, which was played under the banner of exterminating foreigners to support the imperial court, was not overlooked, it was only natural to attack the Mongolian bandits.

After all, no one would say a bad thing about eradicating bandits.Master Yuan sent his powerful generals to conquer the bandits, not only for the peace of the people, but also for actual combat training.

Cao Kun set up his camp in Pingyi County.According to the repeatedly verified information, the thief's lair is in Guangming Temple.Starting from Maoyang Town, there is a main road leading to Mengshan Guangming Temple. Starting from Dafuning Village, head east, pass Sucheng, Lianghe, Zhangjiazhai, climb up the mountain, cross the mountain ridge commonly known as donkey's leg, pass Liucheng, Dongyu, Lou Zi, Tianmen to Guangming Temple.This main road will be attacked by Cao Kun's guardian envoy himself, and another general will be sent to lead the army to occupy Mengyin, blocking the way for the thieves to escape to the east.

Cao Kun, who was born as a cloth dealer, was nicknamed Cao San Fool in the Wuwei Youjun. This nickname refers more to Cao Kun's surname.He didn't pay much attention to the errand entrusted by Yuan Dashuai. Cao Kun really didn't pay much attention to the small group of thieves entrenched in Mengshan. The thunder strike of the three thousand elite soldiers.However, Marshal Yuan's military order clearly stated that the bandits in Mengshan should be wiped out completely. For the leaders of Mengshan bandits such as Sun Dewang, they must see people alive and corpses in death.Therefore, with the help of the local government ax and the brothers of the defense camp, Cao Kun carefully collected information on the terrain of Mengshan and the bandits in Mengshan, and made full preparations for this battle.

In addition to his standard troops, Cao Kun's troops also had a field artillery team strengthened for him, with a total strength of 3500.

The hinterland of the mountainous area in southern Shandong has always been barren, with majestic mountains and ravines. Since ancient times, there have been many people who occupied the mountains as bandits. Due to the remoteness of the area, the imperial court would not have paid too much attention to it. The strongman in the four counties called Mengshan Bandits did a stupid thing last year, which angered the imperial court, and made Governor Yuan issue an order to expropriate him at the very beginning of his tenure.

Last winter, Mengshan bandits robbed a group of merchants on the official road in Fei County. Not only did they rob their property, they also killed four bodyguards, took twelve merchants (one of their female relatives) hostage up the mountain, and cut off the bodyguard's body. Ears, let him go down the mountain with a letter from the leading merchant to deliver a huge amount of ransom.This is the old routine of occupying the mountain as the king.What I didn't expect was that the female family member was the concubine of a big man in the capital who returned home to visit his relatives, and this Mr. Zhao named Zhao Qiaoshu is now in the midst of his holy family, with Shuntian Fu Yin as the minister of the Ministry of punishment, and he is about to enter the army .

This is troublesome.Although the woman named Hexian was taken back after the ransom was paid, Mengshan Bandit and Liang Zi of the imperial court were finally settled.A woman is taken captive by a strong man, so her innocence is hard to keep, and the Qing Dynasty was a dynasty that deeply believed in Zhu Zi's ethics. Master Zhao was under pressure after He Xian was redeemed, and gave to death this concubine who was as beautiful as a flower. Send a letter to Shandong, asking the local government to completely wipe out the Mengshan bandits who have caused disasters in Luzhongnan.However, Shandong has not yet reacted, and the officialdom has undergone drastic changes. He made great contributions with Wu Changqing in North Korea and was valued by the court, and Yuan Shikai, who trained a new army in Tianjin, took charge of Shandong.Mr. Zhao immediately wrote a letter to Yuan Shikai who was still on the road, begging with humble words, hoping that Mr. Yuan, who is well-known in North Korea, would vent his anger for him.

No wonder Mr. Zhao, such a shame is not a trivial matter in the imperial officialdom, and it will even ruin the future of an official.

Yuan Shikai readily agreed.Not to mention the dignified second-rank officials of the current dynasty, even if the six departments are in charge, Yuan Shikai's character will be accepted wholeheartedly.So as soon as he arrived in Shandong, he secretly ordered Cao Kun to use false ways to destroy Guo and exterminate the Mengshan bandits who had caused disasters in Yizhou.

Since Mengshan bandits have been doing harm to the local area for decades, they naturally have many eyes and ears.The news of the large-scale offensive by the government and the army could not be concealed from them. As soon as Cao Kun's army entered Maoyang Town, west of Mengshan Mountain, the news spread to the cottage.How to deal with this attack by the official army, the leaders of the cottage did not reach a consensus. After arguing for two days, the opinions of the Sun brothers, who were sitting in the cottage, prevailed. !This is not the first time the government army has attacked Mengshan, nor will it be the last.Soldiers come to block, water comes to soil, it's nothing special.

There are five leaders in Meng Shanzhai, and the soldiers in the village all call them masters. The first leader is Sun Dewang, the second leader is Liu Yucai, and the third leader is Sun Dewang's younger brother, Sun Deming.The fourth head is called Zhou Huanan, and the fifth head is called Nong Mengfu.

The power of Mengshanzhai is roughly divided into two groups, the largest group is Sun Dewang's Situ faction, Nong Mengfu and Sun Deming were the first to fall into the grass with Sun Dewang.Liu Yucai and Zhou Huanan are outsiders.In the 21st year of Guangxu, the bandits Liu Yucai and Zhou Huanan, who had been wandering in Henan, could not gain a foothold in Henan Province, and took more than [-] people to Mengshan. At that time, Mengshan had just been wiped out by the Shandong garrison, and suffered heavy losses.Sun Dewang opened the door to recruit talents, and took in Liu Yucai and Zhou Huanan's subordinates, and the two shares merged into one.Although the number of people brought by Liu and Zhou was not very large, the original troops in Meng Shanzhai were elite soldiers with hundreds of battles, and Liu Yucai was quite strategic, while Zhou Huanan was outstanding in martial arts and good at training soldiers.Thanks to the joining of Liu and Zhou, the Shanzhai flourished.

Since the empire fought against the British and barbarians over trade 60 years ago, it led to the first confrontation between the empire and the western powers that had completed the industrial revolution. There was only one result, the defeat and compensation.A special commodity - opium officially flowed into the mainland, especially after the second foreign war failed 20 years after the Battle of Guangzhou, the British and French allied forces entered the capital and burned the Meihuan Meilun Yuanmingyuan.What followed was the rapid spread of opium in the north. With the demand, opium became the most important type of goods imported by the old empire that was gradually forced to open the country. love.The influx of opium led to the rapid reversal of the empire's foreign trade from a surplus to an external deficit for many years. A large amount of silver flowed out, and the trade deficit became larger and larger, causing the empire's economy to collapse rapidly.The people of insight in the empire realized that since opium is unstoppable, why not grow opium themselves?This is not a high-tech thing. When it comes to the long farming culture, are the western barbarians such as Britain and France my majestic opponents of China?

As a result, opium took root and blossomed in the land of China, and the worst disasters were in Shandong and Shanxi provinces.Large tracts of fertile land are planted with opium, and only those barren lands that are not suitable for growing opium are planted with corn or sorghum. Even the main crop wheat in the north is rarely seen.In the case of privately owned land, the landlords understand it.Opium is a cash crop, and its income is much higher than that of ordinary grain.But they didn't realize that the result of this would be a sharp drop in food production, and even if they couldn't feed themselves in good years, the problem would become even more serious in case of natural disasters.

However, the north has suffered from disasters year after year, and droughts have occurred frequently. The empire, which lacks water conservancy investment, is simply unable to reverse the poor harvest in agriculture.The most direct result of the natural disaster was that the military strength of Mengshanzhai once exceeded 2000 in one fell swoop.A large number of hungry people took the risk out of desperation, willing to become bandits in order to survive, because being a thief is better than starving to death.In fact, the peasants of the Qing Empire were originally the most docile group of people on the planet, but no matter how docile they were, they would take some drastic measures when faced with the danger of starving their entire family.The severe drought in Shandong provided Mengshan Village with an extremely abundant number of soldiers, making Mengshan Village the largest group of mountain bandits in Shandong.This is still the result of careful selection. If there are no restrictions on physical fitness and age, the total number of men and horses in Mengshan Village will probably double.

Although Sun Dewang liked the large number of people, he also knew that Mengshanzhai could not support thousands of people, so he could only loot around more frequently.But this is not an easy task. First of all, feeding 2000 people is a big problem that is difficult to solve.But Meng Shanzhai only has such a small place, it is not easy to solve the problem of food, and the accommodation is also troublesome.In this way, Meng Shanzhai faced a problem, should it disarm or go down the mountain to expand its territory?According to Liu Yucai's suggestion, Meng Shanzhai should send the main force out of the mountain to develop in the direction of Mengyin, instead of guarding the Shanzhai.But the Sun Dewang brothers, who held the real power in the cottage, believed that attacking the county seat was to show the court that they were no longer a group of grassroots bandits who took over the mountains and became kings, but wanted to subvert the court like Hong Yang.How powerful was Hong Yang at that time?Even the Nian Army that later ran across Shandong was by no means comparable to Meng Shanzhai. Aren't they all wiped out by the court?

The Sun Dewang brothers didn't want to invite revenge from the imperial army in exchange for a death by a thousand swords.As for the disarmament proposed by Zhou Huanan, the fourth leader, it is even more ridiculous. How can anyone think that he has too many soldiers?What is the elite route is all nonsense.Sun Dewang knew that Zhou Huanan was instigated by Long Qian of the Eighth Team, if it wasn't for Long Qian's outstanding martial arts skills and ability to train troops, he would have driven this cranky guy out of the village long ago.

In the final analysis, what the Sun Dewang brothers were seeking was to be a bandit, but Liu Yucai, the second largest force in Mengshan, who later joined the gang, seemed to have great ambitions. This incident caused a conflict between Liu Yucai and Sun Dewang.

Instead of grabbing more territory, the bandits in Mengshan Village had no choice but to rob the surrounding villages more frequently, which attracted the attention of the government.

Now that the government and army are sending troops to suppress the army, it is an advantage to have more soldiers and horses in the cottage. Fortunately, Zhou Laosi's bad idea of ​​cutting troops was not listened to.At the military council meeting of the leaders, the youngest, Sun Deming, was the first to speak, and finally had a chance to laugh at Zhou Huanan.

What Sun Dewang and the other leaders didn't realize was that the 75 new military guards led by Cao Zhenshou far surpassed the official army they knew in terms of equipment and training.This is an elite team fully equipped with Western firearms, and it is the crystallization of Yuan Shikai's hard work in training for several years in Tianjin.The troops led by Cao Kun are even equipped with [-]mm German cannons—not old-fashioned cannons that are so bulky that they can only fire stone bullets, but modern war gods that are powerful and cause a lot of casualties.

The Shanzhai was not without sane people. When Long Qian, the captain of the Eighth Infantry, heard that Yuan Shikai's Wuwei Youjun was attacking this time, he begged to see the leader Sun Dewang, and urged him to abandon the mountain and go away to avoid the elite of the official army.But he was reprimanded by Sun Deming, the third leader who was present at the time: It’s not that I haven’t seen battles with the officers and soldiers. The officers and soldiers have foreign guns, and the ones in our hands are not fire sticks!And our Mengshan natural danger, what are you afraid of!

Influenced by the military system created by Zeng Guofan's suppression of Hong Yang's Taiping Army, especially the suggestion of Liu Yucai and Zhou Huanan, who were obviously more knowledgeable than the Sun brothers, the bandits in Mengshanzhai also carried out the military system in the summer of the 24th year of Guangxu (1898). The innovation of the army divides the soldiers into two types: warriors and soldiers, but the ratio is completely different from the ratio of infantry battalions and soldiers set by Zeng Hou, which is basically half to half.The existence of such a huge black army is mainly due to the feeling of the chief leader Sun Dewang, which is different from the second leader Liu Yucai who advocated the reform of arms to improve the combat effectiveness of the troops.In Sun Dewang's eyes, first, as long as they are from the Shanzhai, they are all soldiers who want to charge together when they start a war. What kind of soldiers are divided into soldiers?Second, Sun Dewang has occupied the mountain for many years, and his desire for pleasure has become more and more serious. The cottage has a large number of idlers, and there has been a camp record to satisfy the desires of the minions. The warehouse is also a stockade.Not to mention the chefs invited from Jining Mansion to cook for the chiefs, they even raised an opera troupe——Sun Dewang’s biggest hobby is watching operas besides playing with women. Sing a song to satisfy your spiritual needs.

However, Liu Yucai's (actually Long Qian's idea) suggestion to divide the war against the soldiers is indeed beneficial to the Shanzhai. First of all, the problem of weapon shortage can be partially resolved.In the 20th year of Guangxu's reign, the battle of the government army to suppress Mengshan has already made the Sun Dewang brothers clear that the weapons such as swords and spears that have been used by their ancestors for thousands of years are completely useless. fire shot.However, the copycat foreign guns are all captured from battles, and the quantity is limited. Most of them are collected from the copycats around Mengshan Mountain, some are made in Germany, and there are also products from Hanyang Arsenal.Ammunition is even more scarce, and every shot is less than one shot.The thing is so strange, because of the existence of Meng Shanzhai, the rich households in Mengyin, Feixian and other counties strengthened their Zhuang Ding's armed forces to the greatest extent, and spent money to equip them with as many foreign guns as possible to resist Meng Shanzhai possible looting.

It is undoubtedly a huge improvement to separate the war soldiers from the function. At least the limited foreign guns can be used in a centralized manner, which is more conducive to training.So last year, in the fifth month after Long Qian went up the mountain, Mengshanzhai carried out military innovation for the first time, and established eight teams, each with 120 soldiers, almost an infantry company of the Western regular army, equipped with foreign guns 50~80 sticks.There is also a cavalry team with more than a hundred people, led by the third leader Sun Deming himself.

Long Qian is the captain of the eighth team.Seeing that the third leader was angry, Long Qian explained in a low voice that the army that came this time was Yuan Shikai's Wuwei Youjun, a new army that the imperial court spent a lot of money to rectify after being stimulated by the defeat of Xiaodongyang in the Sino-Japanese War. Those green camps who smoke opium and eat empty pay and lack of training are comparable.What's more, according to the report of the spies, this time it is Cao Kun's thousands of elites. With our hundreds of foreign guns, we are really no match for them.

There was another sentence Long Qian held back in his heart and didn't say it. In terms of training, he was not the opponent of Yuan Shikai's new army.

"Third brother, don't get angry. Brother Long is also for the cottage." The big boss Sun Dewang stopped the angry third brother Sun Deming.Although the young man in front of him has been on the mountain for less than a year, he is brave and resourceful, and he is by no means afraid of death. His superb marksmanship is rare in the village.What's more, this person is not only good at marksmanship, but also outstanding in martial arts. Even Zhou Huanan, a disciple of Bajiquan who entered the room, was defeated by him.What's even more rare is that this guy can read and write!Meng Fu, the five-headed farmer with the highest level of education in the cottage, was quite impressed and often asked Long Qian for advice.Although it was short for Long Qian to go up the mountain, he made great achievements repeatedly, otherwise he would not have been promoted to the captain's position.Although his eighth team was established the latest, but under Long Qian's training, its combat strength is extraordinary, and it seems to have the momentum of the main force.

"Brother Longqian," Sun Dewang put down the polished brass bong in his hand, "how can our two thousand soldiers retreat without a fight? If word spreads like that, how can we hang around in Zhongnan, Shandong? Don't let others laugh Die? Don't give them a hard time, they don't know who I am, Sun Dewang!" Sun Dewang stood up, he was not tall, but he was very capable, staring at Long Qian with piercing eyes, "Even if you quit the cottage, let the officers and soldiers know Our Meng Shanzhai is amazing."