Ding, the naval prefect was born in the army rank.
Xu Hua March 2000 10
"If the navy is defeated, then only the battle against the ship will be exhausted." —— Ding Changru, the prefect of Beiyang Navy
In the history of naval operations around the world, many famous generals who are brave and good at fighting are experts in naval tactics; But a century ago, in the east, there was a man from the army who commanded the largest naval fleet in Asia at that time. He is the prefect (that is, the commander of the fleet) of beiyang fleet in the Qing Empire.
Helpless Anhui orphans
1836165438+1October18, that is, on the tenth day of October in the sixteenth year of Daoguang in Qing Dynasty, Ding was born in a poor peasant's home in Shizuitou Village (now called Ding Jiakan), North Township, Lujiang County, Anhui Province. No one expected that this little creature, croaking in a small room with air leakage everywhere, could become the commander of the naval fleet that posed a great threat to East Asia in half a century.
When Ding was born, his name was Ding Xianda, whose name was Yuting, with the same number of chapters. Because of his poor family background, Ding had to leave his parents when he was a child, went out to work as a helper in a large family to make a living, and later came to a tofu workshop as an apprentice. In the early years of Xianfeng (185 1), the Lujiang area was unfortunately hit by a once-in-a-century drought, and his parents died. Ding, who was only 14 years old, lost his parents' love forever and became a helpless orphan, suffering from human sufferings.
In the year when Ding became an orphan, a great event happened in the far south of China, which later spread to Anhui and other provinces 14. This important event, which completely changed Ding's life, was the peasant uprising launched by Hong Xiuquan, the deity leader of Jintian Village, Guiping County, Guangxi-it was also the beginning of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom revolutionary movement that later spread to half of China and lasted for 14 years. 1853, the Taiping Army captured Jinling (now Nanjing), Jiangsu Province, and made its capital here, renamed Tianjing. In the same year, the Taiping Army swept the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River northward to Chaohu Lake in Anhui Province and captured Lujiang County. Ding, a 0/6-year-old disciple of Tofu Workshop/KLOC, left his millstone putter and went to Taiping Army with the ideal of "plowing, eating rice, dressing, spending money, being uneven everywhere and starving". Soon, Ding joined the Taiping Army in Anqing, the capital of Anhui Province, and began a long and changeable military career.
186 1 summer, Ceng Guoquan, Zeng Guofan's younger brother, commanded the Xiang army to lay siege to Anqing. After a stalemate in the offensive and defensive war, the Taiping rebels in the city ran out of ammunition and food. Ding's 300 Taiping rebels in Cheng Xueqi surrendered to Xiang; He was incorporated into the Xiang army with the Ministry and began to work for the Qing government.
186 1 At the end of the year, Li Hongzhang, a native of Hefei, Anhui Province, was ordered to train the Huai Army, and Cheng Xueqi led his Anhui subordinates Ding and others to return to Li Hongzhang's Huai Army. From then on, the most important first turning point and rise in Ding Junbing's career began.
The generals of Huai army frequently reported good news.
1862, ding led Huai army troops to Shanghai to suppress Taiping army and its knife club. Ding, who was particularly brave in the battle, was taken a fancy to by Liu Mingchuan, a famous soldier of Huai Army. He led the cavalry to be promoted to battalion officer and was awarded the rank of joining the army. Since then, Ding has commanded his own cavalry units and successively participated in the war to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Nian Army. On the battlefield of the Jianghuai land, Ding's Huai cavalry galloped freely, winning every battle and winning good news. 1864, Ding, with outstanding military exploits, was promoted to lieutenant; 186 8, 32-year-old Ding Shengcheng was promoted to company commander (equivalent to today's teachers) and was named "Xie Yong Batulu" by the court. At this time, Ding, who has just turned 30, has become a senior military attache, riding on a war horse in high spirits, and the appearance of poor orphans is long gone.
From 65438 to 0874, the civil war basically subsided and the Qing government reduced its troops. Liu Mingchuan, the satrap of Huai Army, intends to cut Ding's cavalry. At that time, this disarmament plan was naturally strongly resisted by Ding. Fierce man Liu Mingchuan, plot against "life should call and kill". Hearing the news, Ding abandoned his official overnight and fled back to his hometown in Anhui.
Ding's cultural level is not high, so he feels uncomfortable and unhappy at home. However, Ding Furen Wei's family is a smart woman with considerable insight. She often comforted her husband and said, "When you make achievements, you should treat them with your heart." . In this way, after a few years, the family became more and more embarrassed, and the senior military attache could not sit at home all the year round. Ding, unwilling to be lonely, went north in the autumn of the third year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1877) and sought a job in Beijing.
Empress Dowager Cixi personally summoned the generals of the Huai Army who made great achievements in those years in the Forbidden City. After a routine greeting, Empress Dowager Cixi ordered the idle general to be sent to Gansu. However, Ding didn't want to go to the barren land in the northwest. So Ding went from Beijing to Tianjin to meet Li Hongzhang, the old superior of Huai Army, now governor of Zhili and minister of Beiyang trade, and wanted to ask his classmate teacher to find another job for himself. Li Hongzhang immediately called on his former Huai Army Minister Ding. He said to ding: "at present, the establishment of a western-style navy lacks the command of the people;" If you can go to Britain to study the navy, you can entrust a heavy responsibility when you come back. " So, Ding wrote to the Ministry of War (equivalent to today's Ministry of National Defense) for approval and re-entered the door of Li Hongzhang.
1877, the Qing government sent the first batch of naval students to study in Britain and France. Soon, all four gunboats ordered in Britain set sail for home. Li Hongzhang originally wanted to appoint Taoist Xu Jingcheng as a naval inspector. However, due to Xu Jingcheng's opposition at this time, from the long-term consideration of naval development, it is necessary to have a military commander from Huai Army to control the shock. Therefore, Li Hongzhang designated the future commander-in-chief of the navy as battle-hardened Ding. /kloc-at the end of 0/879, Li Hongzhang formally issued an order to ask General Ding to stay in Beiyang; Ding Xuan was appointed to supervise the naval gunboats of Beiyang Navy and officially began his career as a naval commander. This is the second turning point in his life and an important rise.
At the end of 1880, the 1350-ton cruisers "Chaoyong" and "Yangwei" ordered by the Qing government at Armstrong Shipyard in England were completed, and Ding was ordered to lead more than 200 officers and men and sailors, including Deng Shichang, to ship these two ships to England. This is Ding's first time to go abroad and the only trip to Europe in his life. He visited fortresses, military ports, shipyards and arsenals in Britain, France and Germany, which was an eye-opener. 1881In mid-August, Ding set sail for home, passing through the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, Suez Canal, Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean, and it took nearly 60 days to reach Hong Kong. With the help of this sea patrol team, the Qing government rewarded Ding's "Xilin Batulu" for being courageous and awarded the first-class title.
1882 In August, Ding was ordered to lead three warships to North Korea on a diplomatic mission. After returning home, he was given a yellow jacket (a high political treatment in the Qing Dynasty). 1883, Ding awarded the company commander of Tianjin Town and commander of Beiyang Navy. 1885 10, the Qing government established the Prime Minister's Naval Affairs Office (hereinafter referred to as the Naval Affairs Office). Soon, the 7335-ton armored ships Dingyuan, Zhenyuan and cruiser Jiyuan, which were ordered from Germany, arrived in China, and Ding accompanied the Minister of the Navy, Prince Yishi (the father of Emperor Guangxu) and Li Hongzhang to inspect the navy, which was well received. 1In August, 886, Ding led four ships, including Dingyuan, to dock in Nagasaki, Japan for maintenance. In the meantime, the Japanese police deliberately sought trouble, and many China sailors were killed or injured in the conflict; At that time, the situation was in danger of escalating into war. Ding advocated solving the conflict through legal procedures to avoid further military conflicts between the two countries. With his efforts, the two sides finally reached an agreement and expressed mutual sympathy for the dead and wounded.
/kloc-at the end of 0/887, four cruisers, Zhiyuan, Jingyuan and Laiyuan, ordered by the Qing government from Yingde, arrived in China. At this point, there is only one capital ship in beiyang fleet, with the largest lineup in Asia. 1888 10, the Constitution of Beiyang Navy was promulgated, and beiyang fleet officially became an army; Ding was appointed by the imperial court as the prefect of Beiyang Navy (that is, the commander of the fleet), commanding more than 40 large and small ships with a total displacement of more than 40,000 tons. At this point, Ding stepped into the most brilliant peak of his military career. At the age of 52, he became the commander of a naval fleet that no one can despise.
Regrettably, Ding, as the commander of the army, has never passed the naval business during his five-year naval leadership career. This was extremely harmful in the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.
Experience the great naval battle in the Yellow Sea
At the beginning of 1894, Ding was named as a minister (Shang Shu is equivalent to a minister in today's government). In May, a peasant uprising broke out in North Korea; At the request of the North Korean government, the Qing government sent troops to help suppress it. Citing the Tianjin Treaty, the Japanese government also sent troops to North Korea, deliberately provoking war.
On July 25, the Japanese naval joint fleet attacked the South Korean troop transport fleet in the Toyota waters of North China; In August, the Chinese and Japanese governments declared war on each other at the same time, and the Sino-Japanese war officially began.
As more and more Japanese troops entered Korea, the Qing government decided to send more troops to fight in Korea again. On September 16, Ding was ordered to lead beiyang fleet to escort reinforcements to land at the mouth of Yalu River from Dalian Bay. Return the next morning.
At noon 1 1: 30, beiyang fleet found that the Japanese joint fleet was coming from the southwest, and a fierce battle at sea was imminent. Ding immediately ordered beiyang fleet to change his flying squad from 50% discount to yan zhen (horizontal array) to meet them when he returned. At the same time, he also issued three operational instructions to the whole fleet:
(1) Ships of the same ship type should act in concert and assist each other.
(2) Always aim at the enemy with a bow and keep the position as the basic tactic.
(3) Ships should follow the flagship as much as possible.
For various reasons, beiyang fleet's formation when attacking the enemy failed to become a unified horizontal line, but became a scattered formation similar to the "herringbone". The UFJ Fleet 12 warship is divided into two tactical units: four high-speed ships, such as Yoshino, are the first guerrillas, and a single column is used as a sharp knife in front of the team; The remaining eight ships served as our team, and the Dan column filed forward behind the first guerrilla. At this time, the sea surface of Dadonggou in the Yellow Sea where the two fleets are located is calm, and the dead silence is creepy, but the smoke from the chimney of the warship is rising upwards. When the distance between the two fleets was 12km, the Japanese joint fleet changed its course slightly to the left and rushed to the right of beiyang fleet. 12: 50, the distance between the two sides is 5330 meters. The main gun of beiyang fleet's flagship Dingyuan roared in front of its 305cm caliber, and other ships also fired one after another, thus starting a rare naval battle between China and Japan in the Yellow Sea in modern world history.
At the beginning of the naval battle, Dingyuan shot down the flying bridge that had been in disrepair for a long time. Ding, who was directing the battle on the flying bridge, fell on the deck, and Liu, the right-wing company commander and captain of Dingyuan in beiyang fleet, took the place of the commander. Soon, the Japanese ship's artillery destroyed the flag on Dingyuan Island, and beiyang fleet lost unified battlefield command. The Japanese First Guerrilla pounced on beiyang fleet's weak right-wing ships "Chaoyong" and "Yangwei" at high speed and sank them. The two tactical detachments of the Japanese joint fleet turned to the left rear and the right rear respectively, interspersed with circuitous beiyang fleet, which caused beiyang fleet to be caught between Scylla and Charybdis. At 40 o'clock in 17, the Japanese joint fleet voluntarily withdrew from the battlefield and headed southeast. The cruel strangulation at sea that lasted for five hours came to an end.
In this battle-scale naval battle, the number of warships of Chinese and Japanese navies participating in the war is 12, which is roughly evenly matched. As the prefect of beiyang fleet and the commander of the battlefield in China, Ding's command of the battlefield was a serious mistake. The specific mistakes are as follows: Ding directed beiyang fleet to form a horizontal line that was not conducive to maneuvering, and adopted a tactic of "bowing to the enemy" that was not conducive to fully developing firepower; Moreover, their agents and flagship agents were not clearly defined before the war, and no remedial measures were taken during the war, which completely lost their command functions and left the entire fleet in a passive situation of leaderless and fragmented. In this naval battle, although the Japanese joint fleet suffered a certain blow, it did not lose a ship; And beiyang fleet lost five warships. Obviously, it is directly responsible for beiyang fleet's fiasco in the Yellow Sea naval battle.
Weihai Weiberg
After the Yellow Sea naval battle, beiyang fleet sailed back to Lushunkou military port to repair the ship, Ding went ashore to recuperate, and presided over the repair of the injured warship. At the end of June+10, 5438, Japanese soldiers invaded China in two ways: breaking through the Yalu River defense line of the Qing army in North Korea and advancing step by step; The other way landed at Huayuankou in the central coastal area of Liaodong Peninsula and quickly attacked southern Liaoning. Ding, without asking his boss Li Hongzhang, led beiyang fleet to the Ahava military port in Shandong Peninsula. During the 14 days when the Japanese army landed at Huayuankou, beiyang fleet did not attack. After leading the joint fleet to cover the landing of the army, Lieutenant General Ding, commander of the Japanese joint fleet, said frankly: "If Governor Ding leads the fleet and sends several torpedo boats to attack me, how can our army land safely?" 165438+1In late October, the Japanese army captured the Lushunkou military port, which is known as "the first fortress in Asia", and Ding had to send beiyang fleet to Ahava military port alone.
After the Japanese army captured Liaodong Peninsula, it revised the original battle plan in mid-June+February, 5438, and decided to send troops across the sea to launch the Shandong Peninsula campaign aimed at annihilating beiyang fleet. At this point, for China, the war has been extremely dangerous. Once beiyang fleet, who lives alone in a corner of Ahava, is annihilated, the war will surely end in China's complete failure. However, in such a grim situation, beiyang fleet did not carry out active and effective mobile operations. Ding ignored the clear operational instructions given to him by Li Hongzhang and the imperial court for many times to attack the enemy, led the fleet to passively stand by and watch the Japanese transport fleet land in Rongcheng Bay again, thus losing the opportunity to fight against the enemy. After landing in Rongcheng Bay, the Japanese army quickly pushed westward in two ways, reaching the battle of attacking Ahava military port by land and sea.
18951Since late October, Ding has led beiyang fleet officers and men to fight tenaciously with the enemy attacked by land and sea in Ahava military port. On February 4th, General Philip Mante, commander of the British Navy's Far East Fleet, entered the Ahava military port to persuade Ding to give up his resistance and lead his troops to surrender. Ding refused. Ding also sternly rejected the tender surrender of General Ito Sukehiro, commander of the Japanese joint fleet, saying, "I will never give up the meaning of serving my country, but I will die today as a minister."
After several bitter battles, beiyang fleet suffered heavy losses. On February 9th, more than 40 Japanese warships all sailed to the entrance of Ahava military port, trying to launch a storm. Ding took the cruiser "Jingyuan" to fight, but unfortunately the gun ran aground and Ding was rescued from the ship by sailors. At this time, there was chaos in the garrison, and a few foreign instructors connected with some naval officers to incite soldiers to bully the city and lead the people to surrender to the enemy. Ding was not moved at all. He declared in awe, "My governor will come here, but I will die first. I must not sit and watch this! " He also told his soldiers to stick to their aid righteously. On the night of 1 1, Ding knew that there was no hope for land reinforcements, so he asked his men to void his official seal, and then committed suicide by taking too much opium, at the age of 59. The rest of beiyang fleet surrendered to the enemy; Soon, the Sino-Japanese War ended in China's complete failure.
A general full of tragedy.
Ding is a naval general from the army, and his post of prefect of Beiyang Navy is the most brilliant culmination of his military career. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, which he ushered in in in this prominent position, sent him to the end of his life. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 brought bad luck to Ding, and put on a heavy coat full of tragedy for this brave but not good at fighting.
As early as after the first battle of Toyoshima, he led the Ding fleet to sea several times and failed to attack the enemy. He began to be played by some senior civil servants in the court. On August 26, the court dismissed Ding, and after Li Hongzhang repeatedly urged him to protect him, Ding was granted a "temporary exemption from punishment". However, in the future, "if the enemy ship suddenly arrives and retreats, it will be dealt with according to military law and will never be soft."
In the Yellow Sea naval battle, beiyang fleet lost five warships, but the Japanese didn't lose any, and Ding was involved again. 1 16 years 10 16 days, the imperial court issued an imperial edict: "Recently, Lushun warned the navy division that the prefect Ding could not be effective, so he took off his ministerial title and wore a high hat to show a thin punishment. I am still trying to find a way to make a difference by wearing a sin and see what will happen later. " 165438+1October 22nd, Lushunkou military port fell, and on 26th, the imperial court issued a decree again: "The prefect's rescue was ineffective, and his guilt was particularly heavy! Ding was immediately dismissed, but he still held his post for the time being, guarding the seaports closely and watching the aftermath. "
In the battle of Shandong Peninsula, Ding was always in the position of an old school. He is pessimistic and full of inner contradictions, so it is naturally difficult to command the war calmly. 1895 65438+1October 24th, Ding said in a telegram to Li Hongzhang: "If the navy is defeated, there is no reason to quit smoking, and the ship is empty. The purpose is to repeatedly urge the decisive battle to export, but the soldiers in the army are chilling and the overall situation is even harder to imagine. "
On the Liu Gongdao, which is full of snow and guns in the Ahava military port, Ding knows that beiyang fleet, who is caught in a tight sea-land attack by the Japanese army, is doomed. Ding knows better that this fleet, which was built by the Qing Dynasty for 20 years, was completely annihilated by the Japanese army, and only the guillotine was waiting for him in Beijing. Therefore, at this time, I have made up my mind to die. He even hired six carpenters to make a coffin for himself and lay in it to see if it was the right size. On October 27th, 65438/KLOC-0, Ding wrote a personal letter to Dai Zongqian, commander-in-chief of Ahava Army. This letter truly reveals Ding's extremely pessimistic and disappointed state of mind at that time: "Being burdened with a heavy sense of guilt, complaining about others and not making waves is not enough to atone for suicide. Take care of yourself and rot. Do you cherish this body? ..... But at present, the military situation is changing rapidly, and the official rhetoric is straightforward and unpredictable. If things are tight, there is no need to strike, and the crime is determined; Especially when it comes out, it is a crime to prevent or censor it. If you are selfish, you will still lose face if you have to fight. I am too busy to plan success or failure. "
In a dilemma and unable to solve the case, Ding ignored the order and chose a garrison port until the ship was empty, which was the best relief for himself. And he led the fleet to defend the port, which was tantamount to doing nothing. At most, he treated a group of living warships as dead batteries for limited resistance, and finally destroyed this huge fleet that cost a lot of money to build. This violated his prefect duty and is not worthy of praise from future generations. However, Ding's last-minute unyielding action was, in the final analysis, to defend the last days of history for himself. This shows the complexity and tragedy of historical figures!
After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the Qing government had no sympathy for Ding, because he was "extremely guilty". It was not until April 25th, 19 10 (the second year of Xuantong), after the death of Emperor Guangxu, that the Qing government restored Ding's original rank on the grounds that he had "exhausted his life in the war and the circumstances were pitiful". Ding's body was transported back to his hometown in Anhui and buried on the mound of Xiaoshui Stork Mountain in Meishan Village, Yanqiao Township, Wuwei County.
A generation of naval generals who didn't do much was buried in the hills of Anhui. History is so incredible.