Speaking of Taiping Army and Nian Army, these two rebel armies, which fought against Manchu rule in the main battlefield in the late Qing Dynasty, are well known to women and children. In contrast, Miao Qianjiuling, another anti-Qing personage, is also a lofty figure, which few people know. Many people regard Miao's team as a member of the Nian Army, and even the generals of the Qing army who were flat and twisted in those days called him a Nian Army bandit in many letters. With such misunderstanding, Miao was buried in the prestige of the Nian Army and ignored by the public. In fact, Miao Jiajun was not a Nian Army. On the contrary, Miao Qianjiu developed and expanded Miao Jiajun under the slogan of "defending the clan" and under the guise of "resisting the Nian Army".

When the Nian Army Uprising surged in Huanghuai, Miao, who felt lost and unwilling to be lonely, joined the army in Zhang Le.

Nie Jun, who was born with mud legs, has extraordinary respect for intellectuals. Zhang Lexing attached great importance to Miao's arrival, welcomed him as a distinguished guest, and treated him with courtesy, calling him "red pen touting". But Miao despises Zhang Lexing, a rebellious hero, and finally chooses to leave. Long and heroic achievements, self-confidence and welcoming guests, both virtuous and vulgar are natural. With Zhang Lexing's courtesy, Miao Qianjiuling seems to have great confidence. He proudly ran to Jin Guangjian, the magistrate of Shouzhou, and volunteered to be the head coach of the regiment.

In China in the late Qing Dynasty, there was a relative surplus of talents. The popularity of private school education has greatly increased the proportion of intellectuals in society. In addition to the formal class, there are many classes who get fame by donating money, so there are many famous idle officials and poor officials who can't get a commission. When you see the golden light, you will be indifferent to a poor talkative person. Miao Qian 900 touched a nail in Jinguang Lane, but he was still unwilling. Back home, he shouted in front of his people that "building a village, accumulating millet and managing soldiers" might be because he was always boasting on weekdays. His strategic thinking did not win the response of his people, but was "laughed at" by everyone.

In desperation, Miao committed herself as a teacher for three years in order to paste her family. Compared with another giant of his time, we can also see the limitations of Miao's ideological realm caused by the extreme distress of material life. This man is Zeng Guofan!

1856 is the turning point of Miao's life. In the first month of that year, the Nian army swept through Wu Jiaji, Fengtai County, and defeated the local landlord armed forces, causing heavy losses to local tyrants and squires. They suddenly realized that Miao's strategy to treat soldiers was not entirely posturing, and it might be reasonable. Miao also lost no time in clamoring for the same old tune. Under the banner of "Imperial Twist", he founded Miao Jiajun with the support of the gentry. At that time, Zhu Yuanzhang put forward the political strategy of "building high walls, accumulating grain widely and slowly claiming the throne". Inspired by his fellow villagers, Miao put forward the political strategy of "building a village high, accumulating grain widely, killing thieves first, then claiming the throne". Miao Qianjiuling first changed the natural form of primitive villages in the past, dug ditches to build villages, and turned Wufengji, an originally idle village, into a castle with deep ditches and high walls. The subsequent war process proved the wisdom of Miao's move. During a period of time in northern Anhui, such polder villages have sprung up in eastern Henan. Inspired by this, Nian Jun began to build livestock farms on a large scale. Today, in the vast rural areas around Shenqiu and Xiangcheng in eastern Henan, there are still many villages with the word "Zhai", which is the war mark left by Miao Qian's invention.

Due to the correct strategy and proper use of tactics, Miao's power expanded rapidly. In four years, it has become a local force with thousands of villages and hundreds of thousands of people. In addition, Miao met Sheng Bao, a powerful Manchu official and imperial envoy, in Anhui, and was recommended and promoted many times in politics. Since then, the official career has been smooth, until the official ranks second. At this point, Miao can be said to have initially possessed similar opportunities and conditions as Zeng Guofan. But what Miao lacks in his bones is indifference to wealth and snobbery, and even the political acumen and foresight put forward by Ceng Gong, who has lived in officialdom for a long time. This huge difference in personal qualities directly led to the bittersweet ending of their lives.

It is more appropriate to describe the Qing Dynasty in 1860 as stormy. With the peaceful days in the south in full swing, the Northern Army Uprising blossomed everywhere, and the Qing government was stretched. green camp, the Eight Banners, paid attention to one thing and lost another. Britain and France also took the opportunity to make trouble and start the Opium War. The allied forces of Britain and France occupied Tianjin on August 24th this year, and Beijing in June+10/October 65438+March. Xianfeng led the courtiers and concubines to flee to Jehol, and forced their faces to change, which was called "autumn hunting Mulan". Shengbao quickly sent a letter to Miao, urging him to lead the elite soldiers to "go all the way to the end and come to Beijing tomorrow". Miao Qianjiuling said that "the volunteers are bigger than the diligent king", but in fact he was not ready to be transferred to the north, but privately played his own wishful thinking. The situation at that time made Miao Qian 900 make a fatal mistake, and his opportunistic nature was fully revealed at this time. He misjudged the situation, mistakenly thought it was time for him to rise among officials and bandits, and rashly set up a flag to compete with the Qing Dynasty. After the establishment of Tianshun Kingdom, it was called "Tianshun King of Hebei". However, although the Qing government was in a sinister situation, its luck was not exhausted after all.

The Qing court transferred Shengbao to Shaanxi in order to solve the contradiction between the Qing Dynasty and Yuan Jiasan and other Han generals. Li Xuyi, the general of Xiang Army, was appointed as the governor and imperial envoy of Anhui Province, in charge of the military affairs of Anhui Province. However, in order to push Xiang out of the Huaihe River, Miao instigated11on June 27th, 862, to make trouble with Xiang Huishi Yingzhou. On June 65438+February 65438 +0, Wang Jinkui killed 9 Xiang Chai Bing and 3 Xiang Chai Bing. Zeng Guofan was armed to the teeth and was very prosperous at that time. However, he was worried that the confrontation between Xiang and Miao would cause discord between him and the monks, so he took the initiative to ask him to withdraw from Shouzhou and Zhengyang areas. In his letter to Shen Baozhen, he said, "If our army is stupid enough to go to war with the Miao Party, it will be an enemy of the north and south of the Monk House. In today's world, is it possible for the general to have more disputes between fire and water? Therefore, we must leave early. " Zeng Guofan was born in a noble family and studied the history of classics. He was a scholar in his early years. He gave birth to the ability to help the world and solve crises. He never overstepped his wild desires and created a great career, but he still knows how to advance and retreat. Depending on the overall situation, he can put aside his personal spirit and be worthy of being the first Confucian in modern China. Zeng's feelings of worrying about the country and the people are exactly what Miao does not have. When Miao was anxious and afraid of poverty, he stepped forward to pursue wealth, which was absolutely necessary in the age of the jungle. His tragedy only lies in that after he developed, he was still expanding his personal desires indefinitely, dreaming of becoming the king of a country.

Once greed and arrogance are mixed with short-sightedness, destruction and failure are his inevitable destination. The private school education in China in Ming and Qing Dynasties was the education of manufacturing officials, not the education of enriching the country and benefiting the people. Those who set foot in it, once they can't be officials, can't do anything and don't want to do it again!

Reading has freed Miao from intellectual ignorance and spiritual absurdity, and has not changed the poverty and absurdity of real life. Books and knowledge broaden Miao's horizons, improve his ability to understand the world, and make him bear a lifelong nightmare like many lower-level intellectuals. He felt the bitterness and hardship of real life more strongly, and produced more humbleness and despair of life. The gap between ideal and reality, due to the increase of knowledge and self-confidence, has become bigger and bigger and more unbearable. Frustration breeds resentment, and success is inevitably frivolous. When everything in front of us was hopeless to be further changed through the imperial examination, the mental pain that could not be excreted precipitated and fermented in Miao's heart, emitting a lot of hostility and hatred. He hated the social reality he heard and saw, and everything he felt and experienced became the object of his complaint.

Traditional Confucian education made Miao despise the invasion, so he regarded the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's land-escaping movement as revenge for the Qing dynasty's rule. At the same time, his miserable life situation made him extremely dissatisfied with the decay and decline of the Qing Dynasty. In a couplet, he made a brilliant curse on both of them:

What kind of Catholicism dares to call the heavenly father a heavenly brother, lose affection and justice, in fact, it confuses heaven and earth, and when to reach out to heaven for heavenly power, genius has eyes;

These local officials are gangsters, underground ghosts and people in the open. The hinterland turned into hell, local taxes were levied everywhere, and the land was skinless.

Miao, who feels incompetent, reflects on his life experience and finds out the reasons for his downfall, which finally comes down to the delay of poetry. In "Sitting Alone in Autumn Clouds", he expressed his ambition with poetry and drank wine to drown his sorrows:

Holding a piece of paper to the blue light, sitting alone in the star string;

There are six screens in autumn, and insects sing at night.

Rhododendron crying blood, frost white, enchanting peep lamp;

I smile at the sky from the horizontal knife, and I will never miss that poor classic again in my life.

Let's not talk about the level of Miao poetry here, one thing is certain. One of the most heroic and moving poems in Tan Sitong's Prison Wall is to borrow Miao intact. After all, Miao was born nearly fifty years before Tan Sitong. But the ideological realm reflected in the second half sentence is very different! Careful comparison is very intriguing.

Miao Qian is in a hurry and is afraid of poverty. He fought against his fate, but for his own self-interest, his family was rich. It is good to have more hardships in life, but sometimes hardships will create some bad personality defects. Miao is too eager to get rid of poverty and embarrassment. In his view, whether it helps him pursue glory and whether it helps him realize his dream of wealth is the value standard to measure everything!

Tan Sitong's majestic realm of "going to stay in two Kunlun Mountains" was put forward in another environment. Tan sitong was born in an official family and had no worries about food and clothing. His father, Tan Jixun, later became the governor of Hubei and served as the governor of Huguang. When he was young, Tan Sitong was known as the "four sons of the late Qing Dynasty" with Chen, son of Hunan Governor Chen Baozhen, Wu Baochu, son of Guangdong Navy Governor, and Ding Huikang, son of Fujian Governor. In Tan Sitong's view, reading is the way to improve one's ability, and imperial examination is the bridge to realize one's political ambition. Therefore, it is difficult for him to express the feeling that Peilin, a budding seedling, "will never miss that poor classic again in my life". Politically, Tan Sitong was the alternate magistrate of Jiangsu before the political reform, so he went straight to the point and realized the rise of the nation and the prosperity of the country. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, Tan Sitong resolutely gave up the opportunity to escape and was willing to be Gongsun Chujiu in China's modern reform, which proved his selflessness and determination to advocate reform with blood.

Suffering can temper people's will, but it is also easy to create the personality loss of the poor. Although the superior environment is easy to eliminate people's fighting spirit, it can also make people in life cultivate a peaceful mind and eliminate unnecessary paranoia and hatred. Miao and Tan Sitong, one is to grab wealth by hook or by crook, and the other is to give up their existing advantages for ideals and beliefs. It is precisely because of this difference in life circumstances that they directed two completely different life dramas. If a person can regard official titles as dirt and money as dirt, and dare to give up for his ideals, he must be a firm person and a pure person.

* Note: It is said that there is no Ding Huikang among the four sons, but Tao Baolian, son of Mo Tao, governor of Shaanxi but Gansu. Once a short-sighted person is keen on speculation, disaster is not far from him. Miao doesn't know politics, but he is keen on playing politics.

From a poor scholar to a powerful separatist force, it is not only his strength but also his unrestrained personal ambition that expands with this development. He regarded the decline of the Qing Dynasty as extinction, misjudged the situation and predicted the extinction of the Qing Dynasty prematurely. Thus, one of the most unprincipled political hooligans in China's modern history began his short but colorful political speculation.

In February, Miao started his first public anti-Qing movement. In the same month, he sent Wang Jinkui to Lu 'an to reach an understanding with his old enemies Zhang Lexing and Gong Shude. Later, Zhu Xin and Lu Changhua were sent to Luzhou to contact the Chen Yucheng Department. He also expressed his willingness to "accumulate hair" and submit. Tian Fengmiao was the "king of drama" and sent Yu Anding with 700 people to Miao Laozhai to discuss with Miao the joint anti-Qing affairs. In June, the Anhui Governor Weng, who was trapped in Shouzhou City, executed Li Xu Zhuang, who had a gap with Miao, and imprisoned Sun Jiatai. Miao Qian 900 had no excuse to send troops, so he temporarily stopped fighting. Weng asked the court for pardon, and the Qing court sold him a favor and ordered Miao to "lead the regiment to make meritorious service."

Later, Miao besieged Shouzhou again on the grounds that other Qing generals were involved in killing Shouzhou. At the end of October, Shouzhou City was attacked and Weng and other officials were captured. In June 5438+the following year 10, Miao joined the Nian Army in Zhang Lexing, and Ma Rong and Taiping Army jointly attacked Yingzhou. Trapped Jia Zhen, the governor of Anhui Province, in the city. Thus, the second anti-Qing climax was set off in Miaoqian 90. But Miao didn't really want to unite the peasant army against the Qing Dynasty. He is going to jump ship in order to be complacent and become stronger. In March, the Qing army assembled in northern Anhui. Seeing that there was no hope of attacking Yingzhou, Miao turned to Shengbao for help. Shengbao played the court to forgive him. At the same time, Miao ordered the troops to "shave their hair" to show their intention, and secretly gathered in Yingshang, ready to sneak attack the allied forces from behind. In April, Miao, together with the Shengbao troops, attacked Jia Zhen's defenders from inside and outside, defeated the Tianjiao Coalition and solved the siege of Yingzhou. Zhang Lexing defeated YingShang, surrounded by Miao, only by the Ministry of desperate breakthrough, back to waterinfo set. Zhang Lexing was besieged and left, which greatly annoyed the Qing court and accused Miao of being ineffective in destroying the righteous with the wicked and secretly collaborating with the enemy.

In order to quell the dissatisfaction of the Qing court, Miao put the idea on Chen Yucheng. He sent a confidant to Luzhou disguised as a beggar and hid Miao's secret letter in a bamboo pole. Miao praised Chen Yucheng in his letter, and vowed that if the king of England could come to Shouzhou, he would organize four flags,1.20 thousand people, and cooperate with the king to seize Bianjing. Although Chen Yucheng knew that Miao had defected and acted in the opposite direction, he still pinned his hopes on Miao's capriciousness, hoping to make him turn around again. After the breakthrough, Chen Yucheng refused the Ministry's suggestion and insisted on going north to meet Miao. Historical facts show that as soon as they arrived in Shouzhou, Chen Yucheng, Wang Kui, Tian Yichen, Chen, Liang Xianxin and other important Taiping generals were captured by Miao. The king of England thundered at Miao: "Er Quan is really a scoundrel! A grass on the wall, the wind blows to both sides; The dragon wins to help the dragon, and the tiger wins to help the tiger. In the future, even thieves will not be named. " At the age of 26, King Chen Yucheng of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom died generously.

With the strangulation of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement and Nian Jun Movement, Miao's Japanese consciousness is coming to an end. Desperate, he can only send troops to fight against the Qing dynasty. However, its failure is doomed. Helping the enemy to destroy friends is tantamount to self-harm. When friendly forces don't exist, the enemy is still the enemy, but it has become much stronger because it has saved the power that should be consumed. Miao Qianjiuling died in Mengcheng in June+February, 5438, and Miao Jiajun, which had been rampant in the Huaihe River for more than ten years, instantly collapsed and vanished.

To sum up his life in Miao Qian 900, it should be accurate to sum it up in eight words: the heart is higher than the sky and the eyes are shorter than the inch!

A conspiracy can only be a conspiracy in the shadow. Conspiracy and politics can never replace strength to decide the outcome of a gladiator. Because conspiracy can only solve strategic problems, it can't replace tactics, let alone combat. It is always power, not conspiracy, that ultimately determines the success or failure of the struggle.