Sino-French war

Sino-Japanese Wars

The Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, in which Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China in the late Qing Dynasty, was a shameful war in the history of China. The war lasted for nine months, and the Qing Dynasty lost 60,000 troops and captured more than 3,000 people. It lost its important strategic ally Korea, ceded Taiwan Province Province to Japan, and made Japanese forces penetrate into Liaodong.

The result of this war greatly stimulated Japan's ambition to invade China. It is precisely because of this that Japan formulated a national war policy aimed at occupying China and made long-term preparations, and finally launched an eight-year war of aggression against China from 1937 to 1945. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that this war has changed the mutual status and relations between China and Japan, and caused a series of troubles between the two countries since then.

However, today's main comments on the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 all attribute the failure of the war to the corruption of the Manchu system and the gap with Japanese equipment. It seems that the failure of the Manchu dynasty has become inevitable before the war.

Ten years ago, the TV series "Beiyang Navy" filmed by CCTV further deepened this view. However, by chance, when I learned the real situation of the Ming Dynasty's anti-Japanese and aid Korea 300 years before this war, my thoughts began to change. Both wars took place in the same place, facing the same opponent Japan, and the nature of the war was also a war against Japanese aggression.

However, compared with the complete failure of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the Ming Dynasty successfully expelled the Japanese pirates from the Korean peninsula, making Japan huddle on its own land for the next 200 years, not daring to cross the line. Different endings are thought-provoking By comparing the strength of both sides of the two wars and the course of the war, we can clearly see that the failure of the Manchu Dynasty is not inevitable, and we are fully capable of winning that war. It was the mistakes of Manchu rulers and officials that destroyed the excellent war situation and made us lose the war in the end.

1. Compared with the enemy (Japan)

Compared with the Japanese army in 1592, the Japanese army in 1893 has many similarities and differences in military strength, but its international military strength is quite different.

During the period of 1592, Japan just completed its domestic reunification. Toyotomi Hideyoshi has always attached great importance to militarism education. Since he came to power, he has made extermination a national policy and formulated a three-step plan in ten years: the first step is to annihilate North Korea within three years, the second step is to annihilate Ming within five years and move to Beijing, and the third step is to March into countries such as Annan and India to dominate the world. Today, many scholars laugh at the madness and mental retardation of this plan.

But judging from Japan's military strength at that time, he made such a decision for a certain reason. After the reunification of the country, its regime flourished. The Japanese army has a total of 300,000 troops and participated in the Japanese civil war for many years. Has extremely rich combat experience and unprecedented combat effectiveness. It can be said that it is the teacher of tigers and wolves. From the perspective of the army, the Japanese army is well equipped, especially to win the civil war. Japan attaches great importance to the development of firearms and has been buying firearms from Portuguese and other colonists for many years. Its firearms are even more advanced than those of the Ming Dynasty in some respects.

According to Japanese historical records, before the Korean War of aggression, there were as many as 60,000 Japanese soldiers equipped with firearms, accounting for nearly one tenth of the army. Encouraged by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's militarism, the morale of Japanese soldiers is unprecedentedly high. At the same time, Japanese cavalry units are also quite strong, with heavy armor and strong defense capabilities. Its officers are also remnants of the Japanese civil war, and their combat experience is quite rich. From the naval point of view, there are as many as 1000 Japanese warships, and gunboats imitate Portuguese warships, with many guns, strong firepower and fast impact.

Judging from the world at that time, Japan's military strength was also jaw-dropping. At that time, Europe was full of small countries. Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and other countries can throw their weight around in Southeast Asia, but their national strength is only 40,000 to 50,000. The Ottoman Turkish Empire dominated the Middle East, but its national strength was about 200,000. In the Battle of Constantinople, most of Turkey's 500,000 troops were reduced by other countries, and there were very few real Turks.

/kloc-in the 6th century, Turkey's national strength declined, and its military strength was greatly reduced, which was far less comparable to that of Japan in the same period. At the same time, the total number of ships used by Britain and Spain in the naval battle between the "Armada" and the "British Imperial Fleet" is even less than that used by Japan when it launched the Korean War of aggression. The scale and firepower of the Lefadu naval battle between the United Fleet of Christian countries and the Royal Turkish Fleet to stop Turkey from going west were also much smaller than that of the Sino-Japanese naval battle in Lvliang. Therefore, it is probably not an exaggeration to say that Japan is the second military power in the world except the Ming Dynasty.

What's more, before the Ming Dynasty entered the war, Japan had occupied most of the strategic locations in northern Korea, with obvious geographical advantages. In order to attack Japan in the Ming Dynasty, it was necessary to fight fiercely, which was precisely the advantage of Japan's superior firearms. Before the Japanese invasion of Korea, Shi Xing, commander-in-chief of the Ministry of Military Affairs of the Ming Army, advocated peace, and he was worried about the strong combat effectiveness of the Japanese army.

However, Japan in the Sino-Japanese War was far from it. At that time, Japan's military strength had been greatly enhanced after the Meiji Restoration, but compared with contemporary European and American countries, there was still a big gap. According to Japanese Prime Minister Hirofumi Ito's report to the Emperor, before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the total amount of military power available to Japan was only over 80,000.