Three Kingdoms video king: The opening inventory of the top ten fighters!

Chapter 211
Zeng Guofan mentioned agriculture as a fundamental strategic position in the national economy. He believed that "the people's livelihood is based on harvesting, and the national economy is based on a good harvest."

Affected by the two Opium Wars, Zeng Guofan had his own views on the diplomatic relations between China and the West. On the one hand, he hated the Westerners' invasion of China. .

On the other hand, he is not blindly xenophobic, and advocates learning advanced science and technology from the West. For example, he said that buying foreign utensils... interviewing and recruiting thoughtful people, ingenious craftsmen, starting with exercises, and then trial-manufacturing, can suppress hair twists. You can be diligent and far-sighted.

Zeng Guofan's tenet of advocating loyalty to the emperor and governing the army with Confucianism is also implemented in the selection of generals, recruitment, army management, and coordination of internal and external relations within the army.

Zeng Guofan's military thought is very rich in connotation, and it is outstanding. He believes that the number of soldiers is not in the number but in the quality. "The country is strong when there are few soldiers." poor".

Advocating the separation of military and political affairs, and withholding their responsibilities, he purchased foreign guns, foreign cannons, and foreign ships to promote the modernization of Chinese military weapons.

Zeng Guofan took the selection of generals as the top priority in governing the army. He said, "The way to march is to choose generals first."

His selection criteria are both ability and political integrity, wisdom and courage, and he puts morality first, and summarizes the connotation of morality as "loyalty, righteousness and blood".

He proposed, "People with courage should ask the bloody men in our party, who have the spirit of loyalty and the secret of the secret, to conspire with them."

He also said, "A person with courage must first be able to govern the people, second, he must not be afraid of death, third, he must not care about fame and fortune, and fourth, he must endure hardship."

"Mostly, if there is loyalty and blood, then everyone will follow each other. If there is no loyalty and blood, then it looks like the four, and you can't rely on it in the end."

Zeng Guofan believed that "loyalty and blood" generals should be selected mainly from Confucian scholars who have been influenced by feudal ethics and have little officialdom.

According to Luo Ergang's statistics in "The Military System of the Hunan Army", among the 179 generals of the Hunan Army whose names, native places, backgrounds, and positions can be checked, 104 were Confucian scholars, accounting for 58%. It is rare in history.

Reforming the military system of the Qing Dynasty into a military recruitment system was also Zeng Guofan's first move in establishing the Hunan Army.

He said, "For several years, I have hated the habits of the military camp. Wu Bian has no one above the defense without losing his conscience, so he is determined not to use the battalion or the general."

Therefore, when he formed the Hunan Army, he advocated recruiting soldiers from the peasants instead of the citizens. His intention was that the soldiers recruited from the peasants were simple and strong, which was conducive to instilling the feudal ethics of loyalty and adapting to the harsh and cruel war environment.

Zeng Guofan also stipulated that "to recruit soldiers and brave men, you must obtain a guarantee, and make a list of prefectures, counties, residences, parents, brothers, wives' names, and skips, and attach them to each other for the sake of inventory."

Anyone without insurance will not be recruited. This approach of Zeng Guofan is completely inherited from the idea of ​​recruiting soldiers from Qi Jiguang, a famous anti-Japanese general in the late Ming Dynasty.

Zeng Guofan also changed the organization of the Green Battalion. The Hunan Army took the battalion as the basic combat unit, with a sentry below the battalion.

At the beginning of the Hunan Army, there were no officials above the battalion, and each battalion was under the jurisdiction of Zeng Guofan alone. After that, the number of battalions increased, and only then did they have the title of commander and division.

Zeng Guofan demanded that the army should be formed on the principle that generals must be selected by relatives, soldiers must be found by themselves, and restraint at all levels. From the command to the bravery of the soldiers, recruitment and selection are carried out step by step, which changed the "soldiers do not know each other, and soldiers and generals do not know each other". "The ills.

But it also clearly exposed the intention of establishing a private army, and since then created a precedent of "soldiers as generals" in modern China, and the situation of warlords supporting soldiers and separatism has begun to emerge.

Zeng Guofan worked hard on the strategy of governing the army, and advocated the use of Confucianism to govern the army, that is, to use the feudal ethics to educate the officers and soldiers, and to cultivate the officers and soldiers with benevolence, courtesy, loyalty and trust as the foundation of governing the army.

His purpose is to use this to maintain the morale of the army and cultivate a private army that is completely and absolutely obedient to himself. Therefore, he believes, "Those who use the army must first govern themselves, and then control the enemy."

Zeng Guofan's military thinking has influenced several generations, not to mention that his contemporary Hunan and Huai generals took Zeng Guofan as a model, and even many bourgeois military strategists later admired Zeng Guofan's military strategy.

When Zhang Zhidong, Yuan Shikai and others adopted Western methods to train the new army after the Sino-Japanese War, they also adopted many practices of Zeng Guofan in governing the army.

The military strategist Jiang Fangzhen of the Republic of China praised Zeng Guofan in his "National Defense Theory" as "a military genius" in modern history, and said that all leaders should follow Zeng Guofan's example.

Jiang made it clear that he wanted to learn from Zeng Guofan, and asked the generals in the army to "recognize history clearly and emulate Zeng Hu."

Zeng Guofan devoted his whole life to Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, but he did not blindly worship Cheng-Zhu's Neo-Confucianism. In fact, he also learned a lot from other branches of Song and Ming Confucianism. faction.

In his political practice and military struggle, Zeng Guofan also gradually saw the limitations of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism's "instructive words, or lost in narrowness", or "disease in trivialities", or "inclined to quietness".

Under such circumstances, Zeng Guofan showed a tolerant academic attitude towards the theory of mind. Regarding the academic debate between Cheng Zhu Neo-Confucianism and Lu Wang's theory of mind, he believed that the two disputes should be based on the same, avoid their differences, make full use of their strengths, and embrace everything , Foster strengths and circumvent weaknesses, and promote the development of Confucianism.

Zeng Guofan also made up for the limitations of Neo Confucianism with the resources of qi in the theory of generation, saying that "Zhang Zizhi's "Zhengmeng" is full-bodied and upright, but ignorant and ignorant."

According to the idea of ​​qi theory, Zeng Guofan believes that all things in the world are born of qi, and qi is the ultimate basic element that constitutes all things in the world.

However, at the same time, Zeng Guofan believes that although the qi of Taihe and Yixuan is popular, and the qi of all things in the world is "equal", the qi endowed by people and things, saints and ordinary people are not the same.

In terms of the comparison between human beings and things, people get the whole of qi, but things only get partial qi, so people have intelligence, while things only get physical nature.

As far as human beings are concerned, the qi endowed by saints is clear and thick, while the qi endowed by ordinary people is turbid and thin.

Zeng Guofan inherited the style of Fang Bao and Yao Nai of the Tongcheng School, and established the "Xiangxiang School" of ancient prose in the late Qing Dynasty, which is an important representative of Huxiang culture.

When he discusses ancient prose, he emphasizes sonorous tones, and is able to do things with inexhaustibility; the ancient prose he writes is profound, grand and magnificent, and can be transported with the atmosphere of Han Fu, so there is a majestic and magnificent artistic conception, which can revive the dry and dull atmosphere of Tongcheng school. Disadvantages, praised by future generations.

Zeng's patriarchal clan was Tongcheng, but there were some changes and developments, and he selected and compiled a "Hundreds of Classics and History" as a model of writing.

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(End of this chapter)