Shi Dakai

Shi Dakai

Shi Dakai (March 1831 June 27, 1863), nicknamed Yada and nicknamed shigandang, was born in Heping County, Guangdong Province in Guixian County, Guangxi (now Qishi Township, Gangbei District, Guigang City). He was a famous general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and a military strategist in modern China. He was once honored as "Yiwang, the chief General of shengshendiantong army", and was honored as "Yiwang".

In the 27th year of Daoguang (1847), Shi Dakai followed Hong Xiuquan and joined the God cult. In December of the first year of Xianfeng (1851), he was established in Yong'an. Shi Dakai was granted the title of "Yiwang 5000 years old" in Jin Dynasty. In February of the fifth year of Xianfeng (1855), Hunan navy was severely damaged in Jiujiang and hukou. After winning the western expedition, Wuchang was conquered. In November, he marched into Jiangxi and captured a large area of territory in Anhui, Jiangxi and Hubei provinces. In the seventh year of Xianfeng (1857), Tianjing incident was called "Yiwang, the chief General of the left army". On June 2, he left Tianjing again. In October, the soldiers of Anqing entered Jiangxi Province and fought from east to West in an attempt to rescue the troops of Ruizhou, Linjiang and Ji'an besieged by the Xiang army. After the defeat, they gave up Jiangxi, managed Zhejiang and Fujian, and moved to the southern provinces. In May of the second year of Tongzhi (1863), they led the troops to the South Bank of Dadu River. Finally, the whole army was destroyed and Shi Dakai was captured. He died in Chengdu on June 27 at the age of 32.

Shi Dakai is one of the most legendary figures in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. He is considerate of the people's livelihood, and his life and deeds are praised by later generations. He is regarded as "the most perfect image of the peasant uprising in Chinese history".

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Life of the characters

Growth background

In 1831, Shi Dakai was born into a relatively wealthy peasant family in Beishan, Guixian county (now Dakai village, Qishi Township, Gangbei District, Guigang City). His father, Shi Changhui, died early when he was about five to nine years old. Leaving behind the weak wife and children, the family situation is not as good as before. When Dakai was a boy, he did business as well as farming. Sell chickens and ducks, be a cattle dealer. The coal is transported to Pingtianshan mining area for sale. Shi Dakai didn't have a lot of property, but he also had some money. When his father came, he herded cattle for others and bought some fields. Later, he bought cattle for herding and gradually became rich.

At the age of 14, Shi Dakai has become an awe inspiring man and has long shouldered the burden of maintaining his family. He traveled in the rivers and lakes and made friends with heroes from all over the world. He had contacts with Luo Kuo, the leader of heaven and earth society, and Zhang Zhao, the big headed sheep, who were active in Xunwu area at that time. He also established a close relationship with the workers and farmers in Pingtianshan mining area, and prepared good social conditions for later joining the God worship Association. So later, when the Taiping army was trapped in yonganzhou, they could call Longshan miners to help.

Join the uprising

In 1847, Shi Dakai was 16 years old. Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan, who were preparing for the anti Qing uprising in the name of spreading Christianity in Guangxi, came to visit and invited them to work together. Shi Dakai promised with emotion that he would destroy his family three years later and lead more than 4000 people to take part in the Jintian uprising. He was named the commander of the left army and "wing king", which means "feather king" It's called "the Heavenly Kingdom".

Repeatedly making war contributions

In the second year of Xianfeng (1852), after Xiao Chaogui, the Western King, died in Changsha, Hunan Province, the Taiping army fell into the anti encirclement of the Qing army under the city of Changsha. The situation was extremely critical. Shi Dakai led his troops to cross the Xiangjiang River westward and open up a base in Hexi, which alleviated the food shortage of the Taiping army. He defeated the invading enemy many times and won the "great victory in shuiluzhou", which greatly reduced the morale of the Qing army After withdrawing, they jumped out of the encirclement, captured Yueyang and occupied Wuhan. They went down from Wuchang to Jinling in 28 days and marched into 1800 Li. They were invincible and invincible. The Qing army was so frightened that they called it "shigandang".

In March of the third year of Xianfeng (1853), the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Jinling, was renamed Tianjing. Shi Dakai stayed in Beijing to assist Yang Xiuqing, the eastern king, in handling government affairs. After the establishment of the capital, all the kings became hedonistic and chose beauties. They destroyed their houses for the purpose of building the palace. They owned the wealth of the national treasury for themselves, but Shi Dakai was clean and never participated.

In the autumn of the third year of Xianfeng (1853), Shi Dakai was ordered out of Anqing to control the western expedition. He broke the tradition that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom attached great importance to the capture of cities and despised the construction of base areas. He adopted a steady strategy and gradually expanded the base area. He personally directed the capture of Luzhou (now Hefei), the temporary provincial meeting of Anhui Province in the Qing Dynasty, forcing the famous general Jiang Zhongyuan to commit suicide.

Since there was no grass-roots government in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom before, local administration was blank. After Shi Da arrived in Anhui, he organized people to register their household registration, elected grass-roots officials, and set up a provincial, county and county-level local administrative system to attract talents. At the same time, he cleaned up military discipline, restored public order, provided relief for poverty, and expressed sympathy In addition, tax laws and taxes were formulated to provide materials for the political and military activities of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

At the beginning of the fourth year of Xianfeng (1854), Shi Dakai left Anhui Province and returned to Beijing to report on his work. The leadership of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom fully affirmed Shi Dakai's practice. From then on, they gave up the utopian idea of absolute equalitarianism and comprehensively carried out economic policies in line with the reality.

In the autumn of the fourth year of Xianfeng (1854), Zeng Guofan and Shi Dakai weaved a net in Jiujiang and hukou, opening a long-lasting war. This was also the first time Zeng Guofan and Shi Dakai met. The Taiping Army met the fierce counter attack of the Xiang army on the battlefield of the western expedition, retreated steadily and lost thousands of miles of territory. Seeing that the biggest gap between the two armies lies in the Navy, Shi Dakai ordered people to imitate the ship style of the Xiang army and step up the training of the Navy. At the critical moment when the Xiang army was approaching Jiujiang, Shi Dakai became the commander of the western expedition army again and went to the former enemy's command personally. He defeated the Xiang army twice in Hukou and Jiujiang at the beginning of 1855. The Xiang navy was defeated. The commander Zeng Guofan drowned himself and was rescued by his subordinates. The Western Front Army entered full prosperity. In the autumn of the same year, Shi Dakai took command of Jiangxi Province and went to seven prefectures and 47 counties for four months. Because of his strict military discipline, pragmatic administration, caring for the people, and thirsty for talents, Jiangxi people vied for support. Many intellectuals who were not friendly to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also turned to support the Taiping army. The team soon expanded from more than 10000 people to more than 100000 people. His opponents lamented that "the people's will has changed and the general situation is gone." .

In March of the sixth year of Xianfeng (1856), Shi Dakai defeated the Xiang army in Zhangshu, Jiangxi Province. So far, Nanchang, where Zeng Guofan, the commander of the Xiang army, was surrounded by the Taiping army, and all external contacts were cut off. Unfortunately, Shi Dakai was transferred back to Tianjing to participate in the battle of liberation. Although he broke the Jiangnan camp and lifted the Qing army's siege of Tianjing for three years, Zeng Guofan was not destroyed.

Leaving the Southwest

In September of the sixth year of Xianfeng (1856), the "Tianjing incident" broke out. The East King Yang Xiuqing was killed and tens of thousands of East King's subordinates were implicated. When Shi Dakai heard the news that there might be internal strife in Tianjing, he rushed back to stop it and denounced Wei Changhui for killing innocent people, but it was too late. Wei Changhui, the northern king, regarded Shi Dakai's opposition to the indiscriminate killing of innocent people as favoritism to the eastern king, intending to inflict harm on him. Shi Dakai escaped from Tianjing and all his family members and subordinates were killed.

Shi Dakai raised his troops in Jingnan, Anhui Province, and wrote to the heavenly king, asking him to kill the northern king in order to calm people's anger. Seeing that all the army and people supported Shi Dakai, the heavenly king issued an imperial edict to punish Wei. In November, Shi Dakai returned to Beijing in accordance with the imperial edict, and was honored as a "righteous king" by the army and the people, and "promoted the administration of state affairs" in the same Dynasty. Regardless of his personal grievances, he only punished the chief villain and did not blame his subordinates when he investigated the responsibility for the massacre. Even the northern King's relatives were protected and valued, and their hearts quickly settled down. Under Shi Dakai's deployment, the Taiping Army stood by the main pass and waited for the opportunity to counter attack. The rising stars such as Chen Yucheng, Shi Zhenji, Li Xiucheng and Yang Fuqing began to step on the front line and take charge of their own. The passive situation caused by internal strife was gradually reversed. However, the king of heaven saw that Shi Dakai was popular and suspicious, so he made his two elder brothers king. He tried to contain Shi Dakai in all ways, and even intended to harm him. In order to avoid another outbreak of internal strife, Shi Dakai had to leave Beijing in May 1857 to go to Anqing.

In September of the seventh year of Xianfeng (1857), the emperor of heaven was forced to ask shi Dakai to return to Beijing with the gold medal of "righteous king". On the one hand, Shi Dakai didn't believe Hong Xiuquan's so-called "sincerity"; on the other hand, he didn't agree with Hong Xiuquan's idea that he didn't want to make progress and only wanted to protect the southeast corner of Tianjing. Therefore, he decided to command the war according to his own strategic thinking. However, Shi Dakai still put forward a compromise plan. Dexing a mentioned that "Li Xiucheng and Zhang Luoxing were asked to lead the Taiping army to attack the Qing garrison in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and Chen Yucheng, Hong Renchang, Hong Chunyuan, Wei Zhijun, Yang Laiqing and other troops were sent back to Tianjing to attack Zhejiang.". He continued to fight for the kingdom of heaven as "General of the army.". After that, Shi Dakai went to Jiangxi Province to rescue the trapped Linjiang and Ji'an. Most of the Anhui Taiping generals who supported him stayed in Anhui. Because there was no navy, he was unable to cross the Ganjiang River, and the rescue operation failed. Shi Dakai marched into Zhejiang the next year, and United Nations Zong Yang Fuqing marched into Fujian, in order to open up Zhejiang Fujian base area and connect with Tianjing base area.

Zhejiang was the main source of income for the Qing army in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. In order to prevent Shi Dakai from attacking Zhejiang, the Qing government sent all kinds of troops to reinforce it. Finally, Zeng Guofan, who was Ding you's native, had to be appointed as the commander-in-chief of the Hunan army. The Taiping army won many victories in Zhejiang, but after Jianchang and Fuzhou were lost, the troops in Zhejiang lost their rear. In order to avoid being attacked on all sides, Shi Dakai decided to give up attacking Zhejiang, withdraw to Fujian, and then move to Jiangxi. Although Shi Dakai's efforts to establish Zhejiang Fujian base area failed due to internal and external contradictions, he restrained a large number of Qing troops and created favorable conditions for the Taiping army to win the great victories in Pukou, the second victory in Jiangbei camp and the third victory in Sanhe.

In the winter, Shi Dakai discussed with the Ministry and decided to attack the lake

Chinese PinYin : Shi Da Kai