A Brief History of the Tujia: Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Feudal Struggles (Part 1)
Section 2: Tujia Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Feudal Struggles — I. Tujia Heroic Struggles During the Opium War and the Eight-Nation Alliance Invasion: In June 1840, Britain launched the Opium War, arousing indignation among all ethnic groups. Tujia forces resisted the British blockade of the Pearl River.
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Section 2: The Tujia People's Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Feudal Struggle
1. The Heroic Struggle of the Tujia People During the Opium War and the Eight-Power Allied Forces' Invasion of China
In June of the twentieth year of the Daoguang reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Qing dynasty (1840), Britain launched the shameful Opium War against our country, arousing immense indignation among all the ethnic groups of the whole country. When the British invading army blockaded the Pearl River estuary and attempted to attack Guangzhou, Chen Liansheng, a Tujia from Hefeng Prefecture serving as deputy general of Sanjiangkou, was transferred from Macao to garrison the Shajiao Fort. The Shajiao and Dajiao forts were the first gateway by sea into Guangzhou. After Chen Liansheng arrived at Shajiao Fort, he led the officers and soldiers in building fortifications and strengthening defenses, "patrolling back and forth day and night, so that the foreigners did not dare to approach." He and Guan Tianpei, the naval commander stationed at Humen, repeatedly requested the Qing court to send additional troops to strengthen the defense, but the corrupt and incompetent Qing court instead dismissed and punished Lin Zexu and Deng Tingzhen, who advocated strict prohibition of opium and resolute resistance, and appointed the capitulationist Qishan as imperial commissioner to go to Guangdong to handle Sino-British negotiations. After Qishan arrived in Guangdong, he actually withdrew the 800 officers and soldiers whom Lin Zexu had stationed at Shajiao to guard against enemy rear attacks, removed the defenses of the Pearl River, and disbanded the water and local militia, in order to curry favor with the British aggressors. Chen Liansheng was extremely angry at Qishan's capitulationist activities, and every midnight "would suddenly shout and rise, holding a candle until dawn, unable to sleep."
Qishan's traitorous conduct further inflated the arrogance of the British aggressors. In early January 1841, Elliot led the British army in a sudden attack on the Shajiao and Dajiao forts. More than twenty British warships and vessels bombarded Shajiao Fort from the sea, and more than 2,000 invaders landed from Chuanbi Bay, swarming up the hill and attacking from the rear. Facing a pincer attack by British troops more than five times his own strength, Chen Liansheng was unafraid and calm, commanding more than 600 Chu soldiers in heroic resistance. The British troops attacking from the rear hill had several hundred killed by buried mines, and Chen Liansheng again commanded the officers and soldiers to use portable cannons to kill two or three hundred of the enemy. But by then the defenders' gunpowder had been completely exhausted, the cannons could not be fired, and there were no reinforcements. In the critical situation of the British troops pressing forward step by step, Chen Liansheng and his son, holding bows and arrows, shot and killed twenty or thirty British soldiers; "when the arrows were exhausted they engaged in close combat, and again killed several of the rebels." The fighting was extremely fierce, and because they were outnumbered, Chen Liansheng was unfortunately hit by a bullet. His son Chen Jupeng, seeing his father wounded, "raised his halberd and shouted loudly, stabbing and killing several foreigners left and right." Seeing that the situation was hopeless and that Shajiao Fort was about to fall, Chen Liansheng urgently ordered his son and the chiliarch Zhang Qingling to break out. Chen Jupeng preferred to die on the battlefield rather than break out to save his life, and continued to fight on, finally throwing himself into the sea to his death. Father and son Chen fought bravely and killed the most British soldiers. After the British army occupied Shajiao Fort, their beastly nature was unleashed, and they chopped Chen Liansheng's corpse into pieces in revenge. Chen Jupeng's spirit of unyielding struggle unto death was such that even the British aggressors had to admit that he "was a brave youth, who, seeing his father dead and himself unwounded, refused to surrender and chose to jump into the sea." In the battle at Shajiao Fort, Chen Liansheng and his son fully demonstrated the Tujia people's patriotic spirit of fearing no sacrifice and fighting heroically to safeguard our country's territorial integrity and resist foreign aggressors.
After the British army occupied the Shajiao and Dajiao forts, it again launched a large-scale attack on Guangdong. In order to preserve the dignity of the "Celestial Dynasty," the Qing Daoguang Emperor ordered the declaration of war against Britain, and appointed Yishan as General for Quelling Rebellion and Yang Fang, the Hunan provincial military commander, as counselor, mobilizing troops from various provinces. Xiangfu, the chief military commander of Zhen'gan, led more than 600 officers and soldiers including Tujia and Miao peoples (among them 100 soldiers from the Baojing camp) to garrison Wuyong, sixty li from Guangzhou. But the muddle-headed and incompetent Yang Fang made no preparations for battle, believing that the reason the British army had strong ships and powerful guns must be that they possessed "evil arts," and so ordered the local baojia to collect chamber pots from the people everywhere and load them on bamboo rafts, calling this "using evil to counter evil," in an attempt to resist the British army with this "brilliant plan." After Xiangfu led the Zhen'gan soldiers there, he considered Yang Fang's "brilliant plan" equivalent to seeking death, and immediately ordered the officers and soldiers to recruit villagers to dig trenches in the fields, which could both conceal soldiers for defense and allow them to come out of the trenches to attack, actively making battle preparations. In March of the same year, the British army attacked Wuyong. The British first fired a cannon from their warship to test the situation, and seeing no one on shore, swarmed ashore. Xiangfu commanded the Zhen'gan soldiers to come out of the trenches and counterattack. After fierce fighting, they beat back the British attack and killed more than 200 British soldiers. When the British saw that the Zhen'gan soldiers' gunpowder was exhausted, they launched another attack; Xiangfu died in battle, and more than 100 officers and soldiers were killed or wounded. At this time, more than 200 Zhen'gan soldiers came as reinforcements and used muskets to kill several dozen British soldiers. But our army suffered no small number of casualties and was forced to retreat while fighting; Wuyong fell, and the British army drove straight in, pressing on the outskirts of Guangzhou city. The defeat at Wuyong fully exposed the muddle-headed incompetence of the Qing bureaucrats, and Yang Fang, who bore direct responsibility for the defeat in this battle, was cursed by the people. At the time someone wrote a poem: "They still speak of chamber pots as a brilliant plan; the stench of scandal spreads throughout the city of Guangzhou," mercilessly mocking the muddle-headed and ignorant Yang Fang. But the broad officers and soldiers of the Tujia, Miao, Han and other ethnic groups, in order to defend the motherland's territory, gave their precious lives, and their patriotic fervor deserves to be remembered forever by the people.
In the 26th year of the Guangxu reign (1900), the Boxer Movement, which swept across the country, rose vigorously, opposing the imperialist powers' partition of China and seeking to save the nation from peril. After the flames of the Boxers' anti-imperialist struggle blazed across the North China Plain and along the banks of the Grand Canal, the people of Tianjin quickly took action and joined the fight. On April 12, the fleets of Russia, Britain, the United States, France and other countries gathered at Dagu, once again issuing an ultimatum to the Qing government, threatening that if the Boxers could not be suppressed within two months, the powers would send troops jointly to crush them. Faced with the armed threat of the imperialist powers, Luo Rongguang, a Tujia native of Qianzhou, Hunan, who had been promoted to the post of Kashgar Prefect in Xinjiang, was filled with righteous indignation and requested to remain at Dagu to defend the coastal defense on behalf of the Qing court. After Luo Rongguang stayed at the Dagu Fort, he inspired the officers and men and actively prepared for battle. On June 16, Vice Admiral Kilidbrandt of the Russian Navy, on behalf of eight imperialist countries, issued an ultimatum to Luo Rongguang, the defending commander of the Dagu Fort, absurdly claiming that the Chinese army's defense of the Dagu Fort was "really inconvenient" for their joint suppression of the Boxers, and unreasonably demanded that the Chinese defenders hand over the fort by the early morning of the 17th. Luo Rongguang, with strong patriotism, sternly rejected the unreasonable demands of the imperialist aggressors, immediately summoned the fort's officers, and spoke with fervor: "If the people are here, Dagu is here; if the land is lost, blood will be sacrificed to heaven!" He expressed his determination to live or die with the fort, vowed to counterattack the imperialist aggression to the death, and mobilized the officers and men to be ready and deal a heavy blow to the invaders. In the early hours of the 17th, the troops of Russia, Britain, Japan, France and other countries, under the command of Kilidbrandt, brazenly launched an attack on the Dagu Fort. Luo Rongguang, calm and composed, commanded the patriotic officers and men to fire back fiercely, damaging one enemy ship. He took the lead, personally firing to destroy the enemy ship "Gilyak." After six hours of fierce fighting, they damaged or destroyed six enemy ships and killed or wounded more than 260 invading troops. In the end, because they were outnumbered, the Dagu Fort fell, and Luo Rongguang died in the line of duty.