Yuan Shikai
This most powerful modern army in the late Qing Dynasty should have been owned by the court in the late Qing Dynasty. But every time Yuan Shikai blows, he will instill it in Beiyang Army? Yuan paid for it? In this way, the Beiyang Army completely became Yuan Shikai's private army. So, is this scene in the movie really historical? If the Beiyang Army was really Yuan Shikai's private army, why did the Qing government tolerate Yuan Shikai's actions?
Yuan Shikai
There is no denying the fact that film and television dramas are inevitably mixed with adapted parts. Undoubtedly, it was the Qing court, not Yuan Shikai, who paid the military expenses for the Beiyang New Army. The Qing court must guard against training ministers, especially those from Han nationality. Therefore, from a realistic point of view, at least in the early days of the training of the Beiyang New Army, Yuan Shikai did not have the courage to say such a thing. What's more, Empress Dowager Cixi was a gloomy and controlling person, and Yuan Shikai could not and dared not turn Beiyang military training into a private army so blatantly.
1September, 907, Empress Dowager Cixi deprived Yuan Shikai of his military power by falling from the sky. From these aspects, during the reign of Cixi, when Yuan Shikai was training the Beiyang New Army, I'm afraid Yuan Shikai didn't let his men instill ideas in the soldiers. Yuan paid for it? The possibility of this idea. Undoubtedly, the film and television drama wanted to exaggerate Yuan Shikai's control over the Beiyang New Army, so this adaptation was made.
Beiyang new army
Of course, the adaptation in the film is not arbitrary, because the Beiyang New Army really became a private army in Yuan Shikai's hands. Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu did not dare to speak out about this matter, mainly because of the following aspects.
First, when Yuan Shikai was ordered to train the Beiyang New Army, he had given priority to controlling the military power of this army. The backbone officers he selected for this army are mainly his personal cronies, veteran cadres who made a lot of money with him, and people who started at the bottom and were promoted and reused by him. The backbone of these officers selected by Yuan Shikai can not only dispel the suspicion of the Manchu royal family, but also fill the Beiyang New Army with his right-hand man, so that Yuan Shikai can easily control the military power of the Beiyang New Army.
Yuan Shikai stills
Second: Yuan Shikai paid the Beiyang New Army a much higher salary than the officers of the old army with the support of the central financial resources, which made the soldiers of the new army grateful to Yuan Shikai. As early as the beginning of Yuan Shikai's formation of the Beiyang New Army, he proposed to let this army play the military camp pay stamp in the court, which greatly guaranteed the pay of the Beiyang New Army. These soldiers can get much higher salaries and public funds than other old officers; In order to prevent some officers from deducting military pay, Yuan Shikai formulated a very strict military pay system. In this way, those junior officers took Yuan Shikai as their parents and obeyed him.
Yuan Shikai
So, although Beiyang army didn't instill it in soldiers when paying salaries? Yuan paid for it? However, there has long been a saying in the Beiyang army that the generals should contribute to Yuan's meal. This also made Yuan Shikai establish a supreme great image in the minds of junior officers. Although Empress Dowager Cixi and her successors did not want the most elite new army of the empire to be controlled by Yuan Shikai, the decadent Qing court, clinging to the remnants, had neither the ability nor enough means to completely control Yuan Shikai's new Beiyang army, and could only watch the new Beiyang army and the new armies of other countries slide into the revolutionary camp step by step and watch themselves die.