The year before the death of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, an event that was not too big was very sensational. It's simple. Li Hongzhang's Huai Army killed the surrendered troops in Suzhou City. Killing prisoners was not a big deal at that time. What really made things big was that Gordon, the captain of the foreign gun team who cooperated with the Huai army, was greatly dissatisfied with this. There is even the meaning of fire (Liang Qichao's biography of Li Hongzhang records that Gordon broke his word and was furious. He wanted to kill Hong Zhang to make amends, so he came to him with a short gun. Hong Zhang avoided it and dared not go back to camp. What makes Gordon unhappy? It turned out that due to the failure of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Gao Yongkuan, Wang, and others, a group of generals guarding Suzhou City, saw that the tide had run out and were all going to surrender. So Gao He and other generals of Huai Army, Cheng Xueqi (also a surrenderer of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) and Gordon, met in Yangcheng Lake to discuss surrender. Two results were achieved: first, offering the city; Second, "Take him alive, be loyal to him, or behead him" (Gao Yongkuan could not bear to harm Li Xiucheng, but only promised to kill Tan Shao, King Mu. Li Xiucheng later realized that it was wrong and ran away). And guaranteed by Gordon.

As a result, Tan Shaoya, the main commander of Suzhou, was killed as scheduled, and Suzhou City presented it as scheduled. Unexpectedly, Cheng Xueqi said after entering the city, "It is better to make a quick decision than to save him." Detain and kill all these rebels. (Plan to kill Gao, Bi Wang Wu Guiwen, Kang Wang, Wang, Tian General Fan Qifa, Tian General Zhang Dazhou, Tian General Huanwu Wang, Tian General Wang Youwei, etc. and dispatch more than a thousand people). Gao Yongkuan's uncle took his family to Gordon's residence and knelt down to seek asylum. Gao Yongkuan's youngest son cried and said that his father had been beheaded! Gordon flew into a rage when he realized that such a change had taken place.

There are many practical considerations for turning yourself in for murder. For example, there are hundreds of thousands of Taiping rebels. If it is not solved well, it will cause great changes. Therefore, Cheng Xueqi and Li Hongzhang conspired in advance, and Li also considered various issues. "For three days and three nights, we couldn't decide", but in the end we made up our minds. It's just that Gordon reacted so badly that even Li Hongzhang failed to anticipate it in advance. Later, Li did a lot of work to calm the matter down.

Gordon was a British officer before joining the foreign guns team. For Gordon, this incident is very contrary to the traditional contract spirit of the West. So he feels that he has seriously damaged his reputation. How can he not be angry? For the people of China, this is just an event of breaking promises. Break faith! It's not a big deal in this era of "bad rituals". So this is an interesting example of the ideological conflict between the East and the West in modern times. It's just that people in China didn't realize what was in it. Such cases will emerge one after another in China in the future.