Russia once invaded China and was annihilated by the Qing army

In the history of the late Qing Dynasty, there were two strange incidents of foreigners invading China's borders and separatizing the territory to establish countries. Once, Agub, a native of Kokand (now Kyrgyzstan), invaded Xinjiang and established the so-called "Zhedeshar Khanate" (meaning the Seven-City Khanate, namely Kashgar, Yarkand, Hotan, Kuqa, Yarkand, and Aksu). , Turpan), and were later annihilated by the children of the Hunan Army led by Zuo Zongtang. Once again, the Russian Sheletkin, with the support of the Tsarist Russian government, occupied the Mohe Gold Mine in Heilongjiang for illegal gold mining and established the so-called "Zertuga Peace", which was later annihilated by the Qing army in Heilongjiang.

Netizens are very familiar with the history of Zuo Zongtang's annihilation of the "Zhedeshar Khanate" and his reconquest of Xinjiang; but for the Qing army in Heilongjiang's annihilation of the "Retuga Khanate" and their reconquest of Mohe Most of the history is unclear. Now we are reorganizing this dusty history and presenting it to netizens.

Mohe is located at the northernmost tip of China, facing Russia across the river (Heilongjiang). Before the Qing Dynasty opened the closure of the Northeast, Mohe was sparsely populated and was a hunting and herding area for the Oroqen, Sauron, and Qiler ethnic groups. In 1877, an old hunter of the Oroqen ethnic group was digging a hole to bury a horse in the Laojingou Valley of Mohe. He accidentally picked up a handful of river sand and found that almost half of the river sand was gold. The news soon spread to Russia on the other side. A Russian businessman named Sheretkin secretly crossed the border with a miner to inspect Laojingou and discovered a large amount of gold sand. Sheletkin was overjoyed and immediately recruited a large number of miners from Russia and North Korea. At the same time, he partnered with local Chinese refugees to mine in Mohe.

Due to the lax management of the northeastern border by the Qing army and the sparse population in Mohe, Sheletkin’s illegal cross-border mining activities were not effectively stopped. With the support of the Russian government, the illegal gold mining gangs expanded rapidly, "recruiting more than 4,000 workers, building more than 700 houses, and more than 500 vertical kilns. The industrial and commercial buildings were lined up, making it look like a major town. The news spread everywhere, and everyone heard about it. . Tsarist Russian gold bandits came in droves and spread across the ditches, coming and going at random." By 1883, when there were only 500,000 Chinese residents in the entire Heilongjiang area, the Laogou gold mine had 15,000 miners (including more than 9,000 Russians), with wooden houses, more than 500 underground tunnels, and 90 large and small shops. With more than 80 wine shops, more than 150 bakeries and hotels, 3 casinos, hospitals and Orthodox churches, Mohe has become a Russian mining city. According to later incomplete statistics, between 1883 and 1884 alone, the Sheletkin gang illegally mined 220,000 taels of gold.

In order to permanently occupy the gold mine, Sheletkin also established the so-called "Zertuga *** Peace" based on the mine, dividing the mining area into five jurisdictions based on ethnicity ( Four white jurisdictions and one Chinese jurisdiction), each of the five major jurisdictions has two elders, and they all form the "Congress". This ten-member Congress elects the "Supreme Leader" through voting. The "Retuga Peace" also established an armed police force of 150 people, promulgated laws, collected taxes, and set up courts, making it a state within a state.

In order to resist the illegal mining activities of the Russians, at the suggestion of Li Hongzhang, from August 1884 to February of the following year, the Qing army in Heilongjiang successively carried out attacks on the "Zertujia War". Three times of suppression. For the first time, all the wooden houses and underground vaults in the mine were burned, one white flag was taken down, 16 guns were surrendered, and 343 Russians were captured and deported. The second time, "more than a thousand Russians gathered in the Mohe Gold Factory and more than a hundred wooden houses were packed up" were burned and expelled. The third time, three Qing armies gathered together, "ambushed in a detachment in the southeast forest, fired guns and shouted, and fired trumpets everywhere" and captured more than a hundred Russians. According to Russian records, the Qing army went on a killing spree in the gold mines, killing all the fugitives. At this point, the "Retuga Peace" illegally established by the Tsarist Russian colonists in the Mohe area was completely destroyed.

In order to prevent the Russians from crossing the river to mine gold again, Li Hongzhang recommended Li Jinyong, the prefect of Jilin, to lead 500 Qing soldiers and 1,000 reform-through-labor prisoners to establish a mining bureau in Mohe and set up three gold factories: Mohe Gold Factory, Qi Jinyong. Ganhe Gold Factory and Luoguhe Gold Factory, with an annual output of 270,000 taels of gold at their peak, became one of the few successful enterprises in the Qing Dynasty's Westernization Movement.