Since ancient times, China has a tradition of "your victory is not expensive for a long time". But in modern times, for the first time, the Qing army met an opponent whose military strength, economic strength and war potential were far stronger than their own. Some modern military scientists have to find another way to overcome the strong with the weak and the excellent with the poor. After countless bloody sacrifices, people began to abandon the illusion of quick victory, and truly realized that they should gradually weaken the enemy, strengthen themselves, turn their disadvantages into advantages, and finally defeat the enemy, that is, defeat the strong enemy through a protracted war.

The idea of protracted war originated from the Opium War. At that time, the Eight Banners of the Qing Dynasty and green camp were defeated in the coastal battlefield, forcing Lin Zexu and other patriots to pin their hopes of winning on mobilizing the people and using other tactics. Lin Zexu, in "The Remembrance of Dinghai County", suggested mobilizing the people to resist the enemy extensively, saying: "There are more than ten people living in more than 200 villages around the county. Strangely, it is on the shore that people should be punished. Anyone who can kill foreigners, whether military or civilian, will be given a very high reward according to the head. A wind like this, a tree, can leave a legacy not in an instant. If this man has done his best, then all his guns are mine. Rewarding the case is not a waste of money, and it seems to be one of the ways to crack down on each other. " At the same time, Zang Xianqing, the staff of General Yang Wei's Book of Changes, also put forward similar ideas. Before the counter-offensive against Ningbo, he suggested that the brave soldiers should be widely recruited and divided into Ningbo, Zhenhai and Dinghai. "No land and water, no travel, no sun, no water, no waves, no land." Or the servo road, see foreigners killed, the ship burned, and then reward, with the newspaper, fight for yourself, regardless of the place "(Yi atmosphere 10 1 page). Be sure to dock the ship, causing all foreigners to come out, panic step by step, wait for its soul to fly discouraged in the place where the wind is trembling, and then attack it on a large scale, attack it from inside and outside, and destroy it. All the above strategies rejected honest tactics and put forward the idea of disturbing the enemy for a long time, which laid the foundation for the emergence of the idea of protracted war. In the later period of the Opium War and after the war, people's analysis of lasting resistance to the enemy was more in-depth. During the war, Lin Zexu proposed using fishermen, buyers and villagers to drill in groups, and asked the Qing army to take defense as a battle and wait for success, instead of fighting the enemy in the ocean, it blocked the enemy in the offshore or land. He called on Guangdong coastal residents to organize a group to defend themselves, and handed over the fire attack boat to fishermen, led by soldiers, waiting for an opportunity to attack at night and carry out guerrilla warfare at sea. He also issued a notice announcing that the "British barbarians" used opium to destroy the lives of our people, deceived the mainland and made them angry. It was agreed that as soon as the "British warship" entered the inland river, everyone was allowed to kill with a knife. Wei Yuan repeatedly quoted the story of Vietnamese introducing British ships into inland rivers and Guangdong Sanyuanli people's resistance to Britain, explaining the necessity of mobilizing people and recruiting rebels to resist the enemy. He also advocated the ancient method of "building a wall to clear the field", envisaging organizing coastal residents and cutting off all supplies from the enemy, so that the invaders "have no fresh water to draw, no cattle and sheep to plunder, no nitrate medicine to match, no iron to buy, no loose rope to make up, no smokeless goods to sell, no rudder guns to repair, no water to sneak attack and no shelter." "When a bomb is launched, a bomb is launched; One is killed and the other is lost; One is broken and the other is lost. " I am "only at loggerheads with it" ("National Sea Slaughters it, Raise the Sea"). When Lin Zexu was sent to Xinjiang, he also had a preliminary idea about the construction of the strategic rear in the protracted war. He said that if the British army "stays on the southeast coast for a long time, the recovery strategy should be based on Jingxiang, which must be linked with Qin and Shu." This thought of Xu Tu's gradual progress with the southwest, northwest and the hinterland of the Yangtze River as the rear area is an excellent supplement to the early protracted war thought at the strategic level.

19 During the Sino-French War in the 1980s, Liu Yongfu, the leader of the Black Flag Army, further linked lasting resistance to the enemy with guerrilla warfare relying on mountainous areas. Liu Yongfu defeated the well-equipped and well-trained French invaders many times by irregular "scattered and scattered attack tactics", which delayed the process of Vietnamese colonization. When answering the French surrender, he summed up his tactics and said, "You (referring to the French army) occupy the water and I occupy the mountain. My sources are endless, and I don't have long-term military expenses. If I set up a dock, I will raise troops every year, kill and set fire to it, disturb its business and politics, and make it restless "(The Sino-French War 1, page 3 15), and this tactic is exactly what the French army fears most.

1894 After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Liaodong and Shandong Peninsula were successively occupied by the Japanese. Some patriots were unwilling to give in, and in order to save the crisis, they revived the idea of protracted war. The protracted war at this time is very different from the past. First of all, people realize that the fundamental factor to defeat the enemy for a long time lies in the real awakening of the Chinese national consciousness and the participation of the broad masses of the people in the anti-aggression war. Thousands of people, including Kang Youwei, wrote to the imperial court and advocated mobilizing the people and sending troops everywhere, which showed that they fully saw the key role of the people and national consciousness in the protracted war against aggression. Secondly, it linked lasting resistance to the enemy with China's political reform, emphasizing that "political reform has become the rule of the world", and took this opportunity to launch a massive political reform and political reform movement. Thirdly, in order to make the protracted war have a safe leadership environment, the problems of "moving the capital" and building the strategic rear area are put forward. Fourthly, the law of protracted war is expounded from both regular and guerrilla warfare. Li Hongzhang once put forward the idea of practicing more elite soldiers, both inside and outside, north and south, and not blaming the Japanese for a quick victory. Zheng put forward the guerrilla warfare method that the Qing army dispatched light horses and boats to disturb the enemy, cut off its land power, disturb its grain route, and attack in different ways after it was tired. Unfortunately, most of these realistic ideas are scattered, and no one has really expounded the law of protracted war systematically and comprehensively, and built a unique theoretical system.

(2) From Haikou defense to "competing for sea power"

Because most of the ancient dynasties in China carried out the wrong ocean policy, China's maritime power was extremely shrinking, and its naval construction became increasingly outdated. The only thing that the Qing navy relied on to defend the enemy was the old wooden sailboat, which was unbearable for sailing and difficult to confront the powerful enemy at sea. In view of the disparity between Chinese and Western maritime forces, Guan Tianpei, the Guangdong frontline general of the Qing army, had to give up the false story-based patrol action and concentrate on the management of Humen Haikou fortress. He built a number of forts on both sides of Humen, which controlled the Pearl River Estuary, equipped with primitive front guns, set up rafts and chains to block the river course, and blocked enemy ships from entering one by one. Humen Fort, on the other hand, only covers the artillery and soldiers with the battlements on the front wall, and the artillery configuration simply pursues long-range artillery (even so, the artillery range of the forts on both sides of the strait cannot intersect with the main channel, leaving a blank area for enemy ships to drive), lacking short-range artillery for self-protection of the fort, and the artillery is mostly located in the front, and there are no trenches and other fortifications behind the fort. Therefore, foreign invaders can drive warships to the artillery blind area near the fortress to destroy them, or they can send landing craft to carry infantry ashore and attack the fortress from the rear. As a foreigner commented after observing Humen's batteries, Humen's batteries are all exposed. None of them can resist the fire of big gunboats or the attack of commandos who cooperate with the naval guns on the shore. Commandos always look for the best stronghold to attack them from the side or the rear where their guns can't reach "(Selected Translation of Opium War Data, p. 70). In the later period of the Opium War, the generals of the Qing army built sandbags and concealed forts near the forts to solve the old problem of emptiness in the back road, but the actual effect was not satisfactory. In Haikou, Zhejiang Province, it was not until the fall of the "Erding Sea" that the Qing army, under the auspices of the new governor of the two rivers, Yu Qian and others, focused on building artillery cities and coastal defense fortifications in the coastal areas south of the county seat, relying on commanding heights and connecting earthen cities, according to the characteristics of Dinghai City surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing the sea on one side. Many fortresses have been built on both sides of Yongjia River in Zhenhai, and wooden stakes have been nailed on the river, and fire attack ships (including newly invented cars and boats) have been deployed, which complement the onshore fortresses. Its coastal defense works are close to the level of Humen fortress in style and quality, and even surpass Humen fortress in some aspects. However, the fact that the British army captured Humen, Dinghai and Zhenhai in a relatively short period of time shows that the Qing army's coastal defense thought was still extremely backward at that time. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects: first, the generals of the Qing army generally hold the wrong idea of "winning by land war", ignoring the importance of joint defense between land and sea, and mistakenly thinking that the British army is good at naval warfare but not good at land war. "All they rely on is the power of the ship. If they go to the ocean to fight, it should always be appropriate. "It is necessary to make sure that there is no wig. Once on shore, the barbarians had no other skills, and they were all wrapped up, and their waist and legs were stiff, so that a servant could not get up again. Not only one soldier can kill many foreigners by hand, but also rural civilians can try their best to control their deaths. " Therefore, the Qing army can easily defeat the invaders by using the complex terrain of mountains and mountains. With this understanding, the Qing army concentrated its financial and material resources on building castles and making guns. In this regard, Lin Zexu and other people of insight hold strong opposition. They believe that the coastal defense policy of "giving up water and specializing in land" will inevitably lead to the strategic passivity of the Qing army. "Against the ship, you can come and go freely, but I will guard against it step by step, and the entrance to the small sea is endless. Can you win the defense? " If we can urgently raise guns for ships and water forces, we can use them on those who dare to die. Although the cost is very complicated, it is more economical than field and long-distance conscription. If you swear not to fight it on the water, you can fight for it, but you don't have to keep it. What have you gained and what have you lost? "Second, divide troops according to positions, rather than giving priority to fortification. The primary goal of Shanghai's defense in the early Qing Dynasty was to deal with pirate attacks and prevent smuggling, thus forming the layout of coastal defense forces. However, in the Opium War, the Qing army encountered a British army with rich experience in modern warfare. At this time, if we don't correctly judge the enemy's main attack direction and "defend the enemy's attack", it will inevitably be empty everywhere, and the troops in various places will not rise in forever strong. Third, only attach importance to the front line defense and ignore the rear defense. For example, in Dinghai and Zhenhai, the Qing army set up a typical front line, built fortifications and sent some troops to guard it, but did not build forts or install cannons. The large coastal beach behind Zhenhai position is almost undefended by the Qing army, hoping to use this natural obstacle to stop the British attack. In fact, when the British invaded Dinghai and attacked Zhenhai for the second time, they all attacked from the rear where the Qing army was unguarded or weak in defense. They made rapid progress and defeated the Qing army defenders in one fell swoop.

After the Opium War, Wei Yuan, a patriot, considered the means of destroying the enemy, and put forward a pro-strategic policy of "keeping the sea is better than keeping the sea, and keeping the sea is better than keeping the inland river", arguing that enemy ships should be lured to the inland river, making their transportation ineffective and painful. In fact, Haikou's anti-blocking strategy was adjusted according to the military equipment of the Qing army. However, it is worth pointing out that this new coastal defense strategy is only an expedient measure to solve practical difficulties, which was initiated by Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan. Fundamentally speaking, there is no alternative but to consolidate the coastal defense houses and actively develop the modern navy. Therefore, they emphasized that "the guns of warships are the necessities of military equipment" (Atlas of the Sea 1), and that "there are ships and guns, and the water army is in charge of them, traveling to and from the sea, chasing the north, and wherever I go, I also". "I don't believe that a large group of water troops chased after the huge immersion, dare to disturb the land, and occupy the city wall instead of the ship." Unfortunately, these views on China's coastal defense strategy were not adopted by the Qing emperors and regimes. Seeing that the Qing army could not fight the enemy of Haikou, they advocated either "luring the enemy to land and living in an empty city" or "telling coastal residents to move within ten miles of the sea." My artillery and shotguns also retreated seven or eight miles away from Shenzhen and Hong Kong, in an attempt to turn the navy division into a land division and "defend the open sea" into "defend the mainland". This practice of never talking about the development of the navy and confusing the realistic coastal defense struggle strategy with the long-term coastal defense development strategy is actually tantamount to surrendering the coastal areas of Wan Li. When describing this situation, Zuo later said: "Since the war at sea, ships and warships from Taixi countries have reached Tianjin directly, but the barrier is useless, and the stars are soaring, which is a worry." (The Westernization Movement, Volume 5, Page 5), China's maritime defense line no longer exists.

It was more than 20 years after the Qing court revised the strategic policy of "defending the mainland exclusively". 1873, China translator Hua, who was employed by the translation library of Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, cooperated with foreign missionary John Flair to translate and publish the Prussian military attache Hiliha's New Theory on Preventing the Sea at the fastest speed. This book is the first theoretical work in modern China that comprehensively introduces western coastal defense thoughts, and it has won the favor of Qing officials who care about coastal defense. Li Hongzhang thinks his book is "extremely incisive" (Westernization Movement 1, page 42). Some governors and officials also regard it as a must-read for westernization, often planning coastal defense, discussing the war situation and punctuality. Although the idea of focusing on Haikou defense introduced in this book has been abandoned by European maritime powers, it provides an important theoretical basis for the transformation of coastal defense strategy in the late Qing Dynasty from "focusing on the mainland" to "focusing on Haikou defense".

1873, when Ding Richang called for the establishment of a modern navy, he submitted to the Qing court six articles of the Navy Charter drawn up when he was the governor of Jiangsu, suggesting the establishment of three navies of Beiyang, Dongyang and Nanyang, with a view to "uniting the navies of the three countries" and "aiming at coastal defense, being orderly and striving for practicality". At the same time, the governors and generals of the Qing court and the coastal provinces along the Yangtze River were also stimulated by the Japanese occupation of Taiwan Province. In the discussion, Li Hongzhang and others who advocated the establishment of a modern navy have actually abandoned the original wrong concept of "preventing the sea is better than preventing the land" and realized that "the land corps should benefit from training, and the offshore navy should be more sophisticated; All ports must be fortified, but unless there are heavy marine troops to meet, intercept and pursue, they can land everywhere, which makes me hard to prevent. But the fundamental purpose is to "defend the mouth, but not the front, that is, the so-called art of war causes people, not the wishes of people" (Outline of Coastal Defence).

Under the guidance of Haikou's key fortification strategy, the protection ability of Qingbao has been comprehensively improved. Most of the old cast-in-place muskets were eliminated and replaced with new fireworks purchased from abroad, which greatly increased the range, destruction ability and launching speed, and could attack enemy ships head-on before they approached the fort. In Haikou, the tactics of relying on warships, forts, mines and obstacles to resist the enemy are generally adopted. There are also many disadvantages in the fort clearing in the Sino-French war, such as the artillery can't shoot in a roundabout way, the interval density between artillery positions is small, Haikou is undefended, and there is a lack of effective fire support between artillery positions. From the 1980s of 19, Weihai and Lushun Fortress, which were designed according to the latest German style, further overcame these disadvantages, surpassed the bare fort and redoubt fortress stage in the history of western urban construction, and developed into a fortress area with comprehensive defense. These two forts are composed of a series of battery groups that defend the sea and land. For example, in Lushun Fortress, in addition to the coastal defense facing the sea, semi-permanent forts were built in Case Mountain, Songshu Mountain, Erlongshan Mountain, Taibei Mountain and Jikou Mountain, and Lv Jiajin Avenue was connected into two fortresses with parapets, totaling more than 20 sea and land fortresses with hundreds of guns. There are various underground ammunition lifting devices in the battery, equipped with large-caliber long-range giant guns, free-lifting ground trap guns and high-speed cannon. The emplacement of battery is reasonable, and they can depend on each other to form a dense crossfire. The Japanese say that it is "connected, beginning and end together, like a snake in a long mountain", and "calling it an unparalleled danger in the East is by no means boasting" (History of Nissin Sea Battle, Volume 6, page 255). Weihai fortress is also full of fortresses. After the Sino-Japanese War broke out, a long trench wall was built to prevent the enemy from attacking from the rear. In addition, there are many mine defense materials in Haikou, and there are ships "fighting with the battery at the mine boundary of the battery gun line, carving cameras to prevent enemy ships from entering the entrance" (Historical Materials on Negotiations between Guangxu and Asahi in Qing Dynasty, volume 28, page 25), which is a strict barrier.

Strategically, however, Haikou's key fortification can't guide China's army to effectively fight against western invaders. This is because Haikou's key fortification theorists have made the same methodological mistakes as those who "defend from the inside", replaced the deep thinking on the future of China's coastal defense with quick success and instant benefit, and replaced the long-term coastal defense development strategy with the stopgap emergency measures. Li Hongzhang said: "There are few warships in China. How can we block the enemy's harbor? Because the best policy is impossible, it is hard to say if you want to be self-sufficient. From Fengtian to Guangdong, the coast extends to Wan Li, and there are many ports. If we must keep heavy troops everywhere, the cost will be great, and if we don't give them, we will collapse. It is very important to choose the most important places, such as Dagu, Beitang and Shanhaiguan in Zhili, which are the gateways of the two capitals. Jiangsu Wusong to Jiangyin area, the gateway to the Yangtze River, is secondary. Gai Gyeonggi is the foundation of the world, and the Yangtze River is a financial district, but it can hold this most important and secondary place. Haikou has made a slight arrangement on the border of other provinces, that is, it has regressed and does not hinder the overall situation. " (Historical materials of the navy in the late Qing Dynasty, 107) Haikou's key fortification thought seriously influenced the development of China's modern navy. The purpose of building and developing the navy in the Qing court was not to build a powerful maritime force and destroy the enemies at sea, but to enhance the stability of Haikou defense and the mobility of the army. For example, Prince Li Shiduo, an important official in charge of coastal defense, was far less enthusiastic about the most powerful warship at that time, thinking that "foreign guns, foreign guns, mines and other items are in urgent need of purchase" and "there is only one armored ship, which is huge and cannot be berthed by people". Once inspected, "If it is practical, continue to buy" (Westernization Movement, page 65433, Ding Richang "Sanyo Navy" Shen Baozhen, governor of the two rivers, also "thinks that there must be a huge navy on the high seas. Although Jiang Fang tried his best to make up for it, it was impossible to prevent it, and he was indecisive "(Volume 7 of Shen Wensu's Justice Book).

As can be seen from the above description, the foundation of the coastal defense strategy in the late Qing Dynasty was the land deeply planted on the shore. Li Hongzhang is not shy about this. He said that foreign enemies "commit crimes from inside the sea lanes, so they must be eager to practice the navy." However, countries are isolated from each other, taking water as their home, and the naval guns have been refined for a long time, which is beyond the reach of China Navy. There is more land and less water, and the army is still the main force 2. If the army is well trained, enemy soldiers can still fight after landing. If the battery is well arranged, enemy ships can still be holed up when they are imported "("Li Wenzhong's attack on the whole book ",Volume 24). Beiyang fleet, which he painstakingly managed, was once the largest fleet in Asia, and the two armored ships Dingyuan and Zhenyuan once made the Japanese tremble with fear, thinking that the advantage of maritime competition had been occupied by China. But Li Hongzhang only regarded beiyang fleet as a deterrent weapon and an important force to defend Haikou. He said: "Even if China doesn't intend to go abroad with poor soldiers, it can still rely on its long-term defense and solid barriers, and it needs a number of armored ships to cruise the ocean, which is enough to protect the north and south ports, establish prestige, nip in the bud and lay a solid foundation for the country" (Westernization Movement, Volume II, page 42/kloc-0). So beiyang fleet started with 1888. However, all this did not arouse the vigilance and anxiety of the Qing Dynasty. Shortly before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Li Hongzhang said smugly in his memorial to the Qing court, "The combat readiness of the integrated nuclear navy can be improved day by day, but it has not been expanded at present because of its limited salary, but it is unbreakable as far as the portal of Bohai Sea is concerned" (Li Wenzhong Gongquan Manuscript, Volume 72).

1894- 1895 During the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing army, which was carrying out key fortification tasks in Haikou, suffered heavy losses, and all the troops in beiyang fleet were wiped out. Lushun, Weihai and other important military ports, Liaodong, Shandong Peninsula, Taiwan Province Province and Penghu were all seized. Later, the imperialist powers took advantage of China's openness and weak defense to set off a frenzy to carve up their spheres of influence. They carved up all the important military ports along the coast, controlled the strategic locations around Beijing, and plunged China into an unprecedented national defense crisis. Many patriots began to reflect on the gains and losses of the coastal defense strategy in the late Qing Dynasty, summed up the experience and lessons of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, and realized that the most fatal defect of the coastal defense strategy in the late Qing Dynasty was the lack of a clear idea of decisive battle at sea, which did not put China's modern navy in a decisive battle with the enemy of the sea, and they were rarely sensitive to the strength of naval battles and the development trend of the enemy's naval strength. At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of people of insight went to Fujian and stayed in Europe and America in order to save the country. They accepted the western naval thought and began to look at China's coastal defense from the height of the world. 1900, Yadong Times, a Chinese monthly magazine sponsored by Yiwei Society of Japan and published in Shanghai, began to serialize Elements of Sea Power, which is the first chapter of Ma Han's book The Influence of Sea Power on History. 10 years later, the translation of Mahan's chapter was published again in Navy magazine founded by naval students studying in Japan. 1909, Wu Zhennan, a student studying in Britain, wrote another book by Mahan, Naval Administration and War: Some General Rules and Other Essays (translated into Chinese as General Theory of Naval Political Art). Although this book is not Mahan's monograph on sea power, it also runs through his basic spirit of sea power. In the late Qing dynasty, there were three groups of people who had the greatest influence on promoting the spread of sea power theory: one was a part of Qing army officials represented by Yao Xiguang, the other was bourgeois revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen, and the third was overseas military students. Among them, Sun Yat-sen made speeches and articles everywhere to promote the awakening of people's awareness of sea power, calling for "since the general trend of the world has changed, the strength of national power has always been at sea rather than on land, and the winner of its sea power often has the dominant national power" (Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, Volume II, page 564). After the founding of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen put forward the idea of building and purchasing new warships and submarines, cultivating naval talents and building a military port in the Outline of the National Defense Plan. In the industrial planning, the grand plan of building three world-class ports, four second-class ports, nine third-class ports and 15 fishing port is put forward. It is also proposed that China should have a sailing fleet of 6,543,800 tons and actively develop overseas trade, which shows his deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the concept of sea power. In the late Qing Dynasty, when the imperial court was preparing to rebuild the navy, Yao Xiguang wrote a book "My humble opinion on raising the navy", which advocated completely abandoning the past method of zoning coastal defense, forming a cruiser fleet and a river patrol fleet respectively, and raising huge sums of money to buy 10,000-ton battleships and large cruisers in 10 years, completely changing the passive situation of China navy patrolling offshore. Unfortunately, limited by the political and economic situation in China at that time, these progressive ideas can only stay on paper, and can't play a positive role in promoting naval construction in reality.