In the late Qing Dynasty in the 19th century, the empire was in twilight. When the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom tore apart the south of the Yangtze River and Britain and Russia surrounded the frontier, a Han Confucian from Xiangyin who had failed the imperial examination three times walked out of the countryside after the age of forty and became a key force in the current situation. He is Zuo Zongtang, a man of action who calls himself a "lone minister" and fights for an inch of land for China in desperate situations.
From the planning of the Changsha City to the iron-blooded attack on the battlefield in Zhejiang, he created the Chu army, established the shipping administration, and broke the institutional dilemma with "administration of the world"; when the dispute between coastal defense and fortress defense stirred up the court, he expressed in a five-thousand-word memorial "not to give up an inch of land", carried the coffin and went to war, using the strategy of "slowly advancing to rush to war" to regain millions of territories and return Ili to its territory. Hu Xueyan's money and Zeng Jize's negotiations became his pawns on the chessboard, while Zuogongliu and the northwest settlement laid the foundation for long-term peace and stability in the frontier.
He fell out with Zeng Guofan over money, and fought with Li Hongzhang over coastal defense. He defeated the corrupt officialdom with his uprightness, but he also paid a huge human price. From Southeast Western Affairs to Northwest Fortress Defense, from Mawei Academy to Gansu Gongyuan, he regarded military affairs as his bones and people's livelihood as his flesh, and practiced his belief in "quelling chaos and rejuvenating the country" in troubled times. Even when he was in danger and supervised the Fujian defense in his later years, the good news at Zhennanguan still became his last bloody footnote.
This is not a perfect hero's biography, but the history of an old man's struggle under the shackles of the times, both arrogant and humble. When the bell of the empire's collapse began to ring, Zuo Zongtang used his courage as a torch to illuminate not only the 1.6 Million square kilometers of territory, but also the spiritual coordinates of the Chinese people in the darkness.
