? Ma Jifen, an American sailor, committed suicide because of the failure of Beiyang Navy.

Last year was the 20th anniversary of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895/KLOC-0. In addition to the unyielding Beiyang prefect, there is also a naval officer in this team. This little-known foreign officer, named Ma Jifen, once commanded the armored ship Zhenyuan of the Qing army and fought to the death with the Japanese joint fleet in the Yellow Sea War. & gt who is Ma Jifen? He was a young man who was born for the navy of China and died for the navy of China. He died at the age of 37. Ma Jifen was born in a prominent military family in Pennsylvania. /kloc-was admitted to Indianapolis naval academy at the age of 0/7, but when 1884 graduated, he failed to serve in the navy and went home as a substitute with the resettlement fee of 1000. This year, the Sino-French war broke out. When Ma Jifen saw the news that Li Hongzhang had opened in Fuzhou in the newspaper, he was very excited and decided to join the army in China. 1in April, 885, Ma Jifen sailed for four months and arrived at the port outside Tianjin, but the first news he heard after landing was that the war was over. Ma Jifen was disappointed, but he still wanted to be a naval officer in China. So he handed the application letter to Li Hongzhang through the American vice consul. Li Hongzhang accepted his interview. The interview went well. However, just when Ma Jifen thought that "success was imminent", Li Hongzhang suddenly asked about his age, and Ma Jifen replied that he was 25 years old. Li Hongzhang said with a straight face, "Standing at 30", Ma Jifen can't bear the heavy responsibility. After Ma Jifen's repeated entreaties, Li Hongzhang agreed to let Ma Jifen serve in the China Navy as long as he passed the examination. Two days later, Tianjin School specially conducted a "civil service examination" for Ma Jifen. Ma Jifen, who studied in the United States Naval War College for seven years, got only 60% of all the papers correctly, which satisfied the examiners in China. But Li Hongzhang still couldn't trust that the torpedo boat was commanded by foreigners, and only let Ma Jifen be the instructor of Tianjin Ordnance Bureau. During his teaching days in Tianjin Ordnance Bureau, Ma Jifen's annual salary was only 130 taels of silver (at the then exchange rate 1800 USD). Despite his high position, he never covets kickbacks when buying arms. In this way, Li Hongzhang began to give Ma Jifen an important task. & gt 1894, the Sino-Japanese War broke out. Ma Jifen was appointed as the vice captain of the battleship Zhenyuan to participate in the naval battle in the Yellow Sea. On September 17, Ma Jifen changed from an instructor to a soldier. Ma Jifen often suggested "preemptive strike", but he found that China people's strategy has always been "avoiding the enemy and protecting the ship" and "focusing on defense", which puzzled Ma Jifen. Zhenyuan was surrounded by three Japanese warships, and the ratio of Chinese and Japanese warships quickly changed from 12 to 8 12. At the same time, the warship commanded by Ding was riddled with holes under the attack of Japanese ships. So Ma Jifen ordered Zhenyuan to be close to the Japanese fleet to disperse the Japanese firepower. The Japanese flagship "Yoshino" was attracted by the "Zhenyuan" ship, and Ma Jifen ordered four Krupp main guns to fire across the board, so Yoshino lost his fighting capacity and led two Japanese ships to retreat. Ma Jifen, who was seriously injured and almost blind, witnessed a shocking scene: Deng Shichang led the Japanese ship Zhiyuan and the Japanese ship Yoshino, which was fleeing after the bomb ran out ... Later, Ma Jifen, who was in a coma, was carried into the cabin, leaving a picture of her head wrapped in cotton yarn and covered in blood. & gt 1895, 17 In February, the Japanese army invaded Ahava, and the Beiyang Navy was wiped out. Ma Jifen heard a news that the China court blamed his foreign adviser for the failure of the war. Ma Jifen knew what this meant to him, so he secretly hid on an American cargo ship and sneaked back to China. & gt After the defeat of China's navy, public opinion in western countries recognized that the Japanese navy was brave and good at fighting, while the commander-in-chief of China's navy was weak and of low quality. In order to "prove" the innocence of his comrades-in-arms, Ma Jifen began to give speeches everywhere. There is a passage in Ma Jifen's book "Sea Battle Outside the Yalu River": "China's navy is not as greedy and incompetent as you say. Our compatriots always insult China's navy. However, only 1 light cruisers and 1 gunboats escaped. The vast majority of China's navy are fighting the Japanese fleet. Although we are at a disadvantage in technology, don't insult us again. We and those who died in the battle deserve the respect of our American compatriots. & gt People only look at the outcome of the war. Because Ma Jifen's brain was badly injured in the war, Americans thought he was mentally ill, his efforts were regarded as madness, and what he said was regarded as a joke. Ma Jifen's account of 1894- 1895 Sino-Japanese War of 1895 was news at first, and later it was regarded as crazy talk. Ma Jifen himself showed some signs of madness in the hospital. His medical record reads: "The optic nerve in the right eye is damaged, the eardrum is damaged, and shrapnel remains in the ribs and buttocks. & gt2 February 1895, 1 1, Ding, who was out of ammunition, refused the forced surrender of the Japanese army and Rinall and committed suicide by taking poison. I can't figure out why my respected prefect Ding had such an experience: Ding had already been dismissed before his death; After his death, Emperor Guangxu also issued the imperial edict that "a family has no property and cannot be buried". When recalling Ding Zhifu, he wrote: "Under the lonely lamp in the middle of the night, I thought about it and drank it and died. How did the old hero feel at that time? " 1897 February 1 1 day, chose the day when the respected prefect was martyred and shot in a hospital in new york. He left a note on his hospital bed: "My heart belongs to China and Beiyang Navy. According to Ma Jifen's will, when he was buried, his body was dressed in the uniform of Beiyang Navy, and the coffin was covered with the Yellow Dragon Flag, which he brought back from China and once hung on Zhenyuan Ship. & gt The back of Ma Jifen's tombstone is engraved with the national flags of China and the United States, and the front reads: "This monument is to commemorate a brave man who loved his motherland but gave his life to another national flag. 」