The evaluation of Zuo in the Draft of Qing History is completely comparable to Zeng Guofan's. Zuo Zhuan said: resourceful, strict with self-discipline, upright and upright, hateful of evil, and disobedient in behavior. Emperor Tongzhi once pointed out the shortcomings of Left, that is, loyalty, some extreme, extreme, extreme. Since Zeng Zuo and Zeng Zuo are compared in the Draft of Qing History, let's look at their differences and gaps in employing people from the perspective of employing people. When Zuo Tang Zong was underdeveloped, he befriended Zeng Guofan and Hu Linyi and became arrogant. Without Hu Linyi and Zeng Guofan, no one can get into his eyes. Most of ZTE's generals were promoted by Zeng Guofan. Although these generals later ascended the position of powerful people, they respected Zeng Guofan all their lives and regarded him as a benefactor. Only Zuo maverick, competing with Zeng Guofan, refused to be independent, and the two tended to be out of date. Zeng Guofan restrained himself by learning, advocated peace in diplomacy, and stood on the left side, arguing for war abroad, so world public opinion stood on the left side. Zuo is complacent about his talents, so the talents who come out of him, although talented, are not as good as Zeng Guofan in virtue and achievement. Let's just say that Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang trained at least dozens of people, while the Left trained very few, which is estimated to be a minority. On one occasion, Zeng Guofan talked about the character of Zuo and other Xiang generals, saying: Zuo especially likes others to compliment him and is very respectful to him. Most people who bow and scrape all day get rich rewards, including those with ulterior motives, and Zuo is easily deceived by others. That's the reason. Left of choose and employ persons than zeng guofan, Hu Linyi, li hongzhang. As mentioned earlier, this is the evaluation of him in the draft of Qing history. There are many examples of left-handed mistakes in employing people, and some even caused big lawsuits. The most typical example is Wu Shimai. At first, Li recommended Wu Shimai to Hu Linyi. After a period of observation, Hu Linyi wrote a letter to Yan Jingming, completely using the language of the fortuneteller: "I met Wu Shimai in Yuezhou for ten days. In these ten days, Wu Shimai didn't say a word. Brother, I used my divine insight to decide that he was not there. Parentheses are added after it. The parenthesis says that "this statement is boastful, but it has a strange formula", which means that he judges people in a strange way. /kloc-in the autumn of 0/860, Li recommended Wu Shimai to Zeng Guofan. Zeng Guofan said to Li: When you recommended Wu Shimai to Hu Linyi, you boasted about how talented he was. Judging from Hu's evaluation, it seems that he is only a learned middleman, not a general. Due to Li's repeated recommendation, Guoan initially arranged for Wu Shimai to recruit 2,500 people. But seeing Mr. Wu busy every day, Zeng Guofan began to be very happy and thought he was a down-to-earth person. But afterwards, I learned that Wu Shimai copied the military system in the official history as a teaching material for running the army. Zeng Guofan felt that the situation was serious, and immediately asked Li to persuade Wu Shimai, who he recommended: "Wu retired from the nunnery, which means to raise 2,500 people and record them. "Military is extremely qualitative. Except for Ban and Ma, the' Twenty-three Histories' were all written by literati. I don't know what Zhan Zhen is, and there are many false words, which are fabricated at will and cannot be trusted. Everything in Tong Jian that is not credible is recognized with a pen. If retiring from the nunnery is based on the editing of Twenty-three History and the military management system, the door diameter is already very poor and it is difficult to achieve it. Since you are close friends with him, you should persuade him to abandon the old paper, read the roll-call exercises and check everything on the wall. " Later, Zeng Guofan did not need Wu Shimai. Ever since he made bad friends with Zuo, there was a saying in the Xiang army at that time: Zeng Guofan used whoever he didn't use, but there was a lot of resentment in it, and the actual effect was very general. People like Wu Shimai don't need Hu Linyi or Zeng Guofan. Naturally, they have their reasons, but Zuo doesn't care. 1863, left to attack Hangzhou. When Wu Shimai was a cabinet minister, he was ordered to divide the system. 1868 went to northwest with the left to suppress the * * * uprising. At this time, the left is the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, and Wu Shimai has also made some achievements. Later, in the name of violating orders, he killed the guerrilla Zhu Deshu without authorization, and even lied to the court about his military situation after killing him. Therefore, Zhu's younger brother reported the imperial edict to the emperor, and the Qing court sent an imperial envoy to ask Zuo to cooperate with the investigation, because this was within the jurisdiction of Zuo. As a result, the left sided with Wu Shimai, saying that there was nothing wrong with him and he didn't kill people at will, but Wu Shimai died of depression in the army. In fact, Wu Shimai ordered Zhu Deshu to attack the East Road, that is, to lead the battalions to fight for the customs, but Wu Shimai was responsible for violating the order and beheading him. Wu Shimai also said that Zhu Deshu embezzled the soldier's pay, which was actually a magistrate recommended by Wu Shimai's followers Ding and Zeng. To this end, Zhu's younger brother demanded revenge for Zhu Deshu and received a pension. Zuo caused a lot of trouble for this matter. In fact, improper employment by the left is by no means a case, so I won't explain it here. In addition to other aspects, Zuo is obviously inferior to the other three among the four famous ministers of ZTE. But then again, everyone has his own strengths. There is no doubt about Zuo's military talent and loyalty to the country.