Liu Yongfu
Liu Yongfu was a Chinese soldier of fortune and commander of the celebrated Black Flag Army. Liu won fame as a Chinese patriot fighting against the French in northern Vietnam in the 1870s and early 1880s. During the SinoFrench War he established a close friendship with the Chinese statesman and general Tang Chingsung, and in 1895 he helped Tang organise resistance to the Japanese invasion of Taiwan. He succeeded Tang as the second and last leader of the shortlived Republic of Formosa .
Liu Yongfu was born onOctober 1837 in the town of Qinzhou in southern China, close to the Vietnamese border. Qinzhou, now in Guangxi province, was at that time in the extreme southwest of Guangdong province. The ancestral home of Lius family was the village of Popai in Guangxi province, and when he was eight his parents moved to Shangsizhou in Guangxi. Lius family was poor, living by manual work for others, and was only just able to scrape a living. In 1857 Liu joined a local militia force commanded by Wu Yuanqing , who claimed to hold a commission from the Taipings.
Source: Wikipedia