Emperor Xianfeng had a very good set of personnel powers, since the local officials in Jiangxi tried their best to impeach the Hunan army. And the Hunan army also needed the support of local money and food in Jiangxi, so Emperor Xianfeng asked the Hunan army to temporarily obey the orders of local officials in Jiangxi. When the Hunan army was a guest army, local officials in Jiangxi could refuse to provide grain and grass supplies to the Hunan army for various reasons. Now that the Hunan army is under the orders of the local officials in Jiangxi, there is no reason for the Jiangxi region to refuse to provide food and pay to "its own army."

After Zeng Guofan's departure, the nominal supreme leader of the Hunan army became Hu Linyi. But this supreme leader is more of a statement or a compliment. The Hunan army adopted a system in which soldiers were generals, and each battalion officer held the power of the army, and if they were disobedient, no one could do anything. Xianfeng ordered Hu Linyi to lead his troops down the river to attack Jiangning.

At the military meeting of the Hunan army, Hu Linyi came up with the strategy proposed by Zeng Guofan, "If you want to exterminate the Cantonese bandits, you need to start with Shi Dakai, Hong Wei, and Wei Ze." You must not go to war with them at the same time. ”

"My lord, the situation in Jiangxi has reached that point, and it is no longer possible to fight in Jiangxi!" Li Jibin, who made great contributions in the battle to capture Jiujiang, said.

Hu Linyi's subordinates all agreed, Emperor Xianfeng did let the Hunan army listen to Jiangxi's command, but to put it bluntly, this practice is a trick to fool people, the Hunan army does not recognize it, and Jiangxi officials will not recognize it. Therefore, if you should not provide food and grass, you should still not provide food and grass. Those who should rob Jiangxi should still loot Jiangxi places. In this case, if you want to fight in Jiangxi, you need to bring your own dry food. At this time, Hu Linyi's troops had just finished the big battle, and immediately went to Jiangxi to participate in the battle of besieging Shi Dakai, which was obviously unreliable.

After some debate, Hu Linyi's subordinates all believed that the most important thing at this time was to bring troops back to Wuhan to rest. After a few months of rest, the troops marched north from the Yangtze River, first with Jiang Zhongyuan in Huaibei to capture Huainan, and then cooperated with the Hunan army and naval divisions to jointly capture Anqing. At that time, the Hunan army would be able to go down the river, go straight to Jiangning, and destroy the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

This strategy seems to be feasible, first of all, the troops can avoid the sparse northern Jiangxi region that was tossed by the Hunan army. As the governor of Hubei, Hu Linyi is in charge of the largest supply of grain, grass and soldiers to the Hunan army. From Hubei's point of view, the Hunan army should march directly from Hubei to Anhui, instead of going to Jiangxi to fight.

At this time, the Hunan army also knew about the Guangfu Army's entry into Jiangxi to fight, and they didn't want to go to Jiangxi to fight. If you are fighting and suddenly attacked from behind by the Liberation Army, who can stand this. Moreover, with the experience of conquering Jiujiang, the Hunan army under Hu Linyi was quite confident in defeating the Taiping army. Moreover, although Hu Linyi himself has a good relationship with Zeng Guofan, the generals of the Hunan army under him undoubtedly prefer Jiang Zhongyuan, the ancestor of the Hunan army. Going to fight north of the Yangtze River met everyone's expectations.

Although Hu Linyi still attaches great importance to Zeng Guofan's views, it is impossible for him to completely ignore the attitude of his subordinates and forcibly implement his ideas. In addition, his subordinates asked to return to Hubei to rest at this time, and Hu Linyi could only agree to his subordinates' request in the end.

At the beginning of August, after the Taiping army did not continue to attack after conquering Jiujiang, it finally relaxed a little. At this time, the reorganization of the troops had been completed, and the commanders-in-chief and deputy generals of the five armies were in place one after another. Despite the loss of the hundreds of thousands of Western Expeditionary Army led by Shi Dakai, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's garrison troops and field armies combined were less than 150,000. Among them, the total number of field troops was only more than 60,000.

But there are two sides to everything, and without those half-hearted people, the remaining generals of the Kingdom of Heaven may not be loyal to the King of Heaven, but they are all loyal to the Kingdom of Heaven. At this time, King Hong was also in the Tianjing City to be powerful, and everyone was too lazy to deal with this already famous Heavenly King. This difficult work is naturally in the hands of Lin Fengxiang, the chief general of the Fifth Army. The commanders of the five armed forces only need to make corresponding measures according to the changes in the battlefield situation. In other words, a meeting of the commanders of the five armed forces can decide on the actions of these military districts that are holding on to the outskirts of the Heavenly Kingdom. These military operations did not need to be interfered by the Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan.

Jiujiang was lost, and the loss of the famous general Lin Qirong and 20,000 elite brothers is indeed regrettable. But Weeser sent 15o bronze cannons, and also left instructions for casting shells and training artillerymen. In fact, there is no need for these "extra" gifts in the eyes of the brothers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The 15o cannon gun carriage with wheels made Lin Fengxiang overjoyed. After personally trying it, Lin Fengxiang now that these cannons can move with the army, and when they encounter difficult roads, they can even be disassembled and transported by horses or manpower. It is no slower than the march of troops. This completely solved the artillery problem that had plagued Lin Fengxiang for a long time.

Of course, Lin Fengxiang's subordinates also happily showed their merits to Lin Fengxiang, and this time they did not give Wei Ze the remaining artillery money, saving Lin Fengxiang tens of thousands of taels of silver. This incident made Lin Fengxiang furious, Wei Ze was not a person that Lin Fengxiang could offend. Who knows what else Lin Fengxiang will ask for to Wei Ze in the future, and the fact that he didn't give money this time is the best reason for Wei Ze to refuse Lin Fengxiang's request in the future.

But in addition to scolding his subordinates, Lin Fengxiang, who was born as a fortune teller, also knew that this time things could not be good. If Wei Ze really wanted to continue to deal with Lin Fengxiang, his troops would not be so easy to ignore and withdraw directly back to Guangdong. Weeser didn't seem to have any strong desire to continue cooperating. Lin Fengxiang could only say to himself, for the time being, he was satisfied with the "windfall" of these artillery.

At this time, the three directions of Jiangxi, Changzhou and southern Anhui temporarily calmed down. The two directions north of the Yangtze River in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are lively. The first direction was naturally the part of the Qing army in the Jiangbei camp in the south of the Yangtze River and the part of the Qing army in the Jiangbei camp that crossed the river and rebuilt the Jiangbei camp in the area north of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu. Of course, this Jiangbei camp is too far away from the original Jiangbei camp. But this is also a signal for the Qing army to counterattack.

The second direction was the Huai army led by Jiang Zhongyuan, who had been sending troops to attack Shouzhou tenaciously and infiltrate the Huai River defense line that had begun to loosen. Since 1853, when Wei Ze was stationed in Anqing and began to occupy Anhui with Anqing as a base, the northern defense line of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had never felt such tremendous pressure.

Therefore, the military meeting of the commander-in-chief of the five armies was held in Chaohu, Anhui Province. It has always been the food and grass supply center of the Taiping Army. At the meeting, the commanders of the five armies all agreed with Lin Fengxiang's proposal, "Divide the combined forces of Dakai and Yang Fuqing, and pull people back as much as possible!" ”

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