One into the gate, facing a wall of three zhang wide, one zhang high, two corners, and the gate thousand general official hall is divided into the front and back of the house, with the gate, the lobby, the second hall, the third hall as the central axis, the other buildings are symmetrical, the inner counselor, the scribe, the official on duty and other officials are all this office lobby five rooms and seven shelves are arranged very majestic

Li Guolou brought the deputy envoy Hongdu, the master Fan Dahui, Wei Hanyu, Xu Lan, the school officials Cheng Kun, Batel, Xun Xi, Fan Ye, and the medical officer Wang Fuzhen, the righteous son Li Yunkai, and the accompanying Goshha, a large group of more than 50 people came to the banquet, and there was even Cao Jiqin, a veterinarian with the army, he had no high-ranking officials here, and the only person who came to play as a friend was Jinshi Zhu Dinghe Wanniang, who belonged to the personal maid, and could not be on the stage, and there was no trace of her on this occasion

The banquet has been arranged, ten tables of banquets have been placed in the West Flower Hall, a few charcoal basins are placed on the ground around them, and they are about to take off their coats when they enter the door, and they are steaming, Li Guolou occupies five tables, Datong General Soldier Liu Qiuzheng occupies two tables, and the master lady guards the thousand total Song Qingren occupy three tables

Li Guolou sat down, Liu Qiuzheng and Song Qing beckoned when they saw that the young Liu Guangcai was about to sit at the table of the Datong officer: "Liu Guangcai came over and sat down, and I asked my godson Xiaoshi to accompany you."

arranged Liu Guangcai, Li Yunkai, Hongdu, Fan Dahui, and Zhu Dinghe to sit at the main table

Among them, Hongdu Hongyun was the head, in the past, it was just a quartermaster in the Dagukou Fort, only because he had grown a fat body, he was named by Li Guolou, and he was confused and did not make trouble, so he became the deputy envoy of the escort, in addition to the carriage and horses, the accommodation and diet were passable, there was no imaginary gnawing dry food to live, carrying a large pot helmet with him, and now he still put it in the carriage, he has not tasted a mouthful, tonight is a table full of delicacies, two large copper basins are full of fragrant fat pork trotters, and there is also a copper basin full of curry beef soup, the pungent fragrance makes the room full of people drooling

There are many rules in the officialdom of the Qing Dynasty, and you must first say an official word to wish the emperor and the queen mother of the two palaces a long and healthy life, and the host and guest begin to toast each other, and the red tape is a big push, but there is always an end time, and then there is no main point, everyone sits down to drink, and fart

Niangziguan water mill noodles have cornmeal, bean noodles, wheat noodles and all kinds of miscellaneous noodles, which are famous for their sweet taste, and the food at the Sanjin wine banquet is indispensable, and it is chewy and sweet in the mouth

Fan Dahui did his master's responsibility, stood up and raised his glass and said: "Everyone, Lord Li, the amount of alcohol is shallow, and the alcohol is too strong to drink, this stuffy fact is reluctant, and I hope to forgive my sins, I will accompany you here first, not self-punishment three glasses."

This is Li Guolou's opening remarks every time he goes to a banquet, as for the effect, the benevolent and the wise should see the wise, and everyone will show their powers

This wine cup is not big, Dahui drank three glasses of wine in a row, just sat down and didn't take a breath, not good at words, Datong General Liu Qiuzheng raised the wine glass and said: "Master Li, the amount of alcohol is acceptable, three glasses of belly, the face does not change, brother, I respect you with a cup of feelings, and I have a deep feeling."

Liu Qiuzheng did it first to pay respect, what can Li Guolou say, the official title is bigger than him, only a mouthful, this wine banquet is used to three cups for a round, that is, Liu Qiuzheng has to toast twice, who called Li Guolou and his party to rest for a long time, and they can't even find a reason to shirk and not drink, so tonight is going to be a banquet, no one will let him go, and the words of Dahui have no effect, and people should come forward one by one to clink glasses to Li Guolou

In the second round of toasting, Li Guolou shirked a little and said: "The banquet has just started to drink slowly, don't be in a hurry, Liu Zhentai, I am very concerned about the war in the northwest, and I haven't written it in the newspaper recently, I don't know how the war is going these days."

Liu Qiuzheng put down his wine glass, his face was as serious as ever, and he said slowly: "The winter army is not easy to pull out, the leader of the rebellion, Ma Wenlu, is still rampant in Suzhou, the Chu army Xu Zhanbiao has not made progress in besieging Dong Zhiyuan due to the difficulty of winter scheduling, Li Daren, Zuo Zongtang is not Lanzhou, but Xi'an, and now there are all rebellions around Lanzhou, how dare Zuo Zongtang put the governor there?"

As the chief soldier of Datong, Liu Qiuzheng had no chance to participate in the counterinsurgency and returned to the chaos, full of complaints, where would he say good things about Zuo Zongtang, because of the encirclement and suppression of the West Twist, Zhang Zongyu had merit, he was promoted to the general army of Datong not long after, but who would dislike the credit, originally cooperated with Zuo Zongtang in the past in Shanxi, Liu Qiuzheng now opened his mouth and called Zuo Zongtang's name directly, and did not talk about officialdom etiquette at all

When Li Guolou heard that the Qing army was besieging Dong Zhiyuan, he was very excited, slapped the table, stood up, and shouted: "Li Zi Battalion soldiers, Dong Zhiyuan, let those rabbit cubs see the power of Li Zi Battalion."

The ten tables were all shocked, this is to escort the military supplies, the envoy is clearly here to grab the credit, the court official Fan Dahui, as the master, always has to show his attitude, look at Li Guolou, as if he is not drunk, this daughter is red is rice wine, the degree is very low, dry a few glasses of wine, it should be fine, and hurriedly persuaded: "Lord Li is not good, the official document says that we will go to Lanzhou, we change the purpose, I am afraid that we will not be able to pay the errand."

"Hey, Master Rice, it's okay, this Qincha has the emperor's holy decree, and he has the right to act cheaply, I have the right to make a decision," Li Guolou has a life-saving talisman and carries a secret decree with him, who dares to provoke him with official affairs, and hits the Jinluan Palace, since someone pulls a bias and beats the Tongzhi Emperor again, taking advantage of the alcohol to raise his status by several levels, and then turn back into the minister of the Qincha

Everyone suddenly realized that Li Guolou's status was really extraordinary, and he was not an escort in the first place, so the identity of the minister was hidden, no wonder he was so arrogant

******

Ma Wenlu, the leader of the Gansu Hui Rebel Army, whose real name is Ma Si Hui, a native of Hezhou, Gansu Province, was a minor officer under Suo Wen, the governor of Gansu Prefecture in the Qing Dynasty, in the spring of 1865, the Hui uprisings in Shaanxi and Gansu broke out one after another, and he led the Hui uprising in Suzhou, making Suzhou a base for the Hui uprising, and also a strong force in the Shaanxi-Gansu Hui Rebellion, with a number of more than 50,000 rebel troops

Ma Hualong, a native of Jinjibao in Ningxia, and the leader of another Hui rebel army, known as Tuobil Tula Dao, Saide Shuhaida, raised troops in Ningxia Jinjibao in the second year of Tongzhi, killed Ningxia Daotai, Hou Yundeng, prefect Lu Jishao, and Zhixian Zhao Changgeng and occupied Jinjibao

Ma Zhenghe occupied Dong Zhiyuan's area and became independent, and he was a strong force in the rebellion

The cause of the rebellion in Shaanxi and Gansu was a chain reaction caused by the Taiping Rebellion, and after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established the capital of Nanjing in 1853, most of the provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River were controlled by the Taiping army

In order to raise huge military funds to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the uprisings of the people of all ethnic groups under its influence, the Qing Dynasty stepped up the search for the so-called "perfect areas" in the northwest region, which had not yet been damaged by the war

In addition to paying tens of thousands of taels of silver to the Beijing division every month, Shaanxi also had to assist in the use of troops, and a large amount of military salaries in various provinces, all of which fell on the heads of the people of all nationalities in Shaanxi

Shaanxi is one of the areas where the Hui people are relatively concentrated, the Hui population in the province is about one million, and the Hui and Han ethnic groups live together, but they have different religious beliefs and customs, do not intermarry with each other, and in some places even build a city for the Hui and Han people, govern the local Hui people with the Hui landlord class, and implement the local Tusi policy

In order to prevent the Hui people from rebelling, the Shaanxi authorities ordered all prefectures and counties to vigorously organize regimental training, and Zhang Fu, the minister of Shaanxi regimental training, was the governor of Jiangxi, and was dismissed from his post because of the failure of Jiujiang to suppress the Taiping Army, and returned to the province in 1861 to defend the system

In May 1862, he entered the Shaanxi Taiping Army, and the Fuwang Chen Decai Department united with the Twist Army to approach Xi'an

The Lan Chaozhu rebel army has also entered Hanzhong from Sichuan, and the whole of Shaanxi shook the governor of Shaanxi, Yingdi, and the minister of regimental training, Zhang Fu, hurriedly mobilized regiments from all over the country to train to Nanshan to block the Taiping army

In May of that year, the Taiping army instructed Zhao Quanzhong's regiment to train hundreds of Hui Yong, who were unwilling to fight the Taiping army, killed the leading officer and took refuge in Qinjia Village outside the city, looted Qinjia Village and nearby Hui villages, and spread the poster "Shaanxi does not leave the Hui people, and the will of heaven will destroy the Hui" post

The Hui people in Huazhou first revolted, and the Hui people on both sides of the Wei River rushed to respond, and the Hui people everywhere underwent drastic changes in the first place, and the Hui people in Shaanxi developed rapidly from then on

In the face of the rapid development of the Hui uprising, led by the governor Yingdi, the civil and military officials of Shaanxi Province "prepared to suppress no soldiers" and "could not help but temporarily comfort", and sent officials and gentry to various places to appease Zhang Fu and others, and when the Hui people negotiated with the Hui people in Lintong Youfang Street, they were very angry and sent him to Cangtou Town to be executed

At that time, in addition to Ren Wu, Hongxing, and Hemingtang, the main leaders of the Hui army in Shaanxi Province also included Ma Zhenghe, Ma Siyuan, Bai Yanhu, Ma Shengyan, Yu Deyan, Yu Yanlu, Sun Yubao, Erhezhou, etc., among which there were upper-level elements such as landlords, merchants, and imams on the rich side of the rich Jia, and the leadership of the rebel army was in their hands

The rapid development of the Shaanxi Hui uprising seriously threatened the northwestern rule of the Qing Dynasty, and the Qing court urgently ordered the Jingzhou general Duolonga to lead the army into Shaanxi, and in January 1863, Duolonga led his troops from Henan to Shaanxi, together with the Shengbao troops, a total of more than 20,000 soldiers

At the beginning of September, Duolonga arrived in Xi'an to perform a trick of appeasement, sent people to the Hui rebel army to lure surrender, and used the frequent Hui gentry in Xi'an to carry out appeasement activities among the leaders of the Hui army, and Sun Yubao and others surrendered to the Qing army

Bai Yanhu, Ma Shengyan, Yu Deyan, and Yu Yanlu led their troops to the northwest and retreated to Pizhou through Liquan and Qianzhou, and then most of the Hui rebel army retreated to Longdong, Dong Zhiyuan, and other Hui troops also entered the eastern part of Gansu through Wugong, Yixian, Fengxiang, and Longzhou, and from then on, the center of the Shaanxi-Gansu Hui uprising was transferred from Shaanxi to Gansu

The rulers of the Qing Dynasty exclaimed: "Pingliang, Jingning, Longde in Gansu, Gongchang, Qinzhou, Fuqiang in the south of Anding Province, Ningxia, Pingluo, Lingzhou, and Guyuan in the north of Qingshui Province are all uncovered and bees and ants gather and breed in the difficult way to stretch for thousands of miles."

In order to relieve the worries of the western expedition, he tried to quickly capture the rebel army by the Lan Dynasty Pillar rebel army to hold on to Shaanxi Xu, and on March 3, Duolonga personally commanded the siege of the city, wounded the head of the rebel army and died soon after, the Qing army lost its commander and could not move westward

In May and June 1864, the Qing Dynasty transferred Yang Yuebin, the commander of the Fujian Navy, to serve as the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu to "specialize" the Gansu Hui army

In July of the same year, after the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Tianjing, the Qing Dynasty transferred the suppression of the Taiping Army to the northwest to suppress the Hui rebel army, so that "in a corner of Gan Province, the number of commanders and commanders of the army has reached as many as eight", and the number of soldiers reached 780,000

However, these commanders and generals are not of the same faction, each has its own politics, and they have different opinions, and they are deeply afraid that it will be difficult to guarantee victory or defeat with the Hui army.

Therefore, although the Qing army had captured the Hui army and occupied Guyuan, Yancha Hall, Pingliang and other places, the strength of the rebel army did not suffer major losses, and the Hui army of Shaanxi and Gansu cooperated with each other, and adopted the tactics of avoiding the real and tending to the false, drifting and swimming, and still won many battles

The Hui rebel army continued to attack the Qing army, causing its newspapers to be choked, the food and salaries were scarce, and the provincial capital of Lanzhou was isolated, and the ruling power of Gansu of the Qing Dynasty was in a state of turmoil

As a result, Yang Yuebin, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, lamented in a compromise: "Now the thieves of Hedi are disturbed by the thieves of Nanping, the thieves of Pinggu are disturbed by the thieves of Dongning, the thieves of Ling, and the thieves of Beiliangsu are disturbed by the west. If you go out of the province to suppress the office, it will be fundamentally shaken, and the external inspection will give the momentum, and the internal strength will not be enough to allocate."

In November of the same year, Zhang Zongyu, the leader of the Twist Army, in accordance with the strategic idea of "advancing to Gansu and Shaanxi to connect the Hui people", led more than 30,000 people of the West Twist Army from Henan into the territory of Huayin and Weinan in Shaanxi, and the Qing court was afraid that the Hui Army and the West Twist Army would unite and urgently ordered the Hunan Army to aid Shaanxi

Admiral Liu Songshan commanded the 18th battalion of the old Hunan army from Henan, on the one hand, to play the defensive central guard Mu Tushan's troops to move to Jingzhou at the junction of Gansu and Shaanxi to prevent the return of twisting and merging, and on the other hand, he led the 30 battalions of the Qing army from the west of Shaanxi, Longzhou, and Pizhou to the east, and concentrated on the attack

Although the Hui People's Army and the Western Twist Army fought separately, they still separated from time to time, and to a certain extent, they played a strategic role in mutual cooperation

In the course of the continuous development of the Gansu Hui Army, four centers of anti-Qing struggle were gradually formed:

One is led by Ma Hualong, with Jinjibao as the center, including Ningxia Prefecture and the Longdong Inner Uprising Area

One is that Ma Zhanao led the Hui, Salar and Dongxiang uprisings centered on Hezhou

One is the uprising area led by Ma Wenyi, Ma Guiyuan and Ma Benyuan, with Xining as the center

One is that Ma Wenlu led the uprising area centered on Suzhou

The principle of Dongzhi in Longdong is the base area of the Hui People's Army in Shaanxi

Because Yang Yuebin, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, was helpless to suppress the uprising of the Hui people in Shaanxi and Gansu, the Qing Dynasty sent Zuo Zongtang, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, to take over as the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu

In January 1867, Zuo Zongtang arrived in Hankou from Fuzhou via Jiangxi, and immediately carried out various preparations, and in February, the Qing court appointed Zuo Zongtang as the minister of the Qin Mission, urging him to quickly go north to supervise the military affairs of Shaanxi and Gansu