Amid the sound of whistles and flutes, and in the midst of cries and pleadings and scolding, the Taiping army did not make much effort to penetrate the town along the red gap; He made persistent efforts to smoke out the last remnants of the enemy in the fortified area of the town by means of arson and projecting poisonous smoke balls.

The ambush soldiers who had been arranged in advance in the inland direction of Lukou were also led by the new instructor Sima Gao Jichang, and intercepted a cadre who fled from the back gate as scheduled; and the ships and supplies that they hide in the reeds. It seems ridiculous that it was only a group of tea merchants who dared to stop the army, but I saw it with my own eyes.

In addition, due to the fact that the nearby people fled to the city, there were nearly 10,000 people in this town, which doubled as a customs market and a fortification; Therefore, the various merchant guards and defected to the Tu Regiment, as well as the young men who were armed on the spot, also reached more than 2,000. There are more than 600 crossbows and crossbows of all kinds, as well as more than 400 collars of various colors of armor.

Therefore, the idle forces in the vicinity did not dare to invade and provoke, but were annexed by several upstream and downstream forces, and by the way, more than a dozen rural earthen fortresses were burned; Even a few days ago, the armed expropriation team from Tanzhou was repulsed by them; Then, after losing half of the manpower, he simply couldn't bear the harassment and scattered on the way back.

The equipment and baggage were all obtained locally, so for a time the "prestige" and a little inflated and arrogant, which was also adopted and invested by more nearby villages. This time, it was also the Taiping army that crossed the border, but it was just an armed collection team from Xiangtan County in the south, and as a result, it was completely kicked on the iron plate and hit the street.

In addition to the routine goods in the tea merchants' houses and offices here, the rebels have fully obtained the material storage of rice, wheat, salt, vegetables, oil, wine, etc., which has been eaten by the whole town for more than half a year; There are even more than 1,000 heads of livestock and thousands of quintals of tea. It is the biggest gain before going to Tanzhou.

Those livestock can be used to replace and replenish the loss of animal power along the way, not to mention that this tea is a good thing for most people in this era. External application can treat insect bites and skin ulcers, and internal application can regulate the stomach and intestines to prevent and alleviate most emergencies. and even as a placebo for all kinds of headaches and brain fevers, and can deceive themselves to barely cope with the past.

In addition, from the seized booty, it was found that the other side actually had different banners, including more than one official army, rebel army, and local regiment, which were obviously used to correspond to and deal with their respective camps and belonging forces; This is also a kind of survival philosophy in the troubled times for this stronghold dominated by merchants in disguise.

It is impossible to say that in time, the combined efforts of this group of businessmen can really break into a situation or achieve a temporary climate; And become a well-known separatist force in Hunan. Unfortunately, however, they stood in the way of the Taiping Army, and made the wrong choice.

Therefore, as the price of choosing the wrong position, from the head of the guild and the east of the town to the ordinary merchants and households, as long as there is a little self-proclaimed character, one of them is hung on the wall (street lamp), and the ordinary armed men who are accomplices are killed by eleven beatings; The rest of the ship, along with locally drawn youth, was transported to the previous granary for supervised labor.

This is also the basic countermeasure and experience of coming all the way from Guizhou; As an important stronghold and key point that has just been conquered, it is these young and middle-aged people who are most likely to be instigated and changed and repeated; Therefore, after spending a little bit of money to forcibly requisition them and resettle them in other places, although there may be poor supervision and escape, there is not much chance to form a subversive joint force in a familiar environment.

And the loss of the original support of these young and middle-aged people has to rely more on the order and security established by the rebels; Otherwise, the hungry people who are wandering around will tell them how hard it is to live a stable life under strict control.

In fact, since sending troops out of Guizhou, Zhou Huai'an has not recruited a single soldier from the homeless people. Compared with the practice that the generals of the rebel army used to put grain on the one hand to provide relief while coercing many displaced people to advance and add trenches; Zhou Huai'an was even more reluctant to allow these miscellaneous currents, which lacked order and training, as well as any organization or collective concept, to undermine and pollute the advanced military system that he had spent so much effort to build.

Therefore, even if the grain station is established and needs to be operated for a long time, he even refuses to charge more for the displaced people who are used for reclamation and engineering labor, and emphasizes the need for more screening and selection; As for those young people who came to vote with various purposes along the way, they were also assigned to participate in logistics and labor along the road after they were collected.

In terms of the source of replenishment of the army, he preferred to use the poor people at the bottom of the city; Especially craftsmen and apprentices, small craftsmen, freed slaves and maidservants, and even porters, porters, pickers, coolies, and so on. In addition, there are fishermen and boat owners who are familiar with water activities, and if they are in mountainous and hilly areas, there are miners and mountain people.

Their only characteristic is that they are not bound by the country, and are willing to work hard for their livelihood, rather than easily settling down like the landless and bankrupt peasants, and there is a little bit of organization and group obedience. Although there are common problems and problems of one kind or another, they still belong to the active group objects that can be guided and transformed at a limited cost and cost.

And the series of systems and systems, ideological theories, and goals of different stages, as well as the practical interests and long-term plans that he created for this purpose, do not exist for the purpose of transforming all these things for his own use? Therefore, when he entered the city of Tanzhou by land and water along the Xiangshui River, which was no longer hindered after the fall of Lukou, his command had reached more than 24,000 people.

Of course, in addition to the original 10 battalions and regiments, the other five battalions were reorganized and reorganized along the way, and the rest were all coarse equipment that lacked training and had no appearance, and could only be used to make up the number of 10 supplementary battalions that could be used to fill up the momentum or cooperate with the garrison to suppress the localities.

During this period, there were still some groups and groups of people who were unwilling to accept the disbandment and reorganization, and hoped to maintain the formation and join, but were persuaded to quit by the Taiping Army in disguise; They only followed the Taiping army for a period of time, and then returned the reward given in the stronghold. Otherwise, we can at least double the number of supplementary camps.

No matter how small groups are broken up and organized, the personal attachment and relationship bonds formed by the original clan and township party will be far less than the effect of the melting pot of unity under the military system that is ordered and prohibited in the long run. However, if the small groups and township party organizations that remain in their original structure and join them can easily confuse the original simple relationship of obedience and management between superiors and subordinates into an even more complicated relationship between friends and parties who are close to each other and discuss interests and harms.

This is also where the major drawbacks of the peasant military system of most of the times lie. Most of the upper and lower levels are filled with large and small township parties and clan groups; And with this as the core of the army's combat effectiveness and the backbone of the army, if you really want to fight for your life, you may have the charm of the ancient style of dying without turning your heels.

However, in the absence of many institutional constraints, and only relying on personal prestige and means to maintain it, it is easy to produce great fluctuations due to the success or failure of people. Often when you are together, you will gather for a while, and if you are not in harmony, you will disperse by yourself, and even at the expense of seeing each other, you will take it as a common thing.

Even when Huang Chao was cultivating and reorganizing the army in Lingnan, he only cleaned up and cleaned up the General's Mansion, and the three wings of the main formation were composed of the eight sons of the Yellow Gate and the old brothers of the Salt Gang; However, peripheral beings such as the Raging Wind Camp still lack sufficient institutional rules and regulations, and can only rely on personal skills and relationship sources to ensure that the basic orders are directed.

When encountering careerists and dissidents like themselves, who are generally not bad on the surface but have their own opinions in private, they are completely powerless and lack the corresponding sensitive reaction and deterrence. Therefore, now that I think about it, the civil strife incident in which Ding Hui seized the army at the beginning is not like some accident, but more like the product of some kind of upper-level game of the rebel army, and the result that needs to be cleaned up.

In the middle of this troop dispatch, Zhou Huai'an strictly ordered that even if there was a contradiction and conflict and he directly used his sword to drive people away, he must resolutely prevent this kind of pollution source and tumor from being mixed into the system.

If Zhou Huai'an was like a traditional rebel general, who was hungry and would pull people to the habit, with the resources at his disposal, he could pull out hundreds of thousands of people from the places along the route in a short period of time; However, for this kind of thing full of chaos and uncertainties, he is not sensitive at all.

You must know that a large part of the lessons learned from the success or failure of many peasant uprisings in history are inexplicable because of a gust of rain, a wind, a sudden small accident, an ordinary contradiction and conflict, and even the timidity and cringe of a few people; As a result, in the obvious advantages and upper hand, they were coerced and scattered by these huge numbers of cannon fodder, and brought into a situation of falling short or even dying.

This is no longer a philosophical story that a lion can defeat the enemy with a hundred sheep, at least the sheep still have the meek and obedient head sheep effect, even if it is a mountain cliff, it can jump down according to inertia; It's a matter of a lion leading a hundred pigs that may run around at any time and catch them, and they may be injured and trampled to death by the frightened mad pigs at any time.

With this kind of thought and plan, Zhou Huai'an silently looked at the Tanzhou Prefecture City on the river, which was like a white veil of mist, with a clear gray tone and a faint luster, or the old county of Changsha, where the Changsha City of later generations was located.

Located in the south of the remnants of Yunmeng Daze, including the 800-mile smoke and vast Dongting, the seven prefectures under the rule of the Hunan Metropolitan Regiment Training Observation and Disposal Mission (now the central and southern part of Hunan Province) for no more than 118 years are located, and the largest and oldest city is located.

However, when the fleet pierced through the morning fog on the river and approached, they couldn't help but be surprised to find that this ancient city, which is located between the main stream of Xiangshui and the Liuyang water, was moaning and screaming in pain in the spreading fire and smoke. And in the moat waterway that connects the city, there are also floating corpses and blood flowing out one after another.

Zhou Huai'an suddenly understood why there was all that chaos on the way.

(End of chapter)