The turning point of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's extreme prosperity and decline was the civil strife in "Tianjing". Hong Xiuquan first summoned Wei Changhui to join the guard, killed nearly 20,000 people under Yang Xiuqing, and then summoned Shi Da Kaiqin Wang, killed Wei Changhui and 4,000 of his subordinates, and then had doubts about Shi Daxing, forcing Shi Dakai to lead his troops west to avoid trouble. Shi Dakai not only evacuated the elite near Tianjing, but also took away all his descendants on the front line in southern Anhui, but the battle was fruitless, and finally the whole army was wiped out in the Dadu River.

When the situation in Tianjing was precarious, it was Li Xiucheng who stood up and saved Hong Xiuquan. He is proficient in the use of soldiers, full of wisdom, and also forms kindness and righteousness to his subordinates, and is deeply supported. So the Taiping army revived, broke the camp in the south of the Yangtze River, swept through Jiangsu, conquered Hangzhou, and created a section of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. This time, he led 30,000 people from Hangzhou, and ordered Liu Zhaojun to send troops from Suzhou, and the two routes were concurrent, bound to level Shanghai and pull out a nail in the imperial court in Zuihou in the southeast.

However, when the soldiers arrived at the city of Songjiang, he received an urgent report from Suzhou, saying that someone was plotting to rebel.

It was Li Wenbing, one of his subordinates, who wanted to rebel, because he had been punished by Li Xiucheng's military law, and he was disgruntled for a long time, and saw that Suzhou was empty at the moment, so he colluded with Xu Shaosui, a big tyrant in Suzhou, and discussed it secretly, preparing to take Suzhou to the imperial court. However, the matter was not confidential, and it was learned by the "inspection" of one of his subordinates who was still loyal to Li Xiucheng, and Pegasus came to report.

At this moment, Li Xiucheng was taken aback. Suzhou is Li Xiucheng's base camp, and his loyal palace, the famous Humble Administrator's Garden, is located in the city of Suzhou. Li Xiucheng had to hand over the army to Tan Shaoguang, the "King of Mu", to command, and he took 3,000 people from the Chinese army, and rushed to Suzhou early the next morning to stifle the signs of rebellion.

Such a big move can't be hidden, so Guan Zhuofan received a telegram from Sijing at noon. In addition to sending someone to report to Wu Xu and report it to the capital, the members of the county government's propaganda committee also immediately started writing and boasting loudly, pointing out that Li Xiucheng was "intimidated by the might of our army, fled before the battle, and spread the pretext far and wide," and pasted the notice all over the streets and alleys.

The purpose of self-boasting is to calm the hearts of the people in Shanghai, but the reaction of the common people to this incident is one with joy and the other with worry.

Happily, Li Xiucheng left and took away his most elite 3,000 Chinese troops, and the pressure on Shanghai seemed to have weakened invisibly. The worry is that the person who succeeded Li Xiucheng in controlling the whole army was his fierce general Tan Shaoguang, who was the most famous for his murder, and the battle of Hangzhou was a battle to kill people.

Tan Shaoguang does have such a plan. He and his eight sworn brothers, including Gao Yongkuan, are collectively known as "Nine Tai Sui", which shows that the military discipline in peacetime is extremely bad. Now that he is in charge of the whole army, he has issued a military order, as long as Zuihou captures Shanghai, he will allow all troops to plunder for three days within one prefecture and seven counties in Songjiang Prefecture, so as to boost the morale of the Taiping army.

"Yongkuan, it's up to you tomorrow. Breaking Songjiang, Shanghai's West Gate is equal to a wide opening. Mu Wang Tan Shaoguang said to his younger brother, "Guan Demon Head's Xuan army has entered Songjiang, and he himself is hiding in Shanghai." The leader of the team in Sijing was the demon head named Ding Shijie. I heard that the Xuan army is quite capable of fighting, but naturally it can't match your bravery. ”

"Big brother, don't worry!" Gao Yongkuan said with confidence, "The official army in Shanghai is not as weak as the Hunan army, no matter what kind of Xuan army he has, and no matter what kind of banner camp he has, I will definitely beat him tomorrow." ”

On the eighteenth day of the first lunar month, because of Li Xiucheng's departure, the Taiping army did not attack the city. On the morning of the 19th, the Taiping army set out, pushing dozens of cannons of various types, more than a dozen shield carts and rushing carts, and carrying dozens of ladders for climbing the city, and slowly pressed towards the west gate of Songjiang City. The leader of the siege troops was Gao Yongkuan, the "Na Wang", with the "Heavenly General" Ji Yuanqing and the "Kang Tianfu" Qian Guiren as his deputies.

The prince of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is chaotic and indiscriminate, with hundreds of names, and it is not easy for others to distinguish clearly. In short, the loyal king is greater than the king of Mu, and the king of Mu is greater than the king of Na, and the heavenly general and Tianfu are the names under the king. But no matter what the name is, it is true that these three people can fight, and when Hangzhou was broken, Tan Shaoguang used them as the vanguard to attack the city.

The army pressed to a place less than a mile from the city, and as usual, stopped to form a formation, first to set up the artillery. When he was in a hurry, suddenly there was a crisp gunshot on the ground, and a gunner who was busy adjusting in front of the muzzle of the gun fell to the ground with blood splashing on his neck.

The Taiping army was stunned, and the crowd was silent for a while, but they saw nearly a thousand heads emerging from the ground in front of them.

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Digging trenches and defending them was learned by Ding Shijie from Zeng Guoquan's battle against Anqing, according to the cat painting tiger. Because of the relationship of time, it was not possible to dig three long trenches in a row like the Hunan army, but from the west of the city to the north of the city, an arc-shaped trench was dug to hide the soldiers.

Hidden in the trench were the soldiers of the Kezi battalion and the Xianzi battalion, a total of 800 foreign guns, led by Ixan himself. The purpose of the ambush was to wait for the long hair to approach, and suddenly open fire, and hit them by surprise, but I don't know which soldier was blind, because he was too nervous, he suddenly got up and fired a shot. The foreign gun in the hands of the Kezi battalion is not particularly sophisticated, at a distance of 100 zhang, it should not be so accurate, and it is difficult to say who the soldier was aiming at, but this shot inexplicably hit the gunner's neck, and was actually killed with one shot.

Hit the middle, but it also exposed these hundreds of people, and Ixan thought that the hard work of most of the night was in vain, and he couldn't wait to catch the soldier and cut it down with his own hands.

However, there are also advantages -- this shot has a deterrent effect, and the Taiping army naturally did not know that this was a shot that was fired indiscriminately, and regarded it as a "move of authority" by the officers and soldiers, and for a time they were greatly afraid of the range and accuracy of the foreign guns of the officers and soldiers.

The Taiping army attacked the city, and there were three common methods. The first is to fire the cannons first, and then suppress the soldiers defending the city with guns, bows and arrows, and force the city to enter the city with ladders; The second is still to suppress with firepower, and then use shield carts and rushing carts to destroy the city gates; The third is to dig tunnels under the city walls, put in explosives, blow up a section of the city wall, and then swarm in.

Gao Yongkuan discussed with the two lieutenant generals a little and decided to attack the city by the first method according to the original Jihua. Songjiang was not a big city, and the opponent was not the Hunan army, and in most cases, the Taiping army's artillery fire, bullets, and arrow rain were enough to deter the officers and soldiers in the city, and when the cloud ladder was attached to the city, the officers and troops often collapsed. But this time there was a slight difference, the trench in front of the city had to be uprooted - first the soldiers inside had to be driven out, and then the trench had to be filled in a dozen ways, otherwise it would not be possible to get close to the city wall.

The cannons of the Taiping army rang out, and the bow carts began to fire arrows into the trenches, and after a while, about 3,000 soldiers with yellow cloth wrapped around their heads, led by a long and powerful standard-bearer, raised a banner, spread a thousand banners, and shouted a shout, and rushed towards the city, with great momentum! However, before the formation was fully expanded, the cannons of the officers and soldiers on the city wall rang out, firing five cannons in a row, and the three iron bullets hit the head very accurately, rolling straight into the formation, sweeping down more than a dozen people along the way, and the two flowering bombs exploded in the crowd, and each sound fell a piece.

The officers and soldiers have foreign artillery! Gao Yongkuan was taken aback first. Ding Shijie in the city breathed a sigh of relief -- on the wall of Songjiang West City, there were originally three cannons, all of which were made of cast iron, and Ixan hoisted the two field cannons in the battalion onto the city with a large winch. The first five shots were repeatedly calibrated with solid bullets to ensure that the first hit must be hit, because the later ones would not be so accurate.

Although the charging Taiping army was hit by such a blow, the momentum was still very strong, they were all specially selected brave men, with previous experience, convinced that as long as they rushed close to the trench, the officers and soldiers would definitely flee, so they rushed forward against the artillery fire of the city.

When they arrived less than fifty or sixty battles away from the trench, the Xuan army in the trench finally opened fire, and the first row of guns rang out, and hundreds of Taiping soldiers were knocked to the ground, but the rest of the people rushed even more violently - as long as it was a gun, after a shot, it had to be loaded with ammunition, and this gap was the best opportunity to engage the enemy, and the faster the rush, the fewer casualties.

Unexpectedly, another row of guns rang out in the trench, followed by the third row and the fourth row, dense as fried beans, back and forth. Even Tan Shaoguang, who was supervising the battle in the back, was also suspicious in his heart: This is the way foreign soldiers play, could it be that the ones guarding the trench are actually foreign soldiers from the concession?

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(Xiexie Undersurge, Party Command, Fish Pleasure, YBCH, Book Friend 1091's tip.) ）