Section 625 The End of the Road
But Baigui's knowledge can't understand this, and even if they understand diplomacy, they can't guess where to go, because the Qing court will definitely not think that the Ming Dynasty has such good intentions. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info
Where did they think that Zhu Jinglun would not only look at these issues from the standpoint of the nation, but even from the perspective of history. The Ming Dynasty guarded in Yunnan, which could block the infiltration of foreigners and guard the interests here, not only for the interests of the nation, but also for the interests of the Ming merchants.
Zhu Jinglun and the high-ranking officials of the Daming Dynasty who were influenced by Zhu Jinglun now regard other Chinese who are not in the Daming-ruled areas as their own people, so they can understand some of the practices of the Daming to defend the interests of the Manchus, such as seizing ports in Qingdao and Dalian in advance and rushing to repair the railways.
But Bai Gui didn't understand, he really thought that maybe this was indeed Zhu Jinglun's good intentions, it seemed that because he betrayed himself and betrayed the Qing Dynasty, Zhu Jinglun was still a little ashamed in his heart.
I know that there is no need to talk about it anymore, the other party doesn't want money, as long as the land, it's the same for the Qing Dynasty, where is there a reason to sell the land for money, if you want the land occupied by the other party, then you must also exchange the land.
So Bai Gui directly stated: "This matter is very important, this official can't call the shots, and after returning to the Queen Mother Lafayette and the emperor, I will reply to your country." ”
After saying that, he bowed his hand and took his leave.
Zeng Guofan is a porcupine, he only knows how to arch forward, since the direction has been determined, his execution is amazing, he doesn't care about the outcome of the negotiation between the court and the Ming Dynasty, no matter what the negotiation looks like, he has to go in the direction of Tianjing, where he wants to occupy, he wants to destroy these bandits who destroy humanity with his own hands.
He was like this back then, he didn't move when foreigners hit Guangdong, he didn't move when foreigners hit Beiqi, and now the Ming Dynasty is attacking the area around Ningguofu, as long as it doesn't get in the way of his attack on Tianjing, he can also ignore it.
So he continued to lead the troops to arch forward, the three major battles before the pass, the Taiping army lost three battles three times, the victory pass was not enough to hold, the roar of the giant cannon turned into powder, and there were foreigners and sailors around it, cutting off the retreat of the Taiping army, so that this victory became a big victory.
The Hunan army broke through the Dasheng Pass head-on in August, and more than 40,000 remnants of the Taiping Army retreated to Tianjing, but they were intercepted by the Hunan Army's naval division carrying the elite soldiers of the Hunan Army.
As if the situation had been repeated many times, the Taiping army went out of the city to rescue many times, but the Hunan army did not retreat, and the camp of the Hunan army was still so impregnable in front of the Taiping army. In the end, 30,000 defeated soldiers were annihilated by the Hunan army on both sides of the Yangtze River, and the next step of the Hunan army will face the enemy of Tianjing, and they are facing the important place, which is Yuhuatai, and another battle of Tianjing began.
As the Hunan army once again aimed the sharp edge of the attack at Tianjing City, the Ming army, which had captured most places in Zhejiang and southern Anhui, also carried out a series of military operations, perhaps with the Taiping army, there was not much difficulty in tactics, but it was a good opportunity for actual combat, in a low-intensity war, it was also a war, more real than any exercises and training.
After capturing Ningguofu, the Ming army had a posture that could not stop the gate, and entered the boundary of Jiangningfu from the southwest of Tianjing, and the city defenders were evacuated from Lishui County, which surrendered. A partial division sent by Li Xiucheng to reinforce the Ming army conducted a field battle near Lishui, but the enemy retreated. There was a scuffle in Zhenjiang Mansion, Wang Haiyang's Ministry was not elite, but the discipline was poor, but it couldn't even surrender in a uniform manner, or it was too serious to do it separately, some wanted to surrender, some wanted to fight, so there were those who surrendered, but there were many who did not. There are also fake surrenders, in short, the Ming army spent a lot of effort to take the main city, and the stragglers in the countryside had no time to take care of it for a while.
Chen Jishi's army, which set out from Jiangxi, arrived here from the boundary of the land march, and he received an order from the army to stop advancing, and the Ming army was to attack from the waterway in the next Suxichang area.
In this era, the Suzhou-Xichang area is also the best place in Jiangsu, especially Suzhou, which is the most important, Li Xiucheng's eldest son guards in Shanghai County, and it is his second son who guards Suzhou.
The main attack on Shanghai was the Ming Navy, the navy went north, mobilized more than 20 ironclad ships, all of which were relatively small tonnage of inland river warships, and the maximum tonnage was only more than 1,000 tons, because the Taiping Army Navy Division had lost its combat effectiveness after being heavily damaged by the Qing Army many times, and it was also because of the lessons learned from the Taiping Army Navy Division that only these small boats were sent.
The main force in the Taiping Army's naval division is ten 5,000-ton ironclad ships, such ironclad ships are not suitable for use as inland river warships anyway, but the Taiping Army insisted on artillery giant ships, they mainly valued the imitation Krupp cannon of the Ming Dynasty, and the small boat could not stand this kind of giant cannon at all, as for the size of the warship, as long as it could enter the Yangtze River and arrive in Nanjing, the Taiping Army required as big as possible.
Historically, there was a record of 10,000-ton American cruise ships arriving in Wuhan, and later after the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was built, only 3,000 tons of ships could pass during the wet season, so the upstream Chongqing and other provinces and cities always proposed to blow up the bridge, but Nanjing did not agree, because there was a bridge jam, and international ocean-going ships of more than 10,000 tons had to berth in Nanjing, which would help Nanjing develop transshipment business.
Although the current Yangtze River waterway has not been dredged as formally as in later generations, it is also not as serious as the siltation in later generations, so it should be no problem for the 10,000-ton giant ship to sail to Wuhan, and there is no reason why it cannot go to Nanjing if it can sail to Wuhan. Therefore, a 5,000-ton ironclad ship can reach Tianjing, but the problem is that this channel can allow giant ships to pass, but there is no condition for giant ships to turn over rivers and seas here.
Therefore, there is a defect of inflexibility in U-turns, the technical gap between the Qing Army's naval division and the Taiping Army's naval division is too large, and the Taiping Army's inflexible drawbacks have been covered up.
But now it's different, not long ago, the Qing army sailors in the west of Tianjing successively hit the Taiping army's ironclad ships, the Ming Dynasty at first wondered how the Qing army did it, and later learned that the Qing army quietly bought a large number of ironclad ships, and it was controlled by foreigners. But at this time, the navy was still very puzzled, even if the British army went out in person, it was impossible to sink the ironclad ship with an iron ship of several hundred tons.
A few years ago, for the purpose of deterrence, they sent the proud ironclad ship to the Huangpu River, but it was inconvenient to turn around, and even had to use tugboats to turn around, and the result did not deter the Taiping Army.
This time the British took advantage of this weakness and, in turn, took advantage of the inconvenience of the Taiping army's transfer and inflicted heavy losses on the mortuary fleet. And the weapon they use is a new type of weapon, the white-headed torpedo!
When the Taiping Navy Navy habitually suppressed the bombardment of the Hunan Army's Navy Division, the British sailors who participated in the war as the Qing Army, the torpedo boats approached these giant ships, released fish at close range, and sent a number of ironclad ships to the bottom of the river. Heavy losses.
After absorbing the battle situation of the Taiping Navy and the British fleet hired by the Qing Army, the Ming Navy immediately made adjustments and sent a nuclear fleet of less than 1,000 tons to Shanghai.
With these small boats, it is enough to grasp the right to control the river in the area of the estuary, and if you control the river, you will have the opportunity to calmly transport troops, and more and more Ming troops gathered in the Shanghai concession, and finally reached 50,000 people, which has formed an overwhelming advantage over Li Rongchun in Shanghai County, Li Rongchun has only 10,000 people in Shanghai.
Zhu Jinglun gave an order to the army, hoping to make a forced landing on Li Rongchun as much as possible, because Zhu Jinglun felt that it was more meaningful to capture Li Xiucheng's eldest son alive.
Therefore, the Ming army in Shanghai had been negotiating with Li Rongchun before, hoping that Li Rongchun could surrender, telling Li Rongchun that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was gone, and if he surrendered, the Ming Dynasty would protect him and let him return to his hometown and live in Tengxian County, Guangxi. But Li Rongchun never agreed, either cruelly, or dragged, obviously delaying time.
The Ming army did not have so much patience, Li Rongchun's main force was concentrated in Shanghai County to confront the Ming army in the concession, the Ming army simply divided its troops to copy the surrounding counties, and the counties of Songjiang Prefecture were also considered prosperous places, but like Ying Tianfu, the troops were transferred to Shanghai County, although most of the guards here were Li Xiucheng's descendants, and the will to fight was more resolute, so that the Ming army had to fight for every county, but the progress was quite smooth, and in more than a month, the obstacles around Shanghai were cleared, and there were no reinforcements to be sent elsewhere.
The reason why Suzhou, which is close to it, has no troops to send is because Deng Shicai, who captured the whole of Zhejiang, made a big move, and marched from Jiaxing Mansion and Huzhou Mansion respectively, as well as from Taihu Lake through the waterway, and launched an attack on Suzhou and Changzhou at the same time. The First Route Army, which advanced by water, directly captured Wuxi and cut off the connection between the two prefectures of Suzhou and Changzhou.
After a hard battle, the other two armies captured most of the area, the battle of Suzhou, Li Rongfa, who defended Suzhou, broke through after ten days, learned that Shanghai had not yet fallen, and planned to break through to Shanghai, break the siege of the Ming army, and join his brother in Shanghai.
But when he arrived in Kunshan, he was caught up by the Ming army again and surrounded again.
After holding out for another ten days, this time Li Rongfa failed to break through, but was betrayed by his subordinates, kidnapping him and surrendering to the Ming army.
The Ming army was very generous, Deng Shicai met Li Rongfa very politely, did not treat him as a prisoner, gave him a good meal, and after understanding his plans, he sent someone to send him to Shanghai intact to reunite with his brother.
This move is also very ruthless, it is a strategy to attack the heart, Shanghai has been surrounded, and sending Li Rong in can only play a role in proving the image of the Ming army to Li Rongchun, so that Li Rongchun believes that the surrender of the Ming army will not be harmed. As for their refusal to surrender, Shanghai will be surrounded, and it is impossible for them to defend it for the rest of their lives.
The Li Rongchun brothers were thus imprisoned in the prison of Shanghai, and their father, the loyal king Li Xiucheng, was surrounded in Tianjing at this time, not only was the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in danger, but the fate of their Li family seemed to be the same as the fate of this country, and it was at the end of the road.
At this time in Guangzhou, the Manchu representatives and the Ming government finally reached an agreement on the Yunnan issue, but in another place, there were new differences, and the Ming hoped to get the right to rule Shanghai after the return of Jiangnan, but the Manchus resolutely could not agree.