The smoke billowing from the old river estuary on the north bank of the Yangtze River, the powder magazine exploded just now, under the shelling of the Ming fleet for more than four hours, the arsenal exploded, killing not many people, but it was the last straw that crushed the hearts of the army, and the Hunan army, which was known for its tenacity, also showed signs of collapse. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The Ming army did not send troops to land, all they wanted was those fragments floating on the water surface of the old river estuary, and all they wanted was to annihilate the Hunan army's naval division.

The Ming army completely controlled the right to control the river, and the merchants of Guangdong completely controlled the commercial trade of Tianjing, and they transported a large number of goods to Tianjing, but now Li Xiucheng has no money to pay for the goods, but he really wants the goods provided by the Ming merchants, he needs a cannon from them, a rifle, and even a piece of homespun cloth from them, and it is winter soon, and he needs to prepare cotton clothes for his soldiers.

But he has no money, and he doesn't dare to rob directly like in the past, first, he knows that it is easy to rob once, and no one will come to trade next time, and second, he knows very well that the Ming army outside the city now determines the life and death of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, once the Ming army retreats outside the city, the Hunan army and the naval division make a comeback, and Tianjing is once again trapped on all sides, and Li Xiucheng simply has no confidence to defend it.

And now the situation is very good, Li Xiucheng thinks that he will soon be able to break through the siege, although he has received the news of the defeat of Li Shixian and other troops, and received the result that Suzhou and other places were captured by Li Hongzhang, and those princes under his command were killed by Li Hongzhang after surrendering, but he did not think that these were all bad things.

Li Hongzhang's killing of prisoners is equivalent to cutting off the back road of those princes in the city at present, they have no choice but to fight to the death, and the wing king Shi Dakai heard that he was also captured by the Qing army, and has been Ling Chi by the Qing court, this news helped him a lot, let his subordinates know that the outcome after their defeat was only worse and not the worst.

With a steady stream of food, clothing and even medicine, the 100,000 troops that were originally hovering on the death line were pulled back from the hands of death one by one, and at the same time, they were also greatly stimulated by Hong Xiuquan's resurrection, everyone thought that Hong Tianwang had re-descended, and brought back the will of the Heavenly Father, that is, to let Li Xiucheng lead the whole army, and now Li Xiucheng's prestige has increased unprecedentedly, even the prince surnamed Hong has to remain respectful in front of him, and he deserves to be 9,000 years old. Even Hong Renfa was punished by Hong Xiuquan for not giving way to Li Xiucheng's sedan chair on the road, and everyone said that Hong Tianwang was fair.

With all the spiritual and material satisfaction being greatly satisfied, the current Taiping Army is in the best recovery period, and it can even be said that it is another peak of combat effectiveness.

The only constraint is silver, and Li Xiucheng is short of silver.

Everyone doesn't know, in fact, Tianjing doesn't have much silver at all, maybe there are a lot of them in the families of the major princes, but the treasury is really poor. Everyone thinks that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom adopts the public ownership system, and everyone's private wealth is placed in the holy treasury, but that is only the early days, after the capital Tianjing, Shi Dakai began to reform in Anqing, known as the Anqing Yi system, the main content is to abolish the holy treasury system, allow everyone to keep private property, allow husband and wife to reunite, and restore the traditional social order.

Later generations know that Shi Dakai has a very high status and prestige in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but they don't know how this status and prestige were formed, a large part of the reason comes from the Anqing Yi system, for a simple example, Li Xiucheng was just a petty official at the time, and then followed Shi Dakai to Anhui to carry out the Anqing Yi system, it was under Shi Dakai's hands, Li Xiucheng These rookies have been greatly trained, from the past simple officers, suddenly came into contact with civil affairs, and later Li Xiucheng carried out successful governance in Sufu Province, It is the experience accumulated during this period. Because there are countless officials like Li Xiucheng, especially administrative officials, they were trained during the period when Shi Dakai presided over the Anqing change system, according to Chinese customs, they were all Shi Dakai's protégés, and later when they took up official positions, they naturally regarded Shi Dakai as their core, so when Shi Dakai left Tianjing, he could take so many elite people with him.

But the cost of suddenly changing a system is very high, and the tax revenue cannot be collected in the short term, but the expenditure cannot be less, and the people still rely on the little things in the Holy Treasury to eat. Later historical materials show that in March 1853, when Tianjing was established as the capital, there were 18 million taels of silver stored in the holy treasury, and by October 1853, one month after Anqing was changed, there were only more than 8 million taels left.

When the restructuring was completed, the sacred treasury system came to an end, so the treasury of the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom was actually very poor, and after the siege of Tianjing, the supply from the outside world was cut off, and there was no cash silver.

Later, the Zeng brothers broke through the Tianjing City, did not find the silver of the public treasury, for which the officials of the world were impeached, Zeng Guofan defended that he did not see the silver, Zeng Guofan has always been honest as the purpose of life, "sincerity" is a symbol of him, what he said is very credible, if this is said by Zeng Guoquan, Zhu Jinglun does not believe it, but if it is said that in the late Qing Dynasty, if you must believe in a person, that person must be Zeng Guofan. Zeng Guofan said that there was no treasury silver in the treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, that is, there was really none.

There is no silver in the holy treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and now it is difficult for Li Xiucheng, he has to buy military rations for the army, and he does not plan to buy only a little after suffering losses, he plans to save enough military rations for a year to eat, and then he will launch an offensive.

He also had to equip his soldiers with sufficiently sophisticated weapons, muskets and cannons, of course, and he found that the cold weapons in Guangdong were also very good, and the weapons made of steel smelted from Swedish iron ore were expensive, but the quality was absolutely excellent, because Swedish iron ore was one of the best iron mines in the world even in later generations.

He even has to build a fleet of Taiping troops, he can't always rely on the Ming army for everything, in the past, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had a psychological advantage over the righteous army of heaven and earth, and the twisted army in the north, but now against the Ming army, everything has to rely on the other party, which is psychologically difficult to accept, and it is also a mistake to entrust his own security to the other party militarily.

He wants everything, and the Ming army is willing to sell everything, including warships. But what if you don't have money?

Li Xiucheng's method is to sell things, Li Xiucheng is indeed short of silver, but there is no shortage of treasures, there are all kinds of rare treasures in his palace, there are all kinds of rare treasures, there are all kinds of war and looting, there are subordinates to offer, there are Hong Xiuquan rewards, piled up in the treasury, so Li Xiucheng first demolished his loyal palace, he knows very well, if he loses, there is nothing, if he wins, he has everything, his palace in Suzhou, is more luxurious than that in Tianjing City, what is the use, it is not occupied by Li Hongzhang.

He destroyed his family and relieved the difficulty, which shook Hong Tianwang, Hong Xiuquan also persuaded Li Xiucheng, Li Xiucheng said that if he did not do this, he would never be able to break the siege of Tianjing, Hong Xiuquan began to ask all the princes to take money, and the big and small princes ranged from 100,000 taels to 10,000 taels, and instantly raised more than 20 million taels of silver, which kept Li Xiucheng's palace.

The treasury has no money, these princes are really rich, especially a few princes surnamed Hong are even richer, these princes surnamed Hong take advantage of Hong Xiuquan's special identity, publicize and sell official beards, more than 2,000 princes, most of them are sold, even during the siege of Tianjing, they still continue to loot wealth.

It's just a pity that in the end, when the Hunan army broke the city, their wealth was looted by the Hunan soldiers who owed more than half a year, and the silver looted was actually equivalent to the silver in the holy treasury that outsiders thought, after being divided between soldiers and officers, Zeng Guoquan was extremely aggrieved in the face of accusations from the outside world, and even led troops to the barracks and asked to hand over the looting of the soldiers, Zeng Guofan stopped his younger brother, because Zeng Guofan knew very well that this would make the entire Hunan army rebel, at that time, the Hunan army rebelled, not to mention that the Zeng brothers couldn't suppress it, and the whole country couldn't suppress it. In the end, all this money went into the pockets of the Hunan officers and soldiers.

Now the money continues to fall into the pockets of the merchants of Guangdong, the more they earn, the more they support the Ming, but at the same time the pressure on the Ming is also greater, the foreigners in Shanghai and Hong Kong continue to put pressure on their ministers, and their ministers put pressure on the Ming government, requiring the Ming to open the Tianjing trade road.

Wu Chongyao has always explained that Tianjing is a war zone and is currently at war, out of safety, so the Ming Dynasty will intercept other merchant ships, as for the merchant ships of the Ming Dynasty, those cannot be counted, those are to transport military supplies, not ordinary merchants, it is the army that rents their ships. But it is obviously impossible for foreigners to agree with this perfunctory, the contradictions between the two sides are getting deeper and deeper, and it has developed to the extent that the minister directly negotiated with Zhu Jinglun, and it is obvious that it is impossible for the Ming Dynasty to monopolize this trade route for a long time.

In the midst of the intrigue of various forces, Chen Ada's fleet moved again, the reason why he chose this time, first, was because his flagship Guangzhou was finally repaired, and last time it was knocked out of three holes by the warship of the Hunan army, and in the whole of China, only the shipyard of Kebai could repair this big ship, he could only drive back to Guangzhou, and then drive back, with this giant ship with powerful firepower, he launched an attack on Laojiangkou; The second is because the Taiping army said that they were ready, and the most important military target of the Taiping army after they were ready was Pukou on the opposite side.

When the complete destruction of the old river estuary of the Hunan army water village, the Taiping army's boats began to cross the river, they successfully landed on the beach with the support of the Ming army's naval guns, and then sent the Hunan army to attack again after three years, the victory or defeat of the first battle was very critical, so Li Xiucheng's most elite troops were sent out, but the Hunan army was still depressed, only two hours, Pukou fell.

The Ming fleet began to enter Pukou and repair the Shuizhai Wharf at the mouth of the old river, with Pukou on one side and Xiaguan on the other, controlling these two places in their hands, and did not dare to say that they controlled the entire Yangtze River, but at least they cut off the waterway of the Yangtze River.

The Hunan army could not accept that their waterways were cut off, Zeng Guofan in order to prepare for the construction of a naval division in Xiangtan, Wuhan have a huge shipyard, although only the traditional Chinese sampan warship, no matter the size, firepower or mobility are not comparable with the small steamers of the Ming army, but it is always a warship, in the absence of a choice, Zeng Guofan can only continue to build warships and the Ming army to start a battle for the right to control the river, and then continued to fight more than ten battles, these battles together are called the Yangtze River Campaign.

It's a pity that the Hunan army has never been able to recapture the Yangtze River waterway since the fall of Pukou.

The victory of the first battle greatly stimulated the military spirit of the Taiping army, and the haze of being beaten by the Hunan army for a long time was dissipated.

Li Xiucheng has very good coordination skills, the biggest defeat of the Hunan army, the Battle of Three Rivers is under his organization, Chen Yucheng and other large and small princes, together in Zongyang held the Zongyang Conference, and then annihilated the Hunan army Li Xubin in one fell swoop, and at the same time broke the Jiangbei camp, it was this battle that established Li Xiucheng's status in the Taiping Army, and became a famous general who could compete with Chen Yu's court.

This time, he still convened a meeting and gave full respect to the kings, in fact, in order to achieve a unified combat goal, after fierce discussions, the final plan was that with the help of the superior fleet of the Ming army, they would give priority to seizing Anqing, and after retaking Anqing, they would wait for an opportunity to recover the land between Tianjing and Anqing one by one, and strive to restore the situation to the situation before the battle of Anqing again. (To be continued.) )