This analysis made Zhu Jinglun couldn't help but marvel, this is a gamble, but compared to Zeng Guofan, he is more decisive, he almost pressed everything, and Li Xiucheng couldn't concentrate his strength from beginning to end. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Judging from this point alone, this battle is very unfavorable for Li Xiucheng.

Unless Li Xiucheng can make a desperate bet, mobilize forces at this time and counterattack Anqing, he may be able to pull out the nail of Anqing once and for all, and even eliminate the old thief Zeng Guofan himself in the eyes of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but unfortunately, the Taiping Army, which seems to have many soldiers and generals, cannot send a single soldier.

In less than a month, the battle situation ahead was clear, after the Taiping army retreated from Yangzhou successively, the Hunan army reinforcements entered Yangzhou, and the siege of Yangzhou was lifted.

The first Hunan army of 5,000 people entered the city, although it did not bring supplies, but it stabilized the morale of the army very well, and brought Zeng Guofan's order, so that the Huai army generals strengthened their confidence, so that they could hold the city before the Hunan army reinforcements arrived.

Now that the encirclement of Yangzhou has been lifted, the main force of the Hunan army has entered the city, the total strength of Yangzhou will immediately exceed 200,000, and the number of troops used for the pursuit is not less than 150,000, mainly the Hunan army, the Huai army who has been tired for a long time will rest on the spot, and a small number of troops with combat effectiveness will go south to Guazhou to change defenses with Zeng Guoquan, and Zeng Guoquan will lead the elite troops to be responsible for the pursuit of the Taiping army.

The Taiping army from Yangzhou to Taizhou, step by step, intending to block layer by layer, the Hunan army rushed forward, within a month broke more than 100 Taiping army camps, the Taiping army retreated space squeezed to Taizhou and Hai'an, the current situation at this time is that the Hunan army attacked the Taiping army in Taizhou, and the Taiping army attacked the Hunan army in Hai'an, both sides attacked from west to east, and the situation was to attack from the east to the west.

In the end, the Hunan army took the lead in capturing Taizhou, the Zeng brothers were fully prepared, and naturally thought of attacking Jiancheng, perhaps they were prepared for Yangzhou, they may have prepared for the fall of Yangzhou, and now they are used in Taizhou, more than a dozen heavy artillery bombarded the city wall of Taizhou, and the Hunan army and the Taiping army broke out a fierce battle in close combat, and this kind of white-knuckle combat is what the Hunan army is good at, and finally the Taiping army was driven out of Taizhou by the Hunan army, and the space was further squeezed.

The Taiping army also spared no effort, Li Xiucheng's two sons led the troops to the north, starting from Rugao to attack Hai'an, and the Taiping army in the direction of Taizhou flanked on both sides, and finally broke through this town, and completely annihilated the 10,000 Hunan troops here, but on the other side, the Taiping army retreat in Taizhou has been squeezed by the Hunan army from the second retreat to a rout, and the multi-layer defense line has never been established, and the defense line has been squeezed into one, and it collapsed all of a sudden.

The rambling rout of the army to Hai'an, the Li family brothers gathered the rout in Hai'an, and they were unable to advance westward, and a large number of Taiping troops were captured by the pursuing Hunan army. In the end, the Taiping army managed to escape to Hai'an, only more than 20,000 people, and 50,000 became prisoners of the Hunan army.

The losses of the Taiping army from the encirclement of Yangzhou to the retreat were less than 30,000 people, but the Hunan army, which had been attacking fiercely, paid losses of more than 50,000 people. The greatest losses in a war often come in a rout.

After this battle, although Li Xiucheng's rescued army, plus scattered escapes, a total of more than 30,000 people, but the Taiping army's spirit was completely defeated, the Hunan army once again made a shocking achievement, in the famine and the Taiping Army's Northern Expedition, as well as the joint persecution of the great powers, a large number of Qing Dynasty scholars and doctors who felt that the country was about to die, suddenly saw hope again, once again pushed Zeng Guofan's reputation to the peak, Zeng Guofan was considered, once again saved the Qing Dynasty.

As for the Taiping Army, although Li Xiucheng is still the strongest king within the Taiping Army, but after this battle, the power comparison between him and Yang Fuqing and Wang Haiyang has undergone subtle changes, and the blow to his prestige is too serious, the disrespect for him in the court is getting louder and louder, and the forces dissatisfied with Li Xiucheng's dictatorship have all jumped out, and life is just like Li Xiucheng imagined, and it is not easy.

In this war, the Ming Dynasty always maintained a neutral posture, did not provide any help to both sides, let alone weapons, not even a grain of rice was sold to both sides, and all the grain was sent to the north to help the victims.

However, the life of the victims is still not so easy, because after entering June, the famine in Shanxi has become unprecedentedly severe, and serious disasters have broken out everywhere.

The missionary Timothy Lee entered Shanxi in July, and he stayed in the northeast for more than a month, and when he saw that the situation was relatively better, he took the Ming train from Qinhuangdao into Shanxi.

Timothy Lee saw a lot of hungry people who couldn't see their life along the way, moving forward in groups, some of them fell to the ground while walking, and couldn't get up again, and saw some mothers carrying their children, and the children had already died, and the mother was actually the child's coffin bearer, looking for a place to bury his child, and he also saw that he was about to die, and there were some men who were always carrying their weak mothers in a blind quest to survive.

Wild dogs and foxes followed the crowd, these beasts looked fat, and crows circled in the sky, and the near-hellish sight along the way made people feel chills in their hearts.

The situation of starvation to death has become widespread, and in some villages entire villages starve to death, but Timothy Lee was surprised to find that there was no such phenomenon of large eaters in Shanxi as he had seen in Shandong.

He followed the Daming disaster relief team into a disaster-stricken village, and found that there were few people in the village, either starved to death, or was rescued by the Daming disaster relief team, but he saw a lot of notices posted by the government in the village, announcing that the governor had an order, and anyone dared to commit murder and robbery, and the heads of villages and towns had the right to correct the looters on the spot.

What Timothy Lee didn't know was that the root cause didn't stop there, mainly because the landlord's family had no surplus grain, so that the common people couldn't rob the big households. The root of everything is still opium, the devil forcibly brought into China by the British, which has become an indelible nightmare in China's modern history.

Unable to stop the British from selling opium, the Qing government promulgated the "Ordinance on the Collection of Local Medicine Taxes" in 1859, which legalized opium cultivation in the country. In a short period of more than 10 years, Shanxi peasants "abandoned half of their fields to grow opium poppies," and because growing opium poppies made more money than growing grain, "they often planted opium poppies all over the paddy fields, while the grains were reversed in the barren areas." Before the famine, Shanxi had become an important production area of local opium. Liu Enpu, the imperial historian of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, said that the situation in Shanxi was "hundreds of thousands of hectares of plastered fields, and there was almost no arboriculture and grain"; The locals estimated: "Since opium poppy is prevalent, no less than three-tenths or four-tenths of the opium poppy are planted in the fields of each county, which should account for 150,000 hectares of land in the whole province." Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Shanxi, found that opium was cultivated everywhere in Shanxi, "almost no county".

Most of the land, and the most fertile land, is used to grow opium tobacco soil, grain production is not enough, in the face of famine, especially in the surrounding provinces are affected by disasters, Shanxi people are not starved to death.

In particular, out of panic in neighboring provinces, the local government strictly banned grain from entering Shanxi, which exacerbated the famine in Shanxi. Henan, which is as serious as Shanxi, is also an important opium producing area like Shanxi, and the number of opium chips planted in Hebei and Shandong is also quite large.

In the entire Shanxi Province, the only ones who can really find food are those rich families, such as the Jin merchant groups who are rich in the world. But at this time, they were more than enough to protect themselves, and they were not able to provide relief at all.

For example, the Jin merchant families such as Rishengchang and Da Shengkui, they all hid behind the high walls of their own compounds, and their strong compounds were like fortresses, and the hungry and unorganized people could not be broken at all.

These wealthy merchants have been dealing with all kinds of bandits on the grassland in the past, and have strong emergency experience, and when the famine is together, they hired arms, and there are a large number of dart boards who cooperate with them to do business, and at this time they all enter their yards to protect them, and their clans are also armed, and the local villagers are also organized, enter their bunkers, protect them, and protect their hometowns from being destroyed by the displaced people.

Of course, they are not completely inactive, most of the Jin merchant families, at this time, are outside their own compounds, open porridge sheds, relief victims, this is also the tradition of Shanxi wealthy merchants, every year of disaster, they will always help the victims, which to a certain extent alleviates the hatred of the hungry people against them, protect themselves.

As a result, a large number of hungry people habitually gathered at the famous local Jin merchant compound, where everyone knew that they could eat a little food.

As a result, the Jinshang compounds have become relief stations, which has greatly improved the working conditions of the relief stations.

The governor of Shanxi is Zhang Zhidong, although this person does not look at the Ming Dynasty, but it is always good to come to the court to have a life, and the second is always good to save people, so compared to other places, he cooperated with the disaster relief operations of the Ming Dynasty and was quite active, not only sent people to post notices to guide the victims to flow near the railway, but also notified the various Jin merchant families, so that they could cooperate with the disaster relief team of the railway company and try their best to live the people of the Three Jins.

With the cooperation of the local government, Jin merchants and wealthy families, and the railway company, after three months, the famine was curbed, and the number of dead people began to decrease.

One of the most important reasons is that the railway line of Daming extends from north to south, connecting the whole province of Shanxi, and even the hinterland can be replenished.

To Timothy Lee's regret, despite the fact that the railroad had miraculously played a major role in the disaster relief, the local government was still full of resistance to the railway.

Recently, the opposition has been even more loud, because the Ming began to build a second railway, which is a parallel to the disaster relief railway, although it is still under the banner of disaster relief, but this is a permanent railway, the Ming began to use the formal way, building roadbeds, erecting bridges.

This situation alerted some intellectuals who knew more or less about the railway, and they believed that the Ming Dynasty would control the Qing Dynasty through the railway.

Such a statement is very loud, not only in the countryside, but also in the Manchu court, but also condemned.