The problem that the Taiping army is encountering now is that it is mainly unable to attack the Hunan army's camp outside Tianjing City, Zeng Guofan summed up his tactics as a hard village to fight a dumb battle, in fact, it is not so simple, but their camp is indeed very level, and the Taiping army still uses the old methods they used to attack the city and dig tunnels. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

However, the Hunan army adopted the method of digging to dig, and each tunnel dug was smoked, or smoked with poisonous smoke, or poured with filthy water, or blocked the hole with wooden stakes, so that the tunnels of the Taiping army failed again and again.

Therefore, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom hoped to buy heavy artillery from Guangdong to bombard the Hunan army's strongholds.

This businessman was entrusted by Hong Renji to come to Guangdong, and Hong Renji once knew about Zhu Jinglun in Hong Kong, but Zhu Jinglun had not stolen Guangdong before he left, but Hong Renji still had contact with foreigners.

When Hong Renji first arrived in Tianjing, Hong Xiuquan did let him take charge of the government, but he had no prestige at all, no one obeyed him, the generals said that the kings of the Taiping army were all fought in battles, and even constantly instigated Hong Renji to go out of the city to fight a battle, and the result of the war was a big defeat, and he could no longer gain a foothold in the court, and was arranged by Hong Xiuquan to take charge of diplomacy.

Stayed in Hong Kong, he can speak English, but it is also suitable to communicate with foreigners, he still made a little achievement in this regard, such as purchasing arms and food through foreign merchants in Shanghai, he is mainly responsible for contacting, but when Li Xiucheng attacked Shanghai, he was deceived by foreigners, and secretly agreed that foreigners were neutral, Li Xiucheng took thousands of people to receive Shanghai, but after approaching the city wall, the foreigners had already laid an ambush, and the artillery fired in unison, almost killing Li Xiucheng, and then Hong Renji's situation was even more difficult. was squeezed out even more by Li Xiucheng and other powerful figures.

Because of this incident, Hong Renji even killed the servant of Luo Xiaoquan, a foreign missionary who came to him from Hong Kong, and killed the chicken to show the monkey.

He also learned from foreigners that Zhu Jinglun actually held great power in Guangdong, according to the words of foreigners, that is, a coup d'état has been launched and a government is being established, according to Hong Renji's understanding, that is, Zhu Jinglun has become a feudal town of one side at this time, but he did not dare to tear his face with the court.

After all, he knows a little about both the East and the West, and this insight is correct, but he mistakenly thought that Zhu Jinglun was afraid of the revenge of the Manchus, so he did not dare to establish himself as the king, so he wanted to use the throne of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to win over Zhu Jinglun, thinking that with the support of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Zhu Jinglun would dare to rebel, which was a bit too naïve.

Hong Renji also learned from foreigners that Zhu Jinglun had an arsenal that could manufacture cannons and even warships, but because he could not break through the Hunan army camp and was blocked by the Hunan army, Hong Renji had the plan to buy cannons and warships.

It is ironic that the United States was the world's largest arms importer at this time, but their businessman was the largest arms smuggler in Shanghai.

To be honest, Zhu Jinglun is still very greedy for the people's fat and ointment looted by the Taiping Army, and the foreigners looted it away.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was blocked, and arms could only be obtained through smuggling, but the blockade of the Qing army was not strict, and even their army was involved in smuggling, not only the bastard army of the Eight Banners Green Battalion, but even the Hunan army could not get involved, and characters like Zuo Zongtang were also involved, of course, Zuo Zongtang himself did not care about these, but handled it through one person, he didn't even know or pretended not to know, because he needed money, and that person could get him a steady stream of money, that person was called Hu Xueyan.

In order to lure the smugglers into supplying the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with weapons, they resorted to high-priced purchases, or rather desperation. In November 1853, the Governor of Liangjiang, Yi Liang, declared that "the Taiping Army must pay the smugglers 100 yuan for the short guns that could be bought for 15 or 20 yuan in Shanghai" and that "those who used to sell foreign silver for three yuan per barrel of gunpowder have now increased to 256 yuan." Ten years had passed since the Liangjiang Governor's report, but this smuggling trade still could not be stopped in Shanghai.

According to the British consul in Shanghai, Ali Guo, at that time, the countries in China "were divided into merchants, hated rebellion and bandits, so that the goods were unsalable, only two-tenths; Eight out of ten people who wanted to evade taxes and receive profits from gunpowder and grain were actually eight out of ten. ”

Obviously, arms smuggling has formed an industrial chain in Shanghai, and there are a large number of vested interest groups, and they certainly do not want the war between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Qing army to end prematurely, so the Qichang Foreign Company is willing to provide Hong Renji with information about Guangdong, and even if they did it intentionally, the representatives of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also came to Guangdong on the ship of the Qichang Foreign Company.

"The situation in Shanghai is more complicated than I thought."

Zhu Jinglun sighed after listening to Wu Chongyao's Shanghai intelligence.

A big part of Wu Chongyao's foreign minister's job is actually to collect intelligence from all over the world, and his identity as an old merchant in the past has provided great convenience for his work, whether it is a foreigner, or a comprador in Shanghai, there is an inseparable connection with the past 13 lines, needless to say, those pervasive compradors, the earliest ones are from Guangdong, and they used to serve the 13 banks, collecting tea and other things from all over the country, and handing them over to the monopoly 13 lines to sell to foreigners, which is their main business in the past. Zhan Tianyou's father was such a middleman, and he was very rich, and he could come up with tens of thousands of taels of silver for a disaster relief, but with the end of the Opium War, the Zhan family went bankrupt, otherwise Zhan Tianyou would not have been able to take the risk of being a ** child, in the eyes of people at the time, it was no different from selling children.

Therefore, Wu Chongyao obtained information from various places through these compradors, mainly information from various ports, but also some other aspects.

Gathering intelligence is naturally a preparation for rebellion, or self-reliance.

The more he knew the inside story, the more cautious Zhu Jinglun became about his career, and the Xiang army was much more powerful than he imagined.

Shanghai's foreign rifle team is definitely not a rabble, although the military discipline is not very good, but the combat effectiveness should not be underestimated, the main officers are foreigners, the leader is the American Wall, this person is definitely not a simple adventurer, he has military experience.

He once enrolled in the United States as a liberal arts and military cadet, did not graduate, but also had a certain theoretical knowledge, and then joined the U.S. Army and fought with the Mexicans, and later joined the French Army and participated in the Crimean War against Russia.

The officers he recruited were all foreigners, mainly veterans with military experience, and there were many such people in Europe where the war was constantly raging, so the officers in his army were also relatively professional.

In terms of weapons and equipment, there is no shortage of foreign guns and cannons close to Shanghai, Western-style training, and it is a lie to say that such an army has no combat effectiveness.

However, such an army, in the face of Li Xiucheng's Taiping army, did not have an advantage, but failed many times, in addition to the gap in strength, at least it shows that the Taiping army has the strength to fight in the face of the Western-style army, at least has a strong will to fight.

But such a Taiping army can't do anything about the Hunan army of Zeng Guofan. Li Xiucheng organized thirteen kings this year, with more than 100,000 troops to surround and rescue Tianjing, but he couldn't open Zeng Guoquan's defenses.

Zeng Guofan said that his Hunan army was "a hard village to fight a dumb battle", Zhu Jinglun felt that the Hunan army was a "hard battle and a stupid village", from the introverted and tenacious peasants in Xiangxi, trained by Zeng Guofan into a robot that can resist to the end, extremely obedient, able to fight to the last man, and also equipped with a lot of modern weapons, such an army must not be underestimated.

"Then you can't see that person?"

Wu Chongyao asked.

Zhu Jinglun smiled bitterly: "Anyone involved with these things will be infamous in the future." ”

What Zhu Jinglun has never understood is why the party and the state did not try to correct historical mistakes, which he did not want to make from the beginning.

Wu Chongyao asked again: "What about the business?" ”

Zhu Jinglun shook his head: "Forget it, let him go, we don't care about Jiangnan affairs." By the way, there is no need to keep this matter secret, let Bai Gui and them know. ”

Since they did not collude with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, then they did not touch the bottom line of the Qing court, to be precise, Zeng Guofan, they would definitely not do anything to Guangdong at this time, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would be able to help Zhu Jinglun block it for at least a year.

Wu Chongyao nodded, flipped through the pages of his notebook, and remembered that he was going to report all the situations, and when he was old, he could only write them down.

"Oh, by the way, the Americans have arrived. There are ten people in total, and there is only one captain, and the rest they say are first mates, but they guarantee that military skills are more than enough to be captains. They also sent a naval engineer to inspect our shipyard. ”

In the past few months, the Americans have sent hundreds of teachers, in this point they are more efficient than the Swedes, of course, the main thing is that their population base is much higher than Sweden, so they have more teacher reserves, plus a unique sense of mission in the United States, they consider themselves to be the moral model of the world, so there are a large number of people who are willing to dedicate themselves to the cause of education, driven by the sense of mission to spread the advanced European and American educational culture to the backward East, many teachers in American schools take the initiative to sign up.

As for their military advisers, they have just confirmed the news, and it is estimated that they have already set off at this time, which is requested by Zhu Jinglun by name.

After the combat effectiveness of the Hunan army exceeded his estimate, he began to worry that the war with the Hunan army would develop into a protracted war in the future, Zhu Jinglun did not want to fight with the Qing court for more than ten years, what he wanted was change, the industrial revolution, not the war. The Taiping War was not the American Civil War, it was not a civil war that cleared the way for the development of the country, it was a completely meaningless civil war, one of these wars was enough, one was already a tragedy, and two times it was really a disaster.

Therefore, he decided to devote his main energy to the navy, and if a land war formed a stalemate, he must break the stalemate by sea, and the most direct way was, of course, to follow the example of the British and French forces and drive directly to Beiping.

But he did not have qualified naval officers, the Swedes navy was not strong, he thought about it, the most experienced naval in this era, the first was the British and French, in the Crimean War, both navies fought against the Russian navy, and the French even used early ironclad ships.

But these two countries, at this time, are not optimistic about Guangdong, although they can accept Guangdong's self-reliance, but they are not willing to intervene, after all, they are not a small country like Sweden, a small Chinese local government, can make them how much attention, in addition to Britain and France, the country with the most rich naval combat experience, that is, the United States.

The American Civil War was still fiercely engaged, and the South was still on the offensive, but on the sea, the power of the North continued to grow, with 588 ships and 34,000 personnel in 1863 and 671 ships and 51,500 personnel in 1864. By the end of the war, it had more than 700 ships. By the size of the post-war U.S. Northern Navy, it will become the world's largest navy.

The key is that the US Navy has accumulated a lot of experience in the long-term implementation of the blockade and in the battle with the Southern Navy, and this war experience is exactly what Zhu Jinglun is short of, so hiring naval officers from the United States is the second choice after Britain and France.

For this reason, Zhu Jinglun specially wrote a letter to Lincoln, because Zhu Jinglun supported Lincoln on behalf of the Guangdong government, and also bought Lincoln's bonds of tens of millions of dollars, Lincoln weighed, although it is only a local government, and according to intelligence, it is very likely to rebel, although he has many concerns, because the United States is now quelling the rebellion, supporting a force that may rebel, which is not good for their international image, but he still wrote back and promised to send officers, but repeatedly emphasized that American advisers will not intervene in the Chinese civil war, once a civil war breaks out in China, He will remove the advisers.

After the negotiations were completed at the government level, it was time to set up an advisory group, and after half a year of preparation, the Americans were finally ready and selected military officers to come to Guangdong.

The Americans arrived sooner than Zhu expected, and they arrived a month later.

At this time, the official Chinese New Year, February 18, 1863, the Spring Festival of the second year of Tongzhi.

Zhu Jinglun asked him to take the American advisers to take a good walk around Guangdong, feel the lively atmosphere of the Chinese New Year, especially let them feel the atmosphere of Guangdong, and compare the hellish situation in the Jiangnan area at this time, I believe that their psychology will have a greater sense of identification with the local government of Guangdong, and once they agree psychologically, they will be more efficient in performing their duties.

It was only after the fifteenth day of the first lunar month that they officially took office.

The captain and first mate are all assigned to Zhu Jinglun's only gunboat, and two other gunboats are about to be completed, which have accumulated experience after building the first one, and then improved and produced, and there is also a 1,000-ton warship, which is in full swing with the help of Swedish engineers.

This is the largest production capacity in Guangdong at present, and it will be impossible to expand it for a while and a half.

Since the two gunboats were about to be launched, Zhu Jinglun needed to provide officers for the two gunboats, so these Americans came in time and let them get on board immediately, first, to be responsible for urgently training the navy, and second, to familiarize themselves with Zhu Jinglun's gunboats.

But a month later, the American engineer who came with the officers, after inspecting Zhu Jinglun's shipyard, suggested that Zhu Jinglun build ironclad ships, and he thought that Zhu Jinglun's arsenal was fully capable of producing ironclad ships. (To be continued.) )