The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was fragmented in Anhui, but it was like a fish in water in southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, which was inseparable from Li Xiucheng. If King Chen Yucheng inherited Yang Xiaoshan's courage and tenacity, King Li Xiucheng inherited Yang Xiaoshan's wisdom and benevolence.

If you simply compare the combat effectiveness of King Ying and King Zhong, King Chen Yucheng of England is obviously higher than King Zhong Li Xiucheng, and his record is also better. Li Xiucheng has some culture, and his style is relatively steady and steady, not so sharp. So his team rarely fights hard.

Of course, Li Xiucheng also realized this, so his team had the highest rate of firearms and equipment, and his guards were all foreign guns.

Compared with Anhui, where Chen Yucheng was located, the war environment in Jiangsu and Zhejiang controlled by Li Xiucheng was much better and less bloody.

The Hunan army led by Zeng Guofan captured the prisoners of the Taiping army, and the senior generals were basically executed by Ling Chi, even if the Taiping army surrendered, if it was the old Changmao of Liangguang, he would not be spared. Even the dead generals of the Taiping Army, the Hunan army also wanted to open the coffin and kill the corpse, and the method was very cruel, which was inseparable from Zeng Guofan's constant emphasis on the use of heavy codes in troubled times, and it was not enough not to kill to set an example.

On the other hand, Li Xiucheng broke through the Jiangbei camp for the second time, captured the Yangzhou prefect of the Qing Dynasty alive, broke through Hangzhou, captured Lin Fuxiang, the political envoy of Zhejiang, and Mi Xingchao, the general of the army, and captured the brave general Li Jinyang in the second westward expedition. In the face of these captured Qing officials and generals, Li Xiucheng neither tortured them nor shouted at them. Instead, he treated them politely, asked them if they would like to submit, and if they did not want to, they were not to blame, but still sent them back with a gift and gave them a circle.

Sadly, these officials and generals who were let go by Li Xiucheng were killed by the Qing Dynasty as "thieves". After Zhang Guoliang, who had been an enemy of the Taiping army since Guangxi and led the Jiangnan camp to besiege Tianjing for several years, was killed in battle, when his body was found, Li Xiucheng not only did not crush his bones and scatter ashes, but buried him with ceremonies. broke Hangzhou, and Wang Youling, the governor of Zhejiang, hanged himself to death. Li Xiucheng gave him two taels of silver and asked his own soldiers to escort his coffin back to his hometown. conquered Suzhou and Hangzhou, and killed none of the Qing troops who surrendered and surrendered. Those who are willing to join the Taiping Army will stay in the army, and those who are unwilling will be sent back. Even if it is full of people, it is treated equally.

Li Xiucheng's benevolence in this cruel era made him shine dazzlingly, allowing countless people to escape death and save their lives.

But it was also this benevolence that harmed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Li Xiucheng was so merciful to the enemy, and even more cherished his subordinates to the point of being unprincipled. caused the great generals under him to be full of morale, because Li Xiucheng laid a large territory, and his generals had a very strong sense of territory, and each of them was in charge of their own land, so that they swept the snow in front of their own doors, and their brother troops did not help when they were beaten.

Luzhou was beaten, Li Xiucheng didn't want to help, but his ability to control the generals under him was too low, and he allowed them to expand their territory in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but he didn't care about the tragedy of the war situation in Anhui at all.

Sitting on the richness of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the Taiping army developed rapidly here, Li Xiucheng was only more than 10,000 people when he first conquered Suzhou, and later with the victory on the battlefield, his wealth increased day by day, and the number of troops also increased seven or eight times. After that, his subordinates also stationed troops in various places, and more than 100,000 Taiping troops who returned from Shi Dakai also took refuge in him. His nominal ranks numbered as many as six or seven hundred thousand at its peak.

It sounds like Li Xiucheng's team is quite large, but the number is up, and the combat effectiveness is very weak. Among these people, the green battalion soldiers, ruffians, and hungry people who surrendered from all over the country accounted for the majority, so Li Xiucheng's team was very scary, but it was only by relying on more people to scare away fewer people, and it was often difficult to win when encountering the enemy's elite soldiers. What's more, what Li Xiucheng can really mobilize is only the private soldiers he raised and the team of his cousin Li Shixian, and whether others listen to him or not depends on the situation.

Although Li Xiucheng controlled a large amount of land in southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, the important city of Shanghai was never breached.

The first attack on Shanghai was after Li Xiucheng had just taken Suzhou, and a large number of Qing troops fled to Shanghai, posing a threat to the surrounding Taiping territory. But Shanghai is a special place, foreigners have very big economic interests here, in order not to tear up his face with foreigners, Li Xiucheng did not stumble on the city.

The second attack on Shanghai was forced by the situation, and the British naval admiral Ho Bo submitted a very domineering treaty to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The treaty was very similar to the previous demands on the Qing court, which were nothing more than indemnities, freedom of navigation, and not allowing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to attack Shanghai, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom justifiably rejected it.

On the side of the Qing court, since the signing of the "Beijing Treaty" with Britain and France, Britain and France have obtained a large number of rights and interests in China, and since then they have torn off the pretense of neutrality, sided with the Qing court, and aimed their guns at the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Not only did they slander the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the newspapers, but they also imposed a trade blockade on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and it was difficult for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to buy foreign guns and cannons from foreigners.

In Shanghai, after the uprising of the Little Knife Society, the customs became controlled by foreigners. In particular, after the Englishman Hurd became the person in charge of the General Department of Customs, the Qing court actually reaped a blessing in disguise; in the past, Qing court officials managed the customs here, but the management was lax and lax, bribery and indulgence in personal gain became a common practice, smuggling and tax evasion have always been very serious, and the customs duties that the Qing government should have entered have been embezzled layer by layer.

After taking up the post of General Revenue Department of Customs, Hurd introduced the management of British Customs into China Customs. At that time, in Britain, an efficient and clean civil service system had been established.

In the end, HD formulated a standardized employment system for the Chinese Customs under its jurisdiction, strict business procedures such as accounting, statistics, inspection, and review, as well as a system of year-end confidential reports, coupled with reasonable remuneration and benefits, etc., making China Customs the only efficient and honest yamen in the Qing Dynasty. The tariffs handed over to the Qing court every month reached hundreds of thousands of taels, and they were still increasing month by month, becoming an important source of silver taels for the Qing court's treasury.

Of course, Li Xiucheng also saw this, and led 100,000 Taiping troops to surround Shanghai. Due to the intervention of the foreign powers, they bombarded the Taiping army with gunboats, and some foreign adventurers and hooligans also formed foreign gun teams to openly help the Qing army attack the Taiping army. In addition, the Taiping Army itself was not strong enough to defeat the small county town of Shanghai.

Shanghai could not be attacked for a long time, Zeng Guoquan of the Hunan army came to Tianjing again, and built fortifications in Yuhuatai, under the strong summoning of the king Hong Xiuquan, Li Xiucheng could only give up Shanghai and lead his troops back to Tianjing.

And here Li Xiucheng was strongly blocked by Zeng Guoquan, and the 200,000 Taiping army could not take Zeng Guoquan's 20,000 Hunan army, and Li Xiucheng suffered his biggest defeat here.