It is said that under Su Shun's strong recommendation, Zeng Guofan received a holy decree from Emperor Xianfeng and asked him to train troops in Hunan. For Zeng Guofan at this time, it was not an easy task.

He is a scholar, and he used to learn the way of Confucius and Mencius, the words of the sage, and the training of soldiers is a black eye, a complete layman. But Zeng Guofan is a smart man, he knows that there are only two conditions for doing something, one is money; One is people.

Although Zeng Guofan's official residence is second-class, he is a clean official, he is old-fashioned, his clothes are still wrinkled, and his food and clothing depend on the basic salary of the imperial court. As the eldest son, he led by example, there were few servants in the family, and the daughters-in-law married by the younger brothers below also had to engage in manual labor, from laundry, cooking, pickling side dishes, to spinning, embroidering, sewing, sewing, and making shoes.

How can such a family have the money for him to train his troops? Zeng Guofan's first pot of gold in military training was completely obtained by his old face. After all, he was a classmate in Hunan, his protégé was old, and his network resources were relatively extensive, so he borrowed them one by one, and there were always a few people who were righteous and squandered money to give him some face and pay some money to support him.

However, this is not enough, military training is a business that costs money like water. In order to accumulate more start-up capital, Zeng Guofan fought with an old face, and went to the Hunan governor's mansion every few days to beg for some military funds. A few thousand taels of silver is not too much, a few hundred taels of silver is not too little, and it annoys Governor Luo to death, whenever Governor Luo wants to find an excuse to shirk, Zeng Guofan takes out Xianfeng's holy decree to let him train the army and reads it out. forced Luo Bingzhang to pay money to send him away.

With the first pot of gold, Zeng Guofan began to look for talents. He himself as a scholar, especially like to scholars as generals, the first thing he likes is Mr. Luo Zenan, a private school, this Luo Zenan is also a native of Hunan, but his knowledge is not as high as Zeng Guofan, just a showman, but this person has a very flexible mind, he is not a dead student, he pursues the principle of applying it to the world, and advocates that learning can not only pay attention to the national economy and people's livelihood, but also be able to solve practical problems and realize self-worth.

Luo Zenan was forty-five years old, and he had many protégés in Hunan, and when the Taiping army passed through Hunan, many bandits and robbers jumped out. Luo Zenan took his protégé as the team and formed a team of Xiangyong. At this time, Jiang Zhongyuan's fame was already very great, so many of their military training methods were based on Jiang Zhongyuan's, and they not only focused on military training, but also paid attention to ideological education. With this Xiangyong, Luo Zenan won many battles, eliminated several cottage leaders, and gained the attention of Zeng Guofan.

Zeng Guofan has silver and the emperor's signboard, and Luo Zenan has a man and a horse, and he has a certain record. The two hit it off and developed together. This is equivalent to Zeng Guofan taking the license of the imperial court and the entrepreneurial funds raised by himself to buy Luo Zenan's grass platform team and form a formal start-up company.

But this was not enough for Zeng Guofan, he hoped to form a strong Hunan army that could fight against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and this alone was not enough, so he also needed greater development. But at this time, he encountered a bottleneck, the regimental training was not the regular establishment of the imperial court, which was equivalent to a private army. If you are a Han Chinese and have a large private army, you will inevitably be criticized.

So Zeng Guofan needed a shield, and at this time he fell in love with another person: a four-rank capital under the former Ulantai. By chance, Zeng Guofan met him and was impressed at first sight. Because this Taqibu is dressed very strangely, he wears the military uniform of the imperial court on top, but he has a pair of straw sandals under his feet, which is equivalent to wearing a suit on top and sneakers on the bottom.

Zeng Guofan, who is very good at observing people, noticed him, this Taqibu is really very bad luck, he is a man with yellow flags, a nobleman among nobles, but he is serious in his work, and the other green battalions and eight banners do not drill in the summer, only he braves the scorching sun and trains hard with soldiers. If he was replaced by someone else, he would have been promoted a long time ago, but his boss Ulantai was defeated and died, and he became a person without a backer, such a good background At the age of thirty-five, he was only a four-rank capital division, a middle-level officer.

Zeng Guofan took a fancy to Taqib, in addition to his down-to-earth, hard-working and simple, there is also his identity with a yellow flag, with Taqib Zeng Guofan can dilute the court's prevention and suspicion of him, and play the role of "borrowing full to relieve doubts". After spending a lot of time, Zeng Guofan finally poached Taqib to him as the head coach of the Hunan army, responsible for training recruits.

In order to better envelop this person, Zeng Guofan also strongly recommended Taqib on the emperor's side, using his political life as a guarantee, and promoted Taqib to be a third-grade general. This move made Tazib grateful to Dade, which was equivalent to saying to the emperor that if anything happened to Taqib in the future, he, as a protector, would be jointly and severally responsible, and in the officialdom of the Qing court, if it was not particularly appreciated or had an extremely close relationship, such a guarantee was rare.

With a political shield like Taqib, Zeng Guofan multiplied the number of his Hunan army several times, not only forming thirteen land battalions, but also forming a naval division in Hengyang. Because Jiang Zhongyuan told him that if you want to defeat the Taiping army on the Yangtze River, a strong sailor is absolutely indispensable.

Zeng Guofan, who is good at identifying talents, fell in love with Peng Yuqi, who abandoned literature and martial arts, this Peng Yuqi is a show talent, with excellent water nature, and is known as "Mixed River Dragon". He is a noble person, refuses to be in the same stream as the people in the officialdom, and resigns every time he encounters difficulties from his boss. He has a noble temperament and a Confucian temperament, which is very valued by Zeng Guofan.

Zeng Guofan set up two shipyards, and at the same time entrusted someone to purchase foreign artillery equipment from Guangdong and hand it over to Peng Yuqi to take care of.

So the Hunan army became a powerful armed force with both water and land armies, and there were many people, and the initial funds close to Zeng Guofan could not be maintained at all, but the smart Zeng Guofan thought of a way. He broke his tongue and asked the governor of Hunan, who was already unwilling to pay for it, to agree that he would collect centijin in Hunan for military use, which was equivalent to the current toll, and Zeng Guofan asked people to set up checkpoints on some bridges, mountain passes and other necessary roads to collect tolls for merchants between the two places.

This is a very large amount of money, many people did not realize this at the time, Zeng Guofan used this centigold very well, and set up a special department to be responsible for this work. The Hunan army belonged to a civilian organization and did not have a military salary allocated by the imperial court. Zeng Guofan relied on this centim to not only maintain the operation of the Hunan army, but also the salary of his soldiers was several times that of other regular armies.

Zeng Guofan not only paid attention to the development of Hunan, but also lost no time in opening a "branch" in Hubei. At that time, Wu Wenyi, the governor of Hubei, was the chief examiner of Hu Linyi's middle school jinshi, and he was Hu's teacher. He knew that Hu Linyi was very capable, so he asked him to come to support, but by the time Hu Linyi arrived with six hundred soldiers, the governor had already been defeated and died.

At this time, Hu Linyi had no backer, and it was difficult to move forward in Hubei, and he left without food or salary, and the situation was very embarrassing. Zeng Guofan was a jinshi at the same time as him, and he had a good relationship with Hu Linyi, and he also admired Hu's talent very much. At this time, Zeng Guofan's Hunan army was just starting out, and he didn't have much money, but he still tried his best to support Hu Linyi.

Zeng Guofan not only gave money back to people, so that Hu Linyi gained a firm foothold in Hubei. Hu Linyi really lived up to Zeng Guofan's expectations, and developed rapidly in Hubei, growing from a mere 600 people to tens of thousands, and became an important force of the Hunan army in Hubei.

In just over a year, the Hunan army formed by the self-made Zeng Guofan already had a considerable scale and relatively strong combat power. At this time, it was the time of the Taiping Army's westward expedition, and Zeng Guofan finally went into battle with his Hunan army.