Besides, Sufu Province of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was already a thin mud, Li Xiucheng led a large army to fight in Tianjing and Zeng Guoquan's iron barrel formation, and Li Hongzhang's Huai army began to counterattack the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom from Shanghai.

When Li Hongzhang first began to form the Huai Army, he was ridiculed as the Huazi Army, and more than 6,000 people were dressed in tatters, and there was no military appearance at all. But Li Hongzhang is very oily and very good at communicating, he is a little confused on Zeng Guofan's side, and the Hunan army is mostly unsmiling scholars, and he doesn't like his oily tone very much.

However, Shanghai made Li Hongzhang successful, so he relied on his mouth, flickered left and right, and "cheated" hundreds of thousands of taels of silver from the Shanghai gentry as protection money to arm the Huai army. After the signing of the Treaty of Beijing, the foreigners strongly supported the Qing government.

This time, Li Hongzhang, who is in Shanghai, is close to the water, and he is strong. The Huai Army is not what it used to be, all of them have foreign guns and artillery, and there are foreigners in each battalion as instructors to command operations, and the training has been changed to foreign exercises, and the number of people has also rapidly expanded from 13 battalions to more than 100 battalions and more than 50,000 people.

This time, Li Hongzhang went out of his best and penetrated directly into the junction between the north of Suzhou and Wuxi, in a vain attempt to cut off the connection between Suzhou and Tianjing, and encircle Suzhou.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also used the main force, and the Suzhou garrison general Tan Shaoguang and the servant Li Shixian, who rushed from Tianjing, joined forces with a total of more than 60,000 people to resist the Huai army's encirclement of Suzhou.

Tan Shaoguang, the king of Mu, and Li Shixian, the king of waiting, were determined to block Li Hongzhang's Huai army here across a Xitang River in the south and north.

To their surprise, the Huai army actually crossed the river in front of them with a swagger, and seemed to be completely unafraid of the Taiping army's half-crossing attack.

Li Shixian and Tan Shaoguang are both fierce generals, and they can't see such blatant contempt from the Huai army, so they immediately let the strikers attack the Huai army.

The Huai army's team to cross the river is the most elite Liu Ming Chuan, he has a little pockmarks on his face, and he ranks sixth in the family, known as Liu Liuzazi. He was recruited by Li Hongzhang from his hometown in Anhui Province to train a landlord regiment, and he won Li Hongzhang's trust because of his courage in fighting and his brains in fighting. He had three armies, left, center, and right, each with six battalions, a total of 18 battalions, and one artillery battalion, plus the pro-soldier battalion and staff members, with more than 9,000 people and more than 4,000 foreign guns, making it a powerful force in the Huai army.

Liu Mingchuan saw the Taiping army roaring and hurriedly commanded the artillery battalion to shell it.

At this time, the artillery battalion of the Huai army did not use the old mountain cannon of the Qing court, but the most advanced flowering cannon of this era. The shells fell to the ground and blossomed, exploding a large area, and the lethality was much greater than that of the old mountain artillery.

"You can't let them cross the river." Li Shixian saw that the striker was injured by shells, and many people were beaten back, and he was ruthless in his heart, and rushed up with the main force.

Tan Shaoguang and Li Shixian thought the same way, and they also rushed up with the main force.

The Taiping army was desperate, and tens of thousands of people killed like rolling thunder, killing in a big way. The speed of the Taiping army is very fast, and it is only more than 200 meters away from Liu Mingchuan's troops who have crossed the river and just lined up.

"Don't be afraid, hit their standard-bearers with foreign guns." Liu Mingchuan faced the full force of the Taiping army's blow, although his face was pale, he was very able to restrain himself, pulled out his waist knife, raised his head upward, and commanded calmly.

Although the Huai Army's foreign gun team has not been formed for a long time, it still has the prototype of a modern army, and the three-stage shooting is already decent.

Liu Mingchuan is very bad, and the experience he summed up many times with the Taiping army is to fight against the standard-bearer, all the Taiping army can fight is the standard-bearer, and the whole team will collapse as soon as the standard-bearer dies.

The Taiping army suffered heavy casualties, and if it was replaced by other generals, I am afraid that the team would collapse, but Li Shixian and Tan Shaoguang personally led their troops to rush upward, and only their team could continue to fight in the face of such adversity.

If it weren't for the Huai Army, in fact, the Taiping Army also had foreign guns, and they could still fight a dozen, but the Huai Army's foreign guns were all of a unified model, and the weapons and equipment were all purchased from the foreigners in a structured system. After the Taiping Army was embargoed by Britain and France, it was difficult to get weapons, most of them were smuggled at high prices, ammunition was scarce, and all kinds of foreign guns were difficult to manage in a unified manner.

The Taiping army paid the price of thousands of people and finally encountered Liu Mingchuan's team, and the two sides fought with each other in a tragic white-knuckle battle.

Li Shixian and Liu Mingchuan's right army fought together, he killed well, and successively split several garrisons of the Huai army, and Tan Shaoguang was not far behind, in the face of the large number of left army, the silver spears were like sparks, stabbing several Qing generals to death, forcing the Qing army to retreat again and again.

Liu Mingchuan saw that the left and right armies were about to collapse when they were in a bitter battle, so he hurriedly commanded four battalions of the Chinese army to go to support, and the Qing army continued to rescue the front through the pontoon bridge.

Liu Mingchuan stood by the river with his own soldiers and shouted: "Whoever dares to retreat will be killed." ”

No matter how Liu Mingchuan shouted, the Taiping army had already taken the advantage at this moment, rushing down like a torrent, and slapping the Qing soldiers to death on the shore one after another.

The banners of "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Servant King Li" and "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Mu Wang Tan" are about to be planted on the Xitang River.

"Mr. Liu, let's withdraw, the brothers can't stand it." One of the generals beside him pleaded bitterly.

"No! We have to hold on, and we're going to hold on a little longer. Liu Mingchuan kicked the general away, and said angrily with fire in his eyes.

His personal battalion and more than 1,000 Qing soldiers who had retreated formed a circle, using corpses as a wall of flesh, desperately resisting the onslaught of the Taiping army. The banner of the Taiping army was getting closer and closer to him, and the sound of gunshots, killing shouts, and horses' hooves gathered from all directions.

"Why hasn't the support come yet? My life is at stake. Liu Mingchuan threw away the pistol that had run out of bullets, took off the red top that was already soaked, and was about to pull out the knife and commit suicide on the spot.

Suddenly, the ground shook, and the artillery team of the Qing army appeared behind the Taiping army, and the dense flowering cannons exploded in the crowd of the Taiping army, and a large number of people fell in a pool of blood.

"It's finally here, everyone climb down, don't get hurt by mistake." Liu Mingchuan said happily.

It turned out that the victorious army composed of foreigners who came together finally went around the back of the Taiping army, and the army composed of all foreign devils was very strong in combat, especially their artillery was particularly accurate. (Chang Shengjun was originally called the foreign gun team, and Li Hongzhang deliberately changed his name to make others mistakenly think that it was a Chinese team and hide people's eyes.) ）

Li Shixian and Tan Shaoguang were surprised, and looked back to see that the victorious army of the foreigners spread out in a fan shape from behind, wanting to cut off the retreat of the Taiping army and surround them, and the situation of the Taiping army was extremely critical.