Sure enough, Li Xiucheng's attitude was very tough, the Taiping army must be stationed in Shanghai, and it was already his bottom line to allow the Ming army to be stationed, and now he couldn't agree to the foreigners coming, let alone restore the original status quo in Shanghai, and the Taiping army would have to withdraw. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

The attitude of the British is also very tough, and the Taiping army is here, and they cannot feel at ease.

Constantly pulling each other's skins, and Li Xiucheng doesn't talk to foreigners at all, the strange thing is that he can tolerate Xu Rongcun not bowing when he sees him, but he can't tolerate foreigners not bowing when they see him, and he still looks down on foreigners because of prejudice.

After fierce mutual tussip, a month later, foreigners and Li Xiucheng gave in to each other.

The British relented because they were determined not to move their troops, and by this time the Franco-Prussian War had already been decided, and at the Battle of Sedan in September, Napoleon III surrendered to the Prussian Chief of the General Staff with more than 80,000 French troops.

If the war had ended, it would have been fine, but the problem was that the French emperor had surrendered, the French could not yet accept defeat, there was a coup d'état in the country, the bourgeois forces had declared a republic, they did not intend to surrender, and Prussia decided to continue the war and march on Paris.

It was the national policy of the British to maintain the balance of the European continent, and they could not allow this diplomatic principle to be undermined, and Shanghai was insignificant compared to the balance of the European continent.

They could not anticipate what major challenge Prussia's march into Paris would pose to the balance of Europe, and now they had to prevent Prussia from becoming too strong, dominating the continent, and then threatening Britain, so Britain decided that it must not devote its energies to any other direction until the European question was resolved.

If we cannot intervene in the Shanghai issue by force, we can only choose to compromise and retreat.

There is another important reason, after the Taiping army captured Shanghai, the purpose was for the wealth here, so there was no ban on trade, but they were here, foreigners did not dare to come, the result was a group of Ming and Taiping local merchants made a lot of profits, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom merchants are mainly doing local business, while Ming merchants are doing international trade, for a long time, it is very likely that the Ming Dynasty will replace the trade status of foreigners, and even if the negotiation is good, the foreigners will lose their trade status in Shanghai.

Therefore, the British businessmen put tremendous pressure on the government, and finally the British government decided to give in as soon as possible and let the domestic businessmen recover their interests as soon as possible.

The British gave up their demand for the Taiping army to withdraw from Shanghai, but there were still no troops in the concession, and the Taiping army could only be stationed on the county side.

As for the location of the Ming army, after compromise, several parties accepted that the Ming army would be stationed between the British and American Concession and the city of Shanghai, that is, the location of the original French Concession.

Obviously, under the compromise of the various houses, the interests of the French were betrayed.

As for whether the French will agree, the current French government can't take care of it itself, so let's talk about it then.

Of course, there are more than these conditions for Li Xiucheng and the foreigners to make concessions, otherwise Li Xiucheng would not be able to agree in the first place.

The British made a promise not to interfere in the war between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Great Qing Kingdom, and their fleet would remain neutral. The Taiping Army allowed the British to resume their garrisons in the Anglo-American Concession. And Daming vouched for this. On both sides of the British and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, whoever undermined the principle of neutrality, the Ming Dynasty would use its own forces to intervene.

As a result, Shanghai temporarily formed a balance under the power of the British, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the Ming army.

For Li Xiucheng, his Northern Expedition was more likely to succeed if the foreigners could remain neutral, and he could accept the British army returning to the concession. For the British, since they could not intervene by force for the time being, and since their own will was not strong, it was also cost-effective to agree to remain neutral in exchange for regaining control of the concession.

After the agreement was reached, the Taiping army released the British and American prisoners, and even returned the weapons to them, but they seized those rifled cannons and multi-barreled machine guns, and after suffering the loss of these weapons, the Taiping army very much hoped to get these weapons, but this weapon was far from enough for the huge Taiping army, so they asked the Ming if they could make these weapons, and at the same time they also sent samples back to Tianjing, so that the craftsmen of Tianjing could copy them as soon as possible.

With the withdrawal of the Taiping army from the concession area, the order of Shanghai was quickly restored, and the foreigners returned to the concession for the first time and couldn't wait to resume trade, but at this time they found that the Ming merchants had established a strong trade advantage, and now the middle and lower commercial system was controlled by the local merchants of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and they sent the goods from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom control area to Shanghai, and the Ming merchants made acquisitions, completely replacing the status of the Great Ocean Bank in the past. Now these ocean companies can take goods from the hands of Ming merchants.

However, the British businessmen still resumed the business of the banking industry, because this field has not yet been touched by the Ming merchants, and the business of the ticket number and the business of the bank are complementary, not competitive.

With the settlement of the Shanghai problem, Li Xiucheng's army has also completed its rest, and it is impossible to cross the river directly for the time being, because Zuo Zongtang's Huai army is still guarding Taicang.

Wang Haiyang and other miscellaneous troops have been besieging this place before, but they have not contributed to the work, and Zuo Zongtang's troops are really difficult to deal with, so he has never taken here, but he has also blocked Zuo Zongtang from rescuing Shanghai, and bought time for Li Xiu's troops to attack Shanghai.

After Li Xiucheng completed the occupation of Shanghai, Zuo Zongtang's offensive also weakened.

After Li Xiucheng's main force rested, he immediately crossed the Wusong River, and at this time, the ten Krupp cannons transferred from Jiangxi were also transported to the front line, and under the bombardment of these cannons, the city walls of Baoshan County and Jiading County were like tissue paper, and Zuo Zongtang's Chu army seemed to be frightened, and it was unable to organize an effective defense, and was easily repelled by Li Xiu's elite troops.

Not only was Zuo Zongtang frightened, but Wang Haiyang was also frightened, he was still full of complaints before, and he was not willing to consume troops, under the pretext that the Chu army was brave, and tried his best to exaggerate the difficulties of attacking these places, but Li Xiucheng did not say a word, withdrew his army to the second line, went up to his own headquarters, and repelled the left army with three strikes and two divisions.

This is a huge deterrent to Wang Haiyang, and when Li Xiucheng was about to attack Zhenyang County, Wang Haiyang took the initiative to ask for help, obviously he was impressed by Li Xiucheng's strength. Li Xiucheng did not refuse, and Wang Haiyang's ministry easily recovered Zhenyang County.

It was so easy, mainly because Zuo Zongtang took the initiative to retreat, and all the main forces withdrew to Chongming County, which also belonged to Taicang Prefecture, but the location was in the middle of the Yangtze River, which was a big sandbar, and if you wanted to capture here, you must have a water division.

At this time, the entire south of the Yangtze River was recovered by Li Xiucheng, which was more powerful than when Li Xiucheng founded Sufu Province, with the help of this power, Li Xiucheng returned to Tianjing, and the Manchu Dynasty only celebrated the business, without half a bit of noise, and his control of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at this time reached its peak.

At this time, preparations for the Northern Expedition began, and the first step was to dispatch the Navy Division to assist Wang Haiyang's Ministry to attack Chongming County, once Chongming County was captured, it would become the base of the Northern Expedition. At the same time, in order to cooperate with Wang Haiyang and assist the Northern Expedition, he gave Yang Fuqing an order to choose an opportunity to attack Jiangbei from Tongling and Wuhu and capture the area of the Nicha River.

Because this area is under the jurisdiction of Bao Chaobu, who is based in Sanhe Town, the purpose is to let Yang Fuqing contain Bao Chaobu and provide support for Wang Haiyang to cross the river.

As for the reaction of Zeng Guoquan, who was hiding in Anqing as the emperor, it is not clear now, because Zeng Guofan arrived in Anqing.

Things are different.

The original plan was that Yang Fuqing would launch a feint attack on Jiangbei, and Bao Chao's department would definitely not let Aspen's fleet go to Chongming County.

However, Bao Chaobu was willing to let Yang Fuqing land safely, and also transferred the main fleet to Chongming to help Zuo Zongtang, as a result, Yang Fuqing entered the Wuwei area and had a land battle with Bao Chaobu, while the Taiping fleet had a water battle with the Aspen fleet in Chongming.

Both battles were fought inextricably for a while.

They are all sailors mainly based on steam sail warships, fighting in the narrow waterways of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, basically just setting up a formation to carry out a confrontational scene, which is very spectacular, but there is no artistic color, and in the eyes of countless people on both sides of the strait who love to watch the excitement, they have a lose-lose ending.

From September to October, the war had to be hastily ended because Zeng Guoquan moved.

When he saw the banner of the Jizi battalion appear, the Taiping army, which had long been naturally afraid of the Hunan army, took the initiative to retreat, of course, the main reason was that Yang Fuqing did not want to consume his own troops, so he used this as an excuse to withdraw all the 30,000 troops from Jiangbei to Chizhou.

For this reason, Li Xiucheng launched the impeachment of Yang Fuqing, but under the protection of a group of princes surnamed Hong, Hong Xiuquan finally stood up, and only punished Yang Fuqing for half a year.

The Taiping Army's Northern Expedition failed, but the changes that took place as a result were still there, and both the Taiping Army and the Manchu Qing Dynasty ordered arms from the Ming Dynasty.

The Taiping army ordered 100 Krupp cannons from the Ming Dynasty, worth 10 million taels of silver, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty also took a fancy to this cannon, which was ordered by Li Hongzhang.

The difference is that the Taiping army even hoped that Daming could sell them a batch of ironclad ships, and they also took out 10 million taels of silver to order ten ships from the Daming Arsenal.

But the attitude of the arsenal is that he doesn't want to sell, even if Hao Kejiu wants to make this money, but he still feels that he shouldn't sell it, he plays a militaristic heavy weapon, and he can't easily oppose it with the excuse of others, but he is very supportive of exporting giant artillery to the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

Zhu Jinglun felt that there was a problem with the position of the general office of the arsenal who was born as a Jin merchant shopkeeper, and it seemed that he was inclined to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, so when the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Rites argued about this to Shangshu Province, and then the lawsuit came to Zhu Jinglun, Zhu Jinglun had to express his position.

"Ironclad ships can be sold, let them fight water wars, instead of fighting on land with rivers of blood, it is better to let them spend all their silver on water, after all, there will be fewer deaths."

But on the issue of selling the cannon to Li Hongzhang, Zhu Jinglun felt that he had to have a good talk with Hao Kejiu, so he immediately summoned Hao Kejiu.