Lee so-sung is indeed in big trouble. Pen fun and pavilion www.biquge.info

He could imagine that when he was in Shanghai before, he found that the Armstrong breech-loading rifled gun equipped by the British army was much better than his front-loading smoothbore gun, which not only had a higher rate of fire, but also had a longer range and greater power of the shells.

The British made great efforts in the concession, this is not to help defend the city of Shanghai, not to help the Qing army fight, but to defend their old nest, they demolished a large number of civil buildings, built strong fortifications, hired a large number of people to provide logistics, and formed an army of 20,000.

The key is that they have 300 Armstrong cannons, although Li Xiucheng has more cannons, it is impossible to fully deploy them on the front, and the previous artillery battles have caused too many casualties among his excellent gunners, and it is difficult to brave the artillery fire to fight the British.

If you take a detour from other directions, the British gunboats patrol at the mouth of the Wusong River, and the Huangpu River is the stage of the British Navy, and it is impossible for both sides to pose a threat to the concession.

In this case, he is not helpless, is he fighting, it is nothing more than more dead people, and he can always win.

So he asked the infantry to charge again and again under artillery fire, but at this time he found that the foreigners had actually taken out a new weapon, a musket with a high rate of fire, and swept away a large area. He didn't know about this kind of weapon, he had never seen it, and there was nothing he could do about it, and after a layer of Taiping corpses lying on the ground, Li Xiucheng knew that it was not a way to attack by force.

The lack of understanding of new weapons made Li Xiucheng feel that it was impossible to use infantry to penetrate them, and it was useless to fill in the number of lives.

So in desperation, he thought of asking Daming for help, because at this time, in his understanding, only the kind of giant cannon of Daming could suppress the British cannon, and even he thought about using the giant cannon to detour back to the rear to bombard the British warships, and he didn't need to deal with the capital ships on the Huangpu River, he only needed to kill the gunboats on the narrow Wusong River, and he could attack the rear of the concession through that river.

The good news is that the Daming merchant told him that the Daming Arsenal had been contacted and was willing to ship. However, it is emphasized that this is a completely private trade with the military attache of the Ming Dynasty, so this price has to be mentioned, mentioning 150,000 taels per cannon.

Li Xiucheng acquiesced in the blackmail of this group of vampires, as long as he could get Shanghai, he could earn it back as much as he spent. Once he fails, not only will his previous achievements be wasted, but Li Xiucheng feels that he may be in big trouble.

In the past few years, Hong Xiuquan has put him in power, although most of the time his power is unimpeded, but he understands that a force against him has been formed. It is impossible for the prince surnamed Hong to see him become bigger, so he has long been secretly co-opting his subordinates and contacting other powerful princes. As long as he gives him a chance, those people will definitely get him in trouble.

That's why he would rather come to Shanghai in person to command the battle, and also keep his cousin Li Shixian in Ningguofu, he is worried that once his main force is transferred out of Tianjing, Yang Fuqing, who is transferred back to Huizhou from northern Jiangxi, will do something, Hong Xiu lives in the deep palace all day long, and does not care about political affairs, but who can find out what this king is thinking in his head, in case he is playing a secret edict to Yang Fuqing, the army is not in Tianjing, Yang Fuqing suddenly led troops into Beijing, and he Li Xiucheng will become the second Yang Xiuqing.

Therefore, Li Xiucheng continued to keep Li Shixian in Ningguofu and kept an eye on Yang Fuqing, while doing his best to defeat the foreign forces in Shanghai in a war.

As for where Taicang is and where is the Wang Haiyang faction in southern Jiangnan, he is not too worried that Wang Haiyang will have any hookup with Zuo Zongtang, because it was Zuo Zongtang who drove Wang Haiyang from Zhejiang to Fujian, and then from Fujian to Jiangxi, beating Wang Haiyang like a lost dog, Wang Haiyang's old brothers, who died in Zuo Zongtang's hands, not 10,000 but 8,000, these two people have a deep blood feud, and it is impossible to reconcile.

But it still depends on whether he Li Xiucheng can capture Shanghai as soon as possible, otherwise after a long time, Wang Haiyang will not be able to keep any changes, Wang Haiyang and Zuo Zongtang have a deep enmity in the sea of blood, but among his subordinates, there are a large number of Bao Chao's old generals, once Bao Chao secretly contacts, what will Wang Haiyang do, if he loses in Shanghai, Bao Chao and Wang Haiyang will be able to go straight to Tianjing City, and there will be another siege of Tianjing.

So he must be fast, he must take Shanghai as quickly as possible, and give no one a chance.

As long as he takes Shanghai, and then he will join Wang Haiyang as quickly as possible, gather and annihilate Zuo Zongtang's army in Taicang, and completely clear the obstacles to crossing the river, so that Wang Haiyang's ministry can only follow him on the Northern Expedition, whether the Northern Expedition can succeed or not is not the key, drive Wang Haiyang's gang across the Yangtze River, and let them go to Jiangbei to open up territory like Chen Yucheng back then, so Jiangnan will be stable.

As for Yang Fuqing, no matter whether Wang Haiyang's ministry is smooth or unfavorable, he has enough excuses to transfer Yang Fuqing across the river to support, after all, his army has fought hard against the foreigners, and Yang Fuqing has to support him in both public and private affairs.

Yang Fuqing and Wang Haiyang both went to Jiangbei, no matter what they tossed into, the Jiangnan area was connected, it was he Li Xiucheng who had the final say, and he didn't have to worry too much about the princes surnamed Hong, and then he could show his strength and exert his means in this entire region.

Therefore, the crux of the matter is whether Shanghai can be taken as soon as possible.

The good news was that Daming agreed to sell him cannons, but there was a difficulty in how to avoid the British blockade.

The British navy no longer dared to approach the city of Shanghai, but they still had an advantage on the Huangpu River, on the Yangtze River, on the sea, the British warships always controlled the sea dominance, and the smugglers of the Ming Dynasty dared to ask for such a high price, the biggest reason was that their goods were constantly seized by the British.

In particular, the port of Ningbo is now blockaded by the navy of the British and French forces, and the merchant ships of the Ming Dynasty cannot dock, and now the Ming Dynasty has obtained so many things by smuggling, and the smuggling of a boatload of grain and cloth will be detained, and his army can still raise food from other places, but if the cannon is detained, he will have nothing to do.

In addition, I heard that it is also very troublesome for the Ming Dynasty to produce this kind of cannon, only one or two hundred pieces can be produced a year, and their stock is at most dozens of pieces, if they are all sold to him and seized by the British army, let him wait for a year, he can't afford to wait.

He'd rather be slower, but steady.

Therefore, he suggested that the delivery should be made by land, and the two sides would be separated, so that the Ming merchant ships could transport a batch of cannons to Fuzhou, and then take the land route to Zhejiang, and the other way would go to Jiangxi and send it to the Taiping army through the Ganjiang River.

If it can be sent from Zhejiang to the Taiping Army, he will be able to launch an offensive against Shanghai again in a month or ten days at least.

"This Li Xiucheng is cautious, so it saves us from trouble!"

After receiving the suggestion, Zhu Jinglun agreed very painfully.

In this way, the artillery will be sent to Fuzhou by sea first, and then handed over to the Taiping army at the water-dividing pass at the junction of Fujian and Zhejiang to the north, and then transported all the way north to Wenzhou, and then sent to Hangzhou by water, where there is a canal to Shanghai, so in fact, as long as it is sent to Wenzhou, then it can basically reach the front line within ten days.

As for which road to take Jiangxi, it is far from the water can not quench the thirst of the near, the Yangtze River can not go, so to Jiangxi, at most it is sent to Huizhou, from Huizhou land transportation to the front line, you have to pass through the whole Jiangsu, there are mountains and rivers along the way, that is, there is no continuous waterway channel, it is difficult to send it over without one or two months.

"If only there was a railway!"

Zhu Jinglun sighed.

The construction of the Ningbo-Hangzhou railway was already on the agenda, and the population of Jiangsu and Zhejiang was less than half of what it used to be, only about 20 million people, and the violent management of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, land acquisition was not a problem at all.

But Zhu Jinglun also wants to immediately build three inter-provincial railways from Guangzhou to Fujian, from Guangzhou to Jiangxi, and to Guangxi.

The Guangjiu Line is to establish credit, and the bridges that have been erected for no reason have become a symbol of the Ming Dynasty's attitude towards protecting private property.

The flag has been erected, so we need to let everyone see the ability and determination of the Ming Dynasty to maintain the legal system, and the attitude of protecting private property is already there, but whether the protection of private property depends on the law or the government's consciousness, obviously the law is more reliable, so Zhu Jinglun now needs to establish the prestige of the law.

Or by building railways.

This time he plans to expropriate land, but not blindly, but to make sense and be legal. He decided to introduce a land acquisition law, and later countries had relevant laws, even if it was a well-known lighthouse country, there were also land acquisition laws, and because some people used this law to exploit loopholes, it caused various disputes. For example, the government expropriated an old residential area for public welfare renovation, but later sold it to a private company, and the locals found out that the company soon found a huge coal mine from under their land, and immediately suspected that the government was colluding with interest groups to use the law to infringe on their interests, and directly sued the federal government.

Zhu Jinglun introduced the land requisition law, of course, not to compete with the people for profit, he is to put an end to the blind land plot, that is, some people are killed and refuse to sell land, so what should I do? Isn't the road repaired, this is unrealistic, and in the end it can only be to wronged the minority and benefit the majority.

However, the law must be fair and cannot be reduced to a tool of profit, so land can only be fought for in areas that are truly beneficial to the public, such as building a very necessary railway, which can compete for land, but if it is not necessary, land cannot be acquired.

The relevant legal provisions have been considered by the legal experts of the Ming Dynasty, and it is very simple for the Ming Dynasty to introduce the law now, because there is no parliamentary constraint, and Zhu Jinglun can approve the law by stamping the big seal.

I believe that this efficiency will be very high, within a month, the relevant laws can be introduced, within three months, the relevant land can be completed, within half a year, the three railway lines can start construction at the same time, within three or five years, the Daming railway network can be formed.

As for the people's resistance, it will definitely happen, this time Zhu Jinglun will take tough measures, because he will tell others that this is determined by the law, he doesn't care that someone will hate the law, Zhu Jinglun's understanding is always that the law can be hated, but it must be trusted, whether it is hating the law or liking the law, everyone must first believe in the law.

Once he convinces everyone of the power of the law, then the law says to protect private property, and everyone will be convinced. Only then will there be capitalists who will have no scruples about investing their capital in the industrial field, because they know that even if it is not land as an asset for sacrificial industry, it will not be taken away by the powerful for no reason.

That's when the wave of private investment arrives and the real industrial revolution kicks in.

At present, the most important thing is to help Li Xiucheng recapture Shanghai, the best result is that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom occupies Shanghai by force, and then the Ming Dynasty obtains the management right here through diplomatic channels, even if it is to help the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom collect taxes, at worst, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom decides to manage Shanghai by itself, which leads to a sharp drop in the efficiency of Shanghai, then Zhu Jinglun has to consider letting Ningbo temporarily replace Shanghai to play the role of the economic center of the Yangtze River Delta region.