Section 164 Zhejiang Zeng Guofan

That's all for the tenth watch!!

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The work of gathering intelligence in Zhejiang is proceeding in an orderly manner.

Zhou Lang said that he wanted to establish a comprehensive intelligence agency, but he did not understand the meaning, and Zhou Lang explained to him in accordance with the operation mode of the modern commercial intelligence department, telling him that he was collecting all kinds of intelligence materials and conducting summary analysis, including financial level, production level, equipment level, eating habits, and even the family background, age, and personality of the target person.

Wang Fuqian thought about it, isn't this the Jinyiwei of the Ming Dynasty, listening to all kinds of intelligence internally and externally, Zhou Lang told him that he was only responsible for collecting and analyzing information, not arresting, interrogating and other actions like Jinyiwei.

Wang Fuqian also felt that such a complete range of intelligence departments seemed to exist only in the pre-Qin period, when the Son of Heaven would send officials to go deep into the people to understand the situation of the people, because many of the contents reflecting the situation of the people appeared in the form of songs, and the result was compiled into a pre-Qin classic, called "The Book of Songs".

The act of the Son of Heaven sending people to the people to understand the situation is called collecting style, so there is an institution with a very elegant name.

In fact, in ancient times, the Son of Heaven went to the folk to collect poetry, not for the purpose of collecting poems, but many of them reflected the folk issues, which were compiled into songs and songs by the people, and these songs were the most widely sung and the most representative, so they were collected, and these contents were also easy to compile into books.

"The Legend of the Ram in the Spring and Autumn Period" explains that the role of collecting wind is very clear, "Therefore, the king does not go out of the house, and knows the suffering of the world", in order to let the Son of Heaven know the suffering of the people without going out.

At present, it does not belong to any government department, but directly under the shogunate of Zhou Lang. There are all kinds of talents in Zhou Lang's shogunate, and there are all kinds of people, but they are generally older, because Zhou Lang has to use their experience. The doorman in the shogunate is called a staff member, and Zhou Lang understands it as an advisor.

For example, the military advisory group formed by Fischer is even a team in the Zhou Lang shogunate. There are also economic aspects, such as the Dutch financial team from Amsterdam that helped Wu Bingjian regulate his banking business. U.S. Textile Industry Team. British military-industrial team.

In addition to these foreigner advisory groups, there are more Chinese teams, and the composition is even more diverse, it can be said that there are all from the princes and princes to the peddlers and pawns. Fujian, Guangdong local famous Confucian Zhou Lang invited, the old shopkeeper of the thirteen lines Zhou Lang also invited, the rivers and lakes who walked the rivers and lakes to sell art and darts, Zhou Lang invited, tortured to extract confessions and blackmailed people for money, Zhou Lang also invited, proficient in farming old farmers, Zhou Lang invited, good at hanging pots, famous doctors, Zhou Lang also invited.

In short, practitioners from all walks of life, as long as they need it, will invite Zhou Lang, and then treat them as VIPs, ask them to help themselves, and provide themselves with a variety of experiences.

Some have a special team to carry out regular work, some do not have a specific team, and there is no specific task, Zhou Lang will come when he looks for them, and he will leave if he doesn't look for them, and most of them are actually people with social status, and they don't need to pay salary at all, they help Zhou Lang give advice, some are to show off their strengths, some are just for hobbies, and some feel that they have obtained the status of a consultant to the Marshal's Mansion and feel that they have face.

But relatively professional and has a fixed job, Zhou Lang insists on paying his salary, otherwise it will be messy.

Most of the people in the wind collection department do not need salaries, they are a group of old antiques in the industry, and they are the social elites who have proved their ability, but those information collection personnel who perform actual work in the wind collection, Zhou Lang pays them relatively considerable wages, especially the group of people who are composed of rivers and lakes, and sometimes need to go deep into the enemy territory, their salaries are even higher than the salaries of soldiers, as high as more than ten taels per month, and they will double when they enter and leave the enemy territory.

The information collected by these information collectors is classified and collected according to the categories listed in detail by Zhou Lang, and finally organized together, so that these social elites who experience labor can analyze and discuss together, and sometimes Zhou Lang will personally participate in the discussion.

After this comprehensive information collection and analysis, Zhou Lang's understanding of the southern region of Zhejiang under Chen Zhouquan's control is even clearer than Chen Zhouquan's, but it has become clearer recently, because a large number of Zhejiang refugees continue to pour into Fujian, Zhou Lang ordered to open the water dividing pass, let these refugees enter Fujian for refuge, provide them with some rescue, in addition to introducing jobs to the capable craftsmen, and find ways to arrange them to do various government and public works without a skill, of course, from them.

The information work before the Northern Expedition to Zhejiang was already very detailed, so detailed that Zhou Lang even predicted the current situation, Chen Zhouquan was really in a desperate situation.

In fact, Chen Zhouquan's ending was already doomed, when he landed in Zhejiang with all his might, if he could take the entire Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Beijing in one go, his Northern Expedition was likely to be successful, but as soon as he stopped, the fate of failure came, this is not a matter of his personal ability, but the situation, he could not get the support of local forces, so he could not gain a firm foothold, and could not continue to obtain resources to confront the Manchu court, so as long as it was stagnant, it often meant failure, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was the best example.

The Manchu Qing Dynasty at the time of the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom was even more corrupt than the current Manchu Dynasty, the Eight Banners and the Green Camp at that time were even more unusable than now, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at that time was more powerful than the current Chen Zhouquan, occupying the entire lower reaches of the Yangtze River from Nanjing to Shanghai, and Chen Zhouquan has been squeezed in the south of Zhejiang, basically only Wenzhou and Taizhou, but he had to face the pressure of the entire Qing court, and the failure was already doomed, but the failure in the current situation was somewhat accidental.

Now Chen Zhouquan was almost forced into a desperate situation by a landlord's armed force, and now the force responsible for suppressing Chen Zhouquan in Zhejiang turned out to be a local group training, and the host was called Ruan Yuan.

Originally, Chen Zhouquan's situation was already very bad, and the Eight Banners Green Battalion in the Jiangnan area compressed him and couldn't move, and fell into a stalemate.

Chen Zhouquan has been trying to launch a fierce attack, the Manchu Qing is mainly defensive, in fact, this kind of defense is a kind of strangulation for Chen Zhouquan, he does not have enough resources to consume with the Manchus, and must continue to expand his strength through sports warfare, but the consumption of up to a year in southern Zhejiang has almost exhausted the potential of Taiwan and southern Zhejiang. If nothing else, he won't last long.

The accident was that Zhou Lang went to Beijing to make a fuss, robbed Qianlong's Old Summer Palace, and attracted the Manchu elite soldiers from all over the country. Chen Zhouquan not only breathed a sigh of relief, but also achieved results again, capturing Ningbo Mansion, but nothing more. Then he was blocked by a landlord armed in Hangzhou Mansion, this person who led the green battalion soldiers and regimental training to block him was called Ruan Yuan, different from Zeng Guofan, he was not an official eunuch at home, but an incumbent official, who was the governor of Zhejiang at the time, and the green battalion under his command was his government standard, and the regimental training organized was the township regiment led by his students.

The time for Ruan Yuan to form the township regiment was actually very short, only one or two years. At the beginning of the 60th year of Qianlong, when he had just taken office in Zhejiang, he had been a pure civil official before, Qianlong 54 years (1789) at the age of 25 Jinshi, entered the Hanlin Academy as a Jishi, the following year awarded the Hanlin Academy to edit, a year later because of his profound knowledge, by Gaozong appreciated and promoted to Shao Zhan Shi, into the South Study, Maoqin Palace, moved to Zhan Shi, only went to Shandong to supervise the study of politics for two years, Qianlong 60 years transferred to Zhejiang as a school administration.

It is such an official who has always excelled in learning, no matter how you look at it, there is no room for military and political play, and he has shown his ability when he encounters an opportunity, and he may not have known that he has this ability before.

As soon as he took office as a scholar and politician, it happened that Zhou Lang swept Fujian, and then Chen Zhouquan made a northern expedition to Zhejiang, and Qianlong announced that he would abdicate in the court, which can be described as a situation of internal and external troubles. Seeing that Chen Zhouquan was unstoppable and the local army was weak, these were not his business to study politics, but Ruan Yuan insisted on convening the students of the government school and telling everyone that when the country was in danger now, the scholars could not stay out of the matter, and called on everyone to have money to contribute and make a strong contribution.

After Qianlong also regarded the chaos in Fujian and Zhejiang as the top priority, mobilized the armed forces of the entire Jiangnan to suppress it, and after cooperating with the regular army to block Chen Zhouquan, the former governor was dismissed for mishandling, but Ruan Yuan was promoted to the governor of Zhejiang because of the decisive organization of Zhuang Ding.

After becoming the governor, Ruan Yuan's resources were even more abundant, and at this time, his students all brought some young people to their hometowns. Some of the students who can study in the house are not the children of poor families, some are big landlords, some are big clans, some are children of famous families, and some of the people they recruit are the children of clans with the same surname, some are the villagers of their hometowns, or long-term and short-term workers who have worked for their own families for a long time.

Ruan Yuan asked Qianlong to give these students temporary official positions one by one, and his subordinates cooperated with the officers and soldiers with a few dozen or many defeated people, and Ruan Yuan issued them weapons and supported them with money and food from the government treasury. At this time, this township militia was only a cooperative armed force, and no one thought that they would have any combat effectiveness.

But when the elite soldiers of Zhejiang went north to capture the king, the old and weak green battalion left behind could not resist Chen Zhouquan's attack at all, and Ningbo Mansion fell instantly, at the most critical time, these people helped to defend Hangzhou Mansion, at this time Ruan Yuan found that these militia groups under the leadership of the students, although they could not charge into battle, but they had an advantage, that is, the people of the hometown and the tribe gathered together, and there would be no escape, and there was no bad habit of the green battalion soldiers who fled when they heard the wind, as long as their commanders did not escape, these people could even die together.

After discovering this secret, Ruan Yuan began to form more township regiments, asking the students to go back and continue to recruit people, and whoever recruited, let whoever brought it, and the more recruited, the bigger the officials.

In this case, the local family is also very supportive, and even willing to raise donations, after all, it is the future of their own children, not all national affairs, in addition, the local landlord clan in Zhejiang is indeed frightened, Chen Zhouquan's predatory fiscal policy, let them think of Li Zicheng.

So there was money to contribute, and the forces of the entire hinterland of Zhejiang were mobilized, and a large number of landlords' children joined Ruan Yuan's army, and in a short period of time he actually formed 50,000 militia groups.

At this time, Qianlong and Jiaqing had just relieved themselves from the siege of Beijing, although Ruan Yuan lost Ningbo Mansion, but they knew that it was because the main force went north, and did not remove Ruan Yuan, but let him wear the guilt and make meritorious service, and at this time Zhejiang was a hot potato, and no one was willing to fight for this position, but they said good things to Ruan Yuan, and there were many people who wanted Ruan Yuan to continue to be on the front line, so Ruan Yuan kept his position safely, which gave him the opportunity to reorganize his military forces.

Ruan Yuan pulled generals from the green camp and the dwarf, selected a group of brave men, put them in charge of training, and led the militia with the children of the landlords, and the green camp was completely placed on the second line.

After a year of fierce battles, training and polishing, the recruits have also become veterans, and Nguyen Yuan is no longer limited to defense at this time, but has begun to counterattack.

In cooperation with the local forces, he took Ningbo Mansion by storming.

At this time, his landlord militia already had the ability and experience to confront Chen Zhouquan's army, and the most important thing is that a new model of armed forces was formed, from the rural society ruled by the landlords, there were constantly soldiers, money and food gathered into Ruan Yuan's army, he was not only sufficient armed forces, he was combined with the current social situation, reshaped an armed system.

This is also the reason why Zeng Guofan was able to win the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom back then, not that the Hunan army was stronger than the Taiping army, nor that Zeng Guofan's generals were better than Li Xiucheng's others, but Zeng Guofan's system was more stable and more durable, and he not only won the next game, but also could afford to lose.

After losing Ningbo Mansion, Chen Zhouquan concentrated his forces on counterattacking, but was not only repulsed, but also attacked.

At this time, Zhou Lang decided to go north to Zhejiang, and Chen Zhouquan could no longer help himself stop the Qing army, so he could only come by himself.