Since Jiang Zhongyuan left Hubei and went to Anhui, the life of Hu Yihuang, the king of Yu, has been much better. He made good progress, and after taking Wuchang, he connected Xiaogan, Yunmeng, Anlu, Suizhou, Zhongxiang, Yichang and other places. Then King Yu moved to Hunan, and successively captured Yuezhou, Xiangyin, Jinggang, Ningxiang and other places. For a time, the Taiping Army was very prosperous in Hunan and Hubei.

Taking Xiangtan, Hu Yihuang is in high spirits, and his next target is Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan, and he did not realize the coming of the crisis at this moment. Because he had captured many cities, his army of tens of thousands had been dispersed, and now he had only about 10,000 heavenly soldiers in his hands. Moreover, there were no major setbacks before, and almost all the Qing soldiers along the coast were in a state of non-resistance, and Hu Yi shook the heart of the proud soldiers.

The prosperity must decline, and Hu Yihuang, the king of Yu in Xiangtan, was strongly blocked by the Hunan army of the Zeng State Domain. Zeng Guofan sent Taqibu to lead more than 4,000 Hunan warriors to Xiangtan and opened the first battle of the Hunan army.

I have to say that this Taqib is a fierce general who is not afraid of death, he led Xiang Yong to take the lead, with a spear in his hand and two waist knives in his waist and went into battle. He let his own soldiers hold their own banners, and they were the first to rush into the formation of the Taiping army.

In this battle, Taqibu killed nine Taiping generals in a row, resulting in the rout of the Taiping army, and then the Xiangyong soldiers killed Xiangtan City in one breath before stopping.

The next day, Hu Yihuang couldn't swallow the breath of yesterday's fiasco, and personally went into battle to seek a decisive battle. As a result, Zhou Fengshan, the advisor that Zeng Guofan equipped for Taqib, played a key role, and this Zhou Fengshan and Taqib were two diametrically opposed people. Taqib is brave and not afraid of death, and Zhou Fengshan is brave and scheming and afraid of death.

Zhou Fengshan set up a plan to lure the enemy into the depths, set up ambushes on the left and right sides of a mountain, equipped with many cannons, and then lured the Taiping army with a small number of troops. The luring forces of the Hunan army fought and retreated, leading the Taiping army into the mountains. At this time, the artillery on both sides bombarded together, killing more than 100 Taiping troops. The Taiping Army, which was suddenly hit hard, quickly became disorganized. At this time, the Hunan army ambushed on the mountains on both sides rushed out and once again inflicted heavy losses on the Taiping army.

At the same time, Peng Yuqi, the commander of Zeng Guofan's naval army, led the Hunan army to engage the naval army of King Yu. The water and military forces of King Yu are basically civilian ships, which can be transported, but not combat, because the bottom plate of the civilian ships cannot withstand the recoil generated when the cannon is fired, so the cannon cannot be installed.

And the water army of the Hunan army, Zeng Guofan spent a lot of effort to form. His warships were all designed by special personnel, and the warships in the water camp were large and small, and each had its own division of labor. The ship's floor was specially treated to withstand recoil, and it was equipped with a variable number of foreign cannons, capable of attacking from a distance, and it was also very powerful.

As soon as the two sides fought, the sailors of the Hunan army continued to sink the civilian ships of the Taiping army from a long distance, and when the Taiping army fell into chaos, Peng Yuqi sent dead soldiers to drive small sampans into the Taiping army formation and set fire everywhere.

Under the double blow, thousands of civilian ships of the Taiping army were almost completely wiped out. King Yu was hit hard, and knew that things were not good, so he hurriedly asked Shi Dakai in Jiangxi for help.

Shi Dakai attacked Nanchang, and the troops were also very tight, but he still let his cousin Shi Fengkui lead a part of the soldiers and horses to the rescue.

But it was too late at this moment, after the successive failures of King Yu, the old brothers of Huguang under his command and the newly recruited new brothers blamed each other for failure and shirked responsibility, and Hu Yihuang did not take effective measures to solve it at the first time, and then there was infighting, so that the Hunan army took advantage of the fisherman.

Hu Yihuang fought fiercely with the Hunan army for seven days, ten battles of all sizes, all of them were defeated, with more than 10,000 casualties, and finally fled to Yuezhou with only four heavenly soldiers.

Zeng Guofan refused to stop, and followed closely to Yuezhou, starting the offensive and defensive battle of Yuezhou.

Hu Yihuang, who lost the naval army, was no longer able to resist the Hunan army, which was advancing by land and water, and lost several battles one after another. In the last duel with the Hunan army, Hu Yihuang met his enemy Taqib. The two were very red when they saw each other, and Hu Yihuang rode his horse to single-handedly challenge Taqib.

Both of them are tiger generals, and they are inseparable for a while. Hu Yihuang was more excited, because the resentment generated by the successive failures made his movements deformed. During a sprint move, he used too much force to pierce Tazib and his horse. When he wanted to draw his gun and stab again, one accidentally lost his balance, fell off his horse, and was killed by the surrounding Qing soldiers.

Hu Yihuang's army was defeated and died, the Taiping army was defeated, and Yuezhou fell into the hands of the Hunan army.

And Shi Fengkui, who came to support, was not as wise and martial as Shi Dakai, his qualifications were mediocre, and he was defeated by the Hunan army on the way to support and fled to Wuchang.

Hubei's Hu Linyi was also in this suit, which was suitable to cooperate with Zeng Guofan to lead the army to attack Wuchang.

At this time, there were only a few thousand Taiping troops in Wuchang City, but Hu Linyi outside the city had tens of thousands of troops, and Zeng Guofan also sent a naval army to support.

At this time, Shi Fengkui already knew that Wuchang could not hold it, and after holding out for two days, he led his troops to break through. He was chased and killed by Hu Linyi, losing thousands of people, and the sailors abandoned by him were burned by the Hunan army, with about a thousand ships.

Zeng Guofan went down the river to Tianjia Town, the last stronghold of the Taiping army in Hubei.

This Tianjia town is at the junction of Hubei and Jiangxi, which is the throat of the water and land transportation of the two provinces, and it is also a place where soldiers must fight.

Yang Xiuqing was also anxious, on the one hand, he pursued Wuchang's loss and cut off Shi Fengkui's head. On the other hand, because Yang Xiaoshan was still at the critical moment of attacking Luzhou, the king of the east had to ask Qin Rigang, who was closest to Tianjia Town, to hurry up to support.

Yang Xiuqing knew Qin Rigang's ability and was not worried about him, so he personally ordered him to strengthen Tianjiazhen's defenses.

According to Yang Xiuqing's instructions, Qin Rigang blocked the Yangtze River with iron cables and organized the passage of the Hunan army's sailors; Gun emplacements were also built on the shore to form a joint defense of land and water to control the waterway. Later, a wooden city was placed on the river, which was equivalent to building a water fort on the river, which could be used to confront enemy ships.

But the tactics are dead, the people are alive, Qin Rigang can't be said to be incontributive, he completely follows the deployment of the East King to set up the defensive forces, but these defenses are all dead, there is no counterattack plan, you can only sit and wait for the Hunan army to attack, which is very passive.

Zeng Guofan would not blindly attack to the death, he adopted a plan of water and land cooperation, the first step, first use the land division to take the half of the mountain opposite Tianjia Town, and then with the cooperation of the Lu division, dispatch the water division to use the stove to barbecue the iron cable, and then cut it. Finally, destroy the power of the Taiping army on the water and take full control of the river power.

Zeng Guofan's serial style of play made Qin Rigang at a loss, and in the end he had to burn down his Tianjia Town camp and fled, since then the Taiping army was completely beaten out of Hunan and Hubei, and all the fruits of the previous western expedition were lost, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom fell into a very big crisis.