But the wisdom of the Chinese is often long-term, not a short-term effect, so it cannot break out for a while. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Moreover, the Taiping Army's Northern Expedition was very strong, and after their army crossed the river, they quickly defeated the Qing army in Jiangbei.

With the support of the heavy artillery troops sent by Li Xiucheng, Wang Haiyang's army soon took the cities of Haimen and Tongzhou, and Zuo Zongtang's Chu army group seemed to be vulnerable, and constantly retreated to Yangzhou in the west.

And Yang Fuqing's army also annihilated the Eight Banners and Green Battalions of Hezhou and Wuwei Prefecture, and marched in the direction of Chaoxian.

Zeng Guofan seemed to be out of reach in Anqing, and he didn't make any moves for a while, and Zeng Guoquan, the main force of the Hunan army, was still stationed in Anqing without moving.

Those Qingliu who abused Zeng Guofan in the past continued to abuse Zeng Guofan, but from the past to tolerate foreigners and raise traitors to the Taiping army like a tiger, but their scolding was mixed with a tone of fear.

The Taiping Army's Northern Expedition began in June, which can only be described as overwhelming, and they cooperated by water. Wang Haiyang advanced along the river, and after conquering Guazhou, Li Xiucheng's sailors immediately built a water camp in Guazhou to receive all kinds of supplies from Wang Haiyang. After Yang Fuqing conquered Wuwei Prefecture, Li Xiucheng also opened up a port in Yuxi Town, which could directly lead to Chaohu Lake through the Xinyu River, which ensured the supply problem for Yang Fuqing's troops who attacked Chaoxian County.

With the Northern Expedition going well, no conflict broke out within the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

On the contrary, the people in the Manchu Qing Dynasty were panicked, they had not had a good life in the past few years, not to mention the Tianjin teaching plan, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom occupied the southern wealth, and the northwest Huijiang was also in frequent wars, Agubai had taken advantage of the chaos to occupy the entire Huijiang outside Kucha, and Tsarist Russia took the opportunity to seize Ili, and the invasion of Tsarist Russia made the Qing court feel pressured.

The angry youths in the court, in addition to shouting for the western expedition, that is, shouting for the southern expedition, and of course, scolding Zeng Guofan, they can't come up with any good way otherwise, and the only good way is to order Zeng Guofan to cross the river and fight immediately.

Among these discordant voices, there are also some people who do practical things, such as Li Hongzhang, who has built a complete fortress group in the vicinity of Dagukou in the two years since he became governor of Zhili, boasting that he no longer has to fear the fleet of foreigners.

There is also Yi Xin and other enlightened magnates among the Manchurians, who began to form a new Eight Banners. The young and strong bannermen were selected from the various banners, and the new army was formed, and the commander was Fu Zhuli, the deputy capital of the Eight Banners who returned to Beiqi from Guangdong.

Not long after Fu Zhuli returned to Beiya, he was actually imprisoned for helping the Ming army persuade him to surrender when the Ming army was attacking the city. Many Manchurian officers and soldiers who saved their lives because of surrender not only did not rescue Fu Zhuli at this time, but fell into the ground, and said unashamedly that if they had not been bewitched by Fu Zhuli, with their men guarding Beiqian City, even a million false traitors would not want to enter Sijiu City, and they would have put all the blame for losing the city on Fu Zhuli. But he completely forgot that after the Ming army entered the city, it was Fu Zhuli who brought the Eight Banners soldiers who came from Guangzhou, wearing the military uniforms of the Ming army, and stood in front of the door of a family full of human dignity to prevent rebellious soldiers from entering these mansions and looting.

But Yi Xin is a smart man, after he investigated clearly, he not only released Fu Zhuli, but entrusted him with a heavy task, gave him an official and a knight, and asked him to select 10,000 people from the Manchurian people to buy foreign guns and cannons to train a new army.

It's a pity that these Eight Banners masters, there is no problem with walking training, but as soon as they, they are either going to drink or play cards, Fu Zhuli wants to restrain them, and they are reprimanded by them for taking out the qualifications of red and yellow belts. Fu Zhuli fled back from Guangzhou, and he didn't dare to provoke these second-generation Eight Banners who were deeply rooted in Beijing, and these bannermen who could send food to his army all came in through various excellent back doors, and the power behind them was something that he could offend as a Guangzhou Banner man who had lived in Guangzhou for several generations. In the end, he could only take one step at a time, let him take these people to the battlefield and fight the Ming army armed to the teeth, he knew that it was just to send them to death.

The banner people themselves are rotten, so they can only rely on Hanchen to arm, but Hanchen always makes people feel uneasy, not because they have made any inappropriate moves, but because of a kind of defensive psychology against the Han people for more than 200 years, how can the Han people trust the Manchus?

From time to time, in addition to crying twice in front of the Manchu civil and military forces, Cixi could only use power with Yixin to make these Hanchen unable to twist into a rope.

Zeng Guofan is a very calm person, he used to stay in Anqing for a few years, the Eight-Nation Alliance attacked the north and he did not move, the emperor ran to Chengde and he did not move, Li Xiucheng and Chen Yucheng attacked Wuhan He also did not move, this time Li Xiucheng Northern Expedition, he still did not move.

The purpose of his immobility is precisely to move.

In the past few years, Zeng Guofan has not been idle in Anqing, he imitated the style of the Ming Arsenal that he had visited several times, so that Rong Hong hired more than 200 Americans, and built a huge arsenal in Anqing, the Anqing Arsenal is even larger than in history, and has been able to produce most weapons and equipment, from steamships to rifled guns.

It's a pity that the steam ships they produce are all wooden structures, and the rifled guns are also front-loading guns, which are already a generation behind the Daming Arsenal in technology. And it was not possible to line a rifled cannon. The high-horsepower steam engine of the steam ship still has to be imported, either from the United States or from the Ming Dynasty, and only the marine steam engine of less than 500 tons can be produced by itself, and the steel used to produce these small steam engines is still imported from the Ming Dynasty.

Even so, the military industry built by Zeng Guofa has far exceeded the military industry of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which could only repair rifles.

But Zeng Guofan didn't expect that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would buy ironclad ships from the Ming Dynasty, and what he didn't expect was that the Ming Dynasty was really willing to sell this kind of militaristic weapon, and the two didn't expect the Hunan army to lose the right to control the river in an instant.

After losing the right to control the river, the subsequent battles of the Hunan army could only be limited to land operations.

Engraved on land, Zeng Guofan never did anything.

In July, Yang Fuqing besieged Chaoxian, and Bao Chao returned from Sanhe Town to support, but failed to break the encirclement of the Taiping army three times. In August, Wang Haiyang's 100,000-strong army marched north from Guazhou to encircle Yangzhou. At the same time, the troops were divided into Yizheng, Liuhe and other places, and a large Jiangbei base was opened. Obviously, Wang Haiyang and these princes are very attentive to expanding their sphere of influence.

For the fierce battle between the Taiping army and the Qing army, the Ming Dynasty communicated with the ministers of Britain and France at the first time, and the Ming announced that they would remain neutral in this incident, and also hoped that all countries would maintain a neutral attitude and not forcibly intervene, so as not to complicate the problem. Britain and France expressed the hope that the war between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Manchu Qing would not affect the normal trade between the two countries in Shanghai.

In the last Taiping army's attack on Shanghai, the Ming mediated and guaranteed Shanghai's neutrality, ensuring that neither side could let Shanghai fall into war, and if necessary, the Ming would be responsible for protecting the safety of the city, while Britain and France would maintain a neutral attitude during the war.

In order to prevent the two countries from taking the opportunity to intervene, the Ming Dynasty sent a fleet of ten large warships, including two 10,000-ton ironclad ships, to Shanghai and stationed in the Lujiazui area on the other side of the Bund.

In order to isolate the connection between the foreigners and Shanghai County, Li Xiucheng generously leased a large piece of land in Pudong to the Ming Dynasty, and Lujiazui, which was on the Bund, was selected by the Ming Navy to build a naval base in Shanghai. It can be seen that Li Xiucheng also attaches great importance to whether foreigners can maintain a neutral attitude. Although he doesn't care about fighting with foreigners, he has always had a concept that foreigners are very powerful on the water, even if the Ming Dynasty has to give them three points.

Under the supervision of the mixed fleet of Daming ironclad ships and armored wooden ships, the foreigners really maintained a considerable degree of control, and only the British sent a steamship to cruise the Yangtze River to protect the safety of the passing ships. The French fleet was even more directly lying on the Bund, and after they lost even the concession, they no longer had a fixed base in Shanghai, and most of the French merchants entered the British and American public concessions to do business, and to be honest, they were not very interested in intervening in the war. The main purpose of the Ming was to prevent the French from taking the opportunity to regain the lost interests of the past.

But the French did not make trouble in Shanghai, but they chose to make trouble in the south of the Ming Dynasty and in Vietnam.

In September, when fierce fighting continued along the Yangtze River, the French demanded that the Vietnamese be allowed to navigate freely on the Red River, but the Vietnamese court refused, so the French let the merchant Jean Dubouil hire people to enter the Red River without permission, trying to find a passage to Yunnan, China.

After Jean Dubouil's men were shelled by the Vietnamese government on the Red River, resulting in many injuries, the French colonial government sent General Francis Garnier to lead a fleet to the north under the guise of mediation.

In 1866 he assembled a large investigation team, which traveled from the Mekong River to Yunnan and Sichuan, and then along the Yangtze River to Hankow, reaching Shanghai in June 1868. After two years of surveying, he submitted a report to the colonial government proving that the Mekong River was not navigable and that the route for trade between Yunnan and Vietnam should be the Red River.

He was awarded the Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society in 1870 for his contribution to the expedition, and his report sparked interest in the Red River in France. Had it not been for the Franco-Prussian War, French expansion at the Red River would have begun long ago.

It is worth mentioning that this Francis Garnier is the An Ye in the Chinese history books, who was later killed by the Black Flag Army led by Liu Yongfu on the Guizhou-Vietnam border.