Chen Zhouquan has been pulled down, but no one wants to sit still, after learning the news that Zhou Lang is going to the Northern Expedition, whether it is anger or fear, retreating from the enemy is the most realistic, Chen Zhouquan sent to stop Zhou Lang is his confidant Chen Guanghui.

Chen Guanghui tried to persuade Zhou Lang not to go north on the grounds of in-law relations, anti-Qing righteousness, and morality.

Zhou Lang persuaded Chen Zhouquan to recognize the reality, if he was willing to surrender, Zhou Lang was willing to repay him with high-ranking officials, and was even willing to send a ship to send Chen Zhouquan back to Taiwan, so that he could live in his old age, as long as he could hand over southern Zhejiang to Zhou Lang completely.

This kind of person is impossible to convince, until the last moment, he will not give up, and dare to take risks, willing to take risks, keen to take risks, always feel that he will definitely be able to win back, with a typical gambler mentality.

So Chen Zhouquan chose to resist stubbornly, and even he withdrew the Taizhou army to Wenzhou, the purpose was to block Zhou Lang, in his opinion, Zhou Lang was obviously more terrible than Ruan Yuan.

It's just that Zhou Lang didn't regard him as an opponent, but paid more attention to Ruan Yuan, and the attitude of the two of them towards each other was completely unequal.

Zhou Lang saw that Chen Zhouquan refused to surrender, and the New Year had passed, so he immediately launched a three-way march by water.

One way crossed the Wuyi Mountain by land to attack Jiangxi, all the way through the water pass into Wenzhoufu, and the other way was the sailor division went north and captured the Wusongkou of the Yangtze River, in order to prevent Ruan Yuan from obtaining supplies from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

The main force of the fleet is the old lock ship built by the Guangdong shipwright, and the later Zeng Guofan used this kind of ship to overwhelm the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom sailors and firmly control the Yangtze River. Now Zhou Lang used this kind of ship more than half a century in advance, naturally it was also to crush the Qing army's naval division, after occupying Wusongkou, he left 5,000 people to defend, and the main force of the fleet continued to advance along the west of the river, and it was unrealistic to attack Nanjing, the purpose was to occupy the river ports in the Jiujiang area, which was empty, and control the Yangtze River.

Among the three-way army, on the contrary, the land attack on Jiangxi was the smoothest, because the Eight Banners here were emptied, and the green battalion was not elite, and the green battalion of the governor of Liangjiang had already gone to Zhejiang, basically a group of local troops, the best equipped Jiangxi governor's mansion, under the leadership of an official like Chen Huai, there was no possibility of fighting to the death, and it would be good if the governor did not take the lead.

As a result, the soldiers were bloodless, and successively won various prefectures and counties, Jianchang Mansion and Fuzhou Mansion were occupied successively, and in just one month, the Fujian army approached Nanchang Mansion, at this time Chen Huai actually surrendered, this is the first time that a high-ranking Manchu official surrendered, and even a county order rarely surrendered before.

Chen Huai is not a good official, his official reputation is very bad, and he complains about local governance, but if he surrenders, Zhou Lang must accept it, and he must also treat him preferentially, which can be regarded as an ability of this kind of person, they can always make the right choice.

Chen Huai has been selling officials in Jiangxi for many years, and most of the magistrates in the counties are black yarn hats from him, all of them are raccoon dogs, and when they see that the governors have surrendered, they have no reason to insist, and as a result, the entire Jiangxi is basically up to the mark, only the prefect of Ganzhou refuses to surrender, and after a big war, it is only the jade burned.

After the First World War, Jiangxi Province actually retained a complete local government agency, although it was a local government composed of a group of corrupt officials and corrupt officials, but the organizational structure was complete, Zhou Lang retained all of them, told the localities, exempted from taxes for one year, and did not give them the opportunity to loot, one year was enough for Zhou Lang to take care of the government in Jiangxi.

The surrender of Jiangxi made it easy for the naval division to have a stable base in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and at this time, the Qing army naval divisions in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River had been wiped out.

Chen Zhouquan is not worth mentioning, but Ruan Yuan can't run away, the surrounding areas of Zhejiang have been besieged by Zhou Lang, Ruan Yuan has no chance to be Zeng Guofan again, he can only die with his opponent Chen Zhouquan.

But before he died, Ruan Yuan still made an enterprising, his militia conquered Taizhou Mansion, Chen Zhouquan's main force fought with Zhou Lang in Wenzhou, Zhou Lang's 20,000 troops attacked Wenzhou City, Chen Zhouquan gathered 100,000 troops to defend, still to no avail, the city wall was blown down, and then there were short-handed battles, fierce street battles.

It's a pity that Wenzhou is not Stalingrad, too many enemy troops surrendered, too many enemy troops fled, after a short battle, Chen Xiaoshou, who temporarily served as the chief military officer, hit the Wenzhou Mansion, Chen Zhouquan and his ministers and executives did not run, they were all blocked inside.

At this time, a person came out, and he said that the emperor wanted to talk to Zhou Lang.

Chen Xiaoshou said that the handsome man did not recruit in person, and the handsome man had all the opportunities and lacked skills. This is true, this time for comprehensive expansion, Zhou Lang can only stay in Fuzhou to sit in the town, he can understand why Zhu Yuanzhang, a fierce general who can lead the troops to charge, why did he give up the opportunity of the Northern Expedition to Beijing, but gave it to Xu Da, not that he didn't want this opportunity to go down in history, but he was too busy.

Although the territory that Zhou Lang now occupies is not as big as that of Zhu Yuanzhang's Northern Expedition, the administrative system he created is much more complex than Zhu Yuanzhang's system in the pure agricultural era, and the offensive he launched is not just all the way to the north, so he really can't get out.

But Chen Zhouquan said he could go to Fuzhou to meet with Zhou Lang. Whether it is delaying time, or being sincere, Chen Xiaoshou feels that he can't mention Zhou Lang to take the idea, if he is replaced by an official of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, he can ignore this kind of request, but Chen Zhouquan represents the emperor of the Heaven and Earth Society after all, he is the monarch of Zhou Lang in name, and this kind of person may have other roles, so he agreed to let Chen Zhouquan talk.

Chen Zhouquan asked that before he negotiated with Zhou Lang, he asked Chen Xiaoshou to withdraw from Wenzhou, Chen Xiaoshou couldn't agree, Chen Zhouquan turned to ask, Chen Xiaoshou gave up half of Wenzhou City to his subordinates, Chen Xiaoshou still couldn't agree, Chen Zhouquan finally asked at least let his soldiers have an independent camp, Chen Xiaoshou agreed at this time, let them live in the northeast corner of Wenzhou City, and fortify the surrounding area to prevent them from making trouble.

At this time, Chen Xiaoshou's main force still needs to continue to march into the army, this state is actually very unsafe, after all, Chen Zhouquan's men still have tens of thousands of people, and Chen Xiaoshou's strength is not much, only three armies, fortunately, the follow-up troops continue to come, and Wenzhou will be handed over to the auxiliary troops to garrison, he will lead the main force to continue north, to catch up with Ruan Yuan's foothold in Taizhou, to seize Taizhou.

On the contrary, it was the militia groups in Taizhou that made Chen Xiaoshou fight hard, and the fighting skills of these militia groups were not good, but they were tenacious. Because their officers were more rigid, although they were a group of young scholars, they only enrolled in the books of the sages, but they had no military experience. But it is precisely because they have only registered for the books of sages and sages, but have not yet had the opportunity to enter the filthy officialdom, so the pure idea of loyalty to the monarch and the country is still relatively strong, and they really believe that their death is glorious. Officers don't run away, and the hometown children they lead often don't run away, people are group animals, and they instinctively want to stay in their familiar environment, stay in their familiar group, especially in a strange place.

As a result, the Battle of Taizhou brought nearly 1,000 casualties to Chen Xiaoshou, most of which appeared in the street battles after the city was broken. More than 10,000 militias were killed, 20,000 were captured, and less than 8,000 fled.

However, this battle basically knocked out the main force of the Zhejiang militia group, and it is difficult to say whether the morale can be boosted.

Immediately behind Chen Xiaoshou is the auxiliary troops, and with the auxiliary troops, it is Wang Fuqian's civilian team, he wants to quickly restore order in the occupied area, this is not Jiangxi, after Chen Zhouquan's military occupation, the traditional structure here has almost collapsed, and the big landlord forces in the past have basically been swept away, it is not that these landlords are unwilling to cooperate with Chen Zhouquan, knowing that Chen Zhouquan must squeeze out all the capital he has to wage war from these people, even if there is surrender at the beginning, he has to resist later, Whether it is an overt armed resistance or a non-violent resistance behind the scenes, there will be severe retaliation.

In fact, most of the landlords did not die of resistance, but because they could not pay the amount of grain and grass demanded by Chen Zhouquan, Chen Zhouquan had their homes raided.

The traditional landlords are strong and powerful, and the famous families have basically disappeared, and those small and medium-sized landlords can not support the grass-roots social structure at all, and the other is the army disrupted by the war, whether it is Chen Zhouquan's troops or the armed militias, after the defeat, they are often left in the grass, and under Chen Zhouquan's rule, those small and medium-sized landlords do not dare to organize regimental training to protect themselves, otherwise they can only invite the disaster of killing and the fate of raiding their homes, and as a result, the rural society has completely lifted its self-defense ability, and let bandits run rampant.

Wang Fuqian led the auxiliary troops to replace the traditional township regiments, not only stationed in the cities, but also in the countryside, at least in various market towns, so as to facilitate the maintenance of law and order in the countryside.

To restore the government institutions, he brought a large number of civil officials, most of them were selected from the scholars in Fujian through the imperial examination, before under Zhou Lang's system, they could only be low-level officials, but the loopholes can be drilled, and now there are so many official vacancies vacated in Zhejiang, just let these scholars from the imperial examination (Zhou Lang ordered Wang Fuqian to run the imperial examination) to fill the vacancy.

It is basically difficult to find the local officials, because heaven and earth will hate the officials of the government, even more than the officials, this is an interesting phenomenon, the officials are actually a group that is in direct contact with the people, and they are also the ones who implement the policy.

Of course, there are also some small officials who are directly members of the Heaven and Earth Society, because they have closer contact with the bottom of the society, they are hated, and they are the ones who have the closest relationship with people.

In short, the Heaven and Earth Society cleaned the old officials in the occupied areas very thoroughly, except for a small number of officials such as officials and jailers who joined the Heaven and Earth Society, those civil servants among the officials, whether they were dealing with legal documents or in charge of the treasury money and grain, were basically pulled out and killed when the city was broken, and the common people felt very happy at that time.

Later, when it was the turn of the common people to be unlucky, it was another story.

As a result, Wang Fuqian had to build an entire government agency from the grassroots level of officials, and this official shortage was really empty.