In this Northern Expedition, Li Xiucheng seemed to have made up his mind, and he sent his own elite, led by his cousin Li Shixian, to avoid the heavy army group of the Hunan army of Zeng Guo in Anqing, and landed from Nantong and Guazhou at the same time, focusing on attacking Li Hongzhanghuai's army who had changed guards with Zuo Zongtang's Chu army. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Zhu Jinglun suddenly felt that his head was big, and he was focused on dealing with the big-stirring stick in the UK, and when he ignored it for a while, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a small-stirring stick in China, jumped out.

In terms of military science, the Taiping Army, a force that started from the peasant armed forces, was indeed the best time for them to expand their strength in the year of the catastrophe. However, from the perspective of the nation, this is the time when the whole nation is the most fragile and lacks the most organizational power, and when war breaks out at this time, the order will collapse in an instant, and the damage caused by the reversal will be much greater than the disaster itself.

It is very likely to turn into a great upheaval that lasted for decades like a peasant uprising in the late Ming Dynasty, and there is no doubt that the people who starved to death in the famine at the end of the Ming Dynasty were much fewer than the people killed by Li Zicheng and other rebels and the Ming army. Moreover, the uprising itself will exacerbate the famine, once the uprising breaks out, production will stop and be destroyed, and the common people will become displaced people, and they can only live by looting, and so on, and the number of people who will die in the end will increase exponentially, and the time for the restoration of order will be greatly delayed.

Zhu Jinglun did not want to see this nation experience this level of blood loss, so this time, the Ming Dynasty will firmly oppose the Northern Expedition of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Xu Rongcun, a member of the Department of Foreign Affairs and a close relationship with the high-level of the Taiping Army, personally went north to meet Li Xiucheng to express the attitude of the Ming Dynasty, hoping that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom could suspend the Northern Expedition.

But if Li Xiucheng misses this opportunity, he doesn't know when he will have the spare strength for the Northern Expedition. For the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, this is simply heavenly help, the famine broke out in the entire north, and even spread to the northern part of Jiangsu, but it happened that the Jiangnan region where the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was located was not impressed, and the Heavenly Kingdom was talking about this as a disaster sent by the Heavenly Father, and they all said that the Manchu Dynasty was finished.

The call for the Northern Expedition was so high that Li Xiucheng could not ignore it.

And the last time he promoted, after the failure of Yang Fuqing and Wang Haiyang's Northern Expedition, the two began to twist into a rope, cutting the land in the local area, and the court and the prince surnamed Hong took care of it, and he was against Li Xiucheng everywhere. Hong Xiuquan also seems to be quite dissatisfied with Li Xiucheng, and regards the failure of the Northern Expedition as Li Xiucheng's responsibility.

Political passivity made Li Xiucheng urgently need a victory to stabilize his position, re-establish his prestige, and also deter the princes from all walks of life.

So he sent his most elite troops, 100,000 old subordinates who had experienced the bloody battle of Tianjing, and let his cousin Li Shixian personally lead them to cross the river and fight a decisive battle with Li Hongzhang. For the time being, there is no need to move Zeng Guofan, as long as Li Hongzhang is defeated, one of the wings of the Qing court will be broken, and Li Xiucheng's position will be stabilized.

In this case, is it possible for Li Xiucheng to terminate the Northern Expedition?

Of course not.

Da Ming didn't know that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had this kind of reaction, but Da Ming had to show his attitude first, and then he would have a reason not to cooperate with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, such as no longer providing arms to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, not selling food to them, and even forcibly intervening at a critical moment.

Now that the greeting has been beaten to Li Xiucheng, don't blame the Ming Dynasty for the back soldiers, the same attitude of the Ming Dynasty, so that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can not have no worries, Li Xiucheng must guard against the Ming Dynasty stabbing the knife from the back, and the Northern Expedition that does not dare to go all out will make it easier for Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang to block the Taiping army on the line of the Yangtze River and prevent them from entering the chaotic Shandong, so as to begin to coerce the wanderers to roll and develop, and crush the last straw of the northern social order under the rule of the Manchu Dynasty.

Due to the disaster in the north, the Taiping army was like a rainbow, these experienced the siege of Tianjing, and experienced the resurrection of Hong Xiuquan, the veterans who walked on the verge of death with hunger and disease, many of them became fanatical believers in worshipping God, and fought extremely bravely, and they all thought that the famine of the Manchu Qing Dynasty was the end of the Qing Dynasty, with such a belief in the destiny of heaven, and was also equipped with the excellent Mauser rifles and imitation Krupp cannons made by the Ming Dynasty, he captured Tongzhou in World War I, and entered Yangzhou in World War II.

In the face of the sudden attack of Japan, the generals had no fighting spirit and took the lead in escaping, and the soldiers followed, fleeing all the way, but they were killed, captured, and humiliated all the way.

At the critical moment, an army saved the fate of Li Hongzhang's heavy troops arranged on the Yangtze River defense line to be completely annihilated, this force with only 10,000 people, in the fairy town east of Yangzhou, firmly blocked the Taiping army Huang Wenjin who pursued all the way from Nantong to this place, won the time for the fleeing soldiers to escape into Yangzhou, and destroyed the Taiping army's main attack from Zhenjiang and detoured Yangzhou from Nantong, and bought enough time for Li Hongzhang to deploy defense and reorganize the army in Yangzhou.

The battle of Fairy Town lasted for twenty days, and both sides lost their troops, and finally this army successfully broke through and fled back to Yangzhou.

This unit is the foreign rifle team led by Gordon, and in terms of combat equipment, it is no better than Liu Mingchuan and Pan Dingxin in Li Hongzhang's headquarters, and it is also a front-loading rifled rifle that is being eliminated in the West, and the cannon is only a few Amster infantry guns. It's just that when the war started, they were better prepared, every rifle, every cannon, was well maintained and ready to be used.

In terms of well-trained, compared with other Huai soldiers, the foreign rifle team is not much special, because they all train together and use the same set of training drills, but when other troops begin to be idle in peacetime, they still rigidly train according to the drill codes.

In terms of military discipline, they also used Li Hongzhang and officers at all levels, and made it with reference to Chinese and Western military regulations. It's just that when other troops began to relax and officers began to protect their shortcomings, Gordon always insisted on doing business.

The biggest difference is that the general of this army, Gordon, did not run away, not only did not run away, but insisted on sticking to the front line from beginning to end, so that all the officers and soldiers who fought could see him.

This made Li Hongzhang very ashamed, but he didn't expect that it was not his cronies who turned the tide and blocked the thunderous blow of the Taiping Army in the end, but the foreigner Gordon, an outsider who didn't listen to him much.

But in any case, the danger is over, successively collected the remnants of the defeated generals who fled from Guazhou and Nantong and other places, stepped up the rectification of discipline, strengthened the defensive line, and waited for the next attack of the Taiping army, and at the same time sent people to actively ask for help from his teacher Zeng Guofan, but when Bao Chao asked for help, Zeng Guofan delayed for two years, and Li Hongzhang is now yelling for help, I don't know if Zeng Guofan will continue to stabilize Anqing as always.

After the battle of Fairy Town, Li Xiucheng thought that the heavy firepower of his soldiers was still not enough, if he could send the Krupp cannon to Fairy Town at that time, this battle would not drag on for twenty days, and it would be possible to break through here within a few days, and then continue to close Yangzhou, when the panicked Qing army could not effectively defend at all, and it was only a matter of time before Yangzhou was lost.

However, the fortress-type Krupp cannon imitated by the Ming Dynasty was very expensive, Li Xiucheng only sold a hundred, most of which were installed in one Jiangfang fortress, and only a dozen of the infantry were equipped, all of which were under the command of Li Shixian.

Unexpectedly, because of the lack of heavy firepower, Huang Jinwen fought hard in Fairy Town for 20 days, which directly disrupted the battle plan of Yangzhou, which is really a pity.

In order to succeed in this Northern Expedition, Li Xiucheng spared no cost, anyway, he has saved some capital in the past few years, as long as he can win this Northern Expedition, even if it is all spent, it is not a pity.

So Li Xiucheng decided to spare no expense to order another thirty Krupp fortress guns from Daming, intending to use them as siege artillery, but Daming refused Li Xiucheng's request.

Not to mention the cannons, even the grain will no longer be sold to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Li Xiucheng was extremely dissatisfied with this, and he immediately issued a serious warning to the Ming consul, warning the Ming that if they did not sell weapons to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, they would not want to do business in the Heavenly Kingdom.

The minister of the Ming Dynasty did not show weakness and told Li Xiucheng that the Ming Dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had a treaty of commerce, and if the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did not abide by the treaty, it would infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming government had the right to take any action to protect its rights.

Li Xiucheng did not reply, but acted directly, sending his cronies, a fellow villager of Tengxian County, Guangxi, Lu Shunde, the king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and Li Xiucheng's two sons Li Rongchun and Li Rongfa led the army to approach the original French Concession, the current Ming Concession, and told the Ming army that the heavenly soldiers wanted to enter the concession and station, but the Ming army stationed in the Ming army sternly refused.

After that, the Ming army raised its vigilance, and at the same time, the fleet blockading the Bohai Sea began to move south, stationed in the Lujiazui area of Shanghai, and transferred 10,000 troops from Fuzhou to the north and stationed in Shanghai, expanding the Shanghai garrison to 20,000.

The Taiping army is obviously using military threats to express dissatisfaction, but they really don't dare to turn their faces at this time, contrary to the aggressive posture they showed, maybe they are more nervous in their hearts, their elites are transferred to Jiangbei, the troops in Jiangnan are either some second-line troops, or the troops of political enemies such as Wang Haiyang and Yang Fuqing, in this case, if the Ming invades the border from Jiangxi or Fujian, the Taiping army is simply powerless to stop, and the Ming army can drive straight into the hinterland of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

The reason why the Taiping army put on such a posture and sent a small number of elites who stayed in the south of the Yangtze River to Shanghai was that they advanced on both sides of the water and land under the command of their two sons and Lu Shunde, the commander of the Taiping Army's naval division, which was actually a defensive strategy, telling the Ming army that they had pinched the key points of Shanghai, and if the Ming army moved in other aspects, the Taiping army could attack Shanghai at any time.

This is an arrow of deterrence that has not been released, or a pistol on the chest of Da Ming, at least Li Xiucheng thinks so, he thinks that Da Ming, who values interests, will definitely dare to risk Shanghai.

Only the bow that is pulled out has a deterrent effect, and there is nothing to be afraid of when the arrow is released, so Li Xiucheng has never made a move, and the two sides have been in such a stalemate, which seems dangerous, but it is very calm, except for causing a panic in Shanghai again, there is no substantial loss.

But even if there was no fighting, all the forces saw a problem, and the honeymoon period between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Ming Dynasty was finally over.