The war that took place in Shanghai, the Ming government did not seem to care too much, because the top government officials were basically attracted all the attention of Jiangxi, which was given away by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

No one dared to believe that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would dare to give away a province just to exchange for a loan of 10 million taels of silver.

So for a while, I was smashed by this big pie falling from the sky and couldn't walk, and I smashed Venus twice, who cares if the Taiping Army and foreigners in Shanghai are fighting to the death.

At this time, from Chen Zhiting to the Sixth Division, they were busy annexing and digesting Jiangxi, and the army was stationed in Jiangxi for the first time, and the Taiping Army completed the defense, and then transferred a large number of officials from the local government to deal with the power vacuum after the Taiping Army withdrew, and there were still some problems with the transfer of power, and there was a certain degree of chaos in various places, which they could predict, as soon as the army left, the order was gone, and before the Ming army was familiar with the environment, all kinds of cows, ghosts, snakes and gods drilled out, stealing, Robberies happen from time to time.

On the contrary, when the Ming army entered Fujian, the confrontation of the local forces did not occur, because the local forces were mainly armed by the landlords, and in recent years under the rule of the Taiping army, there was no room for them to survive, and they either fled to the neighboring provinces to join the Hunan army, or were suppressed, exterminated, or drilled into the mountains to become bandits.

As a result, the military border was relatively calm.

Western countries did not react to the expansion of the Ming Dynasty at all, and they did not expect this to happen, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a crazy cult regime, was able to give up half of its territory to another country, and Jiangxi was deep inland, so they could not reach it, but fortunately they acquiesced in this matter.

They are more worried that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has reached a secret agreement with the Ming government at the cost of ceding territory, if the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom does not have any demands, just hoping to get a loan, killing foreigners will not believe it, they are very worried that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Ming Kingdom will attack the Qing court at this time, which will greatly affect their interests, and because of the involvement of the Ming Dynasty, Britain and France feel that the cost of suppression is too high, after all, the Ming Dynasty is also a country with ironclad ships, Moreover, the trade interests between the Ming and Britain and France were greater than those of the Qing court, and if they were to fight each other, the opportunity cost would be too high, and they could not afford to lose the interests of the Yangtze River valley if the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Ming Dynasty wiped out the Manchus.

The more complex the situation, sometimes it is not easy to get out of control, because it is more difficult for everyone to calculate the pros and cons, and it is more difficult to make decisions immediately.

Therefore, before figuring out what was wrong with the Ming Dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Britain and France did not immediately express their position, but they had reached an agreement to advance and retreat together, and they first adopted peaceful means to put pressure on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Shanghai, warning them not to attack Shanghai, otherwise the foreigners would not sit idly by. On the one hand, he sent a note to Daming in Guangzhou, asking Daming about his attitude towards this war, and at the same time hoping that Daming would not get involved in the war.

They were relieved by the reply from the Ming Foreign Affairs Division, and replied to their notes one by one, telling them that the Ming had neither interest nor desire to join the war. The foreigners also asked the Ming Dynasty about its attitude towards the mountains and seas, and the Ming said that the Ming Dynasty would remain neutral in the war, but would not allow any force to harm the interests of the Ming merchants in Shanghai.

Britain and France felt that they basically figured out the attitude of the Ming Dynasty, and naively hoped that the Ming Dynasty could be consistent with them, which was rejected by the Ming Dynasty.

Being able to play the strategy to this level, Zhu Jinglun was really a little impressed by Li Xiucheng, boldly abandoned a Jiangxi, and threw all the pressure from the Hunan Hunan army to the Ming Dynasty, so that shrinking the force would not only be safer, but also have the spare strength to plot against Shanghai, and then launch the Northern Expedition.

But if that's the case, it's not clever, after all, they paid the price of a province, but in exchange for just an illusory opportunity that might succeed or fail. But if it was Li Xiucheng who took the opportunity in turn to completely complete the integration of the internal forces of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it would be different.

The unexpected development of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has reached the present, and the system of kings has become a fait accompli, although it has seriously restricted the cohesion of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the kings check and balance each other, and no one obeys anyone, but it has formed a balance that no one can break.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has 600,000 soldiers, which is a real number, and the vast majority of soldiers are veterans who have experienced battles, but these armies are not in the hands of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime, no longer in the hands of Hong Xiuquan, but are controlled by one prince after another, among which the most powerful is of course Li Xiuchengzhong's royal forces.

Li Xiu's troops have 200,000 people, of which 100,000 are veterans who have experienced the siege of Tianjing, the kind of siege that has lasted for two or three years, under the invasion of hunger and disease, it is indeed very exercise people's will, just like climbing the snow mountains and crossing the grassland for the Red Army, after the siege of Tianjing, this group of soldiers has completed a kind of spiritual transformation, and in terms of spiritual will, they have not lost to the old brothers of the Taiping Army in the early days. But their firepower was a hundred times stronger than that of the old brothers. There are also 100,000 people, who are Li Xiucheng's cousins, the soldiers and horses of Li Shixian, the two brothers support each other, and it can be said that they are one.

So Li Xiucheng also mastered one-third of the Taiping Army's strength before, but it was far from reaching the point of covering the sky with one hand, Hong Xiuquan was not dead, and those princes under Li Xiucheng still had feelings for Hong Xiuquan, and Li Xiucheng couldn't put aside Hong Xiuquan to do his own thing, and it is likely that he himself also had feelings for Hong Xiuquan, and he never thought about standing on his own.

But loyalty and the integration of forces are two things that go hand in hand, as long as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom wants to continue to develop, and there is still the idea of competing for the world, they must unify their command and complete the integration of forces.

The only one who has the opportunity to do this is Li Xiucheng, but Hong Xiuquan doesn't care about anything, and the princes surnamed Hong are very resistant to Li Xiucheng. Not to mention letting Li Xiucheng unify the other princes, it is Li Xiucheng's department, and they have been dividing. Hong Renji has now established a deep relationship with Huang Wenjin, the king of blocking, and Huang Wenjin is one of Li Xiucheng's most courageous generals.

The princes surnamed Hong also supported Yang Fuqing, the younger brother of Yang Xiuqing, the king of the East of the year, and placed Yang Fuqing in the northern part of Jiangxi, stationed in the important town of Jiujiang and other places, in the name of preventing the Hunan army from going downstream, as well as Zeng Guoquan in Anqing.

With the support of the princes surnamed Hong, Yang Fuqing had 200,000 troops, and was supported by a large number of old generals of the Eastern Wangbu back then, and was the only prince who could compare with Li Xiucheng in prestige.

But what made Li Xiucheng even more a headache was actually Wang Haiyang's Ministry of Activities, Wang Haiyang once followed Shi Dakai to run away, broke up in Xianggui, Guangxi, returned to Jiangxi, and then moved to Zhejiang, Fujian, and finally was oppressed by Zuo Zongtang to move to Guangdong, and after being rejected by the Ming army, he entered southern Gan again.

In the long-term guerrilla warfare that broke away from Tianjing, Wang Haiyang's forces were developed and his army was tempered. And it is less dependent on Tianjing, and more self-reliant. For example, a few years ago, when Bao Chao's army was squeezed out by the Hunan army and was not accepted by the Qing court, Wang Haiyang recruited a considerable number of old generals of Bao Chao's army.

Wang Haiyang also has more than 100,000 troops. In addition to some other princes scattered all over the place, with complex backgrounds, and even those from the Heaven and Earth Society, local gangs, and the Twist Army, there are also about 100,000 troops.

In this complicated situation, in addition to constantly strengthening the strength of his own troops and horses, it is very difficult for Li Xiucheng to integrate other factions.

In terms of dealing with Yang Fuqing, Li Xiucheng arranged his cousin Li Shixian in Ningguo Mansion, saying that he was guarding against Anqing's Zeng Guoquan, and I am afraid that he was also monitoring Yang Fuqing in the Jiujiang area. It would be impossible for Li Xiucheng to eat Yang Fuqing for a while, unless he was willing to take the risk of infighting like the Tianjing Change. But to fight against a motley armed force like Wang Haiyang, Li Xiucheng didn't care much.

Because Wang Haiyang has nothing to do with the old forces of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, many of the early high-level generals are from Guiping, Guangxi, such as the remnants of Yang Xiuqing. In addition, the newly rising brothers, such as Li Xiucheng and Li Shixian, are from Teng County. And Wang Haiyang is not even from Guangxi, he is directly from Anhui, not to mention joining later, and followed Shi Dakai to go through. Unable to gain the trust of the prince surnamed Hong, he recruited rebels in the army to form a family.

Li Xiucheng could not rest assured that this kind of force would be divided, and he was also worried that this person would collude with the Qing army, and once the Taiping army went on a northern expedition, it would be a threat for this person to make trouble in the back, and the biggest threat was to take refuge in the Qing army, lead the Qing army into Jiangxi, and attack Tianjing from the belly and back.

So simply continued to unite with the Ming army, ceded a less reliable Jiangxi to the Ming army, and then forced Wang Haiyang to go north, so that he could be monitored nearby, and at the same time ordered him to participate in the Northern Expedition. Similarly, Yang Fuqing in northern Jiangxi will also lose reliable territory, and if there is no source of grain and grass, he must rely on Li Xiucheng's allocation, and he will have to be controlled by Li Xiucheng.

Therefore, Li Xiucheng is a very ruthless move, not only to combat the internal instability forces, but also to reduce the area of contact between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Qing army by more than half, and the area that needs to be defended is greatly reduced, on the other hand, it has attracted the Ming army, Zhu Jinglun has never believed that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom lacks the 10 million taels of silver, and the most important thing is to tie the Ming to their side with a loan, Li Xiucheng estimated that he has considered it many times, and it is very clear that if the Ming army wants Jiangxi and attacks from both sides of Fujian and Guangdong, they will not be able to defend it at all.

Fortunately, Jiangxi was handed over to the Ming army, so that the area of contact between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Hunan army was reduced, while the Ming army was in contact with the Hunan army on three sides of Guangdong, Guangxi and Jiangxi, and the Ming army was more likely to side with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Since the abandonment of Jiangxi in this way became a good move, the chess players called it a sacrifice to take advantage, and the strategic situation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was greatly reversed.

Thinking about all aspects so carefully, Zhu Jinglun suddenly found that Li Xiucheng had grown to a fairly mature level.

He suddenly felt that history was becoming more and more difficult to judge, Li Xiucheng was like this, Zuo Zongtang was pinned down in northern Jiangsu, Zeng Guofan was detained in the Ming Dynasty, it seems that the late Qing Dynasty was on the side of the important ministers, Li Hongzhang's position suddenly became extraordinarily detached, I don't know what he can grab in this great change?