Zeng Guofan, who was in Wuchang City, was busy in front of his terminally ill old father's bed these days. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

A while ago, Wuchang won a great victory, defeated the long-haired thief army, and even killed the thief Zeng Tianyang, which made Zeng Guofan very beautiful. Immediately afterwards, the holy decree of commendation came, and Zeng Guofan was promoted to the governor of Munan and the assistant minister of regimental training in Huguang Province, supervising the military affairs of Munan and Beibei provinces, and rewarding 10,000 taels of silver.

Zeng Guofan couldn't help but be overjoyed! The emperor is taking care of himself again! Isn't it to be loyal to the country and sell his knowledge and talent to the emperor's family, just to glorify the ancestors and be a minister? If he was promoted to the governor of his hometown province, he can be regarded as a member of the party!

As a result, Zeng Guofan was busy with government affairs every day, took root in the military camp, and personally supervised his subordinate generals of the Hunan Army to train soldiers and horses, raise money and food, and build weapons.

However, Zeng Guofan was not happy for long when he heard the news that his old father was seriously ill, and he hurriedly rushed back to his temporary home in the city with several brothers in the army.

Zeng Guofan looked at his father Zeng Linshu's skinny body and burst into tears. More than a year ago, his mother went to Xiango, and now seeing his father like this also makes him worried.

He asked his wife Ouyang, and said that the well-known doctors in Wuchang City had seen it, but there was no improvement. Zeng Guofan didn't care so much, and sent his family around to seek medical treatment.

Zeng Linshu looked at the tired look on his eldest son's face, and he was also a little distressed, and instructed with great effort: "Boss, teach your brothers for your father, study hard, and glorify the Zeng family's disciples, serve the country loyally for the court, and be a reasonable gentleman." Do you remember? ”

The Zeng brothers nodded one after another, and Zeng Guofan replied: "Father, don't worry, we all keep it in mind. ”

Zeng Linshu nodded with difficulty and said: "Now that the court is in turmoil, boss, you have to be the ruler of the king, do your best, you must not be distracted, or even betray the court with crooked thoughts, bring infamy to the Zeng family in Xiangzhong and the ancestors, and lose the face of our scholars!" ”

Zeng Guofan hurriedly knelt on the ground and bowed, "Where did my father say this?" The son remembers his father's teachings of 'cultivating oneself to reassure the people, being respectful and the world is peaceful', and serving the country with all his heart, and has no second intentions! ”

Zeng Linshu closed his eyes and said, "Then I can rest assured that I am a father!" ”

Zeng Guofan asked a few brothers to talk to his great-father again, and asked Ouyang to take a few maids to take good care of him, while he himself walked out of the door with a blushing face.

Outside the door, Zeng Guofan's friends and staff, Liu Rong and Li Yuandu, both stepped forward and asked with concern: "Disheng, is uncle okay?" ”

Zeng Guofan said quite painfully: "I'm afraid it's not long before I die!" The incompetence of the national domain, unable to defend his hometown, let the Cantonese thieves wreak havoc, causing his father to be so old, and he had to wander around and leave his homeland, thinking that he was tossing too much, and his health was getting worse, so it was like this! ”

Liu Rong and Li Yuandu were busy comforting.

Zeng Guofan felt a little relieved when he saw the two old friends, but remembering what his father said to him, he couldn't help but ask Liu Rong: "Meng Rong, have there been rumors about Zeng in this Wuchang City recently?" ”

Liu Rong's face changed and said, "What?" Did you hear anything? ”

Zeng Guofan repeated what his great-father taught him, and said, "There must be some rumors that my father heard, and his old man told me this." Meng Rong, looking at your appearance, it seems that you also know something, so don't say it! ”

Liu Rong bowed down and apologized: "Lord Futai, Rong does know something about this matter, seeing that you are working hard day and night and have a lot of affairs, I didn't tell you, I wanted to ignore it, and these rumors will disappear, but I didn't expect it to become more and more intense and spread to my uncle." It's true that Rong was wrong! ”

Li Yuandu also chimed in: "Disheng, Yuandu also knows about this matter, but he is afraid of distracting you and dissuading Meng Rong from telling you." ”

Seeing Zeng Guofan waving his hand and not blaming himself, Liu Rong explained: "About last month, I don't know when it started, there was a rumor circulating in Wuchang City, saying that you had reached an agreement with the Cantonese thieves in the south and were ready to take refuge in the Cantonese thieves. Therefore, the Cantonese thieves captured Jingzhou, Anlu, De'an, and Hanyang, but did not come to attack Wuchang City. ”

"What?" Zeng Guofan was shocked, his eyes were dark, and he almost wanted to fall. After settling down, he couldn't help but scold: "Who the hell is this who has ulterior motives, spreading rumors and slandering Zeng!" It's so vicious! No wonder my father spoke so much and spurred me on! ”

Zeng Guofan's face turned white, it was really this rumor that was too vicious, and it hit his death hole at once, making him tremble!

He knew very well that this Qing Dynasty was the Great Qing Dynasty of the Manchu Banner People. Fundamentally speaking, the entire imperial court is controlled by the Manchu people, like those long-haired thieves and Cantonese thieves who played slogans, the Han people are just the slaves of the Manchus, this sentence is not empty words, and even the Manchus are qualified to call themselves slaves, and they are Han people, not even as good as slaves.

Once this kind of rumor is known by the imperial court, especially by the emperor, with his understanding of the emperor, Xianfeng is the most suspicious, and he will definitely snub himself, and even find a way to remove himself. No, I have to prove my loyalty to the emperor. It seems that he can only send his son to the capital, so he can be regarded as a hostage mortgage in disguise.

So, Zeng Guofan immediately sent his eldest son Zeng Jize, who was only fifteen years old, who had been studying with him, to the capital and handed it over to his old friend who was an official in Beijing to settle down.

Zeng Guofan analyzed it slightly, and was afraid for a while, this way of murdering himself was either the long-haired thief or the Cantonese thief in the south, Zeng Guofan analyzed it a little, it must have been thought of by the Cantonese thief saint king in the south, and its purpose was nothing more than a deliberate frame, a simple plan to discord, which could force the imperial court to do it to himself.

If you are really dissatisfied, isn't it exactly the same as they designed? Break with the imperial court, and they will come to co-opt and recruit themselves again?

What a good calculation! Because the long-haired thieves don't need to be scholars, they destroy the Confucian Temple all the way, and they can't take refuge in the long-haired thieves, so they can only take refuge in them!

What a deep calculation!

Zeng Guofan was really worried that this Cantonese thief would have any tricks.

Just when he was worried, a shocking news came: the Jiangnan camp was broken by the long-haired thieves!

Xiang Rong, the minister of the Qin Mission, was dismissed from his post by the emperor and retired to the Changzhou capital.

Zeng Guofan couldn't have imagined that even the Jiangnan camp was destroyed by the long-haired thieves, so that the imperial court could no longer contain the Jinling City of the long-haired thieves, and only the Jiangbei camp was left to threaten it.

Moreover, the Qing Dynasty's occupation areas in the south of the Yangtze River, only the Changzhou Mansion, Suzhou Mansion, Huizhou Mansion, and the northern and eastern Zhejiang prefectures have all become enclaves, and I am afraid that it will not be long before the entire Jiangnan will be out of the control of the Qing Dynasty.

Zeng Guofan, who had been trained in the household department, understood what this meant to the Qing Dynasty!

It seems that the Qing Dynasty is really exhausted! Zeng Guofan's firm mind was originally said by his father, but he was also a little shaken!

Without the grain, finance and taxes of these rich places in the south of the Yangtze River in the Suzhou and Hangzhou areas, where could the Qing Dynasty still raise military salaries and grain? Not to mention recruitment, the existing Eight Banners and Green Battalion soldiers are difficult to feed! Not to mention that there are so many banner people whose monthly expenses have to be borne by the imperial court.

Zeng Guofan remembered the group of thousands of bannermen who escaped from Jingzhou City a month ago, it was like a nightmare, fortunately they fled from Xiangyang Mansion to Nanyang Mansion. The daily food and drink expenses of such a large number of people are enough for Zeng Guofan to build another 10,000 troops.

Thinking of this, Zeng Guofan set his sights on Xiangyang Mansion and other places, a Wuchang Mansion really couldn't afford his army expenses of tens of thousands of people, and the imperial court would not pay him military salaries, everything had to be raised by himself, and he had to find a way to collect silver taels as soon as possible!

…….

However, after Feng Yunshan got the formula for phosphate fertilizer, he asked people to look for phosphate rock and materials for making phosphate fertilizer, but he didn't expect that after more than ten days, he received reports from all over the world and found many collar phosphate mines, and even serpentine was found.

There are too many phosphate mines, especially small phosphate mines, which are available in almost every state capital, and they are still open-air or on the rock walls of the mountain, buried underground, and it is difficult to find them in this era.

Although they are all micro or small deposits, they are sufficient for the current productivity.

Feng Yunshan was overjoyed and hurriedly ordered Xu Shou, director of the newly established Petroleum and Fertilizer Department, to lead people around to verify phosphate fertilizer minerals, and to set up mines and build phosphate fertilizer plants.

Serpentine is found in Luoding and Xinyi in eastern Guangdong, but it is rare in other places. This is very inconvenient for the construction of phosphate fertilizer plants.

However, Xu Shou, who was already proficient in chemistry, was extremely smart, and he thought of an alternative way. Since serpentine has a role, it is which ingredients have an effect, according to his experiments, it was found that serpentine contains magnesium aluminum and other silicate components, and the phosphate fertilizer manufacturing formula of Hexin is the role of these things.

As a result, Xu Shou quickly found a replacement for serpentine, which was mica. This material, which is very common, is just relatively hard and difficult to crush.

Soon, under Feng Yunshan's personal inquiry, phosphate fertilizer factories in various state capitals were set up one after another.

It is said that it is a phosphate fertilizer factory, in fact, it is to build a large cement kiln in the phosphate mineral areas of various places, and then support phosphate mines, coke fields, crushing fields and packaging fields, which are similar to the porcelain kilns for firing porcelain in this era. Even, some places simply copy the original porcelain kiln, resulting in a huge phosphate firing kiln.