Zhou Shixiang claimed that in the future, the Taiping army would change the previous practice of rogue bandits and change it to build a base for the needs of the war, but when attacking Zengcheng, Panyu, Shunde and other counties, the Taiping army still used the methods of rogue bandits.

The most typical manifestation is that the Taiping army large-scale looting of "strategic materials" in the occupied area, and in the name of "voluntary" to move the youth to Xiangshan, although from beginning to end, the main battalion of the Taiping army still adhered to the five military disciplines of "no killing, no arson", but the plundering of grain, salt and iron like a wall and a cabinet still caused huge losses to the local people. In this process, there were many villagers who spontaneously organized regimental training to resist the Taiping army, which brought a certain degree of casualties.

In the Second Lutouhe War, Zhou Shixiang slightly changed some radical policies, allowing the people who were unwilling to move south with the Taiping army to Xiangshan to leave a certain amount of rations, and no longer forcibly attacked the villages with strong resistance, so as not to cause unnecessary casualties among the people, and vigorously publicized that if the people did not move south with the Taiping army, they would inevitably be retaliated by the Qing army, but these remedies came too late, and by the time the Taiping army withdrew, the people in Zengcheng, Panyu, Shunde and some areas of Xin'an had more than 1,000 casualties. More than a dozen villages were burned.

With the complete victory of the two Lutouhe battles and the collapse of the Qing army's rule in Zengcheng, Panyu, Shunde and other countryside, more and more green battalion soldiers, bandits, and robbers joined the Taiping army, making the Taiping army's new battalions continue to increase, reaching more than a dozen, and the number of new attached soldiers has also risen from more than 1,000 at the beginning to more than 6,000.

The military discipline of these new recruits has been corrupted to the extreme, just take the Yu Tianen Department of the Zengcheng Volunteer Battalion as an example. After seizing Zengcheng and surrendering to the Taiping army, Yu Tianen made his subordinates loot in all directions, slaughtering towns and villages. In the name of beauty, he said that he would pay taxes to the Taiping Army Marshal Zhou. If they do not comply, they will be regarded as having their hearts set to the Tartars and will kill them on a large scale.

The destructive looting of the new annexes in various places made the Taiping army have a bad reputation in these places, and Zhou Shixiang did not want to restrain these surrendered troops, but the sources of these surrendered troops were complicated, and each of them had a piece of territory, and they were also very scattered among each other, so that the Taiping army, which was eager to return to Xiangshan, could not draw troops. There is no time to use troops against them. Later, Zhou Shixiang simply ignored them and left them to fend for themselves.

Qin Zhisheng strongly opposed letting these new recruits go unchecked. It is said that these bandits surrendered troops under the banner of the Taiping Army to reap all the benefits, but the bad thing is the reputation of the Taiping Army, how to get it in the long run, and when the people of Guangdong regard the Taiping Army as an enemy. It's too late to make up for it. Now, even the Taiping Army does not have the ability to incorporate these new troops into the Taiping Army's system for a while. Officials should also be sent to take over the territory controlled by these new annexes, do their best to maintain local law and order, restrain the military discipline of the new recruits, and prevent them from harming the people, instead of letting them go on like this.

Zhou Shixiang ignored Qin Zhisheng's request to send personnel to rectify and surrender troops, firstly, he really did not have these manpower to send out, and secondly, the Taiping army had expanded a lot of troops in the two northward advances, and he had not yet had time to digest it. Where is there still room to reorganize those new annexes? Third, he privately thought that although these soldiers were unbearable, there were thousands of them. It is a force that is neither big nor small.

At present, the Qing army in Guangzhou was wiped out by the Taiping army before and after seven or eight thousand people, and in a short period of time, the Qing army in Guangzhou was no longer able to use troops against Xiangshan on a large scale.

The first time Zhou Shixiang wanted to obtain grain from the areas occupied by the Qing army, and the second time was to destroy a certain strength of the Qing army in addition to grabbing grain and completely destroy the ability of the prefectures and counties around Guangzhou to supply grain and grass to the Qing army, so that the Qing army in Guangzhou could only transfer grain from the Chaoshan area, but could not solve the source of grain and grass nearby. This will inevitably increase the burden on the Qing army in Guangzhou, and will also affect their ability to use troops.

It can be said that Zhou Shixiang's strategic goal of the two northward advances has been basically completed, and now, what he has to do is to digest the results of these two northward advances, place the people who moved south with the Taiping army in various places in Xiangshan, and wait until the summer grain harvest to launch another northward war, cut off the flesh of the Qing army little by little, and let their blood until the Taiping army has the ability to attack the city of Guangzhou.

During this time, Xiangshan needed absolute security and stability, and the focus of the Taiping army was no longer attack, but defense, so there were thousands of new troops scattered near Guangzhou, undoubtedly for the Taiping army to block the front to attract the attention of the Qing army, which was a good thing for the Taiping army, and the price paid was only the damage to reputation.

In the troubled times, human life is like a mustard, what Zhou Shixiang can do is to settle the people who moved south with the Taiping army, so that they will not be starved to death or killed, as for those people who were harmed by the new annexes, he can only hold guilt. Reputation, the knife handle is hard enough, and the reputation is good; The handle of the knife is not hard, and no matter how good the reputation is under the knife and pen officer, it is not as good as pigs and dogs.

There is no perfect person, and there must be no perfect thing.

In the current era, this kind of good thing can only be said to be a luxury.

After returning to Xiangshan, Zhou Shixiang convened a military meeting of more than 100 households, at which Zhou Shixiang formally proposed the concept of five districts.

The five major regions refer to the core area, the periphery area, the occupied area, the friendly military area, and the neutral area.

The so-called core area is the main territory of the Taiping Army, which is dominated by Xiangshan; The marginal area is the area around Xiangshan; The occupied area is the area occupied by the Qing army; Friendly military regions naturally refer to territories controlled by the Ming army, while neutral zones refer to those territories that were not annexed to either the Manchu Qing or the Southern Ming.

The primary task of the Taiping Army is to ensure that the core area is not threatened by the Qing army, and the people in the core area must not be invaded by the Taiping army. The forces in the periphery must accept the command of the Taiping Army (mainly the new annexes), and the Taiping Army can acquiesce in the independent collection of grain and taxes in the marginal areas, play the banner of the Taiping Army, and provide protection when the Qing army invades, provided that the forces in the periphery areas must pay a certain amount of money and grain to the Taiping Army. At the same time, the Taiping army will also restrain the forces in the peripheral areas to protect the local people, rather than killing and looting.

The Taiping Army should immediately establish ties with friendly military regions, and at the same time, it must also reach a certain degree of intention with the forces in the neutral zone, and as long as the forces in the neutral zone do not clearly turn to the Manchu Qing, the Taiping Army will not use troops against the other side. As for the occupied areas, it is the main direction of the Taiping army's use of troops in the future, and the Taiping army will not kill the people in the occupied areas in principle.

Zhou Shixiang said vaguely about how to deal with the people in the occupied areas, and he was going to deal with Wang Yinghua's affairs, and then discuss with Song Xianggong and them about the precautions for using troops in the occupied areas in the future.

Zhou Shixiang was anxious to get the captive demotes and scholars to submit because he urgently needed these people to help him govern Xiangshan and build the civilian system of the Taiping army.

Zhou Shixiang never thought that martial artists could only fight the world, but not rule the world. In his view, a perfect political regime should pay equal attention to civil and military affairs, and civilian officials are military attachés, and military attachés are also civilian officials. The distinction between civil and military affairs should not only be judged by whether he is in charge of the people or the army, but should be distinguished by whether he is illiterate, whether he can understand official documents, whether he can act according to the system, and whether he can express his own opinions on things.

In a word, the martial artist in Zhou Shixiang's eyes is just an illiterate knife bearer, as long as a literate knife bearer can be called a literati, not what kind of official this person is, even if he is just a general, as long as he is literate and can understand the official documents under his head, then he is a civil official, not a military attaché.

The civil official is the commander, and the military attache is the minister; It may seem absurd that civil officials can ride horse-drawn bows and military attaches can write poems, but in fact they are at the heart of Confucian teaching, and the Six Arts are the basis of this concept, and the essence of Confucianism lies in the essence of Confucianism.

However, the reality is that most of the warriors in this era are illiterate, and those who are literate, even if they are officials to the general soldiers, and knights to princes, are still military attaches in the eyes of the world, not a member of the civilian officials. This distorted concept of Confucianism has been popular for hundreds of years, and if it were not for troubled times, the status of martial artists would be so low that people were speechless.

If Zhou Shixiang wanted to break this deformed concept of civil and military affairs, and wanted to establish the civil and military annexation regime of the Taiping Army, he needed a large number of people who could help him build this regime and serve as officials at all levels. But the problem is that there are no such people in his pocket, or there are very few such people.

Cultivating civil and military officials of the Taiping Army is the key to the development and growth of the Taiping Army in the future, Li Dingguo, King of Jin, Liu Wenxiu and Sun Kewang of Shu, and Ai Nengqi of that year are the new generation cultivated by Zhang Xianzhong in the Great Western Army, and now they have shouldered the burden of the Great Western Army, and have become the last pillars of the Ming Dynasty. If Sun Kewang had no dissent, Zhou Shixiang believed that the co-leader of the Great Western Army would definitely be no less successful than Li Dingguo in the history books, after all, Sun Kewang was the real successor of Zhang Xianzhong and the real leader of the Great Western Army!

Zhou Shixiang often felt that his subordinates lacked talents, and everything in Xiangshan and the Taiping Army was forcibly promoted by him, despite the help of Song Xianggong and Liao Ruixiang, it was still difficult to achieve, and the reason for this was that there was no effective grassroots officials to assist.

It is not enough to rely on a structure of power to go to the countryside to support the development of the Taiping army in Xiangshan, and there must be enough officials to maintain this structure, and continue to enrich and expand, so that the Taiping army can obtain a steady supply of money, food, and manpower, obtain a stable rear, and persevere to the end in the continuous battle with the Qing army.

Zhou Shixiang is already doing this part of education and training, but just as there are only a few talents in Xinhui County to help Liao Ruixiang maintain the operation of the county government, education is also difficult, and it is difficult to make the students who teach it reach the point where Zhou Shixiang is satisfied. Moreover, education in Xiangshan County was only started at the beginning of the year, and it would take at least a few years for the children in those schools to really grow up, and in these years, Zhou Shixiang had to get the help of those ready-made literati.

The captive demos and scholars are treasures placed on Zhou Shixiang's mouth, he can't kill people because the other party is unwilling to submit, he must let these people serve him, even if they are reluctant, he has to let them temporarily bow their heads for their own use.

Zhou Shixiang asked Xu Yingyuan to bring Wang Yinghua over.

(To be continued.) )