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Only a few drops of iodine wine are needed, and the seemingly wordless envelope shows a dense fly-headed small letter, this is a secret letter from Tianjing, in fact, only Zhu Yifeng knows who wrote this letter. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Even Zhang Sen, who was the intelligence leader of the rebel army, didn't know that there was a high-ranking person in Tianjing City who had been serving himself, but at this time, looking at the content and suggestions on the letter, Zhu Yifeng's brows were frowning.

In addition to mentioning some recent changes in Tianjing City, the content of the letter revealed several more important information. One is that the Taiping army is under-armed!

Will the million-dollar Taiping Army be under-armed?

In fact, the reason could not be simpler - there were not enough "old brothers" in the Taiping army who were strong in combat, and as for the other newly coerced civilians, they did not have much combat effectiveness. Now that it is both the Northern Expedition and the Western Expedition, and it has to be stationed in separate cities, this force is naturally stretched.

Because of this, when it decided to support the Northern Expeditionary Army, the reality of insufficient troops made it only possible to demolish the east wall to make up the west wall, and transfer the Taiping army of Jiujiang or Yangzhou out, and now in order to avoid Jiujiang being taken by the Qing army, under his suggestion, Yang Xiuqing is ready to hand over Jiujiang to the righteous army, of course, it is not for nothing, and in the future, the righteous army will also hand over half of the Jiujiang tax to the Taiping army.

"Jiujiang ......"

With his eyes half-closed, thinking about the strategic location of Jiujiang, Zhu Yifeng naturally would not object to getting this important place without spending a single soldier, but another message in the letter made him seem a little hesitant.

It's the problem of the Northern Expeditionary Army!

At Sun Maolin's suggestion, tens of thousands of reinforcements from the north will go north along the Han River, from Xiangyang to Henan, and from Nanyang all the way north to support Lin Fengxiang and Li Kaifang.

In other words, tens of thousands of Taiping troops heading north will pass through the hinterland of Hubei, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

"When it is in the place of erosion, it is the day when our righteous army will move north!"

I have to admit that Sun Maolin's suggestion is quite tempting, why he was able to easily control Hubei in the first place, wasn't it just the opportunity to take advantage of the Taiping Army's erosion? Now after tens of thousands of Taiping troops go north, they will inevitably erode Henan along the way, so that the righteous army can naturally enter Henan smoothly, so as to master the Central Plains, the formation of a coercive trend to the north, not only can suppress the north, and even point to the north of Anhui, Shanxi! And even the Jingshi!

At that time, the world will be ...... Isn't it all for yourself?

But the question is, is it possible to win the world now?

Not to mention anything else, whether it is the Taiping Army or the Qing Army, it is not a behemoth that the Righteous Army has the ability to defeat completely, perhaps the Righteous Army has tens of thousands of elites, if it is slightly dispersed, I am afraid that it will fall into the dilemma that the Taiping Army is overstretched after the four attacks, and today the Taiping Army demolished the east wall to make up the west wall, but it is not their own tomorrow.

In the final analysis, it is still a lack of strength, and how can it win the world without a few years of recuperation?

But this is an opportunity after all!

Yes, this is an opportunity after all.

If we miss this opportunity now, will there be a better opportunity in the future?

After receiving Sun Maolin's secret letter, Zhu Yifeng felt that he was in a strange mood.

Today was supposed to be a day of joy, and he himself wanted to work hard to make himself happy. But for some reason, there is always a trace of apprehension hidden in my heart that is not easy to detect.

Since I came to this era, basically every step has been quite smooth, except for the initial adventure, now every step is steady, rather than expand the territory, but also to run their own base camp and base area well.

After a few months of painstaking management -- in fact, under the old system, Hubei, which had not suffered too much war, was completely regained -- the most important summer tax of the year is proof of this, and although Hubei did not have a bumper harvest this year, the collection of its summer tax was extremely smooth, and the various prefectures collected millions of taels of silver as they did last year, thus fundamentally alleviating the dilemma of insufficient financial resources.

Moreover, the mining of salt mines has also entered the mining stage, and soon a steady stream of rock salt will be mined, which can not only fundamentally alleviate the salt shortage in Hubei, but can even be sold to Hunan, Jiangxi and other places, bringing a steady stream of wealth to the metropolitan governor's government.

Of course, the more important point is that today is still a "big day" -- the first steam ship manufactured by the Yangtze River Shipyard in Wuchang will be launched and completed today, although this steam ship is only a wooden hull ship of several hundred tons, but it carries Zhu Yifeng's hope, or symbolizes the change of the shipyard.

The shipyard was the first batch of "government-run enterprises" founded by Zhu Yifeng in Wuchang, and the shipyard was originally just a deserted riverside vacant land, and even today, it is just a small shipyard with a few hundred people, and its scale is not large, and even the facilities are not perfect, even if the limited equipment in the shipyard is old equipment bought from Shanghai, Hong Kong and other places.

However, this does not prevent Zhu Yifeng from placing his hopes on him -- the future Chinese Navy will set sail here!

Although in the past few months, shipyards have built Western-style sailing ships of varying tonnage, but now sailing ships are tending to be eliminated, and the future is the era of steam ships, and sailing in the Yangtze River is not as good as sailing at sea, sailing in the Yangtze River, steam ships have their natural advantage - speed! Not limited by wind direction.

Building steamships is a very trendy business in today's world, and it can even be said that it is firmly grasping the future.

In reality, however, the steamer was more experimental in nature - the steam engine it used was an old steam engine purchased from Shanghai, which was actually dismantled from the old ship.

But even so, today also means a special day for Zhu Yifeng: it means both the end of the past and the beginning of a new one.

It's a fresh start!

Although this is a wooden ship, it means a beginning for China's shipbuilding industry. If it can be successful, then in the future, the Yangtze River Shipyard will continue to rush to produce the second and third ships according to the established plan...... There are even more river steamboats, and after the construction of the future ironworks, a new generation of iron-ribbed wood-hulled ships, and even iron-ribbed iron-hulled ships, will replace the current wooden ships.

Well! At that time, the era of ironclads will come!

If all this succeeds, Zhu Yifeng does not have to think about it to know what will happen -- China's navy will lay the foundation here on the Yangtze River, and in the future, when the time is ripe, it will be able to enter the sea from the river and establish a real navy.

Of course, this is Zhu Yifeng's ultimate wish - to build a real navy, and for now, all this is just the beginning.

Zhu Yifeng knows very well, what does he need at the moment? What is needed is a river fleet capable of galloping across the Yangtze River, but what kind of warships does this river fleet need?

Naturally, what he needs is not a sampan with ten oars and one person, but a real warship, a real modern warship, a warship powered by a steam engine, or even an ironclad ship.

Even like the fleet he founded, perhaps the Yangtze River Fleet is just a sketch now, but in fact it should be the most westernized "fleet" in East Asia, although its original origin was only a merchant fleet, but it already has everything that a fleet has at first.

In the next few years, as the Yangtze River Shipyard continues to manufacture the warships it needs, a real inland river fleet will surely appear in front of the world, no matter whether today's launch is a success or a failure, for Zhu Yifeng he will go down this road.

But if that's the case, what's there to be worried about?

It's not uneasy!

It's a little messy with my thoughts!

Is it because of the letter? Because of the opportunity shown in the letter?

If Zhu Yifeng chooses to work steadily and steadily, through the operation of the base areas, through the establishment of factories -- shipyards, arsenals, iron factories, and future machine factories, just like a red police strategy game, after these factories are put into operation, they will explode troops and sweep across the Central Plains with superior weapons and equipment, and no one will be able to stop his footsteps at that time.

But now, Sun Maolin's letter told him another choice - in fact, he didn't need to wait that long at all, he only needed to seize the opportunity, he could chase the Central Plains, and he could launch an offensive in advance.

With such an opportunity in front of us, how should we choose?

"Governor, the time is almost up."

A voice dragged Zhu Yifeng, who was pondering, out. When he looked up, it turned out to be Li Ziyuan, one of his right-hand men. is also the first person to defect to him, looking at Li Ziyuan, Zhu Yifeng suddenly realized what his biggest weakness is now, not a soldier!

Soldiers can be trained!

Even with Western-style training, the officers' deficiencies can be compensated, after all, the opponents they have to face are too erosive to be vulnerable to attack, even the so-called elite, without several rounds of gun shooting.

But what about people?

To be precise, the construction of his staff team and civilian team is too outdated, why did the Taiping army abandon the city? Not because of their military strength, but because they were unable to rule those cities, and even now, as they are now, is it not because of the lack of manpower that they continue to use the old officials and recruit the fallen scholars as local officials?

Why do we continue to use the old system?

Isn't it because those people can only maintain the old system, in this case, why should they implement top-down reforms? How to build a brand new country?

In the final analysis, it's still a matter of people!

Li Ziyuan's appearance made Zhu Yifeng realize the problem, so he picked up the mood that became a little anxious because of the letter and asked:

"All ready?"

"Everything is ready, Grand Governor, just wait for the auspicious time." (To be continued.) )