"It's... Absolutely unforgiving! ”

Xu Yingyuan coughed lightly, feeling worried about his gaffe. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Unlike Zhou Shi's deep hatred for the Manchus, Xu Yingyuan actually did not have much hatred for the Manchus, but because of the Manchu occupation of Guangdong, he was able to serve as the magistrate of Zengcheng. If it weren't for the massacre of the Qing army in Guangdong, I'm afraid that the position of the magistrate would not have fallen to him, a man with no background.

In the Ming generation, most of them can only be the head of a county, a county officer, or a school official, and few of them directly serve as county officials. Xu Yingyuan's hometown, Yuan Chonghuan, who was the governor of the Ming Dynasty, was admitted to the Jinshi examination before he was able to serve as Shaowuzhi County, Fujian. There are very few people who can be known as counties, and most of them are in barren underground counties. During the Jiajing period, after the famous Hairui Township was tested, he also served as a teacher in Nanping, Fujian, and then served as the magistrate of Zhejiang and Jiangxi.

Because of the limitation of fame, before the Qing army entered Guangdong, Xu Yingyuan never dreamed that he would one day be a "Baili Hou", so compared with Zhou Shixiang, who had a direct family feud with the Manchus, Xu's attitude towards the Manchus was naturally much more "tolerant".

In other words, Xu Yingyuan was tied to the ship of the Taiping Army at the beginning, if it were not for Zhou Shixiang, he would still be his magistrate in Zengcheng now, where would he be the current military counselor of the Dadu Governor's Office.

For example, there are many civil servants under Zhou Shixiang, such as Guo Shao, who is now the ambassador of the Admiral of the Salt Administration, who was originally the salt inspector of Xiangshan. Gui Yongzhi, the political envoy of Fujian and the prefect of Fuzhou, has been working under the curtain of Li Shutai, the governor of the Qing Dynasty and Guangzhou. Counting over and over, there is also a Dong Changqing who "does not wear a clear sky on his head and does not step on the ground with his feet", and he is "rooted in the seedlings", and he has always been inseparable from the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

Cheng Hanbin, who served as the ambassador of the Ordnance Bureau, was also from a good background, but he had wavered, otherwise he would not have gone to Beijing to take the exam. If it weren't for the rise of the Taiping Army in Guangdong, Cheng Hanbin and his friend Xiong Cixu would probably have passed the Qing court's examination and became a Qing Jinshi.

These people have a common characteristic, that is, they are not from Jinshi, they are all lifters and talents. To this day, there is no Jinshi who can take the initiative to attach himself to Zhou Shixiang and use it for him. Ye Fangai, who was admitted to the Qing court to explore flowers, had the intention to contribute to His Royal Highness the King of Qi of the Ming Dynasty, but unfortunately now he ended up in a different place.

Last year, the champion in the first Enke examination of Dingwu, and later changed his surname to Xu because of the story of the White Snake, the Chen champion, who took the initiative to take refuge in the Qi Wangfu after winning the examination. I don't want to, but Zhou Shixiang doesn't look down on this champion, thinking that this person is very talented, but in addition to his literary talent, there seems to be nothing eye-catching, and he doesn't have Xu Yingyuan and Gui Yongzhi's political ability and experience, so he didn't call him around, but put it in the Hanlin Academy according to the Ming system.

Some time ago, after hearing that this champion changed his surname to Xu, Zhou Shixiang became interested and instructed Ding Zhixiang and Yuan Kuoyu to take care of them and hone them in the Hanlin Academy for a few years to see if they could use it greatly.

Zhou Shixiang still knows the truth of "repaying the peach", after all, the champion in the examination is the highest honor of the literati imperial examination, and it is also the place to look up. It is rare that this Xu Zhuangyuan is "yearning" for himself, so he will be given a chance, if he performs well, Zhou Shixiang will not be stingy to give the other party a chance to become famous and famous.

Can't be sparing the enemy, Zhou Shixiang's meaning is obvious, Xu Yingyuan also heard it, the marshal obviously means that the vacillation of a large number of generals in the Wu army is inseparable from Wu Sangui's kindness to the Manchurians.

Since the surrender of the Qing Dynasty in the 17th year of Chongzhen, the main force of the Wu army, the Guanning Army has been the vanguard of the Qing army's southward movement to extinguish the Southern Ming Dynasty, and for 16 years, the Guanning Army has always appeared in front of the world as a "traitor army". Sixteen years is enough time for the Guanning army to be branded with fear of their masters, the Manchurians. There are only two ways to break this fear, one is to cut them off, and the other is to let them know that the Manchurians are not better than them.

Wu Sangui didn't do these two things, but Zhou Shixiang did.

When Luo was taken, in order to let those Jiangxi green camps follow him desperately, Zhou Shixiang branded behind them that they would not be opposed. Subsequently, no matter which battle, Zhou Shixiang took the lead, just to lead these former Qing troops to defeat the objects of their fear on the battlefield. After bloody battles, tough battles, and slaughtering cities again and again, the old men of the Taiping Army fought fewer and fewer, but the team grew stronger and stronger, so that there are as many as thousands of Manchu and Mongolian soldiers in the Japanese army. All this is only because Zhou Shixiang let his subordinates "put them to death and come back to life" from the beginning.

It's better to die if it's not to be reversed.

If there is no way out, then stop thinking about a way out, and bravely fight a way forward.

In order to survive, no matter how timid and cowardly a person is, he will burst out with amazing strength. Facts have proved that Zhou Shixiang is right, and the Taiping Army he built with the Manchurian "Eight Banners" method is already the nemesis of the Manchurian Eight Banners. In the past, the fear of the Manchurians was always funny when many generals from the former Qing army mentioned it.

"The Wu army, since the army against the Qing Dynasty, has never fought a tough battle with the Manchurians, and it can be said that the army has come to the Central Plains smoothly. As a result, when he encountered the main force of the Eight Banners led by Aobai, his original form was revealed. In the final analysis, the lackey has been doing it for a long time, and suddenly turned over to be the master, and his mentality has not changed. ”

In fact, there is not much difference between the combat effectiveness of the Guan Ning Army and the Eight Banners, and in Zhou Shixiang's view, the defeat of the Wu Army was completely a man-made disaster, not a fault of the war. If Wu Sangui had cut off the idea of "back road" for his subordinates and generals from the beginning, and had aroused the bloody and murderous spirit of his lackeys who had been Manchu for more than ten years at the beginning, the Battle of Kaifeng would not have been fought so hard, so that he would have suffered repeated setbacks when his troops had the advantage.

"Ao Bai is a character, and that foreign priest Nan Huairen told me that among the four auxiliary ministers left by Fu Lin, the one who is really capable is Ao Bai. Zhang Changgeng also told me that Aobai is the most admired Sinicization among the Manchurian magnates and attaches the most importance to winning over our Han gentry. Fu Lin also has great faith in Aobai, if it weren't for my defeat, I'm afraid that the head of the so-called auxiliary minister would not fall on Sony's head. But thinking about it, before Fu Lin died, he chose to let Ao Bai lead the army against Wu Sangui, instead of letting Sonny or Suke Saha, or others, obviously, in Fu Lin's eyes, it was Ao Bai who could really carry half of the sky in the Qing Dynasty. ”

Although Aobai is a tartar and the object he wants to kill, Zhou Shixiang did not hesitate to praise Aobai. Not only because Aobai's attitude towards Han people is different from that of other Manchurians, but more importantly, Aobai is good at learning. It is not difficult to imagine that in the future, there may be pure firearms troops in the Qing army like the Taiping army, just like the army of King Sanshun back then.

The leak of the "no conscience cannon" sounded a wake-up call for Zhou Shixiang, that is, the secrecy level of the new weapons now developed must be raised again. He didn't want that in the future, when he went on a northern expedition, the Qing army would also send out teams of flintlock pikemen and flowering cannons.

Although the Wu army was defeated, the war in Henan is still unclear, and the emaciated camel is bigger than the horse. The weak camel of the Qing court was still able to muster tens of thousands of elites to fight against Wu Sangui in the Central Plains, and with more than 200,000 troops, he was able to win Wu Sangui in the northwest.

After Guo Zhuangtu was defeated, he led the remnants of the army and the Xia State to join the army, and had retreated from Kaifeng to Henan (including Luoyang and Zhengzhou).

After Ao Bai won the victory of Xuanwu, he wanted to annihilate Hu Guozhu's department on the other side of the Wu army in one go, and completely cut off Wu Sangui's big hand stretched out to Kaifeng, but it was blocked by Ma Bao, the general under Hu Guozhu. The two sides fought fiercely in the area around Chenliu, and there were casualties among each other. On the third day of the battle, Hao Shaoqi's troops operating in the area of Nanyang and Ruzhou suddenly went north and attacked the Qing army from behind, causing the two wings of Aobai to be attacked by the enemy.

The time chosen by Hao Shaoqi to go north was when the Wu army had just been defeated, and helped the Wu army stabilize the battle line, so Wu Sangui, who got the news, was very happy, sent someone to send a large amount of money and grain to Hao Shaoqi's department, and strongly invited Hao Shaoqi and Zhu Jingli, the king of Han in his camp, to Luoyang. However, Hao Shaoqi accepted the money and grain given by Wu Sangui, but did not go to Luoyang. Zhu Jingli, the king of Han, also refused to go to Luoyang on the grounds that he was sick and could not travel far.

After Wu Sangui learned that King Han was sick, he immediately sent his strategist Fang Xianting to take Lang Zhong beside him to Hao Shaoqi's camp. Fang Xianting was clearly treating King Han's illness, but he actually had the calculation of lobbying King Han to go to Luoyang.

Although Wu Sangui had the idea of becoming the emperor after "asking the sky" in Luoyang, he was even ready to ascend the throne in Kaifeng and stand on his own. However, the disadvantage of the war made Wu Sangui have to dismiss this idea.