With Tang Sanshui, the deputy general of Zhaoqing, behind the scenes, Zhang An finally got a real foothold in Zhaoqing City, and the prosperity of Dadong's rice business also allowed him to have enough funds on hand, but he never forgot his brother and sister-in-law who died tragically under the knife of the Qing soldiers, and never forgot the Taiping Army and Zhou Shixiang who were far away in Xiangshan.

Song Ying's arrival made Zhang An, who originally wanted to send someone to Xiangshan to re-establish contact with the Taiping Army, was overjoyed, and after a secret conversation with Song Ying, Zhang An went to Tang Sanshui's house with a silver ticket that night. The next day, Zhang An handed over the business of the rice store to the shopkeeper below, and he left Zhaoqing with Song Ying in the name of going to Guangzhou to buy grain

After seizing the former cottage, the Taiping army's large-scale battle in Xiangshan came to an end. After the Qing army in Zengcheng was defeated by the Taiping army at Yinzhuizan Mountain, Li Shutai, the governor of Guangdong, sent 2,000 green battalions to Zengcheng, but did not attack Xiangshan, because Sanjiangkou was attacked by the Ming army.

On the 23rd of the lunar month, Chen Qice, the general of Linghai, together with Zhu Tong, the general of Zhenguo, Zhou Tengfeng of Haibei Province and others, mobilized more than 10,000 soldiers and horses to use Xinhui as a base to launch an attack on Sanjiangkou, which was heavily guarded by the Qing army. After two days of fierce fighting, the Ming army failed to break through the Qing army's defense line. On the 26th, because the boat division of the headquarters of Chaozhou General Wu Liuqi arrived at the mouth of the Sanjiang River, the Ming Army's naval division could not continue to block the river, and also faced the enemy on the belly and back, so Chen Qice, Zhu Tong and others decided to withdraw after discussion. After the Ming army withdrew, Wu Liuqi's Zhou Division followed in pursuit, but was ambushed and defeated by the warship led by Zheng Chengkui, a partial general of Chen Qice's department, in Jiangmen. In this battle, the Ming army suffered more than 3,000 casualties and 4 warships sank; The Qing army suffered more than 400 casualties and 12 boats were destroyed.

Chen Qice's attack on Sanjiangkou verified Shang Kexi's fears, and made him even more determined to recapture Xinhui. At the same time, the Ming army's attack on Sanjiangkou also attracted all the attention of the Qing army in Guangzhou, so that Shang Kexi and Li Shuotai did not dare to divide their troops to attack the Taiping army in Xiangshan, which provided time and security for the Taiping army's foothold and development in Xiangshan.

Encouraged by the capture of Xinhui by the Ming army, the activities of the Ming army and the anti-Qing righteous division in the coastal areas were active again. Guo Zhiqi, a scholar sent by the Yongli Imperial Court to Guangdong, secretly went to Yunnan due to the incident of the Son of Heaven moving to Kunming. Lian Chengbi, the governor of Liangguang, failed to detect in time that the development of the war situation in Guangdong had become favorable to the Ming army, and did not make timely arrangements, resulting in the Ming army and righteous divisions in various localities being excited, but lacking overall overall command, and each locality could only fight on its own, and the results were not great.

On the Xinhui side, due to the failure of the battle to capture the mouth of the three rivers, the Ming army gathered here was passive again, if it were not for Chen Qice's insistence, the Zhenguo general Zhu Tong and others had led their troops back.

As of the end of the year. The Ming army gathered in Xinhui has reached more than 20,000 people, except for Zhu Tong's department, the rest of the Ming army is adapted from the righteous division, not only lacks the necessary equipment, but also lacks food and grass, and the internal faction is also very complicated, and there are two people with the title of Guogong, which makes Chen Qice try his best to maintain the situation and want to repeat the eastward trend of Li Dingguo's army last year, but his energy is consumed by the intricate relations within the Ming army. It was not possible to organize an effective offensive again.

Chen Qice, together with Zhu Tong and others, sent an urgent delivery to the governor of Leizhou, Yamen, requesting that Lianchengbi could move the governor to Xinhui, and then all the departments fought in unity under the command of the governor, so that the governor himself sat in Xinhui. It will certainly boost the morale of the army and the people. At the same time, Chen Qice asked the Leizhou side to raise grain, grass and water to transport it to Xinhui to solve the urgent needs of all armies.

After the urgent delivery to Leizhou, Lianchengbi did not agree to move the governor forward except for allowing him to raise grain. However, in the capacity of the governor, Tang Pingbo, Zhou Jintang, Jingxiang General Deng Yao, and Zhang Xiaoqi, the governor of the four prefectures, asked each ministry to select elite soldiers to be sent to Xinhui, so that Xinhui would no longer fall into the hands of Kou.

In his letter, Chen also asked the imperial court to compensate the Taiping army and the Zhou scholars for their merits. However, because Guangdong could not get in touch with the imperial court in Yunnan, and Lianchengbi could not make the decision to reward the imperial court privately, he temporarily appointed Zhou Shixiang as the chief military officer of Chaozhou as the governor, and the official reward was given after the scholar Guo Zhiqi went to the imperial court. As for Liao Ruixiang, the magistrate of Xiangshan County, who was protected by Zhou Shixiang, Lianchengbi issued a document to approve it and awarded it to the official with a bronze seal.

When Chen Qice's envoy sent the official certificate and copper seal of the Xiangshan magistrate to Renhoufang, he also brought Chen Qice's letter. In the letter, the white-haired veteran was very guilty, and he was very embarrassed that his previous promise to ensure that Zhou Shixiang was promoted to the general soldier had not been fulfilled. In this regard, Zhou Shixiang was not dissatisfied, whether it was the Chaozhou general soldier, or the named Chaozhou general soldier, to put it bluntly, it was all empty, the current general soldier of Chaozhou was Wu Liuqi appointed by the Qing court, what did he use to fight with others.

In the envoy's speech, it was revealed that Xinhui was now very short of food, and the soldiers could only eat one meal a day. After listening, although the Taiping army is also very short of food, but after all, Xiangshan County is not as dilapidated as Xinhui, and the battalions have been captured in the countryside for more than a month, so Zhou Shixiang transferred 300 stone grain and 10 fat pigs from Liangzi for the envoy to bring back, which can be regarded as doing some modest help to Xinhui, after all, the Taiping Army's stable development in Xiangshan is inseparable from Xinhui's containment of the Qing army. If the Xinhui Ming army collapses, the good days of the Taiping army will come to an end. The lips are dead and the teeth are cold, and Zhou Shixiang can't help but be indifferent.

Liao Ruixiang, who got the official certificate of Xiangshan County and the copper seal, smiled from ear to ear, although the copper seal carving given by Leizhou was not as delicate as Sun Quanzheng's, but the nature was incomparable to Sun Quanzheng's pseudo-county official seal. With this official seal issued by the governor of Guangdong, even if the Taiping army is gone, he Liao Ruixiang is an official official of the Yongli Imperial Court, which is a great thing that he can wake up with a smile in his dreams. After a lifetime of suffering, now it is finally out, Liao Ruixiang cried with joy, and it was not a penny of Zhou Shixiang's appreciation of his own Bole who gave birth to a little bit of a scholar who died as a confidant, but was determined to be quite good for Zhou Shi, and to take care of Xiangshan

After more than a month of encirclement and suppression, not only were the Qing army stragglers in Xiangshan completely wiped out by the Taiping army, but the bandits who plagued the local area were also cleaned up one by one. Before the end of the year, the Taiping army had completely controlled the various fangs of Xiangshan, and several important places connecting Xiangshan to other places were also guarded by the Taiping army.

On the twenty-eighth day of the lunar month, Zhou Shixiang returned to Zhiren Houfang in Xiangshan County, and the first thing he did when he came back was to set up an altar to commemorate the Taiping soldiers who died in Xiangshan.

The battle to capture Xiangshan and purge the Qing army's stragglers and bandits was not fierce and large-scale, but the Taiping army also paid the price of 62 killed and 125 wounded.

The soldiers who died in battle were buried on a hilly slope with good feng shui outside Xiangshan County, which was also officially used by Zhou Shixiang as a Taiping Army cemetery. Unlike the Xinhui fallen soldiers, who only buried but did not erect a monument, this time Zhou Shixiang erected a tombstone for the fallen soldiers.

The tombstones, facing north, are inscribed with the names, places of origin, ages, and status of the fallen soldiers, and where they died in battle. At the same time, this cemetery also has a stone tablet more than seven feet high, which is engraved with "Ming Taiping Army Memorial Cemetery". There is a dismount stone in one mile of the cemetery, and all the martial arts are dismounted and walked here.

When leading the officers to set incense and candles to commemorate the dead, Zhou Shixiang felt very uncomfortable. He looked at the tombstones one by one, and the dead soldiers were all young, many of them under the age of 20. The origins are also very complicated, and almost all the soldiers after the Taiping army set up camp. According to Zhou Shixiang's arrangement, Liao Ruixiang selected the relatives of these Xiangshan soldiers from their hometowns and let them live with the rear camp, so that they could enjoy the treatment of martyrs allocated by the Taiping Army Treasury in the future, and give them rewards for land, livestock and other goods.

The reward of land does not only exist on paper, the land in Xiangshan is fertile, although there are many hilly areas in the territory, but there are also many plains, and there is more land to be cultivated. When seizing the Longyan Capital, Zhou Shixiang intended to tie the land and the Taiping army tightly together, so he asked Song Xianggong to pilot the Longyan Capital.

The main content of the pilot project is to clear and integrate the ownerless land, which also includes the landlords' fields that were suppressed by the Taiping Army and the large ones that escaped. On the premise of guaranteeing the property rights of the original residents' land, what Song Xianggong had to do was to collect all the remaining land into the possession of the Taiping army, and then use the land to resettle the old and weak in the rear camp, and divide the land according to the size of the soldiers' military merits.

The soldiers who were allocated the land could not cultivate it because they were in the army, so this part of the land was cultivated by the rear battalion, and the income was divided equally between the rear battalion and the soldiers. If a soldier has relatives who can cultivate this part of the land on his own, the income will go to the soldier, but in order to meet the needs of the Taiping army, the soldier and his family must sell the surplus grain to the Taiping army at a price slightly lower than the market price, or exchange the surplus grain from the Taiping army treasury for other goods. In short, Zhou Shixiang divided the field, but he had to control the grain produced in the field in his own hands.

Regarding the policy of the local people, Zhou Shixiang basically retained the previous government practice, which was to collect taxes. However, because the arrival of the Taiping Army caused a large number of landlords and gentry to flee, many peasants who served as tenants for the landlords no longer had to pay rent to the former landlords, but only needed to pay a certain amount of taxes and grain to the Taiping Army, which greatly reduced the burden on the peasants and made the Xiangshan peasants have a cordiality to the Taiping Army. After all, there are many benefits to joining the Taiping Army, and the land distributed by the Taiping Army families who are settled in each square is enough to make the locals blush.

Peasants are naturally profit-seeking, and this profit-seeking is not the greed of businessmen, but the yearning for the improvement of food, clothing, and living conditions. The policy of the Taiping Army was favorable to the peasants, allowing them to live a better life than before, and they no longer had to be oppressed by the government and the gentry, and the peasants naturally supported the Taiping Army.

After Song Xianggong's governance in Longyan Capital was slightly effective, Zhou Shixiang officially implemented it in various parts of Xiangshan. He planned to make this policy a fixed policy of the Taiping Army for a long time, and also to include the original residents of Xiangshan in this policy, so that the Taiping Army could get more support from the people in Xiangshan, and then let the Taiping Army and the people mingle, the soldiers are the people, the people are the soldiers, and the army and the people are fishing and water. It is foreseeable that the Taiping Army, which has the support of the people, will definitely grow gradually. (To be continued.) )