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It's New Year's Day 2016, I wish you all a Happy New Year!

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When Li Weiguo returned to Shanghai, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had been completely destroyed, and the remaining Taiping army had become guerrillas, still resisting everywhere, but the overall situation was decided, and their resistance was only to prove their last dignity.

The fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a great strategic success for Li Weiguo.

Using the threat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to cover the rise of the Wu army, this tactic Li Weiguo went right, and now Li Weiguo no longer needs to use the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to cover, so the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is inevitable.

However, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom brought Li Weiguo a huge harvest, which can be described as a bumper harvest.

When the officials of the Ministry of Finance of the Wu Wangfu counted the harvest, even Li Weiguo was shocked.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's realization of public ownership of property, officially known as the "Sacred Treasury System", actually concentrated the wealth of all parts of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom into the Sacred Treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, that is, entered the homes of high-level officials in disguise, which was also a very important reason for the final demise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

It is precisely because of the existence of this holy treasury system that the wealth of the entire Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is almost concentrated in the Tianjing City, after the capital was occupied by the Wu army on the same day, not only Hong Xiuquan's thousands of cars of treasures were intercepted by the Wu army, but none of the civil and military officials ran away, their family property was all seized by the Wu army, and then handed over to the Ministry of Finance of the Wu Palace, not counting real estate and those unestimable treasures, antiques, calligraphy and paintings, gold and silver alone are as high as 1,200 tons, of which gold accounts for 110 tons, The combined wealth of gold and silver is almost equivalent to one-third of the AIIB's treasury reserves, and other copper coins and copper coins are piled up on several hills, if it were not for the fact that the copper coins have been invalidated against the yuan, I am afraid that the wealth will be even more.

In addition to money and goods. The bigger gain is people.

In addition to Hong Xiuquan's family and relatives who handed over to Li Hongzhang to receive rewards from the imperial court, there were more than 3,000 civil and military officials at all levels, of which 600 were useful to Li Weiguo, including Shi Dakai, Li Xiucheng, Chen Yucheng and other military generals, and Meng Deen, Li Shixian, Yang Fuqing, Chen Decai and other capable ministers in internal affairs, all of whom expressed their loyalty to Li Weiguo. made Li Weiguo's account instantly become full of talents.

There are many subjective and objective reasons why these talents chose Li Weiguo and did things for Li Weiguo. First of all, as captives, Li Weiguo did not kill them is a grace to them, in order to survive, they can only choose to serve the new master Li Weiguo.

This is an objective reason, subjectively, these capable officials are anti-Qing in their bones, and Li Weiguo has already exposed his ambition to usurp the Qing Dynasty. This is almost a well-known thing for passers-by. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom wanted to overthrow the Manchu Qing Dynasty, otherwise it would not have received the support of the Heaven and Earth Society at the beginning, and Li Weiguo was a Han Chinese, and if he rebelled, he would also restore the Han world, and Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang finally gave up their rebellion and turned into Manchu slaves, which was absolutely intolerable to these officials.

Two of the three candidates were excluded, and Li Weiguo showed his ability to be wise and martial. Even Shi Dakai finally recognized Li Weiguo, so that these capable officials finally chose Li Weiguo as their new master.

And what Li Weiguo lacks most now. There are only two words, talents, talents who govern the country. There is no shortage of talents in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and it can even be said that many of the top talents in modern history came from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and now they have joined Li Weiguo's shogunate, which has virtually inflated Li Weiguo's soft power unprecedentedly.

Why did Li Weiguo postpone the war to destroy the Qing Dynasty? It's not because there aren't so many talents in hand, once a large area of land is laid but there are no talents to govern it, and the local area is in a miasma and chaos, it will suffer huge losses.

In addition to these 600 capable officials, as for the other thousands of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom officials. Li Weiguo directly abandoned it, because most of those officials were talentless and corrupt. If Li Weiguo doesn't like corrupt officials, then he hates dog officials even more, and the so-called dog officials are talentless people who are corrupt and don't do practical things, and they are also the most hateful.

As a superior, he can tolerate the corruption of his subordinates within a certain range, and the so-called water is clear, and there is no fish in this sense, but he will definitely tolerate the waste of no talent, that is, the person who eats the corpse.

Li Weiguo is this kind of superior, as long as he can do practical things, he can turn a blind eye to petty theft to a certain extent.

Provided, of course, that no one reports and complains.

Soft power aside, the rest is hard power.

To destroy the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Li Weiguo's greatest hard power was the huge Taiping army.

More than 1 million Taiping troops were wiped out in less than a year, of which nearly 300,000 were killed in battle, nearly 70,000 were missing, and more than 630,000 others finally surrendered.

You must know that in the first five years of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, none of the Taiping troops surrendered, which shows that in the later Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the military spirit and the people's heart have been dispersed.

Among the more than 630,000 Taiping troops who surrendered, no one surrendered to the Hunan army, because the commander of the Hunan army was called Zeng Guofan, known as Zeng Shaved Head, and never took prisoners.

As for the Huai Army, Li Hongzhang also resolutely implemented Zeng Guofan's idea in the early stage, not to take prisoners, and to kill people. However, Li Hongzhang's thinking was more advanced and enlightened than Zeng Guofan's, and he no longer insisted on it in the later period, which made nearly 30,000 Taiping troops surrender to the Huai army in the battle with the Huai army.

Many more Taiping troops eventually surrendered to the Wu army, with a total size of 600,000 men, including 430,000 men and 170,000 women. Among the male soldiers, there are 100,000 people in Shi Dakai's department, all of whom are elite in a hundred battles. In addition, Su Sanniang personally came forward to recruit tens of thousands of Taiping troops, most of which were Taiping women's battalions, because Su Sanniang used to be the commander of the women's battalion, and many old subordinates chose to surrender, and the other Taiping troops were scattered all over Jiangxi, and with the demise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Hong Xiuquan, they finally surrendered.

The reason why most of the Taiping army surrendered to the Wu army is that there are many prerequisites, first of all, the Wu army and the Taiping army have the least number of bloody battles, except for the Taiping army's first eastward crusade, the two sides have almost never broken out large-scale battles, making the Taiping army's hatred of the Wu army the least.

Secondly, Su Sanniang, a senior general of the Taiping Army, became Li Weiguo's wife, which was the main reason why the female soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom chose to surrender to Li Weiguo, because of the large number of female soldiers in the Taiping Army. Especially in the later period, the Taiping army was exhausted, and women also had to go to the battlefield to kill the enemy, and the scale was as high as hundreds of thousands. And women go to the battlefield, there is only one way to die, they know very well that they can't be injured and can't be captured. Otherwise, the end will be miserable, and life is worse than death.

In this way, for the female soldiers of the Taiping Army, their choice is very narrow, they will not surrender to the Hunan Army and the Huai Army, although the Huai Army will not kill prisoners in the later period, but the female soldiers will become military prostitutes and be spoiled. The biggest difference between the Wu army is that it does not kill prisoners, and it does not bully men and women. Since the day the Wu army was founded, this military regulation has been enforced, and the female soldiers of the Taiping Army surrendered to the Wu army, without worrying about humiliation. And Su Sanniang, the former female marshal of the Taiping Army, is now Li Weiguo's wife, and she will not allow the Wu Army to bully the female soldiers of the Taiping Army, so all the female soldiers of the Taiping Army who surrendered surrendered to the Wu Army, and the Hunan Army and the Huai Army did not get a single female prisoner.

For the male soldiers of the Taiping Army. In addition to the above points, the most critical thing is Shi Dakai's surrender. Shi Dakai led 100,000 elite Taiping troops to surrender to Li Weiguo. and was treated well by Li Weiguo, which was the reason why more Taiping troops finally surrendered to the Wu army, because they didn't believe in the rhetoric of the government, but they would make comparisons, Li Weiguo could accept the surrender of Shi Dakai, who had led the army to invade Shanghai, not to mention these Taiping generals at the bottom. It's even more of a problem.

The surrender of 600,000 Taiping troops made Li Weiguo, who had just returned to Shanghai, miserable and happy.

The painful thing is that these more than 600,000 people have strong combat effectiveness, but they can't let go, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has been decided. Although these Taiping troops surrendered temporarily, it is difficult to guarantee that they will not rebel again after being released, and there are still many Taiping diehards in various places, and it is difficult to guarantee that they will not be hooked up and seduced, which will pose a threat to Li Weiguo's rule in the future.

But here comes the problem, more than 600,000 people, that is, more than 600,000 mouths, and the daily consumption of grain, straw and medicine is astronomical, although Li Weiguo is not short of money, but the richer the people, the more they pick the door, and it is definitely not happy to feed these Taiping troops for nothing, it is a painful thing.

But Li Weiguo soon became happy again because he had found a solution.

With the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the main contradiction in China shifted from the hostile contradiction between the entire Qing Empire and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to the contradiction between the Qing government and the Han landlord armed forces, and the contradictions between the Han landlord armed forces and the Han landlord armed forces.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was destroyed, and the Qing government was not a little happy, but even more frightened, because the Han landlord armed forces rose, Li Weiguo's Wu army, Zeng Guofan's Xiang army, Li Hongzhang's Huai army, the three Han landlord armed forces rose strongly, as if in an instant the Qing Empire returned to the era of Kangxi and the three feudal kings.

There are too many of them, so that the Qing government has to think of Kangxi's policy of pacifying the three feudal kings.

The Empress Dowager of the Two Palaces chose to temporarily back down and ordered the regent Yixin to step up borrowing from Britain and France to build a new Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners army to prepare for a possible civil war in the future.

Li Hongzhang got his wish to obtain the Beiyang Minister and the Governor of Zhili, because Li Hongzhang was born in the Song Dynasty, so he was named the King of Song, becoming the king of the Song Dynasty after Li Weiguo, the only difference is that Li Hongzhang did not have a fief, while Li Weiguo had two rivers and four provinces as a fief.

As for Zeng Guofan, the cunning queen mother of the two palaces moved him with affection and reason, and persuaded him to succeed in protecting the emperor, so in order to win over Zeng Guofan, the court finally gave Zeng Guofan the title of king, because Zeng Guofan was born in Chu, so he was named King of Chu.

The queen mother of the two palaces was so generous to seal the two one-word side by side kings, the fundamental purpose was to win over and contain Li Weiguo, the king of Wu, and at the same time did not give Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang fiefs, and it can be seen that they distrust the two of them, and they are just temporarily using the relationship.

On the whole, the Qing government's strategic policy has been determined, that is, to deal with the strongest enemy Li Weiguo of Wu first, and then turn back to deal with Zeng Guofan, the king of Chu, and Li Hongzhang, the king of Song, which is essentially a battle between the Manchu and Han people, as well as a war between the traitors and the Han people.

Based on this general domestic environment, Li Weiguo could only expand his army on a large scale and actively prepare for war.

Therefore, the 600,000 Taiping troops who ate Li Weiguo's food and drank Li Weiguo's had to do things for Li Weiguo, and immediately began a major reorganization.

The 600,000 Taiping troops, including 70,000 disabled soldiers who could no longer go to war, were sent home, but they were not allowed to leave their hometowns for three years, otherwise they would be prevented from participating in things that were unfavorable to the Wu army.

Among the remaining 530,000 Taiping soldiers, the female soldiers were dismissed one step later, they were forced to join the army, and they were allowed to go home to marry, but most of the female soldiers are now homeless, and they will be taken in by the Wu Wangfu, and they will be married to the meritorious soldiers of the Wu army as wives in the future to boost morale.

In this era of male superiority and inferiority of women, female soldiers are not tolerated, Zeng Guofan's Hunan army and Li Hongzhang's Huai army will not and will not have female soldiers, and even all countries in the world currently have no female soldiers.

But Li Weiguo also set up a women's army for the first time, he didn't have this idea before, but now when 100,000 Taiping soldiers are placed in front of him, it is a pity to lose them.

Li Weiguo was the first to set up a field hospital among the Wu army, and among the European and American powers, only Britain and France established a special field hospital system after the Crimean War. Li Weiguo's move can be said to have caught up with the international pace.

In the Wu army, the soldiers were eager to kill the enemy on the front line, and many soldiers were reluctant to become doctors and nurses, but now with tens of thousands of female soldiers of the Taiping Army, this problem was solved at once.

After a series of selections, 34,000 female soldiers of the Taiping Army eventually became the medical guards of the Wu Army, which was a bit much for the current total strength of the Wu Army, but Li Weiguo agreed in order to appease and settle them first. It's just that in addition to receiving the training subjects of Wu's regular army, these more than 30,000 female soldiers have also been given professional medical knowledge by university medical schools, and ordinary nurses are expected to be competent in six months to a year, while doctors will need at least three to five years.

The cost of training 100,000 female medical and nursing soldiers at once can be described as huge, but Li Weiguo still made up his mind to invest a lot and gain even more, and when these 100,000 female medical and nursing soldiers form combat effectiveness in the future, they will greatly reduce the non-combat attrition of Wu army's soldiers, which will have a huge impact on the maintenance and timely recovery of Wu army's combat effectiveness.

It is important to know that the poor medical conditions in this era have led to the fact that the number of non-combat attrition in the war is often several times or even dozens of times the number of direct war deaths, and the armies of various countries have no medical aid on the battlefield or the rescue is not timely, which eventually leads to a large number of soldiers who should have been able to continue fighting, but because of this, they are crippled and lose their combat effectiveness, which not only affects the war, but also the post-war pension expenses and social legacy problems are also huge, and compared with those huge expenditures, it is more cost-effective to vigorously build a medical corps system.

In addition to the female soldiers, it was much easier for the other Taiping soldiers to break up all their original establishments and concentrate them in the new barracks for unified training, which only took a few months, and hundreds of thousands of troops were at their fingertips. (To be continued.) )