Chapter 166: Childhood sweethearts
The Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou was originally the palace of Li Xiucheng of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the old nest was ended, and His Royal Highness the King was furious, and once again gathered 200,000 troops to fight a decisive battle with the British army on the outskirts of Wuxi. The imperial court's policy of amnesty to the world played a very good role in disintegrating, most of the people who were coerced were just eating with their mouths, and they heard about the power of the foreigners' guns, and a large number of Taiping soldiers continued to flee before the decisive battle began, and the soldiers who fled to various places really did not have to be troubled by the encircled Hunan army, according to military needs, these deserters were arranged on a fixed route to evacuate the battlefield in an orderly manner, and the local officials must arrange porridge factories for the displaced people, so that the deserters who had no way out would no longer fall into the grass.
Officials in each locality do not judge their ability to expel displaced people, but rather their ability to shelter them, and every six months they check whether this policy, which is essential for the swift suppression of the uprising, has been implemented. Officials who perform well are commended, while those who do not implement well are demoted.
Qi Taiyu and Xu Rongcun, the two big compradors, were in charge of military rations, clothing, barracks, and other war materials, thus ensuring the logistics of the Hunan army and the British army, and also greatly improving the integrity of military supplies.
Li Hongzhang did not show his strength, but Zeng Guoquan was more out of line, and Zuo Zongtang, who served as a staff member under Hunan Governor Luo Bingzhang, couldn't stand it, regardless of his relationship with Zeng Guofan, and came forward to defend the big comprador, while Zeng Guofan scolded his younger brother and asked the court for guilt.
Zeng Guofan thought that the imperial court could not always rely on foreigners, and he should not punish himself, but Zeng Guoquan was instantly deprived of his position, and he was ordered to go to Beijing to sue for his post. Zeng Guoquan persuaded his brother not to go, otherwise he was afraid that there would be more luck and less luck, and Zeng Guofan couldn't pay attention to it, so he asked Li Hongzhang. Master Li said: "According to the recent style of the imperial court, there should be no problem, the teacher can go with confidence." ”
After some struggle, Zeng Guofan went to Beijing gloomily, full of uneasiness. After Zeng Guofan left Anqing, Zuo Zongtang was appointed governor of Zhejiang, and together with Li Hongzhang, he led the Hunan army to cooperate with the British army against the Taiping army. Hu Guangyong's big backer, Wang Youling, was demoted one level as a warning.
Zeng and Wang were both front-line commanders and top dignitaries with heavy troops, and they actually said that they would withdraw, which greatly demonstrated the authority of the imperial court. When Li Xiucheng learned of the change of commander of the Hunan army, he thought that it was a good opportunity for the final decisive battle, and the 200,000 troops fled and left 150,000, pouring out, and the Taiping army, whose combat strength was not much inferior to the Mongolian Eight Banners, launched a tidal charge against the main force of the British army.
Hong Xiuquan waited for the good news of Li Xiucheng, the king of loyalty, in Tianjing City, but there was no news for more than ten days, and when he felt very bad, the official who went out to spy on intelligence on his side came to report: "The 200,000 army has been wiped out, the whereabouts of King Zhong are unknown, according to a very small number of soldiers who fled back, the collapsed army was properly placed by the Hunan army, so few people went to the direction of Tianjing, and now we have less than 50,000 soldiers guarding Tianjing." ”
Hong Xiuquan is a complete god, and he firmly believes that he has seen God in his dreams, and he has entrusted his order to God to come down to earth to save all souls. His delusions all came from a Christian sermon called "Advice to the World" that he bought at a stall in Guangzhou in his early years, which gave Hong Xiuquan a novel feeling that he had been repeatedly eliminated from the imperial examination.
Hong Xiuquan was praised by adults when he was a child, but when he grew up, he became a failure in life, and after the next failure, he could no longer withstand the blow, fell ill, and in a daze, he delusionally imagined that he had seen God. After coincidences and many twists and turns, with the help of Feng Yunshan and others, he finally pulled up a rebel team with the gods descending to earth as the core selling point.
When Li Xiucheng's army was completely defeated, he still did not wake up, indulging in his own delusions, thinking that God would never let himself fail, and there must be a turnaround, so he decided to resist stubbornly.
The Sino-British alliance was not in a hurry to attack, they needed to implement the imperial court's leniency policy towards the Taiping army, constantly receiving deserters, and recording words of persuasion to surrender with a phonograph, and announcing it with a loudspeaker at regular intervals.
The entire Tianjing was finally surrounded and could not be cleared, and Li Xiucheng, who had not died in the catastrophe, returned to Tianjing and strongly persuaded His Majesty the Heavenly King to "let the city not go". The king of heaven scolded Li Xiucheng angrily, saying that he was the son of God, and the heavenly soldiers and generals were coming, and he must not disturb the morale of the army with nonsense.
Li Hongzhang has a young general who is not afraid of death, patted his chest and expressed his willingness to enter Tianjing City with generous conditions to persuade him to surrender, Li Hongzhang saw people very accurately, saying that Hong Xiuquan was a madman, although the meaning of the court was lenient, but there was no need to risk death to persuade him to surrender.
The youngster wants to make a big contribution, so he insists on his own ideas. Zuo Zongtang admires this young general very much, thinking that he has the demeanor of an ancient sage, since he is so eager to make meritorious contributions, then give it a try.
The young general practiced an impassioned rhetoric several times, and entered the city with a letter of persuasion signed by Lord Li and Lord Zuo, and after a while, the head of the young general was thrown out of the door by the defenders, and the leader of the defenders shouted: "My heavenly army is blessed by God, and will win all battles, and will never surrender. ”
The morale of the Taiping army was greatly boosted, Zuo Zongtang's nose was crooked, he regretted that he had killed the young general, and notified the British army to launch a general attack.
Waiting for the sound of guns and cannons to attack, Zuo Zongtang ran to the foreigner to ask why, and after muttering to the translator, Zuo Zongtang heard an unclear news - the air force of the East India Company came to help in the war, please delay this side for an hour before launching an attack.
After listening to the interpreter's explanation, Zuo Zongtang learned that the airship unit had appeared on the battlefield in Europe and achieved good results, so he had something to do with the Qing Dynasty After the East India Company's war in Italy was basically over, two airships were transferred to help the British army fight.
The British general Grant was dissatisfied with the East India Company's intervention again, but the Duke's face still had to be given, and an hour late would be an hour, he pinched his watch and asked the soldiers to pay attention to the sky, to see what the scene was like for the air force to help the war.
It should be said that the command of the Lombard army led by Mazzini was not excellent, but fortunately, there were airships in the sky that kept reconnoitring and repeatedly saw through the secret operational intentions of the Sardinian army, so the Lombard army was able to gradually gain the absolute initiative on the battlefield, and in a decisive battle, it dropped bombs with airships, destroyed the arsenal of the Sardinian army, and made the Sardinian army collapse and decided to surrender unconditionally.
And Tang Ning found that the decapitation trick was particularly effective when he pacified the change in the capital, so he decided to recruit airships to help in the siege of Tianjing. In view of the fact that the appeal of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom mainly comes from Hong Xiuquan's "personal charm", I have to admit that it is also necessary to fool others into believing that you are the son of God, just like the Virgin Mary fooled others into believing that she was a virgin born of Jesus, and if she changed to another wife, she was beaten to death by her husband. (http://)。
Singapore is the heart of Asia that Downing painstakingly managed, and it was here that he secretly built the most powerful arsenal. Even the most important heavy cruisers were made in Singapore, and other weapons, of course, could not lag behind. The bombshells used in Italy were amateurs, and the ones that were installed in Singapore were "epic", and each bomb even had a name.
This is a one-ton super-bomb that has reached the limit of airship delivery. The heavy gun that Krupp presented at the International Industrial Exposition was a 6-pounder gun, and a ton was 2200 pounds. 500 pounds is the www.biquge.info of the bombshell, this bomb can blow up a huge crater the size of a basketball court on the ground in a thousand meters, the killing radius of its shock wave is about 100 meters, and the power of 2200 pounds is several times greater, you can imagine what the scene is, the boulder will be lifted by the shock wave dozens of meters into the air.
This time, there were two professional strategic bombing airships, each carrying an epic bombshell, one called Little Boy and the other Little Girl. This time the action is called a childhood sweetheart. Taishang had already given the Taiping Army a fairly preferential and lenient plan, but this god stick refused to make peace, so he had to taste the taste of a naughty little boy. In case the little boy fails in the mission, there is also a little girl with his childhood sweetheart.