The remnant sun was like blood, and the ancient city of Tianjing trembled in the artillery fire.

Besieged by the Hunan army and the Huai army for more than half a year, the Taiping army in the city has killed and wounded more than 100,000 people, although there are still more than 100,000 people still resisting, but the morale has become weaker and weaker, and the city is already a matter of time.

Li Hongzhang is proud, as the minister of Beiyang, he now controls the financial power of the entire north, although Yi Xin made a hindrance from it so that he could not use all the money and grain of the northern provinces, but compared to Anhui, which has not been able to scavenge the silver, he still got a lot, enough to support the Huai army to continue to storm Tianjing City.

On the other hand, Zeng Guofan became more and more impatient, saying that he was not jealous of Li Hongzhang It was a lie, which person did not live to fight for face, Zeng Guofan was also a mortal with the naked eye, and he couldn't jump out of the mortal dust. He was able to calm down at first, but as the Huai army repeatedly gained the upper hand in the siege, the Hunan army weakened the offensive because the financial resources could not keep up and the ammunition supply became more and more difficult.

Listening to the guns and cannons on the Huai army's side all day long stronger than his own side, Zeng Guofan finally couldn't sit still, and also learned from Li Hongzhang to contact the British and French powers to seek support from foreigners. Even if you don't fight for that throne, you have to fight for a breath and a face.

Li Hongzhang cooperated with the French military to train a Changjie army, which also included French soldiers, making the combat effectiveness very strong. Zeng Guofan then asked the British for help, and the British were also very interested in the Huguang region controlled by Zeng Guofan, and then set up a consulate in Hankou, the seat of Zeng Guofan, and began to negotiate with Zeng Guofan.

France's intention in supporting Li Hongzhang is obvious, that is, it wants to cultivate agents in China, that is, to fight against Li Weiguo, but also to better invade China and expand its rights and interests.

Similarly, Britain is not far behind, following in the footsteps of France. He established Zeng Guofan as a British agent in China and began to vigorously support the Hunan army.

The British were clearly richer than the French and had much more power in the Far East than the French. In particular, after three months of war against Japan, the British captured the capital of the Tokugawa shogunate, Edo (present-day Tokyo), sacked the Tokugawa Ieyasu Imperial Palace (present-day Tokyo Imperial Palace), and finally burned down the palace that had lasted for hundreds of years in order to cover up the invasion.

The Tokugawa shogunate was severely defeated by the British army, and was finally forced to sign the Treaty of Edo with the British, which stipulated that Tsushima Island would be ceded to the British and that the British would be compensated 84 million yen (about 2.5 million pounds). The British were allowed to establish a legation in Edo and send troops to garrison them, as well as to open coastal cities as treaty ports, and the British were allowed to open factories, lease land, and recruit workers in Japan.

The British army lost the Second Yapian War in the Qing Dynasty and suffered heavy losses, and finally regained their dignity and self-confidence in Japan.

The British army won the war against Japan, and part of the troops needed to return to Singapore to recuperate. So he sent 5,000 British troops to join the Hunan army of Zeng Guofan, and Zeng Guofan was responsible for all expenses.

Zeng Guofan didn't have so much silver to feed the 5,000 British army, but he was unwilling to lag behind Li Hongzhang in order to be crowned king. He gritted his teeth and agreed to borrow money from Britain to buy British weapons and equipment, and to combine the 5,000 British army and the 5,000 Hunan elite army into one army with the taxes of the two provinces as security. No. Victorious Army.

In this way, Li Hongzhang had a mixed Chinese and French Chang Jie army, and Zeng Guofan then also had a mixed Chinese and British Chang Jie army. Because these two armies were joined by active soldiers from the British and French armies, they had rich experience in line infantry combat, so they quickly formed combat effectiveness and were quickly put into the battle to attack Tianjing.

The historical Battle of Tianjing lasted for several years, but now the Taiping Army has suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Tianjing, and the precarious situation of Tianjing City is directly related to the participation of these two mixed armies.

In Tianjing City, the Tianwang Mansion was bleak.

Hong Xiuquan's face is yellow and thin at the moment, and his eyes have lost their former brilliance.

He regrets it very much now, he should have listened to Li Xiucheng's words and told the city not to leave. Now that he is besieged in Tianjing City, he has eaten Wowotou for several months, which makes him want to vomit when he sees Wowotou now.

Even Hong Xiuquan has eaten Wowotou for several months, which shows that the food in the entire Tianjing City has been reduced to a certain extent. The soldiers and ordinary people at the bottom can only eat tree bark and grass roots every day, so not everyone can eat it, people starve to death every day, and the phenomenon of eating the corpses of dead Taiping soldiers often occurs, and even cannibalism occurs, which can be described as a tragedy in the world.

Hong Xiuquan in the previous life was very lucky, because Tianjing City was broken after his death, although his grave was dug up by the Qing army and killed, but after all, he couldn't feel it. But Hong Xiuquan in this life is very miserable, before he died, Tianjing City was breached.

The fuse that caused the destruction of Tianjing City was that Shi Dakai's 200,000 Taiping army elite was defeated, and Shi Dakai surrendered to Li Weiguo with the remaining 100,000 troops.

As early as the early days of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the soldiers of the Taiping army never had a record of surrendering, and all of them were killed in battle. However, with the Tianjing Incident, the old generals of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were gone, and the veterans were all wiped out subsequently, and the new soldiers were not so determined to fight to the end. Because most of the recruits were ordinary people from all over the country who were coerced by the Taiping Army, their families were ruined to a large extent because of the rebellion of the Taiping Army, and they were only forced to join the Taiping Army in desperation, so their loyalty to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was greatly reduced, and they would never let go of the opportunity to flee for their lives, so deserters and soldiers who surrendered to the Qing Army often appeared on the battlefield in the later period of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

In addition to the Qing army's Eight Banners captured the Taiping prisoners and never left them alive, whether it was the Hunan army or the Huai army, they all changed their tactics and stopped killing prisoners and surrendering soldiers, and some Taiping troops chose to surrender to join the Qing army camp, among which the famous one was Ding Ruchang who led 10,000 Taiping troops to surrender Li Hongzhang.

However, the news of this incident was tightly sealed by the top level of the Taiping Army, which made the Taiping Army suspicious. But now Shi Dakai led 100,000 Taiping troops to surrender to Li Weiguo, but Li Weiguo sent people to vigorously publicize it, so that all the soldiers and civilians in Tianjing City knew about it.

The Wu army stationed in Xiaolingwei was responsible for attacking the south gate of Tianjing, fishing for three days and drying nets for two days, and the attack on the Taiping army was not very active, and even allowed some of the people in Tianjing City to go out of the city to cut firewood every day, and what was even more excessive was that the generals of the Wu army also secretly sold grain to the people in the city at a high price.

Of course, all this is a strategy set by Li Weiguo, on the one hand, let the Hunan army and the Huai army continue to pull hatred, so that the Taiping army's hatred value against the Wu army will continue to decrease, so as to facilitate Zhao'an in the future. It was successfully recognized by the common people in the jurisdiction of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. On the other hand, Li Weiguo delayed a few months in Yungui in order to encircle and suppress Shi Dakai, in order to buy time to wait for Li Weiguo to return to the army, Li Weiguo specially allowed the Wu army to secretly sell grain to the people, these grains must have fallen into the hands of the Taiping army, which can make the Taiping army have the strength to deal with the Huai army and the Hunan army, and the sale of grain at a high price has also brought huge income to the Wu army, hundreds of thousands of taels of silver come into the account every day, and it can also find out the intelligence in the city, killing multiple birds with one stone.

For Wu Jun's moves. Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were so angry that they scolded every day, but unfortunately they didn't dare to take action against Wu Jun, so they could only send people to fight with Wu Jun every day. However, Wu Jun naturally refused to admit his account, insisting that he was following the orders of King Wu and showing compassion for the innocent people in the city, which was humanitarianism, and even the special representatives of Britain and France, who did not know the truth, believed it, praised Li Weiguo, and ordered Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang to be unable to speak.

But Wu Jun's "kindness" was used by Li Xiucheng. When Hong Xiuquan no longer wanted to eat Wowotou and asked Li Xiucheng to take him to break through, Li Xiucheng quickly formulated a breakthrough plan.

Obviously, it is impossible for the Hunan army and the Huai army to break out. On the contrary, the Wu army, which has not moved the real character, has a chance to break out.

After years of observation, Li Xiucheng found that Li Weiguo's army had never dealt a dead hand against the Taiping army, and this was an opportunity to take advantage of.

As a result, Li Xiucheng felt that Wu Jun must be lax in his defense. The breakout is the most promising.

In this way, the Taiping army quietly gathered 30,000 troops outside the south gate, almost the last elite in Tianjing City. Prepare for the final breakout.

It's just that Hong Xiuquan is reluctant to give up his glory and wealth and the three thousand beauties of the harem, even if he breaks through, he also brings dozens of cars of gold, silver and jewelry, harem women's dependents, female battalions, as well as civil and military officials and their families, there are tens of thousands of people, more than the breakout soldiers prepared by Li Xiucheng.

Li Xiucheng repeatedly told Hong Xiuquan that he couldn't take so many people out of the city together, but Hong Xiuquan couldn't bear his gold and silver treasures and harem beauties, so he was not qualified to talk about other civil and military officials, let alone break through without bringing hundreds of civil and military officials.

Hong Xiuquan then ordered Li Xiucheng to find a way, which suddenly made Li Xiucheng instantly become bitter.

In desperation, Li Xiucheng could only obey, so the breakthrough operation began.

However, Li Xiucheng still misjudged the form of the Wu army outside the south gate.

Don't look at the lax defense of the Wu army on the surface, it is all deliberate, and the Wu army has always liked the tactics of loosening the outside and tightening the inside to confuse the enemy. In the outermost periphery, the Wu army only deployed a town of troops, only a simple wooden wall, blocking the enemy's sight, and the Wu officers and soldiers on it looked like they were hanging and defenseless.

However, there are more than a dozen lines of defense built inside, all of which are dug into the ground, dug deep trenches, and artillery are equipped with echelon firepower, and there are two towns of infantry defending in the trenches without showing their heads, so it is difficult to see their presence outside, especially at night, and they cannot be found.

Li Xiucheng led the death squad to launch a surprise attack on the first line of defense of the Wu army, concentrating all the artillery fire available to the Taiping army, and collapsing the wall of the Wu army in an instant.

The Third Front Army of the Wu Army, which was responsible for the siege of Tianjing, consisted of the third and fourth towns of the Second Army, the sixth town of the Third Army, and the seventeenth and eighteenth towns of the Ninth Army, a total of five towns. The commander of the front army was Chen Liang, and the chief of staff of the front army was Hai Mingze, and the two of them were the division commander and chief of staff of the fourth town respectively, and they made great contributions because they transported all the treasures of the Old Summer Palace back to Shanghai intact, and when Li Weiguo reorganized the Shanghai army to establish the Wu army, the two of them were directly promoted and sent to the Tianjing battlefield as commanders.

Of course, Chen Liang and Hai Mingze's official positions can't suppress Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan, in order to avoid letting Wu Jun suffer a secret loss, Li Weiguo persuaded Su Sanniang to let Su Sanniang sit in the Jiangnan camp as the princess of Wu, so that Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang have to weigh if they want to find fault.

But there is one thing Li Weiguo doesn't know, that is, before he left the Shanghai Southern Expedition, Su Sanniang was already pregnant, but Su Sanniang thought that Li Weiguo would come back in two or three months and didn't tell him, but Li Weiguo went for more than half a year, but Su Sanniang had to sit in the military camp with a big belly, which was really hard.

At this moment, Su Sanniang was snoozing, and the sudden sound of cannon woke her up.

Soon, the female guard came in to report and inform Su Sanniang that the Taiping army was going to break through, but she chose to break through from the Wu army's defense line.

Su Sanniang was suddenly anxious. After changing clothes, he came to the headquarters and saw Chen Liang and Hai Mingze deploying combat operations and ordering the three armies.

Seeing Su Sanniang coming, Chen Liang, Hai Mingze and other generals immediately knelt down on one knee to pay respects.

Su Sanniang waved her hand and said, "No need to be polite, tell this palace, how is the situation?" ”

Chen Liang and the others got up suddenly, and Hai Mingze, as the chief of staff, reported to Su Sanniang by him.

"Princess Qiqi, tens of thousands of people of the Taiping army suddenly launched a surprise attack on our army's position. They have already broken through the first line of defense of our army, and it seems that their posture is preparing to break through. ”

Su Sanniang was clear about the military deployment of the Wu army, she was a general, and she knew that this was the strategy formulated by the Wu army to loosen the outside and tighten the inside to lure the enemy, so she was not surprised by the loss of the first line of defense.

"Tens of thousands of Taiping troops are here, it should be the last elite of the Taiping army in Tianjing City, it seems that they are ready to give up Tianjing City, this is a desperate breakthrough."

Chen Liang nodded and said, "The princess expected it to be good. Hong Xiuquan should be hiding in the breakout army, it won't be long before the Taiping army will run into our real defense line, and they will definitely not be able to break through. ”

Su Sanniang nodded slightly. Immediately, Emei frowned slightly, and said: "With such a big movement on our side, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang will definitely find the abnormality, and soon they will judge that the Taiping army is breaking through from our side." ”

Hemingze smiled: "The princess doesn't have to worry. With the strong combat effectiveness of our army, we can deal with third-rate armies such as the Taiping Army, in the words of the king. Destroy them in minutes. By the time Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang arrived with their troops, we would have already ended the battle. ”

The crowd burst into laughter.

Su Sanniang said: "This palace is not worried about this, but is worried that Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang will not rush over, on the contrary, they will immediately launch a final general attack on Tianjing and rush into Tianjing City first." ”

Everyone's smiles instantly froze, and then they all changed to a dignified color, obviously no one was willing to let the Hunan army and the Huai army attack Tianjing first. It is true that Li Weiguo has been crowned king, and the reward of being the first to attack Tianjing City is no longer needed for Li Weiguo, but the generals of the Wu army do not want others to also be crowned kings and sit on an equal footing with Li Weiguo.

Chen Liang suddenly said: "The matter is now, the only way is to fight quickly, we can't blindly wait for the Taiping army to break through, we have to carry out a counter-charge and go directly into the city from the south gate." ”

Hemingze also agreed: "This is a God-given opportunity, and we will allocate our troops." ”

Soon, the distribution of forces was completed, and the third and sixth towns continued to defend in their positions to prevent the Taiping army from breaking through. The fourth town, the seventeenth and eighteenth towns, launched an attack on Tianjing City, with the fourth town serving as the main attack, and the seventeenth and eighteenth towns serving as the countermeasures and flanking cover.

At this time, Lin Getian, the chief of staff of the sixth town, suddenly said: "There is no problem with leaving only the troops of the third town and the sixth town to defend, but since the Taiping army is desperate to break through, it must be very brave and fight to the death. ”

This reminds everyone that it is useless to capture the thief and capture the king, otherwise it will be useless to break the Tianjing City.

Su Sanniang suddenly said: "Staff Officer Lin is right, you can't let Hong Xiuquan go." ”

Chen Liang, Hai Mingze and the others glanced at each other, and the former said: "In that case, anyway, the Taiping army has broken through with all its might, there should not be many troops in the city, and the fourth town should not be a big problem to attack the city alone." Seventeen and Eighteen Towns stayed, once Hong Xiuquan's traces were found, they would do their best to surround him, and he would never be allowed to run away regardless of whether he was dead or alive. ”

This arrangement was unanimously affirmed by everyone, and the order was immediately issued, and Wu Jun quickly moved.

At this time, Li Xiucheng led the Taiping army to the vicinity of the second line of defense of the Wu army, and was immediately hit by the fierce artillery fire of the Wu army.

The guns on the battlefield were deafening, and the dense fire fired brightly up the sky in an instant.

The soldiers of the Wu army lay down in the trenches and shot at the oncoming Taiping army, shooting out one after another, taking away one life after another.

Li Xiucheng was sad, he thought that breaking through the wall of the Wu army would be completed, but he didn't expect that the Wu army's camp was just a disguise, and the real killing move was waiting for him here.

When the Taiping army broke through, all of them were lightly armed, and heavy weapons such as artillery were concentrated on attacking the first line of defense of the Wu army.

Of course, even if the Taiping army brought their artillery over to deal with the Wu army's position, it would actually have no great effect, because the Taiping army's artillery was aimed directly and suitable for attacking targets above the ground, but the Wu army's position was dug below the ground, and the Taiping army's artillery shells would be difficult to exert their power.

On the other hand, the Wu artillery position, which was also hidden under the ground, the 59-type infantry cannon could shoot outward, but it could shoot shells into the Taiping army, killing and injuring a large number of Taiping soldiers.

Looking at the fallen soldiers of the Taiping Army one by one, Li Xiucheng's heart was dripping blood, and then he realized that the strong combat effectiveness of the Wu army was not boasted, and it was able to defeat 200,000 British and French troops, which was really not an ordinary army.

It's just that the breakthrough is imminent, and if you don't succeed, you will become a benevolent, Li Xiucheng has no choice, not to mention that Hong Xiuquan is behind him.

"Rush me!"

"Fight at night, don't be afraid of muskets!"

Li Xiucheng shouted loudly and ordered the whole army to charge again.

This is experience, the Taiping army can hold out for so long, already know the advantages and disadvantages of the musket battle, at night, the power of the musket is greatly reduced, during the day the Taiping army is pressed and beaten, but at night they will retaliate back, using cold weapons to recapture the lost position during the day.

However, Li Xiucheng was sad again, the Wu army on the opposite side was very cunning and shrewd, only to see that hundreds of searchlights suddenly turned on on their position, instantly illuminating the front, and the figure of the Taiping army could be seen clearly.

Fighting at night, it is difficult to fight in the open and in the dark, but it is easy to fight in the dark.

The Wu army was hidden in the trenches, in the dark, not affected by the light, but the Taiping army was blinded by the searchlight, and they couldn't see anything in an instant, and they stood there one by one waiting to be hit by the guns and shells of the Wu army.

For a time, the Taiping army was bleeding, and more than half of Li Xiucheng's 30,000 elites were killed or wounded in an instant. (To be continued.) )