The second is to ask for a monthly pass. Big Luo Luo and Little Lori wish you all a happy Juneteenth.

Walking in Shanghai, looking at the Wuzhou Book House, Zhu Jishi, the great son of tomorrow, was sitting behind a wide mahogany desk, and he was talking in a solemn voice with Zuo Zongtang, Luo Zenan and Li Hongzhang about the situation in the Central Plains.

Of course, the situation is very grim, and the rapid change in the situation in the Central Plains after the Huaxian War is completely beyond the expectations of the Zhu Ming Group - the reason for this situation is mainly because the speed of the change in the situation completely exceeds the speed at which the Zhu Ming Group obtains information from the north, coupled with Yang Xiuqing's deliberate blockade. The Zhu Ming clique's northern policy is based entirely on outdated or erroneous information. Nature is passive everywhere.

Moreover, the rapid expansion of the Zhu Ming group in the south also weakened their influence on the situation in the north. In just a few months after the Battle of Huaxian, Zhu Ming's territory expanded from the original five provinces to 13 provinces (Liangguang, Huguang, Fujian and Zhejiang, Liangjiang and three provinces, Yunnan-Guizhou, Sichuan, and the newly established Huaibei Province). Although the newly acquired eight provinces are almost "determined by transmission", it does not mean that there are no stubborn people loyal to the Manchus on the territory of these eight provinces. In particular, before the Manchu Qing Dynasty lost Beijing, the Son of Heaven, they had ordered the governors of all provinces to organize regimental exercises. These regimental exercises are not only the powerful forces of big warlords such as the Liangjiang Training Army, but also the regimental training armies run by the landlords of various prefectures and counties, and the total number is only hundreds of thousands, which is several times more than Zhu Ming's Wang Army!

If he did not completely disarm these landlord militias and turn the newly acquired heroes and powers of the eight provinces back into gentry, Zhu Ming would not be able to fully control the land, wealth, and people of these eight provinces. And the difficulty of mastering the territory thoroughly. It is several times more difficult to obtain these sites nominally.

Other than that. It is also urgent to promote the modernization of the territory of the 13 provinces. Now Europe, the United States. It is already at the end of the first industrial revolution, and the second industrial revolution will be in full swing in the next ten or twenty years. If China, which is already lagging behind, wants to catch up with the trend of development in the world, it must complete the road of industrialization that the great powers took 70 or 80 years to complete within this decade. This is not an easy thing, and the things to be done are even more complicated, and naturally it also occupies the main energy of Zhu Datianzi.

And for the Central Plains, for the North...... Zhu Datianzi did not want to fight and draw. However, the combat power of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the Northern Expedition to the Manchu Dynasty completely dispelled Zhu Jishi's idea of quick unification.

"Your Majesty, Lin Muweng refuses to give up Jinan, he thinks that the city of Jinan is strong and has sufficient reserves. The defenders also had seventy or eighty thousand people, and they were completely capable of fighting. What he meant was to use Jinan as a stone mill, grind the flesh and blood of the Taiping army, exhaust their main force, and then I Ming took the opportunity to go on a northern expedition, fight a decisive battle with the main force of the Taiping army, and settle the Central Plains as soon as possible. ”

It was Li Hongzhang who spoke, and he had just returned from Jinan - just before the Taiping army besieged the city! Lin Zexu stubbornly rejected the suggestion to abandon Jinan and leave, and chose to defend the fortified city of Jinan.

"Zuo Xiang, military advisor. What do you guys think? Can you listen to Lin Zexu's suggestion? "Zhu Jishi asked Zuo Zongtang and Luo Zenan for advice as usual, although in the matter of the Northern Expedition. He had already had an opinion, but he still wanted to hear the meaning of his two wise men.

"Lin Muweng underestimated Yang Xiuqing's talents, if Jinan Jiancheng is difficult to overcome, Yang Xiuqing will not blindly attack." Luo Zenan shook his head, "If I were Yang Xiuqing, I would dig a long trench and besiege the city, besiege it for a year or two, and exhaust the reserves in Jinan City, and Jinan would go down without a fight." ”

Siege of a city is always a military problem, and besieging a city and starving for food has been the most effective way to deal with a fortified city since ancient times. In the military history of ancient and modern China and foreign countries, it is common to see examples of battles that lasted for several years in siege cities.

"It would be nice if we could surround it for a year or two." Zuo Zongtang stroked his beard and frowned, "In today's general trend, the Taiping Army is conducive to a quick decision, and I am conducive to lasting. The Taiping Army's reliance on cults to demagogue, its use of burning and killing to coerce the people, and its reliance on looting to raise military funds are not long-term solutions. And I am a master of the way of middle school, using Western techniques, according to the land of wealth, to run new schools, open factories, and open commerce, if I can manage it carefully, I will be able to make the national strength a thousand miles a day. If the decisive battle between the north and the south is held in three years, I should have an eighty percent chance of winning. If the decisive battle between the north and the south is held in five years, my Ming will have a 100% chance of winning. ”

"But things like running Western studies, opening factories, and engaging in commerce can also be done by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom." Li Hongzhang said a little worriedly, "Listening to Lin Muweng, the Taiping army is now fighting with the British, and the development of Tianjin's commercial port is also very good. In addition, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also had a "Heavenly Dynasty Tianmu System", which divided land equally, controlled industry and commerce, and integrated military and government...... Someone wrote in the Western-language newspapers of Tianjin and Hong Kong that the beliefs and systems of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were superior to those of the Ming Dynasty, and that if they could be thoroughly implemented, the future might be limitless! So it's better to make a quick decision. ”

Zuo Zongtang smiled disdainfully: "It's just a few Western nerds talking nonsense!" How can the beliefs and systems of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom be superior to my Ming Dynasty? ”

Zhu Jishi smiled bitterly and shook his head, because most of the Western nerds who put forward this point of view were professors from Jishi University that he invited from Europe at a high price. Among them was Louie. Pasteur, Joseph. Liszt and Charles. Darwin, Friedrich. Willer, Justus. Feng. Baron Riebig, Robert. Bunsen and other people who were famous in later generations. These people are the most outstanding scientists of the 19th era, Zhu Jishi had contacts with them when he was in Europe, and now they are all fooled into Daming Jishi University because of Zhu Jishi's warm invitation and high salary and abundant scientific research funds, and they have also become academicians of the Daming Royal Academy of Sciences.

Originally, these scientists did not have much interest in Eastern politics, they were not politicians after all. However, after returning to Guangdong from Beijing, Brother Trigo, vice president of Jishi University, gave a report entitled "A Study of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Question" at Jishi University in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, and wrote a travelogue of what he saw and heard in the north, which was published in Ta Kung Pao. As a result, the issue of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom became a hot topic among foreigners in Guangdong, especially after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom settled in Beijing, and it seems that favoring this peasant regime has become the mainstream view of a group of foreign scholars.

In their view, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was carrying out a complete revolution, not only to overthrow the decaying Manchu dynasty, but also to eradicate the Confucianism that had corrupted the hearts of the Chinese and replace it with a variant of Christianity—Western scholars who were of course Christians, but not as heretical as Trigot. In their view, Christian heresy is still stronger than Confucianism in China. Moreover, the civilized countries of this era are all Christian countries. Therefore, if China wants to truly rejuvenate, the best way to do it is to abandon Confucianism at its roots and replace it with Western Christianity.

In addition, the "Heavenly Dynasty Tianmu System", which has a strong egalitarian color, has also attracted a lot of applause. The reason is naturally related to the utopian socialist trend that is gradually becoming popular in Europe at present. The "Heavenly Dynasty System of Fields and Mu" is undoubtedly extremely close to utopian socialism, especially in terms of the economic system, and seems to be completely in line with the viewpoint of utopian socialism.

According to the views of several foreign professors who also think that they have studied sociology and economics, the "Heavenly Dynasty Tianmu System" has fundamentally destroyed China's traditional backward feudal small-scale peasant economic system and achieved a revolutionary breakthrough in the organizational form of social production! It can effectively concentrate all the financial, material, and human resources of northern China for war and industrialization.

Zhu Ming's current policies include opening a parliament, enacting a constitution, running a newspaper, establishing Western-style education, encouraging industrial and commercial investment, establishing a central bank, forming a Western-style army and navy, and hiring Western talents. Although the intensity is very strong and the results in the short term are remarkable, it is not enough to reach the root of the matter after all, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is just a façade.

If Zhu Ming and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom fought a decisive battle in the short term, Zhu Ming would still be able to have an overwhelming advantage in national strength by relying on the short-term benefits of various new policies. However, if the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is given 5 to 10 years to completely replace Confucianism with the belief of worshipping God, and the "Heavenly Dynasty Tianmu System" is put into practice, the national strength of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom will definitely catch up! (To be continued......)