At the beginning of 1853, more than 100,000 Taiping troops came from Wuchang along the east of the Yangtze River, advancing by land and water, and connecting the famous city, so the southeast shook, and the local officials everywhere suffered from the lack of defense strength of the regular army, and formed regiments to train in order to protect themselves, and Shanghai was no exception, under the auspices of Wu Jianzhang, a civil guard was established mainly of Cantonese people, and because of the favorable conditions, many Cantonese people came from afar to participate in this mercenary group.

This move caused panic among the local gentry in Shanghai, although the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement originated in Guangxi, but the backbone of the force were Cantonese, so the Qing court contemptuously called the Cantonese bandits, and now these regimental exercises are from Guangdong, in case of regional centripetal force with the Cantonese bandits, what can be done, but Wu Jianzhang was unmoved, thinking that the Cantonese people bear hardships and stand hard work, and they can only rely on them to fight.

After the Taiping army occupied Nanjing, it seemed that there was no further strategic offensive against southern Jiangsu, and since the situation was no longer tense and the economic source was cut off, Wu Jianzhang also pushed the boat down the river and disbanded the group training.

These veteran mercenaries lost their jobs and were resentful, so they were quickly absorbed into Hongmen by Liu Lichuan, because he was already preparing to start a riot.

The proposal for the riot was put forward by the Shanghai Xiaodao Society, when the Fujian Xiaodao Society had already killed officials in Xiamen and rebelled, setting up a Ming banner, and the Fujian people in Shanghai were ready to respond positively and invite Hongmen to join the uprising.

In terms of strength, the knife will be stronger, but the prestige is slightly higher than that of Liu Lichuan, and Wu Jianzhang's personal guards are mainly from Xiangshan, and they have been opened by the Liu family, so the riot is dominated by the knife society, with the Ming Dynasty as the call, but the head is Liu Lichuan of Hongmen.

From the beginning of the capture of the county seat of Shanghai, the riot lasted for more than a year, during which the Fujian and Guangdong gangs never united, Liu Lichuan captured Wu Jianzhang, and wanted to release him because of the friendship of his fellow villagers, but the knife society did not agree; Liu Lichuan sent a letter to Nanjing, wanting to change the banner to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and give up the purpose of opposing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty, but the Little Knife Society did not agree, and when the situation was at its most tense, Liu Lichuan wanted to obey the mediation of the foreign consul and surrendered his weapons, but the Little Knife Society still did not agree.

Although there were many differences between the Fujian and Guangdong gangs, one thing was to reach unification, that is, in 1855, when the first day of the Lunar New Year broke through, a fire burned down the county seat of Shanghai, destroying this 600-year-old city.

After the Qing army conquered the county seat of Shanghai, they began to severely punish the Fujian and Cantonese people, in addition to brutal killings and wanted notices, every Minyue guild hall was destroyed, the graves of their ancestors were bulldozed, and heavy taxes were imposed on the Fujian and Cantonese merchants who remained in Shanghai, that is, the Qing court wanted to expel all the Fujian and Cantonese people from Shanghai.

From then on, as a force, the Fujian and Cantonese people never re-entered Shanghai, and the vacancies they left behind would be filled by the people of Suzhou and Ningbo who had fled the Taiping army.

The biggest impact of the Little Knife Society riot on Shanghai, in addition to destroying the county seat, was to break the previous situation of isolation between China and the West.

Originally, there were only 500 Chinese in the concession, all of whom were servants and miscellaneous servants, and the knife society rioted, and 20,000 locals poured into the concession overnight, and then the Taiping army swept through southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, and the local gentry and merchants fled into the razor that they disdained to enter and did not dare to enter, and the population of the concession skyrocketed to 500,000, and the land price rose by as much as 100 times.

After the defeat of the Taiping Army, Shanghai entered a period of steady development, various social forces reappeared, combined, balanced, as later Mao Taizu said, the secret society is a mutual aid group in political and economic struggle, its main members are landless peasants and lost job opportunities handicraft workers, so after Hongmen and Xiaodao will be eliminated, a new gang force is quietly growing among the unemployed nomads.

When it comes to the growth of new gangs in Shanghai, the biggest contributor to this is the famous pidgin.

Pidgin was originally the name of a tributary of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, it leads the water of the Huangpu River to the east through the Baxian Bridge to flow west, the north passes the temple bang, the Songjiabang, the west leads to the north Changbang, the southwest leads to Zhoujing, although it is an inconspicuous small river, but it has the convenience of extending in all directions.

Since the failure of the Xiaodaohui uprising, the population of the Shanghai Public Concession and the French Concession has swelled greatly, and the demand for living materials in these two concessions has also increased day by day, so the peasants in Chuansha, Nanhui, Fengxian and other suburban counties have rocked small boats and loaded with agricultural products from the Pujiang River, moored on the banks of the Zhengjiamu Bridge in Pidgin, and traded with the residents on both sides of the river.

At the beginning, there were some gangsters in Shanghainese who called Xiao Qi San begging, extorting and even robbing here, and the peasants who came to do business shouted for help, and if the patrol of the French Concession came, these small ruffians would set foot on the Zhengjia wooden bridge and flee to the Public Concession, and on the contrary, they fled from the Public Concession to the French Concession.

Gradually, the street children, the prodigals, and the green-skinned hooligans gathered here, and the concession police also worked together to dismiss them, and even used tugboats to exile them to Pudong, but it didn't take long for them to return to their original state, and they became more and more chaotic and filthy, and they were like thieves.

At this time, the small deflated three on the wooden bridge of the Zheng family can not be called the Qing Gang, these people just occupy the gap between the Hongmen and the knife will be suppressed by the government, and the three or five groups gather together to form a new gang, and the original sphere of influence of the Qing Gang is centered on Qingjiangpu in Huai'an Prefecture, extending north along both sides of the canal, and the members are mainly from northern Jiangsu, Anhui and Shandong, and the two are not directly related.

With the vigorous development of the shipping industry, there is no room for profit in the inland water transportation, so these young gang members who rely on the water transportation for a living will set their sights on the more and more prosperous Shanghai.

At that time, Shanghai was full of vitality and mixed fish, many wealthy businessmen sought personal security, and they were proud to join the Green Gang, and even the anti-Qing revolutionary party also joined the Youth Gang one after another in order to be more conducive to safe work, Chen Qimei and Jiang Zhiqing joined the Youth Gang together on the eve of the Xinhai Revolution, and their master was Zhang Renkui, a big character.

However, as a big gang like Hongmen, which has existed for hundreds of years, it is naturally impossible for official suppression to make it disappear, and the Yuelian Press evolved from Shanghai Hongmen in the cracks.

Although the Yuelian Society escaped the suppression of the imperial court in a low-key manner, it gradually lost its foothold in Shanghai, so in order to survive, they had to relocate Tangkou to Fengxian County, which is adjacent to Shanghai County.

Although Fengxian County is adjacent to Shanghai County, its economic level is very different from Shanghai, and at the same time, there are other local gang forces in the county that rob them of the limited nature in the county, which makes their situation more and more difficult.

The current leader of the Cantonese Associated Press is called Sui Yongzhi, who is the apprentice of the former old leader, and has been living with the old leader in the Cantonese Associated Press since he was thirteen years old, and has been taking over the leading company for five years, and has a deep affection for the Cantonese Associated Press.

Sui Yongzhi personally witnessed the Yuelian, which was formed by Hongmen, from prosperity to decline under the joint suppression of the Qinggang and local gangs, so he has always wanted to regain its strength after he took over as the leader of the Yuelian.

Since Sui Yongzhi took over as the leader of the Cantonese Associated Press, he changed the old custom of the Cantonese Associated Press only accepting Cantonese, and began to absorb local green skins and homeless people.

As the saying goes, the sea is tolerant and tolerant, Sui Yongzhi's decision did make the Yuelian Press show signs of ZTE, but his decision was still a little late in time, at this time there were already Sun Wei and Huang Jinrong in Shanghai who had both official protection and gang support, thus preventing the Yuelian Associated Press from developing to a higher level.

Sui Yongzhi is also relatively knowledgeable among the many leaders of the Cantonese Associated Press, and he quickly saw that the factor restricting the development of the Cantonese Associated Press is no longer the number of helpers, but the silver in his pocket.

In Shanghai, the place with the most silver is naturally the banks and money houses all over the Bund, but these places have a strong security force, and there are also layers of protection in the bank, even if they eliminate the guards of the bank and the bank in the process of robbery, but they will not be able to open the vault for a while, and it can provide enough time for the support of the house.

Under the thousands of choices, Sui Yongzhi set his sights on Xiangfu Gold Store, although the largest gold store in the Hongkou area also has a strict security system, but in Sui Yongzhi's view, it is just some embroidered pillows, as long as he has enough weapons, breaking through the defense of Xiangfu Gold Store is just a hand-to-hand capture.

Sui Yongzhi knew very well that it was impossible to complete the task with only a few broken knives in his hands, so he entrusted a friend he knew to buy some firearms.

The friend entrusted by Sui Yongzhi was a landlord in the countryside of Fengxian County, and the landlord had bought two long guns from Sun Li in order to protect his family and house, so after receiving Sui Yongzhi's commission, he did not bother the two masters and purchased nine short guns in Sun Li's hands.

Although Sui Yongzhi had some insight, he would not have thought that the guns and ammunition used in their hands were all determined by their identity, and the detectives who went to explore afterwards determined the model of the pistol from the bullet casings they left behind, which was a pit bulldog revolver, which was a serialized revolver that was very popular in Britain and continental Europe, designed by Webley, initially as a miniature personal self-defense weapon, and later copied by a large number of manufacturers in Europe, especially Belgium, U.S. President James Garfield was assassinated by an assassin armed with a bulldog revolver.