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At the beginning of the offensive of the Red Army of the Celestial Empire, there was nothing that the Red Army could not run, and one ran faster than the other. Not only is it fast, but the progress of the Red Second Front and the Red Third Front is still amazingly fast.

Let's take a look at the current situation in Henan and Shandong first, and it is not difficult for everyone to understand why the progress of these two armies is amazingly fast.

The rapid progress of Henan and Shandong is inseparable from two important factors. One is the unprecedented catastrophe in eastern Henan and southwestern Shandong led by the diversion of the Yellow River last year; The other is the guerrilla column of the Luyu-Anhui Red Army under the leadership of Zhang Lexing and Gong Deshu, which has not stopped for a moment in the four or five months since the other armies were reorganized and expanded.

On August 1, 1855, the Yellow River broke in Henan Lanyang (Lankao) copper tile box, suddenly, the turbulent Yellow River water is three strands overwhelming, one from the Zhaowang River to the south of Caozhou Mansion in Shandong, two from the north and south of Dongming County, Zhili two points to note, through Puzhou, Fanxian County, Shandong, to Zhangqiu Town, after the confluence through the canal, always return to the Daqing River into the sea.

As a result, parts of eastern Henan, southwestern Shandong, and northwestern Shandong have become the largest affected areas. Pu, Fan below, Shou, Zhang above all submerged, other such as Dongping, Wenshang, Pingyin and other prefectures and counties, where the canal and the Daqing River pass through the place are affected, Shandong province has five prefectures and more than 20 prefectures and counties affected, southwest Shandong, northwest of the vast area of yellow water crossflow.

The Yellow River is known for its "good silting, good decision, and good migration", and has always had the saying that "two breaks in three years, and one diversion in a hundred years". Of course, whether it is a breach or a diversion, the catastrophe it has caused is unspeakable.

By 1853, the situation in the vast areas of northern Jiangsu and southern Shandong was already "starving and dying" and "corpses were everywhere," and there was even a tragic situation of "corpses that had fallen and were half cut and eaten by hungry people." Due to the repeated collapse of the Yellow River and the ineffective governance of the Manchu government, eastern Henan, northern Anhui, northern Jiangsu, and southern Lunan had already become a miserable hell on earth.

At the beginning of the Yellow River breach, the Manchu government had planned to block the mouth, if not for anything else, but to use the natural barrier of the Yellow River to prevent the "long hair" from moving north in the future. Who knows, when the governor of the East River sent people to investigate the site of the breach, they measured that the distance between the east and west dams of the breaching was 1780 zhang wide. Oh, my God! If such a big breach is to be successfully blocked, it is really too huge a project, and the labor required alone will be at least tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and the silver is not hundreds or tens of millions, let alone even think about it.

Where would Cixi in the Forbidden City be in such a mood. In order to drum up loyalty and save **, she almost sold herself publicly, where is there any spare time to think about this. “…… The mourning family is deeply sympathetic to the disasters brought by the Yellow River to the people, and it is even more difficult to sleep peacefully when they think of the small people who have been dissolved and left to live. However, if you think about it, for those lawless rebels, the trouble of the Yellow River is still just a disease of ringworm, and bandit rebellion is the great trouble of my Qing Dynasty. Therefore, it is hoped that all yamen, from top to bottom, should take advantage of the situation and try to eliminate the yellow troubles......"

After Cixi issued this edict to the Military Aircraft Department, for the battle that was going on in northern Anhui at that time, the government in Shandong not only allowed the yellow water to flow, but also requisitioned more than 100,000 military salaries from various prefectures and counties to send them to the camp of Shengbao to comfort the army. What's more, before the first month of this year, not only did the disaster relief funds and life-saving food that the victims were looking forward to not come down, but the imperial court also issued a strict decree that Shandong must raise another 200,000 taels of silver to repay the loan for the purchase of ordnance and equipment of Russian allies.

The inaction of the Manchu government before and after the diversion of the Yellow River made the danger of the diversion of the Yellow River even worse and extremely tragic. In the year of the breach, the Yamen, the governor of Shandong, had calculated that there were 1,821 villages with 10 points of disaster (i.e., no harvest of grains), 1,388 villages with 9 points of disaster, 2,177 people with 8 points of disaster, 1,011 people with 7 points of disaster, 774 people with 6 points of disaster, and no statistics at all for those with less than 6 points. It can be seen that 7,161 villages were affected by more than six points of the disaster. What does this mean? At that time, Shandong was one of the most densely populated provinces, and if each village was counted by 200 households and five people per household, more than 7 million refugees were affected by more than six of the hardest-hit areas.

It is not difficult to imagine what the scene would have been like at that time, the endless yellow water source came endlessly, the previous rise did not disappear, the continuous rise came suddenly, one village after another was washed, and it instantly became Zeguo, and it was vast and boundless as far as the eye could see. Countless victims of the disaster are scattered on the plateau in the foothills, building small shacks that are shaking in the wind and rain, and temporarily sheltering. Even the prefectures and counties in the two major prefectures of Jinan and Wuding, such as Licheng and Zhangqiu, are also mostly trapped in the huge immersion, and there are countless victims.

The Manchu Qing Dynasty's exploitation and looting of chickens and eggs caused millions of people in Shandong to struggle on the line of death, "without a rafter to live, without a place to eat and to eat" or "to die of hunger and water".

As a result, the victims in the neighboring areas controlled by the Celestial Empire government began to move south in droves, while more of those who stayed behind, in order to survive, brewed one after another large and small civil uprisings.

It was under these circumstances that the guerrilla columns commanded by Zhang Lexing and Gong Deshu penetrated deep into these areas.

As soon as the Battle of Northern Anhui ended, the Shandong-Henan-Anhui guerrilla column, under the leadership of Zhang Lexing, Gong Deshu, Ren Huabang, Niu Hongsheng, Zhang Zongyu, and others, took advantage of the geographical advantages of the diversion of the Yellow River to quickly open up four guerrilla zones in southern Henan, eastern Henan, western Luxi, and southern Lunan.

In addition to leaving the two main regiments in their hands as a mobile strike force for the column at any time, in accordance with the unified arrangement, the Luyu-Anhui guerrilla column was all divided into small work teams one by one, with a few tens or 100 people, and no more than 2 or 300 people.

On the one hand, the various task forces unleashed the people to resist donations and grain donations, forced the landlords and gentry to reduce rents and interest rates, gave the peasants their due living space, and organized the people to save themselves. On the one hand, with the shape of shì, sometimes gathering and sometimes dispersing, and the officers and soldiers who dared to go to the countryside to urge donations and distribute grain at the beginning, and the stubborn local tyrants and bullies who did not want to go.

In the vast areas of southern Henan, eastern Henan, and southwestern Shandong, all kinds of notices and posters issued by guerrilla columns in the name of the Celestial Government can be seen almost everywhere. As long as the landlords and rich men give up their wanton exploitation and inhuman abuse of the tenants, and as long as they do not gather illegal armed forces to resist the Red Army, the government of the Celestial Empire will not make it difficult for you to protect your legitimate property.

As for those peasants who participated in the regimental training and were brave in the countryside, the guerrilla columns also gave them repeated solemn warnings: "...... Regardless of whether they voluntarily or forcibly joined the reactionary group training, as long as they repented, the Celestial Empire government would not be in the past. If someone still insists on not withdrawing from the reactionary landlord forces that are enemies of the Red Army in time, not only will he have no future, but the government of the Celestial Empire will also not guarantee that your family will be able to benefit from the patriotic movement such as rent reduction and interest reduction. The government of the Celestial Empire has always had clear grievances and grievances, and no one should leave anything to chance and step on two boats."

While other units have grown up in the course of rest and reorganization, the redevelopment of the Luyu-Anhui guerrilla column has been achieved by relying on little by little efforts and by itself.

The times create heroes, and in the land of eastern Henan and southwestern Lu, two young guerrilla heroes who were viciously cursed by their enemies as "big and small Hades", Ren Huabang and Zhang Zongyu, were born.

Under the heavy blow of the two main regiments of the Shandong-Henan-Anhui guerrilla column under the command of Ren Huabang and Zhang Zongyu, the local government of the Manchu Qing Dynasty was depressed, and the bully landlords and local tyrants were forced to swallow their anger, and the people from all over the country gathered around the Red Army work team, especially in western Henan and southwestern Lu, where the people suffered greatly from the flooding of the Yellow River and the people could not survive, and one village after another began to gradually evolve into a strong red fortress.

The Manchu government could not collect donations and collect grain. Without money and food, there would be no salary, no due soldiers could be recruited, and there would be no fighting spirit of the Qing army. In order to reverse this passive situation, at the beginning, naturally there were officers and soldiers who left Fuzhou and went to the countryside to try to clear the situation.

However, if there are fewer soldiers and horses, they will immediately become rats crossing the street, and the work team will beat them, and the people will also fight them. I went out a lot, but I couldn't find the Red Army task force at all. And once you are tired of walking, and want to stop in a certain place for a few days, then it will not work, not only can you not sleep well at night, but you may not know when the fierce cavalry team of Ren Huabang and Zhang Zongyu will come to the "evil wolf", it is like suddenly emerging from the ground, and a large piece of meat will fall off if you bite it.

As a result, the only thing left of the Qing soldiers was to burn, kill and loot all the way without stopping.

Natural disasters**, the atrocities of the Manchu officers and soldiers, inspired a stronger resistance. With the emergence of more and more peasant self-defense forces to protect their homes and gardens, in the end, officers and soldiers from all over the country could only retreat in Fuzhou and county towns, forming a pitiful situation that made it difficult for "several miles to get out of the city."

This point is that even Kuang Yuan, the former minister of military aircraft who was assigned to Shandong as governor at that time, can see it clearly. He had to sigh in a report to his imperial court, "The troops sent by the Eastern Province bravely pursued and suppressed the red bandits, but the red bandits either did not dare to stay, or hid deep among the people. The soldiers rushed to the scene, and the evil of adultery and burning and captivity made ten rooms and nine empty, and the people hated the soldiers, especially the bandits. The villagers would rather be attached to the bandits and be willing to fall ......"

Eastern Henan and southwestern Shandong became the so-called "erosive land" in the minds of the Manchus.

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