On July 28th, outside Hefei County, Luzhou Prefecture, Shi Qingxuan, who had come all the way to the west, did not see the tired look at all, but was full of energy.

After advancing westward from Chuzhou, Shi Qingxuan led the First Army to attack all parts of northern Anhui, attacking Luzhou in northern Anhui and a large area in the east, and also fought many times with the Taiping army under Chen Yucheng.

These skirmishes of only a few thousand men were no surprise, and the First Army was completely victorious, and in the face of Chen Yucheng's kind of outcast-like army, it didn't even need to send the Royal Army troops, and they could be defeated by relying only on the troops of the Auxiliary Defense Army.

Two days earlier, the Second Cavalry Regiment under Shi Qingxuan, under the command of Major General Wang Luyun, the commander of the cavalry and concurrently the commander of the Second Cavalry Regiment, attacked a Taiping army again, and achieved great results in annihilating more than 2,000 enemies.

With a number of big victories, the main force of the First Army led by Shi Qingxuan finally arrived in Hefei County, where the capital of Luzhou was located.

However, what made Shi Qingxuan a little depressed was that he probably knew that it was difficult for him to resist the attack of the main force of the Chinese army, and Chen Yucheng actually led the army to evacuate Hefei in advance, leaving less than 20,000 troops in Hefei.

20,000 troops may sound like a lot, but for Chen Yucheng's department, which has swelled to more than 200,000 troops, it is really nothing.

Moreover, among the 20,000 people, like Chen Yucheng's other troops, there are only a very small number of veterans of the Taiping Army, and the rest are homeless people, and most of them are old and young women and children.

Chen Yucheng left 20,000 people behind, as he said, in order to block Shi Qingxuan's westward advance, but rather to throw off the burden and flee westward with the Qingqiang army.

The reason why Chen Yucheng gave up Hefei so simply was not that Chen Yucheng was really afraid of the Chinese army, but that he knew that he couldn't do it.

In addition to the menacing factors of the Chinese army itself, it is also related to the fact that there is no danger to defend around Luzhou Mansion, including Hefei, the entire Luzhou Mansion is a flat river, and it is simply an undefendable terrain.

In the early years, it was very easy for the Taiping army to conquer Luzhou and Hefei, and it was equally easy for the Qing army to recover Hefei later. This year, Chen Yucheng once again knocked down Hefei without much effort, which shows that Luzhou is a soft persimmon, and anyone can pinch it.

Luzhou has nothing to defend. Previously, Chen Yucheng also sent a number of partial divisions in a row to try to ambush and intercept Shi Qingxuan's First Army, but this kind of homeless army, which could not even match the sword, wanted to fight with the Chinese army in the field on the plain terrain, and the hope of victory was almost equal to zero.

After several failures, Chen Yucheng simply took the initiative to withdraw from Hefei!

Anyway, he was originally a mobile battle. is not limited to the gains and losses of one city and one place, as long as he continues to flow, he will be able to coerce many people to join him and continue to grow and develop.

Even if he was unlucky and was caught by the Chinese army and hundreds of thousands of troops were defeated in one fell swoop, as long as Chen Yucheng kept the 5,000 backbone soldiers he brought from Nanjing, then he would be able to make a comeback in less than two months and re-envelop an army of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people.

Chen Yucheng walked simply and chicly, the people who stayed in Hefei were all old and weak women and children, and Shi Qingxuan didn't put much thought into it in the face of such Hefei. Just put the posture of the army out, and after a little temptation, it was to attack, and the Taiping army in the city resisted for about two hours, and then it completely collapsed.

Looking at the city gate that had been broken, Shi Qingxuan didn't care: "Let the assistant defense division enter the city to clear and clean up the remnants of the thief army in the city, well, I ordered to go down, and after entering the city, the affairs should be handled according to the old rules!" ”

What are the old rules in Shi Qingxuan's mouth? Two words: shave your head!

Since the implementation of the shaving order, the Chinese army is currently not mandatory for people in their own jurisdiction. In the case of large areas of rural areas or cities that do not resist much, people are not forced to shave their heads, and generally only captives and officials who surrender to the city are forced to shave their heads.

However, for some cities that resist resolutely, they often carry out more brutal shaving orders after they are defeated. Not only did the enemy prisoners be required to shave their hair, but they also required all men in the city to shave their hair, regardless of whether it was the kind of braids of the Manchu Qing Dynasty or the hair of the Taiping army.

In Nanjing before, Yangzhou has already done it. Now, in the face of the situation of bandits everywhere in northern Anhui, Shi Qingxuan, as the commander-in-chief of Jiangbei military affairs, feels that it is necessary to adopt a tougher policy, otherwise it will not be enough to deter the locals.

In other places such as southern Anhui, northern Jiangsu or Jiangxi, although the Chinese army also fought with the Taiping army and the Qing army, this kind of engagement was relatively regular, and the armies of both sides fought each other, and there would be no large number of people mixed in.

But this is not the case in northern Anhui, first of all, Chen Yucheng used mobile coercion warfare, and coerced a large number of people to fight with the Chinese army, so that the southern region of northern Anhui, that is, the Huainan region, and Chen Yucheng's department formed an extremely close relationship.

On the other hand, it is also related to the twist army!

The early twist army was not a twist army, but a 'twist son' What is a twist? It is a bandit who intimidates money and extorts money, and the twist of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period is a universal national activity, especially after the famine year, the rural areas of northern Anhui are the whole village, and the young and strong of the entire relatives go to be the twist, showing the situation of 'the dweller is for the people, and the one who comes out is the twist'.

As the northern Anhui region continued to be damaged by war, coupled with the famine training, more and more people joined the twist, and finally swept the entire northern Anhui region, and even the major twist leaders united, and their alliance advocated Lexing to call themselves 'King Yong of the Han Dynasty'. Completed the transformation from bandit to rebel army.

And last year, it was a condition to listen to the seal and not listen to the tune, and accepted the canonization of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and its Zhang Lexing was named the King of Wo, and began to grow his hair and change the flag of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Chen Yucheng cooperated deeply with various units of the Twisted Army, and in the first half of this year, they almost joined forces to carve up the entire northern Anhui region.

But don't think that there are only Chen Yucheng and the Twist Army in northern Anhui, in fact, there are also Qing troops and various local armed forces.

Previously, the Qing army also controlled Hefei, Bengbu and other places in Huainan, and some large cities in northern Anhui were also in the hands of the Qing army, but most of them were trapped in one place and could not launch a counteroffensive against the Twist Army or the Taiping Army.

In addition to the Qing army, there are some local armed forces, there are all kinds of regimental training, township bravery, and even some landlords' powerful private armed forces, among which the most famous in history is Miao Peilin.

This person was born in poverty, but he was admitted to Xiucai, and then saw that the Twist Army was raging in the northern countryside of Anhui, he began to organize a regimental exercise, and rapidly developed and expanded in the resistance to the Twist Army, he officially ran a regimental training for only a year or two, but it was a rapid expansion of strength, and now he has controlled the surrounding areas of Fengtai, and it is rumored that there are as many as 10,000 soldiers under his command.

Miao Peilin in 1857 naturally cannot be compared with him after 1860 in the original time and space, at least now Miao Peilin has not yet taken refuge in the Twist Army, but his strength is enough to influence the situation in northern Anhui.

In addition, in northern Anhui, there are many people like Miao Peilin, and there are thousands of people in various groups, and there are hundreds of regimental training, and there are many townspeople.

Today's northern Anhui is the Taiping Army, the Twist Army, the Qing Army, and the local regiments training the township bravery, causing an extremely complicated situation.

In the face of all kinds of chaotic armed forces, Shi Qingxuan didn't have time to win over or divide or anything like that, these strategies may sound good, but they didn't need them for the Chinese Empire.

For the Chinese army, it is much easier to fight directly than to use stratagem to win over and divide!

However, it is easy to defeat these chaotic bandit armies, but in order to prevent all kinds of bandits in the rear from growing like spring breezes and weeds after the Chinese army sweeps over, we must take tougher measures, and let them know that the Chinese army is not the Taiping army, let alone the Qing army, and anyone who dares to resist will die a miserable death.

Based on this, Shi Qingxuan chose to Liwei in Hefei, and after breaking the city, he directly shaved off the braids and long hair of the men in the city.

But to Shi Qingxuan's surprise, he originally thought that he would encounter a lot of resistance, after all, shaving hair is still very repulsive to the Chinese people, for traditional Confucian children, the body hair and skin of the parents, can not be lightly shaved, and for those who accepted the rule of hundreds of Manchus, the braid on the head is the object of allegiance to the Manchu court, and cannot be cut off lightly.

But unfortunately, this Hefei was conquered many times by the Qing army and the Taiping army, the Qing army came, forcing them to shave their hair and keep braids, and the Taiping army came to force them to grow their hair.

However, there were a few old scholars who held the braids that had been forcibly cut off and cried, saying that the parents of the body hair and skin had no face to face their ancestors and so on when they cut off the braids.

Shi Qingxuan looked disdainful about this, why didn't you see your ancestors say this when the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs two hundred years ago!

The Manchu court wore braids, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom grew hair, and the Chinese Empire shaved its hair, and the policies of the three major regimes in China towards the hair of the three major regimes actually represented the status quo of the three forces being incompatible.

This policy on hair is no longer just a matter of morality and ethics, but a matter of distinguishing personal political attitudes, such as keeping braids to represent your allegiance to the Manchus, growing your hair means that you agree with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and shaving your hair represents your support for the Chinese Empire.

Fortunately, the people on the Hefei side were obedient, so the shaving order did not encounter much resistance, and after taking Hefei, Shi Qingxuan was too lazy to deal with these sundries, and soon led the army to march again.

And in the south of the First Army, the Second Army of Hezhou also started related operations, and their goal was Anqing! (To be continued.) )