After several days of marching, the army led by Lin Zhe himself had approached less than 15 kilometers from Nanjing.

In front of the army, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, as the vanguard, had already arrived at the foot of Tianjing City!

The Second Cavalry Regiment led by Wang Lüyun fell to just over 600 horsemen after the losses of the Battle of Danyang, but the Chinese army later captured many horses from the Taiping army.

Of the nearly 2,000 horses and mules seized, the vast majority of them were ordinary mules and horses, which could only be used as service horses, and only about 200 fine horses could be used as war horses.

For these precious mounted war horses, although the divisional cavalry units of each unit wanted them very much, you must know that the second and third divisions only had a cavalry company, but Lin Zhe gave priority to supplementing these war horses to the second cavalry regiment.

As the only cavalry regiment in the Chinese army that fought independently, under the leadership of Wang Luyun, it played a role far more than other divisional cavalry units, especially in the Battle of Danyang, the Second Cavalry Regiment effectively delayed the advance of Li Xiucheng's troops, and won valuable time for the pursuit of the Third Division and other troops.

In this case, Lin Zhe naturally continued to give preferential treatment to the Second Cavalry Regiment, and supplemented the captured superior war horses to the Second Cavalry Regiment.

At the same time, soldiers with a certain foundation in horsemanship were selected from all over the army to supplement the Second Cavalry Regiment.

Interestingly, only half of the more than 100 cavalry recruited were drawn from the regular army, and the remaining half were drawn from the auxiliary defense force.

This is not just a special case, in fact, the vast majority of the soldiers recruited by the Chinese army are from good families in the countryside, and there are quite few who can ride horses, and it is impossible for the Chinese army to spend several years training them, so the recruitment of cavalry units is different from other infantry, artillery and other arms.

Recruiting cavalry is often eclectic, regardless of whether you were a Jiangyang thief or a captured soldier of the former Qing and Taiping armies, as long as you have outstanding riding skills, pass the physical knowledge and pass the guò assessment, you can enter the cavalry unit to serve.

As for whether these cavalry with complex sources will bring about a bad atmosphere for the cavalry troops, for this point, the Chinese army is naturally sacrificing an invincible weapon of destruction: military law!

Under the strict military law of the Chinese army, no matter whether it is an arrogant Jiangyang thief or a soldier, you must obediently obey the order to train, otherwise you will wait to be whipped, if this is not good, then wait for the head to fall to the ground!

After the Second Cavalry Regiment, which had already recovered more than 800 cavalry, arrived at the foot of Tianjing City, Wang Luyun looked at the dense banners on the city, and he was not reckless enough to charge the city wall with the cavalry!

Although Wang Luyun was called a madman and dared to charge against dozens of times the enemy's army, he was not reckless, let alone stupid, no matter how arrogant he was, he never thought that he would be able to lead the cavalry to take Tianjing City.

After he arrived at the city of Tianjing, he roamed around, and launched a perimeter encirclement of Tianjing City by means of maneuvering and wandering, preventing reinforcements from other directions from reaching Tianjing City, and also preventing the enemy troops in the city from escaping out of the city.

The next day, the second division, which was going north from Lishui, Jurong and other directions, was the first to arrive at the southern outskirts of Tianjing!

Lin Anfei immediately sent troops to carry out a tentative attack on Tianjing City, trying to find out the defensive deployment force in Nanjing City before Lin Zhe's army arrived.

Facing the city of Nanjing, which was surrounded by high walls, Lin Anfei was very cautious, and without saying anything, he sent a large number of troops to launch a general attack, but only sent more than 1,000 soldiers of the auxiliary defense army to launch an attack in Nancheng.

But the result was very surprising to Lin Anfei, the Taiping army on the city wall didn't seem to resist very resolutely, and the strength of the attack was also very small.

This made Lin Anfei puzzled!

The Taiping army in the city is said to have more than 50,000 people, and most of them are the elite troops of the Taiping army, including Shi Dakai's elite troops who came back from Jiangxi, Hubei and other areas, as well as the old troops of Qin Rigang, Wei Changhui, Yang Xiuqing and others.

After Shi Dakai returned to Tianjing, although the Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan also killed Qin Rigang, Wei Changhui and others, most of the lower-level soldiers were still retained, and these soldiers were elite soldiers accumulated by the Taiping Army for many years, and they were later reorganized by Shi Dakai.

Later, 20,000 people led by Li Xiucheng were sent to rescue Tianjing, and after the unit was completely annihilated by the Chinese army in the area south of Danyang, there were still more than 50,000 people in Tianjing City.

Even if the remaining 50,000 veterans of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are poorly armed and equipped, even if they want to disperse and defend the huge Tianjing City, and only deploy a small number of troops on the south city wall, they will definitely not be beaten by the more than 1,000 soldiers of the Auxiliary Defense Force sent out!

Seeing that a defense group that he had originally sent out just to test had already climbed the city wall to fight fiercely with the Taiping army, Lin Anfei was even more puzzled.

This shouldn't be!

Is it to lure the enemy deeper, take the initiative to abandon the city, and then launch a surprise counterattack against my army that has ascended the city?

It's not right, if he wants to fight back, he has to have someone, although there are a lot of Taiping troops on this city wall, but there should be only one or two thousand people when they are full.

With doubts, Lin Anfei didn't care what the Taiping Army wanted to do, since the soldiers of the Auxiliary Defense Army under his command had already landed on the top of the city, he was no longer polite, and directly changed the temptation to the general attack.

He also ordered the Fourth Infantry Regiment under his command to join the siege battle, and at the same time instructed the officers who led the team to be careful of the ambush of the thief army and not to rush in.

Lin Anfei was still worried about whether this was an ambush by the Taiping Army, so he commanded the troops to be cautious and cautious, and even this caution and caution were not dispelled after the Second Division took the southern gate of Tianjing.

Lin Anfei couldn't figure it out, the Taiping army on the southern city wall was more than 2,000 people at most, and the total number of Taiping troops in the city should be 40,000 or 50,000, where did they go?

With doubts, Lin Anfei continued to command the troops to storm, and it didn't take long for his troops to capture the inner city and enter the city, and there were only three or four thousand Taiping soldiers to stop the entire siege process, and he didn't see the expected large number of Taiping troops at all......

Soon after, Lin Anfei received a report that the total number of Taiping army thieves, including those who had been defeated and were still resisting, was only 10,000, and quite a few of them were soldiers who did not even have weapons, and it was obvious that they were temporarily forcibly recruited.

At this time, Lin Anfei learned that tens of thousands of Taiping troops in the city actually ran away, not only the 40,000 or 50,000 elite main forces of the Taiping Army ran away, but also took away a large amount of young and strong, gold and silver and other property in the city, and those granaries and other cabins were emptied, and there was not a grain left.

"Okay, this Shi Dakai is bold enough to give up Jiangning and flee westward, hateful, hateful!" Lin Anfei showed an angry look, he was still worried before the siege of the city, and he was afraid of falling for Shi Dakai's trick when he turned around three times, but he didn't expect that the expected ambush was not, but he watched a big drama of empty city planning, how could this not make him angry!

In addition to being annoyed, I couldn't help but complain to Wang Lu Yun, your second cavalry regiment arrived yesterday, why haven't you noticed that Jiangning City is extremely empty, and the main force of the thief army has fled west?

However, in addition to being depressed and complaining, Lin Anfei also reacted quickly, and immediately left more than 3,000 soldiers of the Auxiliary Defense Army to stay in Tianjing to welcome Lin Zhe's army.

And he himself personally led the main force of the Second Division to pursue to the west, as for Wang Luyun, he also rode on his horse with a depressed face, and then galloped westward with the Second Cavalry Regiment, but the Taiping army and thieves have been gone for so many days, and only God knows if they can catch up.

In the evening of the same day, Lin Zhe also led the army to rush to Nanjing City!

Compared with Lin Anfei's anger after being teased, Lin Zhe felt a little lucky for Shi Dakai's westward escape!

Even if Nanjing is easy to attack, if Shi Dakai comes to defend the lonely city, even if the Chinese army is strong in combat, it will be difficult to take it without ten days and half a month, and it is even possible to spend a month or even two months if it is not smooth.

Now Shi Dakai fled without a fight, although Shi Dakai took away a large number of elite troops of the Taiping Army, and the young and strong people in the city were taken away, and many belongings were taken away, but in terms of taking Nanjing without blood, the loss of the former is completely negligible.

Besides, the current Chinese army has passed the stage of developing by grabbing money.

For the early Yu Shengjun, because they did not have their own territorial foundation, and everything needed to be purchased, they paid special attention to the plundering of gold and silver and other property.

But today, for the Chinese army, although gold and silver are still important, they are no longer the first factor restricting the development of the Chinese army.

The Chinese army, which controls southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang, has enough annual tariffs, centigold, and taxes to support the needs of the Chinese army to fight and expand its army, on the contrary, there are two factors that really restrict the development of the Chinese army, the first is ordnance and equipment, especially mini rifles, and war horses, which are rich and nowhere to buy.

The second is time, the time required to train soldiers and officers is nothing in peacetime, but in wartime, a few months can decide the life and death of both sides, so time is the most scarce thing in the Chinese army at present.

As for gold and silver, although it is also lacking now, it can barely be maintained, and it is not to the point of issuing out military salaries, and although the consumption of grain is also large, it is not a big problem to sit in the important grain-producing areas of southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang.

Besides, although Shi Dakai took away a lot of property, he couldn't take it all away in a hurry, and for a fleeing army, food was much more important than gold and silver property, and they took away more of the necessities of life such as food and cloth, but they didn't bring much of gold and silver and other external things.

Anyway, the Taiping army never had to pay military salaries, except for some gold and silver needed to import foreign guns from foreigners some time ago, in fact, the Taiping army had nowhere to spend money, and there was no need to spend a dime on military rations, because everything in the world belonged to the holy treasury.

So you can see that the Qing army and the Chinese army are worried about the lack of military spending every day, but only the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has never worried about military spending from beginning to end, because people don't have the option of military spending!

Therefore, after the Chinese army entered the city, although the military rations were not found much, a large number of war trophies were collected in various places in the city, including gold and silver products, precious calligraphy and paintings, etc.

This is also thanks to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's sacred treasury system and the early male and female camp system, the early Taiping army would divide the male and female camps every time they conquered a place, and all the people's wealth and food had to be handed over to the holy treasury.

In particular, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has long controlled the cities, such as Zhenjiang and Tianjing, the people in these two cities implemented the separation of men and women in the early days, and almost all the family wealth was handed over to the holy treasury, although in 1856 Tianjing was infighting, Shi Dakai ordered the abolition of the male and female separation system, but it was impossible to return the wealth to the respective families, so the wealth of these two places was highly concentrated, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom almost looted the wealth of the whole city, and then piled up one warehouse after another.

Previously, the Chinese army seized at least two million taels of silver worth of various property in Zhenjiang!

In Nanjing, after a rough count, at least five million taels of property worth more than five million taels were seized, including silver, gold, gold and silver products, pearls and jade and other treasures.

It's just a pity that before Shi Dakai withdrew, he actually burned down the original Heavenly King's Mansion and other palaces, otherwise those magnificent palaces would definitely be able to harvest more loot.

And when Lin Zhe was wearing a military dress and did not ride in a sedan chair like other ancient emperors, but directly rode a high-headed horse and set foot on Nanjing City under the escort of the guards.

Outside Dangtu County in southern Anhui, Shi Dakai also rode a horse westward, and his front was Dangtu County.

Behind him is a long marching column, with Taiping soldiers, soldiers' families, and young and strong people temporarily wrapped, with a total number of more than 150,000 people, and the marching columns are connected before and after, and it is impossible to see the end at a glance! (To be continued.) )