Lin Zhe just entered the city and instructed his subordinates: "Mobilize the people in the city and let them bury the corpses inside and outside the city, if it is hot and stuffy today, there will be no plague in the city!" ”

Including at the beginning of the head-on battle and the follow-up pursuit operations, Yu Shengjun killed and wounded a large number of Taiping soldiers, according to incomplete statistics, at least 4,000 to 5,000 Taiping soldiers were killed, the wounded are not counted, and more Taiping soldiers were taken prisoners, before and after Yu Shengjun captured at least about 13,000 prisoners, most of whom could not escape and surrendered voluntarily in order to save their lives.

Wu Ruxiao will not take more than 5,000 people and horses, and the remaining tens of thousands are all going back to their own homes, looking for their own mothers, and they don't know where they have gone.

Yu Shengjun's own casualties were not small, with nearly 300 casualties, after all, there was a price to be paid for victory.

However, compared with the casualties of these hundreds of people, Yu Shengjun's gains were greater.

As soon as they entered the city, the soldiers of Yu Shengjun searched everywhere for money, the former Qing court official yamen, various warehouses, and the previous garrison of the Taiping army were surrounded and searched, and all the property that could be found was looted.

Waiting for the next night, Bi Yutong came to Lin Zhe with an excited face holding the account book.

"Dashuai, this time you got a lot of money!"

Lin Zhe knew before entering Suzhou City that this time his Yu Shengjun's harvest should be not small, Suzhou is a tax town, and the concentration of wealth in the entire southern Jiangsu region is numbered, although he did not directly confiscate the whole city, but in fact, this work has been done by the previous Taiping Army, they only need to snatch these property from the Taiping Army, and they can treat these property as trophies with peace of mind.

"Gold and silver alone are two million and six hundred thousand taels!" Bi Yutong's face was full of excitement: "There are also a large number of grains, cloth, silk and other goods, and there are three major warehouses just for treasures, and these are worth at least millions!" ”

Lin Zhe listened, forcibly pressed the excitement in his heart, took the account book and looked at it carefully, and sighed in his heart while reading, this wealth of Suzhou is far beyond his imagination, he has captured so much loot from the Taiping army alone, if he does it ruthlessly and directly confiscates the whole city, I am afraid he will get more.

Hearing that a lot of seizures have been made, Shi Langyi, Qu Panyun and other generals also found Lin Zhe, and most of what they said meant the same thing, that is: Now that there is no shortage of money, what are you waiting for, hurry up and expand the army!

On the third day of entering Suzhou City, he sent a number of officers back to Zhejiang to expand the scale of recruitment, and asked to recruit at least 3,000 new soldiers this time, and at the same time placed an order for 5,000 Linde rifles to the Linde Machinery Factory in Shanghai, and at the same time entrusted a number of foreign companies to purchase artillery.

This time, Lin Zhe was determined to expand the scale of Yu Sheng's army to more than 10,000 people!

Just when Lin Zhe and Yu Shengjun were immersed in the joyful atmosphere of harvesting many trophies, Lin Zhe also received a letter from Xiang Rong.

It's just that this letter made Lin Zhe a little unhappy, and in the letter, Xiang Rong regarded himself as a boss, and after hearing that Lin Zhe had recovered Fuzhou, he asked him to immediately send troops to Changzhou Mansion, and then march to Zhenjiang, asking Lin Zhe to conquer Zhenjiang in the month.

Lin Zhe put down the letter, and snorted coldly in the letter, this Xiang Rong was a big sigh, what kind of thing did he dare to give me a battle order directly.

Shi Qingxuan, who was on the side, said: "Then should we go or not?" ”

Lin Zhe said: "Now the rest of my Suzhou Mansion is still in the hands of the thief army, there are many thief troops wandering around the country, and I have to slow down when I go to Zhenjiang!" ”

What are you kidding, even if he defeated Wu Ruxiao in Suzhou City, but Wu Ruxiao still fled with thousands of backbones, and more importantly, Wu Ruxiao still has tens of thousands of troops in Changzhou and Zhenjiang, and Zhenjiang has been operated by the Taiping Army for more than a year, and all kinds of fortifications are perfect, and if you go to attack by yourself, you will lose your troops and generals if you are not careful.

And once he can't fight, he will be dragged a large number of troops, he has only more than 5,000 soldiers in total, Huzhou has to put more than 1,000 people, and there are only more than 4,000 in southern Jiangsu.

And in his heart, Lin Zhe himself was unwilling to fight to the death with the Taiping Army so early, which can be seen from the actions of the more than a year of the victorious army, unless the Taiping army took the initiative to attack, otherwise the Yu Shengjun would not take the initiative to fight.

This is true in the direction of northern Zhejiang, and the same is true for Suzhou.

Lin Zhe needed time to develop and expand his army, and until he had decisive power, he was not willing to engage in a life-and-death decisive battle with the Taiping army, which would not benefit him.

And after Xiang Rong in the Jiangnan camp on the outskirts of Jiangning received Lin Zhe's reply, his beard flew up angrily: "This Lin Zhe, is there still a court in his eyes, and now that Changzhou and Zhenjiang are in the hands of thieves, he doesn't want to counterattack, but says that Su Mansion is not appeased, and the soldiers are few and refuse to go west, I want to join him ruthlessly!" ”

When Xiang Rong, as the commander of the Jiangnan battalion, naturally had enough influence in the imperial court, and Lin Zhe's excerpt not only said that he did not move, and sat back and watched Changzhou and Zhenjiang fall into the hands of thieves, but also participated in Lin Zhe's messy business and trade zone in Shanghai, allowing foreigners to come and go, and losing all the national power.

He also hired a large number of foreigners as officials to control the Jiangxi Customs and privately embezzle one million taels of silver in the river and sea tariffs.

There is nothing in front of them, but one said that Lin Zhe privately swallowed one million taels of silver in the Jianghai tariff, but it has attracted the attention of many bigwigs in the court, what is the most lacking in the imperial court now?

In order to supply the military expenses needed by the two large battalions in Jiangbei and Jiangnan and the Qing army fighting in other provinces and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Qing court has already hollowed out the household department, and now it is found that the Jianghai Customs has a lot of monthly taxes and silver, but only a small part of it is handed over to supply the military supplies of Jiangnan and Jiangbei, and the rest is when it is privately swallowed by Lin Zhe.

Regardless of whether the matter was true or not, it attracted the attention of the imperial court, so the imperial court soon appointed the former political envoy of Jiangsu, Gil Hang'a, as the trusted governor of Jiangsu, and asked him to thoroughly investigate and rectify the affairs of the trade zone and the customs of Jiangsu.

Hearing this news, Lin Zhe's face suddenly became gloomy, and what made him angry was not that Gilhanga became the governor of Jiangsu, and he did not become it, but because the imperial court let Gilhanga Cha Trade Zone and Jianghaiguan.

For the position of governor of Jiangsu, he also had extravagant expectations, but the reason why he said it was extravagant rather than hopeful was because he knew that he would not be able to play at all in a short period of time, and he had only been in the group for more than a year since he ran the group training, and this official was still donated, and the road to the official career was less than two years.

Although he is now serving as the governor of Su Songtai and Jianghaiguan with the title of Sanpin Taoist, he is still quite far from the governor of Jiangsu in terms of qualifications.

Even if he has a lot of achievements now, the number of troops under his command cannot change his weakness of lack of qualifications, and at the same time, Yu Shengjun is his capital and his weakness.

Lin Zhe raised an army of four or five thousand people as soon as he called out to the people, and he also won many battles in a row, it is impossible to say that the bigwigs of the imperial court have no scruples about Lin Zhe and no defense against Yu Shengjun.

Even Zeng Guofan, who had served as a squire, after taking Yuezhou, although there was a rumor that Zeng Guofan was appointed governor of Hubei, he was still suppressed back, not because Zeng Guofan's qualifications were not enough, but because the army in his hands made the court feel afraid, so he delayed giving Zeng Guofan a real job.

It can be seen from this that unless the bigwigs of the imperial court collectively convuls, it will be difficult for Lin Zhe to serve as the governor of a province or the governor of several provinces in a short period of time.

It is precisely because of knowing this that after Xu Naizhao's death, Lin Zhe didn't even have the mind to fight for the governor of Jiangsu, and he couldn't fight anyway, so it was better to manage the one-acre three-point field in the business zone.

What does it mean that the imperial court, which really made Lin Zhe angry, appointed Gil Hang'a as the new governor of Jiangsu, and asked him to investigate the affairs of the trade zone and the Jianghai Customs?

This means that the imperial court is not only dissatisfied with Lin Zheke's misappropriation of Jianghai tariff silver, but also a very obvious signal, that is, Lin Zhe's defense has been raised to the surface.

In order to cope with the arrival of Gilhanga, Lin Zhe led Yu Sheng's army back to Shanghai after leaving a part of his troops to garrison Suzhou.

Although Shanghai at the end of September has entered the early autumn season, the weather is still hot, and many construction sites in the business area and workers on the wharf are sweating like rain, and they are working hard to support their families.

Returning two months after leaving the trade zone, Lin Zhe found that the trade zone had undergone a lot of changes, from the moat of Shanghai County to Pidgin, a large road along the river that was newly included in the trade zone last year, and a large number of horse-drawn carriages pulling goods were passing through it.

There are many large ocean-going cargo ships moored at the wharves of the major ocean-going companies along the river, and on the other side of the river, there are many Western-style buildings that have just been completed.

In the interior of the business district, a number of neatly planned avenues are also preliminarily completed, and a large number of buildings on both sides of the avenues have been completed, some are still under construction, and the most of them are residential houses.

With the eastward advance of Wu Ruxiao's Taiping army, a large number of people in Changzhou and Suzhou fled to Shanghai to escape the war, and in just two months, more than 150,000 people poured into the business area, and even the population of Shanghai County exploded.

The arrival of so many people is due to the fact that on the one hand, it has brought a lot of cheap labor, and on the other hand, it has also brought more capital.

All these have injected impetus into the development of the new business district.

And just two days after Lin Zhe returned to the business zone, and before he had time to read the recent development plan of the business zone, Ji Hang'a also arrived in Shanghai in a hurry with his Fubiao battalion!

The first thing he did after arriving in Shanghai was to remove the current Shanghai county magistrate, but with his Fubiao, he directly sealed the old gate of the east gate of the Jiang Customs, and dismissed a number of Jiang Customs officials appointed by Lin Zhe on the spot in the name of corruption.