In the face of the enemy's more than 30,000 troops, including nearly 8,000 cavalry, Aguba's infantry units were also equipped with rifles provided by Russia and Britain, and even some Mini rifles.

Therefore, Bian Chengxun adopted the tactics of defending first and then attacking in the decisive battle, taking advantage of the huge tactical advantage of Agubai's subordinates, who were not familiar with the rear-loading rifles, to show weakness in the early stage, revealing the weakness of less than 3,000 people on the left flank to lure Agubai's cavalry to attack the left flank of the Sixth Army.

Subsequently, Bian Chengxun only used the defensive line composed of more than 3,000 infantry on the left flank, and used the rate of fire of the rear-loading rifle to form a dense barrage, and in one fell swoop defeated the more than 6,000 enemy cavalry who launched a flank charge towards them.

Later, Bian Chengxun pressed on with the main frontal force, and still through the dense breech-loading rifle fire, he defeated the main force of Agu Bai's department in the first battle.

In this battle, the Sixth Army annihilated and captured at least tens of thousands of people, and easily recovered Dihua.

In late September, the forward units of the Sixth Army successfully recaptured Wusu and entered the vicinity of Ili!

But at this time, the Chinese army had a large-scale armed conflict with the Russian army!

The Russian army refused to withdraw from Ili, so Bian Chengxun, who led the army at the front, did not hesitate to throw Aguba aside and directly led the army to attack.

Although the number of Russian troops entrenched in Ili is quite large, it is definitely not as large as there, with a total strength of less than 5,000 troops.

Just two days after the battle, the Russian army suffered more than 1,000 casualties, and it was invincible, and the Russian army's logistical supplies and reinforcements were far away, so the Russian generals had no choice but to lead the army to retreat on their own initiative.

After recovering Ili, Bian Chengxun sent about 5,000 men north to continue the pursuit of the Russian army, and went to recover the western part of Ili, the Talba region, etc.

And he himself continued to lead the main force of the Sixth Army to the south with about 10,000 people!

By the time 1860 was coming to an end. Bian Chengxun's troops had already arrived in Kashgar.

During the march, the Sixth Army and Aguba's troops also engaged in many battles. But in the face of the Sixth Army, which was already fully equipped with breech-loading rifles, they had muskets supported by the Russians and British. But it was still invincible to the Chinese army.

You know, now the British and the Russians themselves can only use Mini rifles, and they can't beat the Chinese army equipped with rear-loading rifles, let alone Aguba's troops.

If it weren't for the fact that the supply line was too long, it is estimated that Bian Chengxun would have entered Kashgar as early as 1859.

In addition, by the second half of 1860, the empire had already ended the wars in Yunnan and Sichuan, and the pressure could be said to have been greatly reduced, and it was only necessary to maintain the wars in Xinjiang, Wutai Province (Outer Mongolia), and the Outer Khing'an Mountains. Moreover, the fighting in Wutai Province and the Trans-Khingan Mountains area was mainly small-scale, and there were no large-scale battles at all, so the pressure on logistics was relatively small.

That is, after entering the second half of 1860, the Reich could fully supply the Sixth Army for the battles in the Xinjiang direction.

However, the current 20,000 people are also the limit of the empire's logistical capacity, so many troops are fighting, artillery shells, bullets need to be transported from the distant Jiangnan region, and even grain needs to be collected in the Shaanxi and Gansu regions and then sent thousands of miles over. The cost of maintaining such a supply line is simply too high.

Now 20,000 people is barely enough, and any more will not be able to sustain it!

On December 278, the Sixth Army launched a large-scale general attack on heavily defended Kashgar, after two days of fierce fighting. The Sixth Army successfully entered the city of Kashgar and drove Aguba's recalcitrant forces out of the city on the same day.

On January 1, 1861, on the first day of the Western New Year, Bian Chengxun rode his war horse to the land of Kashgar City!

Kashgar is an important town in the southwest of Xinjiang. It is also the core strategic support point of Agubai entrenched in Xinjiang, and after recovering the city, it can basically be judged that Agubai has been initially destroyed. The few remnants of Aguba's remaining army were no longer enough to deal with.

After another two months of purging operations, Bian Chengxun's Sixth Army successfully annihilated the remaining Agu Bai troops in Xinjiang. Completely recover the southern Xinjiang region.

At the same time, thousands of Russians were driven out of the Ili region, and the 5,000-strong Chinese army pursuing the Russians had arrived in Kopal, an important Russian stronghold in southern Balkhash Lake.

Due to the long-term operation and the further lengthening of the supply line, the Chinese army advancing westward also lost the ability to continue to launch large-scale attacks, so it needed to rest.

The Chinese army is no longer able to attack, and the Russian army is no better than there, and it is simply unable to gather heavy troops to launch a counteroffensive, so it can only be a passive defense, so the Chinese army and the Russian army have initially formed an armed confrontation situation in the south of Lake Balkhash and the Ili River, although some small-scale battles will occasionally break out, but they are all aimed at each other's small strongholds, and this does not change that the two sides have entered the stage of strategic confrontation.

This situation can basically announce that the large-scale military operation of the Chinese army in the Xinjiang region has ended, and although there will be a continuous war with Russia in the future, it will be the same as in the outer Khing'an Mountains, and without the influence of major external factors, it is unlikely that a war of more than 10,000 people will break out between the two sides.

With the end of the large-scale military operation in Xinjiang, the empire has basically entered a period of peaceful recuperation!

Although the current state of peace may be rather nonsense for future generations, after all, the Chinese army is still continuing to carry out intensive operations in the domestic region, especially in the southwest and northwest regions, to eliminate all kinds of illegal armed forces, and in Central Asia and the Trans-Khingan Mountains, it is still fighting with the Russians every three or five times, and the rebellion on the Mongolian side has not been completely resolved.

But you can't see the international situation in the mid-nineteenth century with the eyes of later generations, for people in this era, border conflicts with hundreds of people and thousands of people cannot be regarded as wars at all, but are daily affairs, not to mention Lin Zhe, even the military side doesn't care too much.

No, as soon as the large-scale military operation in Xinjiang ended, the military began to devote most of its energy to the refitting and expansion of troops.

In 1859, the military had already put forward a plan to build at least thirty infantry divisions, and it was steadily implemented, although the pace of progress was not very fast. After all, in 1859 and 1860, the military still needed to devote most of its resources to Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Sichuan. These ongoing wars have drained the military's resources, leaving it insufficient to expand its forces.

But it's 1861 now. The Empire had basically put an end to large-scale military operations, and although it was said that the proportion of military expenditure in the budget of 1861 had fallen by two percentage points from that of 1860, to only 37 percent.

However, the total military expenditure has increased, from 80 million yuan to 100 million.

Why has the proportion decreased, but the total military spending has also increased? This was naturally due to the further increase in the financial revenues of the empire.

After entering 1861, except for part of the Trans-Khingan Mountains and the southeastern part of Lake Balkhash occupied by Russia, all other territories had been completely recovered, and even Tibet had sent an infantry regiment into Lhasa. As a military presence of the empire controlling the province.

At the same time, as time passes, the more the empire recovers from previous wars, the recovery of people's livelihood can not only ensure the people's livelihood, but also further increase the empire's taxes.

In the Ministry of Finance's 1861 budget for revenue, the central government was expected to receive more than 250 million dollars, an increase of 50 million from 200 million in 1860.

Among them, the largest increase in blessings is still in the field of industry and commerce, followed by the impact of the restoration of people's livelihood after the unification of the empire, and the income from agricultural taxes and salt administration has also increased greatly.

In addition, it also benefited from the development of industry and commerce. Customs revenue has a great increase!

The Empire's full support for the textile industry led to a further increase in the production of raw silk within the Empire, and at the same time, the Empire exported more raw silk in order to obtain more foreign exchange. The domestic consumption of raw silk has been suppressed to a certain extent, and a higher tax has been levied on the consumption of domestic raw silk products, so that a large amount of raw silk consumed in the domestic market is used for export. So starting in 1860, the export of raw silk from the empire increased extremely rapidly.

Year 1860. The empire used Shanghai as its main export base, supplemented by Ningbo. A total of 210,000 bales of raw silk were exported, worth about 94,500,000 yuan at an average price of 450 yen per bagel, accounting for 67.5 percent of the empire's total exports of 140,000,000 won in 1860.

From this data, it can be seen how much of a role the current raw silk industry has for the industrial economy of the empire.

In addition, in the two traditional export commodities of the empire, porcelain and tea, although tea was influenced by India's cheap tea to a certain extent, Chinese tea is still the first choice for foreigners, especially the British, and the largest importer of Chinese tea, Britain, imports tea worth at least 30 million yuan every year.

These teas are mainly exported from Fuzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou and other ports, in addition to this year Ningbo also began to export a large number of Zhejiang tea, to know that the West Lake in Zhejiang is also an important tea production area, the famous West Lake Longjing is in Zhejiang.

As an important export commodity in China for thousands of years, porcelain is still one of China's three major export commodities, although the overall market is not too large.

Relying on these export commodities, the empire established a huge raw silk industry chain with Shanghai as the core, and farmers in Zhejiang and Jiangsu planted mulberry trees to raise silkworms, and then sold the cocoons to major steam silk reeling factories, which then processed these cocoons into raw silk, and then sold directly to those import and export traders, and then shipped to the United Kingdom, France and other European regions and the United States.

Even in order to further the control of domestic capital over the raw silk industry chain and avoid foreign capital from exploiting too many profits, China's commercial capital has set up a number of commercial banks, money banks, in order to provide loans to those steam silk reeling factories to maintain their production and the purchase of silkworm cocoons.

In addition, under the leadership of the Shanghai Raw Silk Association, many raw silk manufacturers began to form ocean-going trading companies independently or jointly, and personally organized ships to transport raw silk to Europe for sale.

In 1859, the Shanghai Textile Company of the royal family industry personally transported a shipload of raw silk and sold it in London, although this move caused many foreign companies in China, especially Xinde and Jardine Matheson, to oppose or even resist the system, so that the raw silk shipped to London by the Shanghai Textile Company had to be sold at about 80% of the original CIF price of raw silk.

However, this move still made the Shanghai textile company very profitable, and after deducting transportation, public relations and operating expenses, it was still more than 70 percent more profitable than selling raw silk directly to foreign companies in Shanghai.

It's just a pity that the risks of ocean trade are too great in these years, and when the Shanghai Textile Company organized a second ship of raw silk to be shipped to Europe, the ship was unfortunately caught in a storm and sank while passing through the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, and millions of goods sank into the cold and merciless waters, and only nine of the dozens of crew members survived.

The loss of this shipload directly caused the Shanghai Textile Company to suffer a large loss in the financial statements of the current quarter, and the total profit of the Shanghai Textile Company in 1859 fell by more than 30 percent compared with the forecast!

Subsequently, the Shanghai Textile Company was forced to stop organizing its own ships to transport raw silk to Europe, and it was not until the end of last year that it began to have this idea again, but this time the Shanghai Textile Company in order to reduce the risk, pulled up many other domestic raw silk manufacturers, and even specially purchased a large ocean-going cargo ship with a displacement of more than 1,800, and it was also a merchant ship equipped with a steam engine, just to purchase this ship, well, but also to arm the ship, so as not to be attacked by pirates or warships of other countries, It was also equipped with a lot of artillery, and a naval officer who had retired from active duty due to injuries was invited to be the captain.

This merchant ship alone costs hundreds of thousands, but it is nothing compared to the goods loaded on it, and the value of raw silk on this ship is as high as more than one million!

Now the ship has been loaded with more than 10 domestic raw silk manufacturers of raw silk sailing on the sea, all goes well is expected to arrive in London, England in March this year.

Even if the ocean-going trade in these years has huge risks, it is impossible to organize the pursuit of profits by businessmen.

Compared with China's self-organized ocean-going trade, the ocean-going voyages of those foreign companies are equally unsafe, and the Cape of Good Hope in Africa is a fatal test for any vessel.

The pursuit of profit has led to the rapid growth of China's exports, and the development of China's industry has led to a rapid increase in imports.

In 1860, China's imports totaled about 120 million, mainly high-tech industrial equipment, but also some finished industrial products such as steam engines, ocean-going merchant ships, and daily industrial products such as matches, soap, kerosene, and even cement and steel.

There are also some foreign specialty products such as British high-grade woolen wool, and some agricultural products, such as spices and rice from the South Seas

In recent years, imports have increased the most in terms of industrial raw materials, such as rubber from the South Seas and coal from the United Kingdom and Australia.

Among them, the import of coal increased quite rapidly, in 1860 the domestic coal consumption increased by more than 200% compared with 1859, and so much coal consumption, the domestic coal is quite small, part of the coal from Taiwan, Xuzhou coal mine and some small coal mines in the country can not meet the huge domestic demand for coal, and these domestic coal quality is low and difficult to use in the application of ships, generally speaking, the current domestic ship coal is mostly imported goods, Merchant ships would use cheaper Australian coal or British regular coal.

However, the warships of the empire were all made of British anthracite, and even in order to prevent the inability to import anthracite under certain special circumstances, the navy also built many warehouses for hoarding coal, which were used to hoard anthracite.

The prosperity of imports and exports also brought a very considerable amount of customs tariff revenue to the empire, whether it was export or import, this customs was subject to tax.

The rapid development of industry and commerce, and the further recovery of agricultural production, made it possible to greatly increase the tax revenue of the empire.

In this way, the Ministry of Finance was able to give a budget of up to 250 million in revenue.

At the same time, in order to meet the needs of domestic development, the Ministry of Finance intends to start a large-scale bond issuance next year, and it is expected to issue more than 20 million bonds.

In other words, in the 1861 budget for expenditure, the empire had prepared a budget of more than 270 million!

The military gets 37 percent of it, that's 100 million won!

Before entering 1861, the military began to think about how to use this huge amount of military spending! (To be continued.) )