"My family is 9,000 years old, and I am willing to give up my past suspicions with Lin Dashuai, work together to create a better future, rescue the people in the world who were persecuted by the Qing demons, and give God the blessings to tens of thousands of people!" This retro style of the messenger sent by Shi Dakai shaking a paper fan, and his words did not deviate from the Divine Religion, which made Lin Zhe frown secretly.

However, Lin Zhe still did not express this dissatisfaction, but said something else: "Oh, nine thousand years old? Isn't that Yang Xiuqing? ”

The envoy didn't see any other looks after hearing this, and continued to smile: "Last month, the Heavenly King had already made the Wing King nine thousand years old, and he was in charge of the affairs of the Heavenly ** government, how could it be comparable to Yang Reverse!" ”

Lin Zhe was secretly amused in his heart, Hong Xiuquan was really unlucky, killing Yang Xiuqing caused Lin Chengting to rebel, and then in order to calm Lin Chengting's anger, under the joint oppression of Shi Dakai and Wu Ruxiao, he personally killed his henchmen Qin Rigang and Wei Changhui, as for letting the military and political power of the entire Taiping Heavenly Kingdom fall into the hands of the Wing King Shi Dakai.

Now that Shi Dakai is nine thousand years old, it is estimated that it will not be long before he will follow Yang Xiuqing's example and force Hong Xiuquan to seal himself as long live.

Lin Zhe doesn't have much to do with the infighting in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, he only cares about Shi Dakai's cooperation if he wants to cooperate with himself, what kind of cooperation method is there?

"Nine thousand years old is willing to buy your army's foreign guns and cannons at a high price, in terms of price, Lin Shuai can rest assured, there will definitely be no shortage of your army!" So said the envoy.

But Lin Zhe asked rhetorically: "How can the sharp weapons of the military state be measured in gold and silver!" ”

The messenger immediately said, "I don't know how your army can sell foreign guns and cannons!" ”

Lin Zhe didn't give him any illusions, and said directly: "Not a single shot or cannon will be sold!" ”

Hearing this, the messenger who had been calmly answering finally changed his face slightly.

Seeing that this person's face had changed, Lin Zhecai smiled, and then said, "However, if your army can give up the town and Jiangning, it is not without room for negotiation!" ”

The envoy finally couldn't hold back a trace of anger: "Zhenjiang is the gateway to Kyoto of my heavenly kingdom, and Tianjing is the capital of my heavenly kingdom, how can I want to give it to others!" Moreover, now that everyone in the world knows that Lin Dashuai has broken with the Qing Demon, it is the time for you and me to join forces to fight the Qing Demon. How to ......"

Lin Zhe stretched out his hand to interrupt his words: "The Tao is not the same, come and send off guests!" ”

Hmph, want to win yourself over and start a war with the Qing court? There is no such good thing in the world.

Standing in Lin Zhe's position. The Qing court was certainly his enemy, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was even more of his enemy, and he had fought many battles with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the past few years, and the cumulative loss of the Taiping army in his hands was not 350,000, but there were definitely 108,000.

And even if he personally doesn't have any plans for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. agreed to cooperate, but there will also be great opposition within Yu Shengjun.

How did Yu Shengjun rise?

In order to exterminate the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, most of the scholars who came to join the army maintained an extremely hateful attitude towards the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

If Lin Zhe raises the banner to rebel against the Qing court now, it is estimated that some generals will follow him without hesitation, but if he also cooperates with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it is estimated that the following generals will have to rebel together.

Regardless of whether Lin Zhe was against the Qing Dynasty or not, it was absolutely impossible for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to cooperate or surrender to them, so those generals of Yu Shengjun had to rebel against Lin Zhe first.

Coincidentally, Shi Dakai's envoy had just left, and Lin Chengting's envoy had arrived in Shanghai. And after Lin Chengting's envoy arrived in Shanghai, he brought a very tempting Tiyì from Lin Zhe.

"As long as the marshal gives us some of the ordnance and food, with the combat power of our army, it is enough to contain tens of thousands of Jiangning thief troops, and greatly reduce the pressure on you!"

"Even in the future, it is not impossible for the Hu army of our town to announce that he will join your army!"

Listening to these people's words, Lin Zhe did not answer immediately, and had to say that Lin Chengting's mention was extremely attractive to him.

As far as he knew, after Lin Chengting retreated from Tianjing to southern Anhui, he went all the way south to Jiangxi and conquered Jiujiang, Nanchang, Raozhou and other places from the Taiping army, entrenched in most of Jiangxi.

The army under the command of the self-proclaimed 'Generalissimo of Zhenhu and Thieves' is called the Zhenhu Army. Break away from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and stand on your own!

These people, including Lin Chengting, all have a blood feud with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and they all want to enter Tianjing and slaughter the whole city, if they support him a little. Lin Chengting was able to contain a large number of troops of the Taiping army in northern Jiangxi and southern Anhui, and finally created favorable conditions in order to take Zhenjiang and Tianjing.

If Lin Zhe officially raised the anti-flag, then he would have to ensure the strategic security of his control area, especially in southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, and he would have to destroy the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom before he could attack the Manchus in the north. Take Zhenjiang and Tianjing.

Otherwise, when he led the army to cross the river and fight with Li Hongzhang's Qing army, Shi Dakai would come to the bottom of the kettle and directly march into southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, Lin Zhe would not cry to death.

Therefore, even if the anti-flag is raised, Lin Zhe has no possibility of uniting with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, because there is a fundamental conflict of interest, no matter how big Sunan is, Yu Shengjun and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can only have one family to survive, and peaceful coexistence can only deceive children.

When both sides had the enemy of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and at the same time, Lin Chengting was now in Jiangxi and Lin Zhe was in southern Jiangsu, and the two sides were not in direct contact. Moreover, Lin Chengting has rebelled against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, set up his own door, and has also given up many bad habits of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, such as separating men and women, killing Confucian students, burning scriptures and destroying Confucian temples, etc. This means that the battle of faith between Yu Shengjun and Lin Chengting's Zhenhu Army no longer exists, and at most it is a conflict of interests.

In fact, the current Yu Shengjun and Zhenhu Jun do not have too many conflicts of interest, and this leads them to have a great space for cooperation.

After thinking about it for a long time, Lin Zhe felt that Lin Chengting's preservation was still very necessary, and he could contain a large number of Taiping Tian** forces, laying a favorable foundation for himself to conquer Zhenjiang and Tianjing in the future and completely take over the Jiangnan region.

Therefore, he agreed to Lin Chengting's request to purchase guns and cannons, and promised to sell Lin Chengting 5,000 smoothbore foreign guns and 20 artillery pieces.

Of course, even if it was a desire to cooperate, Lin Zhe did not forget to pit Lin Chengting, those smoothbore foreign guns were all brown bass rifles from the inventory of Linde Machinery Factory, and a few were made by Linde Machinery Factory, but the selling price was a complete set of 20 taels of silver.

As time passed, Yu Shengjun's newly expanded five mixed regiments were also formed one after another, and by September 1856, the sixth, seventh, and ninth mixed regiments had been formed one after another.

The 8th and 10th Mixed Regiments are also undergoing the final intense recruit training. It is expected to be an army within the month.

At the same time, Yu Shengjun's recruitment has not stopped, but has been continuing, but it has been given a number as before. Then recruit recruits differently, this time Lin Zhe let the Supervision and Training Office be directly responsible for recruit recruitment and training affairs.

Then there is a supervision office assigned at the same time.

At the same time, a military order was issued that in order to ensure the quality of soldiers, all units were strictly prohibited from recruiting soldiers on their own, and all the soldiers who were lacking were recruited by the Supervision and Training Department. Training, supplementing.

On the surface, this is to ensure the quality of soldiers, but in fact this is an important measure for Lin Zhe to take back military power.

After the soldiers' salaries were directly paid by the Food and Salary Bureau, the recovery of the right to recruit soldiers was also an important means for Lin Zhe to implement the centralization of military power, and in the following August and September, Lin Zhe began to transfer the middle and senior generals of Yu Shengjun on a large scale.

Shi Langyi, the number one battler, will be transferred from the post of commander of the 1st Mixed Regiment and transferred to the post of chief of staff of the 1st Infantry Division that Lin Zhe had just established, and the division commander was held by Lin Zhe himself.

The commanders of other regiments have also been transferred, and most of them are mainly flat transfers, such as Lin Anfei, who was transferred from the Fourth Mixed Regiment to the Second Mixed Regiment as the regiment commander. Xu Yanqing was transferred from the Second Mixed Regiment to the Fourth Mixed Regiment as the head of the regiment, and Xu Pengan was transferred from the Supervision and Training Office to the Sixth Mixed Regiment as the head of the regiment.

This large-scale transfer was Lin Zhe's attempt to break the control of the generals over the troops and prevent the troops from becoming the private soldiers of these generals, and at the same time, it was also for his own follow-up to officially raise the favorable conditions and squeeze out some officers and generals who were usually sympathetic to the imperial court from their core positions.

And Shi Langyi is a typical example of these, although he has been married to Shi Langyi, but Lin Zhe is still wary of Shi Langyi, this time transferring Shi Langyi from the head of the first mixed group is the most obvious example.

As for the chief of staff of the 1st Infantry Division, to be honest, this is a position specially set up by Lin Zhe for Shi Langyi.

In order to concentrate and consolidate the military power in the hands, while taking into account the increasing number of troops in the hands. Lin Zhe has already begun to make certain changes to Yu Shengjun's military system.

The largest of these is the establishment of infantry divisions, based on the first mixed regiment, the third mixed regiment, the fourth mixed regiment, and the first cavalry regiment, Lin Zhe himself served as the division commander. Shi Langyi served as chief of staff.

The baggage battalions of the three mixed regiments mentioned above were drawn out to form a new first baggage regiment with three baggage battalions. Three cavalry platoons were also drawn into the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. The artillery companies were also drawn out to form the First Artillery Regiment.

After the auxiliary arms were transferred and combined, the above three mixed regiments also lost the ability to fight alone, and evolved into simple infantry regiments, each with three infantry battalions.

It has four infantry regiments, a baggage regiment, a cavalry regiment, and an artillery regiment. Including the division headquarters and other personnel, the total strength is about 11,000 people.

This infantry division, which accounts for almost half of the main force of Yu Sheng's army, will have Lin Zhe himself as the division commander and commander, which is an important step for Lin Zhe to control the military power.

And several other more important mixed regiment troops are also led by Lin Zhe's more reassuring generals, for example, the commander of the second mixed regiment and the two auxiliary defense regiments is Lin Anfei, this person is Lin Zhe's family, and his loyalty is still okay.

The new commander of the Fifth Mixed Regiment is Shi Qingxuan, and in the eyes of this person, Yu Shengjun's interests are also higher than the interests of the Qing court.

The other 6th to 10th mixed regiments, most of the regiment commanders and battalion commanders in it are also people that Lin Zhe thinks are reliable, as for some people who are considered by Lin Zhe to be loyal to the imperial court and have problems with loyalty, most of them were transferred to the headquarters of Yu Shengjun, and a few were suspected by Lin Zhe, but they were really good, and Lin Zhe was reluctant to give up was arranged to serve in the First Infantry Division.

For example, Shi Langyi is such a person, Lin Zhe values his talent very much, but he is even more afraid that he will betray him, so he plans to put Shi Langyi in the eyes of the eyelids.

In October, he received a tip-off that Li Hongzhang's Jianghuai New Army had expanded to more than 8,000 people, and at the same time sent a force to cross the river and arrive in Jiangyin, where he joined Hechun and others.

"It seems that we can't wait any longer, if we wait until next year, I'm afraid Li Hongzhang will be able to expand his army to 20,000 people!" Lin Zhe put down the report in his hand and walked to the window to look at the Huangpu River.

Now, all he needs is an excuse, an excuse to raise the flag! (To be continued.) )