Yangzhou is only about 100 kilometers away from Nanjing by water, whether it is a fast horse or a navy steam boat, at most one day's time can transmit the news of the Yangzhou battle back to Nanjing.

Because of the proximity, the First Army and the Fifth Army attacking Yangzhou City reported the relevant situation to the Joint Staff Headquarters of Nanjing City every day.

After the First Army and the Fifth Army jointly took Yangzhou City, the navy immediately sent a steam gunboat to urgently return to Nanjing City with the news, and sent the good news jointly written by Shi Qingxuan and Shen Chiyun to the Joint Staff Headquarters.

When Shi Langyi, then chief of the Joint Staff, learned of the great victory in Yangzhou, he was ecstatic in his heart, and immediately went to the temporary operation in person to report this great victory to Lin Zhe in person.

In this way, on June 29th, that is, the night of the Chinese army's capture of Yangzhou City, the good news of Yangzhou's victory was delivered to Lin Zhe.

"Chen Xuan, Yun since the edict to cross the river to the north of the attack, day and night, never dare to slack off, in the second half of this month to Yangzhou puppet Qing army launched an attack, thanks to the emperor's might, the soldiers with their lives finally broke the city yesterday, and fought hard day and night finally at dawn to conquer the Yangzhou capital, Hu Shou Huang Zonghan feared the might of my Great China, killed himself, and the prisoners killed countless enemies ......"

Shi Qingxuan and Shen Chiyun's joint good news is sprinkled with a total of nearly 1,000 words, except for a small number of words describing the battle situation, most of them are compliments such as the invincible king of Great China, His Majesty Xià Shengming, and the emperor's might, in short, the whole article has one meaning, that is, the victory of this battle is all because of the wise guidance of His Majesty, and the emperor's prestige is far away.

As for the actual battle situation, it is natural that it will not be written on this short good news, but a more detailed battle report will be attached.

And now Lin Zhe put down the joint report of Shi Qingxuan and Shen Chiyun, and took this detailed battle report and read it.

Unlike the good news report, which is full of compliments, this battle report is much more similar, from yesterday's breach of the city to today's dawn to completely control the whole city, according to the time period probability of almost every news battle, along with these battles, a large number of jù is also attached to it.

According to this battle report, those in the staff can completely reproduce the situation at that time.

Of course, Lin Zhe didn't care much about what tactics he used to win the victory at that time, but let a large group of staff officers in the staff department study it, and as for himself, he only paid attention to two sets of numbers, one was captured, and the other was the number of casualties between the enemy and the enemy.

When Lin Zhe was still watching, Shi Langyi on the side said with a happy face: "The history of this battle is more than half a month, the first army and the fifth army have killed about 8,500 enemies, and captured more than 20,000 Qing troops. The casualties of our Royal Army were only more than 800, and the casualties of the Auxiliary Defense Force were only 2,000. The proportion of casualties is quite impressive! ”

While listening, Lin Zhe also continued to watch, but soon he frowned: "Li Hongzhang escaped?" ”

Shi Langyi seemed to be a little dissatisfied when he heard Lin Zhe's tone, and immediately explained: "Last night, the puppet Qing army broke through by different routes, when the city was full of fire, the situation was quite chaotic, our army could only send troops to intercept the largest breakthrough force, but I didn't expect Li Hongzhang not to be with those old green battalion troops, but to break through on his own, although the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division tried its best to intercept it, but it was still escaped by Li Hongzhang with part of the Jianghuai New Army, but we stopped at least tens of thousands of Qing troops to break through and eliminate them."

Lin Zhe shook his head: "What's the use of those old soldiers of the Green Battalion killing more, is it possible that they can still stop us from going north?" The only thing that threatens us is the new army of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, especially Li Hongzhang's new army of Jianghuai! ”

Immediately, Lin Zhe thought about it, and then said: "You remind the First Army and the Fifth Army that the follow-up war affairs must pay attention to the new army of the Manchu Qing Dynasty!" ”

Although he was a little dissatisfied with the failure to leave all the Jianghuai New Army, in the face of the great victory in Yangzhou, more than 30,000 enemy soldiers were killed, wounded and captured, which was still a joyous event worthy of special mention, and the corresponding rewards after the war should also be carried out in time, so as not to make the soldiers chill.

Immediately, Lin Zhe waved his pen and instructed the Ministry of Military Affairs, the Quanxu Division, and other institutions to complete the work of recounting the meritorious soldiers of the Yangzhou Campaign, and to reward the soldiers who had made great contributions.

According to the battle report sent back from Yangzhou, Quan Xusi promoted more than 20 meritorious officers on the same day, and approved three meritorious soldiers to be specially sent to the Royal Army Military Academy to study in a crash course, these six soldiers said that they were studying in a crash course, but in other words, they crossed the obstacles that most soldiers could not overcome in their lives, and were directly promoted from soldiers to officers.

You must know that since Yu Shengjun became an army, in addition to technical arms, such as artillery and cavalry, ordinary soldiers, especially infantrymen, want to become officers, the difficulty coefficient is quite large, either at the beginning of literacy, self-taught, and then valued by senior officers and recommended to study in a crash course, or make an exception to send to a crash course to study.

In addition to rewarding these individual soldiers and officers for their direct combat exploits, several units with collective combat merits were also ordered to give collective rewards.

For example, the first battalion of the Eighth Infantry Regiment was awarded the honorary title of 'Tiger Battalion' by Lin Zhe because it was the first to break through the city and fought bravely.

In addition to the rewards for these middle and low-level officers and soldiers, Lin Zhe is also very generous to senior generals, such as Shi Qingxuan and Shen Chiyun.

Because of his meritorious command and coordination, Shi Qingxuan was directly promoted to the rank of lieutenant general of the army, and he was appointed commander-in-chief of Jiangbei military affairs, and he was rewarded with a Nanjing mansion, a saber, and a war horse.

And Shen Chiyun was mediocre in the Yangzhou Campaign, and Lin Zhe didn't want two lieutenant generals to appear in northern Jiangsu, so as to compete for command, so he didn't promote Shen Chiyun to the military rank, but only appointed him as the deputy commander of Jiangbei Military Affairs, and of course, he was also rewarded with a house, a saber, a war horse and other odd things.

It is worth noting that Lin Zhe did not give any title in this reward, nor did he seal Shi Qingxuan and other existing nobles.

For the title of nobility, Lin Zhe is still more cautious, except for the reward of a batch of reduced hereditary titles when he ascended the throne and opened the country, and then rewarded a few royal relatives of the Lin family, his wife Chen Jing, and several viscounts and barons who are not hereditary relatives of Mrs. Lin's mother's family, he has not been awarded a title again.

At present, there are only three hereditary counts and seven hereditary viscounts in the Chinese Empire, and the others are viscounts or barons who cannot be hereditary.

And for a period of time in the future, unless there are prominent meritorious people in the military or civil service system, he is not ready to give out too many noble titles.

You must know that the country has just been established now, and there is still a long time before reunification, and there is nothing to say about the unification war, and if it is not smooth, it is foreseeable that a large number of generals and officials with outstanding military achievements will appear, and these will need to be rewarded at that time.

If there are many rewards at the beginning, and the title of the reward is also high, then it will not be easy to do it in the future, he can't learn from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the title of the prince and the marquis is casually sealed, it is said that Shi Dakai wrapped Hong Xiuquan left Jiujiang to go to Wuchang, Hubei After settling down, he has rewarded dozens of princes, you must know that the princely and marquis titles in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are still very valuable in the past few years, and there are only a handful of princes, such as Shi Dakai, Yang Xiuqing and a few other real bigwigs, even in the middle period, Those who can be named marquis are also the generals who lead the army, such as Lin Chengting, Marquis of Zhenhu, and Wu Ruxiao, Marquis of Zhenjiang, who have tens of thousands of people under their hands.

But what about the current Taiping Army, if you pull out a Taiping Army general with thousands of troops, it may be a marquis or even a prince.

In the past few months, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has been as many princes as dogs, and the Hou Ye has crawled all over the ground.

Lin Zhe also wanted to make the gold content of the noble title higher, this noble title was originally a face-saving product, except for a little subsidy, it was also a little better in the name, no fiefdom, no privileged aristocratic titles If the noble titles are still all over the street, it is estimated that no one cares.

If you want to maintain the gold content of this honorary noble title, you have to control the number, especially the number of nobles who can be hereditary, otherwise others will not care about your noble title.

So this time Yangzhou was a big victory, even if Lin Zhe promoted Shi Qingxuan to lieutenant general, but still did not raise his noble title to one level, if there is no outstanding feats enough to seal the territory, Shi Qingxuan wants to turn the earl into a marquis, it is estimated that it will have to be a big seal after real unification, as for wanting to turn the marquis into a duke, it is estimated that he can only wait for the posthumous seal after his death.

And just when Lin Zhe rewarded the soldiers for his great victory in Yangzhou, Li Hongzhang, dozens of kilometers north of Yangzhou, sat on the horse with a gloomy face.

And most of the Jianghuai New Army in front of him and behind him are also depressed!

On the surface, he led more than 20,000 people to break through together, but in fact he threw out the green battalions of Zhang Guoliang and Dexing'a, and the infantry of the old army of the Eight Banners as bait, and then he himself broke through from another direction with more than 8,000 Jianghuai new troops and more than 3,000 elite cavalry of the green battalion.

Just when Zhang Guoliang and Dexing'a's nearly 20,000 old troops of the Green Battalion attracted the attention of the Fifth Division of the Chinese Army and intercepted it, Li Hongzhang personally led 8,000 Jianghuai New Army and more than 3,000 cavalry to break through from the northwest corner of Yangzhou.

Although the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division of the Chinese Army in front of him tried his best to block it, the Jianghuai New Army could not defeat the Royal Army in the Chinese Army, and it was difficult to defeat these auxiliary defense forces that only held swords and arquebuses, so although the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division left more than 2,000 people under Li Hongzhang's department, it still let Li Hongzhang's main force break through and leave.

All the way north, Li Hongzhang's subordinates, who had escaped from the chasing soldiers several times, were exhausted when they arrived in Huai'an City, and what was even more interesting was that the local officials did not let Li Hongzhang's troops enter the city to rest, saying that they were afraid that the people in the city would recruit soldiers and rebel, so angry that Li Hongzhang was screaming outside the city! (To be continued.) )