The death of the Guangzhou general Mukdena and the surrender of Huang Kaiguang, the commander of the naval division, made the morale of the Qing army, which was not high, even more low, and the angry Ye Mingchen ordered the chambers of commerce and wealthy households in Guangzhou to organize business groups and militia groups to fight against the Taiping army.

As an open treaty port, the news of Guangzhou is not as closed as the inland areas, and the wealthy merchants here have long heard that the foreigners have told the deeds of the Taiping Army, and they know that what the Taiping Army did in Shanghai, Ningbo and other places is to protect private property and vigorously encourage industry and commerce.

Moreover, the Taiping army soldiers were mighty and hehe, and they also fought a battle with the foreigners a few days ago, although it was not considered to have won the foreigners, but the Taiping army dared to fire at the foreigners, so that the merchants and people of Guangzhou felt that the Taiping army was much better than the soft-boned Qing army. Although the merchants and people of Guangzhou do a lot of business with foreigners, they have never had a good impression of foreigners. After the Opium War, the people of Guangzhou had prevented foreigners from entering the city of Guangzhou for more than ten years, which shows that the people of Guangzhou hated the foreigners very much, and when the Taiping army went south, at first the people also said that the Taiping army was with the foreigners, but then the conflict between the Taiping army and the British broke out to break these suspicions.

As a result, a strange scene appeared in the city of Guangzhou, where wealthy merchants and rural civilians were all looking forward to the Taiping army entering the city as soon as possible. After arriving at the end of the day, Ye Mingchen had to send troops to drive the strong men in the city to the city to help defend it, and excluded the soldiers to forcibly extort rich merchants to donate money and food. The result is even greater resentment boiling.

After completing the sweep of the key areas on the outskirts of Guangzhou, the three divisions of the Taiping Army quickly attacked the city of Guangzhou on three sides, which was a tactic of encircling three and missing one. The Taiping army did not force the Qing army to be in a hurry and caused too much damage to the city of Guangzhou, in Xiao Yungui's eyes, after Guangzhou was taken, it would continue to play its role as a treaty port.

The Qing army was the commander of Laicun, the deputy commander of the capital Shuangxi, and the general soldier Ren Anbang were respectively defending the east, west and south of the city, but they only resisted for an hour, and Ren Anbang, the general soldier of the Qing army guarding the south of the city, first opened the city and surrendered. Seeing the fall of the south of the city, Lai Cun and Shuangxi hurriedly retreated, escorting Ye Mingchen, Bai Gui and other Guangzhou officials to escape from the north of the city.

June 28. The Taiping army entered and occupied Guangzhou, and it took less than a month for the Taiping army to land on the Wanshan Islands to occupy the city of Guangzhou. Yes. The Taiping army suffered more than 1,000 casualties, including officers and soldiers killed and wounded in the conflict with the British, and annihilated more than 30,000 Manchu Qing Green Battalion, Guangzhou Eight Banner Soldiers, and regimental training soldiers and horses, most of which were surrendered by the Qing army.

And after Ye Mingchen and other Qing officers fled from the north gate. More than ten miles south of Huaxian County, it was surrounded and annihilated by the cavalry of the Taiping Army. Except for the deputy commander of the Qing army, Shuangxi, who led hundreds of Qing troops to break through the siege, the rest of the Qing troops from Ye Mingchen down, either killed or surrendered or captured alive.

The commander of the Battle of Guangzhou was Chen Yucheng, a young famous general of the Taiping Army, who arrived in Guangzhou with the Second Fleet of Luo Xuan, and on the way he received a secret order from the King of the West, telling him not to ignore the British to continue to capture Guangzhou, and if the British fleet came to provoke again, the sailors could resolutely return fire without remembering the losses. It was after Chen Yucheng arrived in Guangzhou. Quickly launched troops to sweep through Guangzhou.

Thanks to the good foundation laid by Zhang Wenxiang's division of the Third Division in advance, Chen Yucheng's follow-up troops and horses did not encounter much resistance when they landed in Guangzhou. Coupled with the will of the people, the Battle of Guangzhou ended in a short period of time.

After capturing Guangzhou, Chen Yucheng left a part of the Second Division to defend Guangzhou with the naval division, and the rest of the troops and horses swept through Guangdong in three directions. The first way was the first division led by Chen Alin, the former general of the Little Knife Society, who attacked eastward, preparing to fight to the neighboring places of Fujian and Guangdong, and together with the soldiers and horses of Chen Kaibu of the former Red Turban Army who were preparing to go south from Fujian, they surrounded and annihilated the Qing army of Wang Yide and Li Tingyu, the governor of Fujian, who were struggling in Chaozhou, Meizhou and other places. The second route, with Chen Zhiming's second division as the main force, swept north to open up the connection with Jiangxi, cleared the Qing army in the north, and strived to connect Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi. The third route, with Zhang Wenxiang's third division as the main force, went west to attack Zhaoqing and other places, preparing to march into Guangxi.

Due to the sudden landing of the Taiping army in the Battle of Guangzhou, all the high-ranking generals and officers of the Guangdong Prefecture, Daotai, and other high-ranking officers were killed or captured by the Taiping army, and the command system of the Qing army in Guangdong was paralyzed.

Between July and August, the Taiping Army's three-way army swept through Guangdong, except for the Eastern Route Army, which was strongly resisted by the Qing army's Li Tingyu in Chaozhou and Meizhou, the rest of the roads were progressing smoothly. By the end of August, the Qing army in Guangdong was basically wiped out, Meizhou was also conquered, and officials such as Wang Yide, the governor of Fujian, committed suicide, leaving only Li Tingyu, a veteran of the Qing army, to defend the lonely city of Chaozhou, but it was also surrounded by the Taiping army.

After Guangzhou was captured, Xiao Yungui imitated the example of Shanghai, Ningbo and other treaty ports, and set up a separate Guangzhou Military and Political Department to govern Guangzhou, and sent Lu Xianba to take over as the director of the Guangzhou Military and Political Department, Li Tianxi as the commander of the Guangzhou garrison, and established the South China Sea Fleet, with Tang Zhengcai as the commander of the fleet. After Luo Xuan led most of the fleet back to Shanghai, the original Shanghai fleet was upgraded to the East China Sea Fleet.

After Lu Xianba took office, he copied the example of Shanghai, quickly took over the customs, established the Guangdong Customs, abolished the excesses and miscellaneous taxes, and encouraged the development of industry and commerce, which won the support of the merchants and people of Guangdong. At the same time, Guangzhou was rich, and more than 1 million taels of silver were found in the Manchu Qing Customs Yamen in Guangzhou alone, and after a large number of Guangzhou officials' mansions were confiscated, the Taiping army obtained a total of more than 5 million taels of money, grain, and property.

At the same time, there is also a full city in Guangzhou, the Taiping army did not massacre the city of Guangzhou this time, after the invasion of the city, in addition to the resolute extermination of the recalcitrant elements, most of the banner people in the city chose to surrender, and the Taiping army also accepted their surrender.

After the surrender of the bannermen, most of their belongings were confiscated, and more than 100,000 bannermen were driven out of the city and scattered to several large mining areas in Guangdong to engage in heavy labor such as mining. In the later period of the Opium War, the money and food received by the banner people gradually decreased, and in the early years of Xianfeng, it was even more difficult to make a living. Since the Kangxi period, the banner militia stationed in Guangzhou has been strictly forbidden to learn farming skills. These people have no skills at all, and they are not able to engage in any production, and they are strictly forbidden to engage in industrial and commercial activities. Then the banner people of Guangzhou strictly forbade intermarriage with the people of other cities. It was even strictly forbidden to leave the city for ten miles, which led to the fact that the Guangzhou bannermen in the city basically had no social contact with the outside world.

For these banner people who had no social relations and no skills, it was naturally impossible for the Taiping army to let them continue to stay in Guangzhou City like this, and it was the best choice to arrange for simple manual labor in the major minerals, and no one in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom could enjoy getting something for nothing.

As a result, more than 100,000 banner people began a bloody and tearful relocation history, and they were divided into dozens of batches by the Taiping Army according to family units. Each batch of thousands or more than 10,000 people was resettled in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi and other places. Along the way, the Taiping army only provided the most basic rations, and the migration of the banner people was difficult and difficult. dragged the family with the mouth, slept in the open, and the crying and shouting shook the four fields, and the Taiping soldiers escorted along the way were also quite unbearable.

In fact, the life of the banner people in Guangzhou is not very good, even worse than that of some people in the outer cities of Guangzhou. People in the outer cities can still have a means of livelihood. They could only survive on the meager money and food, and the hardships they have experienced now can only be blamed on their ancestors who admired the bow horse, and if it were not for the so-called ancestral system imposed on them, they would not have fallen into such a field.

Later, these banner people engaged in heavy labor such as mineral mining in various places, and then a large number of banner people participated in the construction of the Fujian-Guangzhou railway, and finally had a skill to survive. But at that time, the number of banner people had already been drastically reduced due to heavy labor and chronic malnutrition, and this is a later story.

There were also several major riots and escapes during the migration of the banner people. But they were all quickly suppressed by the Taiping army, because the banner people have been out of touch with the outside society for a long time, they lack sympathizers, and even ordinary people regard these former flag men as monsters, no one supports and sympathizes, so the resistance of the flag people is also extremely fragile. Later, except for a few widows and widows who wrote articles about the history of blood and tears of the migration of the banner people, the account in the official history of the Kingdom of Heaven is only a few simple sentences: "When Guangzhou was recovered, more than 100,000 banner people scattered in the three provinces of southern Xinjiang, so that they each made a ......living by mining and building roads."

After Ye Mingchen and other Manchu officials were captured, they followed the fleet of Luo Gang's army by sea to Shanghai, and then sent to Tianjing. In Shanghai and other places, Ye Mingchen and other captured Qing officials saw the amazing changes in Shanghai, not to mention the prosperous ten-mile foreign field in Shanghai and the thriving domestic industrial and commercial new area on the other side, and even the Western train they took to Suzhou later, which opened the eyes of these Manchu officials.

Xiao Yungui did this for a purpose, with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's military offensive becoming more and more vigorous, there will be more and more Manchu officials who surrender or take the initiative to surrender and change banners in the future, at this time, you can't blindly catch the Manchu officials and kill them, after all, it is very necessary to reduce losses and let the enemy surrender on their own initiative, so Xiao Yungui needs to buy horse bones.

But only Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui Xiao Yungui did not give preferential treatment, after the failure of the Guangdong Tiandihui uprising, Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui slaughtered the families and children of the rebel army in Guangdong, and even killed many innocent people. Huang Kaiguang, the commander of the naval division who surrendered to the initiative, Ren Anbang, the chief soldier, Jiang Guolin, the captured political envoy, and Zhou Qibin, the envoy of the inspection, and other officials can be used.

Among them, Jiang Guolin, who has been an official for more than 20 years, has been honest all his life, and when he took office, he cared about the people's weal and woe and severely punished corrupt officials and corrupt officials. Historically, Jiang Guolin was promoted to governor of Guangdong in 1858, and he was even more diligent in government and loved the people, and he was personally responsible for everything, and strictly rectified the rule of officials, thus offending many bureaucrats and corrupt officials. They bribed the court magnates and framed Jiang Guolin, and soon Jiang Guolin was impeached and moved to Huizhou. When the elders of Huizhou heard that Jiang Guolin was coming, they walked wildly to tell each other. According to the "Dazhu County Chronicle", at that time, "the old man held a cane to the left, and women and children frolicked and leaned on the thatched eaves, peeping at the color of adults; Every household burns incense, and the sound of firecrackers resounded for ten miles." After Jiang Guolin entered the hotel, the betel nuts, coconut millet and other items presented by the people of the county filled the outdoors, and the grateful greetings came one after another. The people of the county greeted a retired official with such a warm welcome, which is the only time in the history of Huizhou. Jiang Guolin returned to his hometown a few months later, and died soon after at the age of 50.

Officials like Jiang Guolin can be appointed, and the premise is that they let go of the original Manchu masters in their hearts. Now Xiao Yungui is not only keen on power, but also more keen on imposing his will on others, and if he can take an enemy official and military general for his own use, Xiao Yungui will feel a greater sense of accomplishment. As a result, Jiang Guolin and others visited Shanghai, Suzhou and other places before they were sent to Tianjing. (To be continued......)