Xianfeng's edict to appoint Shu Xing'a, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, as Jiangxi's suppression of bandits and control of the Qing army seems to have arrived late, and the Qing army of each department is not subordinate to each other, and after wandering around outside Nanchang for more than half a month, Xianfeng's holy decree arrived, which can be regarded as solving the embarrassing situation of no one to lead the Qing army.

Shu Xing'a is a native of the Blue Banner of Manchuria, a member of the Hesheri clan, and a scholar in the twelfth year of Daoguang. In the twenty-second year, he was promoted to the cabinet bachelor, and the Ministry of Rites and the deputy capital of Mongolia with the yellow flag. Awarded the Shengjing Military Department Squire. In the following year, he was in charge of the affairs of the clan Kyora government. Twenty-four years, he was appointed Minister of the Interior. He served as the Counselor of Ili, the General of Ili, the Minister of Khotan, and the Minister of Aksu. In the first year of Xianfeng, he was awarded the left squire of the household department, walked on the minister of military aircraft, and became the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu. Historically, he fought against the Taiping Army in Shanxi and Henan for a long time in order to deal with the Taiping Army of the Northern Expedition, but because the Taiping Army did not launch the Northern Expedition, he used Shu Xing'a to bring the Shaanxi, Gansu and Qing Army to fight against the Taiping Army in eastern Xiangdong. Looking at the Qing army generals on the periphery of Nanchang at this time, only his qualifications can command the whole army.

After ending the period of not commanding each other and fighting separately, the Qing army finally eased up, and Shu Xing'a ordered the Qing army to also set up camp and confront the Taiping army.

At this time, Nanchang was stationed in the city of Jiang Zhongyuan, an old opponent of the Taiping Army, and Zhang Fu, who was demoted to Jiangxi as the envoy and the minister of Jiangxi assistant regimental training. Zhang Fu was originally the governor of Jiangxi, but was demoted and retained because of the ineffective battle against the Taiping Army, this person and Jiang Zhongyuan are of the same mind, the two cooperated to stick to Nanchang, but also as stable as Mount Tai.

In his opinion, the Taiping Army's launch of the Eastern Crusade was a ruthless move, not to mention the interruption of transportation and sea transportation, and also broke the possibility that the Qing army would build a large camp in Jiangnan to threaten Tianjing. What's even more terrifying is that the Taiping Army and the foreigners actually hooked up, which made the situation even more complicated.

Jiang Zhongyuan's mind is clear, not as optimistic as Xianfeng, this long-haired rebellion is more tricky in his opinion than the rebellion of the three feudatories during the Kangxi period, and now the Qing army has to do not attack, but to consider how to defend it holistically. Defend the future offensive of the Taiping army, and then form a stalemate, and then rely on the strength of the whole country to slowly consume the Taiping army, it is impossible to defeat the Taiping army in more than ten years.

It's a pity that his opinion was reprimanded after he wrote Xianfeng. However, after the reply in the compromise, Xianfeng added a sentence thoughtlessly, "The hinterland of Jiangxi is two wide barriers, and Nanchang must not be lost." ”

With Jiang Zhongyuan's understanding of him, the emperor's master, it is impossible for him to say such a sentence at the end after reprimanding himself. Jiang Zhongyuan was a little puzzled, but Jiang Zhongyuan was still glad that Xianfeng did not blindly urge Jiang Zhongyuan to send troops to attack the Taiping army. Therefore, Jiang Zhongyuan and Zhang Fu wantonly repaired the city defenses, strengthened the city walls, and recruited regiments to train new soldiers in Nanchang. and burned houses outside the city. Set up a hard village on the high ground outside the city, and dig a trench to connect the city, making Nanchang City like a railway.

When the Taiping army attacked, the Qing army in Nanchang City trained more than 20,000 to defend the city, and the city defense was reinforced, and the outside of the city became an open field. There was no shelter, and there was a lot of money, food, and equipment hoarded in the city. Yang Fuqing's troops besieged for half a month, losing thousands of soldiers and horses, and all the sieges and strong attacks were broken by Jiang Zhongyuan. The Taiping army did not even take a few important places outside the city and Nanchang City. If it weren't for the fact that Chen Yucheng's troops in the West Hall had defeated the Qing army reinforcements one after another, the Taiping army would not even dare to camp outside the city.

The battle of Nanchang has been fought so far, it is a bit like the battle of Changsha in history, but the connection between Nanchang City and the Qing army reinforcements has not yet been established, and the Qing army only needs to open up the connection with the city, and connect the camp position outside the city with the Qing army in the city, then it is really invincible.

After gaining a firm foothold, the Qing army that came to help repeatedly fought with the Taiping army outside the city, hoping to open up contact with Jiang Zhongyuan's deployment in several important places outside the city. However, the Taiping army repeatedly blocked it, and the two sides began a tug-of-war that lasted for more than ten days.

The south of the city is the Taiping army garrison of Chen Yucheng's department, and it is also a nail between the Qing army's Shuxing Abu and Jiang Zhongyuan's department, and it is the greatest pressure to bear, but fortunately, Chen Yucheng's department has a lot of muskets and artillery, and built three wooden cities in the shape of a zigzag, and the Qing army has not obtained benefits from several attacks, on the contrary, the losses are quite large.

Ronglu had few soldiers, and he was not valued too much by Shu Xing'a, but at this time, most of the supplies of the Qing army came from Hengyang, Hunan Province, so most of the Ronglu troops were assigned the task of guarding the grain road, and there was not much risk. Rong Lu came to see the play, and he didn't make any damages, on the contrary, he brought a large amount of tobacco and soil to arrive, and bought a batch of porcelain, tea, raw silk, etc. from Jiangxi in bulk, but he made a lot of profits.

Shu Xing'a convened the generals for several days to discuss the strategy of breaking the enemy, and all the generals were all old people, and they all said that if they wanted to break the four-eyed dog, they must first destroy his three wooden cities. Since Chen Yucheng led an army alone, he defeated the Qing army, and he led tens of thousands of troops at the age of seventeen, becoming the youngest general in the camps of the Qing army and the Taiping army. And Rong Lu was eighteen years old at this time, although he was also the title of chief soldier, but it didn't seem to be enough compared to Chen Yucheng. And Chen Yucheng broke the Qing army even again, plus the black mole under his eyes, so the Qing army called Chen Yucheng a four-eyed dog, a four-eyed dog that can bite people very well.

Shu Xing'a also knew that in order to break Chen Yucheng, he had to break his three wooden cities first, but Chen Yucheng's three wooden cities had sharp artillery and strong defenses, and the artillery of the Qing army could not reach them at all. Seeing this, Rong Lu said that he could purchase more than ten Western artillery pieces to bombard the Taiping army, but at this time, the foreigners were at odds with the imperial court for the exchange of contracts, and the foreigners were not willing to sell performance haode artillery to the Qing army.

Zuihou Ronglu still persuaded Shu Xing'a, only saying that he had a businessman who could buy the goods on his behalf, but the price was more expensive, so Shu Xing'a allowed Ronglu with the attitude of giving it a try.

As a result, Rong Lu sold more than ten Western artillery pieces he purchased to Shu Xing'a at ten times the price, making a lot of money. Zeng Guoquan was very dissatisfied when he heard this, knowing that the more than ten cannons were the sharp weapons of the Hunan army, although they were sold at a good price, they could not be sold all.

Rong Lu didn't explain much to Zeng Guoquan, but only promised that he would buy more artillery in two months, which temporarily suppressed Zeng Guoquan's dissatisfaction.

More than 20 days later, Rong Lu transported the artillery, Shu Xing'a had ordered people to build the earth mountain, the Qing army sent the artillery to the earth mountain, set up artillery on the earth mountain, and bombarded the wooden city with artillery every day.

Chen Yucheng was also too careless, he didn't expect the Qing army to get so many Western cannons, when the Qing army was in the Tushan area, he also thought that the Qing army was building fortifications, plus more than a month of fighting, the ammunition was a little unable to keep up, so he ignored the Qing army on the mountain.

But he didn't expect that on this day, the Qing army on Tushan suddenly fired artillery, Chen Yucheng was caught off guard, eight cannons were destroyed, the casualties were quite serious, and the wooden city was also damaged in many places. Fortunately, there were many Taiping soldiers, and the places that were blown up by artillery fire every day were repaired overnight in the evening.

Chen Yucheng was furious, and the next day he ordered the Taiping artillery to bombard Tushan, and the two sides started an artillery battle, after which the Taiping army sent troops to raid Tushan many times, but the Qing army also defended well and was beaten back.

The gunners of the Qing army are not as skilled as the gunners of the Taiping Army in playing with this Western artillery, and after days of artillery battles, there are also a lot of losses.

After Rong Lu arrived, he ordered someone to carry a sand table and put it in the center of the tent, but the mountains and rivers of Nanchang City were all shown on this small sand table, and the generals were amazed when they saw this. Shu Xing'a's eyes lit up, and he followed all the generals to watch. I saw that the positions, camps, soldiers and horses of the enemy and our armies were clearly marked above, and all the generals admired the talent of this weak-crowned general, and they were able to come up with such exquisite utensils for marching and arranging.

Rong Lu walked to the sand table, pointed to the Qing army camp outside the Jinxian Gate in Nanchang with a bamboo stick and said: "Now our army has gathered, the company camp is here, and there are three long-haired wooden cities opposite, supplemented by barracks and moats and wooden fences in the middle, as a barrier to block the connection between us and the Jiang people in the city." Now if our army wants to relieve the siege of Nanchang, it only needs to open the Xianmen Gate, so that the city can get the support of our army's grain and grass, baggage, and soldiers, and Nanchang can be defended for a long time. So tomorrow, my subordinates think that they should break these three wooden cities first! ”

Shu Xing'a frowned and said: "The three wooden cities here are attacked by me for many days, they are unusually strong, there are many long-haired soldiers, and the middle camp is coherent, and the long-haired can increase troops to the three wooden cities through the camp at any time, and it is difficult to pull them out in a hurry." The long-haired guns are sharp, and the artillery of our army is unfavorable, so what can I do? ”

Rong Lu chuckled: "Changmao and our army have been attacking and killing for three years, and they have besieged and broken the city, and they all like to attack the cave, bury gunpowder under the city wall, and blow up the city wall and attack. Now we are treating others as they would have been treated. In the past few days, his subordinates have taken advantage of the time when the artillery fire is attacking the wooden city, and they have sent hundreds of people to dig tunnels, and they have dug three tunnels to the bottom of the wooden city, and put gunpowder on them tomorrow morning, and they will also blow up their three wooden cities, and then the whole army will break through the formation, and they will succeed in one fell swoop! ”

The Qing generals were overjoyed when they heard this, Jiang Zhongyuan's brother Jiang Zhongjun and Jiang Zhongyuan's old subordinate Liu Changyou were even more overjoyed, and Jiang Zhongjun even shouted that he would take the lead tomorrow and avenge his brother Jiang Zhongji who died at the hands of Chen Yucheng. Shu Xing was overjoyed, he didn't expect that Rong Lu had already arranged everything quietly, as long as Mucheng went, Jiang Zhongjun's troops were fierce, supplemented by soldiers and horses from all departments, they would definitely be able to relieve the siege of Nanchang in one fell swoop, and they were all happy at the moment. At present, Shu Xing's preparations are divided into various departments, and he will break the city in one fell swoop tomorrow. (To be continued......)