In mid-November of the second year, the Guangdong Tiandihui uprising broke out. He Liu, the leader of the Dongguan Tiandihui, led the people to revolt in Shilong Town, Dongguan County, and began to attack the county seat on the 17th, opening the prelude to the Tiandihui uprising near the city of Guangdong Province. The uprising soon grew to more than 30,000 people and more than 600 boats. On the 19th, Chen Kai, the chief helmsman of the Foshan Tiandi Society, launched an uprising in Fengning Temple in Shiwan, Foshan, and immediately began to attack the town of Foshan under Nanhai County. Subsequently, Li Wenmao, Gan Xian, Zhou Chun and others gathered people to revolt on the south bank of the Shenghe River (Pearl River) in Foling City in the northern suburbs of Guangzhou, Chen Xianliang and others in Yantang in the east of the city, and Lin Huanlong and others gathered on the south bank of the Provincial River (Pearl River).

The rebels shaved their hair and changed clothes, wrapped their heads in red scarves or belts around their waists, and branded the banner of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, calling themselves Xidian soldiers. After the Opium War, the Manchu Qing Dynasty ceded land to the outside world and paid reparations, lost power and humiliated the country, and intensified internal oppression, preying on the people, and the social crisis became more serious. Guangdong bore the brunt of the Opium War, suffered the most, and shared the heaviest war reparations after the war, so the Manchu Qing Dynasty's exploitation and oppression of the people was even more cruel. With the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom uprising, half of Jiangnan fell, and Guangdong, as the only province with a surplus of money and grain, naturally exploited even more. As the Manchu oppression deepened, more and more poor peasants, unemployed handicraftsmen, petty traders, boat people, and unemployed vagrants joined the Tiandihui organization and embarked on the road of anti-Qing struggle. Therefore, after the Tiandihui uprising in Foshan and other places in Guangdong, the uprisings of the Tiandihui in Guangdong Province began to rise like mushrooms after a rain.

Within two months, Chen Kai, He Jiu, Li Wenmao and other rebels conquered more than 40 prefectures, prefectures, and county seats, and successively formed several central areas. In the vicinity of Guangzhou, in addition to Chen Kai and Li Wenmao, Chen Jingang, Lian Sihu, Hou Chendai, Lin Danian, Chen Ji, Liang Ji, Liu Guanxiu, Chen Songnian, Lu Cuijin, Feng Kun and others led the Tiandihui uprising in Huaxian, Sanshui, Qingyuan, Shunde, Longmen, Xinhui, Heshan and other counties.

In the Zhaoqing area in the west, Chen Rong, Wu Baiji and others led the people to revolt and responded in Shui Yong. In one fell swoop, he captured the city of Zhaoqing (now Zhaoqing City). In the northern Shaozhou region, Chen Yihe of Yingde County and Ge Yaoming of Lechang County first launched an uprising, and later, together with other rebel armies, besieged the capital city of Shaozhou (present-day Shaoguan City) three times. In the eastern Chaozhou and Huizhou regions, the rebel army led by Chen Niangkang, Zheng Youchun, Wu Zhongshu, Zhai Huogu, etc., was active in Huilai, Chaoyang, Chenghai, Puning, Jieyang, Guishan (now Huiyang), Boluo and other places. In addition, the counties of Jiaying, Gaozhou, and Lianzhou also had uprisings of varying scales. The rebel armies everywhere ranged from tens of thousands in large groups to thousands or hundreds in small groups.

In the face of the overwhelming wave of uprisings of the Tiandihui rebel army, the Qing army was surprisingly calm and calm. The Qing army near Guangzhou after the uprising of the rebel army. The surrounding towns were quickly abandoned, and most of the troops retreated to the provincial capital of Guangzhou, while the rest of the Hunan soldiers and the training horses of the local regiments in Guangdong were camped on various key roads outside Guangzhou.

The intention of the Qing army was to attract several large rebel armies around Guangzhou to attack Guangzhou, and to use Guangzhou's strong defenses to deplete the rebel army, while the soldiers and horses on the periphery cut off Guangzhou's connection with other prefectures and counties. Intercept the rebel army from other parts of Guangdong to come to Guangzhou to rendezvous. As long as the mutual connection between the rebel armies can be severed, the rebel armies will not be able to form a joint operation. Hunan soldiers and local regimental training will have the opportunity to break through one by one. Zuihou turned around again to clean up the rebel army in the outskirts of Guangzhou.

This strategy was suggested by Rong Lu to Ye Mingchen in the name of the guest army Xiangyong Admiral, since Rong Lu led 8,000 Xiangyong into Guangdong, he also slowly saw that the contradictions between the local government and the people in Guangdong have reached the point of irreconcilability, and at the same time, heaven and earth will be intertwined in Guangdong, and it is not as simple as the Shanghai knife will be as simple as the Shanghai knife back then. Therefore, Rong Lu changed his strategy, and he first led the Hunan soldiers to clean up the local regimental training in various places. Carry out unified organization and training of local regimental training loyal to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, eliminate the Tiandihui gangs in the regimental training, and then lead the Hunan soldiers and regimental training troops to garrison various key roads, separating the entire Guangdong prefecture and county and the provincial capital of Guangzhou. The intention was to divide the rebel armies in Guangdong, and to encircle and suppress them in pieces after the rebel army revolted.

Sure enough, after the rebels everywhere rose up one after another, they found that they could not get closer to the provincial capital of Guangzhou, and at the same time, with the cooperation of Xiang Yong, the regiments and horses from all over the country began to fight back frantically. Due to the lack of unified leadership and lack of combat experience, most of them were defeated by the regimental training organized by the Qing army and the landlords and gentry.

In the first month of the year of Bingchen (1856), in addition to the rebel armies of Chen Kai and Li Wenmao, who were still besieging Guangzhou, most of the rest of the rebels were wiped out, and only Zhai Huogu, Ge Yaoming and other troops were transferred to Jiangxi, Fujian and other places to join the Taiping army. Some, such as Chen Jingang's troops, moved to the border areas of Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi, while others were forced to transfer to Guangxi to seek refuge with Zhu Hongying and He Goubei.

Although the land passage of Guangzhou was besieged, and the rebel army also blocked the inland river in the Pearl River, they were never able to close the waterway of Guangzhou. The Qing army was able to get supplies by sea, and at the same time, the foreign powers began to sell guns and ammunition to the Qing army.

Ye Mingchen, the governor of Liangguang, and Bai Gui, the governor of Guangdong, personally led troops to defend Guangzhou, and there were more than 4,000 green battalion soldiers in Guangzhou, together with more than 1,300 soldiers of the Eight Banners in the city, to defend the forts and water and land passes. The gentry and landlords in various localities were ordered to quickly organize regimental training, and by means of "giving preferential rations" and "doubling the wages", they successively hired more than 27,000 villagers from the provincial capitals, Xiangshan, Xin'an, Dongguan, Xinhui, Chaozhou, and other places, added hundreds of inland river warships, and selected and hired 16,000 relatives of water warriors and artillery warriors to cooperate with the Eight Banners and the Green Battalion to fight.

He also asked the Qing government to quickly transfer troops from Fujian, Hunan and other provinces to Guangdong to suppress it, and at the same time set up a "salary bureau" headed by the big comprador Wu Chongyao, and then shamelessly begged the British authorities in Hong Kong to send troops to rescue, although they were refused, the foreign powers began to sell weapons and food to the Manchu government in Guangzhou.

As early as when Rong Lu entered Guangdong, he consulted with Ye Mingchen, Bai Gui, Guangzhou General Mu Teen, and the right-wing deputy commander Tuo En Dong'e, and made specific strategies for defending Guangzhou. After the rebel army began to besiege Guangzhou, Ye Mingchen and others quickly acted according to the strategy set at that time, and the general Wei Zuobang led the green battalion of his subordinates to be stationed on the East Road and defend the Baoli Fort; Huang Darong and Xiong Yingrong led the green battalion and some regimental training to garrison the key passes outside the small north gate; The guerrilla Zeng Tingxiang, the general Jishan led the green battalion and some regiments to garrison the important places in the north of the city; guerrilla Chen Dingbang led part of the green battalion and artillery Yong to defend the forts of Qiding, Gongji, and Baoji; The co-leaders Lai Cun, Wang Zhenxiong and Zuo Ling Ge Bandage led the Eight Banners to guard the Yongkang Fort outside the North Gate; The guerrilla Chen Guohui and the sailor general Wang Xian led the green battalion to counter-regiment training and stationed in Xishan Temple, Mud City and other places in the west of the city; Co-leaders Tuo Yunquan, Tai Chengen, Guoyin and others led the Eight Banners and some regiments to defend the old city; Adjutant General Waitab led the Guangzhou Xielu Battalion to defend the new city. Ye Mingchen and others climbed the five-story building (Zhenhai Tower) of Yuexiu Mountain every day to personally command. In the above strategy, the north of the city was the focus, followed by the east and west of the city, and the forts were strengthened to ensure that the river channel from Guangzhou to the open sea was unblocked.

Ye Mingchen and Rong Lu agreed that the Qing army in Guangzhou would hold on. It was not until the peripheral soldiers and horses led by Rong Lu extinguished the rebel armies in other places that they returned to Guangzhou, and the two armies jointly exterminated Chen Kai, Li Wenmao and other rebels under the city of Guangzhou.

The news of the sale of weapons and food by the foreign powers to the Qing army in Guangdong was transmitted back to Shanghai as soon as possible, and it was not surprising that Xiao Yungui, the king of the West, who was still fighting a diplomatic war with the foreign powers, was demonstrating to himself and exerting pressure in this way.

After the end of the Crimean War, the Northern Corps of the Taiping Army, as a mercenary, refused to withdraw its troops from Temple Street and Sakhalin Island on the grounds that the war was over and the employment relationship was over. This greatly annoyed the British and French ministers, but the Taiping army had a de jure advantage, the first being that the employment contract did include the end of the war. The terms under which the employment relationship ends immediately and stipulates that the employing party shall not assume any operational responsibility for the coalition forces as a combatant unit at the time of negotiations between the belligerents. That is, after the end of the war, the Taiping army was no longer under the command of General Grant, the commander-in-chief of the allied forces. The second is that Temple Street and Sakhalin Island were still Manchu territory at that time. The fact that the Taiping Army, as a rebel army, occupied its own territory and did not lose anything in the face of Britain and France, which maintained diplomatic neutrality, was that even the Russian minister did not have the audacity to demand that the Taiping Army withdraw from these two places. The reason is that the legal treaty between the Manchus and Russia dates back to the Treaty of Nebuchu during the Kangxi period. The treaty made it clear that Temple Street and Sakhalin were still Chinese.

At the same time, before the freezing period of the Tatar Strait, the merchant supply fleet of the Taiping army sent enough supplies to the troops there for more than three months, and established sea trade routes in Sakhalin, Hakodate, Nagasaki, Shanghai and other places, and the money earned back and forth was enough to pay for the supplies of the troops in the north. After solving the supply problem, the Taiping army did not want to retreat from Temple Street and Sakhalin even more.

The Taiping Army appeared in the Northeast. The direct chain reaction was that Xianfeng suspended the errand of transferring the Heilongjiang horse team from the northeast to the south, and instead transferred part of the Chahar horse team and the Mongolian horse team to the northeast for defense, and he was afraid that the Taiping army would copy his back road in the land of Longxing in the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

As a result, a large number of Qing troops poured into the northeast, and the Russians in the northeast began to panic. They began to reveal themselves to the Manchu army along the banks of the Heilongjiang River with supply points, outposts, and temporary docks. Previously, Heilongjiang General Yige had played, saying that the Rakshasa often transported troops east through Heilongjiang, when the Manchu court was busy dealing with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and there was no time to probe, with the Northeast having long hair, the Qing army in the Northeast did not dare to sleep. When they woke up, they found that on the land north of the Heilongjiang River, the Rakshasa people had built so many towns, military stations, outposts, docks, and so on.

Yige also saw the seriousness of the matter, not only did Long Hair threaten the northeast of the Manchu Dynasty, but even Lao Maozi began to pay attention here, instead of the Rakshasa people who had just borrowed Heilongjiang to pass the army as the court thought before.

So the Qing army in the northeast moved, Yige was dismissed, and another important minister of the clan, Yishan, took over as the general of Heilongjiang. In the northeast, there was a strange confrontation between the Manchus, the Russians, and the Taipings.

If the Taiping army did not withdraw from Temple Street and Sakhalin, the negotiations between Britain, France and Russia in the Far East would be even more difficult than the Paris Peace Conference. Russian Minister Tuzhkov insisted that Temple Street and Sakhalin had been captured by the Anglo-French forces and should be returned to Russia. In fact, the three parties knew the reason, but the Russian minister insisted on this point and demanded that Britain and France make concessions on the treaty in the Far East. So the British and French, in this case, began to support the Manchus in Guangzhou, which was to put pressure on the king of the west.

The West King ignored this pressure for the time being, and he was now fighting with the East King with all his might...... (To be continued......)