The county magistrate of Linyi County and the general of the green battalion did not hesitate for long, and soon after receiving the letter of persuasion, the general gathered the army, and the county official sorted out the documents and materials such as the seal letter, household registration, grain and grass account book, and then opened the city gate to welcome the Taiping army into the city.

The reason for such a quick surrender is also very simple, the army of King Qinwang of Shandong in Linyi was too much of a disaster before, and the people were very resentful, and the Qing army could not get the support of the rich merchants in the city, so they also had no idea of resisting, and more than 2,000 Qing troops in the city surrendered neatly, and it didn't cost Li Xiucheng too much to do.

After entering the city, Li Xiucheng's subordinate officers handled the aftermath of the incident, accepted and surrendered soldiers, checked the most heinous soldiers and ruffians, and executed them after a public trial, and selected the able-bodied to supplement the army on the spot, and the old, weak, sick and disabled were given money and food to be dismissed on the spot, and the rest were organized into township soldiers to maintain local law and order, and more than 100 officers selected from the Taiping Army were under the command of each other. The quartermaster received the household registration information, counted the grain and grass, made an example to reassure the people, and distributed some grain to the people.

The county officials and generals and other county Qing court civil and military affairs are also generally checked in the past, and those who harm the people are all executed in accordance with the laws of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, like the county officials of Linyi County, who are relatively honest on weekdays, and are still appointed as the county magistrate of Linyi County after Li Xiucheng met with him. And the general drank a lot of soldiers' blood, and there were many homicide cases in his hands, so he was naturally executed after a public trial. Although the county official pleaded for the general, hoping that Li Xiucheng would let the general go for the credit of taking the initiative to sacrifice the city, Li Xiucheng refused.

Li Xiucheng said to the county official: "Heaven has its own laws of heaven, even the Manchu Qing Dynasty has laws, and the crimes committed by this person deserve death even according to the laws of the Qing Dynasty." It is impossible to release him because he has contributed to the city, so how can we face the soldiers and civilians who have been brutalized by him? ”

But the county magistrate was worried that Li Xiucheng had done so. In the future, I am afraid that those Qing generals who have bloody cases in their hands will not dare to take the initiative to surrender. Li Xiucheng shook his head and said: "The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is going to create a new country, and if the officials are not clear, it will be the same as the original Manchu Dynasty." So what's the point? Since these people were not punished by the laws of the Manchu Dynasty, the laws of the Kingdom of Heaven were to be cured! As for not taking the initiative to surrender in the future, it would be better, and our Taiping army will resolutely exterminate them! ”

The county official was silent for a while, and said that many generals were actually not evil, but because they had been fighting with the Taiping army for a long time, they had more or less blood on their hands, so they were quite apprehensive about surrendering. Li Xiucheng thought about it and said: "In the past, each was his master, and there would be casualties in the battlefield, if they could wake up as soon as possible." If you voluntarily surrender and revolt, you can be exempted, but if you have done evil things in the past that tortured and killed our prisoners, wounded soldiers, or killed good people and mutilated ordinary people, you will not be exempted from the crime! ”

The county official somewhat understood what Li Xiucheng meant, and it was excusable to fight on the battlefield, but if they had indiscriminately killed prisoners or wounded soldiers of the Taiping Army after the war, they would no longer be pardoned, especially those who had done such evil things as killing good people and taking meritorious deeds, the Taiping Army would not let them go.

After the Taiping army entered the city, they killed some heinous soldiers and ruffians, and corrupt officials and corrupt officials. Everyone applauded. And the Taiping Army, a big family, did not bother, but was sued by the people in the same way, and those who usually oppressed the people and had a lawsuit in their hands were also punished according to the law. Confiscation of family property. The Taiping army naturally treated the wealthy merchants in the township with courtesy, and at the same time announced the abolition of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes. The Taiping army did not need to donate money and grain when they crossed the border, and at the same time, they also encouraged wealthy merchants to open shops and markets as usual. Steady dìng place. As a result, every household in Linyi rejoiced overnight. The people's hearts quickly turned towards the Taiping army.

The day after capturing Linyi, Li Xiucheng received news from Bai Zetang in Shandong that Lin Fengxiang's division of the Southern Route Army had captured Xuzhou half a month ago, and the main army was attacking and advancing to the north in two ways. Lin Fengxiang's East Route Army along Zaozhuang, Tengxian, Yanzhou, Tai'an all the way to Jinan Mansion attack, now the front has arrived in Yanzhou, Yanzhou Qing Army is not many soldiers and horses, I believe that it will be captured soon, the East Route Army and Li Xiucheng's division in Jinan is just around the corner. The Western Route Army was commanded by Lai Wenguang, together with Chen Decai, Zhang Zongyu, Ren Huabang and other generals of the Twist Army, Ma Xiangxi to attack Henan Guide, Shangqiu, Suizhou, Qixian, Lankao and other places, the intention of the Western Route Army was obviously to protect the flank of the Eastern Route Army and Li Xiucheng's department, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Staff Headquarters was worried when deducing the Shandong Campaign, once the Manchu Qing was forced too urgently, the Qing army might blow up the Yellow River embankment in Lankao or other sections, and the flooding of the Yellow River would inevitably form a huge Yellow River flood area in Shandong, Anhui and other places, so that the Taiping Army would march, Logistical aspects have been greatly affected. Therefore, the task of the Western Route Army was very clear, to occupy the towns along the Yellow River in Henan Province, and to coerce the Qing army in Kaifeng, so that they did not dare to go out of the city lightly, so as to ensure the safety of the Yellow River.

The progress of the Western Route Army was also good, having captured Guidefu, and the Qing army hurriedly shrank its defensive line, not daring to fight with the Taiping Army in the field, and concentrated its forces to defend the key passes of large towns. Due to the dispatch of elite troops by Li Hongzhang, Yuan Jiasan and others, the Qing army's Jianghuai and Yellow River defense lines were almost immediately crushed, and Lin Fengxiang's two armies progressed very smoothly.

After receiving the news of the Southern Route Army, Li Xiucheng breathed a sigh of relief, and it seemed that if there was no accident, Shandong and Henan provinces would be recovered within three months. After dealing with some affairs in Linyi, the whole army rested in Linyi for three days, and Li Xiucheng led the army to continue southward towards Jinan Mansion.

When Li Xiucheng and Lin Fengxiang marched north and south, the Manchu capital was indeed in a state of sorrow, and the Taiping army unexpectedly annihilated the foreigners landing on the shore, and there was no situation in which they hoped to see both defeats, and the three sides of the northeast and south outside the capital were still firmly surrounded by the three large camps of the Taiping army, and the 20,000 Taiping army field troops plus the Taiping army in the Jintang area instigated the newly recruited more than 10,000 township soldiers and civilians (many of them were originally local regiments and reorganized), and surrounded the three directions of the capital.

The Taiping army is very ruthless, they just surround the capital but do not attack, the Manchu Qing Dynasty more than 100,000 soldiers and horses stationed in the capital, the daily consumption of grain and grass is an astronomical amount, because they occupy the Jintang Canal, the grain and grass can not be transported to the capital, only relying on the west from Xuanhua, Datong to raise the grain from Guanwai, Shanxi and other places is a drop in the bucket.

Li Hongzhang, Yuan Jiasan and other officials all knew that the Taiping army was a policy of waiting for work at ease, just waiting for the Manchu Qing to exhaust the last bit of energy and blood in order to hold the capital, and then the capital would still collapse because of the food shortage, and then the Taiping army would sweep the northern provinces without much effort. They also wrote several times to ask the empress dowager and the little emperor to move the capital or tour the west, to avoid the edge of the Taiping army, even if they retreated outside the border in the future, they would have more than enough.

But the Manchu nobles do not agree, they have lived in the capital for a long time, and the foundation of their family property is in the capital, if the imperial court abandons the capital, then their net worth will be lost to the Taiping army in vain, and the capital has more than 100,000 soldiers and horses, but they were besieged by only 30,000 long hairs and fled without a fight, isn't it a joke? If the imperial court loses the capital, what majesty will it use to command the world?

The two factions then quarreled endlessly, every day the court was a lip service lawsuit, and then impeached each other, Li Hongzhang, Yuan Jiasan, Peng Yulin and others were criticized for being incomplete, and finally the Empress Dowager Xi had to agree with the mainstream opinion, sent a large group of soldiers and horses to storm the Taiping army camp, and sent more soldiers and horses to protect Xuanda, the west road grain road, and continue to hold the capital.

In fact, the Queen Mother of the West doesn't know which hand the West King is playing, in history the Manchu Qing Dynasty strangled the Taiping Army in this way, Jiangnan, Jiangbei two camps have been besieging the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom capital Tianjing, although there have been several times the two camps were conquered by the Taiping Army, but soon the Manchu Army rebuilt two camps, the Taiping Army used a corner of the manpower and material resources and the Manchu Qing Dynasty manpower and material resources to fight to consume, as a result, the essence of Jiangnan was consumed, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was defeated.

And now the king of the west is just to govern his body in the way of others, and also let the Manchu Qing taste the taste of being slowly hanged, whether the city of Beijing is defended or abandoned, and it has also become a headache for the Manchu court, and the grain shortage in Tianjing has become a food shortage in the capital in history, and the two capitals are full of soldiers and civilians, and the food consumption is huge, but they are also places that cannot be easily given up.

In the evening of this day, the Qing army brigade went out of the city to attack the Nanyuan camp of the Taiping army, the two sides fought viciously all night, this time the Manchu Qing Dynasty made a bloody capital, Seng Greenqin, Li Hongzhang and others always led the supervision team to supervise the battle in the back, the Qing army soldiers who fell in the supervision team alone were not less than 3,000 people, but in the end the Qing army was still unable to break through the Nanyuan camp that the Taiping army was tightly guarded.

The rifled muskets of the Taiping army, the captured British Armstrong artillery and the dense mine array in front of the camp became a nightmare for the Qing army, and the frontal width of less than three kilometers was tens of thousands of corpses of the Qing army, but they still desperately rushed to kill. However, the Taiping army was not stingy with guns and ammunition, and after they seized the military supplies of the British and French forces, they were greatly replenished, and the guns and ammunition were extremely sufficient, and some soldiers even changed their guns with red barrels, and immediately changed their guns to continue firing.

After dawn, the Qing army finally did not retreat, in front of the camp in the open ground, only to see corpses everywhere, blood flowed like a river, many Qing soldiers will stand in a daze in the corpse mountain blood sea hugging their heads and crying, when the Taiping soldiers came up to capture them, they were not resistant, and the spirit completely collapsed.

In the face of the huge gap between weapons and soldiers, and discipline, the Qing army shed the last drop of blood, and the supervising team refused to kill the deserters who fled back from the battlefield in the end, and the last bit of spirit of the Qing army was completely defeated in this battle. This battle was launched on the day of the solar term, known as the Battle of the Summer Season, which was a disastrous defeat of the Qing army, with more than 25,000 soldiers killed and more wounded. However, the damage on the side of the Taiping army was minimal, almost exactly the same as the battle in history when the British and French forces annihilated the main force of the Qing army at Bali Bridge.

This battle also declared the complete failure of the Qing army's plan to break through the Taiping army's camp, and the Qing army was unable to launch a large-scale battle to break the camp, so it could only retreat in the capital and the three mountains and five gardens on the periphery to survive.

After the defeat, Seng Greenqin, Li Hongzhang, Yuan Jiasan, Peng Yulin and others gathered the remnants of the army and retreated, and the four of them decided to enter the palace and then persuade the Queen Mother to abandon the capital and tour the west.

At the moment, the four of them did not remove their armor, and went directly to the palace to meet the Queen Mother of the West, but they didn't expect to arrive at the noon gate, and Li Lianying came to pass the decree, so that the four of them went to Chuxiu Palace to meet them. The four of them were very strange, why the Queen Mother didn't meet them in the Qianqing Palace, but they had to go to Chuxiu Palace to meet them according to the Queen Mother's wishes...... (To be continued......)