Chapter 83 4. Wutou and Chuwei Road 3,000

After withdrawing from the siege of Changsha, the Taiping Army repelled the pursuers and continued northward, crossing Dongting Lake and reaching Yuezhou.The admiral who defended Yuezhou was Bole Gongwu from Manzhou. His old man had oiled his feet and escaped three days in advance.Yuezhou City is an important town in northern Hunan. During the "San Francisco Rebellion" during the Kangxi period, it was the base camp of Wu Sangui's army. The Qing army and Wu army fought several battles here.After the defeat of the San Francisco, a large number of arms and firearms hoarded by the Wu army here were left idle for nearly two hundred years, and now they all fell into the hands of the Taiping Army. During this period, Western firearms developed vigorously, and various new equipment were continuously put into use.However, in our ancient oriental country, these antiques from two centuries ago can still be used as first-line equipment!

In addition to a large number of firearms, the Taiping Army also captured thousands of ships in Yuezhou.The Taiping Army went east along the river, first captured Hanyang in the north of the river, captured two pontoon bridges across the river, and then attacked the city from the weak point near the river in the north of Wuchang City.Chang Dachun, the governor of Hubei, ordered the defenders to burn down the houses outside the city to clear the blind spots of firearms shooting, and offered a reward: one person who captured a long-haired thief would be rewarded with twenty taels of silver; one who captured a short-haired thief would be rewarded Silver ten taels.To be honest, this amount of reward is quite low. According to the salary level of infantry at that time, ten taels of silver was only equivalent to three months of military pay. ——So under the low reward, there were no brave men, and the burning of houses was very unpopular, so Wuchang City was captured on January 12, 1853, and Chang Dachun died in battle.Although Xiang Rong's pursuers arrived in time, they did not dare to go all out to help. They just faked good news every day and kept complaining that Chang Dachun refused to go out of the city to attack the Taiping army.

Wuchang City was the first provincial capital city occupied by the Taiping Army.Here, they harvested more than one million taels of silver and a large amount of inventory, and the army immediately inflated like a balloon.By February 10th, when the Taiping Army abandoned Wuchang City and continued eastward along the river, the team was said to have 500,000 people, traveling on both sides of the Jiajiang River, with more than 10,000 ships. The Taiping Army arrived at Wuxue, an important pass of the Yangtze River, where they encountered the army of Lu Jianying, the governor of Liangjiang in the Qing Dynasty. The Qing army was weak and retreated steadily.The Taiping army pursued all the way and captured the important town of Anqing. On the 30th day after abandoning Wuchang, they marched nearly 2,000 li and drove them all the way to the city of Nanjing.

The regular army of the Qing Dynasty in Nanjing City was staid and refused to attack, but the ignorant regiments were willing to go to the enemy bravely.The regiment training organized by the Rice Merchant Guild of Jubaomen took the lead in the battle, but was accidentally injured by the artillerymen on the top of the wall who were not good at shooting, and the others scattered.The chief envoy Qi Suzao, who was watching the battle on the top of the city, was so angry that he vomited blood and died on the spot. On March 19th, the Taiping Army blasted a gap in the northwest corner of Nanjing City and broke into the city. Governor of Liangjiang Lu Jianying and other frontier officials died in battle. The remaining remnants retreated to the inner city and were wiped out two days later. .

Xiang Rong followed and set up camp at Xiaolingwei to monitor the city of Nanjing. From then on, the era of "Jiangnan Camp" began.On the same day that Xiang Rong arrived in Nanjing, General Lin Fengxiang of the Taiping Army led his troops eastward to conquer Zhenjiang, and Yangzhou two days later, cutting off the water transportation of the Grand Canal.The Taiping Army was then ordered to go north to the Central Plains and began a tragic Northern Expedition. On March 29th, Hong Xiu was dressed in a yellow dragon robe, with yellow dragon shoes on his feet, and entered the city in a gorgeous sedan chair carried by sixteen porters.Thirty-two female officials held yellow umbrellas and straddled horses surrounded him. On both sides of the road were countless people prostrating to the ground, and there was a sound of long live all around.Amidst the music, five hundred white cranes made of paper fluttered in the wind, and everything in front of me seemed to be just a dream—ah, the heaven on earth in that dream!

The city of Nanjing was then renamed Tianjing. The common people in Tianjing City, without a doubt, became the victims of the war.But in all fairness, the "crimes" created by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were nothing more than "inconvenience"—or, to put it more seriously, "extremely inconvenient".But these inconveniences are not impossible to overcome. For example, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom required registration of household registration, and each family sent one person to serve as a soldier.Under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, the common people in Nanjing, who were used to dreaming about Jinling and enjoying boats on the Qinhuai River, naturally loved peace and hated war, and they didn’t want to experience the feeling of being stabbed—so, most of them procrastinated when registering. The staff of the Taiping Army were so angry that they could only threaten to cut off their heads.As a result, profiteers used internal relationships to sell blank household registrations to help everyone tide over the difficulties.

For another example, some ordinary people love the Qing Dynasty more and desperately want to escape from the heavily guarded Tianjing city.At this time, traitors came out to organize embroidery workshops and produce rouge pollen, and sold them to the female generals of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom—even the female generals of the Heavenly Kingdom are still women, who are born to love beauty, and are easily confused by these sugar-coated shells .Through this kind of business relationship, the traitor was allowed to take people out of the city to cut firewood—needless to say, this guy immediately took the opportunity to organize smuggling.

In addition, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom promulgated its own calendar, which is somewhat different from that of the Qing Dynasty. This brought great inconvenience to the underground organizations supporting the Qing Dynasty and directly led to many unnecessary sacrifices.For example, Zhang Bingyuan, a scholar in Tianjing City, incited some dissatisfied elements, trying to open the east gate at dawn one day to welcome the Qing army into the city.But the information he sent out used the date of the "Taiping Calendar", and the Qing army took it for granted to respond according to the date of the Great Qing Calendar-there is a difference of six full days in between!As a result, of course the two sides failed to meet on time, and a large number of exposed rebels were arrested and brought to justice.

What's even more inhumane is that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom actually differentiated between men's and women's battalions.Even if it's your own wife, you can't seduce her in private. Even if you are a single heir of three generations, you can't bring up a marriage certificate if you come up with such a high-sounding reason as "there are three ways to be unfilial, and having no offspring is the greatest".Dongwang Yang Xiuqing personally presided over a public trial meeting, and the two unlucky men who were brought out for public display were Zhenguo Hou Qiuguan and Prime Minister Lu Xianba and Dongguan Youzheng Prime Minister Chen Zongyang.These two guys actually dared to disregard the seventh clause of the Heavenly Law and have sex with their wives privately, as many as four or five times.Because Lu Xianba is a veteran of Jintian and participated in the formulation of the "Ten Articles of Heaven" (this Lord Lu is a typical cocoon), so he dealt with it leniently and passed the test after tearful self-examination.After the crime was discovered, Chen Zongyang and his wife actually tried to "seduce" the female servant who knew about it.

However, the Heavenly King himself has eighty-eight concubines—as early as when Yong'an broke through, he already had thirty-six concubines.Theoretically, there are eleven Eastern Kings (the exact number is unknown), and even the two idiots Hong Renfa and Hong Renda have six—which one should be counted? Chen Zongyang must die with regret.