Han’s Son is Not a Slave

Since the Taiping army began to raise its army, due to the lack of ground, Zhou Shixiang insisted on expanding the army by coercing rogues. Therefore, everything in the army (soldiers, food and grass) depended on looting and capture from the Qing army. After several battles in Deqing, Gaoyao, and Xinhui, the Taiping Army obtained enough food and grass to maintain the entire army for half a year, but the amount of salt seized was not much. There are two reasons for the scarcity of salt. On the one hand, the prefectures and counties passed by the Taiping Army were not salt-producing areas;

The blockade of salt by the Qing army resulted in the influx of salt in the places where the Taiping army passed, and the people could only buy it in quantity. In this way, the Qing army effectively prevented a large amount of salt from flooding into these areas repeatedly contested by the Ming and Qing Dynasties, preventing the salt, a war material, from falling into the hands of the Ming army who was also lacking in salt.

If the Taiping Army can continue to follow the policy set by Zhou Shixiang before, looting and looting all the way, the existing personnel of the Taiping Army alone do not need to be afraid of lack of salt. However, after occupying Xinhui, Zhou Shixiang decided to rely on Xinhui to lure the main force of the Qing army in Guangzhou to attack the city in order to prevent the Taiping army from turning into Xiangshan and being blocked by the superior Qing army. The strong city consumed a lot of the Qing army in Guangzhou, making the process of advancing south relatively easy.

From the perspective of the Taiping Army's own conditions, this kind of strategic structure is obviously in line with the interests of the Taiping Army. After all, the Taiping Army is just an army composed of many people, voluntarily or involuntarily. The whole army condensed to marry a certain combat power. At this point of combat power, it is natural to fight against a small group of green battalions, but once it encounters the main force of the Qing army in Guangzhou with cavalry, it is obviously not enough.

Moreover, the Taiping Army not only marched and fought with the army, but also carried a large number of old and weak women and children with the army. In the absence of transportation, they carried so many civilians with the army. Since ancient times, only two kinds of people can do it. One is a rogue, and the other is a bandit. The fate of the two is probably similar, and they have never heard of a major event. This is what Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong did when they first started their army. But once the scale became larger, they also abandoned this coercion method. And then show the road to the elite soldiers and strong generals. The remnants of Li Zicheng's Dashun Army and the Daxi Army, which had become the main force of the Southern Ming Dynasty, were the remnants of these elite soldiers.

The drawbacks of coercive exhibition, Zhou Shixiang, who has been a man in the two generations before and after, does not know how, but he has no time and no opportunity to make the Taiping army bigger, and become able to develop the road to the elite soldiers and strong generals, until he is trapped in Xinhui, Taiping The five battalions of the front battalion had a combined number of more than 2,000 soldiers. Not to mention such a small number of troops in the whole country, even if it is placed in Guangdong, it is inconspicuous. It can't influence the situation of Ming and Qing Dynasties at all. If it weren't for the fact that Xinhui City had been built too strong by the Qing army itself, the Taiping army would have been eaten up several times by the Qing army.

In the battle of Guifeng Mountain, the death of thousands of old and weak women and children has been a wake-up call for the Taiping Army. Zhou Shixiang is difficult to ride a tiger. Let's go straight to Fragrant Hill with the front battalion lightly loaded. If he does this, the first one who will disapprove of him will be the officers under his command. It should be noted that many of them have family members in the rear camp!

How many people in this world can be as ruthless as Liu Zongmin, the general next to King Chuang Wang. Killing his wife and child to make a "revolution"? !

People must not be thrown away at will. In the future, when they enter Fragrant Hills, they will always have to plan to develop. If they want to expand, they will naturally have to have manpower. Without manpower, what are we talking about?

Therefore, Zhou Shixiang did not dare to give up the Xinhui army and move to Xiangshan when the threat posed by the Qing army in Guangzhou to the southward march of the Taiping army could not be completely resolved.

The evolution of the war is roughly the same as Zhou Shixiang envisioned, the difference is that the Qing army died after two major offensives before and after, and turned to the method of siege to deal with the Taiping army. Zhou Shixiang was quite regretful.

After regret, we can only face the reality - the long-term siege of the Qing army has caused more and more troubles for the Taiping army, and Yan is one of them.

The besieged Xinhui City had no way to obtain salt from the outside world. The commander of the Qing army besieged the city was Shang Zhixin, the son of Shang Kexi, the king of Pingnan. Although this guy turned against Kangxi in the future. But Zhou Shixiang didn't think that this guy was against the "Qing Dynasty" now, and he could send salt to the city for the sake of being in the same line of anti-Qing.

The Qing troops besieging the city were also the elites of the Qing army in Guangdong. Not only the Han army flags and horses of the two vassal kings, but also the governor pacesetters of the Governor of Guangdong participated. Half of the elite soldiers that the Guangdong Green Camp can recruit are also located outside the city. These leading generals are all die-hard "fans" of the Qing Dynasty. There is no possibility that there are any characters who want to secretly communicate with the Taiping Army. I want to find one from them. Deqing guarding Tang Sanshui was more difficult than ascending to the sky.

There is no way to get salt from the outside world. Nearly 10,000 people in the city have to eat salt every day. Even if there is no guarantee that the people in the Houying and Xinhui will have salt every day, the people in the former camp who have knives and guns should always eat salt. The captives who are forced to work as coolies should also be given a little bit of salt symbolically, otherwise people will flutter when they walk.

In the first ten days of July, Song Xianggong made statistics on the existing salt goods in the public treasury, and then Zhou Shixiang convened the generals to discuss with the veterans of each camp and set up a salt distribution system. This distribution system is not much different from the distribution method of water wells, both of which are to ensure the amount of troops first, and then return to the battalion.

The generals and the battalion elders are aware of the current situation. Whether it is food, water, or salt, they must all use the previous battalion first. It didn't take an instant to become the meat on the Qing saber plate, let them harm, let them poison.

Even so, the salt storage in the public treasury could not last for half a month. For this reason, Zhou Shixiang asked everyone to think of a way based on the principle of brainstorming. Some people proposed a way to scrape some salt around the kennel and boil it. This suggestion reminded Zhou Shixiang that when the Red Army was on Jinggang Mountain in later generations, it seemed that because of the lack of salt, he collected the nitrate that was attached to the wall around the Maokeng to eat.

No matter if the salt is edible or not, it is always good to have a salty taste in the mouth! Zhou Shixiang rewarded the proposer with 10 taels of silver and asked Liao Ruixiang to organize people from the county government to collect it. As a result, Liao Zhixian County became the first county magistrate in China to lead people around the maiden all day for thousands of years, only to feel wronged by this old master.

Practice has proved that this kind of nitrate is indeed edible, but the amount is still limited, and it does not help much at all. Zhou Shixiang asked everyone to think of a way, but he also gave it up and offered a big reward, no matter whether it is a white cat or a black cat, if it can catch a mouse, it is a good cat! As long as anyone who can solve the problem of salt, wants to be an official, Bai Ding directly raises the general flag, asks for silver, and rewards one hundred taels!

It is often said that there must be a brave man under the heavy reward, but seven or eight days have passed, but there is no news at all, and no one has published the county government bulletins posted in Houying and Xinhui residential areas.

No new salt comes in, how good is it to sit and eat! I really wait for the salt to break, everyone can wipe their necks with knives!

After Zhou Shixiang and Song Xianggong discussed together, they decided to choose another dead man, led by Chen Mo to go out of the city late at night to grab salt in the Qing army camp.

This is an adventure that is destined to kill many people, because since the last time Chen Mo led the dead to destroy the east and west forts of the Qing army late at night, the Qing army was obviously more attentive, not only completely blocking the tunnels they dug themselves, but also Two trenches were dug in front of the camp, and the trenches were covered with bamboo tips, and anyone who fell into them would not die.

Not only that, the Qing army also set up a few fences outside these trenches, and each fence was repaired to death. The Qing army sentries were separated by three or four feet, with either gunmen or archers on them, and patrolling in addition. The Qing soldiers of the Qing Dynasty went back and forth for almost half a column of incense, so that there was no gap to take advantage of. Hugh said that it would be extremely difficult to pass through the two ditches even if the barriers were removed.

Chen Mo, the death-row prisoner who instructed his subordinates to take advantage of the fire that day, has been promoted to the general flag of the guard battalion because of his achievements in destroying the east and west forts of the Qing army. nod. At that time, there was an indescribable silence on his face, obviously knowing that he was going to die.

Song Xianggong saw this~www.wuxiaspot.com~ sighed and didn't say anything. Zhou Shixiang felt uncomfortable and just wanted to encourage Chen Mo to say a few words, but Jiang He, the bald man, came over to ask for a meeting, saying that there were anti-Qing fighters outside Xicheng who defected at night.

Xicheng was stationed by the Xiongwei Camp. Compared with the other three directions, the Qing army garrisoned outside the Xicheng was obviously weak. From the point of view of the banner, only the Green Battalion was guarding. But the weak defense does not mean that the Taiping Army can open a gap from the Xicheng to get in touch with the outside world, because the Xicheng is directly facing the Tanjiang River, and there is a wide river within three miles from the city. If you want to cross the river from here, there is no door!

Because the Xinhui Xicheng was facing the Tan River, and the Taiping Army in the city had no navy to support the river, the Qing army's defense of the Xicheng was weaker than the other three directions. No matter Shang Zhixin or Zhou Shixiang, they have never had the idea that the Taiping army will break out of the Xicheng. The Taiping army really wants to break out of the city from the Xicheng. At that time, there will be Tan Jiang in front and chasing troops in the back. !

Before the Qing army besieged the city, Zhou Shixiang once sent a number of envoys to the outside of the city, intending to contact the rest of the Ming army scattered in the mountains near Xinhui after Li Dingguo's withdrawal. No one came back. At first, Zhou Shixiang still had fantasies, but after a month or two, he no longer had any hope of the outside world. Now he suddenly heard Jiang He said that someone was coming to defect, which made him a little surprised, and he couldn't sit down anymore. Take a look at the West City. (To be continued)