Han’s Son is Not a Slave

With Tang Sanshui, a Zhaoqing lieutenant general behind the scenes, Zhang An finally got a foothold in Zhaoqing City. The booming business of Dadong Rice Shop also gave him enough funds, but he never forgot his brother and sister-in-law who died tragically under the sword of the Qing army. , and never forget the Taiping Army and the Qianhu Zhou Shixiang who were far away in Xiangshan.

The arrival of Song Ying made Zhang An overjoyed, who originally wanted to send someone to Xiangshan to get in touch with the Taiping Army. After a secret talk with Song Ying, Zhang An took a silver note to Tang Sanshui's house that night. The next day, Zhang An handed over the rice business to the shopkeeper below, and he left Zhaoqing with Song Ying in the name of going to Guangzhou to buy grain.

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After capturing the former cottage, the Taiping army's large-scale war in Xiangshan came to an end. After the Qing army in Zengcheng was defeated by the Taiping army at Yinpingzui Mountain, the Governor of Guangdong, Li Ruitai, dispatched 2,000 green battalions to Zengcheng, but did not launch an attack on Xiangshan because Sanjiangkou was attacked by the Ming army.

On the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, General Linghai Chen Qice, together with Zhenguo General Zhu Tong, Haibei Road Zhou Tengfeng and others, mobilized more than 10,000 land and sea troops to use Xinhui as a base to launch an attack on Sanjiangkou, which was heavily guarded by Qing troops. After two days of fierce fighting, the Ming army failed to break through the Qing army line of defense. On the 26th, because the boat division of the headquarters of the Chaozhou general Wu Liuqi arrived at the Sanjiangkou, the Ming army navy could not continue to block the river surface and faced the enemy from both sides. Therefore, Chen Qice and Zhu Tong and others decided to withdraw their troops after deliberation. After the Ming army withdrew, Wu Liuqi's boat division followed and pursued, but in Jiangmen, he was ambushed by the warship led by Zheng Chengkui, a general of Chen Qice's army, and returned. In this battle, the Ming army suffered more than 3,000 casualties and 4 warships sank; the Qing army suffered more than 400 casualties and 12 ships were destroyed.

Chen Qice's attack on Sanjiangkou verified Shang Kexi's fears, making him more determined to regain the new return. At the same time, the Ming army's attack on Sanjiangkou also attracted the full attention of the Qing army in Guangzhou, which made Shang Kexi and Li Rutai dare not split up to attack the Taiping army in Xiangshan, which provided time for the Taiping army to gain a foothold and develop in Xiangshan. and security.

Encouraged by the Ming army's capture of the Xinhui, the activities of the Ming army and the anti-Qing righteous division in coastal areas were active again. Guo Zhiqi, a scholar who was stationed in Guangdong by the Yongli court, went to Yunnan secretly because of the emperor's move to Kunming. As a result, although the Ming armies and volunteers in various places were active, they lacked overall overall planning and command, and each place could only fight independently, and the results were not great.

new club. Due to the failure of the battle to capture the Sanjiangkou, the Ming army gathered here became passive again. If not for Chen Qice's insistence, the town general Zhu Tong and others would have returned with their troops.

By the end of the year, more than 20,000 Ming troops had gathered in Xinhui. Except for Zhu Tong's department, the rest of the Ming army were adapted from volunteer teachers. Not only did they lack the necessary equipment, but they also lacked food and grass. The internal factions were also very complicated. It is necessary to repeat the trend of Li Dingguo's army advancing eastward last year, but his energy was consumed by the intricate relations within the Ming army, and he could not organize an effective attack again.

On the one hand, Chen Qice, together with Zhu Tong and others, sent an urgent delivery to the Governor's Yamen in Leizhou, requesting that Lianchengbi could move the Governor's Xingyuan to Xinhui. After that, all the ministries will fight in a unified manner under the command of the Governor, so that the Governor will personally sit in the Xinhui, which will definitely inspire the hearts and minds of the army and the people. Chen Qice also asked the Leizhou side to raise food and water to be transported to Xinhui to relieve the urgent needs of the various armies.

After the urgent delivery to Leizhou, Liancheng Wall did not allow the governor to move forward, except to allow food to be raised, but in his capacity as governor, Tang Pingbo Zhou Jintang, Jingfang general Deng Yao, and the governor of the four prefectures Zhang Xiaoqi and other ministries were asked to choose each. Send elite soldiers to Xinhui, so that Xinhui will no longer fall into the hands of bandits.

Chen Qice's letter also asked the court to repay the Taiping army and Zhou Shixiang, but because Guangdong could not get in touch with the court in Yunnan. Lianchengbi couldn't make the decision to award the imperial court's reward privately, so he temporarily served as the governor of Zhou Shixiang as the named chief military officer of Chaozhou. As for Liao Ruixiang, the magistrate of Xiangshan County, recommended by Zhou Shixiang, Lianchengbi issued a document to approve it. Awarded to the official with a bronze seal.

When Chen Qice's messenger sent the official certificate and bronze seal of the magistrate of Xiangshan to Renhoufang, he also brought a letter from Chen Qice. In the letter, the white-haired veteran felt very guilty, and was very embarrassed for not fulfilling his previous promise to ensure Zhou Shixiang's promotion to the commander-in-chief. In this regard, Zhou Shixiang was not dissatisfied, either the Chaozhou general or the named Chaozhou general. To put it bluntly, it is all empty, and the current general of Chaozhou is Wu Liuqi, who was appointed by the Qing court. What does he use to compete with others.

In the messenger's speech, it was revealed that the Xinhui was now very short of food, and the soldiers could only eat one meal a day. After hearing that, although the Taiping Army was also in short supply of food, after all, Xiangshan County was not as dilapidated as Xinhui, and it was okay for the battalions to seize it in the countryside for more than a month. Therefore, Zhou Shixiang adjusted 300 shi of grain and 10 mouthfuls of food from the good characters. Let the messenger bring the fat pig back, which can be regarded as a modest contribution to Xinhui. After all, the peaceful development of the Taiping Army in Xiangshan is inseparable from Xinhui's containment of the Qing army. If the Xinhui Ming army collapses, the good days of the Taiping army will come to an end. With his lips dead and his teeth cold, Zhou Shixiang couldn't help but remain indifferent.

Liao Ruixiang, who received the official badge and bronze seal of Xiangshan County magistrate, laughed from ear to ear. Although the bronze seal engraving given by Leizhou was not as delicate as Sun Quanzheng's, its quality was incomparable to that of Sun Quanzheng's fake magistrate's seal. With this official seal awarded by the Governor of Guangdong, even if the Taiping Army is gone, Liao Ruixiang is an official official of the Yongli court, which is a great thing that he can wake up with a smile from his dreams. After suffering for a lifetime, now it is finally time to come out, Liao Ruixiang wept with joy, for Zhou Shixiang, a Bole who appreciates himself, was not born a scholar who died for his confidant, but was determined to be very bad for Zhou Shi and take care of Xiangshan.

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After more than a month of encirclement and suppression, not only the Qing army skirmishers in Xiangshan were eliminated by the Taiping army, but the bandits who harmed the area were also cleaned up one by one. Before the end of the year, the Taiping army had completely controlled the capitals of Xiangshan, and several important places connecting Xiangshan to other places were also guarded by the Taiping army.

On the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month, Zhou Shixiang returned to Zhirenhoufang, Xiangshan County. The first thing he did when he came back was to set up an altar to pay homage to the Taiping soldiers who died in Xiangshan.

The battle to capture Xiangshan and eliminate the Qing army skirmishers and bandits was not fierce and the scale was not large, but the Taiping army also paid the price of 62 killed and 125 wounded.

The fallen soldiers were buried on a hilly **** with good feng shui outside Xiangshan County, which was officially used by Zhou Shixiang as the Taiping Army Cemetery. Unlike Xinhui's fallen soldiers who only bury and do not erect monuments, this time Zhou Shixiang erected tombstones for the fallen soldiers.

The tombstone faces north and is engraved with the names, places of origin, age and status in the army of the fallen soldiers, and where they died. At the same time, there is a stone tablet more than seven feet high in this cemetery, on which is engraved "The Cemetery of the fallen soldiers of the Taiping Army of the Ming Dynasty". There is a dismounting stone at one mile of the cemetery.

When he led the officers to set up incense candles to pay homage to the dead, Zhou Shixiang felt very uncomfortable. He looked at the tombstones one by one, and the dead soldiers were very young, many of them under the age of 20. The place of origin is also very complicated, and it runs through almost all the soldiers of the Taiping Army after the establishment of the battalion. Some of the soldiers killed were young men from Xiangshan who volunteered to join the army after the Taiping army entered Xiangshan. According to Zhou Shixiang's arrangement, Liao Ruixiang selected the relatives of these soldiers from Xiangshan from their hometowns and let them live with the Houying so that they could enjoy peace in the future. The military treasury allocated the martyr's treatment, and rewarded them with land and livestock and other goods.

The reward of land is not only on paper. The land in Xiangshan is fertile. Although there are many hills in the territory, there are also many plains, and there is more land available for reclamation. When he captured Longandu, Zhou Shixiang deliberately tied the land and the Taiping Army tightly together, so he asked Song Xianggong to test in Longandu.

The main content of the pilot program is to clean up and integrate unowned land, which also includes the property of the landlords suppressed by the Taiping Army and the property of those big households who escaped. On the premise of ensuring the property rights of the original residents, what Song Xianggong had to do was to take all the remaining land into the possession of the Taiping Army, and then use the land to resettle the old and the weak, and divide the land according to the military merits of the soldiers.

The soldiers who were assigned the land were unable to cultivate the land because they were in the army, so this part of the land was arranged by the rear battalion, and the income was divided equally between the rear battalion and the soldiers. If a soldier has relatives who can cultivate this part of the land by himself, all the income will belong to the soldier, but in order to meet the needs of the Taiping Army, the soldier and his family must sell the surplus food to the Taiping Army at a price slightly lower than the market price, or Exchange the surplus food from the Taiping Army Treasury for other items. In short ~www.NovelMTL.com~ Zhou Shixiang has divided the fields, but he has to control the grain produced in the fields in his own hands.

Regarding the policy of the local people, Zhou Shixiang basically kept the previous government practice, which was tax collection. However, due to the arrival of the Taiping Army, a large number of landlords and gentry fled, so many peasants who served as tenants for the landlords no longer had to pay rent to the former landlords, but only had to pay a certain amount of tax and grain to the Taiping Army, which greatly reduced the burden on the peasants. , making Xiangshan farmers have a kindness to the Taiping Army. If it is not for the fact that the Taiping Army can gain a foothold in Xiangshan, I am afraid that there will be more people from Xiangshan participating in the Taiping Army than the current number. After all, there are many benefits to joining the Taiping Army, and the land allocated by the Taiping Army family members who are placed in each square is enough to make the locals jealous.

Farmers are born to be profit-seeking. This profit-seeking is not the greed of businessmen, but the yearning for the improvement of food and living conditions. The policies of the Taiping Army are beneficial to the peasants, allowing them to live a better life than before. They will no longer have to be oppressed by the government and the gentry, and the peasants will naturally support the Taiping Army.

After Song Xianggong's governance in Longan Capital was slightly effective, Zhou Shixiang officially implemented it in various places in Xiangshan. He plans to implement this policy as a fixed policy of the Taiping Army for a long time, and will also include the original residents of Xiangshan into this policy, so that the Taiping Army can gain the support of more people in Xiangshan, and then the Taiping Army and the people will be supported. Together, the soldiers are the people, the people are the soldiers, and the soldiers and the people are in the same boat. It is foreseeable that the Taiping Army, supported by the people, will definitely grow gradually. To be continued.