The Manchurian-Mongolian special task force is the implementation of the policy of "going down the river with the uniform of the Qing army and threatening the reinforcements of Jiangxi Province to enter Jiangning", but Zhou Shixiang sent not a pseudo-Qing army, but a real Manchurian and Mongolian Tartar, and the purpose was not to attack Nanjing, but to attack Nanzhili and capture Anqing.
At the same time, news also came from Anqing that Yue Le, the prince of Qing'an, after learning of the defeat of Zheng's army in Nanjing, led the green battalion soldiers of several northern provinces to rush to Nanjing on the ships of the Anqing water camp.
Anqing was handed over to Gushan Ezhenba Yubu Dash to take charge of the 3,000 Henan Green Battalion.
The defeat of the Zheng army forced Zhou Shixiang to convene an emergency military meeting among the generals.
Dong Changqing, a military officer, suggested that the main force of the Northern Expeditionary Army should immediately attack from Raozhou, Jiangxi to Huizhou, and then pass through Ningguo Mansion and Taiping Mansion to go straight to the city of Nanjing, and storm Nanjing before the Shunzhi army arrived.
Dong Changqing thought that as long as he captured Nanjing, he could use Nanjing as a base, and then sent troops to capture Zhenjiang, integrate the anti-Qing forces in the south of the Yangtze River, and confront the Shunzhi army across the river.
If the Qing army crosses the river, it will fight a decisive battle with the Qing army with the main force.
If it wins, the Qing army will be crippled and unable to fight again; If defeated, the Northern Expeditionary Army retreated to Nanjing, holding out like the Qing army, and at the same time the main forces from the two field corps of Guangxi and Hunan were sent from Jiangxi to help.
In this way, there is a strong city of Nanjing to follow, and there are reinforcements to come, the Qing army is trapped in the city, and after a long time, it will become a labor division, and then the time will be flanked inside and outside, and the period of the Tatar captives to give the head is not far away.
Dong Changqing's proposal was very adventurous, and it was even possible to capture and kill the Tartar chieftain Shunzhi in one fell swoop, so the generals were very moved to hear it, but a practical problem was placed in front of everyone.
The area around Ningguo and Taipingfu is mostly hilly, which is inconvenient for the march of the army, especially in the west of Nanjing, where more than 1,000 soldiers and horses can easily pass, but the army of tens of thousands of people, together with the baggage and people, is difficult to pass quickly, let alone spread out in the west of Nanjing.
Nanjing is a fortified city again, and the Qing army in the city has just defeated the Zheng army, and the morale is high, and it is impossible to be as frightened as the Zheng army soldiers coming to the city, thinking that the end is coming.
In addition, Yue Le brought the green battalion soldiers from several northern provinces to Nanjing from Anqing, so it is conservatively estimated that the defenders in Nanjing are probably more than the Northern Expeditionary Army, and the Qing army captured a large number of artillery and ordnance of the Zheng army, which made it more difficult for the Taiping army to attack the city.
In case the siege of the city could not be attacked, the Northern Expeditionary Army would not have become a lone army, a laborer, and repeat the defeat and retreat of the Zheng army Li Zhicui and Gui Yongzhi resolutely opposed Dong Changqing's adventurous strategy, believing that since ancient times, Nanjing must first seize its upper reaches, and the two important towns in the upper reaches of Nanjing, Jiujiang and Anqing, are battlegrounds.
Only by gaining control of Anqing and Jiujiang can we consider attacking Nanjing downstream, otherwise it is easy to be flanked.
Gui Yongzhi even persuaded Zhou Shixiang not to attack Nanjing in a hurry, but to stabilize Jiangxi, to take Fujian and Zhejiang in the east, and to occupy the entire territory of Hunan in the west, cooperate with the loyal battalion to defeat Wuchang, completely recover Huguang, and then concentrate troops into Guizhou, and solve the Doni and Wu Sangui corps in Yunnan and Guizhou in one fell swoop, so that they can integrate the territory of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hubei, and Hunan provinces, and confront the Qing court across the river.
The First Army went down to the south of the Yangtze River from the upstream, so that the Qing court was difficult to take care of, Gu Dong lost the west, and Gu Xi lost the east.
No matter which way the east and west roads succeeded, it would be a fatal blow to the Qing court.
Jiangnan is a wealthy land, Shaanxi and Gansu are elite soldiers, Gui Yongzhi's strategy is to force the Qing court to choose one of the two, no matter which one to keep, or which one to lose, the Qing court's rule in the north will be shaken.
It's just that the implementation of this policy took a long time, and it couldn't be done in three or two years, and I had to worry about what happened halfway, especially the Qing army trapped in Yungui was the largest heavy army group in the Qing court after all, with 20,000 people in the Eight Banners of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Wu, and Wu Sangui's subordinates were also elite generals.
With the current strength of the Taiping Army, it is possible to successfully annihilate the Yungui Qing army, and the price paid will be so great that Zhou Shixiang can't bear it.
And the most important thing is that if Gui Yongzhi's strategy is adopted, the initiative of the war will be transferred to the hands of the Qing army at the beginning, because the Tatar chieftain Shunzhi has already taken the imperial expedition in person, and there is a great victory in Nanjing, so it is impossible for Shunzhi to sit back and watch the Taiping army stabilize Jiangxi, seek to capture Fujian and Zhejiang, and let the Doni army be trapped in the southwest without asking.
It is almost certain that Shunzhi, after arriving in Jiangnan, will definitely march to Jiangxi, taking advantage of the limelight of defeating Zheng's army to force Zhou Shixiang to concentrate his main forces to fight him in a decisive battle, and Zhou Shixiang must face it because he cannot give up Jiangxi.
Whether from a political point of view or from a military point of view, Jiangxi must not be lightly abandoned, otherwise the military spirit will be shaken, and those generals who surrender to the army will also be shaken, just like Li Zicheng after the defeat of a stone, almost all the officials and generals of the Ming Dynasty who surrendered to the Ming Dynasty rebelled.
At the same time, abandoning Jiangxi, the Taiping army will also lose its strategic depth, and Guangdong will face the pressure of the Qing army, and will return to the situation when the Qing army invaded the southwest in a big way.
At that time, Zhou Shixiang decided to march west to Guangxi, in order to prevent the Qing army in the southwest from attacking Liangguang.
What's even worse is that if Zhou Shixiang decides to start a battle in Jiangxi and Shunzhi, he will definitely mobilize the main forces of the field corps in Hunan and Guangxi, which will inevitably weaken the strength of the defense line of Hunan and Guizhou, and the pressure on the Qing army in the southwest will be greatly reduced, and it is very likely to take the opportunity to break through the blockade.
Zhou Shixiang will never give up the initiative in the war, he must take an offensive to contain and disrupt the Qing army, and even more so to seize Nanjing, not only because Nanjing is close at hand, but because the political significance of recovering Nanjing is extremely great, and the impact on people's hearts is so great that it can no longer be added.
Once Nanjing was recovered by the Ming army, not to mention those who were demoted and demoted in the Taiping army, or those Han officials and generals in the Qing court, I am afraid that they would have to re-examine the general trend of the world.
At that time, it was not that Zhou Shixiang was worried about internal instability, but that the Tartar chief Shunzhi had to think about how to settle the interior at the same time.
Since the day of the second man, Zhou Shixiang has been planning to pick up the fruit of the defeat of the Nanjing country, today this fruit is in front of him, although the fruit is now full of sharp points, but as long as he gritted his teeth and reached out to pick it, he could always pick it in great pain, so how could he give up.
Zhou Shixiang decided that Nanjing must be captured, and the theme of the meeting was no longer whether to fight Nanjing, but how to fight Nanjing Guo Xiong, an officer of the military department, took out the map and gave the opinion of the staff officer of the military department.
The staff officers of the military headquarters unanimously agreed that only by taking the waterway of the Yangtze River could there be a chance to capture Nanjing, but this opportunity has changed from 70 percent to 50 percent at present.
The reason why the military department reduced the chances of success in capturing Nanjing was the reinforcements brought to Nanjing by Yue Le, the prince of Qing'an.
Guo Xiong gave specific data, if you take the land route of Huizhou, Ningguo, and Taiping, and all the four main towns arrive, it will take 20 days at the earliest, which has to rule out that it will be intercepted by the local Qing army on the way, and the Qing army in Nanjing will shrink in the city like a fool, and let the Taiping army swagger to the city of Nanjing.
If the Qing army in Nanjing went out of the city to intercept and occupy a favorable position, then the military department was not optimistic about whether it could repel the Qing army and reach the city of Nanjing before the Tartar army arrived.
In addition, if you take the land route, it will also be a great test for the logistics of the Northern Expeditionary Army.
After all, Zhou Shixiang issued a strict order that the Northern Expeditionary Army was not allowed to loot the people's grain and grass, which greatly increased the logistical pressure on the military department, and the closer the Northern Expeditionary Army was to Nanjing, the longer the grain and grass transportation line was.
Ensuring the supply of grain and grass at the front line is obviously an extremely costly and extremely difficult project when it is purely human-based to transport grain and grass.
"Take the waterway and take Anqing" Zhou Shixiang made up his mind, the land route was too slow, and the unpredictable risk was too great, so he would take the water route.
The king of Yanping went against the wind, and he went down with the wind.
But when the generals heard the undoubted order of the marshal, they looked at each other, and they were fast and stable by water, and they were able to transport the soldiers, horses, grain and grass at one time, but the question was where did the Taiping army come from Jiujiang has the water camp of the original Qing army, but after the Jiujiang general Chen Yuan escaped, the Jiujiang water camp also dispersed, and Ge Yi only incorporated dozens of boats and hundreds of Qing army water divisions after taking over Jiujiang, and did not want to build a Yangtze River water division belonging to the Taiping Army in the short term.
Without a water division, how to capture Anqing Anqing is on the other side of the river The generals were all confused, but Li Zhicui's eyes lit up and asked: "Don't you want to co-opt the gang of water bandits in Poyang Lake?"
After the Taiping army went north to capture Ganzhou, the Poyang Lake bandits joined forces to start an incident, called eighteen families, the momentum was very loud, and there were one or two thousand soldiers in each village, and the person in charge called the generalissimo of the world's restoration of the Ming Dynasty, more than Zhou Shixiang, the Tang Dynasty canonized the general of the conquest, the governor of the soldiers and horses, and the governor of the following governors sealed a large group, and this king and that duke were not lively.
However, after the Taiping army captured Nanchang, Raozhou, and Jiujiang, these water bandits with the banner of restoring the Ming Dynasty did not come to surrender, nor did they send personnel to contact the Taiping army, and only lived happily in the lake.
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The Taiping army was busy capturing the prefectures and counties of Jiangxi, and they didn't care about these people for a while.
Li Zhicui thought that the marshal wanted to absorb the water bandits in Poyang Lake, and then let these water bandits enter the river to attack the Qing army water camp in Anqing, so that the Taiping army could attack Nanjing by water, but he didn't want Zhou Shixiang to shake his head and said: "What is the use of a group of water bandits, pointing to their willingness to serve, the daylily is cold." ” "That big handsome means" Li Zhicui is puzzled, if he doesn't recruit those water bandits, where will he get the water master.
Zhou Shi relative to the people, the military intelligence department found out that Zhang Huangyan, the secretary of the military department, was taking the original Xihou Zhang Mingzhen water division in the left provinces of the south of the Yangtze River, although this Zhejiang army water division is not as strong as the Zheng army, but it is also a not weak water division force, if you can get in touch with them, let the Zhejiang army attack Anqing, and then cooperate with the Taiping army along the river to attack Nanjing, then this waterway is naturally unimpeded.
The generals did not know much about the Zhejiang army, so Zhou Shixiang asked Guo Xiong to send a brief description of the activities and strength of the Zhejiang army, and heard that the Zhejiang army was operating in the Ningguo and Wuhu areas, and the generals immediately became hotly discussed, if the Zhejiang army was really willing to cooperate with the Taiping army to seize Anqing, then the attack on Nanjing would be very certain.
When the discussion was being discussed, there was an urgent report from the Military Intelligence Department, Zhou Shixiang opened it and saw that his heart suddenly cooled completely, and the letter only said one thing, that is, the Zhejiang army collapsed in Tongling, and Zhang Huangyan, the secretary of the military department, led the remnants to abandon the sea ship and go ashore to the Yinghuo Mountains. oshow7 t1706231537: