While busy reorganizing the army, Zhou Shixiang did not sit idly by and watch the anti-Qing uprising that was breaking out in Shandong.
The Yuqi uprising has spread throughout Denglai, and the Shandong Green Camp must be powerless about it, otherwise Sony would not have urgently dispatched the Tuntai Department to Shandong to quell the turmoil.
Take advantage of people's illness to kill people.
If Zhou Shixiang now takes advantage of the emptiness of the Qing army in Xuzhou to move north, he can completely occupy Xuzhou in one fell swoop, and take advantage of the situation to enter Shandong, get in touch with the Yuqi rebel army, flank the Qing army in Shandong before and after, and settle Shandong in a battle, and then form a frontal threat to Gyeonggi.
However, this will undoubtedly overturn the strategy formulated before, and it will require an urgent mobilization of the army to the north, and it will be too late in time.
By the time the Taiping army was assembled, the daylilies were cold, and it was impossible for Yu Qi's rebel army to hold out for so long.
The military headquarters worked out a plan overnight, that is, the Jiangbei Army would not be reorganized for the time being, but would transfer two or three towns to the north under the personal command of Ge Yi, and take Xuzhou at the lowest cost and with the fastest speed.
Going north with the size of two or three towns can not only avoid the movement of a large army to the north, which will affect the ongoing reorganization of the army, but also save a large amount of money and food.
The outbreak of the Jiangnan riots not only caused serious losses to the people, but also caused Jiangsu's tax revenue to drop sharply this year.
Now, in order to provide disaster relief and post-disaster reconstruction, Zhou Shixiang had to take out part of the military rations stored in Chongming, Songjiang, Taicang and other places and return them to the localities.
This is also the reason why the plan to go north to Liaodong had to be aborted.
Without the support of money and food, no matter how large the fleet is, it is impossible to make a difference in Liaodong, and it is even impossible to support the Korean peace.
This plan of the military department is obviously feasible, because the training and garrison of the Jiangbei Army are aimed at the Qing army in Xuzhou.
In terms of distance, it is also the closest to the Qing army in Xuzhou, and the Jiangbei Army itself has a batch of grain stocks, and the military headquarters gritted its teeth and transferred some of it across the river, which can fully support the needs of 20,000 or 30,000 people.
Zhou Shixiang had no doubt that the Jiangbei Army would take Xuzhou and then occupy the whole of Shandong, but what he considered was that once Shandong was lost, whether the little emperor in Beijing and the Manchurian magnates would have the courage to continue to stay there, waiting for Ao Bai and Wu Sangui in the Central Plains to divide the victory and defeat.
If the little emperor and the Manchurian magnates did not have the courage to stay in Beijing any longer, and chose to take the wealth they had looted for decades and then coerce the people of Gyeonggi to withdraw from Guanwai, then capturing an empty city would not make any sense for the Taiping army at all, but would make the trouble even bigger in the future.
If you want to completely wipe out Manchukuo in Liaodong and outside the Guanzhou, Zhou Shixiang has to invest in something as simple as two or three towns.
All along, Zhou Shixiang's attitude is that either he does not go north, he must exterminate the clan and uproot Manchuria, and he must not let a Manchurian Tartar escape from the customs, from the old Bangzi to the little cub.
To truly see people in life and corpses in death.
For this reason, Zhou Shixiang ignored the opposition of the generals, tried his best to overcome the differences, and insisted on mobilizing land and water troops to fight in Liaodong in the north.
Although this bold and risky plan had to be aborted due to the Jiangnan riots, Zhou Shixiang never gave up on it.
Strategically, despise the enemy; Tactically, however, it is necessary to pay attention to the enemy.
In his bones, Zhou Shi was actually afraid of Manchuria.
What he was afraid of was not the ferocity of Manchuria, but the "tenacity" of Manchuria.
Why did the Ming Dynasty have the smoke everywhere in the Central Plains, why there was the Jiashen Change, why the three emperors were martyred, and why there were 156 large and small cities that were slaughtered, the fundamental reason is not because of natural disasters and man-made disasters, but because of the 30-year-long "Liao Affair" that dragged down the Ming Dynasty alive.
If Manchuria is out of the customs, it means that this "Liao incident" will continue.
It is impossible for Zhou Shixiang to tolerate this situation, let alone let Manchu survive like the Northern Yuan in those years and become a border trouble for the Han people.
The Manchus were not nomads, but fishermen and hunters, and it was impossible for them to run around the steppes like the Mongols, fleeing to another when one stronghold was burned, and taking advantage of the vast steppes and the Ming army to guerrilla.
When Emperor Chengzu went out of the fortress five times, he still could not completely eliminate the Mongols, but more than ten years later, a Tumubao change made the Ming Dynasty realize again that the Mongolian wolf still has the ability to bite back.
But there is no prairie outside the pass, but there is a vast forest sea, and the Taiping army can occupy the towns, but they cannot capture the Manchurians one by one and behead them in the vast forest.
It is also impossible to divide troops to defend each key point one by one, so that it will fall back into the situation of the Ming army in Liaodong decades ago.
At that time, the Ming army outside the gate was still supported by three million Han people, but now, there is not a single Han outside the gate.
Relying purely on the support of food transfer within the pass, the Taiping army was like a dilapidated house outside the pass, showing the wind everywhere.
As long as there is a slight carelessness, the tragedy of Salhu will occur again, and there will be no return.
More importantly, it was impossible for Zhou Shixiang to station a large army outside the customs for a long time.
If there are fewer garrisons, they will not be able to deal with the Manchurians, and if there are too many garrisons, the finances of the Guannai will not be able to bear it.
According to the existing population of the Ming Dynasty, it was impossible to develop the Guanwai into the Northeast known by Zhou Shixiang in his previous life in twenty or thirty years, so Zhou Shixiang insisted on going north to Liaodong, cutting off the back road of Manchukuo and blocking them in Shanhaiguan.
Even if this plan is not in the interests of the Taiping army at the moment, it is not conducive to recovering the north.
And he insisted on doing so.
In order to prevent the Manchu Qing from leaving the customs, Zhou Shixiang even secretly ordered a Taiping army to disguise the Qing army under the hands of Tang Sanshui to contain and obstruct the hundreds of thousands of loyal battalions in the north, and earlier there was a cavalry with the identity of the Eight Banners and the Wu Army's vanguard Wu Zhimao's department had a battle, if these two things were announced, the aura of anti-Qing heroes above Zhou Shixiang's head would immediately become dim, and there would be criticism inside and outside the army.
After the military department's proposal was rejected, Guo Xiong thought that Zhou Shixiang would not pay attention to Shandong, but soon, he was ordered to immediately draft a combat document to the East China Sea Fleet.
On land, Zhou Shixiang would not send a single soldier to the north, but he would not ignore the anti-Qing rebel army in Shandong.
Whether in the name of the Dingwu court or in the name of Zhou Shixiang, the king of Qi, the Taiping army had to show goodwill and support for the anti-Qing rebel army in Shandong.
Zheng Mingjun, the commander of the East China Sea Division and the Duke of Dinghai, who was resting in Zhoushan and preparing to go north to Liaodong, received an urgent order from the military headquarters, ordering the East China Sea Division to immediately set off for the north, with the goal of capturing the port of Qingdao in Laizhou, Shandong.
Qingdao is not the place name of the Ming Dynasty, but a new place name of Zhou Shixiang on the coast of Laizhou, which was originally the location of the Laizhou Sailor of the Ming Dynasty.
Free novels bring you joy and joy ---> storyskyline.net
After the failure of the rebellion in Dedeng Prefecture of Kong Youde, he went to sea in Qingdao Port to defect to Houjin.
Before leaving, a fire burned down the Laizhou water camp, and after the Qing army entered the customs, the remnants of the Denglai water division surrendered to the Manchus.
The Qing court rebuilt the Laizhou Water Camp, and the camp was in Qingdao Port.
However, because the Qing Dynasty did not attach importance to the sailors, and there were no Ming army sailors in the north, the Laizhou water battalion has not been valued by the Qing court, and its strength is very small, with only dozens of large and small warships, and the sailors on board even have old-fashioned existence. said that the Laizhou Water Camp also lifted those people.
Zhou Shixiang asked Zheng Mingjun to lead the East China Sea Division to seize Qingdao Port, annihilate the poor dozens of ships in Laizhou Water Camp, build Qingdao into a port for the East China Sea Division, and become a transit war for the Liaodong army going north in the future.
After Zheng Mingjun received the order, he immediately discussed with his nephew, Zheng Zhangxu, the Marquis of Jianping, the ambassador of the East China Sea Division, and Simingbo Feng Xifan on how to seize Qingdao.
During the period of rest in Zhoushan, Zheng Mingjun and Feng Xifan have not been idle, and they have already sent a clipper to the north to survey and map the seaways along the way, and found the old man of the Zheng family who went north to Denglai to do business, and confirmed the charts they drew back then and the current surveying and mapping results.
In general, Zheng Mingjun and they are very confident in going north.
The name Qingdao is very unfamiliar to Zheng Mingjun and them, but they are familiar with the Jiaolai Canal.
In order to facilitate the shipping of grain, the Yuan Dynasty opened a sea canal on the Shandong Peninsula, called the Jiaolai Canal, and the outlet of this canal is Qingdao, which is now where the Laizhou Water Camp is located.
In addition to occupying Qingdao, Zheng Mingjun and his team also had a mission, which was to fully support Denglai's Yu Qi rebel army.
Zhou Shixiang demanded that after they occupied Qingdao, they should immediately get in touch with the rebel army, send them grain, grass, weapons and equipment, and after obtaining the consent of Yu Qi and others, they could send officers to the rebel army, and they could also send some elites who were good at land warfare to help the rebel army fight against the Qing army in Shandong.
Zheng Mingjun had a certain number of ironclad soldiers among his subordinates, and even some Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese people.
These were originally recruited and raised by Zheng Tai during his lifetime, and after Zheng Tai's death, because these people were Zheng Tai's private soldiers, it was impossible for them to gain Zheng Jing's trust, so most of them followed Zheng Mingjun's uncle and nephew to join the Taiping Army.
Zhou Shi also treated these people equally, and did not ask Zheng Mingjun's uncle and nephew to hand them over, but continued to stay in the East China Sea Division, forming a marine army of less than 1,000 people.
Internally, the Marine Division is called the Marine Corps.
After formulating a plan to go north, Zheng Mingjun immediately ordered his nephew Zheng Zhangxu to lead 240 large and small warships and more than 6,000 sailors to the north, and two days later, he and Feng Xifan led the remaining more than 300 warships and more than 12,000 sailors of the East China Sea Division to anchor and go north.
The occupation of Qingdao and the elimination of the Laizhou water camp, which had only a few dozen boats, were nothing at all for the huge East China Sea Division.
But this time the navy division went north, but since the anti-Japanese war in the Wanli period, the Ming Dynasty sailors were another huge assembly, and it was the first time since Jiashen that the Ming Dynasty army set foot on the land closest to Beijing, and its nature was far greater than the ordinary naval battle.
Zhou Shixiang specifically demanded that the East China Sea division could only operate in a hundred miles around Qingdao, and must not appear in the coastal area of Tianjin.
This is to prevent the sailors from scaring the little emperors of Beijing and the Manchurian magnates and making it self-defeating.
However, if the Qing court was frightened out of the customs just because there were Ming army sailors on the coast of Shandong, then Zhou Shi could only express helplessness in this regard, thinking that he still overestimated the courage of the Manchurian masters.
When the East China Sea Division set out from Zhoushan and arrived in Chongming to replenish fresh water and grain, the latest news of the war in Henan was sent to Zhou Shixiang's desk. oshow7 t1706231537: