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Volume 1: Fierce Battle in Changsha Chapter 497: Sweeping across Guangdong

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    The death of Guangzhou General Mukdena and the surrender of Navy Admiral Huang Kaiguang made the already low morale of the Qing army even lower. An angry Ye Mingchen ordered various chambers of commerce and wealthy households in Guangzhou to organize business groups and militia groups to fight against the Taiping Army. Although there were still some  Rich households and businessmen formed merchant corps and militia groups to help the Qing army, but most of the wealthy businessmen did so perfunctorily.

    As an open trading port, information in Guangzhou is not as closed as in the inland areas. The wealthy businessmen here have long heard foreigners tell the deeds of the Taiping Army. They know that what the Taiping Army did in Shanghai, Ningbo and other places was  Guangzhou businessmen who protect private property and vigorously encourage industry and commerce are quite yearning for the fact that the Taiping Army abolished many of the excessive taxes and miscellaneous taxes under the Manchu rule and the officials governed the Qingming Dynasty.

    Moreover, the Taiping Army was very powerful. They fought a battle with foreigners a few days ago. Although they could not be considered a victory over the foreigners, the Taiping Army dared to fire at the foreigners, which made the businessmen and people of Guangzhou feel that the Taiping Army was better than the weak Qing army.  Too much.  Although the merchants and common people in Guangzhou do a lot of business with foreigners, they have never had a favorable impression of foreigners.  After the Opium War, the people of Guangzhou prevented foreigners from entering the city for more than ten years. This shows that the people of Guangzhou hate foreigners. When the Taiping Army went south, at first the people thought that the Taiping Army was with the foreigners.  But the subsequent conflict between the Taiping Army and the British broke these suspicions.

    So a strange scene appeared in Guangzhou City. Rich businessmen and rural civilians were all expecting the Taiping Army to invade the city quickly.  In the end, Ye Mingchen had to send troops to drive the strong men in the city to help defend the city, and expelled the soldiers to extort wealthy businessmen to donate money and food, which resulted in even greater public dissatisfaction.

    After completing the clearing of the key areas outside Guangzhou, the three divisions of the Taiping Army quickly attacked the city of Guangzhou on three sides. This was a tactic of encircling three and missing one. The Taiping Army did not seem to have pushed the Qing army into a hurry and caused too much damage to the city of Guangzhou.  In Xiao Yungui's eyes, after Guangzhou was captured, it would continue to play its role as a treaty port.

    The Qing army¡¯s commander Laicun, deputy commander Shuangxi, and commander-in-chief Ren Anbang guarded the east, west and south of the city respectively, but they only resisted for an hour.  Ren Anbang, the commander-in-chief of the Qing army guarding the south of the city, opened the city and surrendered first.  Seeing that the south of the city had been lost, Laicun and Shuangxi hurriedly retreated, protecting Ye Mingchen, Bai Gui and other Guangzhou officials from escaping from the north of the city.

    On June 28, the Taiping Army occupied Guangzhou. It took the Taiping Army less than a month from landing on the Wanshan Islands to occupying Guangzhou City.  In this battle, the Taiping Army suffered more than a thousand casualties.  This included officers and soldiers who were killed or injured in the conflict with the British, and more than 30,000 Manchu Green Battalion, Guangzhou Eight Banners, and regiment training horses were annihilated, most of which were surrendered by the Qing army.

    After Ye Mingchen and other Qing officers and officials fled from the north gate, they were surrounded and annihilated by Taiping cavalry more than ten miles south of Huaxian City. Except for Shuangxi, deputy commander of the Qing army, who led hundreds of Qing troops to break through, the rest of the Qing troops from Ye Mingchen down  .  Either dead, surrendered or captured alive.

    The man who commanded the Battle of Guangzhou was Chen Yucheng, a famous young general of the Taiping Army. He arrived in Guangzhou with the Second Squadron of Luo Gang. On the way, he received a secret order from the King of the West, telling him to ignore the British and continue to capture Guangzhou. If the British army continued to capture Guangzhou,  If the fleet comes to provoke again, the navy can resolutely fight back regardless of losses.  Therefore, after Chen Yucheng arrived in Guangzhou, he quickly deployed his troops to sweep across Guangzhou.

    Thanks to the good foundation laid by Zhang Wenxiang of the Third Division in advance.  Chen Yucheng's subsequent troops did not encounter much resistance when they landed in Guangzhou. With the support of the people, the Battle of Guangzhou ended in a short period of time.

    After capturing Guangzhou, Chen Yucheng left part of the Second Division to guard Guangzhou together with the navy, while the remaining troops swept across Guangdong in three directions.  The first route is the first division led by Chen Alin, the former general of Xiaodao. They attack eastward, preparing to hit the border between Fujian and Guangdong, and join forces with Chen Kai, the former Red Scarf Army, who is preparing to move south from Fujian.  Together they surrounded and annihilated the Qing troops of Fujian governor Wang Yide and Li Tingyu who were struggling in Chaozhou, Meizhou and other places.  The second route, with the First Division of Chen Zhiming's Second Division as the main force, swept northward to open up the connection with Jiangxi, wipe out the Qing army in the north, and strive to connect Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi.  The third route, with Zhang Wenxiang's Third Division as the main force, went west to attack Zhaoqing and other places, preparing to march into Guangxi.

    Due to the sudden landing of the Taiping Army in the Battle of Guangzhou, all senior generals including the general soldiers of Guangdong Fudaotai were killed or captured by the Taiping Army.  The command system of the Qing army in Guangdong was paralyzed. The Qing armies in various places were not under each other's control and fought independently. The results are naturally conceivable.

    July to August.  The three armies of the Taiping Army swept across Guangdong. Except for the Eastern Route Army, which encountered strong resistance from Qing army Li Tingyu's troops in Chaozhou, Meizhou and other places, the rest of the armies were progressing smoothly.  By the end of August, the Qing army in Guangdong was basically wiped out, Meizhou was also captured, and Fujian governor Wang Yide and other officials committed suicide. Only Qing army veteran Li Tingyu was left to guard the isolated city of Chaozhou, but he was also surrounded by the Taiping Army.

    After Guangzhou was captured, Xiao Yungui followed the example of Shanghai, Ningbo and other treaty ports and established the Guangzhou Military and Political Department to govern Guangzhou, and sent Lu Xianba to take over as the Guangzhou Military and Political DepartmentCommander, Li Tianxi was the commander-in-chief of the Guangzhou garrison, and the South China Sea Fleet was established, and Tang Zhengcai was the admiral of the fleet.  After Luo Gang led most of the fleet back to Shanghai, the original Shanghai fleet was upgraded to the East China Sea Fleet.

    After Lu Xianba took office, he copied Shanghai's example, quickly took over the customs, established Guangdong Customs, abolished exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and encouraged industrial and commercial development, which won the support of Guangdong business people.  At the same time, Guangzhou was prosperous, and more than one million taels of silver were found in the Manchu and Qing customs offices in Guangzhou. After a large number of Guangzhou officials' offices were confiscated, the Taiping Army obtained a total of more than five million taels of money, food, and property.

    At the same time, there was also Mancheng in Guangzhou. The Taiping Army did not massacre Mancheng in Guangzhou this time. After entering Mancheng, in addition to resolutely annihilating the stubborn resisters, most of the bannermen in Mancheng chose to surrender.  The Taiping Army also accepted their surrender.

    After the bannermen surrendered, most of their property was confiscated, and more than 100,000 bannermen were driven out of the city and dispersed to several larger mining areas in Guangdong to engage in heavy labor such as mining.  It can be said that the banner people in Guangzhou were not wealthy. In the later period of the Opium War, the money and food received by the banner people gradually decreased. In the early years of Xianfeng, it was even more difficult to make a living.  Since the Kangxi period, the bannermen stationed in Guangzhou have been strictly prohibited from learning farming and manual skills. These people have no skills at all, cannot engage in any production, and are strictly prohibited from engaging in industrial and commercial activities.  Then Guangzhou banner people were strictly prohibited from intermarrying with people outside the city, and were even prohibited from traveling ten miles away from the city. This resulted in Guangzhou banner people in the city basically having no social contact with the outside world.

    For these bannermen who have no social connections and no skills, it is naturally impossible for the Taiping Army to let them continue to stay in Guangzhou City like this.  The best choice is to arrange all of them to do simple manual labor in major mines. No one in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can enjoy something for nothing.

    So the bloody relocation history of more than 100,000 banner people began. They were divided into dozens of batches by family units by the Taiping Army. Each batch had thousands or more than 10,000 people, and they were resettled to Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi and other places.  Along the way, the Taiping Army only provided the most basic rations, and the banner people had great difficulties in relocating, dragging their families with them and living in the open.  The cries shook the whole country, and the Taiping troops escorting them along the way were also quite intolerable.

    In fact, the life of the banner people in Guangzhou is not very good. It is even worse than that of some people in the outer cities of Guangzhou. The people in the outer cities can still make a living, but they can only survive on the meager banner money and food. The suffering they have experienced now is only  Can you blame their ancestors who admired bows and horses?  If it weren't for the various so-called ancestral systems imposed on them, they would not be in this situation.

    Later, these banner people were engaged in heavy labor such as mineral mining in various places. Later, a large number of banner people participated in the construction of the Fujian-Guangzhou Railway. Finally, they had skills to survive. After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom unified the country and promulgated the "Declaration of the State",  The banner people began to enjoy all the rights and benefits that citizens of a country can enjoy again, but at that time, the number of banner people had been reduced sharply due to heavy labor and long-term malnutrition.  This is a later story.

    There were several major riots and escapes during the migration of the banner people, but they were quickly suppressed by the Taiping Army. Because the banner people were disconnected from the outside world for a long time, they lacked sympathizers, and even ordinary people took these former  The bannermen looked upon them as monsters and had no support or sympathy, so the resistance of the bannermen was extremely fragile.  Later, except for a few old and young people who wrote articles describing the blood and tears of the banner people's migration, the official history of the Kingdom of Heaven only contained a few simple sentences: "At that time, Guangzhou was restored. More than 100,000 banner people moved to the city and were scattered throughout the three provinces of southern Xinjiang.  , so that they each make a living by mining and building roads"

    After Ye Mingchen and other Manchu officials were captured, they took the sea route and followed Luo Gang's fleet to Shanghai, and then to Tianjing.  In Shanghai and other places, Ye Mingchen and other captured Qing officers and officials saw the amazing changes in Shanghai. Not to mention the prosperous Shili Foreign Market in Shanghai and the prosperous new domestic industrial and commercial district on the other side, even the Western train to Suzhou later.  It was an eye-opener for these Manchu and Qing officials.

    Xiao Yungui did this for a purpose. As the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's military offensive becomes more and more powerful, more and more Manchu and Qing officials will surrender or voluntarily surrender or change their banners. At this time, we cannot just catch the Manchu and Qing officials and kill them.  .  After all, it is very necessary to reduce losses and make the enemy surrender voluntarily, so Xiao Yungui needs thousands of gold to buy horse bones.

    But only two people, Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui, were not given preferential treatment by Xiao Yungui. After the Tiandihui uprising in Guangdong failed, Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui massacred the families, women and children of the rebels in Guangdong, and even killed many innocent people indiscriminately. These two people will be tried after  Mingzheng canon punishment.  The navy admiral Huang Kaiguang and the commander-in-chief Ren Anbang who surrendered voluntarily, as well as the captured chief envoy Jiang Guolin and the inspector general Zhou Qibin and other officials can be used.

    Among them, Jiang Guolin is especially important. He has been an official for more than 20 years and has been honest throughout his life. When he took office, he cared about the suffering of the people and severely punished corrupt officials.  Historically, Jiang Guolin was promoted to governor of Guangdong in 1858, and he was even more diligent.He loves the people, must do everything personally, and strictly rectifies the administration of officials, thus offending many bureaucrats and corrupt officials.  They bribed the court dignitaries and framed Jiang Guolin. Soon Jiang Guolin was impeached and dismissed from office and moved to Huizhou.  When the elders in Huizhou heard that Jiang Guolin had arrived, they ran wildly to tell him.  According to the "Dazhu County Chronicle", at that time, "the old man held a stick to the left of the road, women and children were playing and leaning on the eaves, peeking at the adults' faces; every household was burning incense, and the sound of firecrackers resounded for ten miles."  After Jiang Guolin entered the hotel, betel nuts, coconut millet and other items presented by the county people filled the outdoor area, and people who expressed gratitude and greetings came one after another.  This is the only time in the history of Huizhou that the county residents warmly welcomed a retiring official.  Jiang Guolin returned to his hometown after staying in Huihui for a few months, and soon died of illness at the age of 50.

    Officials like Jiang Guolin can be appointed, but the prerequisite is that they must let go of their original Manchu masters.  Now Xiao Yungui is not only keen on power, but also keen on imposing his will on others. If he can take an enemy official and general as his own, Xiao Yungui will feel even more fulfilled.  Therefore, Jiang Guolin and others visited Shanghai, Suzhou and other places before sending him to Tianjing.
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