Li Hongzhang's arrangement on the northern front was to defend Qingpu with a total of 1,700 men in the three battalions of Liu Mingchuan's "Ming" character, and to defend Baoshan with 4,000 men led by Zhang Shusheng and Wu Changqing, while Jiading with Cheng Xueqi, Zhang Yuchun, Guo Songlin and other main forces of the Huai Army in the middle. Everywhere is supplemented by green battalions and regimental training, and the troops are sufficient.

There has been no war in Qingpu. Tan Shaoguang, who was in the middle of the Taiping Army, only dealt with the Xuan Army in Songjiang and did not touch Qingpu City. But in the other two directions, the fight was quite fierce, especially in the direction of Jiading, the main attack of the Taiping army was Li Xiucheng's most courageous general "Gao Maniac", every time he fought a tough battle, no matter what the time of day, he would expose half of his body when supervising the battle, put six bowls of wine in front of him, and slowly drink one bowl at a time. If the six bowls of wine are drunk and the results have not yet been played in front, they often have to kill the generals in front of them, and then personally lead the charge of the team.

When the Huai army encountered such a force, it was unfavorable at first, and it was slowly pressed back into the camp, so the Taiping army and the Huai army fought for the base outside the city of Jiading.

The Huai army built a total of seven round bases in the west and north of Jiading City, and there were also cross-defense troops between the round bases, and the preparation was not sufficient, so at the beginning, the casualties of the Taiping army were not small, but after a long time, the weakness of the Huai army's artillery was exposed. Gao Luozi did not blindly attack in battle, and gradually figured out this weakness, so he used night fighting, every time under the cover of darkness, he advanced his own artillery to a place of two or three hundred paces, shot at close range, blasted out several large gaps in the wall of the round fortress, and then concentrated on these gaps at any cost.

In this way, the power of foreign guns could not be fully brought into play, and the weakness of the lack of guns was fully revealed. The Huai army fought very hard. It's July 9th. That is, the tenth day after the start of the war. The outermost camp in the north of the city was finally broken by the Taiping army, and a short ladder was used to cross the outer trench and the inner trench, and rushed into the fortress, and more than 200 Huai soldiers inside were all killed.

The fourth base in the north of the city, losing this one, opened a hole in the defensive line. On the one hand, Li Hongzhang ordered Zhang Yuchun and Pan Dingxin's five battalions to fight back desperately, and on the other hand, he ordered Guo Songlin's 1,100 and Zeng Bingzhong's 3,000 green battalions. Wrap around the flanks of the tall maniac and relieve the pressure from the front. But this time the Taiping army also fought hard, and Li Wenzhao, the general of the Gao madman, with 5,000 soldiers from his headquarters, blocked Guo Songlin's attack in Beiqi Mountain, and fought to the death.

And in the north of Jiading City, the two sides fought a bloody battle around that camp. In the repeated battles, it changed hands several times, and it was often the Huai army that recaptured it during the day. The Taiping army broke through again at night, within a radius of one mile. It turned into a meat grinder, and both sides suffered heavy casualties, and it was all up to who could hold this breath.

In the end, the Taiping army was a little more vigorous, and when it was half a July, it not only firmly held the round fortress, but also captured the second one, and after a little rectification, it was all in one go, to sweep away the periphery of Jiading City.

At such a time, Li Hongzhang couldn't sit still any longer, and finally went out of the city to supervise the battle in person, and put the two battalions of Cheng Xueqi, who were the most capable of fighting, as the general reserve, into the battlefield in the north of the city.

This is almost like a decisive battle, everyone has hit the artillery fire in their hands to the extreme, 20,000 Taiping troops and tens of thousands of Huai troops under the city of Jiading are killing the sky, and the blood fight until the afternoon is still a stalemate. The high madman on the opposite side, after drinking six bowls of wine, captured a "military marshal" who had not been able to attack for a long time in front of him, and executed him on the spot, and then led more than 1,000 Chinese troops, like a mad tiger, to charge in person. The morale of the Taiping army was greatly boosted, the trumpet cannon was fired, thousands of flags were unfurled, and the whole army shouted loudly, making a decisive impact on the Huai army.

At this moment, the newly trained Huai army began to be unable to withstand it, Zhang Yuchun ran back to the rear of the battle in a hurry, Li Hongzhang supervised the battle, and said loudly: "Zhongcheng, the long-haired attack is too urgent, please Zhongcheng enter the city to avoid it!" ”

Li Hongzhang is a native of Hefei, when it comes to seeing the real chapter, he has his own ruffian, and he also learned the word "courage" from the teacher, seeing Zhang Yuchun like this, he ignored him, sat on the chair and did not move, so he said to the left and right: "Go find a knife for me, I will cut off this Zhang Yuchun's head." ”

He usually controls generosity, always uses kindness and righteousness to entrap his generals, and there are not many times to scold, let alone cut off his head? It can be seen that it is really urgent. Zhang Yuchun paused, knelt down and kowtowed to Li Hongzhang, and made up his mind to fight with the madman Gao.

"Please take care of my mother."

After that, he turned around and left, ripped off his clothes like a high madman, got naked, and shouted with a knife: "Two Huai children, you can't lose to Changmao!" Beat the drums, follow me! ”

The boss was like this, and the soldiers below were naturally excited, so thousands of people followed Zhang Yuchun and bravely stepped forward to launch a counter-charge against the high madman.

Li Hongzhang and Zhang Yuchun's luck was really good, just at this moment of victory or defeat, the high madman who was heavily guarded by his own Chinese army was hit in the left chest by a stray bullet flying from nowhere, and without snorting, he threw himself forward and fell to the ground, and the big knife in his hand fell far away, and he lost his life.

The situation on the battlefield was reversed, and the whole Huai army shouted, "The high madman is dead!" ", counterattacking the Taiping army on all fronts. The Taiping army inexplicably died the main general, and under the shaking morale, it could not hold its position, and finally collapsed, and was chased by the Huai army all the way for more than ten miles, with thousands of casualties. Li Wenzhao, who blocked Guo Songlin on the flank, could not retreat and was killed by the Huai army at the foot of Beiqi Mountain. The Taiping army that attacked Baoshan received the news of the defeat of Jiading, so naturally there was no way to fight any further, so they had to retreat into the territory of Taicang Prefecture.

As a result, the northern front was Ningjing, and the Huai army finally fought a beautiful victory.

Although the Huai army's victory was a fluke, it was won by hard and bloody battles. As soon as the good news came, Shanghai shook, and those who originally looked down on the Huai Army couldn't help but be impressed.

In contrast, the Xuan army, which was guarding the southern front, was compared this time. Although the Taiping armies of Huang Wenjin and Tan Shaoguang never broke through any of the camps, the Xuan army never defeated any of the Taiping armies like the northern front. Inevitably, some people in the market gradually discussed, saying that the soldiers under Guan Fantai will return to strength, will there be a sign of arrogance? But most people are defending the Xuan army, saying that the Xuan army was originally ordered by Li Futai to defend the southern front, and now that it is impregnable, what else is there to blame?

But in any case, it is the Huai army that is in the limelight now. Li Hongzhang succeeded in the first battle, and on the one hand, he wrote a report on the victory overnight to describe his exploits, and on the other hand, he mobilized people and horses to make plans for the next step.

He wanted to learn from Zeng Guofan and Hu Linyi's set of borrowing heavy bannermen, and pushed Guan Zhuofan to lead this performance, but Zeng Guofan's great Confucianism, and that kind of kung fu to cultivate qi was not something that Li Hongzhang could easily learn, so between that seemingly humble and free look, he couldn't help but show a little fox tail, and he couldn't hide his complacency, thinking that he had given Guan Zhuofan a great credit. Guan Zhuofan seemed to be unconscious, but he resolutely refused to occupy the leading position, but only met the title on the excerpt according to the rules, and Li Hongzhang bowed the next day.

Li Hongzhang is different from his teacher Zeng Guofan, he thinks very quickly, and he won this battle, and he is already planning the next battle. In his opinion, the new defeat of Long Hair will definitely be sluggish, and he will recover the lost territory in Jiangsu, and this is the time! So he summoned the generals, declared the purpose of the pursuit of victory, and planned to divide the troops into two routes, one route was Pan Dingxin led by the prefect Li Qingchen, Wang Guoan, Liang Anbang and other departments of the Huai Army and the Green Battalion, a total of 9,000 people, to sweep the Taicang Prefecture in the north nearby, and recover this piece of lost territory that had been occupied by Changmao for more than two years. On the other hand, his younger brother Li Hezhang led 17,000 people, including Zhang Yuchun and Cheng Xueqi, to prepare to march west to Suzhou.

This plan reached the ears of the generals of the Xuan Army, and everyone couldn't sit still. I have been training on the battlefield for almost a month, and although I have made some gains, compared with the great achievements of the Huai Army, it is one heaven and one underground. So they exchanged news with each other, and made an appointment to come to the yamen of the clan in the south of the city, and asked to see Xuan Shuai.

"Do what?" Guan Zhuofan looked at everyone with a look of surprise.

Everyone, you look at me, I look at you, zuihou or Daniel Zhang couldn't help it, and said it first: "Boss, do you know that Li Futai's Huai army has already set off to fight Taicang, and the soldiers fighting Suzhou on the other road are about to be pulled out?" ”

"Oh, this," Guan Zhuofan nodded, "I naturally know, what's wrong?" ”

"He Li Futai can make meritorious contributions, and it all depends on our Xuan Army to drag Huang Wenjin and Tan Wenzhao to the two long hairs!" Daniel Zhang was a little anxious, he usually looked down on the Huai Army the most, and was even more unwilling to let Li Hongzhang steal Guan Zhuofan's limelight, "Now their Huai Army is going to make great merits, but take our Xuan Army here as a decoration, the brothers are not convinced!" ”

"Why are you not convinced?" Guan Zhuofan spread his hands innocently, "In the excerpt this time, there is also the credit of Xuan Jun, you all, the court will have a reward, just wait for the good news." ”

"Yixuan, we didn't mean to reward." Wall also spoke, "It's obvious that we can fight, but you won't let us fight." General Ding and I are willing to make a military order, as long as you are willing to give the order to let us go, within ten days, if we can't sweep these two roads from the south to the middle, I will ...... Yuancheng, willing to kneel here and plead guilty to you! ”

"Ah, good! Good! With such morale, how can there be any reason not to win the battle? Guan Zhuofan was very happy, "Mr. Liu! ”

"Yes." Liu Xun replied with a bow.

"Add half a month's salary to the grain table to encourage you. Besides, you've all worked so hard these days, and you haven't had a good meal, right? I'll eat lunch at my place today, and I'll give you a taste of the kitchen's dishes! ”

His words were foggy and meaningless, and everyone was confused.

"Xuan Shuai......" Ding Shijie looked like he wanted to speak and stopped.

"I was busy until midnight yesterday, and I still have a lot of official documents left to finish - the official business of this clan and the yamen is really a headache!" Guan Zhuofan yawned and said apologetically, "You have eaten, please return to the camp." I'll have to go sleep for a while, and I'll not be with you. ”

After saying that, he stood up and walked out with Shi Shiran, leaving a room of military attachés, all looking at each other, not knowing the essentials.

Guan Zhuofan returned to the wing room, and his kimono fell on the bed, tired and tired, but he was not sleepy, and his eyes were blazing and looking at the roof in a daze.

"Li Xiucheng, where are you?"

*

(The second watch is around 7 p.m.) ）

*(To be continued......)