Above the officialdom, there is an anecdote that the protagonist is Hu Linyi, the governor of Hubei who died last year.

Hu Linyi was a generation of famous ministers, and after his death, the Qing court called him "Wenzhong", which shows that he was highly evaluated. It is said that when the Hunan army besieged Anqing, Zeng Guoquan accompanied him to ride a horse to Longshan and look down on the whole city. After reading the situation, Hu Linyi was full of spirits, and smiled at Zeng Guoquan: "Although the long hair is strong, it is not enough. Before the laughter fell, I suddenly saw two foreign boats on the Yangtze River, and the drum wheel was going up the river, like a galloping horse, as fast as the wind. Hu Linyi's face suddenly changed greatly, he vomited several mouthfuls of blood, and his condition worsened after returning to the camp.

Guan Zhuofan's mood at the moment is similar to that of "Hu Wenzhonggong". The British and French warships opened fire at Gaoqiao, and although the shells landed on the positions of the Taiping army, they were no different from those that fell on his own heart. Wang Shuban shouted recklessly, just touched his moldy head and received a slap in the face, and he was not wronged.

He was not sympathetic to the Taipings. In his mind, the Manchurian court was certainly not enough to rely on, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was even less worthy - if Hong Xiuquan sat in the world, what would it be like? Even just thinking about it can be chilling.

For the victory of this decisive battle, luring foreigners' warships to participate in the battle was a helpless move for Guan Zhuofan. What he was worried about was the power of the cannon when it burst out. I can fully imagine the scene when the muzzle of the black hole suddenly spews smoke and fire, and the extremely powerful cannonballs whistle away.

When will such shells fall back on their British and French?

There will always be a day like this. Guan Zhuofan cheered himself up.

Only on your own.

The earth-shattering shelling lasted more than an hour. Two lines of defense laid out by the Taiping army. Seven out of ten were destroyed, but only two of the forts on Xilin Gang were destroyed, and four were still usable. As a result, when the officers and troops began to move forward and entered the firing range, the Taiping army was still able to support the defensive line with the remnants of artillery fire.

The problem for the Taiping Army was that they were running out of ammunition. In the absence of supplementation in continuous combat, both guns and cannons must be carefully used when casting. And the field artillery group of the official army also ran into a little trouble. The water network was wide, the soil was soft, and the heavy gun wagons needed two or three times more effort than usual to advance. Therefore, it was almost noon that the battalion soldiers under Li Hengsong and Jiang De opened a gap in Yujiagou in the east, and then fought horizontally from east to west, and with the foreign gun team in front, they finally captured the small Jiemiao stronghold in the middle.

As soon as the boundary temple was broken, the Taiping Army's first line of defense was only left in Nanlin Village in the west. What he relied on was the fort on the Xilin Gang behind him. Because of the high terrain. Therefore, the artillery was also accurate, and Ding Xianda and Wu Jianying, who were mainly attacking this way, rushed three times successively, but they were all suppressed by artillery fire and had to retreat.

However, the fort on Xilingang also has a weakness, that is, the muzzle of the cannon can hardly rotate left and right, so Ding Xianda left Wu Jianying's troops, and led the Xuan army to detour to Xiaojiemiao, rendezvous with Huaer, and began to attack Xilingang from the flank.

Guarding the fort was Li Rongfa's subordinate general Ji Yuanqing. He had the foresight to set up a total of twelve wooden fences under Xilin Gang, although most of them were destroyed by artillery fire, but the remaining broken wood sharp branches had already become a greater trouble for the attack of the Xuan army. Li Rongfa also saw that Xilingang had become the key, and mobilized thousands of people and handed them over to Ji Yuanqing's command, and at the same time, the remaining three mountain-splitting cannons and more than 20 lifting guns among the generals were also transported to Xilingang, and Ji Yuanqing was strictly ordered to defend and not retreat.

The front fought fiercely, but Daniel Zhang in the back was bored. The terrain here is cramped, there is no room for maneuvering, and it is not suitable for horse teams to gallop, so the 500 cavalry had to sweep behind, and he stayed in a small forest as a temporary headquarters with Wall and Ding Shijie.

"Lao Hua, if you can't do it, do you want me to try my 'touch off painting' step bravery?" Daniel Zhang smiled and said to Wall, "At least the gun is far." ”

What "Lao Hua"? Wall snorted and didn't answer. Although he himself is also a lively person, he has never liked this slightly ruffian Daniel Zhang, but has a lot of love with the mature and stable Ding Shijie. On the battlefield, he regarded himself as a professional officer, not to mention that he was still the commander of the East Road appointed by Guan Zhuofan, so he was not very satisfied with Daniel Zhang's hippie smile.

"It's not a matter of guns, it's better to urge the artillery team behind, hurry up and find a way to come up." Wall said to Ding Shijie, "Those wooden fences need to be cleared, otherwise it will be difficult for the soldiers to rush up." If we drag it out any longer, Yixuan is afraid that he will curse. ”

Who knew that the artillery team had not yet waited, but waited for the three cavalry soldiers who rushed from Shanghai, and the leader was a general, who rushed into the forest in a rage, and a thousand children hit the ground.

"The order left by Mr. Guan, with Daniel Zhang leading the horse team to gallop back to Ling's house to cross the river and rush to Shanghai!" The general said loudly, "Tan Shaoguang stormed Qibao, and the Kezi camp was almost unable to withstand it." ”

Qibao Town is only ten miles away from Shanghai. The three of them were taken aback, and Daniel Zhang jumped up and hurriedly asked, "What order to stay?" What about Mr. Guan? ”

"Out of town!"

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Tan Shaoguang's sneak attack on Qibao Town was something Guan Zhuofan had never expected, and he was also shocked when he received the news in the county office.

The first place I didn't expect was that Tan Shaoguang dared to go out of the city. The last time he tried to sneak attack Songjiang, he had been beaten by Daniel Zhang's horse team, and he dared to act again so quickly.

The second thing he didn't expect was that he dared to attack Qibao. Qibao is located between Sijing and Shanghai, and logically speaking, it should not be fought, otherwise it will be attacked on three sides, and it is not the way to use troops. Who knew that Tan Shaoguang just hit it, and this time, it still hit Guan Zhuofan's "seven inches"-

Qibao is the location of the Xuan army's grain station, and it is also the base used by Guan Zhuofan to support Li Hengsong, Wu Jianying and other departments, all kinds of ordnance, ammunition, and grain are stored in the town, becoming the de facto general grain station of the official army. However, Qibao's defense is quite weak, for the decisive battle of Gaoqiao, Guan Zhuofan has sent all the troops that can be drawn to the eastern front, and there is only one sentry Xuan army stationed in Qibao, plus more than 200 regiments.

There's no way around it. As far as the entire Shanghai battlefield is concerned, the officers and troops can only concentrate the maximum force in some parts of the country in order to achieve victory, while in other places, it is inevitably empty. But Guan Zhuofan was puzzled, why did Tan Shaoguang grasp this weakness all of a sudden?

In fact, as far as Tan Shaoguang is concerned, he has not been able to understand the deployment of the Xuan army so clearly. It's just that the Taiping Army on the East Road was pressed to Gaoqiao, and it was in danger, and Li Rongfa was also trapped inside, once there was any mistake, how could he treat Li Xiu? So he took 3,000 people out of Qingpu City, first pretended to go north for a while, and then made a bend, avoiding Sijing, and pounced on Qibao from the northwest.

Tan Shaoguang didn't really want to defeat Qibao - after all, Qibao was the grain platform of the Xuan army, and there must be heavy defense. What he used was the usual strategy of the Taiping army to "encircle Wei and save Zhao", in order to force the Xuan army to return to help, so as to relieve the siege of Gaoqiao. Because of such a thought, the Taiping army built up a lot of momentum at the beginning, but they were really afraid of the firepower of the Xuan army, and in order to avoid losses, they did not attack, which gave the Xuan army a buffer time.

As soon as the gunshots rang out, Xu Zhi, the "President Xu" who presided over the grain platform in Qibao, panicked and hurriedly sent someone to ask for help from Yixan in Sijing, and at the same time sent someone to report to Shanghai. However, the sentry officer stationed in Qibao was calmer, first roughly determined the direction of the Taiping army's attack, and arranged his more than 100 men in the west and north of the town respectively, relying on the terrain and simple fortifications, and beat the guns extremely lively--not only for their own courage, but also to bland against the Taiping army, anyway, the ammunition was unlimited, just shoot, so the gunfire hardly stopped.

The regimental warriors in the town, because of their negligent training, lacked combat strength and could not help much. The sentry officer surnamed Qi selected more than 30 young and brave people who could fire shotguns, gathered the shotguns of the militia group and handed them over, and arranged them in the middle of the officers and soldiers on both sides, which could be regarded as an auxiliary to the officers and soldiers. The other regimental warriors were responsible for carrying ammunition and beating gongs and drums to cheer.

It's a pity that the cannon can't be fired. It's not that there are no cannons - in Qibao Town, there are two brand-new foreign cannons, and even the cannon suits have not faded, but there are no people who can handle cannons. After fighting for an hour, the Taiping army gradually discovered that Qibao Town did not seem to have many Xuan troops and no artillery, but it was just a bluff. So I readjusted the deployment and decided to turn the virtual attack into a real attack and pick up this big bargain.

Fortunately, at this time, Ixan arrived from Sijing with his two sentinels. (To be continued......)