The telegraph line in Jiading was about to be completed, and the army of Li Xiucheng of "Southern Jiangsu Province" finally raised troops in three directions, and Xiangshang Sea pounced.

The situation in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has reached a very passive time. Since the loss of Anqing, the Hunan army fought along the river and fought until the city of "Tianjing". Although the walls of the "Tianjing" city are high and wide, and the outlying strongholds have been in operation for many years, there is no danger of being breached for a while, but in the long run, after all, it is not a way, so it is necessary to rely on the Taiping armies from other places to go back and forth to relieve the siege. At this time, bad news came that the "British King" Chen Yucheng died at the hands of Guan Zhuofan's fourth uncle, Shengbao.

After the Tianjing Incident, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom withered and suffered a great loss of vitality, and it was only thanks to the two newly rising young generals Li Xiucheng and Chen Yucheng that they were able to regain their prestige, among which Chen Yucheng was even younger, only twenty-six years old. These two people are the two pillars of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and now that one pillar has been broken, the situation west of Tianjing can no longer be managed.

When Chen Yucheng was a child, because of the cure, he burned wormwood, leaving a light purple scar under each eye, looking from a distance, like four eyes, so he was contemptuously called "four-eyed dog" by the Qing army. Although the title is contemptuous, in fact, he is extremely afraid, saying that Chen Yucheng is "very beautiful and has no murderous spirit", but "fierce and outstanding, good at destroying great enemies", Hu Linyi's evaluation of him before his death was even more bloody - "The elite of thieves, only four-eyed dogs and one ear, why should he worry!" ”

Such a character, Katsu Bao is not an opponent. He was already stubborn and self-serving, but since he led his troops to knock on the Zigong Palace in the Xinyou coup d'état to deter Su Shun, he thought that he had made an immortal feat of stabilizing the country, and he became more and more arrogant. His subordinates are also corrupt in military discipline. The twilight is deep. In Shandong, it was fruitless. In February, he was transferred to Anhui, but he was still being suppressed as a messenger, and it was still fruitless. And now he can actually hunt and kill Chen Yucheng, because of the success of people, which can be regarded as the credit sent to the door.

This person is Miao Peilin, the leader of the regimental training in Shouzhou, Anhui. He is a native of Fengtai, Anhui Province, and in the name of anti-twisting, he started a group practice. The scale has grown rapidly, with thousands of people and more than 100,000 people. However, after sitting big, he began to come nonsense, one will be the king, one will be the Qing, one will collude with the Taiping army, and the other will turn his face ruthlessly, the most is a deep and capricious traitor.

When Anqing broke, Chen Yucheng retreated to Luzhou. Miao Peilin judged the situation and took another line of victory. In order to have a step forward. simply designed to lure Chen Yucheng to Shouzhou, and even Chen Yucheng's guide Wang Chen Shirong, from Wang Chen Deyi, Tianyi Chen Jucheng and other Taiping army generals, one drum into a capture, tied up Shengbao's battalion, it can be said that the country is a traitor, and both ends have achieved the extreme.

Now that Chen Yucheng is dead, the heavy responsibility of guarding "Tianjing" falls on Li Xiucheng. However, just as Guan Zhuofan and Li Hongzhang predicted, Shanghai has always been a major problem for Li Xiucheng. So Li Xiucheng decided to attack Shanghai again, hoping to solve this hidden danger before going to Tianjing Qinwang.

This time, the Taiping army did not dare to underestimate the enemy as it did last time, reorganized its armaments, mobilized ordnance, and made full preparations. The troops were divided into three routes, all the way from Hangzhou, commanded by Huang Wenjin, a general who originally belonged to Chen Yucheng, and pointed to Nanqiao; All the way from Suzhou, commanded by Tan Shaoguang, pointing to Songjiang Qingpu; All the way, Li Xiucheng personally led, and the striker approached Jiading.

Guan Zhuofan's killing of Li Rongfa was originally Li Xiucheng's great enemy, but the sharpness of the Xuan army reached the point of talking about the tiger's color change in the Taiping army. Therefore, Li Xiucheng decided to focus his offensive on the northern route, trying to defeat Li Hongzhang's Huai army, and then attack Shanghai from the north, and use the southern and middle routes as Liliang to contain Xuan's army.

Although the war clouds were approaching, this time, the common people and gentry in Shanghai were not as frightened as last time - after all, the liliang of the official army was also different. Everyone is saying that the original 3,000 Xuan Army pacified Shanghai, and now the Xuan Army has a scale of more than 10,000 people, why should Long Mao fight? What's more, with the addition of Li Futai's nearly 20,000 Huai troops, this battle will definitely be won.

Whether you win or not, whether you say it or not, you have to fight to know. By 28 June, Wu Jianying's regiment, which was stationed at Nanqiao, had already engaged Huang Wenjin's troops outside the city, and gunfire was heard in the direction of Songjiang in the middle road. In the early morning of 29 June, Li Xiucheng's forward "Gao Maniac" swooped down on Jiading on the northern front, and the second battle of Shanghai began in an all-round way.

*

*

Li Hongzhang asked Guan Zhuofan to guard the southern line, and Guan Zhuofan really guarded it honestly.

Outside the three cities of Songjiang, Nanqiao, and Fengxian, the Xuan army set up camps. These camps were learned from the Huai army, that is, the "round bases" that the Hunan army had painstakingly summed up after a hundred battles.

Outside the round rampart, there is a trench, the wall inside the trench, no masonry and wood, only with soil embryo pouring and tamping, up to one zhang thick, not only can prevent guns, but also can avoid the masonry splashed by shells. On the rambut wall, following the style of the women's wall, the firing positions are separated one by one, and three gun emplacements are set up on each base, and three eight-pounder field guns are placed. Each round fortress can hold up to three hundred soldiers.

Compared with the camp of the Huai army, there are also differences, the most obvious is that the camp of the Xuan army does not have an inner trench, which saves a lot of labor and effort. The reason why the inner trench was not set up was that Guan Zhuofan believed that under the firepower and range of the Xuan army, he did not believe that the Taiping army could break through the outer trench, and even if he could break through the outer trench, he did not believe that the Taiping army still had the strength to storm the wall.

It turned out that even the outer trenches were redundant. Although the two troops of Huang Wenjin and Tan Shaoguang have built up a lot of momentum, not to mention the siege of the city, even these camps set up on the periphery of Songjiang and Nanqiao are only tentatively fighting, and after suffering some casualties, they simply stopped their troops and actually began to dig fortifications. As for the direction of Fengxian, it is ignored at all.

At this time, Guan Zhuofan also understood that Li Xiucheng wanted to avoid the edge of Xuanjun and planned to specialize in Jiading.

In this case, Guan Zhuofan is not polite - if you don't come to beat me, I will come to beat you.

This battle is still commanded by Ding Shijie and Wall, but this time the commander-in-chief has become Ding Shijie. Ding Shijie, who is humble and studious, has deepened his understanding of modern warfare in the six months he has been with Wall, and his level has been greatly improved in both training and commanding operations.

Ding Shijie and Wall uphold the purpose explained by Guan Zhuofan, "training first". Therefore, it obviously has a strong combat power, but it is unwilling to do an overall defeat, and only makes a fuss about the position that the Taiping army wants to build, fighting the east today, fighting the west tomorrow, using artillery fire as a cover during the day, interspersed with impacts, and at night taking the battalion as a unit, raiding and harassing, and fighting extremely lively.

On the battlefield, it is always the attacking side that occupies the strategic initiative, but the defending side has the advantage of holding on to fortifications, which can often cause greater damage to the attacking side. What's more, this time, the firearms of the Taiping Army have been significantly strengthened, and in the past few days, all the units of the Xuan Army that participated in the rotation have suffered casualties of varying degrees.

"Hold on, keep fighting." Guan Zhuofan only commanded these few words.

This is tantamount to using blood to train soldiers, but fortunately, the artillery of the Xuan army is a sharp weapon that the Taiping army still cannot match. Under the impact of the Xuan army's artillery cooperation, the front-line positions of the Taiping army could never be truly cultivated, and the damage caused to the Xuan army was quite limited.

After all, in the last battle, Li Rongfa's troops were cut off by the Xuan army, and the example of gathering at Gaoqiao was placed there, so when the defense was difficult, they would rather retreat backwards than hold their positions and attract the encirclement of the Xuan army. However, when the Xuan army withdrew its troops, the Taiping army stubbornly pressed up, always taking not disengagement as the top priority.

Both sides are of general mind, and an interesting tug-of-war is formed. In the case of the Taiping Army, it was to hold back the Xuan Army and prevent the Xuan Army from galloping to the northern front; As far as Guan Zhuofan is concerned, there is no plan to rush to the northern front - Li Hongzhang wants to deal with Li Xiucheng alone, which is in his arms. This kind of opportunity for actual combat training is too rare, and he must seize such an opportunity to train those new brave soldiers in the Xuan army who have only been trained but have never been on the battlefield into "veterans."

However, the training of the troops is the training of the troops, but the mind is all on the battle situation on the northern front, after all, it is a hard-fought battle, Jiading and Baoshan are fighting very fiercely, in case the Huai army has something to lose, causing the northern gateway of Shanghai to open wide, it is not a joke.

Fortunately, judging from the telegram from Jiading, the Huai army fought well, and under the offensive of the Taiping army, the two cities have been able to stand, and even most of the outer camps are still in the hands of the official army.

It's just that there is another thing that people can't put their hearts at ease - "Loyal King" Li Xiuben himself, never appeared, I don't know where he went?

On July 13, when the fighting in Jiading began to tighten, when Guan Zhuofan contacted him by telegram again, the reply came was "Zhongcheng has gone out of the city".

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