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He feared that the Taiping army, which had won a military victory against the Manchus, would once again turn around and blockade the walls of Guanao, restart the blockade of Macao, and even immediately send troops to attack Macao, so he sent the envoy Xiao Bailang to Guangzhou to express to the Taiping army the "goodwill" of himself and the Portuguese government to the Ming Dynasty and the Taiping army, and asked for "peaceful coexistence" with the Taiping army, a neighbor that had become large and terrible.

After repeated negotiations, Zhou Shixiang agreed not to blockade the Guanao city wall, but the premise was that the Portuguese must immediately provide 1,000 arquebuses to the Taiping army free of charge, another 2,000 arquebuses to the Taiping army at a price of 6 taels of silver, 45 Hongyi artillery pieces to the Taiping army at a price of 1,200 taels of silver, and 80 large and small bronze cannons to the Taiping army at a price of 400-500 taels of silver, and more than 20,000 catties of medicine.

In addition, the Macao authorities had to allow the Taiping Army to recruit and merge military personnel and various craftsmen in Macao, and to donate about 100,000 taels of silver to the Taiping Army. Such materials were to be purchased by the Taiping Army, and if the purchase was insufficient and the remaining silver taels could be used to offset the cost of purchasing firearms. In other words. On the condition that he would no longer blockade and military strikes against Macao, Zhou Shixiang blackmailed the Macao authorities with arms and materials worth more than 100,000 taels of silver, and asked the Macao authorities to provide the Taiping Army with the military personnel it needed.

Zhou Shixiang really gritted his teeth and proposed this peace condition that was not excessive in his opinion. Because the wealth in the hands of the Portuguese in Macao is more than ten times or even dozens of times the price he offered, it is impossible for the Portuguese to break their bones and bones with a mere hundred thousand taels of silver, and it will not even make them frown. If he directly sent troops to occupy Macao, he would definitely get far more than this price, and there would be no need to continue to keep the Portuguese in Macao to make Oriental fortune.

Zhou Shixiang thought about replacing the role of the Portuguese in the East and earning military expenses from the sea trade, but the shortcomings of the sailors made his idea very unrealistic. Therefore, after Tang Sanshui told him that Shunzhi in Beijing had sent Prince Jian Jidu to lead 20,000 Manchurian and Han troops to fight him, Zhou Shixiang decisively chose to back down and no longer be aggressive towards Macau.

Confronted with a formidable foe. It was impossible for the Taiping army to use troops against Macao, and it was impossible to allocate enough troops to maintain the blockade of the city wall of Guanao, compromise and retreat. Rein in your ambitions. In other words, putting away his greed and obtaining as much as possible from the Portuguese some arms and materials that can be immediately used in the war against the Qing Dynasty is the right choice for Zhou Shixiang.

After solving the threat of Jidu's army, Zhou Shixiang swore that the fat meat of Macao would be swallowed sooner or later!

If you want to get rich, the big head has to be his Zhou Xiucai!

A hundred thousand taels of silver could be exchanged for the safety of Macau, which was much less than the losses caused by the war with the Taiping army, and Bugallo agreed to this condition without hesitation. After all, he did not have the support of the Portuguese Eastern Fleet in Goa, nor did he have enough land to withstand the attack of the Taipings. He didn't want the Oriental governor of India, who had always looked down on him unpleasantly, to have an excuse to drive him away from Macao.

Peace must be priced.

Bugallo did not mind the Taiping Army's recruitment of Western military personnel and craftsmen from Macao, which had previously provided several batches of military personnel to the Ming Dynasty, and there was a precedent for cooperation between the two sides. If the Taiping army could not defeat the Qing army in Guangdong, Bugallo would naturally not consider this "capital enemy" plan, but now, he must continue to show the friendliness of the Grape people to the Ming Dynasty, because if he does not do this, Macao is likely to be destroyed.

During the Chongzhen period, Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Denglai, in order to make the new firearms and new army form combat effectiveness as soon as possible, in addition to purchasing cannons and arquebuses from Macao, he also hired a group of instructors and craftsmen. When Dengzhou was broken by the rebels of Kong Youde, the Portuguese officer chief teacher Xi Teixeira Correa and 11 of his men died in the battle for the Ming Dynasty, and 15 people including Fisk served the rebels. This made the army of the "Sanshun King" completely consistent with the Westerners in the use and training of firearms. In the second year of Yongli, when Pang Tianshou, the master of ceremonies, purchased firearms from Macao, he also recruited hundreds of Western military personnel in Macao to form the Xiyi soldiers to serve the Ming Dynasty, and the training methods of these Xiyi soldiers were almost the same as those of the Han army of Kong Youde and others, and also similar to the training methods adopted by the second town formed by the Taiping army.

More than 5,000 muskets were seized from the Pingnan and Jingnan feudatories, and 3,000 arquebuses provided by the Portuguese, bringing the number of Taiping guns to more than 8,000. The army was filled with a large number of soldiers and officers of the Han army under the Pingnan and Jingnan domains, and there were drill training manuals formulated by Zhou Shixiang, so there was no need to ask Westerners in Macao to teach the training of firearms, but the artillery guidance of the artillery battalion still needed the efforts of these Westerners.

Like Sun Yuanhua, Zhou Shixiang paid these Western officers, including the Portuguese, a large amount of money and silver, and Zhou Shixiang explicitly told these Western officers that they could leave as long as they had served in the Taiping Army for three years, and that they would not only receive a huge amount of money, but also travel expenses. If they are unwilling to return to Europe, then the Taiping army also has a place for them, and they can obtain the title and official position of the Ming Dynasty by virtue of their military exploits.

Many of the Westerners in Macao have a certain degree of military literacy, and they either did not settle down in the country, or they were defeated in the war, and they risked dying on the sea to come all the way to the East to seek wealth, so the employment of the Taiping Army was simply a relief for them.

Within a few days, Xiao Bailang justifiably recruited hundreds of Western military personnel for the Taiping Army, some of whom could be officers, while others could only be ordinary soldiers. Zhou Shixiang did not blindly "worship the foreign and flattering the foreign", these Western military personnel were treated as treasures, and everyone was entrusted with official positions, but personally tested and selected, and finally 80 people were assigned to the military training center as instructors, 120 people were assigned to the second town as sergeants, 35 people served as officers at the first level of Wu Zheng, more than 20 people served as team leaders, more than 40 people stayed in the military marshal's mansion as staff officers, and the rest could stay if they were willing to serve as soldiers in the Taiping Army, and they did not want to give the money to go back. Eventually, 589 Western military personnel became part of the Taiping Army.

Xiao Bailang recruited more than 100 craftsmen from Macao who were proficient in ordnance maintenance for the Taiping Army, including Westerners and Han Chinese, and there were also some craftsmen skilled in the maintenance and forging of firearms under the Pingnan and Jingnan domains, all of whom were transferred by Zhou Shixiang to the ordnance station opened in the west of the Yuexiu camp. Both Westerners and Han Chinese are given a first-class salary to the guards, and those who have special performance and major meritorious service are rewarded according to the size of their merits.

The Ordnance Institute is directly under the leadership of the Military Marshal's Office, and Zhou Shixiangyi takes the Ordnance Institute as the core to support a series of military projects, making it a military factory of the Taiping Army. However, for the time being, he is not in the conditions to open a mine in Guangdong, nor is he in the condition to build some forging equipment, so the Ordnance Institute can only rely on manual repair of the damaged firecracker, and there is no way to transform the firecracker. Some ideas for the improvement of the musket can only stay on the drawings, and the second town is still mainly equipped with arquebuses.

The training of the Taiping Army's troops in various towns did not stagnate because of the suppression of bandits, but was tempered in the process of suppressing bandits. Let a sheep lead a group of wolves, it must be unsightly, but let a wolf lead a group of sheep, it is impressive, and these soldiers are not sheep in the first place, but a group of wolves, as long as they can effectively control and use them, give them enough sweetness, these soldiers can quickly integrate into the Taiping Army, and immediately improve the combat effectiveness of the Taiping Army.

It is also a means to control the families of the surrendered troops and to resettle them in various localities to set up villages and townships, to give them land is also a means, to divide and conquer the surrendered troops is also a means, and to use the first surrendered troops to suppress and then surrender the troops is also a means; of course, the most effective means is to stimulate interests.

Promotion is the most old-fashioned but also the most useful, no matter ancient or modern, promotion and wealth is always the best way to motivate people to work hard. Even if the revolution of later generations. The essence of life is actually to be promoted and make a fortune, but there is a layer of righteousness on top of this essence. The destruction of the old class will naturally lead to the birth of a new class. The Taiping Army destroyed the old landlord and gentry class in Xiangshan, and the same military class of the Taiping Army was born, which violently gained the right to rule the local area and became the new landlord and gentry class.

With land, wealth, and something to defend, anyone would fight in the Taiping collective.

The righteousness of the Taiping Army is to oppose the Qing Dynasty, but why it is anti-Qing, not many people can say clearly, the people of this era have no concept of the nation-state, what Zhou Shixiang can instill in them is the most primitive and barbaric concept - the Manchu Qing occupied our land, robbed us of our gold and silver, played with our women, and enslaved us like cattle and sheep, so we must resist and take back everything that belongs to us, we will never be slaves!

These words sounded almost ridiculous to later generations, but they were the most effective slogans.

"For the sake of the Ming Dynasty, for the sake of the Taiping Army, for the sake of your wives and children, you must fight!"

Zhou Shixiang promulgated the Taiping military song, which was not a new creation, but took the military song of the Red Turban Army at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and ordered the whole army to sing it without changing a word.

"The clouds are from the dragon, the wind is from the tiger, fame and fortune are from the dust and the earth;

Looking at Shenzhou, the people are bitter, and thousands of miles of fertile land are barren;

Look at the world, as much as you want, and make up for the defects of heaven;

A good man, don't be a parent, just for the common people, not the Lord;

Holding a steel knife of ninety-nine, kill all Hu Erfang and stop;

I am a dignified man, what is a Tartar as a horse and a cow;

The strong man drank all the wine in the bowl, and did not look back on the journey of a thousand miles;

The golden drums roared in unison, and the yellow dragon swore endlessly! ”

Every day, in the barracks of the Taiping Army, teams of soldiers with broadswords, spears, and firearms can be heard walking forward step by step, singing loudly step by step.

"Ninety-nine with a steel knife, kill all Hu Erfang!"

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