At the beginning of the war in Guangxi, Shao Jiugong was still very confident in inducing the line Guoan to go deep into Guangxi and then encircle and annihilate it, after all, according to the confessions of those demoted officials, there were only more than 10,000 elite soldiers under the original southern domain in the line Guoan headquarters, and the rest were mostly Ming troops who surrendered in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.

In terms of combat effectiveness alone, the Han army of the line national security headquarters is not a strong army, otherwise it would not have been suppressed by Li Dingguo, the king of Jin, for so many years. It was not until the king of Jin drove from Anlong to Yunnan that the remaining troops of the Ming army in Guangxi were empty, and the line Guoan was able to take the opportunity to capture Liuzhou, Xunzhou, Wuzhou and other important towns in Guangxi, cut off the communication channel between Yunnan and the Ming army in Guangdong, and realized the return of Guangxi's territory to the Qing Dynasty on the bright side. If the king of Jin had not withdrawn the main force from Guangxi back then, the remnants of the army under the line Guoan and the Dingnan domain might not even have a chance to survive in Guangxi, and they would probably flee back to Hunan in embarrassment like lost dogs.

In terms of military morale, the current line may not be monolithic. Most of the troops who surrendered as many as three or four times the number of the national security headquarters were the former Sun Kewang's driving army and other Ming Dynasty soldiers and horses, and these people were demoralized after Sun Kewang surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, and the future of the Qing Dynasty was desperate, so that after the Qing army entered Guizhou, they either fled from the wind or surrendered without a fight, which was not one or two points worse than the soldiers and horses under the command of the King of Jin and the King of Gongchang who swore to resist to the death. This difference is not in combat effectiveness, but in the morale of the military.

Thirty or forty thousand soldiers who had just surrendered could sell their lives for the Manchu court, Shao Jiugong kept doubts about this. And whether Line Guoan can drive these troops, who are much larger than his headquarters, to charge into battle, Shao Jiugong is also skeptical. Under the two suspicions, he was naturally full of confidence in the battle situation, and it was rare to be optimistic.

Zhou Shixiang chose Shao Jiugong as the governor of Guangxi, becoming the first general to take on one side of the military and politics alone since the establishment of the Taiping Army.

The core of the Taiping Army's southwest strategy is to block the Yunnan-Guizhou Qing army, in other words, it is to defend. Relying on the mountainous terrain of Hunan and Guizhou and Guizhou and Guizhou with few roads, and relying on the geographical advantage, hundreds of thousands of Qing troops were sealed in Yunnan and Guizhou, which was the "Qinwang Strategy" set by Zhou Shixiang and Song Xianggong as early as Guangdong.

The two main points of this strategy are the blockade of the border between Hunan and Guizhou, and the blockade of the border between Guangxi and Guizhou. In the former, Zhou Shixiang personally led the troops to implement it, and the latter was handed over to Shao Jiugong.

Shao Jiugong, who was old and serious, was undoubtedly very suitable to undertake the task of "defending", and according to the original plan, lured the enemy to go deeper, gradually eliminated and then encircled the national security in Liuzhou, cut off the connection between his troops and Guizhou, and made his army alone under the fortified city of Liuzhou. At that time, even if the soldiers and horses under the line Guoan and the overall strength of the Guangxi Taiping Army were equal, it would be impossible for the other side to win this battle.

The Taiping Army has obtained all the three elements of war.

In time, the entire territory of Guangxi was occupied by the Taiping army; Those who are geographically advantageous, the fortified city is strong, the checkpoints are all in the hands of the Taiping army; The Taiping Army united the military and the people of Guangxi with the victory of the rapid sweep of Guangxi, even the demoted officials changed their banners under the Taiping Army's soldiers, and they wanted to live and die with the Ming Dynasty. Of course, the biggest people are those who are demoted, they are worried about the fate of the family and the family, and they don't dare to gamble on the survival of the family to bet on whether the Taiping Army's knife will be soft. In the face of the two very troublesome multiple-choice questions of imminent and possible death, the demoted officials unanimously chose the former, so that the anti-Qing voice in Guangxi was high.

The capture of Guangxi can be said to be extremely smooth, but the only pity is that the Han army under the Dingnan Domain did not bring their families from Liaodong. It's not that they don't want to take it, in fact, when Dolgon ordered King Sanshun to go south, they were all allowed to open a domain and build a town in the future, and Yongzhen was south. In order to let the Han vassal work for the Qing Dynasty, Dolgon was also generous and allowed them to take all the families who remained in Liaodong to the south. This is the so-called employment of people without suspicion, and suspicion of people without suspicion.

Dolgon's generous decision made the Han vassals doubly desperate. After Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao captured Guangdong, they moved their families from Liaodong to Guangdong, but Kong Youde did not do it, because before he could start moving his wife and children from the bitter cold Liaodong for the soldiers, Li Dingguo's army surrounded him in the city of Guilin.

In a fire in Dingnan Palace, more than 120 members of Kong Youde's family died, and only the youngest son Kong Tingxun and his daughter Kong Sizhen in Beijing escaped. Since then, the remnants of the Dingnan Domain have been living a precarious life in Guangxi, except for a very small number of generals with their families in the army, most of the families of the Dingnan Han Army are waiting for news in Baba, Liaodong. This led to the fact that after the Taiping army occupied Guangxi, it could not threaten the lives of their families as in Guangdong, so that the Ministry of State Security could collapse without a fight.

There were no hostages, but a lot of gold and silver goods were seized. It can be said that all the net worth looted by the generals in the line national security army over the years has fallen into the hands of the Taiping army, but this is obviously not a good thing. After hearing that Guangxi had fallen, the generals under the command of Xian Guoan were all gritting their teeth and trying their best to return to Guangxi with red eyes and the Taiping Army.

Of course, the Taiping army in Guangxi is not afraid of the subordinates of Anguo coming back and working hard, and it is also difficult for them to vomit out what they eat in their stomachs.

The favorable conditions are fully occupied, and it is to deal with the line of national security that has come from afar and returned to the army for thousands of miles, and it is Shao Jiugong, who is famous for his seriousness, who is responsible for this task, no matter how you look at it, Zhou Shixiang does not think that there will be any mistakes on the Guangxi side. Even if Shao Jiugong still can't deal with the line Guoan, he can be considered qualified to complete the task by containing the other party near Liuzhou.

Zhou Shixiang once said to the generals when he was in Xiangshan, Guangdong, that cutting down is like cutting down a tree, and the Manchu court is like a big tree with deep roots and thick trunks. The roots, the Manchurians also; The backbone, the Menghan Eight Banners; The branches, the green camps everywhere, and the Han landlords and gentry who supported the Manchu Qing Dynasty were the leaves of this towering tree. The first thing to do with this tree is to first pluck the leaves, sawn off the branches, then cut the main trunk, and finally cut off its roots. The process of cutting down trees is slow and extremely dangerous, and if you are not careful, you can kill people. As for some branches and leaves, if they are willing to fall on their own, thus making the Manchu tree weaker and weaker, Zhou Shixiang is also willing to see and be willing to fulfill it.

Zhou Shixiang was never arrogant enough to think that he could use the power of the Taiping Army to give hundreds of thousands of Qing troops in the southwest to a pot, so he contacted the Thirteen Families in Kuidong and released the rest of the Shun Army as a big water from Kuidong, went to rush the two lakes, and took the pressure on the northern front for the Taiping Army. On the other hand, against the Qing army in the southwest, Zhou Shixiang still adopted the previous strategy, that is, to divide and win over. (To be continued.) )