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In April 1860, the Xianfeng Emperor finally returned to Beijing from the Chengde Summer Resort. Coincidentally, at about the same time, the Restored Governor's Office also moved from Foshan to Guangzhou City.
Of course, the two of them didn't have any intention of fighting each other, and it was even more impossible for them to have any tacit understanding. The military power of the Liberation Army was enough to resist the attack of the British, and the Manchu Qing imperial court finally understood that as long as they did not go against the will of the British and allowed the British to freely sell cigarettes in China, the British would not attack the Manchu Qing imperial court.
When Xianfeng ascended to the throne, he once wanted to avenge his father, Daoguang, by abolishing the various treaties he had signed with the foreign devils. However, he didn't expect that he would lose even more miserably than his father. The ferocity of the British, the crushing defeat of the Manchu Qing, the humiliation of being driven out of Beijing, and when he returned to Beijing, he found that all his belongings in his favorite Summer Palace had been robbed clean. This vexation caused Xian Feng, who was already in poor health, to fall ill.
The sick Xian Feng still wanted to deal with the affairs of the state, so he could only ask Yi Guiren to help him sort out the memorials. This move was naturally opposed by the ministers of the court, but Xian Feng completely ignored the objections of these good-for-nothings. This group of people was useless against the foreign devils, but when it came to opposing the Emperor, they could speak clearly and logically. Xian Feng had completely given up on them.
On the 29th of April, Lady Yi, who was in Xian Feng's room helping to review the memorials, happily handed two memorials to Xian Feng, who was lying on the sickbed.
The one on top was a memorial from Cao Shuzhong, the inspector-general of Guangxi. Apart from writing that he had already wiped out most of the rebel troops in Guangxi, and was preparing to join forces with Hunan's Inspector Luo Bingzhang to annihilate Shi Dakai's troops. He even excitedly reported to the Xianfeng Emperor that in the past month or two, he had caught dozens of "Guangdong bandits" who had broken away from Vézé's Liberation Army. After careful interrogation, they learned that there was internal strife in Vézé's army. A large number of Cantonese bandits were either driven out of the army by Vézé or left on their own. Those who were captured were all Cantonese bandits from western Guangxi. After leaving Vézé's army, they chose to return home. Cao Shuzhong optimistically believed that after the Cantonese bandits in Jiangning had killed each other, the Cantonese bandits in Guangdong would soon split up.
This memorial was full of good news. Besides the fact that Shi Dakai was walking towards the end of his road, Vézé, who had once dominated the world and even defeated the foreigners, was beginning to split internally. Emperor Xianfeng's pale face, which had been pale because of his illness, now had some color in it.
The other was a memorial written by Guangxi's commander-in-chief Krondo. Krondo could be considered an old acquaintance of Vézé's. Among the Manchu Qing generals, there weren't many who could fight Vézé head-on and continue to serve the Manchu Qing. Jiangnan's commander-in-chief Zhang Guoliang had been defeated by Vézé. Because Vézé had been summoned to Tianjing by the King Of The East Yang Xiuqing, the army hadn't pursued him desperately, so Zhang Guoliang had survived. He Chun's entire army had been annihilated in Liu 'an, but at least he had escaped with his life. Compared to these two people's crushing defeats, Krondo had acted with the grain transport team in 1852. When Vézé had led troops to ambush the Qing Army's grain routes, Krondo, who had been the Imperial Bodyguard at the time, had been calm. Although the grain had been seized and the troops had lost more than half of their troops, they had still managed to lead the troops out of the battlefield in an orderly fashion. As for the other generals, when they fought against Vézé, they had either been defeated, killed, or captured.
When Krondo arrived in Guangxi, he had received Xianfeng's order to stay in Guangxi to fight. After a few years of meritorious service, he had been promoted to commander-in-chief. As a Manchu, Krondo had taken the heavy responsibility of being the Emperor's eyes and ears in Guangxi. Krondo was still brooding over the fact that he had been defeated by Vézé. Therefore, in Krondo's memorials, he didn't write much about the destruction of the other rebel forces in Guangxi. Instead, Krondo had interrogated the people who had escaped from Vézé's army one by one and had written a very detailed report.
The people who had escaped had even more details about how Vézé was able to create his own weapons and defeat the foreigners. As for the reason for their escape, they all had different opinions. Some said that Vézé was biased towards the Cantonese, some said that Vézé was biased towards the Anhui, and some said that Vézé was biased towards the Northerners. Naturally, there were also people who believed that Vézé was biased towards the Guangxi's Tujia, or that Vézé was biased towards the Guangxi's Hakka.
All in all, the opinions of these people were that Vézé was not biased towards the Guangxi's people, which made them very disappointed. Similarly, Vézé was also very disappointed with these people. He gave them travel expenses and had them leave.
Krondo naturally didn't believe that Vézé would be biased towards so many people at the same time. After careful interrogation, these people gave the same description of the policies that Vézé had implemented in the past few months. The 'Mandarin' that had been forcefully promoted among the officers was now being forcefully promoted among the soldiers. In the army, the 'equality between officers and soldiers', 'opposition to localism' and 'opposition to mountainism' were being promoted, as well as discipline.
No matter what kind of achievements they had, anyone who formed a local faction or fought with people from other places were all dismissed from their posts and educated. Those who didn't accept the army's discipline were stripped of their posts. Those who were willing to stay in Guangdong to farm or work in factories were transferred to the agricultural and industrial departments. Those who didn't want to stay in Guangdong were all given travel expenses.
The statements that had always been very uniform now had a new divergence here. According to the data of these escapees, Krondo believed that there were three to ten thousand people in the Liberation Army who were purged because of 'localism'. The leaders of the army from various places were swept clean.
Localism and mountainism were prevalent in the Manchu Qing Army. It was common for armies from different places to have conflicts with each other. When the armies set up camp next to each other, it was even more common for them to kill each other because of the distance from the water source, the distance from the road, or the robbing of the merchants who were doing business with the army.
Krondo, who had ample experience with internal strife, didn't look favorably upon Vézé's purge of the Liberation Army at all. He believed that this kind of purge would only make the people in the Liberation Army panicky and lose their will to fight. The result would be internal disintegration and their fighting power would be greatly reduced.
If Xianfeng didn't read a thousand memorials requesting the Emperor to punish the other side, there were at least eight hundred of them. So he completely agreed with Krondo's point of view. With such a detailed report describing the internal conflicts of the Liberation Army so clearly, it was as if the Xianfeng Emperor had drunk a bowl of deer blood from deer antlers. He actually had some strength.
Yi Guiren saw that Xianfeng was in a good mood after reading the memorials. She, who had a lot of experience in government affairs, happily said, "Your Majesty, if the memorials from Guangxi aren't wrong, Vézé is also someone who likes grandiose achievements and is eager for quick success. Ceng Guofan commanded the Xiang Army to attack Anqing, and Hu Linyi has already stolen emotion. As long as the Guangdong bandits in Jiangning are eliminated, the destruction of the Guangdong bandits in Guangdong will only be a matter of a snap of the fingers. "
These words were in line with Xianfeng's thoughts. A slight smile appeared on his slightly blood-red face. But this smile only appeared for a moment. "If it's really as Guangxi says, send down an edict for the civil and military officials of the other provinces to seriously investigate this matter."
The Xianfeng Emperor had rich experience in being fooled by his officials. If he really believed the words of this group of civil and military officials, especially their good news, then he really would have been sold and would still have to search the sack for money. He hoped to obtain more information to compare.
At the beginning of June, more information regarding Shi Dakai and the Liberation Army arrived in Beijing. There was a major split in Shi Dakai's troops. A large number of troops left Shi Dakai and once again entered Hunan and Jiangxi. At this time, the "Dog Li" Li Xiucheng of the Taiping army was leading troops to battle in Jiangxi. This group of Taiping army immediately joined Li Xiucheng's ranks. After obtaining this large group of subordinates, Liu Xiucheng left Jiangxi and headed north. Unexpectedly, his destination was the Zhenjiang area.
Shi Dakai had originally led his troops south, seemingly wanting to enter the heart of Guangxi. After encountering the stubborn resistance of the landlords' troops, he immediately turned in the direction of Sichuan. However, his troops had been split up several times and his remaining troops were very insufficient.
As for Vézé, the intelligence reports from the other provinces were clearly vague. What could be confirmed was that there had been no mutiny in Vézé's troops and there were no clear signs of a split.
On June 11, the Hunan Inspector Luo Bingzhang submitted a memorial to the court. The Liberation Army under Vézé's command set off from Shaoguan and entered Chenzhou. The Liberation Army's attack was extremely fast. At this time, they could no longer contact Chenzhou. News also came from Guiyang that traces of the Liberation Army troops had appeared near the provincial capital. It seemed that the Liberation Army had not set off from Chenzhou to head north but had begun to move west.
On the same day, the Guangxi Inspector Cao Shuzhong's urgent memorial was delivered to Xianfeng. The Liberation Army set off from Wuzhou and advanced on land and water. Their ships went upstream and unexpectedly reached Yongan Prefecture. Yongan Prefecture fell in one day.
Seeing this news, the Xianfeng Emperor's face paled. He didn't know whether to accept his unreliable judgment of the court's civil and military officials or to be more worried about the Liberation Army's actions. After all, the Liberation Army had not made any moves in the past five years. If they had advanced all the way, it might have been a small-scale military operation. Now, they were advancing from two directions and killing their way into Guangxi and Hunan at the same time. Such an operation was definitely not a small one.
Carefully looking at the map and connecting it with the situation on the memorial, Xianfeng's pale face gradually became pale. From Yongan to Chenzhou, Xianfeng still had an impression. The Taiping army had once charged out of Yongan and then turned and killed their way to Chenzhou. Now that the Liberation Army had occupied these two areas, it was very likely that they were preparing to take this route again. If Xianfeng's thoughts were correct, the troops of the Liberation Army occupying Yongan and the troops that had set off from Chenzhou to attack Guiyang would eventually meet up in one place. That was the capital of Guangxi, Guilin. If things really developed to that point, Guangxi would be taken by the Liberation Army.
Just as the Xianfeng Emperor was secretly trembling over his thoughts, the commander of the Fourth Army of the Liberation Army, Lei Hu, was already standing on the city wall of Guiyang. There were no surprises in the battle. A division of the Liberation Army, consisting of more than ten thousand people, set off from Chenzhou. After surrounding the city of Guiyang, they broke through the city in half a day. The Xiang Army in the city was no more than two thousand men and horses, and they were quickly annihilated.
The battle went very smoothly, but Lei Hu was not in a very good mood. Many familiar faces were missing from his troops. Most of them were middle and low-level commanders. In the discipline rectification that had ended not long ago, Vézé showed no mercy to regionalism and mountain-headism. The middle and high-ranking officers with regionalist tendencies were all sent to military schools to study, while the low-ranking officers were concentrated and trained.
The middle and high-ranking officers sent to military schools to study would not be able to come out in the short term. If the low-ranking officers did not repent, they would be expelled. They would either be discharged or given travel expenses and leave. The personnel department of the General Staff quickly selected new officers to take over these vacant positions.
These actions were completely public, so the officers who received the opportunity to be promoted were happy and naturally did not want to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Not only did the serious regional rivalries in the army completely disappear, but even the soldiers' committee was well organized.
After the "black sheep" of the regional leaders among the soldiers were eliminated, the mood of the soldiers was not affected much. Lei Hu and the political commissar personally participated in the investigation. They found that the grass-roots officers did not really intend to resist. It was just that someone from their hometown had taken the lead, and they had no choice but to participate because of face or other reasons. Now that the leaders had been eliminated, everyone was relieved. Finally, they did not have to make a difficult choice between their hometown and military discipline!
After the investigation, Lei Hu had to admit that Vézé had indeed grasped the key. Vézé clearly believed that the grass-roots officers were reasonable. After eliminating the black sheep, not only did the troops not resist at all, but they also became more united.
This should have been a happy thing, but Lei Hu could not bring himself to be happy. He never thought that Vézé could be so "ruthless" to the troops. The reason why the "black sheep" could exist was not because Lei Hu tolerated them, but because most of them were soldiers who had performed well in battle. It was impossible for Lei Hu not to cherish these people.
If his immediate superior was not someone with absolute authority like Vézé, Lei Hu would certainly not have accepted the large-scale removal of the soldiers. He had to protect this group of people no matter what. Even if they obeyed Vézé's orders, Lei Hu had talked to Vézé before the battle. Lei Hu hoped that some of them could return to the troops and atone for their crimes in battle.
Vézé mercilessly refused Lei Hu's request. He said with a straight face, "Comrade Lei Hu, your request obviously does not make sense of cause and effect. We removed those comrades not because they did not fight well. It was because they could not abide by the discipline of the Liberation Army. If you ask them to atone for their crimes, some of them will definitely think that not abiding by the discipline can be compensated with military achievements. As long as they have military achievements, they can do anything and don't have to be afraid of any discipline. What is the difference between such an army and the heads of the Taiping army? Can you tell me? "
The problem pointed out by these words was already very serious, and Lei Hu did not dare to refute. The Liberation Army was the most disciplined, especially after the establishment of the General Staff Department. Officers were transferred back and forth between commanders and staff officers, and any officer had lost absolute control over his own troops. The power of personnel, financial power, and logistical supply were all owned by the General Staff Department. It was already impossible to make the troops independent. The system of the heads of the soldiers as generals was an untouchable and forbidden area in the Liberation Army. Whoever was labeled as a head of the army would have their entire future completely ruined, let alone trying to do it.
However, many of those who had been removed were people that Lei Hu thought highly of, so he had a glimmer of hope in his heart. If the troops did not fight so well, Lei Hu might be able to use this reason to speak up for those comrades after the war. The battles to attack Chenzhou and Guiyang were enough to prove that the combat effectiveness of the troops did not suffer because they had lost some of their combat backbone. On the contrary, due to the increased discipline and obedience to combat orders, the battles were even smoother and smoother than before.
Looking at the troops cheering for victory below the city wall, Lei Hu knew that those comrades who had been removed would not be able to return to the troops.
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