The international community changed suddenly, the Western Crimean War broke out, and more than a dozen countries were involved in the war. In the territory of the Celestial powers in the East, the bloody battle between the Taiping Army and the Qing Army also entered a white-hot stage.

Although the Northern Expedition Army of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom lost Su Sanniang, a powerful general, and was initially attacked by the Qing army's Shengbao troops, which was very embarrassed. However, since the Taiping Army entered Henan, the situation suddenly improved.

This is because Henan is in a severe drought, and thousands of miles away from land. Corrupt officials deduct money and grain for disaster relief, landlords increase rent and interest rates and pass on the losses to farmers. The unscrupulous merchants take the opportunity to raise prices. In addition, the imperial court has no money to suppress the Taiping Army and increase taxes, which has led to the miserable life of the people in the Central Plains.

The Taiping Army entered Henan, hunted and killed bannermen, tried corrupt officials publicly, forcibly confiscated land and money and grain from landlords and merchants, and distributed them to poor people, causing a large number of ordinary people to join the Taiping Army, causing the Northern Expedition Army to surge in its troops, and quickly made up for the passive situation caused by Su Sanniang's departure.

In the spring of the fourth year of Xianfeng, the Northern Expedition Army advanced rapidly, entered Hebei and headed straight to Tianjin, and was shocked the world. The Qing emperor Xianfeng immediately fled the Forbidden City in the name of hunting and ran to Chengde.

At the same time, the Taiping Army's Western Expedition Army also won the Jinggang victory, defeated Zeng Guofan's Hunan Army, and entered Hunan.

The situation of the Taiping Army was very good. Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing did not expect tens of thousands of Northern Expedition Army to overthrow the Qing court, so the supplies for the Northern Expedition Army were interrupted and they fully supported the Western Expedition. As a result, when they learned that the Northern Expedition Army had reached Tianjin and were close to Beijing, they woke up as if they were dreaming and immediately regretted it and hurriedly sent two reinforcements to the Northern Expedition.

However, the Second Route Northern Expedition Army was not so lucky. As soon as he crossed the river and entered Anhui, he was stubbornly resisted by Anhui Governor Pang Jingsong. Pang Jingsong did not have such great energy. A few months ago, he received financial support from Hu Xueyan and purchased a large amount of weapons and food. The Hunan Army general Zuo Zongtang also sent several capable generals to Pang Jingsong for the sake of Hu Xueyan's face. The strength of the Huai Army in Pang Jingsong increased greatly, blocking the Taiping Army's Second Route Northern Expedition Army in Fengyang and unable to move forward.

On the other hand, before Xianfeng fled from the Forbidden City, he activated Prince Gong Yixin again, and ordered him to be the chief minister of military aircraft and lead his army to suppress the Taiping Army entering Tianjin.

Yixin was not low-key, and immediately sent someone to send a letter to Li Weiguo in Shanghai to seek support from Li Weiguo.

Li Weiguo has now been classified as the Sixth Master. He knew that he would have to rely more on Yixin in the court to speak for him in the future, so he had to help him.

At this time, there were more than 48,000 soldiers in the Shanghai army. Li Weiguo knew that the forced abduction of Su Sanniang had already made Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing dissatisfied. There was a crack in the cooperative relationship between the two sides, so he had to be more prepared. Originally, the Jiangdong Camp and the Jiangnan Camp had only 5,000 troops, but it was later increased to 20,000 by Li Weiguo, and he was always warned of the Taiping Army's movements.

The remaining 28,000 Li family troops were used as reserves, and once the Jiangdong camp or Jiangnan camp changed, they would immediately reinforce. Ten thousand of them were stationed in Shanghai, Wusong and Songjiang for many years to protect Li Weiguo's nest. The remaining 18,000 people were assigned to various counties in Susongtai to guard the places.

Li Weiguo would never send the elite Li family army to Tianjin to help Yixin, but he had to give Yixin a face. So Li Weiguo temporarily selected two thousand young and strong men in the newly established dozens of refugee concentration camps, issued them muskets, and selected a group of veterans from the barracks to serve as their commanders, conduct simple queues and shooting training, and then selected several clever agents from China S.H.E.D. as the chief general, and took the two thousand new recruits to Tianjin from the sea on a steamer. He was included in Yixin's tent.

Li Weiguo did not plan to come back in this army, which was equivalent to giving it to Yixin. The agents of the SHIELD happened to stay by Yixin's side with this opportunity and became Li Weiguo's eyeliner.

Yixin was very happy to receive these two thousand musketeers. She praised Li Weiguo very much. In fact, his original intention was just to test Li Weiguo's reaction. As a prince, he naturally could not lead his troops to the battlefield. Therefore, the two thousand musketeers sent by Li Weiguo became Yixin's personal guards. Even if there was a war, Yixin would not be willing to let them go to the battlefield. Because Yixin was also a smart person, he should cultivate his own strength and consume the power of his political enemies at this time.

There are more than 100,000 elite Qing troops in Tianjin, and tens of thousands of Mongolian cavalry from Zenggelinqin participated in the battle. The Taiping Army had no support, and it was already the end of its strength. It was a matter of time before the defeat.

Yixin was very smart. He knew that as long as the Taiping Army had no support, the Northern Expedition Army would be exhausted. So in the name of the head of the military aircraft, Minister Wang, he ordered the Hunan Army to command Zeng Guofan to recover Yuezhou within three days, otherwise military law would be carried out. Yixin knew that Zeng Guofan was from Sushun's side, so he wanted Zeng Guofan to fight to the death with the Taiping Army. On the one hand, he weakened Sushun's minions and on the other hand, he let the Hunan Army attack Yuezhou forcing the main force of the Taiping Army in the Western Expedition, forcing Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing to not draw more troops to support the Northern Expedition.

At the same time, Yi Xin also ordered Li Weiguo to send troops to attack Jinling, but the order given to Li Weiguo was not a dead order, but just asked him to restrain the Taiping Army of Jinling as much as possible. This is a world of difference from Zeng Guofan's treatment. It can be seen that Yi Xin treats Li Weiguo completely as his own person, which is obviously the meaning of letting Li Weiguo preserve his strength.

Li Weiguo naturally understood Yi Xin's meaning, and immediately dispatched troops and ordered the Li family army from Jiangdong and Jiangnan camps to go out in full swing, and acted as if they were attacking Jinling.

Of course, Li Weiguo still secretly sent someone to inform Hong Xiuquan. Unfortunately, Hong Xiuquan could no longer believe Li Weiguo at this time, so he immediately recalled the Second Route Northern Expedition Army and defended Jinling to the death.

Seeing that Hong Xiuquan had recalled the Second Northern Expedition Army, Li Weiguo knew that his purpose had been achieved. He immediately ordered the Li family army to give the Taiping Army the opposite to him a meal of shells, and ordered the troops to withdraw and return to the camp.

At the same time, on the battlefield in Hunan, Zeng Guofan knew that Yi Xin was deliberately punishing him by taking personal revenge, but there was no way. Even Sushun could not speak at this time. After all, the Taiping Army had already reached the foot of the emperor. Yi Xin was really smart and tight to kill Zeng Guofan and break Sushun's minions at this time.

Zeng Guofan had no choice but to take the Hunan Army to fight for his life to attack Yuezhou. After paying a heavy price, he finally took Yuezhou down.

But at this time, because Li Weiguo withdrew his troops, the pressure on Tianjing was reduced sharply. Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing immediately sent Shi Dakai to take charge of the Western Expedition. The Taiping Army counterattacked wildly, encircled and annihilated Zeng Guofan's navy in Xiangtan, defeated the Hunan Army, and occupied Yuezhou again.

Zeng Guofan lost Yuezhou again, and thought of Yixin's death order and jumped into the river to commit suicide.

This is Zuo Zongtang who stopped Zeng Guofan and said, "Sir, I will keep the green mountains without fear of burning firewood, and Yuezhou will be lost. We still have Changsha, and we can make a comeback."

Zeng Guofan said bitterly: "You don't understand. Yi Xin knows that this official is from Lord Sushun. If he loses Yuezhou this time, he will kill me. In order to avoid implicating his family and soldiers, I can only apologize for death."

Zuo Zongtang frowned and said, "Prince Gong is far away in Beijing. It will take some time for the news to be returned. As long as the lord retakes Yuezhou during this period, even if Prince Gong punishes the lord, can Lord Sushun speak over there, right?"

Of course, Zeng Guofan didn't want to die. After hearing Zuo Zongtang's words, he also felt that it made sense, so he nodded and said, "Captain Zuo has a clever plan to retake Yuezhou?"

Zuo Zongtang smiled and said, "Don't worry, you will secretly dig a secret passage in Yuezhou before. Let's reorganize and break into Yuezhou City through the secret passage, and you will definitely be able to retake Yuezhou!"

"If you can retake Yuezhou this time, I will definitely give you a good reward!"

Zeng Guofan was immediately overjoyed and was no longer seeking death. He immediately fled from Xiangjiang River and returned to Changsha under the protection of Zuo Zongtang, gathered the remaining defeated soldiers and prepared to counterattack Yuezhou.

The Taiping Army and the Qing Army fought to the death. Li Weiguo originally sat on the mountain to watch the tiger fight, thinking that he had nothing to do for the time being.

But he soon discovered that a huge crisis came quietly, and the center of the storm was his old nest in Shanghai.

This incident started four months ago, when Li Weiguo was robbing a marriage in Anhui and within the US Concession in Shanghai. US ambassador to China Ma Shali announced to American merchants that Shanghai was a free port and would no longer pay taxes to Shanghai Jiang Customs.

The reason why Mashali was so bold was because he found that the strength of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was unprecedentedly expanding. The Qing army was not good at suppressing the enemy from all sides, but instead made the Taiping army march straight into the forbidden city. The Qing court had no time to take care of foreigners, let alone offend foreigners at this time.

Mashali is very patriotic and wants to expand the interests of the United States in China as much as possible, so he does this.

This move immediately caused a shock to the entire Shanghai Road. The embassies of Britain and France chose to remain silent and see how the government handled it.

At that time, Li Weiguo was not there, and the officials of Shanghai Jiang Customs dared not speak out, which made American businessmen think that Jiang Customs had acquiesced, so they stopped paying taxes and freely entered and exited the Shanghai River.

When Li Weiguo came back, he was furious when he learned about this. He immediately dismissed the original imperial officials of Jiang Customs in the name of "Transporting the Yi Yi and raising the thieves", and replaced them with Li Weiguo's own people, completely taking Shanghai Jiang Customs in his own hands.

Subsequently, Li Weiguo sent a note to the US ambassador to China, Ma Shali, and made solemn representations, demanding that Ma Shali take back his rude remarks and apologize, and at the same time recover taxes to all American businessmen.

This move immediately triggered a strong backlash from the US Embassy and American businessmen. Mashali refused to apologize and American businessmen also refused to pay taxes.

The two sides parted in disagreement, and then Li Weiguo ordered all anti-smuggling ships of Jiang Customs Navy to be dispatched to forcefully intercept all passing American merchant ships, seize people and deduct goods, and deduct taxes previously owed.

The US Embassy responded quickly, and Mashali made a strong protest to the Shanghai Pass. Now all the Shanghai Pass has been replaced by Li Weiguo's people. After Li Weiguo's instructions, he was determined not to be accustomed to the Americans' bad habits and refused directly.

Mashali was furious and immediately organized the American army from the embassy to escort the American merchant ships himself, hoping to force Li Weiguo to surrender with force.

However, Ma Shali's plan was wrong, and he never expected that Li Weiguo would fight back with a tougher attitude.

On February 3, 1854, on the Chongming section of the Yangtze River Estuary, Shanghai Jiang Customs Anti-smuggling Ship was shot by US soldiers above while intercepting the American merchant ship Pigeon, causing one death and three injuries.

In the afternoon of the same day, Li Weiguo received a report and immediately ordered more than 400 large and small warships of the Wusongkou Navy to block the pigeon that was returning. Shanghai soldiers exchanged fire with twenty-three American soldiers on the US ship, killing seven people and injuring three people. The rest of the American soldiers were scared and surrendered immediately and were captured.

The Shanghai army seized the Pigeon ship. After interrogation of the US captives, it was learned that the US military second lieutenant Kerry, who ordered the shooting and killing of Jiang Customs inspectors in the morning, had returned to the US Embassy.

Li Weiguo knew that this was Mashali realized that the situation was serious, so he left Lieutenant Kerry in the embassy, ​​so that under the provisions of extraterritorial legal rights, Lieutenant Kerry could be protected.

But Li Weiguo didn't care about those. He knew that the United States during this period was a small follower of Britain and France. In addition to its strong industrial strength, its military strength was far inferior to Britain and France, so Li Weiguo was not afraid of offending the United States.

So Li Weiguo immediately ordered three thousand Li family troops to enter the US concession with full armies, surrounded the US embassy, ​​and demanded that Mashali hand over Kerry.

At this time, Mashali was also frightened. He never expected that Li Wei would be so bold that he would dare to lead his troops to the US concession and directly ask him to hand over his hand.

Mashali had already gathered 300 American soldiers in the concession to surround the embassy, ​​but facing the 3,000 Li family army with live ammunition, the killing aura alone made Mashali and the 300 American soldiers frightened.

Seeing that force could not defeat Li Weiguo, Mashali moved out the Sino-US Wangxia Treaty, indicating that Kerry's murder case should be tried by the US court.

However, Li Weiguo was prepared for a long time. The Wangxia Treaty stipulates that civil disputes can be handed over to the US court after reaching an oral agreement. However, the Qingjiang customs law enforcement officers shot by Kerry are not civil disputes and must be handed over to Su Song Taibing Preparatory Office for trial and handling in accordance with the Qing Dynasty laws and regulations.

Mashali immediately threatened Li Weiguo to go to war with the United States. Li Weiguo directly replied that he didn't take the United States seriously at all.

Mashali was immediately discouraged. He could not defeat Li Weiguo in both civil and military struggles and psychological warfare, so he was forced to hand over Kerry to Li Weiguo.

Li Weiguo sentenced Kerry to death on the spot in front of Mashali and the staff of the US Embassy, ​​in front of the US military, in front of all the Americans and Chinese in the US concession, and broke him with one shot and handed over the body to Mashali.

This move immediately stimulated Mashali and all Americans. Both sides were at a loss and almost started fighting. At this time, the British minister Bao Ling appeared in time, preventing the two sides from fighting.

This incident spread throughout Shanghai and was immediately very satisfying. The people rushed to tell each other, praising Li Weiguo as a contemporary Lin Zexu and a national hero.

After secretly discussing with Bao Ling and the French ambassador, Mashali left Shanghai and returned directly to the United States to report the situation.

Li Weiguo couldn't know what the three of them had talked about, but he didn't have to think about it and knew that these three guys must be conspiring about something.

Sure enough, three months later, Mai Lian, the newly appointed Minister to China, arrived in Shanghai, and accompanied him was accompanied by the American Asian fleet, which had just shown his power in Japan and forced Japan to sign an unequal treaty.
Chapter completed!