On September 5, 1861, Anqing fell, and the battle for the most important city west of Tianjing ended in the total defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom after a long and brutal war of attrition for 17 months.
The city walls fell, the Xiang army swarmed in, and the end of the world was eternally separated. In the sound of Anqing's rumbling artillery fire, Chen Yucheng, the British king who was desperately trying to rescue outside the city, saw that the general situation had gone, and had no choice but to lead his troops north to Luzhou.
After the fall of Anqing, there was no danger to the west of Tianjing, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the Xiang army could seize this important town and go down the Yangtze River and directly attack Jinling. Hearing the news of Anqing's defeat, Hong Xiuquan was furious and punished Chen Yucheng, the commander-in-chief of the campaign, for being dismissed from his post and retained in office.
And Anqing was originally the base camp of the British king, and now that the battle has failed, the loss of soldiers will not be mentioned, and he will be severely reprimanded by the Heavenly King, with more than 40,000 troops with low morale after the defeat, Chen Yucheng who retreated to Luzhou, the mood can be imagined.
At that time, the important cities in Anhui were basically owned by the Xiang Army, and for the British king, who had neither territory nor soldiers, wanting to regain Anqing in the short term was tantamount to wishful thinking, and returning to Tianjing, although it was possible to temporarily avoid the Xiang Army's sharp edge, the general of the defeated army, like a dog that lost his family, would undoubtedly be blindsided in the capital.
For the arrogant Chen Yucheng, such a result is undoubtedly more difficult to accept than being defeated and dying in battle, so there is only one way out for the British king, taking Luzhou as a base to continue to negotiate with the Xiang army, and at the same time send troops to develop outwards, recruit soldiers and horses to buy in order to revitalize the momentum.
At the beginning of 1862, in the cold wind of northern Anhui and Chen Yucheng's earnest gaze, the elite divisions of the 30,000 Taiping Army, which shouldered heavy responsibilities, began an expedition to Henan and Shaanxi.
Before leaving, in order to boost morale and revitalize the morale of the army, Chen Yucheng specially asked the Heavenly King for advice, and Jin appointed Chen Decai (Fu Wang), Lai Wenguang (King Zun), Liang Chengfu (Qi Wang), Lan Chengchun (Hu Wang) and other four expedition leaders as kings.
Chen Decai, a native of Guiping, Guangxi, and also the cousin of King Chen Yucheng of England, joined the Taiping Army during the Jintian Uprising, and then followed the King to fight in the north and south, fighting bravely and making countless achievements.
This expedition, that is, the stakes are important and urgent, and Chen Decai, as the commander-in-chief, did not dare to slacken off, so the army was particularly rapid.
Between the tenth month, that is, from Anhui to the west, through Fuyang to attack Henan, besieged Xincai, attacked Nanyang, but did not conquer, Fu Wang did not dare to delay, and in mid-February through the south of commerce into Shaanxi.
However, just as the expeditionary army was rapidly advancing to the northwest, the danger was coming at a faster speed towards Luzhou, where the British king was sitting.
After Anqing changed hands, the Qing general Duolong'a led his troops to take advantage of The tongcheng, Susong, and Shucheng. In February 1862, he was sent to the city of Luzhou.
In the Battle of Anqing, Chen Yucheng was seriously injured, and after the expedition, only 20,000 people were now stationed in Luzhou City, and seeing that the Qing army was threatening, Chen Yucheng contacted and recalled the expeditionary force while Flying Zhang asked for help from Tianjing.
Anqing was no longer secure, Luzhou could no longer be lost, Hong Xiuquan urgently ordered to love Wang Huang Chongfa, The Good King Chen Guanyi, and the Protector King Chen Kunshu from Liangshan, Wuhu, and Changzhou to Luzhou for reinforcements, but the three major armies were all temporarily patchworked, embarrassing and big, halfway blocked by the Xiang army, and before they saw the walls of Luzhou, they all returned one after another.
However, Chen Decai's troops were far away from northern Anhui at this time due to the speed of advance, and the communication of Luzhou was deeply besieged, and the news of requesting help had not reached the hands of Fu Wang and others.
In March and April, just as Chen Yucheng was sitting in Luzhou and looking through, the expeditionary force developed rapidly in the northwest, first the Lan Ershun troops of the Sichuan-Yunnan Huimin rebel army entered Shaanxi to surrender, and then the twist army Zhang Zongyu came from western Henan to unite. Suddenly, the smoke of the three Qin land wolves billowed out, and wherever the expeditionary force went, Guanzhong was shaken.
In late April, King Fu learned that Luzhou was in danger of being besieged, and on May 1, Chen Decai, Lai Wenguang, and the other four kings led an army east to Henan, intending to return to Luzhou. However, it was not until early June that he joined the Taiping army Ma Ronghe at Wuyang, Henan, that the king abandoned the city as early as May, and was captured in Shouzhou, and on May 8 he was delayed at Yanjin, Henan.
The king was killed, the three armies mourned, and the dragons were leaderless and lost ground, and the expeditionary army could only wander aimlessly in Wuyang, Nanyang, Henan, and Zaoyang and Suizhou in Hubei.
After the death of the king, Hong Xiuquan ordered Li Xiucheng, the king of Zhong, to restrain the old department of the Yingdian Temple, and since the Xiang army Zeng Guo's Tsuen Jizi battalion was already under the rain and flowers, and the defense of Tianjing was about to break out, King Zhong ordered Chen Decai to continue to lead his troops to Henan, Hubei, Shaanxi and other places to raise men and horses, prepare for the upcoming Battle of Tianjing in advance, and agreed with him to return to the Beijing Division within a time limit of twenty-four months.
After that, Chen Decai led this army far away from the Tianjing base camp and once again began a difficult and long expedition.
After Chen Decai's forces re-entered Shaanxi, with the assistance of the Twist Army and the Hui rebel army, the momentum of development was quite rapid, attacking Xing'an, Zhanziyang, and Kehanzhong. As pointed out by the soldiers of Fu Wang, the Qing army along the way fled in the wind, and for a time the army was mighty and the strength of the army was greatly increased.
Time into 1864, just as the expeditionary force swept through the northwest with the momentum of the fire, Tianjing City was becoming more and more difficult to support in the long siege and long-term siege of the Xiang Army in the past two years, in order to solve the urgent need, the Heavenly King urgently ordered Chen Decai to lead the army to the east to qin wang.
In February 1864, Chen Decai led the Taiping Army of 200,000 people from Guanzhong to the south, and the soldiers returned to Tianjing in three ways, except for liang Chengfu on the middle road who turned back to Shaanxi for some reason, the southern and northern armies made rapid progress, entering Henan in February and arriving in Hubei in April.
The "Guanzhong Army" did not drive straight in, but chose to detour from the rear of the flank, "wanting to bypass Yu and Chu, in order to disturb the rear road of the Anhui army, and relieve the siege of Jinling", by threatening the rear base camp of the Xiang army, to achieve the strategic purpose of forcing Zeng Guofan to withdraw his army and thus relieve the siege of Tianjing.
At the turn of the spring and summer of 1864, Chen Decai's army arrived at the border of Hubei and Anhui, but due to the impact of natural disasters and wars, there were famines of varying degrees in Hubei, Henan and northern Anhui, and everywhere the army went was thousands of miles of red land, there was no harvest, and there was a problem with the grain supply of 200,000 people and horses under The King of Fuwang, so it was decided to wait for the autumn harvest to collect grain and grass and then go east to rescue Tianjing.
Who knew that the joy of the autumn harvest did not wait, but waited for a shocking bad news - on July 19, 1864, the Xiang army attacked the Tianjing City, Chen Decai's army was still halfway above, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had already existed in name only.
The loyal Fu Wang was still determined to march eastward, and after the destruction of Tianjing City, this large number of rescue teams with huge targets undoubtedly became the first and worst problem of the Qing government.
At the end of July 1864, Chen Decai led his people into Anhui, and what awaited this lone army was not only the many encirclement and suppression troops of the Qing army, but also the Mongol cavalry led by Senggelinqin.
The monk Gelinqin was an old rival of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and in 1853, the Taiping Army Lin Fengxiang Li Kaifang's Northern Expedition was defeated at the hands of this person.
In 1860, after being defeated by the British and French forces at the Bali Bridge, the monk Greenqin was accused by thousands of men and lay dormant for a long time, and now he has made a comeback, learning the lesson of backward equipment when fighting with foreigners.
At that time, in addition to the most elite Mongol cavalry under his command, Senggelinqin also spared no expense to equip three thousand infantry with the most advanced Enfield 1853 fire hat rifle and Armstrong field guns.
On the side of the Taiping Army, although there were 200,000 people, a considerable number of soldiers in the army did not enlist for a long time, that is, they had no war experience and lacked military training, and coupled with the destruction of the country, the people seemed to be helpless, and their morale was also greatly affected.
From this period onwards, Chen Decai's corps, which had once been in the northwest, was in full swing in the battle against the Qing army, losing more than winning, and was unable to destroy the enemy in a mobile war, nor could it effectively seize towns and cities for repair.
In September of the same year, Zhang Zongyu, the leader of the Twist army, who was also masterless because of the fall of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, learned of Chen Decai's difficult situation and led troops from qianshan and Taihu to meet him.
But this is not a victorious division at all, more like a group of two desperate people to warm up, and the arrival of the twist army, the pursuit of the soldiers also followed.
Nowadays, there were local regiments in Anhui practicing encirclement and suppression, and then there were monks and monks in green qin who were in hot pursuit, and Chen Decai's troops, who had already crossed the river in the mud, were even worse after the arrival of the Twist army.
In November 1864, Chen Decai, Ma Rong and the Taiping Army, plus the Twist Army, totaling more than 200,000 men and horses, were trapped in a narrow area of 50 miles between Huoshan and Yingshan in Anhui.
And this final decisive battle is not as tragic and tragic as imagined, from beginning to end, there is only one key word - surrender!
First of all, Chen Decai's forward Huang Zhongyong's troops of more than 10,000 people were ambushed by 1,200 Qing troops in Yangliu Bay, Huang Zhongyong's strength was ten times that of the enemy, but he had no fighting spirit, and after a little resistance, he tied his hands and captured them.
Then Wang Shidi, a subordinate of Zhang Zongyu of the Twist army, surrendered, and then Ma Ronghe also led 70,000 troops to surrender their weapons, and Ni Longhuai and Fan Lichuan led the main force of more than 110,000 people around Fu Wang to defect.
In just a few days, 200,000 Taiping troops fell without a fight and collapsed in an instant, and only Zhang Zongyu, the leader of the Twist army, joined forces with Lai Wenguang, the king of Zun, and led 5,000 people out of the siege.
At this time, Chen Decai, the King of Fu, was sitting in the valley, and there were few of his men left, and he heard that there were still people in the army who intended to capture themselves and ask the Qing court for merit.
On November 9, 1864, the cold wind was not only rainy, with unlimited loyalty to the empire and unwillingness to complete major events, Chen Decai, who was helpless, committed suicide by relying on medicine in the valley.
When the empire collapsed, although there were still a large number of Taiping troops who insisted on resisting, the skin did not exist, Mao would be attached, and the remnants of the Taiping Army that had lost their spiritual pillars would eventually lead to extinction on the road of losing their spiritual pillars. ------------ Those who had the intention to kill the enemy and were powerless to return to heaven, helped the king to die of poison, and drank the sorrow of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.