In 1860, as soon as Li Xiucheng captured Suzhou, he ordered his general Lu Shunde to lead 1,500 men and horses to attack Shanghai. Immediately after Receiving the order, Lu Shun led his troops all the way down and successively conquered Kunshan, Taicang, Jiading, Qingpu and Songjiang. At that time, the Qing army garrison in Shanghai was not much, and the total was about three thousand people. Because Lu Shunde did not have many troops, he did not have a heavy army to guard the occupied city, and he took his troops to the county seat of Shanghai and killed him. However, just as Lu Shunde and his troops arrived at Huaqiao, dozens of miles east of the city, the messengers from the rear told him that Songjiang had fallen. Lu Shun was stunned when he heard the news, he had not yet figured out the situation.
In fact, the fall of Songjiang was not that the Qing army suddenly became bold and dared to counterattack the Taiping Army, but that a force commanded by foreigners joined the battle and served as the vanguard of the great powers' interference in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement. Before the Taiping Army had conquered Suzhou, the local gentry in Shanghai felt that things were not good. Since the opening of the port in 1843, Shanghai has gradually become the most important port city in East China. Britain, France, the United States and other countries also had a lot of trade and interests in Shanghai, and the Taiping Army gradually threatened Shanghai, which made Britain, France and other powers also feel flustered. At this moment, a Shanghai-exiled American, Wahl, volunteered to stand up, and he negotiated with the local shanghai gentry, hoping that they would pay for it and then be recruited by himself to train a force of foreigners. The Shanghai gentry were not simple in their minds, and they hoped to involve the great powers in this way and then help the Qing court suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. He agreed to Wahl's request.
Who is Wahl, who is an American who has been exiled to Shanghai, who is purely a sans-operative in the United States, and he and his friends Bai Qiwen and Folsd formed a foreign gun team. More than three hundred people were recruited, mostly foreigners. Among them, the Filipinos are the most numerous, equipped with new thermal weapons, so it is called the Yankee Team. They had fought with Lu Shunde once before, and due to the small number of people, they were beaten away by Lu Shunde. This time, they heard that Lu Shun had to lead his troops to the county seat of Shanghai, so they came out and secretly attacked songjiang fu city. With the assistance of the Qing army, Huaer's foreign gun team performed well this time and took Songjiang in one fell swoop. The local officials of Shanghai were very happy and rewarded Huaer with thirty thousand taels of silver at one time, hoping that he would continue to work hard with the foreign gun team.
Lu Shunde immediately led his troops to retreat to Qingpu. In August, the Qing army gathered men and horses to attack Qingpu, and Wahl's foreign gun team also went to help the battle. As a result, this time, Wahl's foreign gun team did not have the good luck of the last time, in the siege operation, Wahl encountered an ambush of the Taiping Army, suffered heavy losses, and he was almost captured. Think about it, Wahl, an American, has never fought a war, and fought against these battle-hardened generals of the Taiping Army, and naturally he was beaten with a gray face. Therefore, the local gentry of Shanghai once again asked the British, French, American and other authorities stationed in Shanghai, hoping that they would use the Shanghai garrison to participate in the war and help the Qing army suppress the Taiping Army. Although the great powers were not willing to help the Qing army and the Taiping army to fight for their lives, it was clear that they did not want the Taiping army to enter Shanghai. So the British and French garrisons participated in the defensive operations of the city of Shanghai and helped the Qing army resist the attack of the Taiping Army. On August 12, after the Taiping Army recaptured Songjiang, it immediately launched an attack on Shanghai. On August 20, Li Xiucheng personally arrived at the Shanghai front and commanded the troops to fight. However, the British actively assisted the Qing army in its defense, and the Taiping Army killed and wounded thousands of people within three days, and still did not take the county seat of Shanghai.
At that time, Hong Xiuquan repeatedly issued orders asking Li Xiu to establish the Ma Hui division of Anqing. Li Xiucheng did not intend to stay in Shanghai, and on August 23, Li Xiucheng issued a retreat order. The First Battle of Shanghai came to an end.
In the autumn of 1861, after Li Xiucheng withdrew from the Hubei front, he did not care whether he was alive or dead in the anqing offensive and defensive battle, led his troops to detour from the northern part of Jiangxi, and then led his hundreds of thousands of troops into Zhejiang. Due to the very large size of Li Xiucheng's soldiers and horses, the vast number of troops poured into Zhejiang one after another, and the Qing army could not resist at all, and then in October 1861, the Taiping Army surrounded the city of Hangzhou. This time, Li Xiucheng decided that he must take the city of Hangzhou and completely conquer the entire Zhejiang Province. Li Xiucheng actually understood that he believed that the Xiang army in the upper reaches of Tianjing was currently strong and difficult to compete with, so it was better to turn to Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places, expand the territory, and seek vitality. Not only that, at this time, Li Shixian, the attendant king, also had his own small calculation. Li Shixian, as Li Xiucheng's cousin, also wanted to expand his strength with his elder brother, in 1860, on the battlefield of the Western Expedition, Li Shixian could not contribute to the work, and led the troops to grind and rub on the border of Gansu and Zhejiang, hindering Li Xiucheng's face, Hong Xiuquan did not really treat Li Shixian. As early as May 1861, Li Shixian himself took soldiers and horses into Jiangxi and competed with Zuo Zongtang for territory in Jiangxi, as a result, Li Shixian, who was very talented, met Zuo Zongtang and fled back to southern Anhui. So Li Shixian, who was in pain, felt that persimmons should be picked and pinched softly, and Zhejiang was undoubtedly better than Jiangxi. Before Li Xiucheng returned to his division, Li Shixian had already taken Quzhou, Jinhua and other places, and opened up the Taiping Army base in central Zhejiang.
Under the sweep of Li Xiucheng's hundreds of thousands of troops, all of Zhejiang Province except Hangzhou was taken by Li Xiucheng, and Jiaxing, Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Taizhou were all conquered by Li Xiucheng's corps. The governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, Qingduan, cried and shouted for Zeng Guofan to rush reinforcements, but Zeng Guofan was busy resting his troops and preparing to attack Tianjing downstream, ignoring Qingduan's urgent documents. Qingduan scolded Zeng Guofan for seeing death and did not save him, and wrote to impeach Zeng Guofan, but to no avail.
On October 28, 1861, the Taiping Army arrived outside the Wulin Gate in Hangzhou, and Wang Youling, the Inspector of Zhejiang, gathered his troops to prepare to defend the city of Hangzhou. At that time, there were more miscellaneous troops in Hangzhou, and the real elite was probably only Zhang Yuliang's soldiers and horses who escaped from the Jiangnan camp last year. After Li Xiucheng arrived at the city of Hangzhou, he did not intend to attack Hangzhou in a hurry, but ordered his troops to dig deep trenches and cut off all links between inside and outside the city. On November 21, when Zhang Yuliang was patrolling the city, he was accidentally injured by the Qing army defending the city, hit the right chest, and then the treatment was ineffective, and he was violently killed in the army. This battle had not yet started much, and a general had died for no reason, and the Qing army defending the city was distracted. Li Xiucheng besieged the city for a month, and the food supply of 600,000 soldiers and civilians in the city suddenly lost, and then there was a serious famine in the city, and the defenders in the city could no longer hold on. On December 28, the defenders of Hangzhou collapsed on their own due to a serious shortage of food, and some defected to the Taiping Army, while others simply took advantage of the chaos to seize the road and fled. On December 29, the Taiping Army entered the city of Hangzhou without much effort, and Wang Youling, the governor of Zhejiang, committed suicide inside the inspector's gate.
At that time, there was still Mancheng in Hangzhou, and the Hangzhou general Ruichang was in charge of leading the Eight Banners in Mancheng to continue to defend. Li Xiucheng ordered a surrender, But Ruichang refused, and then Li Xiucheng ordered a general attack. On the last day of 1861, the Taiping Army conquered Mancheng and completely captured Hangzhou.
The Qing court who heard the news was greatly shocked, knowing that Zhejiang and Jiangsu, as the taxation centers of the Qing Dynasty, occupied a very important position, and finance and taxation were the lifeblood of the Qing Dynasty, and now the lifeline can be lost. Empress Dowager Cixi immediately ordered Zeng Guofan to dispatch troops to Zhejiang for reinforcements and retake Zhejiang. After Zeng Guofan was ordered, he immediately began to prepare troops, and then requested that Zuo Zongtang be appointed as the governor of Zhejiang and lead the zhejiang war. So why is Zeng Guofan willing to reinforce Zhejiang this time, in the previous stage, Qingduan repeatedly asked for help, Zeng Guofan was not moved, how could this son be willing?
In fact, Zeng Guofan also had his own plans, what kind of place is Zhejiang, the financial and taxation areas, the grain supplied by all parts of Zhejiang is much more than the grain and salary supplied to the Xiang army in Hunan, but the former Governor of Zhejiang Wang Youling is a person of He Guiqing, the governor of Liangjiang, and the gap between He Guiqing and the Xiang army is relatively large, and he Zeng Guofan belonged to two factions of different camps within the imperial court. He Guiqing had previously refused to carry out the imperial court's orders, and the grain of the Xiang army was originally supplied in Zhejiang, but as a result, He Guiqing intercepted and did not give, and the angry Zeng Guofan gritted his teeth but had no choice. This time, He Guiqing's army was defeated and degraded, and Wang Youling was defeated and killed. Zhejiang suddenly became a borderless land, and now the Xiang Army went to compete with the Taiping Army for Zhejiang, as long as it won the war, then the whole of Zhejiang was the Decision of the Xiang Army. For the silver of the white flowers in Zhejiang Province every year, he Zeng Guofan also had to break his wrist with Li Xiucheng to see who was stronger.
However, Zeng Guofan would not shake his strategic plan, and his main army continued to attack Tianjing, and he only gave Zuo Zongtang 10,000 horses and put him in charge of retaking Zhejiang. To tell the truth, Zeng Guofan himself felt that the number of troops given was indeed too small, and Li Xiucheng had hundreds of thousands of troops in his hands. However, Zuo Zongtang did not think anything of it, and this time he was trusted by Zeng Guofan and served as the governor of Zhejiang, which can be described as a big step forward in his career. Since he entered Zhang Liangji's shogunate in the second year of Xianfeng, zuo Zongtang has always been committed to various powerful forces, and now he finally has the opportunity to open his own government and build a palace, how can he not grasp it well. With his dream political ambitions, he led his troops to Zhejiang and began the path of the Xiang Army of the Left.
At the beginning of 1862, Zuo Zongtang, who had just entered Zhejiang, gathered the defeated soldiers in various places to count the men and horses, and when he calculated, zhejiang still had more than 20,000 or 30,000 green battalion troops, plus his own 10,000 concubines, and a total of 40,000 horses were gathered to fight against the Taiping Army. Li Xiucheng went north to command the Battle of Shanghai, and the whole of Zhejiang was commanded by Li Shixian. At this time, Li Shixian had more than 300,000 troops in his hands, but the level of training and combat ability of the troops was different, and in terms of quality, the 10,000 elites of the Left Xiang Army were naturally the most sophisticated troops on the battlefield in Zhejiang, but there were only 10,000 of them. The other 30,000 or so Green Battalion troops were sparsely scattered, and they had just finished a major defeat, and the morale of the troops was scattered. On the whole, the morale of the Taiping Army was OK, but the quality of the soldiers was not as strong as that of the Left Xiang Army, and the main victory was the large number of people.
After Zuo Zongtang entered Zhejiang, he took advantage of his position to quickly absorb local regimental training and elite green battalion armed forces, and disrupted and incorporated them into his own elite army of 10,000, gaining 21,000 troops. He stepped up the training of his troops, waiting for the opportunity to prepare for the dispatch. Li Shixian was also unambiguous, concentrating the mobile forces of Zhejiang, and after dividing the troops to guard the cities and pools, he concentrated 200,000 mobile troops to fight Zuo Zongtang. Although Li Shixian was once beaten by Zuo Zongtang and escaped, Li Shixian did not believe that he would never be able to defeat Zuo Zongtang.
In February 1862, Li Shixian's troops entered Quzhou, and Zuo Zongtang also led his troops to Quzhou, and the two sides began to fight over the ownership of Zhejiang.