Zeng Guofan is a saint who has become a saint who has become a great instrument late, he is not only able to do it, but also has not fallen in martial arts, and it can be said that he is an all-rounder of literature and martial arts. He single-handedly trained the Xiang Army, a powerful brigade in the late Qing Dynasty, to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, and was known as Zeng Shaved Head.
When Zeng Guofan first embarked on the road of career, he became a proud disciple of Mu Zhang'a, the military minister at that time. With this relationship, Zeng Guofan naturally received more attention from the Daoguang Emperor.
Zeng Guofan was promoted seven times in ten years, and his status rose.
In 1851, the Jintian Rebellion broke out and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement broke out. At this time, Xianfeng had just succeeded to the throne, the foundation was unstable, and a peasant uprising broke out. The imperial treasury had long been empty, and the ordnance was loose.
At that time, the Eight Banners disciples and the Green Battalion soldiers who fought with the Guanning Iron Horse were already vulnerable.
Forced to do so, Xianfeng had no choice but to delegate power to local officials to organize regimental exercises and suppress the uprising.
Just when Zeng Guofan's mother returned to his hometown of Hunan, the Xianfeng Emperor simply issued a decree that Zeng Guofan and Zhang Liangji, the governor of Hunan, cooperate to organize regimental exercises, which is the origin of the famous Xiang Army in history.
The Xiang Army originally had only the Lu Division. Later, in order to combat the water army of the Taiping Army, another water division was prepared. The two teams of the Xiang Army, the water and land forces, were built in late the first half of the fourth year of Xianfeng. 5,000 men on land and water, 500 men per battalion, each divided into 10 battalions, from Hengzhou (present-day Hengyang), will be in Xiangtan, the momentum is huge, want to "eastern crusade" and the Taiping Army to fight to the death.
When Zeng Guofan led the Xiang army to attack the Taiping Army in the Eastern Crusade, the Taiping Army's water division already had the Yangtze River natural danger, and the land occupied most of the three provinces of Anhui, Gansu, and Hubei. At this time, Anqing and Jiujiang were already in the hands of the Taiping Army, and Wuchang was also surrounded by the Taiping Army, and the Taiping Army obviously had an absolute advantage.
Zeng Guofan's strategic purpose was to compete for the three major strongholds in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Wuhan, Jiujiang, and Anqing, and then march southeast to encircle Tianjing. Therefore, in the following seven or eight years, the Xiang Army and the Taiping Army engaged in fierce and repeated competition for these three major strongholds.
Zeng Guofan faced the powerful strength of the Taiping Army and the advantages it possessed, and believed that it was necessary to advance step by step, step by step, and not rush to advance.
He first focused on the Two Lakes region and fought a desperate battle with the Taiping Army.
This war allowed the Xiang army to retake the capital of Yuezhou in one fell swoop.
Subsequently, the Xiang Army's marine division also had outstanding performance, and under the leadership of Peng Yulin and Yang Zaifu, it broke the chain of the river from Tianjia Town to Banbi Mountain in Hubei Province, and burned more than 4,500 Taiping Army ships.
The Xiang army gained great strength.
However, then the Xiang army suffered defeat, and in just 3 months, it lost Ganzhong and Ganbei.
By the first half of the sixth half of Xianfeng, Zeng Guofan led the Xiang Army's Eastern Expedition and the Taiping Army to engage in a battle for nearly 3 years, each with its own victory and defeat, but the overall situation was unfavorable to the Xiang Army.
However, it was the outbreak of the "Tianjing Incident" that gave Zeng Guofan a turnaround, and he led the Xiang army to take advantage of the opportunity to counterattack.
However, in the two or three years from the eighth to the tenth year of Xianfeng, there were still ups and downs. Zeng Guofan failed, but did not give up. In 1864, he finally conquered Tianjing and completely eliminated the Taiping Army.
This matter could have come to a perfect end, but Zeng Guofan connived at the Xiang army to burn and loot after it invaded Tianjing, and even acquiesced to the Xiang army slaughtering the city, and countless innocent people were killed tragically, and Zeng Guofan also left a thousand years of infamy in history as "having shaved his head".