History is the memory of things that have been said and done. —Carl Baker
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, after Zhu Yuanzhang used the rise of the Red Turban Army and his power to grow, he built the capital in Jiankang (Nanjing), and did not have a Northern Expedition, but Chen Youyu who conquered Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi in the west, and Zhang Shicheng, who was entrenched in southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, in the east. After many years of conquest, he continued the Northern Expedition and drove out the Yuan court. Zhu Yuanzhang's regime did not fall because of the failure of the Northern Expedition in time, but established a powerful Ming Dynasty.
The situation faced by Zhu Yuanzhang when he established the capital Nanjing was very different from the above situation. "The Mo Daoshi people have one eye, provoking the Yellow River to rebel", the Red Turban Army revolted in the Yellow River Valley, the north fell into chaos, the Han military forces of different sizes rose one after another, and many warlords were divided and dominated in various places. The local government of the Yuan Dynasty, from provinces to counties, was lost. Emperor Yuanzong lingered in a very small area around Beijing, and his orders did not leave the capital, and he could not talk about any appeal to the whole country.
Zhu Yuanzhang himself and his relative Guo Zixing, who defected to him, became the head of the Red Turban Army, which dominated the Jianghuai region. After Zhu Yuanzhang established the capital nanjing, he made a sober assessment of the situation: the real threat to his hegemony was not the Yuan dynasty government, but the Han warlords who also rose in the grass, that is, Chen Youyi and Zhang Shicheng, who were entrenched in the vicinity of Nanjing.
Nanjing is in the land of four wars, and is under military threat in the upstream and downstream directions. If we do not solve the two major military groups of Chen and Zhang, let alone go north to cut down the Yuan, even our own survival will become a problem, let alone expand our strength and territory? Therefore, for Zhu Yuanzhang, the Yuan Dynasty regime in Beijing was only a disease of ringworm scabies, and Chen and Zhang Fang were the problems of his confidants.
As for how to deal with Chen Youyu and Zhang Shicheng, which is lighter or heavier, in the order of priority, it is also necessary to carefully consider. Zhu Yuanzhang believed that Chen Youyi's "irritability and good trouble" must be dealt with first; Zhang Shicheng's "small and easy to win" and satisfied with the status quo of dividing the territory may as well be slowed down. Zhu Yuanzhang concluded that when he was using troops against Chen You, Zhang Shicheng would most likely remain motionless, and thus would not fall into the situation of two-front combat.
As Zhu Yuanzhang expected, when he went all out to deal with Chen Youyu, Zhang Shicheng always stood still. After Zhu annihilated Chen, the soldiers moved eastward, and Zhang Shicheng fell over.
After the second period of leveling the masses, Zhu Yuanzhang sent Xu Da to lead the Northern Expedition, and dealing with the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty was like destroying the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty, and did not encounter strong resistance. In the end, Zhu Yuanzhang decided to dominate the world.
After the Taiping Army began to revolt in Guangxi, it occupied Wuhan and marched eastward, although it crossed the seven provinces of Guizhou, Guangdong, Hunan, Hubei, Gansu, Anhui, and Suzhou, it was abandoned and never divided into troops. As of the date of the establishment of the capital Nanjing, the Taiping Army only covered parts of the three provinces of Suzhou, Anhui, and Gansu, while all the northern provinces and most of the southern provinces were under the effective control of the Central Government of the Qing Dynasty, and the diplomatic power of the entire country was also controlled by the Qing court. Moreover, in the face of the overstretched financial embarrassment, the Qing court still adhered to Kangxi's last words of "never increasing the endowment", and did not start from the indiscriminate expropriation of land endowments, but mainly adopted Lei Yixuan's suggestion, levied merchants to donate "help", and expanded the intensity of the rich people's "donation of officials", initially solving the financial difficulties in the extraordinary period. Therefore, although military spending surged during the crusade against the Taiping Army, it did not have a huge financial impact on the effective control of the Qing court over the whole country.
In fact, the rise of the Xiang Army occurred almost simultaneously with the Taiping Army's three provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, and Gansu, while the composition of the Xiang Army and the Li Huai Army was even later. Leaving aside the foreign gun brigades organized in China by the british, French, american and other military personnel, and the Rising Xiang And Li Huai armies alone, the Taiping Army was not their opponent in terms of their appeal to the Han people, especially the intellectuals, and the stamina for the development of their military strength.
A few years after the Taiping Army established the capital nanjing, Li Kaifang and Lin Fengxiang were sent to lead the Northern Expedition, and the soldiers pointed directly at the city of Tianjin. In other words, if the Taiping Army continued its all-out Northern Expedition after capturing Nanjing, it was not impossible to capture Beijing. In the case of the Taiping Army threatening Beijing, the Xiang Army was bound to go north to the "King of Qin", stay away from the base area, and compete with the Taiping Army in the north, which was not advantageous in terms of geography, people, and people. Moreover, the use of troops around the Gyeonggi heavy land was difficult to avoid the suspicion of the Qing Dynasty clan, there were many factors involved, and the unpredictability was quite large, and Zeng Guofan could not sit on the throne at all, let alone Zuo and Li. In this way, the victory or defeat of the Taiping Army is still two things.
However, after the leaders of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established the capital nanjing, they did not want to do so, indulged in wine, accelerated corruption, and then there was a deep and painful infighting, and it was a historical inevitability to fall.