In the two months from September to October 1862, Li Xiucheng of the Taiping Army led a large army of 250,000 (known as 600,000 troops) to launch a fierce attack on the 30,000 Xiang army of Zeng Guoquan, who was stationed in Yuhuatai, and at this time, the Taiping Army, just returned from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang fronts, obtained a lot of advanced weapons and equipment, it can be said that whether it is in the number of troops or the advanced nature of equipment, the strength is absolutely crushing Zeng Guoquan.
However, such a war with absolute crushing strength actually ended with a fiasco and the capture of the general Li Xiucheng, which really made people wonder why Li Xiucheng had absolute superiority and finally lost to Zeng Guoquan?
People's hearts were scattered, and the war was doomed before it began
In fact, at this time, the Taiping Army was already a paper tiger in the middle of the external strength, and could not withstand any cruel blows at all, as early as after the Tianjing Incident, the Taiping Army was completely scattered, before the Tianjing Incident, or before Hong Xiuquan had no pleasure, the Taiping Army was not only numerous, but also very fierce in combat effectiveness.
The reason why the Taiping Army in this period was able to be so fierce was because under the rule of the Qing court, they had already suffered from all kinds of oppression and exploitation, they only wanted the opportunity to stand up and live their own free life, Hong Xiuquan initially revolted in the name of worshiping God, and the vision behind it was to one day achieve fairness and justice.
However, after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom gradually took shape, Hong Xiuquan's high-ranking officials had obviously forgotten their original intentions, and Hong Xiuquan began to plunder the people under the pretext of handing over the Holy Treasury, collecting all the gold and silver he had obtained, and living a life of drunken gold fans in Tianjing, and had long forgotten all the ordinary soldiers who had followed him to build a career.
Not only did Hong Xiuquan enjoy himself, but the high-level leaders, such as Yang Xiuqing and others, also went their own way and enjoyed their own beautiful life, and eventually even because of the conflict of interests between the high-level, the Tianjing Incident broke out, killing a river of blood, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was in chaos.
The people and soldiers who witnessed all this no longer believed Hong Xiuquan's lies, and In order to continue to realize his ambitions, Hong Xiuquan began to appoint his own family members, Hong Renda and Hong Renfa, and as a result, the two were very greedy for money, and took the money inside Tianjing for themselves, and when the war broke out, Tianjing suddenly became short of money and food.
Wanting to continue to control people's hearts and achieve his own greatest interests, Hong Xiuquan, who had experienced the Tianjing Incident, was obviously enough to not only use his family to complete the accumulation of wealth, but also wantonly crowned the king, in order to limit Li Xiucheng's real power and prevent Li Xiucheng from eventually becoming a troublesome figure like Yang Xiuqing.
There is no doubt that what the Taiping Army had in mind at this time was no longer a meritorious achievement, let alone a great ideal and vision, but a separate battalion, and everyone only considered their own vital interests, as for how the war would develop, the Taiping Army did not care.
Under such circumstances, it was completely impossible for the Taiping Army to do its utmost to oppose Zeng Guoquan's Xiang Army, so we would find that the 250,000 Taiping Army, after two months of fierce fighting with the Xiang Army, had less than 10,000 casualties, while the Xiang Army of 30,000 horses suffered as many as 5,000 casualties, accounting for one-sixth of the total number.
From this data alone, we can understand that the essential reason for the taiping army's defeat in this battle is that people are scattered, everyone is in their own battalion, and no one is willing to go all out to throw themselves into the war, so that Li Xiucheng is useless even if he has more troops and advanced weapons.
It was also because of the scattered people's hearts that before the battle, Li Xiucheng and Hong Xiuquan had a dispute because of disagreement, and the Xiang army at that time was just in a relatively passive situation, attacking the four-way men and horses of Tianjing, and was surrounded and blocked by the Taiping Army, at this time there were already three Xiang troops who could not move, and only Zeng Guoquan's team attacked the Tianjing City.
At this time, if the Taiping Army seized the best opportunity to start attacking Zeng Guoquan, Zeng Guoquan would fall into an embarrassing situation of no foreign aid and fighting alone, it can be said that attacking Zeng Guoquan at this time must be the best time, but because of the disagreement between Li Xiucheng and Hong Xiuquan, the two argued for three or four months, missing the best opportunity to attack Zeng Guoquan, so that Zeng Guoquan waited for the foreign aid troops.
Later, in the course of the fierce battle with Li Xiucheng, although Zeng Guoquan had very few men and horses, because the foreign aid route had been dredged, he often had three or five thousand foreign aid to support him, ensuring that Zeng Guoquan had the strength to fight a protracted war with Li Xiucheng.
Lee Soo-sung made a tactical mistake
Li Xiucheng has always been famous for his skilful battles, so in the war against Zeng Guoquan, he also wanted to use qiaozhan to win, but it was his own skillful tactics that gave the Xiang army the opportunity to counterattack, why do you say so? And listen to my detailed analysis.
The Xiang army was located in the narrow strip from Yuhuatai to the river, with the Yangtze River on its flank and the yangtze river, and the front was relatively narrow, so It was obviously unrealistic for Li Xiucheng to use his superiority in strength and weapons and equipment to attack Zeng Guoquan, so Li Xiucheng adjusted his tactics and shifted his target to attack the West Road, and the focus of the West Road was Jiangxinzhou.
However, what Li Xiucheng did not consider was that after he launched his own action, the Xiang army immediately reacted, quickly organized soldiers, and built more than ten fortresses overnight to hold the Taiping Army in the state, originally the battlefield of Jiangxinzhou was very small, and now the Xiang army also recognized Li Xiucheng's plan, the two sides immediately fell into a stalemate, Li Xiucheng's plan to win with a clever battle failed, and the western road was blocked.
Seeing that the West Road was blocked, Li Xiucheng continued to change his mind and planned to launch a fierce battle against the East Road. The East Road was personally supervised by Zeng Guoquan, and at the very beginning, under the fierce firepower of the Taiping Army, Zeng Guoquan was once a bit overwhelmed, not only was he hit in the face by Feizi, the deputy general Ni Gui was also killed, the Xiang army was obviously a bit overwhelmed, as long as Li Xiucheng continued to persist, the Xiang army may be about to fail, but at the critical moment, Li Xiucheng suddenly stopped the onslaught and wanted to use clever battles to win, so he gave the Xiang army the opportunity to be reborn.
Li Xiucheng concentrated all his main forces on the East Road, giving the Xiang army the opportunity to counterattack on the west road, and the Xiang army on the west road soon broke through the stalemate, prompting the Xiang army to get external support, and Li Xiucheng on the east road continued to use skillful combat techniques and began to play various tunnel-digging tactics with the Xiang army.
It should be known that digging tunnels is the most skilled of the Xiang Army, so the tunnels dug by the Taiping Army are often recognized by the Xiang Army, thus suffering huge losses, not only that, the Xiang Army also uses its own advantages to use the way of digging tunnels to take a counterattack against the Taiping Army, and soon the Taiping Army will be a little unable to stand it.
With the continuous counterattack of the Xiang army on the west road and the east road, the Taiping army finally completely could not eat up, the Taiping army, which was originally in a dominant position, gradually fell into a disadvantage, and finally Zeng Guoquan seized the opportunity to launch a general attack on the western road, and the Taiping army continued to fail, and finally could only flee into the wilderness.
In this way, the battle lasted for 46 days, the Xiang army from the beginning of the inferior position, constantly counterattacked and finally regained the initiative of the war, and turned defeat into victory, so that Li Xiucheng was caught off guard, and finally could only choose to retreat and leave.
epilogue
On the surface, Li Xiucheng's defeat was caused by tactical defects, but after our in-depth analysis, we will suddenly realize that 250,000 troops deal with 30,000 troops, where do you need any excessive tactics, as long as you adhere to the spirit of fighting to the end, several Zeng Guoquan are not Li Xiucheng's opponents, but the Taiping Army has no determination to fight to the death, so the whole battle is fought, the Taiping Army has always been able to get by, the people are scattered, even if he Li Xiucheng has three heads and six arms, Defeat in war is inevitable!
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