Since the Taiping Army launched its troops in Luoding, Zhou Shixiang insisted on strengthening the army by means of bandits, so everything in the army (army, food and grass) is plundering and seizing from the Qing army. After several battles in Deqing, Gao Yao, the Taiping Army obtained enough food and grass to maintain the entire army's needs for half a year, but the amount of salt seized was not much. There are two reasons for the sparse salt. On the one hand, the prefectures and counties that the Taiping Army passed along the way were not salt-producing areas; on the other hand, the Qing army in these areas had long strictly monitored and blocked salt.

The Qing army blockade of salt caused no large amount of salt to flow in from the Taiping Army, and the people could only buy it in quantity. In this way, the Qing army effectively avoided a large amount of salt to flow into these areas that were repeatedly fought over by the Ming and Qing Dynasties, so as to prevent salt from falling into the hands of the Ming army, which was also short of salt.

If the Taiping Army could continue to follow the previous policy set by Zhou Shixiang and plundered, the existing personnel of the Taiping Army would naturally not be afraid of salt shortage. However, after occupying Xinhui, in order to avoid the Taiping Army's transition into Xiangshan and being blocked by the superior Qing army, Zhou Shixiang decided to rely on Xinhui to induce the main force of the Guangzhou Qing army to attack the city, thus consuming a large amount of vitality through this strong city that even tens of thousands of troops of Li Dingguo could not conquer, making the process of southward advance relatively easy.

Judging from the conditions of the Taiping Army itself, this strategic structure is obviously in line with the interests of the Taiping Army. After all, the Taiping Army is just an army composed of many people, voluntarily or involuntarily. It is only through the previous few small-scale battles that the entire army has a certain combat effectiveness. This combat effectiveness can naturally be fought if it encounters a small group of green camp soldiers, but once it encounters the main force of the Qing army in Guangzhou with cavalry, it is obviously not enough.

Moreover, the Taiping Army not only marching and fighting in the army, but also carried a large number of elderly, weak, women and children with the army. In the absence of transportation, there were only two types of people who could do it since ancient times. One was bandits and the other was bandits. The outcomes of the two were roughly the same, and they had never heard of great success. It was Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong who first started to raise the army. But once the scale became larger, they also abandoned this method of tyranny and powerful. Li Zicheng's remnants of the Dashun Army and the Daxi Army, which had become the main force of the Southern Ming Dynasty, were the remnants of these elite soldiers and powerful generals.

He was surrounded by the disadvantages of development, and he didn't know how Zhou Shixiang, who was a man in the past and two lives, had no time and no chance to make the Taiping Army bigger and develop into a path of elite soldiers until he was trapped in Xinhui. The five major battalions in the front battalion of Taiping Army had a total of only more than 2,000 soldiers. Not to mention such a small amount of troops were placed in the whole country, even in Guangdong. It would not be possible to influence the development of the Ming and Qing dynasties. If Xinhui City had not been too strongly cultivated by the Qing army, the Taiping Army would have eaten up all the troops several times with the Taiping Army.

During the Battle of Guifeng Mountain, the deaths of thousands of elderly, weak women and children had already sounded the alarm bell from the Taiping Army. Zhou Shixiang was unable to ride a tiger, and he decided the tone he was carrying it. He could not throw it away as a burden now, and then lead the front battalion to go straight to Xiangshan. If he did this, the first person who disobeyed him was the officers under him. It should be noted that many of them had small families in the back battalion!

How many people in this world can be cruel to the general Liu Zongmin, who is like the one who kills his wife and children, and is willing to make a "revolution"?!

People must not be discarded at will. In the future, they always want to plan development when they enter Xiangshan. If they want to develop, they naturally need human resources. Without human resources, what should they talk about development?

Therefore, even if the danger caused by the Qing army in Guangzhou to the Taiping Army's southward advance was not completely solved, Zhou Shixiang did not dare to give up the Xinhui army and the whole army was transferred to Xiangshan.

The evolution of the war was roughly the same as Zhou Shixiang's idea. The difference was that the Qing army stopped and instead adopted the method of besieging the city to deal with the Taiping Army. This made Zhou Shixiang, who was determined to use the strong city to kill and injure the Qing army in large quantities.

After regret, I can only face reality - the long-term siege of the Qing army caused more and more trouble to the Taiping Army, and salt is one of them.

The besieged Xinhui City had no way to obtain salt from the outside world. The commander of the Qing army besieged was Shang Zhixin, the son of King Shang Kexi of Pingnan. Although this guy later caused Kangxi's rebellion, Zhou Shixiang did not think that this guy was now against the "Qing Dynasty". He could send salt to the city because he was both anti-Qing.

The Qing army besieged in the city were also elite troops of the Qing army in Guangdong. Not only were the Han army flags of the two vassal kings, but also the model governors of the Guangdong Governor. Half of the elite troops that could be drawn in the Guangdong Green Camp were stationed outside the city. These leading generals were all die-hard "fans" of the Qing army. There was no possibility of any person who wanted to secretly communicate with the Taiping Army. It was difficult to find a Deqing guard Tang Sanshui from them to come out than climbing the sky.

It is impossible to obtain salt from the outside world. Nearly 10,000 people in the city have to eat salt every day. Even if there is no guarantee that the rear camp and the people in the Xinhui people will have salt every day, the front camp always needs salt to eat with swords and guns. Those prisoners who are forced to be coolies must also give some salt symbolically. Otherwise, people will be able to fly when walking, so where can they get the strength to work?

In early July, Duke Xiang of Song made a statistics on the existing salt goods in the public treasury, and then Zhou Shixiang summoned the generals to discuss with the battalions and battalions and established a salt distribution system. This distribution system is not much different from the distribution method of water wells. They both first ensure the amount of the army and then return to the rear camp.

The generals and the battalions knew the current situation. Whether it was food, water, or salt, they had to do the previous battalion first. Otherwise, without these swords guarding the city, the elderly, weak, women and children would have become meat on the blade board of the Qing sergeant in a blink of an eye, allowing them to harm and poison them.

Even so, the public treasury had not lasted for half a month. For this reason, Zhou Shixiang still asked everyone to think of a solution based on the principle of broad-minded thinking. Someone proposed a solution to scrape some salt around the pit and boil it. This proposal made Zhou Shixiang think of the later Red Army when they were on Jinggang Mountain, it seemed that they had collected the salt attached to the wall around the pit and ate it.

No matter whether the salt can be eaten or not, it is always good to have a salty taste in your mouth! Zhou Shi praised the proposer for ten taels of silver and asked Liao Ruixiang to organize people from the county government to collect and take a look. As a result, Liao Magistrate became the first county master in China in a thousand years to take people around the pits all day, and only complained to this old master.

Practice has proved that this kind of nitrate salt can be eaten, but the portion is still limited and it cannot help much. Zhou Shixiang asked everyone to find a solution, and he also took the initiative and gave a heavy reward. No matter whether it is a white cat or a black cat, it is a good cat to catch a mouse! As long as anyone can solve the problem of salt, he must become an official, Bai Ding directly raised the general flag and asked for silver and rewarded 100 taels!

It is often said that there must be brave men under heavy rewards, but seven or eight days have passed, but there is no news at all. No one of the county governments posted in Houying and Xinhui people's residential areas has been revealed.

If there is no new salt in, how can I eat the whole country? When the salt is broken, everyone will take a knife to wipe their necks!

After the discussion between Zhou Shixiang and Duke Xiang of Song, they decided to choose the dead soldiers and Chen Mo led them out of the city late at night to grab salt from the Qing army camp.

This is an adventure that is destined to die, because since Chen Mo led the dead soldiers to destroy the Qing army east and west in the late night, the Qing army has obviously become more careful. Not only did they completely block the tunnels they dug, but they also dug two trenches in front of the camp, which are covered with bamboo tips, and people will be disabled if they fall in.

Not only that, the Qing army also laid several barriers outside these trenches, each of which was fixed. There was only one thirty or four feet apart in the Qing army's whistle, either a gunner or an archer. In addition, the Qing soldiers patrolling were almost half a stick of incense, so there was no gap at all. Don't say that opening the barriers was difficult, even if you cross those two trenches, you would have to pile up to cross a ditch!

Chen Mo, the death row prisoner who was instructing his subordinates to take advantage of the situation, was promoted to the general flag of the Guards Camp for his contribution to destroying the east and west of the Qing army. When he received Zhou Shixiang's request to him to go out of the city to seize salt again, he was silent for a moment, and then nodded without saying a word. At that time, the indescribable silence on his face was obviously knowing that he had been going for a lifetime.

Seeing this, Duke Xiang of Song sighed and said nothing. Zhou Shixiang felt uncomfortable and wanted to inspire Chen Mo a few words, but the bald man Jiang He came over excitedly to ask for a meeting, saying that there were anti-Qing patriots outside the west city who defected to the night.

Xiongwei Camp is stationed in Xiongcheng. Compared with the other three directions, the Qing army's garrison outside Xicheng is obviously weak. Judging from the banner alone, it is just the Green Camp soldiers guarding. But the weak defense does not mean that the Taiping Army can open a gap from Xicheng to get in touch with the outside world, because Xicheng is facing Tan Jiang, and there is a wide river water less than three miles away from the city. If you want to cross the river from here, there is no gate!

It is precisely because Xinhui Xicheng was facing Tan Jiang, and the Taiping Army in the city did not have a navy to support the river, so the Qing army's defense against Xicheng was weaker than the other three directions. Whether it was Shang Zhixin or Zhou Shixiang, they had never fought the Taiping Army that would break through from Xicheng. If the Taiping Army really wanted to break out from Xicheng, then there would be Tan Jiang in front and pursuers in the back. There would be no way to go to heaven and no way to the ground!
Chapter completed!