One day in May 1854, the weather in Ganzhou was not good, and it started drizzling. At noon, a muffled thunder suddenly rolled over Ganzhou City, burst after burst.

"Thunder is coming this day?" Lao Zhang, the owner of a small silk shop in Ganzhou City, walked out of the counter with some confusion, stretched his head out of the door, looked at the small dark clouds on his head, and murmured: "The world has changed, the Qing Dynasty is coming to an end, and this little rain is thundering..."

"Where is the thunder? The thunder on the Bajing Platform!" The guy from the tavern next door was also leaning against the door to listen to the sound. After hearing what Lao Zhang said, he not only laughed and asked, "Lao Zhang, you just opened the door these days. Have you just been hiding in the countryside and just came back?"

"Yes, but the countryside is also in chaos, killing people every day, scaring me to death, and coming back again." Lao Zhang covered his chest and said, "What's going on?"

"What are you scaring? Your small shop is not a big rich man. If someone kills others, you won't kill you. Changmao has repaired the Bajing Platform these days, and set off firecrackers and boats every day. We all know that you can't go see the fresh ones too?" The guy laughed so hard that he couldn't even close his mouth.

Lao Zhang ran out of the city gate with his robe in his arms and arrived at the Turtle Neck Pier in the north. He had long seen a crowd of people on the shore, including wealthy businessmen, old men, and young wife holding kids. He also saw an acquaintance. He used to sell hunchbacked plums at his door, who was carrying fire to burn stalls and shouting in the crowd: "Burning one cent for fire! Burning one cent for fire!"

Around the crowd were the sound of thunder, and the white smoke of thick gunpowder was as thick as fog.

Lao Zhang squeezed to the shore and saw it, and was stunned.

I saw a fleet of ships parked on the Gongjiang River on the right, mostly dilapidated merchant sampans. At this time, a three-meter-long ship in the fleet was raising sails and dragging a sampan towards the Ganjiang River estuary.

When we arrived at the Ganjiang River estuary, we immediately sank the sails. The sailors on the boat capsized off the side of the boat and jumped onto the sampan, paddled away.

Before the boat could go far, a thunder suddenly roared from the Bajing Platform facing the center of Ganjiang River. As another ball of white smoke covered the Bajing Platform on the sharp corners of Ganzhou, the water columns around the sailboat suddenly rose, as if four or five dragons jumped out of the river from the boat together. The whole boat also moaned shakingly.

Thunder kept sounding, and in the blink of an eye, there was a muffled sound. The sailboat's large mast was smashed to pieces, as if it was jumping from the hull and falling into the middle of the river. The wood chips flew across the river, and the hull shook again. A big mouthful of books was opened on it, and half of the deck collapsed. The poor ship had not yet recovered from its swaying. The rain-like iron book hit the broken hull again. The shotgun made the wooden hull burst out like rain, and this side immediately turned into a honeycomb.

The sound of cannons roared. The ship was quickly sunk into the middle of the river.

Behind the city wall behind the Bajingtai, behind several military flags, the big men from Guangdong long-haired people put down the Qianli Miles in their hands from their eyes.

"Opium Zhang, what do you think?" Zhu Qingzheng turned his head and asked the red-faced Hanshu next to him.

"Beautiful! Beautiful! It's almost the same as the robbers' team at sea!" Opium Zhang replied with a big smile: "It seems that the ten cannons I escorted this time will soon be of great use." Then he said: "Well, boss Zhong Jialiang has said that the opium inventory in Ganzhou also has the Opium Restaurant and the original owner of this business. Please help me, General."

"It's your rush. The whole city belongs to us. You don't have to worry about opening an opium restaurant for a while." Zhu Qingzheng laughed in silence. He said: "The Qing soldiers from Hunan and Jiangxi are gathering around Nanchang. There will be a big war here soon. Do you want to open an opium restaurant in the war?"

Opium Zhang coughed twice and said awkwardly: "That's it...then...then we don't have to hurry. Actually, I told the boss, Lao Zhong doesn't believe it!" He laughed: "But we will give you ten cannons. When will we finish shooting, tell us quickly."

"Ha, you don't care about victory or defeat. You opium merchants are more confident than me." Zhu Qingzheng laughed.

"That's it!" Opium said firmly: "Winning quickly! We win, opium will still rise! Do I want me to buy a few opium for you to see long futures? General?"

As he was speaking, Li Wenmao, the commander of the Sun and Moon Army, rushed up to the city wall and bowed to salute. Before he could repay, Zhu Qingzheng had already stopped smiling. He looked at his subordinates and asked, "What's going on? The artillery fire could not be hit at the docking point on the left and right of the waterway just now! What's going on!"

"Report to General, this is because Qing Yao's heavy artillery cannon body cannot be turned and can only fix the shooting, which makes the cannon windows they built are extremely narrow. It affects our army's Western artillery to rotate and aim and shoot."

"Change the cannon window. Immediately! Don't wait. Now the Western cannons used for exercises are moved to the open space above the roof of the turret to shoot." Zhu Qingzheng said coldly, adding another sentence: "Other built-in cannons will be checked immediately. Prepare to change the cannon window to adapt to our Western cannons."

"As for order!" Li Wenmao rushed away immediately.

Opium Zhang looked at Li Wenmao's back and smiled and said, "Little Li is so energetic. If I can quit opium, I am also a brigade commander now, right? Opium is hateful, I can't quit!"

"Can't you quit? How can you quit Guan Ju?" Zhu Qingzheng said to their big brothers of the Foshan Tiandihui, Li Wenmao, Opium Zhang, and Guan Ju were all the first initiatives of the Foshan Uprising. Now Foshan Tiandihui is extremely powerful in the Sun and Moon Army.

"I said, General, there are no enemy troops now. Are you wasting ammunition when you hit civilian ships like this? Arms are very expensive?" Opium Zhang changed the topic of opium awkwardly.

"We must train and live-fire exercises. This is the military discipline set by His Majesty." A new round of shelling began. Zhu Qingzheng pulled the Qianlijing and looked at it, but murmured: "I really admire him."

Ganzhou is a strong city, easy to defend but difficult to attack.

Looking from the sky, the Ganjiang River at the top looks like a big "1", divided into two by Ganzhou City, with a huge character "ren". The left side of Zhangshui is a stroke on the left side of the land, and the right side of Gongshui is a stroke on the right side of the character "ren". Ganzhou City happens to be in the crotch of this character "ren". Moreover, Zhangshui also turned a corner, surrounding half of the south side of Ganzhou City.

The city is surrounded by water on three sides, and only the southeast is land. Zhu Qingzheng and the others called it from there.

This terrain is not counted. Ganzhou City is a city wall built during the Song Dynasty. It is extremely sturdy.

At that time, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang proposed the strategy of "building high walls, accumulating grain, and slowing down the king", and ordered all states and counties to build city walls. Now, the city walls of the country were built at that time, but the city walls in Ganzhou were from the Northern Song Dynasty. From this, it can be seen that this city wall did not need to be rebuilt in the eyes of the Ming Dynasty's heroes.

Along the crotch of the character "Man" is triangular, Ganzhou City formed a circumference of 13 miles. It is tall and majestic city wall. Moreover, the moat, battlements, city towers, police pavilions, horse faces, cannon city and other facilities are complete. The entire city has five city gates, Xijinmen, Zhennanmen, Yushengmen, Jianchunmen, and Yongkinmen. Among them, the first three city gates also have a double or triple wall city. Not long ago, in order to prevent the Taiping Army from siegeing the city, five cannon cities, including East Gate, Small South Gate, Da Nanmen, Xijinmen, and Bajingtai, were built at the main transportation intersection of Ganzhou City. Because the city is very strong and the river water helps, it is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and it is known as the "Iron City Ganzhou".

However, because of the trade with foreigners, the firearms of the Song Dynasty were extremely sharp, and the morale of the Ganzhou defenders was not strong enough, Zhu Qingzheng led an elite force to attack from Guangdong and land to the city of Ganzhou. The shells of the siege mortar cannon were not finished. As soon as the tunnel was dug, the other side surrendered.

It's like picking up an iron city for nothing.

Surprising at the danger of this city, Zhu Qingzheng strictly implemented the strategy of "striving one place, you must defend one place" under Zhao Kuo. After conquering Ganzhou, he did not rush to attack Nanchang, Jiangxi, and spent a lot of effort to improve Ganzhou's military defense.

In addition, in the core cities of various occupied areas, from large cities to small villages, they all arranged their own officials to establish a ruling system. Zhu Qingzheng personally assisted the new prefect Luo Jingpeng to divide his troops and contact the brothers of the heaven and earth associations in various places. He began to clear the bloody villages in the rural areas of Ganzhou, kill all the gentry, and organize the peasant group.

In short, he wanted to realize Zhao Kuodi's strategic intention, turn this city into a fortress, become a bridgehead for the Song Dynasty's northern expedition to the Yangtze River Basin, and use force to declare the Song Dynasty's ownership of money, grain and people in the southern Jiangxi.

In addition, in Zhu Qingzheng's eyes, Ganzhou is a turning point. He personally believes that it is necessary to strengthen some of the strength when fighting north.

But in military terms, time is victory.

Zhu Qingzheng gave up taking Ganzhou and, under the enthusiasm of the people from all over the country, immediately rushed north to take advantage of the victory to attack Nanchang.

This improved Ganzhou's defense, but also left time for the Qing army to gather reinforcements.

It was faintly as if Zhu Qingzheng's Song Dynasty invading Jiangxi Army planned to invite the enemy Hunan Army to a battle in Ganzhou, and the other party arrived as expected.

Now for the coming grand battle, Zhu Qingzheng began a full-army exercise. As the number of enemies sent by spies increased, Zhu Qingzheng had determined that the result of this Ganzhou war would determine whether it would be a strategic offensive or strategic defense later.

During this period, the Song army repaired the Bajing Platform fortress of the Qing Dynasty. This Fortress is located under the Ganzhou City Wall, in front of it. The Zhangshui and Gongshui merged into the Ganjiang River and flowed northward, and this place was almost opposite the central line of the Ganjiang River.

The cannon city is half-moon-shaped, with three floors above and below. There are 10 cannon gates on the first and second floors, and a viewing hole on the top floor. Facing the rushing Zhang below the city, Gongliang Rivers are high and can be seen without any sight. It is indeed a trend of "one man is at the pass, ten thousand men cannot open."

Now the Song army has lifted out the "mahjong cannon" suicide cannons from the Qing Dynasty and threw them onto the sandbank below. The iron cannons act as iron walls. The cannons inside were replaced with Western iron cannons. Then, a defensive fortification was built under the cannon city, with deer antlers and thorns in front of them, and a earthen city was built behind them. Soldiers, foreign guns and captured Qing bronze cannons were placed behind, forming a fire blockade in front of the Ganjiang River.

The camp guard tower is set up in the southeast of Ganzhou City, which is a place to prevent the enemy from attacking on land. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's city defense law is to "guard the danger but not the nozzle". It means not guarding the city walls, but deploying troops in dangerous places outside the city to build fortresses to block the enemy.

The Song army was equivalent to an army separated from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. They naturally retained the "advanced experience" invented by Yang Xiuqing, but for an iron city like Ganzhou, the importance of guarding danger was much lower.

At the same time, Zhu Qingzheng began to train the navy himself. The craftsmen in Ganzhou City kept building and repairing warships day and night. He turned the 3,000 people of the Sun and Moon Legion under his command to turn to the navy in Ganzhou.

This was not Zhao Kuo's order. Zhao Kuo originally thought that the navy was a matter of Guan Judi, so he assigned two thousand Guangdong navy to help Zhu Qingzheng defend Ganzhou, but Zhu Qingzheng thought this was not enough.

He felt that whether it was defense or attack, Ganzhou was already at the end of the Yangtze River water system. At this time, it needed an excellent naval army. As the fan of Hongwu Taizu, he was familiar with the great flood battle between Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang and the decisive battle of the navy. This was the inevitable result of the struggle for power in the Yangtze River Basin.

The navy was not strong enough, and even Zhu Qingzheng agreed to Zhao Kuo to pee at the camp with one key reason. If the inland waters were not strong enough, they could not win in the Yangtze River Basin.

Zhu Qingzheng replaced the merchant ships and captured Qing warships with foreign cannons and converted them into gunships. At the same time, he trained the navy to fight in small boats day and night - this is a classic textbook-style practice of land and water war in the late Qing Dynasty.

In addition, Zeng Guofan's great victory in Xiangtan in Hunan made the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's Western Expedition Army run away with heavy casualties, which also stimulated the Ganzhou garrison. He stepped up training his navy and strengthened land defense.

Faced with the Hunan Army gathering in Nanchang, Ganyong and the Green Camp took on a stance of water attack and land defense.

My old boss, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, was defeated by a new legion of Qing Yao in Hunan?

This news shocked all the soldiers of the Song Dynasty, and they wanted to see who Zeng Guofan was and what army he had trained.

Zhu Qingzheng, who was ordered to defend, was very curious when facing the enemy coming, but was not afraid. He felt that he would win: his army muskets and foreign cannons were all bought from the West, which were much sharper than the shotguns they had used before. The navy's Western cannons were not only light but also farther. He didn't believe that he would not be able to beat Hunan.
Chapter completed!