In June 1860, in order to deal with the Taiping Army, the leaders of the Hunan Army, Zeng Guofan, and Hu Linyi, agreed on a "perfect plan" to expedition the Eastern Expedition Jinling , and decided to seize the strategic location of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River , cut off the Taiping Army's food and grass transportation channel, and then attack Tianjing, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, that is, Nanjing.
For Zeng Guofan, who is in his fifties, he is eager to win the victory of this operation, fundamentally change the situation of the war, and achieve outstanding achievements in one battle.
However, if a person concentrates on doing something, there will always be outsiders who will discuss and comment on it in the form of care, guidance or slander, etc., and some people cannot afford to offend them and can only use as smooth means as possible to resolve the problem.
When Zeng Guofan and Hu Linyi decided to make the plan to fight the Taiping Army in the east, they were facing this situation.
The Eastern Expedition Plan was a combat plan that Zeng Guofan and Hu Linyi gathered their respective staff members to jointly study and discuss.
After repeated discussions, they decided to use , Anhui, area as the main combat area of this eastern expedition. The most important strategic step is to occupy Anqing, and the basic tactic is to siege the city and attack aid.
Specifically, it is to mobilize troops to surround Anqing and Luzhou first, attract the main forces of the Taiping Army to come to rescue, and finally achieve the goal of gathering and annihilation. They have basically outlined a blueprint for Anqing battle .
This plan has just been released, but somehow it was learned by the governor of Henan, the governor of the river and others. They were responsible for intercepting the Taiping Army to head north. Now they heard that the Hunan Army was going to launch a large-scale eastern expedition, and they all became scared.
What are you afraid of? It is nothing more than a concern - if the Hunan Army's plan to expedition is successful, then the Taiping Army will not be able to continue to gain a foothold in Anhui and will inevitably go north to the Central Plains and occupy the defense grounds of officials such as Henan Governor and River Governor.
As for whether the Hunan Army can destroy the Taiping Army, they do not care, but they are very sensitive to the Taiping Army going north, which will cause them to behead.
For this reason, the Henan Governor, the River Governor and others quickly submitted a memorial, and it was very likely that Zeng Guofan's eastward expedition would lead to "bandits heading north and be troubled by the capital."
Xianfeng The emperor was also afraid of the Taiping Army going north and was very anxious, asking Zeng Guofan and Hu Linyi to modify the plan for the Eastern Expedition.
Zeng Guofan received the sage edict from Xianfeng and learned that the Henan Governor, the River Governor and others were so short-sighted, narrow-minded and selfish, and he was both angry and funny.
But after he thought about it carefully, the emperor was also worried that the Taiping Army would pose a threat to the capital, so he could not speak too fiercely, so he racked his brains to write a memorial, just like instructing elementary school students, and analyzed the original form of Emperor Xianfeng, the governor of Henan and others, and advised them not to worry that the Taiping Army would advance northward.
In his memorial, he said that there were two types of peasant uprising troops in Chinese history, one was “bandits” and the other was “stealing thieves” occupying cities, and different methods were required to deal with them.
To deal with the former, we must adopt a strategy of blocking everything so that it has nowhere to escape.
should formulate a more complete plan and implement more careful actions to achieve the effect of eradicating the roots. The reason why the Eastern Expedition Plan directly attacked Nanjing, the old nest of "Grown Hair", was to lure all kinds of wandering thieves to rescue them. Only in this way can the official army achieve the goal of gathering the "thieves who steal the thieves" and annihilate them. In this way, the "hair growth problem" can be fundamentally eradicated.
He continued to analyze that in order to conquer Nanjing, he must first hoard troops on Chuzhou and Hezhou, so as to break the outer defense line of "Changhai" in Nanjing and cut off its food and grass supply channel in one fell swoop. In order to achieve the goal of controlling Chuzhou and Hezhou, we must first surround Anqing and Luzhou.
As long as this plan is implemented, all kinds of "hair-haired" will inevitably flock to save the leader of the canal. Then the strategic intention of the Hunan Army is fully realized, and they can be seized and annihilated.Under such circumstances, where is the Taiping Army going north to the Central Plains?
But Zeng Guofan also knew that just talking to the emperor and those officials was useless. After all, it was related to their vital interests. Once they recognized something, it would be difficult for them to change their original views. When dealing with them, they must pay attention to methods.
In order to alleviate the concerns of the imperial court and several provinces in the Central Plains, Zeng Guofan also made a little adjustment to the "perfect plan" of the Fourth Route Eastern Expedition, and changed the original fourth route from the mall, Lu'an to attack Luzhou, and then detour from the mall, Gushi and then attacked Luzhou.
In fact, when a discerning person sees it, he knows that the adjustments Zeng Guofan made are just pretending, but this way he has to pretend.
Emperor Xianfeng read Zeng Guofan’s memorial. Although he was a little skeptical, he finally reluctantly agreed.
It is worth mentioning that the results of the implementation of the Hunan Army's Eastern Expedition Plan prove that Zeng Guofan's judgment was completely correct, and it was precisely because the success of this Eastern Expedition shook the foundation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
[Comments on the New Domain of History]: This article is not to beautify Zeng Guofan, but to express a point of view: the fundamental reason why Zeng Guofan, who did not have the most talent, was able to become a general and become a minister and show his skills on the political and military stage in the late Qing Dynasty. On the one hand, we must fight life and death with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and fight wits and courage. On the other hand, we must handle the relationship with the emperor and colleagues well. If it were anyone else, we might not be able to handle it as smoothly as Zeng Guofan.
