The death of Guangzhou General Mukdena and the surrender of the Navy Admiral Huang Kaiguang made the morale of the Qing army even worse. The furious Ye Mingchen ordered that the Guangzhou chambers of commerce and wealthy families organize business groups and militia groups to fight against the Taiping Army. Although there were still some wealthy families, merchants formed business groups and militia groups to help the Qing army, most of the wealthy merchants were perfunctory.

As an open trade port, the news is not as closed as inland areas. The wealthy merchants here have long heard foreigners tell the story of the Taiping Army. They know that the Taiping Army's actions in Shanghai, Ningbo and other places are to protect private property and strongly encourage industry and commerce. They have cancelled many harsh taxes under the Qing Dynasty and the Qingming Festival, and the businessmen in Guangzhou are still quite eager for these.

Moreover, the Taiping Army was very powerful and fought a war with foreigners a few days ago. Although it was not considered to have won foreigners, the Taiping Army's courage to fire artillery at foreigners made the Guangzhou merchants and civilians feel that the Taiping Army was much better than the corrupt Qing army. Although the Guangzhou merchants and civilians have done a lot of business with foreigners, they have never had a good impression of foreigners. After the Opium War, the Guangzhou people had prevented foreigners from entering Guangzhou for more than ten years, which shows that the Guangzhou people hated foreigners very much. When the Taiping Army went south, the people at first said that the Taiping Army was in the same group as the foreigners, but the subsequent conflict between the Taiping Army and the British broke these suspicions.

So a strange scene appeared in Guangzhou City. Rich merchants and rural civilians were looking forward to the Taiping Army to enter the city quickly. In the end, Ye Mingchen had to send troops to drive the strong men in the city to help the guards, and ruled out that the soldiers forced the rich merchants to donate money and grain, which led to greater public grievances.

After completing the cleaning of the key areas outside Guangzhou, the three Taiping divisions quickly attacked Guangzhou City in three directions. This was a tactic of surrounding three and missing one. The Taiping army did not force the Qing army into an urgent situation, causing Guangzhou City to be damaged too much. In Xiao Yungui's eyes, after Guangzhou was taken down, it would continue to play the role of her trading port.

The Qing army commander Lai Cun, the deputy commander Shuangxi, and the general Ren Anbang defended the east, west and south of the city respectively, but only lasted for an hour. Ren Anbang, the general of the Qing army guarding the south of the city, opened the city first to surrender. Lai Cun and Shuangxi saw that the south of the city fell, hurriedly retreated, protecting Ye Mingchen, Bai Gui and other Guangzhou officials fled from the north of the city.

On June 28, the Taiping Army occupied Guangzhou. From landing on the Wanshan Islands to occupying Guangzhou City, it took less than a month for the Taiping Army to be killed and injured. Among them, the Taiping Army killed and injured officers and soldiers in conflict with the British, and annihilated the Qing Green Camp, the Guangzhou Eight Banners soldiers, and the regiment trained more than 30,000 troops, most of which were the Qing army surrendered.

After Ye Mingchen and other Qing army officials fled from the north gate, they were surrounded and annihilated by Taiping cavalry more than ten miles south of Huaxian City. Except for the Qing army deputy commander Shuangxi, hundreds of Qing troops led to break through, the other Qing army was from Ye Mingchen, either dead or surrendered or captured alive.

The one who commanded the Guangzhou battle was Chen Yucheng, a young general of the Taiping Army. He arrived in Guangzhou with Luo Dagang's Second Fleet. On the way, he received a secret order from the King of the Western King, making him ignore the British to continue to capture Guangzhou. If the British fleet comes to provoke again, the navy can fight back without remembering the losses. Therefore, after Chen Yucheng arrived in Guangzhou, he quickly launched his troops to sweep Guangzhou.

Thanks to the good foundation laid by the third division Zhang Wenxiang's troops in the early stage. Chen Yucheng did not face much resistance when he landed in Guangzhou. In addition, the people's will, the battle in Guangzhou ended in just a short time.

After capturing Guangzhou, Chen Yucheng left behind a unit of the Second Division to guard Guangzhou with the Navy, and the remaining troops swept across Guangdong in three directions. The first route was the First Division led by Chen Alin, the former general of Xiaodaohui. They attacked eastward and prepared to attack the neighboring places of Fujian and Guangdong, and joined forces with Chen Kai's troops of the former Red Turban Army who were preparing to go south from Fujian. Together, they surrounded and annihilated the Qing army of Fujian Governor Wang Yide and Li Tingyu who were surviving in Chaozhou, Meizhou and other places. The second route took Chen Zhiming's second division as the main force, swept northward and opened up connections with Jiangxi, cleared the Qing army in the northern part, and tried to connect Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi. The third route took Zhang Wenxiang's third division as the main force, attacked Zhaoqing and other places westward, preparing to march into Guangxi.

As the Taiping Army suddenly landed in the battle of Guangzhou, senior generals and other senior generals were killed or captured by the Taiping Army. The Qing army's command system in Guangdong was paralyzed, and the Qing army in various places was not subordinate to each other and fought on their own. The result was naturally conceivable.

From July to August, the three Taiping Army swept across Guangdong. Except for the Eastern Army in Chaozhou and Meizhou and other places, the rest were progressing smoothly. By the end of August, the Qing army in Guangdong was basically cleared and Meizhou was also conquered. Fujian Governor Wang Yide and other officials committed suicide, leaving only the Qing army veteran Li Tingyu guarding the isolated city of Chaozhou, but was also surrounded by the Taiping Army.

After Guangzhou was captured, Xiao Yungui imitated Shanghai, Ningbo and other trading ports and established the Guangzhou Military and Political Department to govern Guangzhou alone, and sent Lu Xianba to take over as the director of Guangzhou Military and Political Department. Li Tianxi was the commander general of the Guangzhou garrison troops, established the South China Sea Fleet, and Tang Zhengcai was the admiral of the fleet. After Luo Dagang led most of the fleet back to Shanghai, the original Shanghai fleet was upgraded to the East China Sea Fleet.

After Lu Xian took office, he copied the old laws in Shanghai, quickly took over the customs, established Guangdong Customs, abolished the tyrants and miscellaneous taxes, encouraged the development of industry and commerce, and received support from the Guangdong business people. At the same time, Guangzhou was prosperous, and more than one million taels of silver were found in the customs office of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in Guangzhou alone. After a large number of Guangzhou officials' government offices were confiscated, the Taiping Army received a total of more than five million taels of money, grain and property.

At the same time, there were also a city in Guangzhou. The Taiping Army did not slaughter the city in Guangzhou this time. After attacking the city, in addition to resolutely exterminated the stubborn elements, most of the bannermen in the city chose to surrender, and the Taiping Army also accepted their surrender.

After the bannermen surrendered, most of their property was seized, and more than 100,000 bannermen were driven out of the city and placed in several larger mineral areas in Guangdong to engage in heavy work such as mining. The bannermen in Guangzhou were not rich. In the late Opium War, the money and grain collected by the bannermen gradually decreased, and by the early Xianfeng years, it was even more difficult to make a living. Since the Kangxi period, the bannermen stationed in Guangzhou were strictly prohibited from learning the skills of farming and handicrafts. These people had no skills at all, and could not engage in any production, and were strictly prohibited from engaging in industrial and commercial activities. Then the Guangzhou bannermen strictly prohibited intermarriage with the people in the city, and even strictly prohibited from leaving the city ten miles, which resulted in the Guangzhou bannermen in the city having basically no social contact with the outside world.

For these flag citizens who have no social relations and no skills, the Taiping Army naturally cannot let them continue to stay in Guangzhou City like this. Arrangement of all major minerals to engage in simple manual labor is the best choice. No one in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can enjoy the gain without any effort.

So more than 100,000 bannermen began a bloody and tears relocation history. They were divided into dozens of batches by the Taiping Army according to family units, ranging from thousands or more people to tens of thousands of people, and were placed in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi and other places. Along the way, the Taiping Army only provided the most basic food rations. The bannermen moved their families and were sleeping in the open. The crying sounded shocked the fields, and the Taiping Army escorted along the way was quite unbearable.

In fact, the people of Guangzhou’s banners do not live well, even worse than some people in the outer city of Guangzhou. The people in the outer city can still make a living, so they can only rely on meager bannermen’s money and food to survive. Now they have experienced hardships, they can only blame their ancestors who advocate bow and horses. If it weren’t for the various so-called ancestral systems imposed on them, they would not have fallen into such a field.

Later, these bannermen engaged in heavy work such as mineral mining in various places, and then a large number of bannermen participated in the construction of the Fujian-Guangzhou Railway. Finally, they had a skill to survive. After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom unified the country and promulgated the "Decision of the State" nationwide, the bannermen began to enjoy all the rights and treatments that citizens of a country could enjoy. However, the bannermen at that time had already decreased sharply due to heavy labor and long-term malnutrition. This is a later story.

Several major riots and escapes occurred during the migration of the bannermen, but they were quickly suppressed by the Taiping Army. Because the bannermen were disconnected from the outside world for a long time, they lacked sympathy. Even ordinary people regarded these former bannermen as monsters, and no one supported or sympathized with them, so the resistance of the bannermen was extremely fragile. Later, except for a few old and young people who wrote articles to record the blood and tears of the bannermen's migration, the records in the official history of the Heavenly Kingdom were only a few simple sentences: "In the time and the moon, Guangzhou was restored. More than 100,000 bannermen were moved to the city and scattered in all three provinces in southern Xinjiang, so that they could each use mines and build roads to make a living..."

After Ye Mingchen and other Qing officials were captured, they followed Luo Dagang's fleet to Shanghai by sea, and then sent them to Tianjing. In Shanghai and other places, Ye Mingchen and other captured Qing military officials saw the amazing changes in Shanghai. Not to mention the prosperous ten-mile foreign market in Shanghai and the thriving domestic industrial and commercial new district on the other side, even the Western train was taken to Suzhou later, which opened the eyes of these Qing officials.

Xiao Yungui did this with a purpose. As the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's military power and offensive became increasingly powerful, and in the future, there would be more and more Qing officials who changed their banners. At this time, they could not just catch the Qing officials and kill them. After all, it was very necessary to reduce losses and let the enemy surrender voluntarily, so Xiao Yungui needed a thousand gold to buy horse bones.

But only Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui did not give preferential treatment. After the failure of the Guangdong Tiandihui Uprising, Ye Mingchen and Bai Gui massacred the families, women and children of the rebel army in Guangdong, and even killed many innocent people. The two of them were to be sentenced after the trial. However, officials such as Huang Kaiguang, the admiral of the Navy who voluntarily surrendered, were able to use it. The general was appointed Anbang, and the captured governor Jiang Guolin and the censor Zhou Qibin.

Especially Jiang Guolin, who has been an official for more than 20 years and has been honest all his life. When he was in office, he was devoted to the suffering of the people and severely punished corrupt officials. In history, Jiang Guolin was promoted to governor of Guangdong in 1858. He was even more diligent in his work and loved the people, and he strictly rectified the administration of officials, thus offending many bureaucrats and corrupt officials. They bribed the powerful and slandered Jiang Guolin. Soon, Jiang Guolin was impeached and removed from office and moved to Huizhou. When the elders of Huizhou heard that Jiang Guolin had arrived, they left wildly

According to the "Dazhu County Chronicles", at that time, "the old man held a cane to welcome the road left, and women and children were playing and leaning on the eaves to steal the color of the adults; every household opened its color and burned incense, and the sound of firecrackers ran for ten miles." After Jiang Guolin entered the temple, betel nut, coconut and millet sent by the county people filled the outdoors, and those who thanked and greeted each other came one after another. The county people welcomed a step down official in this way, only once in the history of Huizhou. Jiang Guolin returned to his hometown after a few months of residence, but soon died of illness at the age of 50.

Officials like Jiang Guolin can be appointed, and the premise is that they have to let go of the original Qing lord in their hearts. Now Xiao Yungui is not only keen on power, but also keen on imposing his will on others. If he can take an enemy official and general for himself, Xiao Yungui will feel more accomplished. So, Jiang Guolin and others visited Shanghai, Suzhou and other places before sending him to Tianjing.
Chapter completed!