Master Yuan, start!

However, some horses may not adapt to the climate and water on the road and even die on the way. In order to avoid this, some horse dealers will ask caravans along the way whether they want to buy horses.

Although the benefits are not maximized, the risks are much smaller.

If a merchant could pick a good horse, he would naturally be able to save a lot of money; but if he was unlucky enough to pick a half-month-old horse, he might have to bear the pain of eating horse meat after more than ten days.

After I finish this job, I'm afraid the North and the South will go to war. Then I'll quit. Why buy so many horses? Thinking of this, the merchant was about to refuse.

"Brother, we have enough horses. No..." Before the merchant could finish his words, he saw Yuan Keguang's face darken and he immediately changed his words in fear: "No, but we still need to buy a few more horses."

"The shopkeeper is indeed a big businessman, he can see things clearly." Yuan Keguang grinned, waved his hand, and asked his men to bring over a few horses that were obviously listless and limping.

"I'm not a black man either. I'll give you 100 taels per horse. If we cross the river, it will be more than 100 taels."

Yuan Keguang stretched out a finger and smiled, squinting at the businessman in front of him.

The escort and the merchant on the side exchanged glances, as if to say that there were too many people coming and it would be difficult to deal with them.

"Forget it, brother, there are 5 horses in total, I want them all." The businessman clearly felt that these horses were not normal, but looking at the hundreds of bandits with fierce faces opposite him, he could only choose not to cause trouble and keep things peaceful.

In this way, several horses with felt bags on their backs were sent to the merchant's caravan.

Before the caravan members could check the condition of the horses, Yuan Keguang jumped on his horse and led the group through the caravan.

Passing through the middle of the team naturally interrupted their attempts to check the horses.

"Boss, see you later." Yuan Keguang bowed, waved his whip and galloped away.

Looking at the backs of Yuan Keguang and his group of several hundred people walking away, the leading businessman finally felt relieved.

He sniffed his nose as if he smelled something, and thought he was too nervous. When he was about to get into the car, he heard a loud rumbling sound.

"jump!"

Several horses that had just been pulled into the team exploded in the stomach, blood and flesh flew everywhere, and everything within a radius of dozens of meters was dyed crimson.

In addition, the felt bags hanging on the horses' backs were filled with a large number of iron spikes, which shot everywhere under the shock wave of the explosion.

For a moment, all the escorts and servants in the caravan were wailing.

The leading businessman's back was full of nails, and he fell off the car with a scream. His hands were digging at the ground, and his nails were full of sand and dirt. But after a moment, he stopped shaking and was lifeless.

There was more than one person who died.

The escort who was holding a matchlock gun in his arms was the closest to him at the beginning. He was immediately hit by the iron spikes in the face and died on the spot.

The remaining dozens of bodyguards were also startled by the sudden explosion, but the severe pain in their bodies immediately afterwards reminded them that they had been hit as well.

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"The bomb that Fourth Uncle gave me really hit the mark. It's really useful!"

Six Yuan Keguang walked back and saw from a distance that the escort and his companions were blown to the ground, and waved his fist excitedly.

"go back!"

Yuan Keguang turned his horse around and rushed towards the caravan. Before the injured escort could react, he swung his sword and sent the man's head floating in the air.

In just a moment, the cavalry behind Yuan Keguang caught up. Even though the more than 50 bodyguards were holding guns, it was difficult for them to aim and shoot in the severe pain.

In the blink of an eye, more than a dozen bodyguards were chopped to the ground.

If Mi Yuan had thrown a bomb directly, Yuan Keguang and others would not have had such a great chance of winning. After all, the escorts were not fools and would not stand there and let others blow them up.

But they pretended to be horse dealers and used the excuse of forcing them to buy and sell horses, forcing them to accept them. They then covered the horses' stomachs with thick and long felt cloths and stuck yellow gunpowder brought from outside the customs on the horses' stomachs.

The deception was so basic that if one had simply stopped and inspected the horse, one would have noticed something was wrong with the horse.

But it doesn't matter, it only takes a few minutes, and once the fuse burns out, there will be no chance to check it.

The epoch-making TNT explosives have been invented for 30 years. No one would have thought that a fist-sized yellow block could blow through a three-inch thick wooden board, not to mention that the amount of explosives used this time was increased to the size of a head.

After the TNT explosives exploded, the shock wave carried broken nails, creating the effect of a weakened fragmentation grenade.

The escorts, who had never seen fragmentation grenades and didn't even know what TNT explosives were, were so frightened by this sudden and bloody fighting method that they could only stand there and allow others to slaughter them.

"You, go to Lu'an in the south and tell the Hunan barbarians that I can't stand their rampant bullying in Anhui and I will enforce justice on their behalf!"

After cleaning up the mess, Yuan Keguang captured a surviving merchant servant and asked him to speak to the Hunan Army in Lu'an City.

"Tell them that the Huai River belongs to us from Anhui and has nothing to do with him from Hunan!"

"What is your name, my lord? Could you please tell me?"

The servant knew that if he went to Lu'an without knowing the reason, he might die, so he had no choice but to bite the bullet and ask for clarification.

"Huaibei Hun Tianguang!" Yuan Keguang gave the boy a random nickname, then kicked him in the head: "Get out of here! If you ask any more questions, I'll chop you off."

The servant hurriedly got up, rode a horse brought by someone else, and hurried towards the city of Lu'an in the south.

At the same time, if you look down at the two sides of the Huaihe River from the sky, you will see that the caravans on the traditional Huaiying River trade routes such as Yingzhou, Sanhejian, Huoqiu, Xiacai, and Shouzhou have all suffered varying degrees of damage.

Their goods were all intact, but a large number of people in the caravan were killed or injured, and their horses and food were also looted. It seemed that the robbers were not in it for money, but only to make a name for themselves.

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...

"Report, Yingshang encountered unidentified robbers, and merchants along the way suffered heavy casualties!"

"Report, Sanhejian Wharf was robbed, hundreds of thousands of dan of grain from the government warehouse were dumped onto the shore, and the nearby people looted it all!"

"Report!"

In the camp on the Xuzhou front, Zhu Hongzhang was extremely anxious due to the bad news.

Originally, he thought that since he was stationed in Xuzhou, with the natural barrier of the Yellow River and multiple defense lines in the direction of Jiangsu and Anhui, it would not be a problem to hold out at least until winter.

But where did these bandits come from in Anhui? They robbed merchant caravans, stole horses, and distributed the summer harvest from government warehouses to the people.

What a sin! That's the military rations for the new army in Jiangnan, such as Xuzhou and Huai'an, this autumn. How can we get back the missing tens of thousands of shi?

Take it back from the people?

Stop joking. There is no time to do this now. Yuan Shikai's army is beside us, and we don't even have time to defend the city. If we anger the people, won't we push them towards the National Defense Army?

"Where are Yang Shiquan and Yang Changjun? Haven't they called back yet?" Zhu Hongzhang glanced at the map, staring intently at the direction of Gansu.

He was entrusted by Liu Kunyi to contact Yang Changjun, who was once a member of the Hunan Army and is now a big boss of the Chu faction, hoping to attack northern Henan, Shanxi and other places from both sides and catch Yuan Shikai off guard.

However, this man from the Xiang family, who once served as the governor of Zhejiang and is now the governor-general of Shaanxi and Gansu, only felt that he was a member of the Chu faction and was slow to respond to the Xiang army's request for help.

It seemed that Yang Changjun was still resentful of Zeng Guofan for pushing himself, who was then the governor of Zhejiang, out of the Yang Naiwu and Xiao Baicai case in order to protect the Hunan Army, and was eventually dismissed from office by Empress Dowager Cixi.

As a bystander at the time, Zhu Hongzhang naturally knew that it was the Hunan Army that had let them down. Now, how confident can he be in asking for their help?

The old Marshal Zeng Guofan did something wrong, but the ninth Marshal Zeng Guoquan did not apologize when he was the governor of Liangjiang. It was not until the Xian Marshal Liu Kunyi got into trouble that he remembered him.

There is something wrong with this.

"General, Yang Shiquan is somewhat unreliable. It is better to report to General Xian as soon as possible and send troops to support him." The military advisor gave what he thought was the most appropriate advice.

It is easy to send a telegram for help, but it is extremely difficult to send troops. Zhu Hongzhang knows that given the current defensive situation, the strength of the Jiangnan New Army is just enough.

"Forget it. If Yang Shiquan wants to watch from the sidelines, then don't bother with his news anymore." Zhu Hongzhang shifted his gaze from Gansu to the Central Plains.

"What was the name of that gang of robbers?"

"The bandit leader calls himself Hun Tianguang, and the six people below him say that from his accent and appearance, he seems to be from Huaibei."

"Whose troops are these?" Zhu Hongzhang was furious when he thought about how his granary was robbed by a group of bandits. "Could it be that the Nian rebels have made a comeback?!"

"Admiral, you're probably overthinking it." The military advisor, holding the latest military intelligence, worriedly said, "I'm afraid it's related to the north."

"Yuan Xiangcheng?" Zhu Hongzhang was a little skeptical. "His army is all on the north side. How could they cross the defense line and harass the granary?"

"No matter how powerful the Nian rebels were, they had no artillery or explosives. They relied solely on cavalry to move swiftly. But according to the commander of Lu'an City, a merchant caravan 100 miles north of the city was attacked with dynamite, and dozens of people were killed or wounded in an instant. When did the Nian rebels ever have anything like the foreigners'?"

The old Hunan Army had seen the yellow explosives that Zeng Guofan bought from foreigners when they blew up the city of Tianjing, so it was not surprising that Zhu Hongzhang, who had personally experienced the siege of Tianjing, knew about it.

Seeing Zhu Hongzhang's disbelief, the military advisor continued, "The news of the attacks on granaries and merchant caravans started from Yingzhou Prefecture and spread all the way south and east.

The accent of Yingzhou in Huaibei is very similar to that of Chenzhou in Henan. Chenzhou Prefecture is Yuan Xiangcheng's hometown, so it's easy to mobilize hundreds of militias. Outsiders can't even hear the difference in accent!

"Immediately dispatch the patrol battalion to Xiangcheng to clear out the Yuan family's old house. If Yuan Xiangcheng dares to let his clansmen lead a rebellion, then we must be prepared for the annihilation of all nine generations of his family!" Zhu Hongzhang calmed down and came up with a vicious response.

Digging up someone's ancestral graves and killing an entire family are actions that not ordinary people would do, but Zhu Hongzhang had no choice.

As a Guizhou native, he had already tied his life and property to the Hunan Army ships when fighting against the Taiping Army 30 years ago. He could not afford the cost of the Hunan Army's defeat.

The Hunan Army was defeated. For the sake of hundreds of thousands of Hunanese people, Yuan Shikai might spare the life of Liu Kunyi, a Hunanese, but he would never let Zhu Hongzhang, a Guizhou native, go.

Otherwise, who should pay for the blood debt?

Just as the military advisor received the order and hurried out, intending to implement the Yuan family's completion plan as soon as possible, a burst of hurried footsteps came.

Before the military advisor could see the figure clearly, he bumped into him.

"General, something bad has happened. Urgent call from Huai'an!"

Hearing this, Zhu Hongzhang's heart skipped a beat, but he still instinctively asked:

"What happened?"

"Gaoyou Prefecture reported encountering thousands of enemy troops. They overturned the boats in the canal and blocked the waterway completely. Food and fodder destined for Xuzhou in the north cannot be transported!"

"what?"

"Where did the enemy troops from the sea come from? Are they the shrimp soldiers and crab generals from the Dragon King's Palace?!"

Amid the stunned look of Zhu Hongzhang, the commander-in-chief of the Jiangnan New Army, the long-planned battle to the south suddenly began with Gong Baotian's surprise attack on the grain route from the east and Yuan Keguang's bloody massacre on the Huaihe River trade route from the west.

Chapter 229 Talents at the End of the Tokugawa shogunate

In late summer and early autumn, strong winds from the Pacific Ocean continued to blow eastward from the Yellow Sea to Tokyo Bay.

Compared to the fierce battles that broke out on the Chinese land, there was an lingering atmosphere of dullness in Tokyo, as if it was shrouded by an invisible hand.

Under the influence of the typhoon's aftermath, the ships of the Combined Fleet anchored in the port swayed from side to side, and seemed about to capsize in the next second.

"The traitor Prince Nohyu!"

"Tenchu ​​Kitashirakawa Palace!"

"Selling ships for peace is truly detrimental to the country!"

"Four years ago, Yamagata was in a state of utter insane stupidity; today, disaster is upon us!"