The historical materials of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were lost to many overseas countries.
After the defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it was cleaned up and destroyed by the Qing Dynasty, and there were very few of its various documents and documents preserved in China, but foreigners, including foreign mercenaries in the Taiping Army, had a lot of contact with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at that time, and intended to collect the materials of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, take them abroad, and hand them over to libraries and museums for preservation. Eighty percent of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Seal (a compilation of official documents printed by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, such as the 1853 Edict of the Heavenly Father, the Three Character Classic, and the Thousand Character Text) were collected from abroad during the ** period and after 1949.
One of the original sources goes like this.
In April 1860, Li Xiucheng teamed up with Chen Yucheng to destroy the "Jiangnan camp" for the second time, and then went east to conquer Suchang, occupy Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the important financial and taxation areas of the Qing Dynasty, and open up new bases.
At the same time, Hu Linyi formulated the "Eastern Expedition Plan" and led the Hunan army to attack Anhui from Hubei, and went straight to Anqing to threaten the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom from the west. In order to rescue Anqing and defend the west gate of Tianjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Command formulated the "Western Expedition Plan" to attack Wuchang from the north and south, forcing the Hunan army to return from the front line. According to the battle plan, King Chen Yucheng went to the north bank of the Yangtze River and entered Hubei from Anhui; Li Xiucheng, the loyal king, walked on the south bank of the Yangtze River, set out from Zhejiang and Jiangxi, attacked eastern Hubei, and joined Chen Yucheng in Wuchang. Anqing, the base camp of King Chen Yucheng, is also his last political capital. It stands to reason that King Chen Yucheng should actively march westward, but this is not the case,..
In order to implement the plan of attacking Wuchang with Chen Yucheng, Li Xiucheng marched thousands of miles and arrived at Xingguo (now Yangxin) south of Wuchang in mid-June of the 11th year of Xianfeng, and the forward arrived at Wuchang County (now Ezhou), but he could not get in touch with Chen Yucheng, the main force who arrived in advance.
Seeing the arrival of Li Xiucheng's army, the British consul general in Hankow, Jin Deacon, came to visit Li Xiucheng's garrison and informed Chen Yucheng that he had left Hubei, but left a force stationed in Huangzhou (now Huang'an), and the commander of the army was Lai Wenguang. Li Xiucheng immediately wrote a letter to Lai, asking him to report the situation as soon as possible. At the same time, he wrote a letter to Chen Yucheng, and Lai Wenguang forwarded it to Chen Yucheng. He sealed the two documents and handed them to Zhierjin together, asking him to pass them on to Lai Wenguang.
Britain was very close to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at that time, and the British merchant ships were transporting grain and ** to the Taiping army besieged in Anqing City, but it was preparing for the opening of the port of Hankou, and did not want the Taiping army to attack Wuchang, so that the war would spread to Hankou. Kim Deacac, a colonialist and hooligan, promised to hand over Li Xiucheng's letters and reports, but in fact did not hand them over, but hid them, brought them back to Britain after leaving office, handed them over to museums, and was discovered by the Chinese many years later.
Because Jin Deacon did not hand over the documents, Li Xiucheng did not wait for Lai Wenguang's reply and Chen Yucheng's instructions, and the situation on the battlefield deteriorated, so he had to choose to withdraw his troops, and Lai Wenguang also led his troops to evacuate Huangzhou (who will evacuate first is not yet determined), and a major battle plan was abandoned, so that the Qing army avoided a crisis.
Commentators believe that Li Xiucheng's troops were also not active in this battle, and set off three months later than Chen Yucheng. Later, Hong Xiuquan issued a strict order, and Li Xiucheng led his troops to the west, but left the elite troops in Suzhou and Changzhou, and only brought a group of old, weak, sick and disabled people to the expedition. In this way, Li Xiucheng did not progress smoothly along the way, and was pinned down by the Qing army everywhere.
Moreover, Li Xiucheng expanded his troops and horses along the way to the west, and also included more than 200,000 "rabble" who broke away from Guangxi and returned to the dynasty. In July, Li Xiucheng arrived on the outskirts of Wuchang and did not attack the city, but returned directly to the base in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and did not even go to the rescue in Anqing. The Taiping Army of the North and South lost contact with each other and had no intention of cooperating with the battle, and because of this letter privately hidden by the British Jin Zhier, the second western expedition ended without a problem. In September 1861, Anqing fell, and Zeng Guofan finally enjoyed the fruits of victory. In fact, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's second westward expedition to Wuchang had already found the Hunan army's life, and if it weren't for the serious selfishness of the princes and kings, the result would be very different.