On June 19, 1860, an edict was issued from Tianjing, and the destination was Suzhou, the capital of Sufu Province, which had just been established, and the recipient was Li Xiucheng, the king of Zhong.
King Zhong launched the Suchang Raid and won a complete victory, not only opening up the territory, but also obtaining a large number of various gold and silver treasures in Suzhou, Changzhou and other places.
Li Xiucheng sent a considerable number of them, including silver oceans, gold beads, ginseng, bird's nests, corals, jade pens, etc., to Tianjing and put them in the sacred treasury "for national use".
Hong Xiuquan naturally had a great face and a great joy, and issued this edict of commendation in the name of the young king Hong Tianguifu. It mentions:
The head of the rich district, Su Fu, accompanied the military abundance of Kyoto.
Uncle is the first to take care of the country, and the merit is still more loyal.
Asked Li Xiucheng after receiving the edict"Kneel down to greet and read Zhang hanging".
Because of the edict in the name of the Young Heavenly King, Li Xiu was called "uncle". At the same time, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom avoided the word "shang", and all "shang" was changed to "shang". There is a place in the territory of Sufu Province called "Shanghai Hai", so guess which place it is now.
The content of the edict was not a major military matter, and it still used the highest level of document transmission standards of the Taiping Heavenly KingdomThat is, the "Cloud Horse Document" - the newspaper is printed with a round stamp, engraved with winged Pegasus, and engraved with clouds around.
Yunma "is not easy to use, if it is used, it is required to gallop fifty miles every hour, even in the middle of the night, the city must be open for its passage."
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had a post station on land and water, called the Evacuation Ya, which may take the meaning of "the estranged person is attached", and was specially used to deliver newspapers.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom ruled every other area.
3. Fifty miles to set up a sparse attached office, by the supervisor of an assistant.
Twenty or thirty managers. Horses are ridden by land, and eight-oared clippers are used by water.
From Nanjing to Suzhou, it is about 450 miles. All the way is a rich land in the south of the Yangtze River, and the road is not rugged. If you follow the "Yunma" standard, you can reach Suzhou within one day and one night. Even if it is a standard day time of more than 100 miles a day for ordinary documents, it can be delivered.
In fact, the slow delivery speed of this Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's "600 miles expedited" is comparable to that of an old cow and a broken car.
The extant data keeps a record of the handover of each post station along the way:
At noon on June 19, the edict was issued from Tianjing;
At around 3 p.m., he arrived at Xiaolingwei in the southeast of Tianjing City;
Arrived in Danyang on the morning of June 21;
Arrive in Changzhou in the afternoon of the same day;
On June 30, the edict arrived in Wuxi;
Arrive at Hushu Pass early in the morning of the fourth day of the seventh month;
Arrived in Suzhou at noon on the sixth day of July.
450 miles away, this document took 18 days to arrive! An average of 25 miles per day!
Although there are still local team exercises and interference from guns and boats along the way. But to such a slow pace, to a large extent, it can only be due to the ineffective administrative supervision, and the post station system has begun to be abandoned.
The above is not an isolated case, the problem of the transmission of documents from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is known even to the opponent. Zeng Guofan mentioned in his reply to Zuo Zongtang in the second year of Tongzhi (1862): ".But the thief Chinese reported the latest, the loyal and opposing sides are in Suzhou, on the one hand, they are trying to attack Changshu, and on the other hand, they are trying to run through the north of the Yangtze River, or they are not defending Shaojun with thieves." So that Zuo Zongtang can rest assured that he can boldly attack Shaoxing, and ignore Li Xiucheng in Suzhou.