Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 181 Seizing the Fort ([-])

The spring in the 50th year of Qianlong was colder than in previous years. It has been March, but the heavy snow is still falling all over the sky.The cold current from Siberia is still controlling the land outside the pass, trying to prevent the spring breeze from blowing from inside Shanhaiguan.

On March [-]th, a long convoy traveled from south to north on the post road from Kaiyuan to Ula City in Jilin.The road, which was originally frozen by ice and snow, became muddy after continuous rolling by the wheels.

Two-wheeled carts pushed by horses are loaded with various military supplies such as silver, grain, bean cakes, cloth, iron materials, copper materials, iron nails, and gunpowder.The general in charge of escorting in the middle of the team became more and more anxious because of the time delay.

"It's already two days late, if you don't hurry up, Ah Zhongtang and Marshal Fu will really kill people!"

The general who spoke was wearing a red gold chain mail, a thick black cloak, and a third-rank cape on his head; beside him was a bearded attendant.Days of rushing and getting angry made the general's eyes sunken and red.The originally shiny braids have also become dry and astringent.

"My lord, why don't you go to the tent and have some tea. It's too cold here." The attendant leaned over and brushed off the dirt on the general's cloak, and then got up to persuade him.

"How can you still be in the mood to drink tea! Marshal Fu is in Jilin, and he reports and reminds us every day, just waiting for us to fire up the furnace when we arrive!" The carriage of the material was stuck in the mud, and several peasants were pushing forward vigorously, and the two horses kept neighing under the yelling of the coachman.

It doesn't matter if he is slow, all the carriages behind will stop and wait.The general took a look, untied his cloak, left his hand on the ground, and strode over.

"Listen to my password, work hard together! One, two, three!" The attendant saw that he didn't care about the cloak anymore, and hurried to help behind the general, and everyone worked together to drive the carriage out of the mud pit.

"Hurry up and find stones to fill in here! Otherwise, you will have to sink in!" The general wiped the muddy water from the corner of his eyes, and ordered his subordinates.

At this time, there was a sound of horseshoes from the post road in the south, and the mud and water splashed by the horseshoes covered the peasants all over their bodies.

"Hurry up six hundred miles! Get out of the way!" As the call approached, the peasants in the middle of the road stepped aside one after another.A hat tied with tassels, wearing a battle skirt, and a waist that barely fits, a messenger with a sealed bucket on his back drives a stage horse at a gallop.

The military commander stood on a high place beside the road, looked carefully at the stage horse, and said dissatisfiedly: "Hurry up for six hundred miles?! Are the adults in the military aircraft department crazy? It's only the middle of March, and the snow hasn't stopped yet." What! I know the reminders all day long!"

The bells, saddles, and stirrups worn by the stage horses in the Qing Dynasty were all different from those of the folk horses, and were uniformly made and distributed by the capital.The top of the stirrup is in the shape of a dragon's head, most of which have seven or nine eyes with beads; the stirrups are all inlaid with gold or silver engraved silk.Generally, a distance of [-] miles for sending memorials by horse racing is based on the fire card; if there are chicken feathers inserted as an urgent item, the journey is set to be [-] or [-] miles, based on the ability of the Ministry of War.The messenger can only get off the horse and rest after the horse races for a distance.

The courier just started from Kaiyuan Station and passed through eight stations along the way.Because it is six hundred miles urgent, so you have to run all the way to Jilin Ula.

When the stage horse passed by, the peasants scattered on both sides of the post road took the tools from the carriage and began to fill up the mud pit just now.

At the end of the first month of the 50th year of Qianlong, Agui and Fukang'an, who took orders again, went north to Jilin with [-] soldiers and horses from the Beijing Firearms Battalion.Under Fukang'an's efforts, the Qing court dispatched a large number of soldiers and horses from Shengjing and the banner camps in various places in Guannei, [-]% of which were firearms troops.

This time, Qianlong decreed that a total of 71 soldiers and horses from the Eight Banners were recruited from all over the country, including eight battalions of the Eight Banners Firearms Battalion of the Han Army, four Battalions of the Manchurian Firearms Four Banners, a Battalion of the Front Four Banners and a Battalion of the Four Banners, the Defense Army Battalion and Xiaoqi Battalion. Two battalions.

Because it was fighting in the land of Longxing outside the pass, Qianlong, Yongyan, Fukang'an and others did not want the green battalion to mix in, so they were also transferred from the provinces to garrison the Eight Banners.

The provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, Zhili, Shandong, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Sichuan will send 5000 to [-] troops stationed in the Eight Banners to the north.In addition, Fukang'an also asked Qianlong to dispatch [-] cavalry from the Six Banners of Horqin, the Left and Right Wings of Khalkha, and the Seven Banners of Ordos, which belonged to Neizasak Mongolia.

Even so, Fukang'an still felt that it was not enough. He and Agui kept sending memorials to the Military Aircraft Department to request continued deployment of troops.

Yong Yan, He Shen and others in Beijing.Being overwhelmed by Fukang'an and Agui's big moves, most of the daily business is arranging the number of people going north from various places and urging the departure time.

In ancient times, the deployment of troops was actually allocating food and grass, as the saying goes, "before the soldiers and horses move, the food and grass go first."

Without the supply of food and grass, the troops cannot be dispatched.But the food and payment system of the Manchu Qing Dynasty is very wonderful!Because the troops of the Eight Banners are stationed in different provinces, if they want to transfer troops across provinces, they need to raise their own military salaries in their own provinces, and then go to the Ministry of War to sell them after the war is over.It needs to go to the Ministry of War for accounting when it is sold out, and [-]% of the fire consumption silver must be paid in advance when the funds are allocated.

This is okay for rich provinces such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but it is almost impossible for poor provinces in the northwest.Therefore, the provinces will mobilize at most 2000 people to go to the expedition, and it is really unaffordable to have more.

As soon as Fukang'an and Agui arrived in Jilin, they ordered the construction of a cannon factory outside Jilin City to cast cannons nearby to make up for the shortage of artillery.

Beihai Town on the other side.

Since the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, Beihai Town has issued a general mobilization order.

The Ministry of Security once again recruited 3000 people from the refugees, making up a force of 5000.One-third of the soldiers came from the construction workers and loggers under Chen Qingsong; the other two-thirds came from the 8000 people who just arrived a few years ago.

Except for the two companies stationed in Ezo and the people who formed the recruit training team of the original 2000-man army, the rest of the soldiers have been trained crazy for more than a month.In the training syllabus drawn up by Liu Sheng and Wang Yuanfang, in addition to strengthening basic military skills training, trench defense tactics became the most important part of the training.The most important in this tactic are machine guns and artillery.For this reason, the company originally led by Lu Shoushan was completely reorganized into an artillery unit.

At the hospital, Liu Siting led a large number of housewives to make a large number of battlefield first aid kits.A new batch of ambulancemen has also started training.In view of the fact that Fuldan City is too far away from Beihai Town, it is very necessary to build a medical station there, so Liu Siting will bring A Miao and [-] nurses to join the first batch of teams going north.

Chen Qingsong is the hardest one. While cooperating with the Ministry of Security to send his workers to join the army, he also has to select workers from among the new refugees.At the same time, he will also formulate a spring plowing plan for Qianlong's 50 years.

Zhao Liang has officially named the "Colt Model 1851 Navy Revolver" he imitated as "Model 84 Revolver".This revolver uses a 0.35-caliber round lead bullet, loaded with six rounds, and the bullets and gunpowder are wrapped with nitrocellulose paper to form a fixed-loaded bullet.When loading the bullet, it is necessary to stuff the fixed bullet into the chamber of the runner cylinder, and press it into the cylinder with the foldable pressure lever under the barrel, and install it on the anvil at the end of the cylinder before firing. The flash cap acts as a primer.

The 84 Ainu people from Ezo can now understand the order of the procession and can communicate in simple Mandarin.Zhao Xin decided to equip these simple-minded, well-developed guys with Type [-] revolvers.Anyway, as long as the output of the fire hat is controlled, the Ainu will not be able to turn the sky.

Zhao Xin took advantage of this opportunity to purchase arms everywhere for more than a month, and even got a set of German positions and defense maps in World War I.

After careful research by him and the security department, they decided to do the same thing outside Fuldan city to deal with the Qing army's large-scale group firearms attack.

Zhao Xin also wanted to understand, what kind of bullshit is "nine advances and ten serials", isn't it just a crowd tactics, queuing up and shooting!Machine guns and cannons rule all kinds of dissatisfaction in this era!Marshal Fu and Agui Zhongtang, come on!

On March 3000th, the advance team of three companies led by Liu Sheng and a [-]-strong engineering logistics team led by Zhao Xin set off for the city of Fuldan under the leadership of the Seldan investigation team. .

This team is equipped with a large number of horse-drawn sledges.The Mongolian horses seized before and the heavy draft horses bought by Zhao Xin were all used to pull the carts.Since Zhao Xin collected all the construction materials and tools, the logistics personnel only need to carry food supplies, get on the sledge and follow along.

In mid-April, the vanguard arrived at a place three kilometers south of Fuldan and set up camp.

In the green tent serving as a meeting room, Seldan, who had just completed his investigation mission, was reporting carefully to Liu Sheng the situation of the residents in the city and the Karen outpost.

"Let me talk about the situation of Karen first. Karen of Fuldan City is just beside the road under the old city. There are a total of thirty households, all of whom are bannermen; one of them is a leader. There are ten horses in Karen , are all tied in the stables outside, and can be ridden away at any time. So what I mean is that Karen must be captured first to prevent Zhan Ding from fleeing and reporting."

(The requirement of the Qing Dynasty for the post stations in various places is that there must be twelve fast horses, tied to the iron ring outside the wall, regardless of day and night. Shouting: Which section of the newspaper or memorial did I send.

When the postman heard the shout, he immediately took off the horse's reins from the iron ring, led the horse to the post road and waited.As soon as the courier arrives, the postman waits for the courier to get on the new horse, and then watches the courier whip the horse away.The so-called "changing horses does not change people".Afterwards, the postman wrapped the reins of the messenger's mount around the horse's neck, and the horse returned along the original road, walking along Tunchuan Street along the way, and neither the bannermen nor the people dared to disturb them without authorization. )
"In addition to Yi Ding, there are fifty households in the old city's earthen walls. These include bannermen and Hezhe Feiyaka people."

Liu Sheng nodded, and said to himself: "Weapons are nothing, the main thing is to prevent them from escaping and reporting." After he finished speaking, he raised his head and said to Seldan: "Let you and Erlu each take a platoon, and take down the post station first. .Is there any problem?"

Seldan thought for a while and said, "My lord, I only have one request."

"Tell me."

"My lord, whether it's the Yi Ding here or the border people, they are all miserable poor people. What I mean is, if they surrender, can you not kill them?"

Liu Sheng patted Serdan on the shoulder with a smile and said, "We are not butchers. We just need to surrender and lay down our weapons to ensure their safety."

In the Qing Dynasty, Zhan Ding's social status was extremely low. Not only were his descendants unable to take the scientific examination to become officials or serve in the army, but even marriage was strictly restricted.Regardless of the fact that they were banner people, Zhan Ding was still a class similar to official slaves. They could not marry other classes, but could only propose marriages of the same kind, so that the custom of intermarriage between Zing Ding households formed later.

The life of these stationers is extremely difficult. The so-called "family is extremely poor, clothing is not covered, food is not enough, parents are cold and hungry, and wives are separated. Although they have heirs, they are unable to marry and live alone."

Seldan breathed a sigh of relief, saluted Liu Sheng and said, "I am at ease with what you say, my lord. Don't talk about a station, the entire city of Fuldan, my investigation team, plus two platoons, tomorrow It can be taken down before dawn."

"Okay! Take the city of Fuldan, and I will give you the credit!"

When Liu Sheng arranged the task, Zhao Xin, who was fifty miles away, was studying the terrain and roads around Fuerdan City in his tent with documents and an old map.

If you want to occupy the entire Jilin General's Mansion in the future, then the post road must be controlled.During the Qianlong period, the traffic road network under the jurisdiction of Jilin General's Mansion took Jilin Ula City as the hub, and radiated to all directions.Since the tenth year of Destiny, a total of seven main post roads have been opened in Jilin, including: Jilin City - Kaiyuan, Jilin - Ningguta, Jilin - Bodune, Jilin - Sanxing, Ningguta - Hunchun, Ningguta - Sanxing, Ningguta - Yinggeguan (Ying'e Gate).

What Zhao Xin wants to cut off now is the Ninggu Pagoda-Hunchun line.This post road starts from the southeast of the Nanwoling River in Ningguta, passing through Malehuliwoji, Saqiku Road, Kahali River, Gashun River, Detong'e River, Mukdeheng Ridge, From the Mizhan River to Hunchun; then to the northeast, through the Abu Dali River, the Mingba River, Fuerdan City, the Niyalinbila River, and the Huya River, until the Fute in the east of Xingkai Lake. As far as Mount Leku.

There are only six Karen outposts on this road.These Karen also take into account the function of the station.As long as this line is under control, the vast black land from Fuldan City to the east of Xingkai Lake will be fully owned.With this vast plain, Beihai Town has the confidence to accommodate a large number of refugees from Henan.

For Beihai Town, where refugees from island countries are the main residents, Zhao Xin often feels a headache.On the one hand, he sympathizes with the tragic experiences of the hungry people in those island countries, but on the other hand, he still hopes that the Chinese will become the mainstream here.For this reason, he plans to adopt a series of administrative measures after this year's battle to allow the refugees from these island countries to be naturalized as Chinese.

"My lord, warm your feet. You've been walking all day." Tian Guisheng, an orderly soldier, came in from outside carrying a hot water basin.

"Guisheng, are you still used to following me?" Zhao Xin put down the documents in his hand and asked with a smile.

"Very good! That's right, I'm just not used to it in the barracks."

Zhao Xin took off his shoes and socks, soaked his feet in hot water, and said with satisfaction: "That is to turn you from an ordinary person into a piece of good steel. Master Liu and Master Wang came here in this way."

"Forget it, I still want to be an orderly for you."

"You kid, you don't have any lofty ambitions at all."

"Who says I don't have it? Missy asked me to take good care of you. It is my ambition to take good care of you."

Zhao Xin shook his head dumbfounded, this kid is full of thoughts of master and servant, he has to go back to the furnace and continue to practice!

At three o'clock in the morning, Serdan and Erlu set off with the reconnaissance team and two platoons of soldiers.He asked Erlu to lead two platoons to block the two entrances and exits of Fuldan City.He led the scouting team towards Karen Station.

Although it was already April, the temperature at night was still cold.In this weather, none of the station men in Karen would come out to watch the night.Stationers in the barren mountains would never have imagined that someone would attack a place like them that doesn't shit.

In the night, the team in white winter clothing quietly approached the place 500 meters away from the stable.A dozen horses suddenly woke up from their sleep, snorting uneasily, their ears pricked up in Seldan's direction.

As Seldan got up slowly, the team members on both sides also climbed up from the snow, arched their bodies and prepared to attack.

"on!"

A dozen people ran to the stables quickly, their boots creaking on the snow.

"Who?" A weak voice sounded from the room next to the stable. It seemed that he didn't eat enough last night, and he didn't even have the strength to speak.

With a "bang", the wooden door made of old pine boards was kicked open from the outside, and Seldan rushed into the room with a pistol in his hand.

"Don't move! Another shot will kill you!" Seldan shouted in a low voice.

"Ah?!" The stationer in the room was surprised, his pants were only half worn.

"Who are you? You don't sleep at night, and you come here to mess around. Are you fainted from hunger? Let me tell you, the bean cakes are for horses, and no one can eat them, or they will be whipped. Close the door quickly, Mrs. It's cold." At this moment, Zhan Ding thought that Karen's companion was joking with him.

Seldan understood that this man had no consciousness of being a prisoner at all.So he said to the soldiers around him, "Tie him up and gag him."

"What the hell are you! Who the hell is it? Let me know that I have to beat you to death. Hey, hey, what are you doing, let go, let go of me! Woo~~"

The two soldiers went up and down, tied up the hands and feet of the standing man, and stuffed a towel into the opponent's mouth.

After dawn, the early residents in Fuldan were surprised to find that the entrances and exits on the east and west sides of the castle had been blocked by a group of people in strange clothes, all of whom were holding a strange shotgun in their hands.

Wait for them to take a closer look, darling!Why are these people wearing filial piety?But the filial piety clothes looked particularly thick and warm.Especially the leather boots on their feet, black and shiny.

The residents in the castle were stunned. Could it be that these people were sent by the imperial court?But nothing happened to us recently.

(End of this chapter)