I want to be emperor

Chapter 290 The New Standard Army's Left Army Attacks

The second year of Chengshun of the Great Chu Empire and the ninth year of Ming Chongzhen.

On March 5th, the Chu army gathered nearly [-] troops, and more than [-] artillery pieces of various types officially launched a general attack on Linxiang!

On March 22, the Chu army conquered Linxiang. The main general of the Ming army, Yu Xiuwen, the general of Huguang, committed suicide. captured.

On March 23, the [-]st Cavalry Brigade of the Chu Army captured Tumen Town, blocked the Weishui line, and cut off the land transportation link between Baling and Changsha. Yuezhou prefecture governs Baling.

On March 24, the main force of the Fifth Division of the Chu Army arrived in Baling. An hour after the siege, most of the defenders fled, and more than a thousand remnants surrendered to the city. The fire dies or flees or falls.

On the afternoon of March 24, the Xiangjiang Fleet of the Great Chu Empire Navy officially entered Dongting Lake and set up the Xiangjiang Fleet Base in Baling, Yuezhou. Most of the dozens of warships of the Ming Army that had stayed in Baling fled into Dongting Lake In the depths, a few surrendered on the spot.

On March 25, Luo Zhixue led the guards and other troops to Tumen Town. At this time, the front line of Tumen Town had gathered all the guards, a mortar regiment, and a cavalry brigade.

At the same time, the Fifth Division, the Eighth Garrison Division, and the Second Mortar Regiment in Baling, Yuezhou were ordered to move south quickly, and the local defense was temporarily handed over to the Marine Corps of the Navy.

In the past few days, the sixth garrison division and the newly reorganized ninth garrison division have passed the urgent reorganization, requiring the sixth garrison division to quickly and completely reorganize and go south, while the ninth garrison division is stationed in Linxiang and at the same time sends troops to garrison Baling , Tumen Town and other areas.

In this series of arrangements, the follow-up Ninth Garrison Division will be responsible for the defense of the rear, while other units will go south to join the battle.

Just when Luo Zhixue dispatched troops to Tumen Town to prepare for the next offensive.

Yang Sichang, who was in Changsha, finally got the news of the fall of Linxiang. After hearing the news, Yang Sichang felt dizzy and couldn't stand still. fall.

After slowing down for a while, he waved his hand slightly, signaling his followers not to continue to support him, took a deep breath and said, "Where is Zongbing Yu?"

The confidant who came to report the emergency military situation lowered his voice and said: "General Yu fought against the bandits in front of the battle. He would rather die than retreat. At the last moment, he committed suicide to serve His Majesty."

After Yang Sichang heard this, he took another deep breath: "With the [-] troops, no one escaped?"

The confidant said: "There must be someone who escaped, but not many. According to the spies in front, about a few thousand people broke out when the city was broken, but later the Chu thief cavalry chased and intercepted them, and most of them were stopped again." There are only a few people left to disperse and break through, but they have all been scattered and there is no way to gather them together."

Yang Sichang closed his eyes at this time: "Unexpectedly, the general who will never retreat, plus [-] troops, and the Linxiang defense line that has been painstakingly managed for half a year, still can't stop the Chu bandits' guns!"

"In just five days, Linxiang was breached. The Chu thief's guns are sharper than we expected!"

A general soldier next to him also interjected: "I heard that the Chu bandits used more than 300 cannons of various kinds to storm Linxiang this time, and half of them were cracking cannons. It's really shocking!"

"How did these Chu thieves make so many guns?"

"If it's just ordinary small cannons of several tens of catties or even short cannons of one or two hundred catties, it's not surprising that there are three thousand pieces, let alone hundreds of them. But most of these cannons in the Chu thief are The red cannons and the large flowering cannons, each of which weighs hundreds of catties and weighs thousands of catties."

"I waited for half a year to cast cannons in Changsha, and invested tens of thousands of dollars. Now, I only cast more than 20 two-and-a-half catties long robes, and only three five-jin long cannons. It is simpler to explode cannons, but only Only a dozen or so statues have been cast!"

"However, false Chu can cast hundreds of them. How did they do it?"

"Even though they searched for a lot of people's fat and people's cream and food, they still can't conjure up tens of thousands of skilled craftsmen out of thin air!"

"Without enough craftsmen, how did they cast so many cannons?"

Not to mention that the general soldiers under him couldn't figure it out, even Yang Sichang himself couldn't understand why the puppet Chu was able to cast so many guns.

Just like what the subordinates said, whether money or not is a trivial matter, the key is that there are so many skilled craftsmen from Puppet Chu?
In this regard, they didn't know at all that the arsenal of the Great Chu Empire used machinery and equipment on a large scale, and at the same time adopted the method of assembly line operation. The entire production method was completely different from the way the Ming army used traditional manual workshops to build guns.

The military production of the Great Chu Empire used a large number of mechanical equipment and a large number of skilled ordinary workers to replace traditional senior craftsmen.

Although the cost of a single gun has not been reduced much, the output has grown explosively.

But Yang Sichang and the others didn't know about these things at all, or they didn't pay attention to these things before.

Since the rise of the Chu thieves last year, all the civil and military officials of the Ming court have stood up to the Chu thieves' army and paid attention to their weapons, organization and tactics.

Yang Sichang is a representative figure among them. While paying attention to understanding, he also proposed to establish a new standard army and build his own new army to fight against the Chu thieves.

However, they only paid attention to these superficial things, and did not devote much energy to paying attention to why the Great Chu Empire was able to arm such a large-scale new army, equipped with hundreds of artillery, and still using a very It's growing faster than they can comprehend.

At this moment, Yang Sichang was in a very complicated mood. After thinking for a long time, he said: "Linxiang has been lost, and now I am afraid that Baling will not be able to keep it. The next step is that the Chu thieves will continue to go south and kill me in Changsha."

"Let's pass the order. All the surrounding forces will gather in Changsha, so that the defenders of Xiangyin will also retreat to Yiyang. Anyway, Xiangyin can't hold it. It's just a sudden loss of troops. It's better to open the way and let them come to Changsha!"

"Recruit civilians to urgently strengthen Changsha's city defenses, especially to build more and better anti-cannon fortifications. The Chu thieves attacked the city with nothing more than relying on guns. As long as their bombardment is blocked, Changsha will be as stable as Mount Tai."

"Send fast horses to Wuling again, let the left army of the new standard army go out. Once the Chu bandits attack me in Changsha, let the left army go east to attack the rear of the bandits, cut off their food roads, and force the bandits to retreat!"

"Let the gun workshops in the city process day and night, and make sure to produce a batch of guns as soon as possible. Although the front of the new standard army and the right army are used as a cover, the soldiers are also elites drawn from various guards. The new military law is compiled and trained, and when the guns are in place, they are better than battalion sentries!"

"Well, the time is still too tight. If we give us another two or three months, the left army can be trained more elite, the right army can also become an army, and the central army can also set up airs. At that time, there will be a new standard army of 5000 people, even if it is impossible to counterattack Wuchang, it will not be a big problem to defend the eastern part of Yuezhou."

"Now... can only stick to Changsha"

Yang Sichang responded, and many soldiers of the Ming army on fast horses left the city, taking Yang Sichang's order to the Ming army and officials in other directions.

As for Luo Zhixue, he did not lead his troops south as quickly as Yang Sichang expected. Instead, he waited in Tumen Town for two days. After a large amount of ammunition, food, grass and supplies arrived, a new round of operations began.

In the early morning of March 27, the Chu army continued to go south!
Luo Zhixue personally led the Guards Division, the Fifth Division, the Eighth Garrison Division, two Mortar Regiments, and the First Cavalry Brigade to the south of Xiangyin.

In addition, a garrison brigade was sent to detour to the south to Pingjiang, and captured Pingjiang County. Although this place is not important, and there are not many Ming troops there, it must be taken early, so that the Chu army will not be in Changsha. During the war in the area, some enemy troops emerged from this direction to cut off the Chu army's retreat.

Yang Sichang had already ordered Xiangyin to be voluntarily abandoned. Before the Chu army arrived, all the defenders and officials in the city had fled. Not only were they all gone, but all kinds of supplies were also taken away.

This made many people in the Chu army have opinions, especially the logistics department and the finance department.

The logistics department also wanted to seize a batch of grain when they attacked Xiangyin, so as to avoid transporting a large amount of grain from the rear, but they didn't expect that not only a grain of grain was not caught, but also the rations of tens of thousands of people in the city...

When the Ming army withdrew, they took away all the food in the city, including the food from the food stores. The tens of thousands of people in the city had no way to get rations from the outside world, such as food stores, except for their own rations.

And if the Great Chu Empire doesn't want to watch tens of thousands of people starve to death, then it has to squeeze out military rations to the people in the arcade city.

Although it is only for a few days, as long as you take a breather, the official grain bank under the control of the Great Chu Empire, that is, the grain bank under the Grain Storage Department, will transfer the grain, and generally speaking, it will not cost much money. .

But the problem is that this will still be a fierce battle for the rations of the troops going south, and at the same time it will be a fierce battle for precious transport capacity.

The logistics department is cursing, Ming Ting doesn't talk about martial arts, and the finance department is also full of resentment...

After the army entered the city, the Ministry of Finance, which was planning to accept a large amount of property, found that there was not even a hair in Xiangyin City...

There is nothing in the official warehouse, and the officials have all fled. The few remaining low-level officials also surrendered at the first time to search their homes.

Ordinary gentry households in the city also ran away completely, and when they left, they took everything they could bring with them, especially the gold and silver that was easy to carry.

Ever since, officials from the Ministry of Finance came excitedly with a group of carriages preparing to load gold and silver, and then looked at the empty Xiangyin and couldn't help cursing...

It's just that these are trivial matters and cannot affect the established strategy of the Chu army!

After arriving in Xiangyin and resting for a day, the Chu army began to divide its troops.

The eighth garrison division and the sixth garrison division began to go south with great fanfare!

But secretly, the Fifth Division and the Guards Division, the two main divisions, except for a regiment belonging to the Guards Division stayed in Xiangyin, the other units joined the [-]st Cavalry Brigade and turned westward, heading straight for Wuling.

The goal of Luo Zhixue and others is very clear, and that is the new standard army of 5000 people in Wuling, Changde Prefecture.

The Chu army wanted to concentrate their main force first, kill the five thousand new standard troops first, and then turn around and besiege Changsha.

It is worth mentioning that this new standard left army, which was regarded as the main combat target by the Chu army, had already left Wuling and marched eastward. They wanted to attack the Chu army's side and cut off the Chu army's food when the Chu army went south to attack Changsha. Road, cut off the back road.

According to the direction of travel of the two armies, if there is no major accident, they will collide head-on on the Yiyang-Yuanjiang line!
And once they collide, it will break out in this eastern continent, the first battle between line troops in history!

(End of this chapter)