I want to be emperor

Chapter 671 Battle of Yeniseysk

After the Yenisei dispatched army under the Second Army of the Chu Army successfully captured the city of Bratsk, they used this place as a base for rest and reorganization to alleviate the fatigue of the soldiers caused by the arduous march over the past month or so.

At the same time, the logistics organization also began to use the city as a material transfer base, concentrating a large amount of logistics materials here, and creating a relatively stable logistics transportation system.

The Yenisei dispatched army rested here for five days before embarking on the westward march again.

It is already the beginning of August. If this time is in the Jiangnan area, then it is still the time when the autumn tiger is thick and the heat is unbearable.

However, in the area north of Xiaobeihai, the early autumn here is already relatively cold, and it is foreseeable that in two or three months, the area will be covered with snow and enter the real winter season.

In the cold winter season in this kind of place, let alone fighting, normal activities in the wild will become very troublesome.

Therefore, the Chu army needs to capture the city of Yenisesk before the real winter comes.

Even if you can't capture the city of Yeniseysk before the cold winter comes, you must arrive in advance, build a camp before winter comes, and stock up enough supplies to survive the winter.

This time, the Yenisei dispatched army of the Chu army did not intend to retreat.

Even if it was impossible to take Yenisesk before the arrival of winter, the Chu army continued to block and surround the place, waiting for the weather to warm up before continuing to attack.

It is the established plan of the Chu Army's Second Army to take Yenisesk City in one go.

Therefore, after resting for five days, the Yenisei dispatched army marched west along the Angara River again, and this time they went straight to the city of Yeniseisk.

The city of Yeniseisk is located on the west bank of the middle reaches of the Yenisei River, not far from the intersection where the Angara River flows into the Yenisei River.

Not only that, the city of Yeniseysk is also an important node of transportation for a series of Siberian water networks connecting the Ob River, the Yenisei River Basin, and the Lena River Basin.

The two main passages starting from the Ob River to the Yenisei River Basin, the place where the downstream passage connects with the Yenisei River is located one or two hundred kilometers downstream of Yeniseisk City.

The upstream channel is just near the city of Yeniseysk. Of course, this channel is not directly connected by water, but needs to pass through a section of land water channel (a land channel between two rivers), and this channel , is also the channel most used by Russians and with the best traffic conditions.

The eastern end of its land and water passage is the city of Yeniseysk!

Mainly able to control the area, then the Chu army can not only directly cut off the upstream channel, but also go one or two hundred kilometers north to cut off the downstream channel.

If the Russians want to continue eastward in the future, they can only take the northern passage around the Arctic Circle. That road is not easy to walk, and the freezing period is very long.

Of course, other new routes can also be taken, but waterways can no longer be used on a large scale, and long land passages need to be taken. It is basically impossible to maintain large-scale personnel exchanges and material transportation.

According to this series of situations, it can be seen that the city of Yeniseysk is the undisputed number one strategic location in Siberia, at least for the contemporary seventeenth century.

From this place to the east, you can go all the way to the Lena River, and you can even continue east to the Pacific Ocean.

To the west, you can go to the Ob River Basin.

Yeniseysk is the central point of a series of Siberian water networks!

It is precisely because the geographical location of this place is so important that the Russians built a fortress here in 1619, and continued to expand and increase defense capabilities in the following [-] years, and developed surrounding areas.

In the last seven or eight years, because of the continuous threat posed by the Chu army, the Russians have been forced to increase the construction of various fortifications on the city of Yenisesk.

Today, in the 21st year of Chengshun (1655 AD), the size of Yenisesk City is not small. There are more than 1000 Russian regular troops and mercenaries stationed all year round.

At the same time, there are many businessmen, newly arrived Russian immigrants and so on.

The entire city's officials and all kinds of messy troops, commodities, and civilians can have a population of five to six thousand people. At the same time, there are many villages and towns developed by Russian immigrants around the city, and many Russian immigrants live in this area.

As for the aborigines, there are more. There are at least 2 people in the surrounding area. However, even if these aborigines were conquered by the Russians, they still lived a life of fishing, hunting and herding deer. Fur is also the biggest motivator for Russians in the Far East.

The reason why the Russians came to Siberia was directly motivated by a large number of precious furs.

This is different from the Great Chu Empire advancing to the western region for the sake of the northern and western borders in order to expand its territory, so as to ensure the overall security of the north.

If economic interests are purely considered, then the Northern Strategy of the Great Chu Empire is a big loss... Tens of millions have been thrown in, and it cannot be earned back by just relying on fur business.

This is also an important feature of the Great Chu Empire's external expansion, that is, it does not pay much attention to economic interests, at least not short-term economic interests.

The thinking of the top management of the Great Chu Empire is, regardless of how to make money in the future, first occupy the land, and then slowly figure out how to develop and make money.

As for land, more is always better.

This point is most obvious in the northern strategy. This broken place is a place of pure loss for the current Great Chu Empire!

But the top management of the empire doesn't care about the loss of military expenses. Anyway, military expenses have to be paid every year...

If the army and the navy are allowed to eat, drink, whore and gamble with military expenses, they are not allowed to use military expenses to go to the battlefield to fight for the interests of the empire.

This involves the military expenditure distribution model of the Great Chu Empire. The military expenditure of the empire is composed of two parts. One is the annual regular military expenditure, which is given according to a certain proportion of the expenditure budget. It is about 20.00%, and it is calculated that there are more than 18.00 million regular army and navy military expenditures a year.

This fee does not include the Guards, which are paid separately from royal funds.

The other one is temporary war expenses. There is no quota for this thing. It is intended to provide an additional batch of military expenses when a war breaks out.

However, the Great Chu Empire has not paid any temporary war expenses since the extermination of the Dongyao people... Even if it was fighting Zhungeer before, the Great Chu Empire did not give any temporary war expenses. All that is needed is paid out of regular military expenditures.

Because regular military expenses have to be paid every year, the amount paid has already made a lot of civil servants feel heartbroken... This year has been more than 4000 million.

Those civil servants wished they could get rid of all those military generals, and then put all the four to fifty million in their pockets.

But these civil servants can only imagine in their dreams, whoever dares to reduce conventional military expenditures, their military generals will really kill the civilian officials with guns...

This has also formed the pattern of the military and government of the empire in the past ten years. They usually play their own things, and when it comes to money, the conventional military expenditures and civilian groups have no courage to reduce, but the military should not expect to be able to get a temporary battle in this life. Fee!
The Minister of Counsel and Minister of the Ministry of Officials, Guo Quanshu, publicly stated: Unless the country is in danger of destroying the country, there must be no provision for temporary war expenses.

Because conventional military spending is so much every year, so much during wars, and so much when there is no war, so whenever there is no large-scale external war, a large number of civil servants in the high-level empire will look at the army and navy I'm very upset... We, a group of face-to-face civil servants, only earn a few dollars after working so hard... But those Qiuba guys get tens of millions if they don't do their shit...

Therefore, the civil servants of the empire have always supported the military's external expansion.

After all, you have to do things after you get the money, tens of millions of military expenditures every year, looking at the past dynasties, which dynasty, which army has this kind of treatment!
With so much money, I feel ashamed for you if your military doesn't take down the whole world!

Of course, the scale of this war is well controlled, and it must be just within the range that conventional military expenditures can support. If it accidentally exceeds the limit and wants some temporary war expenses, the civil servants will laugh and turn around and leave.

If you want temporary war expenses, let alone doors, there are no windows...

So you can see that the external expansion of the Great Chu Empire in these years is actually very regular...that is, there will be a wave of relatively large-scale waves at intervals of two or three years. Why is there such an interval? Because the military needs to save money to fight wars what……

After saving for two or three years, there will be a big wave. This is the normal state of the Great Chu Empire's external expansion in the past ten years!
The northern strategy cannot escape this practice. From preparation to actual implementation, the military has been preparing for more than two years.

Such long-term preparations have also paid off. From the first day of the launch of the northern strategy, with sufficient troops and strong logistical support, the Chu army's actions have been overwhelming from the first day.

Well, of course, you can also describe it this way: massive funds are burning!
With tens of millions thrown in, even the Chu army in the Arctic Circle can kill them... If not, then add more money!
With the support of a large amount of funds, the Yenisei dispatched army of the Chu army marched westward from the city of Bratsk, and continued to advance along the Angara River by alternating land and water.

Along the way, they also accepted several small Russian strongholds by the way. The people in these small Russian strongholds on the Angara River had already run away before the arrival of the Chu army.

After all, the news of the fall of Brazque City has also spread one after another, which already made them panic.

With the arrival of Bratsk's rout, their luck was completely overwhelmed, and then they directly followed the retreating army and retreated westward.

So much so that the Chu army directly accepted several small Russian strongholds on the Angara River without any fighting, and these small strongholds also became supply transfer stations for the Chu army along the way.

After all, these small strongholds are often built in places with relatively critical geographical locations, and they are all important nodes along the river. They are very suitable for use as supply transfer stations to provide supplies and rest for passing ships.

With the arrival of the Chu army one after another, especially after the defeated soldiers and civilians in the Angara Valley arrived in Yenisessk, it instantly caused panic among the soldiers and civilians in the city.

The Russians in Yenisesk had already learned about the news that the Great Chu Empire had launched a war against them, but they had not been able to hear the news from the front line because of the distance.

It was not until many days after the fall of Bratsk that the communications personnel took the risk of going down the river by boat all the way, and finally reported the news to the Russian army in Yenisesk.

This time node is probably the beginning of August.

After learning of the fall of Bratsk, the Russian army in Yenisesk immediately stopped its original plan to reinforce Bratsk, and began to shrink its troops, strengthen the city defense, and hoard food and ammunition to actively prepare for war.

But at that time, they still had a certain illusion in their hearts, that is, they believed that the Chu army could not come to Yenisesk this year, but would come next year.

They still have time to continue preparing for the battle!

They believed that after the Chu army took the city of Bratsk, the personnel needed to rest and reorganize, the supplies needed to be replenished, and the logistics line needed to be established, all of which would take a lot of time.

At the same time, from Bratsk to Yeniseysk, although the whole journey by water is very fast, the waterway of the Angara River is not safe. Without multiple round trips, under the leadership of a large number of experienced captains, a large-scale The risk of troop transportation and material transportation will be very high, and there is a high probability that the generals of the Chu army will not choose to go directly by water all the way.

Instead, they will alternately take the water route or simply take the land route along the river. In this case, the whole process will take at least two months of marching time.

The rest time plus the time required for the march, when the Chu army reached Yenisesk, it would be the cold winter season.

Under such circumstances, the Chu army is very likely to choose to slow down the full-scale offensive, but to take a rest, strengthen the control of the captured areas, and gradually explore the route from Bratsk to Yeniseysk to prepare for the offensive next year .

In other words, the Russians judged that the Chu army is more likely to attack Yenisesk next year.

They can continue to linger until next year, and take advantage of this precious time to intensify their efforts to search for the wealth of the nearby aborigines.

It's just that the wishes of these Russians have come to nothing!

The Chu army did not rest in Bratsk for too long, but continued westward after a few days of rest and received new supplies.

And the speed of the westward advance also exceeded the Russians' estimates.

Although the Chu army did not take the whole journey by water, the overall speed is still relatively fast under the alternation of waterways... Although the Chu army is not familiar with the hydrological conditions in the middle and lower reaches of Angara, the Russians are familiar with it. The Chu army is in Bratsk. Li took a lot of prisoners!

Among the captives were people who were familiar with the situation along the way of Angara, and these people were selected and used as guides.

Of course, the Great Chu Empire did not treat them badly, and gave these guides future freedom and financial rewards. If they were willing to completely submit to the Great Chu Empire, they could also be educated and become citizens of the Great Chu Empire.

I am not afraid that these guides will lead the way indiscriminately, because the guide is not one person, but dozens of people. The Chu army will conduct a cross-comparison of their identified routes. If the routes identified by each other do not match... then the matter will be serious. .

The agents of the Military Intelligence Department who accompany the army will let them know what the ten tortures are!
Under the leadership of a large number of experienced Russian guides, the Chu army passed through the middle and lower reaches of the Angara River faster than when they passed through the upper reaches...

Because of the idea of ​​collecting a large amount of hydrological confidence in the river, and dispatching hydrological reconnaissance ships in advance to make actual measurements, the Chu army was also more courageous when marching.

In some of the more dangerous sections of the river, only people go ashore and pass on land, but the materials are still advanced by means of boat transport and risky passage, and the overall speed is increased...

After all, the Great Chu Empire had a lot of supplies. Even if a small number of ships sank in dangerous river sections, it would not be a big problem. The captains and sailors were all naval officers and soldiers. They were proficient in water skills and had rich self-rescue capabilities.

However, if a troop carrier sinks, a large number of people will fall into the water, and rescue will be very troublesome at that time. If it is not done well, there will be large-scale casualties.

Using guides and paying a certain amount of material losses, the most important thing is that the soldiers of the Chu army are physically strong, so that the marching speed is quite fast, far exceeding the expectations of the Russians.

The physical fitness of the soldiers of the Chu Army has always been very good, so during the domestic unification war, when the people under the rule did not have enough to eat, the soldiers of the Chu Army had already managed to eat enough, and they could still eat food every two days. It's fun to eat some poultry eggs or broth.

Good food allowed the soldiers of the Chu army to be fully trained, and good training led to the excellent physical fitness of the soldiers of the Chu army.

This good physical fitness was finally fed back to the march, which created the powerful ability of the Chu army to march on foot.

When the roads are good, it is easy to walk [-] kilometers a day. Even if the roads are not good, light infantry can walk more than ten to twenty kilometers.

On the march of the Angara River, because a large amount of materials, including heavy goods such as artillery, are transported by ship, even in dangerous river sections, the infantry marching on the ground are actually marching lightly, and only need to bring On the side weapons and personal items on the line.

Under such circumstances, the speed of marching on foot is quite fast.

The rapid march of the Chu army as a whole far exceeded the expectations of the Russians. In the end, the Russians in Yenisesk found that they had not yet completed comprehensive strategic preparations, and the troops mobilized from the rear had not yet been shadowed.

The Chu army had already crossed the Yenisei River by boat in mid-September, reached the west bank of the Yenisei River, and directly approached the city of Yeniseisk.

What frightened the Russians even more was that in order to win the city of Yenisesk before the severe cold weather arrived, the Chu army did not dawdle for several days to make various preparations after arriving in Yenisesk city as usual. Instead, the artillery was pulled out for heavy shelling that day, and the infantry was dispatched to launch a tentative attack.

Not only the ground bombardment, but also a large number of inland river gunboats of the Chu army approached directly and then conducted close-in bombardment!
The day before, the city of Yenisesk was still peaceful, but now, the city of Yenisesk is rumbling with gunfire and howling everywhere!
The reason why Chu Jun fought so resolutely and decisively is actually related to Chu Jun's own guilty conscience!

When crossing the river on the first day, even if there were enough boats, because of the time required to cross the river, it was impossible for the Chu army to transport more than 1 people and thousands of horses and draft horses across the river at the same time. what!
The first batch of the Chu army to cross the river and land was only infantry and artillery!

In order to avoid being attacked by the Russians when the Chu army had just crossed the river, the Chu army directly came to strike first, and after the pass, they started the film without saying a word...

Just stunned the Russians!
This is also the effect the Chu army wants. It doesn’t really matter whether the city is attacked or not. The important thing is to keep the enemy’s morale down and prevent them from thinking of going out of the city to fight back...to provide more troops, supplies, and cavalry troops in the rear. crossing the river to buy time.

As a result, the Russian army in Yeniseysk flew around like headless chickens for several hours amidst the explosion, and waited until the evening to think about whether to go out of the city to play a wave of counterattack...

But at that time, more than 1000 cavalry of the Chu army had successfully crossed the river, and thousands of fine cavalry were pulled out and placed on the south side of Yeniseysk...

When the Russians saw it, well, they fought back ass, go back and hide obediently!
The Russians stopped fighting back, and at the end of the cover operation of the Chu army, the shelling and infantry attacks were stopped, and then the two sides went back to their homes, looking for their mothers!
Ever since, the first day of the offensive and defensive battle of Yeniseysk city ended like this.

But the end of this time is just a preparation for a larger and more tragic offensive and defensive battle!

(End of this chapter)