Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1922 Change and Strength ([-])

On April 1685, 4, on a mountain path in the north of Zhenxiong Tufu, Chen Ming, a special military observer from the Eastern China Republic, had just put down the binoculars on his chest.

Today's weather is a bit sultry, unlike the usual coolness and crispness in this mountain, it makes people want to untie the brass discipline buckle on their chest.However, looking at the Dashun generals surrounding him, the decent Chen Ming ended this idea rationally, and continued to stand upright on the path wrapped in a thick woolen coat.

About a few hundred meters ahead, a large-scale city was surrounded by groups. Thousands of elite soldiers from Dashun Zuoying were scattered everywhere, attacking in an orderly manner.On the plains or hills farther away, the flags of the Dashun Army appeared at most of the traffic nodes or dangerous mountain positions, leaving only a few positions unoccupied. This was also to not completely cut off the enemy's hope of breaking through. weaken their will to resist.

"Cu'er clown, dare to resist my Dashun Heavenly Soldiers, I'm really impatient." A few meters in front of the left, a general wearing a red forehead said: "Forget it, this time let them know that our army It’s so powerful, to frighten the small group, so that in the future, the old chieftains will always have a fluke mentality, thinking that we dare not do anything to them.”

"I don't know what's going on in their minds. Do you think that the world is still the same as it was hundreds of years ago? Occupying more than a dozen cottages and allied with tens of thousands of troops can force the court to have nothing to do with them?" Another young man Some generals said loudly: "No, the world today is very different from before. The gun factory in Changsha can repair several commanding equipment a day. If you use a boat to go upstream, it won't take long. The materials were transported to the middle of Sichuan. These chieftains still have things in their heads from the Ming Dynasty, no wonder they are so stupid."

"Actually, it's not that they are stupid, it's that there are people behind them." After hearing this, a slightly older man twitched his beard and said sinisterly: "Those bereaved dogs in Xiying have taken refuge in that senseless The remnants of the Zhu family in the previous Ming Dynasty, that’s all, but in the past few decades, how many days have they not thought about doing small tricks behind us? Especially after our Zuoying entered Sichuan, they felt that they had robbed their mouths of food. Crazy to mess with us, it's unreasonable."

"Hey, Li Dingguo and Sun Kewang fought bloody battles with old thief Wu Sangui in Guiyang for two years, and the fight was so dark. Old thief Wu even lost his health because of his long experience in the front line, and he went from bad to worse shortly after he came back. Let us take advantage of it. The people in Xiying probably think the same way, how many elite veterans and Wu Sangui fought to the death in Guizhou, but they didn't get much benefit, so don't they hate us?" Some people with vicious thoughts also said Haha came over and said.

Of course, his statement is not entirely nonsense.Gein Nanming has always believed that when they fought Wu Sangui in Guizhou, the battle of Guiyang was even more soul-stirring. Although they were defeated, they also greatly killed Wu Sangui's men and horses. In the end, when Dongchuan and Zuoying fought fiercely, they finally couldn't support and fell down, which caused the front to collapse completely, and Shunjun moved into Sichuan.

But from the point of view of the Shun army, they came to Sichuan not for nothing, but because of a bloody battle with swords and guns.The fierce battle with Wu Sangui in Dongchuan, the decisive battle with the Qing army in northern Sichuan, the last battle with the Wu army in the Chengdu Plain, and the suppression of various independent or rebel forces in Sichuan, etc., which one can be done easily?To put it irritatingly, with your little capital in Xiying, even Wu Sangui's men and horses can't compete, let alone the Shaanxi-Gansu Green Camp led by Zhao Liangdong and others.

Chen Ming has been in Sichuan for a long time, and he knows a lot about the past between Xiying and Chuangying, so he is no stranger to hearing this group of Dashun generals talking about it. But not involved.And these people didn't shy away from Chen Ming when they were talking, and they didn't seem to care at all. This seemed to confirm from the side that the morale of the soldiers and people in Dashun was soaring.

If you think about it, now you control Jiangxi, Hunan, Sichuan, and half of Hubei. The land is not small, and the population is also large. It is the second largest power among the many princes in mainland China after the Qing court.As for Zuoying specifically, they fought consecutively and won victories in Sichuan, laying down a huge territory, and the entire military and political group showed a strong upward trend.If you don't have some confidence in your speech and demeanor, it's impossible!

"The artillery team is firing!" Just as he was dreaming, an officer suddenly pointed to the battlefield ahead and said loudly.And his roar quickly attracted the attention of others, everyone stopped talking and looked forward together.

Chen Ming took out a notebook and a pen from his pocket, and carefully recorded while reading.Even this kind of battle against chieftains is of great reference value, allowing the gang of big men in the local army department to better evaluate the combat effectiveness of the Shun army and even their opponents.Some guys who sit in the office all day are still thinking about 30 years ago, thinking that the Shun Army is still the lost dog who was chased by the Qing Army and has nowhere to go.But in fact, they have operated the central region for many years, with a deep foundation, and carried out economic reforms, reused new talents, the national strength is increasing day by day, and the military construction is also advancing steadily. The combat effectiveness cannot be compared with the past.

Chen Ming was entrusted by Ma Wenqiang, the former captain of the Southern Exploration Team who had resigned and returned to China, to focus on investigating the combat effectiveness of Liu Zhonggui, the governor of Sichuan. great opportunity.The road that Chen Ming followed was under the command of Zhang Guangcui, the military envoy of the left wing, focusing on Zhenxiong Mansion, Wumeng Mansion, and parts of neighboring Guizhou where the chieftain's influence had always been deeply rooted.

To be honest, this kind of behavior is a bit suspected of playing around the corner.Wumeng Mansion and Zhenxiong Mansion were originally subjugated by Nanming Li Dingguo's army in the battle of Zuoying's entry into Sichuan. Later, in the battle with Wu army, these chieftains also continued to provide strong men, money and food, and contributed a lot.As a result, after Li Dingguo led his army back due to internal problems in Nanming (it is said that he is now in poor health and may die of illness at any time), these chieftains lost their restraint, and they became Tutyul Kings very happily, until the Dashun court turned their attention to them. .

This time, the Dashun court took advantage of the tense situation in the northwestern part of the Qing Dynasty and began to vigorously develop internal affairs, eliminate the internal chieftain forces, open up trade routes and liberate the population at the same time, so it mobilized tens of thousands of troops from Sichuan and Hunan provinces.Among them, the Changsha side sent more than [-] people from the middle camp and the rear camp to march westward, and the Zhang Neng Department under Changsha from the Sichuan side returned to the Chongqing government, and then raised troops to the southeast to jointly eliminate the chieftain separatist regime.

If the imperial court is like this, Liu Zhonggui naturally has to express it, not to mention that they themselves also want to clarify internal relations, so they sent more than 3 troops from the incorporated Wu Sangui to march eastward to clean up the remaining chieftains in Bozhou and other places. Actions in Xiangxi area.In addition, Liu Zhonggui's shogunate also sent Zhang Guangcui, the left-side soldier and horse envoy, to lead [-] elite soldiers to the south, and the prefectures along the way also sent some united soldiers (that is, local militia armed forces) to cooperate. The total force exceeded [-], and the key points were clear. The chieftain forces in Xiongfu, Wusafu and other places also have the intention of spying on the land under Xiying's rule.

Seriously speaking, Liu Zhonggui's move violated the principle of "not to invade each other" set by the people of the East Bank and the two major military and political systems of Dashun and Nanming. After all, if the chieftains really looked into it carefully, they would all have Li Dingguo representing Nanming at home. Letters of appointment, letters of canonization, and confessions issued by the imperial court are not innocent people with no roots.Liu Zhonggui sent troops to beat them, in fact, it was the face of the Nanming court, although they did it under the pretext of cleaning up the chieftain forces.

But then again, no matter how much the people on the east bank objected, how convincing could they be in Sichuan, where the emperor was so far away?Yes, Liu Zhonggui's shogunate has a lot of dependence on the people on the east bank, but this kind of dependence is not enough in the face of the fundamental interests of expanding the territory and stabilizing the rule, right?What's more, they are actually very face-saving, saying that if they don't fight Nanming, they won't fight Nanming. They just play a side game to beat the local chieftain in Sichuan who tends to Nanming. Do you need to make a fuss?

This is actually the general meaning of the Sichuan shogunate's explanation to Chen Ming. Chen Ming also smiled wryly. After persuasion failed, he reported these back to the Southern Exploration Team to decide. What is Shun's team going to do?

Now more than half a year has passed, this army led by the veteran Zhang Guangcui first quickly entered the Wusa Mansion, which was the most troublesome, and broke through more than ten villages with the momentum of the autumn wind sweeping the fallen leaves, capturing countless people, cattle, sheep, and food.After obtaining the consent of the shogunate, two counties, Yanjin and Daguan, were set up in the northern part of Usafu, and many captured people were resettled and returned to the local people.At the same time, Chengdu also relocated tens of thousands of descendants of the former Wu Sangui's descendants and their families to settle here, divide the fields, and carry out military reclamation, in order to digest the land that originally belonged to the chieftain as soon as possible and restore the shogunate's direct control over it. .

Afterwards, after part of the troops were sent westward to Mahu Mansion to continue to suppress the chieftains, except for the few sergeants left behind, the rest of the main force was taken away by Zhang Guangcui and rushed eastward into Zhenxiong Mansion.In the first battle, the Baishuijiang Division was used as an operation, and its main force was destroyed on the banks of the Baishui River, killing and injuring more than [-] people. The enemy's momentum was dampened in the first battle, and then the Northwest Bureau of the Five Chieftains of Zhenxiong was calmed down logically. part of the square.

After occupying the Baishuijiang Division, Zhang Guangcui's soldiers and horses rested here for half a month to wait for supplies.Not long after, after the replenishment of soldiers and logistical materials were in place, the Ministry continued to go south, entered the naturalization chief's lawsuit, and launched an offensive to persuade it to surrender.After the persuasion failed, they were not surprised, they went straight to it, and they won consecutive victories in ten months, which surprised the chieftains when they wanted to cry but had no tears. When did the imperial soldiers and horses fight so well?Think about the rebellion of the Yang family in Bozhou during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, and the She'an rebellion during the Tianqi period, etc., when did the court not mobilize troops from several provinces in the southwest, which cost a lot of money and took many years, before finally being able to calm down?

But this time, there were only tens of thousands of soldiers and horses in the suppression of chieftains in the territory, and half of them were united soldiers.This is probably not only due to the fact that the southwestern chieftains had just been cleaned up during the Wanli and Tianqi years, but also because the combat effectiveness of the Shun army was much stronger than those guard soldiers in the southwestern region in the late Ming Dynasty.Don't look down on these troops that use new methods of warfare such as muskets and artillery, and are relatively disciplined. If the logistics supply is sufficient, the fighting is really more than an order of magnitude stronger than these chieftains.

Do not believe?Looking at the end of the Qing Dynasty in the history of the earth, although people are about to perish, it is amazing that the national power has been rising in the last few decades. The main reason is that people are trying to break away from the stereotype of the agricultural society and add a lot of industrial production. Elements, transportation conditions have also been greatly improved, making the country's productivity level much stronger than even the ancient feudal dynasty in its heyday.Therefore, they can calmly quell various domestic rebellions, and finally maintain the territory in general until the day of the dynasty's downfall.

Although Shunguo is not as productive as it was in the late Qing Dynasty, folk ideas are slowly developing, domestic commerce is becoming more and more active, and although industrial production is mainly invested by the government, mainly in military production, there are various private sectors. Investment in this category also has a momentum of rapid growth in recent years, and the overall development is very good.And more importantly, for decades, the rulers of Shun State, under the advice of the people on the east coast, have persistently built many high-level combat readiness roads or docks in the area under their jurisdiction, and some rivers that can be used for boats have also been widened and dredged. Conditions have improved, and these are real increases in national strength.

Although Sichuan is a newly occupied land, it has been a few years. The new policies are also being implemented steadily, and the improvement of productivity is also visible to the naked eye.In addition, the army under Liu Zhonggui's shogunate was not corrupt or depraved. After fighting against the Qing army and Wu army for many years, they still maintained a very high combat effectiveness. Isn't the chieftain at his fingertips?

So you can see how Zhang Guangcui's soldiers and horses, which can be regarded as elite soldiers for the southwest local forces, attacked the city with the momentum of the autumn wind sweeping the fallen leaves.The chieftains originally thought that the opponent's fighting power was only slightly stronger than them, but they could still deal with them by relying on the place, environment and climate, just like their old tricks against the central court for hundreds of years.But in this era of drastic social changes and increasing productivity, the power of these old tricks is getting weaker and weaker, so that they can no longer maintain their local rule.I believe that if this development continues for several decades, when the productivity level of the whole society is further improved, no matter whether it is the southwestern chieftain or the northwest nomads, it should no longer be a problem. This is something that has been slowly proven in the West. In conclusion, I believe that China will not be too exceptional.

Chinese New Year is really too busy, sometimes I rush to several venues a day for dinner, and there are too many relatives.Yesterday I was dragged to play cards until midnight. Today, some relatives came to pay New Year's greetings during the day, and my classmates got together for dinner in the evening.I thought that there would be plenty of time for Chinese New Year, but now it seems that I am thinking too much.

(End of this chapter)