Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 382 The Confident Hong Chengchou (Third)

Tan Tai hurriedly ordered the [-] iron cavalry under his command to stop the guard cavalry, while he himself fled back to Wuqiao Town with the remaining [-] iron cavalry.

The Qing army of about [-] was in chaos, and ran frantically in the direction where Tan Tai was escaping.

The infantry battalion of the Guards also came up in units, because the Qing army had no intention of resisting, and even the infantry of the Guards didn't bother to shoot anymore, and directly slashed and slashed with flintlock guns as knives.

Except for the remaining [-] remnants of the Qing army who fled back to Wuqiao Town because of their good legs or luck and the [-] Manchu cavalry.

So far, about 12 Qing troops were annihilated or captured by the Guards.

It was sunset time, the sun was setting, the dusk on the Qilu Plain was particularly beautiful, and the cold autumn wind made the yellow leaves rustle.

The former farmland has been dyed red, very dazzling in the afterglow.

Guards officers and soldiers did not pursue.

After all, after a day of fighting, the iron body also needs to rest and eat, and after the crazy killing, the officers and soldiers are a little tired.

Some just sat in a daze in the sea of ​​corpses and blood.

Others wiped their favorite guns, and babbled on their hometown dialects that others could not understand amid the pungent smell of blood.

"The strong man eats the meat of the barbarians hungry, and laughs and talks about drinking the blood of the Xiongnu". After all, it is the imperial guards who were born in the literati.

The three or five comrades sitting opposite looked at him and smiled.

Instead, he cried while thinking about it, and sprinkled a handful of yellow sand on the face of a sacrificed comrade.

At this time, Liu Qian, the deputy commander-in-chief of the First Corps, and the commanders of each battalion came over with golden knives and military boots.

"Get up, get up, clean the battlefield! Dinner will be served in half an hour!"

The officers patted the shoulders of the basic officers and soldiers, and the slightly tired officers and soldiers stood up in groups of three or four. Even so, the guns did not leave their hands, and they followed the flow of people back to the camp.

And the ambulance battalion of the field hospital directly under the Corps also began to carry stretchers over to carry the wounded and the victims of the Guards back.

The prisoners of the Qing army were also escorted back to Shangguan Tunbao by the infantry battalion directly under the Corps, and they were going to be escorted back to Jinan directly.

Although these Qing army prisoners were Han Chinese, after all, they joined the enemy and participated in the destruction of the Han dynasty. Whether they were forced or not, they would have to serve for several years after being captured.

Now all the ore and road construction in Daming and even farmland require labor, so naturally there is no need to kill all of them.

However, the Eight Banners of Manchuria were all to be executed, and to cultivate the national spirit of the officers and soldiers of the Guards, sometimes special groups had to be treated cruelly in special times.

Click.

The heads of a dozen Tartars were chopped off to the ground.

And the Han soldiers of the Qing army who were tied up and escorted to Jinan became more courageous, and they were heading south like walking dead.

"Marshal, the statistics of the casualties have come out. Our guards suffered 20 casualties, ten of them died because of musket explosions, five died of being hit by bows and arrows, and the other five were hacked to death. The Qing army suffered [-] casualties. , we captured [-] prisoners."

When a trainee officer student named Sang Xiangkai walked up to Zhou Yuji at this time, Zhou Yuji couldn't help but smile when he heard this: "The 20 Qing army is so vulnerable, and my first army only dispatched one regiment, and it's just a matter of time." We lost 20 casualties and captured [-] prisoners, but we only lost [-] people. No one will believe this. It seems that the strength of the war between my Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty has really changed."

"Marshal, just got the news that Tan Tai has withdrawn, and has withdrawn to the direction of Dongguang."

At that time, Liu Qian, the deputy general, came to Zhou Yuji.

Sang Xiangkai was watching. As a cadet officer, he was very curious about how these generals planned.

"Withdrawal, it seems that he is really scared. According to the meaning of the above, we are going to eat Tan Tai, and we can't let him leave so easily. There is no need for the Second Corps to stay in Linyi anymore, and order him to go north for fun. Mausoleum, stationed on the east bank of Fuhe River, waiting for an opportunity to occupy Nanpi to block Tan Tai's retreat after half a month, and the First Corps set off to occupy Wuqiao after half a month."

Zhou Yuji was talking on the side, and Sang Xiangkai was watching. He actually didn't quite understand why Zhou Yuji, Marquis of Ningwu, suddenly asked the Second Corps to occupy Nanpi in half a month, and it took half a month for the First Corps to occupy Wuqiao.

But after he looked at the map again, he realized that Dongguang County was sandwiched between the canal and the Fuhe. encircled by .

Zhou Yuji did think like Sang Xiangkai did.

And then Sang Xiangkai saw that the officers and soldiers of the First Guards Army at all levels started to implement around this strategic goal, the deployment of troops, horses, money and food, the marching situation of each unit, the weather forecast, and the change of the enemy's whereabouts.

Sometimes in order to reduce Tan Tai's doubts that the guards would eat him, the guards would deliberately make a southward shift to hide his whereabouts.

……

After the Tan Tai troops of the Qing army retreated to Dongguang, they did leave an army at Wuqiao to monitor the movement of the guards.

Seeing that the guards did not go north to occupy Wuqiao, he was relieved, and began to station in Dongguang City to wait for changes in the situation.

Tan Tai himself was heartbroken, he didn't expect the Guards to be so strong, and he had lost more than half of his troops just before the war started, and the morale of the army had long been weakened.

He could only ask the regent Dorgon for help, asking for more support, and in order to avoid being punished by Dorgon, he directly exaggerated that he was blocked by hundreds of thousands of guards, and he was definitely the main force of the guards.

Therefore, Tan Tai suffered heavy losses and had to retreat to Dongguang and so on.

Although Dorgon has strong military talents, he has no clairvoyance. Naturally, he cannot know the real battle situation on the front line for a while, but he also knows that even if he is the actual supreme ruler of the Qing Dynasty, he cannot intervene in the local military. Believe me, he only agreed to send [-] newly-made red cannons to Tan Taijia and deploy [-] troops from Abatay's command to prepare coastal defense troops to go south to rescue Tan Taijia.

At the same time, Dorgon also ordered people to tell Hong Chengchou the news of Tan Tai's retreat to Dongguang, and Hong Chengchou made unified planning, but he also wrote his own opinion, and Dorgon's opinion was whether it was true as Tan Tai said. The main force of the army is in Shandong, and Hong Chengchou's main force of the Qing army should take advantage of this and immediately go south to Henan to occupy Kaifeng.

Hong Chengchou was very excited after receiving Dorgon's letter. Just as Dorgon was not angry because of Tan Tai's defeat, he was not depressed because of Tan Tai's defeat. In his opinion, this was all he expected thing.

He is more and more convinced that Henan has no main force of the Guards.

For this reason, Hong Chengchou directly and boldly ordered all the 50 main forces of the Qing army to cross the river. He was even more proud when he saw that Lu Zhenfei, the governor of Henan and the commander-in-chief of the Ming court, did not send troops to stop him from crossing the river, and even the Ming army fled directly against the river. It is more confirmed that Lu Zhenfei does not have the main force of the Guards in Henan.

"This road is clear, and the replies are vague several times. This officer sees that he will not cry when he sees the coffin. When my army surrounds him in Kaifeng City, we will see whether he will return or not!"

Hong Chengchou slapped Lu Zhenfei's letter on the table, but he didn't notice the sneer of Henan Admiral Zhou Ze at the foot of the wall.

(End of this chapter)