Begging in late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 751 The Destruction of Jiangbei Camp

The balance of power has been reversed at this time. Previously, the Qing army was high-spirited and aggressively attacked southward, so Jianghuai was an outpost that it must have to occupy the south of the Yangtze River. It has experienced the Battle of Yixing and the Poyang Lake War that Wu Sangui betrayed. The vitality of the Qing court was seriously injured, and Jianghuai was already a bit tasteless to Dorgon. The Qing court could not afford to fight the war of attrition with the Ming people on this land, so it was better to give it up, and defend it according to the north of the Huaihe River.

Compared with the Yangtze River, which is wide and full of ports, the Huaihe River faces significantly less pressure, and the cost of defending it is also much lower.

At this time, the Great Qing Dynasty was already an independent Germany that had gone through the defense of Stalingrad. Although there were still aggressive tigers with the intention of eating people, they were already depressed. Benefits, enjoy the offerings of the Han people, and become unwilling to make progress.

Under orders and laziness, the elite of the Jiangbei battalion, consisting of 7 troops, the Eight Banners army abandoned Yangzhou, Fengyang, Huai'an, Chuzhou and other large areas of the Jianghuai territory all the way, and only wanted to return to the capital for their Spring Festival.

But even so, the Ming army didn't want to let them go.

Xuzhou city.

It used to be Gao Jie's residence, known as the thoroughfare of nine provinces, and also an important passage for Lianghuai to return to Shandong. When the slaves were established and entered Lianghuai, it was Gao Jie's wife Xing who led the Gao family's army to take the lead in surrendering the Qing Dynasty, opening up the Jianghuai line of defense that Nanming had painstakingly managed. In just one month, the three towns in Jiangbei fell so quickly.

Now, the Qing army has come to repeat the same mistakes. A while ago, the two Huaihe Rivers were unstable. In order to appease the people, the Qing court had to release Gao Jie’s youngest son from the capital. Unexpectedly, this Mrs. Gao was really a rebellious expert. Under the supervision of the Qing army, they actually got in touch with Li Yongtai, the general of Gao Jie's department. Taking advantage of the retreat of the Eight Banners army to the south, they led the Ming army to travel hundreds of miles westward from the sea, and first occupied the necessary place for the Eight Banners army to return north. Xuzhou.

It's still the same place, but it's really like the eight thousand elite cavalry of the overlord of Chu attacked Liu Bang's 80 princes' army. The navy and marines of the three divisions blocked the return of more than 7 Manchu and Han Eight Banners.

Facing the turbulent artillery fire, the Eight Banners army outside the city really showed the highest courage of the East Asian cavalry in this era. Under the continuous shelling, the charging cavalry was knocked down by the artillery, causing ripples in the huge and sparse crowd , but this cavalry is still desperate and continues to charge northward fiercely.

Sun Tzu's Art of War says: Do not intercept when you return to your teacher!If you can't get to Xuzhou, you can't go back to your hometown in Liaodong. People in the cavalry are constantly screaming hysterically. The entire cavalry is like a rushing sea.

It's a pity that what they have in front of them is the "Yellow River Embankment"!
The reason why these cavalrymen were relieved to charge forward was because the city walls of Xuzhou were dilapidated. A year ago, Henan was still in a severe drought. However, the Jianghuai Meiyu flooded the Huaihe River and destroyed part of the city walls of Xuzhou. There is an opportunity to take advantage of.

However, this is a death trap.

Gao Jie was obviously very concerned about his old nest back then. In Xuzhou, he had only one hundred and seventy-eight cannons in storage. Although they were all old bronze cannons, they were still enough to fight the brigade and cavalry. On the ground, there are still a large number of Ming army firearms ambushing, especially the infantry in the navy often need to use firecrackers to shoot at the boarding enemy. This kind of street fighting is tailor-made for them.

Passing through the arrow tower at the top of the city and the artillery control area fired on the incomplete city wall, these eight-banner cavalrymen who were returning home fiercely poured into Xuzhou directly from the gap, and their horseshoes trampled on the bluestone bricks that were hardened by the cold winter. The ferocious face and the white breath from his mouth were almost in front of the soldiers of the Ming army defending the city.

Listening to the loud noise passing by in a hurry, behind a bunker of a small store building that was destroyed by the flood and only half of it remained, he suddenly took a deep breath. He leaned out and shot a few times with the revolver in his hand. The slave cavalrymen who were galloping towards the Xuzhou Yamen immediately fell off their horses three or four times. This was also like a signal. At the same time, gunshots were fired from all directions, and the streets and alleys of Xuzhou City were noisy for a while. Cavalrymen continued to fall from their horses, and the horses fled in panic. The fallen knights lay on the ground moaning, adding a touch of red to Xuzhou in the deep winter .

The battle at Poyang Lake has proved that cavalry can't take advantage of street fighting.

After a round of fighting, the Ming army retreated into the alley, and the Eight Banners cavalry who chased to the entrance of the alley could only retreat forward or backward but could not enter. Stabbed to death with a bayonet, during the tragic and intense charge, the backbone of the Qing Empire paid an extremely painful price. It finally rushed into Xuzhou City, but was defeated one after another in the streets.

But Yue Tai, governor of Yangzhou, did not give up so easily. The Eight Banners iron cavalry retreated outward like the waves of the ebb tide. Immediately afterwards, infantry of four colors, red, yellow, white and blue, rushed into the city carrying iron round shields. , on the street, with a tiger-headed round shield and a scimitar held high above their heads, each of the eight-banner soldiers charged towards the Xuzhou Yamen with the courage of their ancestors to charge against the gunfire of the Ming army. As long as they open there, there will be a return to the north. the way.

However, this time is already different from the time of the Sarhu War. The power of the rifles of the Ming army that have been modified over and over again is as different as the crudely made firearms of the Liaodong army. The Qing army charged in a dense formation, with murderous intent in their eyes, Xu Hai monkey suddenly pulled the trigger towards the sky, and immediately amidst a neat crash, the Ming army raised their guns and opened fire.

The roar of the guns made the world seem to lose its sound for a moment. In the eyes, countless lights suddenly appeared on the main street of the city gate filled with gunpowder smoke. Light penetrated countless holes in the tiger-headed round shield, the waist knife and the spear flew up, and the bodies trembled violently and fell backwards. Terrible body wounds spurted blood to the front and back, the long street was the first, and several layers of Eight Banners elite soldiers collapsed on the ground one after another.

With the development of firearms, large-scale charges have gradually moved away from the battlefield. Napoleon can be regarded as an expert in column attacks, but at the Battle of Waterloo that ended with him, the decisive scene was the large-scale raid of the French Guards in columns. Charged the Duke of Wellington, but was killed by the superior firepower of Wellington's ambush, and defeated the strongest French guards in one fell swoop. The turning point of the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was also killed on the spot in the final Pickett charge. With more than ten thousand people, Robert Lee's offensive completely collapsed here.

In the First World War, the appearance of machine guns made trench warfare the mainstream of the battlefield. The volunteers who later generations are talking about large-scale charges on the Korean battlefield. As far as the person concerned recalls, the volunteers were lying on the ground, taking advantage of the night to pull away Crawling forward at a distance is far different from charging with cold weapons.

With the development of the past few years, the combat quality of the Ming army has been further improved, especially the further development of weapons. They are already in the trend of firepower, while the Eight Banners Army is still immersed in their ancestors. In the dream of occupying the land of Liaodong in one fell swoop, this tactical thinking has fallen behind.

If you fall behind, you will be beaten!This is an unchanging truth.

During the first wave of charge, the Eight Banners had invested more than 2 cavalry, and the second large-scale infantry charge also had 6000, but they were pushed back by more than [-] troops from Xu Haihouzi, facing several places where the city wall had collapsed. Streets, relying on intensive firepower to defeat the charge momentum of the Eight Banners infantry, and then the Ming army followed the usual training, divided into three groups of infantry to shoot forward in turn, and the Eight Banners infantry hit by the head-to-head guns became even more dizzy. The tiger-headed round shield in his hand could not provide any protection at all, and once again fled outward like an ant nest in the heavy rain, rolling and crawling.

If the shield is useful, Napoleon's Legion will not be eliminated, let alone the Northern and Southern Army who need to protect themselves more in the Civil War.

"This, this is the Ming army?"

Back then when he served as a general under Gao Jie, Li Yongtai knew the virtues of the three Jiangbei towns clearly. This was still the strongest main force in Nanming. Since 47, Daming has won more victories and lost less. If it hadn't been for the fact that the Qing court actually wanted to give up the entire Huaihe River, and if it hadn't been for Mrs. Gao's news in advance, Li Yongtai would not have surrendered to Daming for fear of being liquidated by Daming.

But in the back, he was doing the work of transporting artillery shells, standing in Cui Gaolou in Xuzhou commanding the follow-up troops, and watching with binoculars made in Daming, Li Yongtai couldn't believe his eyes.

When did the Ming army become so strong?

A wave of awe began to well up in him.

…………

To be honest, regardless of courage, martial arts, and even formation, the Eight Banners Army far exceeds Wu Sangui's 50 Chu Army, but for the Ming Army, the Eight Banners Army is not as threatening as Wu Sangui. After all, the latter has been in charge of the firearms troops of the Ming Empire for many years. After marching into Jingchu, the contact with Westerners made Wu's firearms level develop by leaps and bounds, and inflicted great damage on the Ming army in the battle for positions, but the Eight Banners army?Emperor Yongzheng and Qianlong of later generations decreed several times that the Chinese riding and archery was the foundation of the Qing Dynasty. This time, in order to retreat, most of the cannons in the hands of the Han Eight Banners were also discarded. On the complex fortress terrain of Xuzhou, it is simply this The nightmare of the Cold Weapon Corps.

As the New Year approached, the Eight Banners army, led by the governor of Yangzhou, Yue Tai, launched seventeen assaults on Xuzhou. When Tian wanted to cross the Huaihe River, it was too late, and he chased after him all the way, without any real results. Li Dingguo, like a mad dog, led his Seventh Front Army with twelve divisions to kill him.

Even if the Eight Banners Army has a good fighting capacity, they were hastily pulled from various places in the Jianghuai River and fought hard for three days under the strong city of Xuzhou. Li Dingguo of the ten thousand Mughal army, the battle situation can be imagined.

During the Spring Festival of the 23rd year of Chongzhen, a festival that is highly regarded by both Manchu and Han, Yue Tai presented the letter of surrender as a New Year gift to the Ming emperor and all the citizens of the empire, becoming the first official of the Qing Dynasty to surrender to the Ming Empire, and It is the descendant of Nurhaci's ancestor Takshi, second only to the Jueluo red belt of the clan.

If Emperor Chongzhen and a group of gentlemen from the Donglin Party were in power in the past, it is estimated that they would have to be rewarded and knighted to win over these barbarians with bloody hands to fight for the Ming Empire. In the Ming Empire at this time, where is there such a good thing, the imperial legion is taking money from taxpayers and safeguarding the interests of the entire empire.

Yue Tai and a large number of Eight Banners officers were taken as war criminals and escorted to Yingtian. The Supreme Military Court of the Imperial Criminal Ministry drafted an indictment to prosecute these people for the war crimes they committed during the attack on Yangzhou. But I learned a lot about Japan and Germany during World War II.

Under the leadership of Hitler, the German clan was extinct and inhumane, but he almost conquered Europe, and it was not without reason. During the war on the east and west fronts, Germany sent a large number of eastern countries captives and defected troops to the west to resist France. The British counterattack encountered a large number of Eastern Battalions during the Normandy landings.

In January, the concentration camp located outside the ruins of Yangzhou was dismantled and reorganized. The [-] remnants of the Eight Banners Army were loaded onto ships, along with some of the Green Battalion captured in Jianghuai, and these soldiers began to be continuously transported to India.

Now Subba, Bangladesh has become the empire's first colony in the South Asian subcontinent. What is needed is to continuously expand the empire's power in Bangladesh. Now Li Guo, Gao Yigong, Liu Fangliang and other big men who once made a big splash in Huguang and turned the world upside down The rest of the Shun Army, with some subordinates who were unwilling to be demobilized or incorporated, were sent to Bangladesh in the name of mercenaries, continuing the legend of the Shaanxi Peasant Army.

Bangladesh is big enough. At this time, it is one of the wealthiest regions in the South Asian subcontinent. It will not be a problem to support a group of bannermen and police officers.

In this battle, the Jianghuai Plain, which is equivalent to half of Jiangsu Province in later generations, was completely taken back into the arms of Ming Dynasty, and 30 Qing troops were defeated and captured, especially the Eight Banners troops of the Jiangbei Camp of the Qing Army. The Empire has triumphed for the third time.

However, with the end of the Battle of Xuzhou, this high-profile Northern Expedition began to sink into a trough. The 20 imperial army began to build a defense line in the Huaihe River Basin, and did not continue to expand northward. Which aspect of the Qing army turned the scales, and now the overall situation, the geographical disadvantages faced by the Ming Empire have been revealed. The Qing army, occupying half of Bashu, began to come out from the Sichuan Basin and launched an attack on Jingzhou.

At this time, Chongqing Mansion, the main road to enter Sichuan, is still in the hands of the Qing army. The Qing people are in the strategic advantage of advancing, attacking, retreating, and defending. The Ming Empire needs to guard the huge Huguang, but the army has only about [-] divisions. In February, Jingchu The news of the urgency reached Jinling, and the imperial councilors, who were still furious, had to start changing the Northern Expedition into a Western Expedition to consolidate the western border of the empire.

There is no way, in order to turn Huguang into the grain production area of ​​the empire again, both the Ming Empire and the major chambers of commerce have invested too much capital and resources. The Battle of the Huaihe River has already taught the Qing people a lesson The turbidity in my heart has become less urgent, and the siege of Dengzhou has also been lifted, so defending the vested interests has become an urgent need.

The battle situation seems to have eased down again.

(End of this chapter)