national surname chiming

Chapter 372 Duduo: Seeking Wealth and Insurance
After Azig was completely pinned down in the quagmire on the Huguang battlefield, if the Qing Dynasty wanted to take advantage of this winter to open up the situation against the Ming Dynasty in the south, it could only count on Duoduo's road.

After all, since ancient times when the north and the south faced each other, there were only a few key passages going south——

Either the West Road goes south from Guanzhong to Shu;

Or the middle road goes from He and Luonan to Xiang and Wan;

Either take Feishui and Ruxushui on the east road to enter the river from the Huaihe River through Hefei, or take Hangou in Huai'an and Yangzhou to enter the river from the Huaihe River.

The West Road is impossible now, Wu Sangui will not contribute, and the Chididi thousands of miles in Shaanxi cannot support the logistics of the original round of military supplies entering Sichuan.The middle road has fallen into a quagmire, and the last one left is naturally the east road.

There is no need to fight both of the two lines of the East Road. To solve one of them, open the waterway between the Jianghuai and Huaihe Rivers.

If you win Yangzhou, you can ignore Hefei, and if you win Hefei, you can also ignore Yangzhou. There is no need to repeat the useless work of building wheels.

Duoduo had already captured Yangzhou before, so naturally he would not go to Hefei, which is under the jurisdiction of Zhu Shuren, directly from Yangzhou.

Whether the Qing Dynasty can make decisive achievements at the end of the 17th year of Chongzhen/the end of the first year of Shunzhi, the pressure is all on Duoduo's shoulders.

……

The words are divided into two parts, and the timeline goes back to more than half a month ago.

It was the time when Zhu Shuren, his cousin Zhang Huangyan, and his subordinate Yizhi had just separated and headed eastward in a low-key manner.

His low profile has reached an outrageous level. In order to keep the secrecy to the maximum extent and prevent the insiders from revealing the military information, Zhu Shuren even kept most of his own people secret. He only used the eunuch next to his wife, the little princess Zhu Yuchan, to deliver the letter.Only the emperor's father-in-law Zhu Changhao, Shi Kefa and Shen Tingyang knew about the letter sent.

As for the other civil and military forces of the Manchu Dynasty, they only know that Shi Kefa announced that Huguang will send reinforcements to King Qin, so that everyone can be calm, but at present, it is not Zhu Shuren himself who leads the troops, because he is personally in command in Xiangyang and Nanyang with Azig In the bloody battle, only a Huguang partial division came to help.

Of course, Zhu Shuren didn't do this to make his own people panic. He just wanted to make a shot to ensure that the suddenness was maximized. In case he could seduce Duoduo to seize the "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" and underestimate the enemy for a while. .

The iron cavalry of the Qing army were too good at running. As long as they were in a bad situation, it was easy to escape for their lives.If you don't lure the enemy to stick to it, it's really hard to fight an organic annihilation battle.

However, in order to achieve all of this, Zhu Shuren still paid a price in terms of personal honor and disgrace - for example, when he personally commanded the soldiers to go east to King Qin, it was only halfway through when he killed Li Zicheng and captured Liu Zongmin. It's only a month.

This was originally an extraordinary feat, if Zhu Shuren could immediately lead his troops to Beijing to receive the celebration in person, then even if his father-in-law directly conferred the Duke of E on him, no courtiers would dare to stop him in person.

Although Daming's title is still very valuable now, and Nanjing is still in his hands, the imperial court did not dare to overthrow Zhu Yuanzhang's different surnames casually, and he was not allowed to enshrine the king's ancestors.

But Zhu Shuren's situation is very special after all, he was given the surname of Guo alone by the late emperor before marrying him and the current princess, and he is also surnamed Zhu now.

Even if he has no blood relationship with the current emperor, he can still be king in the era of legal system.Destroy Li Zicheng and avenge the late emperor!This credit is enough!

Moreover, the one who gave the surname Zhu was the late Emperor, and the one who wanted to make him the king was the present, and they were not the same person, so no one would think that he was a poor man, and that he was regarded as a puppet by the emperor—for those who dare to say that, Zhu Shuren only needs to say a word. Can fight back:
The late emperor is so strong and resolute, can we even control the late emperor?Dare to speculate on the late emperor, what crime should he be?

But it is a pity that Zhu Shuren had to endure delayed gratification this time in order to win greater credit, and postpone the settlement of the credit for destroying Li Zicheng until he can officially show his face and return to Beijing.

His troops gathered from Xiangyang back to Wuchang at the end of October, and the whole army was ready in early November, and set sail from Wuchang, and they would be able to maneuver in place in mid-November.

Of course, if it is convenient to set up a situation, he can also control the rhythm a little bit, and stay a little longer before arriving in Hefei.

From Hefei to Nanjing, there is only three or five days' journey for the army. Even if there is a change, it can be remedied at any time.There is Shi Kefa in Nanjing City, which is much more reliable than the soft guys such as Wang Duo and Qian Qianyi in history.

……

It's not enough to divide it into two ends. Who made this year's southern battlefield, the field of vision is too grand, and the whole country's game of chess can only be seen clearly if it is divided into three ends.

While Zhu Shuren was pretending to be a pig and eating a tiger, and Azig was deeply mired in the quagmire, at the end of October and the beginning of November of this year, Duoduo, who had already conquered Yangzhou, was also facing new choices and huge temptations.

As mentioned earlier, news of the fall of Yangzhou City reached the Huguang battlefield in mid-October.Considering that it will take time to communicate on the battlefield thousands of miles apart, in Huaiyang, in fact, around the tenth day of October at the latest, Yangzhou City has already been breached by Duoduo.
The personnel and supplies that had not had time to be evacuated, or were unwilling to be evacuated, were also slaughtered and looted by Doduo, or they had planned to lead the way and respond internally, and they had already surrendered to beg for the protection of their new master.

For the next 20 days, Duoduo has been setting up camp in Jiangbei, operating the ferry, collecting ships from the north, in order to wait for an opportunity to cross the river.It's just that the Yangtze River is really dangerous, and the [-]-day preparation seems to be far away from being completely complete and catching the opportunity, which makes Doduo very impatient.

In any case, the situation on his side is much better than that on Azig’s side. One of the main advantages is that he can completely control the eastern waterway between the Huaihe River and the Yangtze River——

On the Azig side, the waterway from the Baihe River to the Hanshui River was blocked by Nail Jiancheng, and the ships built in the north could not go south.

On Duoduo's side, there is no need to prepare enough warships on the north bank of the Yangtze River in advance.As long as he controls Huai'an and Yangzhou, he can naturally sail the northern ships from the Huaihe River to Hangou in Huai'an, and then sail the boats from Hangou to the Yangtze River in Yangzhou.

Given that the Qing Dynasty has just controlled the national power in the north, it will take more than half a month to mobilize a fleet capable of transporting 20 people plus equipment and luggage across the river, which is still possible.

And the ship type is not too bad, at least it is a medium-sized sand ship that is seaworthy in the northern coastal waters and in the Huaihe River. I am used to using this kind of ship to run the routes of Tianjin, Shanhaiguan and North Korea.

During the process of stationing in Yangzhou and waiting for the collection of ships, Duduo did not suspect that the Nanjing court in the south was indeed trying to stop his preparation progress——

Because a considerable part of the sandboats he dispatched needed to be assembled by sea.

However, the direct naval force of the Qing army was originally stationed in the Liaodong Peninsula. Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming entered the pass with the Qing army. Because there were no opportunities for water warfare, most of the troops were changed to the army to follow the army to the south.

As for the Denglai area, because Liu Zeqing was stabilized by Shi Kefa, it has not yet surrendered to the Qing Dynasty. It just gave up the fertile land along the Grand Canal in Shandong to allow the Qing army to pass through, and Liu Zeqing's own troops retreated to the peninsula to hold on.Therefore, the Qing army has not taken care of taking down the Shandong Peninsula so far, so it cannot station naval forces there.

As for the coast of the Bohai Bay, there is no need to station naval forces. If you go south from those places, you have to go around the Shandong Peninsula, which is farther than the base on the Liaodong Peninsula.

To sum up the above factors, Duoduo needs to mobilize a large number of ships this time. These ships go directly from Liaodong to Haizhou (Lianyungang) into the Huaihe River, and then sail from Huai'an to Yangzhou.

Theoretically, there is another road that would be more direct, that is to drive directly from the sea to Liujiagang, Taicang, Suzhou, and then sail against the current into the Yangtze River—but this road is too dangerous for the Qing army. It is well known that Shen Tingyang’s lair is in Suzhou Liujiagang, Taicang, who has been operating the Yellow Sea trade for several generations, has extremely strong water strength. If Duoduo had the ability to break through the old nest of the Shen family and cross the Yangtze River along the way, he would have won Nanjing long ago.

Therefore, Duoduo had no choice but to dispatch ships from the sea route of the Liaodong Peninsula to the mouth of the Huaihe River.

And throughout late October and even early November, the Ming court in Nanjing was not idle. Zhang Mingzhen's household water guards sent out a small force to search and kill the large fleet mobilized by the Qing army on the Yellow Sea.

The fleet sent by Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming suffered heavy losses along the way, and when they were caught by Zhang Mingzhen, they had to disperse, trying to prevent Zhang Mingzhen from chasing them, and those who were not picked for hunting could escape for their lives——

This feeling is almost like that if the British transport fleet encountered the Scharnhorst/Tirpitz in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II, they could only choose to disperse.At the cost of the destruction of the unit that was hunted down by Tirpitz, other comrades who were unable to catch up with Tirpitz could escape for their lives.

This fight, which was far from the main battlefield, was carried out in the vast Yellow Sea, and the publicity was not high, but their contribution to the main battlefield was definitely not small.

It’s just that Doduo didn’t expect a single source to raise ships. Zhang Mingzhen acted as a “private fleet” on the Yellow Sea to intercept the Qing army’s transport ships. On the contrary, it strengthened one of Doduo’s ideas:
The main thing the Ming army was counting on was that he couldn't raise enough boats to cross the river!They are so arrogant because of the natural danger of the Yangtze River!

That being the case, as long as Duoduo finally gets enough boats by all means, he will desperately cross the river, and he will never doubt whether the Nanjing court may be digging a hole to set a trap for fishing—if it is a trap, why would they let Zhang Mingzhen act as an interceptor? Big pirate ship?Shouldn't they let people into the pit directly?How can anyone block the collection of the net before entering the pit?
Moreover, Zhang Mingzhen's banner has always appeared on the Yellow Sea, which made Duoduo feel at ease. He knew that if he took a sudden risk, Zhang Mingzhen would not be able to make it to the battlefield between Zhenjiang and Yangzhou.The court of the Southern Ming Dynasty still feels that he did not have enough ships and dare not take risks!
(End of this chapter)