Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1642

"Xinchang County, an important town in the south of Shaoxing Prefecture, is also a nail in the back of the Qing army's controlled area. It is controlled by us, but Shaoxing in the north and Jinhua in the south are indeed important places favored by military strategists." On the newly repaired city wall of Xinchang County, the county magistrate Min Honggui supported the barrel of a 12-pound cannon at the top of the city, shaking his head and said: "This is the hub of the entire Zhejiang from north to south. If the Qing army fights hard, it will inevitably Gather heavy troops here and launch a fierce attack with crowd tactics. If we don't pull out our nail, they won't be able to go south with confidence."

"Don't be frightened by the enemy's arrogance." Bogdan, the commander of the Second Division of the Zhejiang New Army, held a large green brick in his hand, looked at the foggy sky in the distance, and said, "With our Second Division here, we can't get out." Big problem. And looking at the intelligence collected in the past few days, the troops of the Qing army going south are fake and real, their real strength is very suspicious, and I haven't seen how many artillery they have with the army. I always feel that they are a little guilty, not playing for real of."

Min Honggui was speechless when he heard the words, and fell into deep thought.As a cadre born in the Ming Dynasty with new ideas, Min Honggui is not ignorant of the drastically changing warfare model in China today.At least, he clearly knows that whether it is the Ming, Shun, Qing, or the East Bank, the number of guns in the army sequence has increased significantly. However, it is an indisputable fact that they also rely heavily on artillery combat.Therefore, to see if the Qing army is really going south in a big way, you only need to see if they have enough cannons and gunpowder to know-go south without cannons, are you kidding!

But many things are not afraid of ten thousand, just in case.After all, you have a few scouts on the east coast, dare to check every gully in this mountain?What if the artillery units of the Qing army did not take the main road, but took the small road, although there are indeed certain problems in transportation.

Therefore, Min Honggui didn't dare to gamble, he didn't dare to joke about the lives of tens of thousands of people in Xinchang County.Of course, Bogdan will not pin his hopes on this. Although he is arrogant, his war experience is real. He fought against the Ottoman Turks in the early years, and later fought against the Indians in the Eastern Mainland. Fighting against the Danes, fighting against the Russians, and fighting against the Eight Banners, this experience can embarrass a large number of generals from all sides on the Chinese battlefield at this time, so Liao Xiaoyao can also safely hand over 8000 people from the Second Division of the New Army. in his hand.

It is worth mentioning that the second division only had three infantry regiments when it fought the Qing army last time. After almost two years of preparation, the second division is now basically complete.Among them, the most important cavalry regiment (Second Cavalry Regiment) has also been formed. A thousand gauchos from the American continent were sent to the Far East after being trained in the mainland for a period of time, and were incorporated into the Formation of the Second Cavalry Regiment.

The Gauchos were described by the Spanish colonists as "never seen people more like centaurs than them", which shows their superb riding skills, and there is no doubt about the basic skills of cavalry.But at the same time, the shortcomings of these people are also very obvious, that is, their discipline is very poor, and their ability to cooperate in combat is weak.

However, considering that the scale of cavalry operations in mountainous areas like Zhejiang cannot be large, the discipline of the "Centaur Cavalry Regiment" (that is, the Second Cavalry Regiment, which is a discriminatory and contemptuous name for the regiment by some soldiers on the east coast) The disadvantage of sexual inadequacy can be greatly weakened.On the contrary, the advantages of being good at fighting alone and fighting on a small scale can be greatly magnified, so the natives assigned these people to the Second Division of the New Army to strengthen their strength.

In addition, the 1000 gauchos sent from the mainland are a one-off, that is, it will be difficult to replenish them in an organized way like this time.It has been clearly stated above that the quota is only [-] people. In the future, if one person dies in the Second Cavalry Regiment, one person will be replaced locally, and ten people will be replaced locally. Battalion, after the casualties in the fight with the Chinese army, he added at the beginning, and then he simply arrested Koreans as soldiers, which was also drunk.

Three infantry regiments, one cavalry regiment, plus the technical arms of the division's artillery, engineering, and heavy troops, the second division of the Zhejiang New Army has almost been formally established. The total strength of the division is more than 7700, and it is well-equipped, With rich combat experience, it can be called a powerful force on the land of southern China.

The commander of the second division, Bogdan, has always been very ruthless in training troops. Anyone who steals, rapes and cheats will be served with a baton and a whip. Therefore, the quality of training in this division is also very high. The officers and soldiers also have a vicious attitude on weekdays. It is the sharpest sword in the hands of Jiang Zhiqing, the leader of the Southern Pioneering Team, although this knife can sometimes hurt himself - the Second Division of the New Army often makes the garrison go crazy, and the people complain and cry for grievances. It was almost full of desks in the office of the Southern Command, but Jiang Zhiqing suppressed most of them, because what he wanted was a tiger-wolf division.

This time, after several months of fighting with the people on the east bank in the north, the Qing army suddenly moved south in a large scale. The vanguard even fought twice with the troops of the second division in the area between Shengxian and Xinchang. .These two battles were at the level of thousands of people. One was the Fifth Infantry Regiment. At that time, they formed an orthodox Spanish square formation and used artillery bombardment tactics to defeat a tentative attack by the Qing army; The performance of the famous "Centaur Cavalry Regiment" was held. More than [-] gaucho cavalry fought against a group of Mongolian cavalry on the north bank of Dongxi (now Xinchang River), and they won the battle, forcing the opponent to leave behind nearly a hundred corpses , and its own casualties were only dozens of people.This battle was considered to have established the reputation of the Second Cavalry Regiment, and it was the first time for the Mongols to see that someone was on par with them in terms of riding skills. It felt like they had seen a ghost.

After the defeat in the two small-scale confrontations, the morale of the forwards of the Qing army was frustrated, and they temporarily retreated to the territory of Shengxian County, as if they were waiting for the arrival of the main force before making plans.The people from the east bank also took advantage of this gap and began to gather the troops of the Second Division of the New Army stationed in various places, and concentrated them around Xinchang County, posing a posture of fighting at any time.

As for the issue of local defense after the Second Division left, one is that the militia security regiments of the local counties are in charge. In addition, Jiang Zhiqing also started to form the Fifth Division of the Zhejiang New Army with the permission of Liao Xiaoyao to serve as the commander of the entire southern theater. strategic reserve.It's just that the soldiers are hard to find and the salaries and equipment are scarce. There is absolutely no reason for the success of the construction in the short term, so we can only slowly find a way.

"Today is already May 5th, what the hell is this Tong Guogang doing? Is his 8 troops full of wine bags and rice bags? Why hasn't the assembly been completed yet? Could it be that they have all gone to the Zhuji area to attack the western half of Jinhua Mansion? "Bogdan walked up and down the city wall, frowned and said: "If this is the case, will Zhang Huangyan and those people be able to stop it? To be honest, although their army has completed some modernization reforms in the past few years, but It’s still the same as before. Those generals, generals, etc., I think their level is very limited, Zhang Huangyan is willing to learn, but the dynasty’s first-class veterans are not easy to adapt, their army is still the same old style!”

"No, I have to strengthen the sentry and find out the situation ahead as much as possible. Now the Qing army doesn't know that my whole division has arrived in Xinchang County, but we don't know how many troops the Qing army has assembled in Shengxian County. The situation on the battlefield It’s not clear at all, how to make decisions.” Bogdan turned to the end, slapped the palm of his right hand heavily on the bricks of the city wall, and said through gritted teeth: “Damn, I’m going to play a bloody scout game with the Qing army again. It's a fight."

"General, just do whatever you want. I, Min, will definitely help you. There is a militia and security regiment of 1000 people in Xinchang County (but the combat power seems to be extremely suspicious), and the general situation is enough. As long as the new army first If the strong force of the Second Division is still there, then Xinchang County is safe, I am absolutely sure of that." Min Honggui also said at this time.

Now that he had made up his mind, Bogdan divided thousands of people from the Second Cavalry Regiment into dozens of groups, and continued to conduct sentry inspections in the Xinsheng Basin and even further away in Kuaiji Mountain and Siming Mountain. The small group of scouts and cavalry fought countless encounters, and both sides suffered extremely heavy losses, but generally speaking, the east bank side suffered less losses due to reasons of riding, equipment and training, and the Qing cavalry often had to pay double the price In order to cause a certain degree of damage to the people on the east coast.

After such a bloody scouting battle lasted for more than half a month, the Qing army couldn't take it any longer (after all, the people who died were all the children of the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners). The field was given over to the scouts on the east bank, which made the fog of war on the map in front of Bogdan slightly smaller, and made more guesses about the deployment of the Qing army.

And just at this time, news from King Lu came again: At the end of April and early May, the Qing army launched a large-scale offensive in the Pujiang and Yiwu areas in the northwest of Jinhua Prefecture, with "tens of thousands" of troops. Wang Dynasty, a veteran general of the royal regime, led his troops to fight with the Qing army on the Huanjiang River, but he was defeated. Now he gathers the defeated troops and sticks to Pujiang County. The Qing army was eager to take it, but the situation is not good, but it is indisputable. fact.

Bogdan was very interested in the battles that took place in the west of Jinhua Mansion, and repeatedly asked the envoys about the exact number of Qing troops, how many field artillery there were, how many siege cannons were there, who the generals were, and whether there were multiple divisions.It is a pity that King Lu's army was indeed rotten to a certain extent. They could not tell the exact number of the Qing army—the concept of "tens of thousands" is too vague. In fact, there is a big difference between 3 and 6. The former means that the Qing army can deploy a lot more troops in Shengxian County - the statistics on the number of artillery pieces of the Qing army are also inconsistent, and it is not even clear who the commander-in-chief is, which is simply speechless.

At this point in the matter, Bogdan no longer had any hope for the 4 or [-] horses under King Lu. He felt that instead of being interfered by pig teammates, he might as well take the initiative to test the Qing army and see how the situation is.His plan was quickly approved by Jiang Zhiqing. Of course, after Jiang Zhiqing received the information that King Lu's troops were in chaos, he immediately selected some elite personnel from the Gendarmerie Command and rushed to the King Lu's army in Jinhua Mansion. , intending to independently collect first-hand information.

On May 5, Bogdan personally led the main force of the Second Division of the New Army down the Dongxi River and went straight to Shengxian County.When they set off, they were still a little apprehensive for a while, thinking that although their 12 or 8000 troops were elite fighters, if they were besieged by tens of thousands of troops from the Qing army, they would still be overwhelmed.However, when they walked all the way for half a day without encountering substantial resistance, Bogdan knew it in his heart. He knew that the main force of the Qing army was not on this road, but went west to Zhuji to fight against the King of Lu. After going, the servant of the dynasty didn't know how to live or die, and the defeat in the field battle was unjust.

Bogdan thought, the Qing army probably felt that they were not sure of taking down Xinchang County, which was a fortified city and sharp guns, so they turned to attack Jinhua Mansion from the west.After all, if Xinchang County is not captured, then the logistics line of the Qing army will always be exposed to the soldiers on the east bank. This is a factor that no military general with a brain can ignore, so they were persuaded and decided to Squeeze the soft persimmons first, and then go back to cooking the people from the east coast.

After understanding this festival, how can the people on the east bank make it easier for the Qing army? On May 1673, 5, the main force of the Second Division of the Zhejiang New Army gathered at the city of Sheng County. More than 13 Qing soldiers did not dare to fight in the field, and all of them retreated to defend in the city. What Zizi arranged on this road in Shengxian County was really a false move, trying to paralyze our army!

Therefore, Bogdan first sent people to closely monitor the Qing army in the county seat, and at the same time spread the Second Cavalry Regiment far away to guard within a range of dozens of kilometers outside, and then brought the main force of the three infantry regiments into the division headquarters. The troops directly under it began to pull out the fortresses set up by the Qing army one by one. The existence of these fortresses had greatly restricted the infiltration of small groups of troops on the east bank in the past. Now, once they are cleared, Sheng County will almost become a toothless tiger. In the future, the field will become a smooth road for people on the east coast.

In addition, many villages and towns outside the county seat of Shengxian County were also severely plowed by the tiger and wolf troops of the Second Division of the Zhejiang New Army.The local gentry accused the new Shengzong soldiers of "fearing the enemy like a tiger" and flew to Fucheng and even Hangzhou like a flurry of letters. For a while, the Qing army in Shengxian County was like ants on a hot pot.

(End of this chapter)