Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 571 Support ([-])

On April 1647, 4, at the mouth of the Yangtze River, it was sunny.

The immigration transportation season that started in October last year was finally over. After hastily finishing the maintenance of the ship, Mo Ming immediately issued a general mobilization order in the control area, and then a large number of materials that had been prepared for a long time began to be loaded on the ship one by one. After loading, there are people and animals.After completing the preparations for the expedition in mid-April, except for a small number of troops guarding Yantai, the rest of the main force (including the army, the Black Eight Banners, and the Standing Team) was dispatched in full force, preparing to launch a large-scale landing operation in the Yangtze River Basin to cope with the current situation. The situation is getting worse and worse in Fujian, Jiangxi and Huguang battlefields.

Today's river near Zhenjiang is full of warships.The "Amur River"-class inland gunboats, which had been expanded to 8, just returned from the front. They raided two water villages of the Qing army on the Zhenjiang and Yizhen rivers. was burned.Although the Qing army may still have a large number of small boats hidden in the inland port, they will not be able to threaten the east bank fleet in a short time.

Speaking of the "Amur River" class inland/offshore general-purpose gunboat, it is definitely a great weapon at Marshal Mo's hand. Equipped with ten small and medium-sized cannons, this kind of ship has strong firepower and shallow draft, and can go to places that many large ships cannot go to. Go; and the speed is fast (10 knots), and the standard displacement is only 250 tons (full load displacement is 330 tons).Among them, the weight of the ship is less than 90 tons, plus artillery, drinking water, boilers, steam engines, personnel, coal and spare parts will only be about 160 tons (including 30 tons of coal, and wood can be cut for charcoal in emergencies). It is extremely light.The two coal-fired boilers consume a total of 300 kilograms of coal per hour (if it is replaced with Tacheng clean coal, the coal consumption is lower), under standard conditions, they can sail continuously for more than 100 hours, and the endurance is close to 1000 nautical miles.

If some additional coal is installed in the 80-ton cargo storage space, it will be very easy to greatly increase or even double the endurance.In other words, this gunboat is capable of independent combat on the Yangtze River.Of course, in most cases, the "Amur River"-class gunboat will move with the steam engine sailboat, because if the coal is loaded too much, the ammunition will be less, and if the ammunition is loaded, the coal will be less, so it is difficult to achieve both.

Earlier today, 8 gunboats broke away from the convoy near the mouth of the Yangtze River, and then went all the way up the river, successively destroying many water villages of the Qing army in Jiangyin, Zhenjiang, Yizhen and other places, sinking and burning the tonnage of the Qing army There were hundreds of small boats of no more than 10 tons, and the soldiers of the Qing army's navy also suffered heavy casualties under the sudden attack and scattered in a herd.And because of the super fast speed of this kind of gunboat, after the Qing army's downstream water village was attacked, the gunboats of the people on the east coast would have rushed there first and launched an attack before the messengers had time to reach the upper reaches.I don't know if the Qing army will set up Yandun warnings on both sides of the Yangtze River after suffering such a severe blow.

After destroying these water fortresses, eight gunboats began to rush towards Nanjing. However, this time the Qing army moved quickly and retreated the boats into the river with complicated terrain. return.

And just when the navy of the Qing army hid in Tibet to preserve their strength, a large number of troops on the east coast, which were divided into nine motor sailing ships, two armed transport ships, two flute-shaped merchant ships, and 18 medium-sized fishing boats (150 tons), began to land. Action, and the landing site was chosen at the junction of Taixing and Jingjiang counties east of Yangzhou.On the outskirts of the landing convoy, two fast cruisers and two escort gunboats were slowly cruising. On the other side of the river, Jiangyin County was stationed with a cavalry team of the Qing army, and they had to watch closely to prevent the other party from sneaking over.

The troops on this expedition include all of the first brigade and the wing headquarters of the long-standing battle team, four squadrons of the third brigade with most recruits, the elite security team and all the cavalry brigade, with a total of 4 soldiers; The 6100nd Company, the 102th Company, the 104th Company, and the Yantai Artillery Company (with 105 artillery pieces) were all dispatched, with a total of 16 soldiers; in addition, more than half of the "loyal" South African Eight Banners New Army also dispatched, counting three steps. The battalion has 920 people.Finally, Zhai Cong'e from Jeju Island also came here with two thousand of his subordinates.All in all, more than 2300% of the armed forces under the control of the people on the east bank are almost used here. There are more than 1000 soldiers and more than 5000 masters (7500 soldiers + 8000 Korean masters in Jeju Island). It was almost the largest landing operation in history launched by the people on the east coast.

The reason why such a large offensive was launched was mainly to cope with the two forces of Dashun and Nanming, which were getting worse and worse.Let me talk about Nanming first. Since King Lu's regime was defeated by Mongolian cavalry in Hangzhou, the situation of the Ming army in Zhejiang and Fujian has taken a turn for the worse.First, the regimes of King Lu and King Tang attacked each other, which gave the Qing army precious time to adjust their deployment and calm people's hearts.After straightening out the internal clues of the Ming army and preparing food and materials, Hong Chengchou (replacing Duoduo), who had already gone south to Nanjing, calmly allocated troops to surrender the four towns of Jiangbei in Nanming, Yuan Jixian Jiangxi soldiers (he himself did not surrender), Zuo Menggeng's department was the main body, quickly defeated the forces of King Lu, and occupied most of Zhejiang.

During this process, the Tang king of Fujian didn't want to sit still, but Zheng Zhilong, who had the most powerful troops and spent the most military pay, was unwilling to fight head-on with the Qing army.In desperation, the king of Tang wanted to go westward to Ganzhou, but the Ming army in Guangxi, Hunan and other places had an extremely indifferent attitude towards him, and seemed to want to support his own troops. The king's recovery ambition was due to the prevarication and avoidance of the governors and warlords in these places. The battle fell short until the Qing army invaded Fujian and was defeated.

But on the Huguang battlefield, a major change occurred within the Shun Army, which had fought vigorously with Kong Youde, Shang Kexi, Shen Zhixiang and others in the Jingzhou and Yuezhou areas.Li Zicheng died in the suburbs of Changsha at the beginning of this year because of his injuries.After Li Zicheng's death, the relationship between the leaders of the Shun Army became very delicate.Although Li himself designated Li Guo as his successor, he was not Li Zicheng after all. The powerful foreign generals Hao Yaoqi, Wang Jincai and others (with [-] and [-] troops respectively) had a bad attitude and seemed unwilling to recognize Li Guo. At the same time, they hooked up with He Tengjiao, who had gone far away from Hengyang, and the situation was even more delicate.

In addition to those who supported Li Guo, Gao Yigong and others who came back from Ningxia and Gansu together, Li Zicheng's elders Yuan Zongdi, Liu Fangliang, Liu Tichun and others each had only a few thousand to more than ten thousand soldiers The army hunted down fiercely and lost a lot of soldiers), in this age of strength, their influence was greatly reduced.

The disagreement between the foreign general Hao Yaoqi and others will inevitably lead to the split of the Dashun Group, and there are already signs of this. In addition to Hao Yaoqi and others who are hooking up with Nanming, Yuan Zongdi and others are also Tong Yanghe, who was stationed in Qinggushan Ezhen in Wuchang, discussed the matter of surrender (Azig had led his army back to Beijing after Li Zicheng's death).Coupled with the fact that the civil servants of the Dashun Group are fleeing more and more, the local governance is weak, and the finances are in dire straits, the current Dashun really seems to be at the end of its rope.

Unexpectedly, the situation that Li Zicheng was barely able to hold before his death would undergo such a huge change after his death. Mo Ming, who received the emergency report at the first time, organized an army as soon as the immigration transportation operation was over, and drove to the Yangtze River River Basin, preparing to launch a large-scale offensive in the Jiangbei area, where the Qing army is relatively weak, to contain and support these two battlefields.As long as a few victories are fought in Jiangbei and a few prefectures and counties are broken, the prestige of the Qing army will inevitably be greatly damaged, and the morale of the anti-Qing armed forces in various places will also be boosted. up.

But this is just wishful thinking of Mo Ming and others. It is really hard to say what the real effect will be. With the current situation of Manchu Qing in the whole country, it is really strange for those people such as Zheng Zhilong not to surrender to Qing Dynasty.However, as the saying goes, it depends on people to make things happen, and now there is only a dead horse as a living horse doctor. Who let the mainland take away 4500 soldiers from the Far East, and at the same time, it is still impossible to use the ship for half a year every year?The deterioration of the situation so far has a lot to do with the weakening of the offensive of the people on the east coast over the past year.So, as soon as the fleet was idle, Mo Ming immediately dispatched a large army to attack the grass valley of the Qing Dynasty. By the way, he restrained the Qing army and gave Dashun and Nanming a break.He reckoned that if he remained still, Nanming and Dashun would suffer even greater losses in their vitality.

The Qing army did not deploy many troops in Jiangbei, so the landing operations of the people on the east bank were not greatly hindered.In fact, the Qing court did not deploy too many troops in the south of the Yangtze River at this time. Except for about 1 to 2 Eight Banners soldiers stationed in Nanjing, there were not many Qing troops in other counties in Nanzhili.At present, most of the Qing troops in the Jiangnan area have been transferred to southern Jiangxi, eastern Zhejiang, and Fujian to eliminate the armed forces of the Southern Ming Dynasty there.As for the Huguang battlefield, Kong Youde, Tong Yanghe, who were in charge of commanding the local war situation, even asked for help again and again, asking Nanjing to dispatch real Manchurian officers and soldiers and a large number of green battalions to attack Yuezhou.

Before Li Zicheng died, Kong Youde and others had just fought a battle with the Shun Army in Jingzhou. Although they defeated the Shun Army and took back Jingzhou City, they suffered a lot of losses, and there was an urgent need to replenish a large number of ordnance and soldiers.Especially the red-clothed cannons destroyed by Dashun made Kong Youde's heart ache to the extreme. At this moment, facing the Dashun Group that had already built a fortress in Yuezhou and the area to the south, Kong Youde urgently needed new support.And this, it is not difficult to understand why Wuchang is currently mainly using political inducement to surrender to the generals of Dashun, which is really beyond its capabilities.In fact, at this time, Li Guo and others did not have the idea of ​​surrendering. The frequent entry of Qing army envoys into the Shunjun camp is a clear proof, but most of the Shunjun generals did not accept it for the time being because they wanted to shave their hair and change clothes.Tong Yanghe also regretted this, but he didn't dare to say anything more about this policy, so he could only continue to send people to persuade him to surrender.

Therefore, in such a situation, the army on the east coast began to land in the rich Yangzhou area, and at the same time cut off the nearby river, it is conceivable that it should have a considerable impact on the overall strategy of the Qing army.

(End of this chapter)