Dragon Sea Empire

Regarding the immediate pursuit, several foreign officers from the cavalry reinforcements of the West Route Army, contrary to their attitude of actively calling for battle yesterday, based on their decades of war experience, believed that they should not attack for the time being. Liaison officer Zheng Zhihu also expressed objections. They believed that Nu Chief was most likely trying to lure the Chinese infantry out of the immediate position, and then return to the carbine halfway, or set up an ambush to invite an attack.

However, Yan Siqi, as the commander of the East Route Army, directly ordered: All the cavalry of the West Route Army to attack. Previously, under Zhang Pan's order, all the 2100 cavalry of the East Route Army and the heavy cavalry reinforced by the West Route Army had all chased them down. go out.

The cavalry of the Chinese Army led by the heavy cavalry, rushed to the southwest, passed the hollow phalanx on the south wing, broke the line of the Eight Banners soldiers in one fell swoop, and opened a big gap in the dense team of the Eight Banners soldiers on the south wing. Then, more than 4000 light cavalry of the Chinese Army Breaking in, the troops of the Eight Banners soldiers Zhenghuang Banner, Xianghuang Banner, and Zhenglan Banner were repeatedly defeated. No matter how hard the Eight Banners soldiers tried, the heavy cavalry broke through to Zaotu Mountain indomitably. The camp tore a big hole.

As the first batch of infantry to attack, Zhang Pan's second regiment of the reserve team and 1000 sailors and marines crossed the position first. There were a total of 3000 people. Four columns moved forward quickly, and seven or eight lightning-strike honeycomb guns were pushed by trolleys in the team, but the field guns could not keep up with the marching speed of the columns and did not attack.

Zhang Pan led his troops through the chaotic battlefield quickly, and from time to time fought against the Eight Banners soldiers who rushed in front of him sporadically. He felt that the Jin Eight Banners' camp had begun to be chaotic. The Southern Eight Banners troops no longer fought according to strict divisions. On the road, he encountered Eight Banners soldiers of various banners.

Soon, one regiment each of the first division and the fifth division of the Chinese army turned to attack. The Chinese army behind the center line ignited rows of Thunderbolt rockets on the brackets, and fired them all over the sky like money, covering the sky and covering the earth. Shooting at the position of the Eight Banners soldiers, this time, Li Kuiqi, the artillery chief, transported [-]% of the rockets in the northeast to the city of Hetuala. Therefore, the Eight Banners soldiers were bombarded by thousands of rockets at the same time.

The Eight Banners soldiers who were still attacking on the center line were caught off guard by the rockets fired from the pockets, and then they were beaten up by the Chinese infantry attacking in a horizontal formation. Soon, the messenger came to Yan Siqi to report: "The Eight Banners soldiers on the center line The team started to back off,"

However, before the Chinese army was ready to attack, the battlefield in Hetuala with a radius of tens of miles was completely chaotic, with Eight Banners soldiers and soldiers of the Chinese Army everywhere, and a small group of Eight Banners soldiers broke into the reserve camp in the south of Daohetuala city , No one knows how they got here, because most of the reserve team attacked with Zhang Pan, almost no one was defending, but fortunately Yan Siqi's guards were still here, and a militia battalion in Hetuala City just came to collect ammunition. After a fierce hand-to-hand fight, the Chinese Army relied on their numerical superiority to wipe out all these Zhenglan Banner soldiers.

Yan Siqi received more than a dozen reports at the same time that the Eight Banners stragglers appeared in all directions of Hetuala City at the same time. The number of teams was different, and there seemed to be no unified command. They were aimlessly attacking the camp of the Chinese Army.

Yan Siqi, who was originally impatient and adventurous, now shouldered the burden of life and death for the front army. Instead, he calmed down and did not order the whole army to attack. Don't charge forward anymore, the infantry on the center line began to form formations in front, forming two hollow phalanxes with regiments as units, only Zhang Pan's troops fell into the battlefield on the south line, and the messengers did not find him.

"What the hell are the Tartars doing? Order all the troops to assemble on the spot. Except for the militia battalion left behind, all the troops in the city will gather at the South Fort,"

……

Li Xiao is a former junior officer of the Liaodong Frontier Army of the Ming Dynasty. He is very familiar with the terrain along the border. Because he was injured in the battle against the Xianglan Banner last year, when the Battle of Jinzhou began after the Northern Expedition, he was left at the rear of the Jinzhou Guard to serve as the defense logistics channel tasks.

When Nurhachi suddenly withdrew from Liaoshen, he couldn't stay in the rear any longer, and strongly demanded to come to the front line.

The West Route Army marched northward and eastward from the Liaoshen line, and dispatched troops to recover the fortresses and guards on the Liaodong side wall. Only then did Yang Dacheng feel that Nurhachi suddenly abandoned Liaoshen because he wanted the West Route Army to disperse its forces and delay them. He asked Lu Xiaotian to gather all the remaining horses of the cavalry brigade, plus the cavalry battalions of the divisions of the West Route Army, and gathered 5000 cavalry to break away from the brigade to pursue Nurhachi. Li Xiao just came to report. Lu Xiaotian still appointed him as the commander of the forward cavalry battalion.

As soon as the pursuit began, Li Xiao's vanguard battalion went into the jungle and lost contact with the rest of the cavalry brigade. It was not until Nurhachi pushed out of Fushun Pass that a messenger sent by Li Xiao came to Yang Dacheng's old camp. Within a day, Li Xiao had already passed the Fushun Pass in the south of the Eight Banners Brigade, approaching Saarhu.

Li Xiao's youth coincided with the heyday of Li Chengliang's family. Since he was 12 years old, he followed the Ming army who went out to suppress the barbarian tribes and traveled all over the border of Liaodong. On the south side of the road from Fushun Pass to Sarhu, there are only ginseng collectors. , The secret road that hunters know is not suitable for cavalry to pass through. Only the path along the river can pass through horses, but it cannot be passed by people on horseback. Li Xiao chose to take his own cavalry along this route. He asked everyone Dismounting his horse and marching in the water, in September, the river valley in Liaodong was covered with weeds and shrubs as tall as a person. Li Xiao ordered people to set fire outside the jungle. Thick smoke billowed in the air, and then, Li Xiao commanded the men and horses to follow the river valley into the blackened forest, setting fires all the way forward.

Some Jurchen tribes were burned and fled in embarrassment, and some Jurchen villages were burned and killed by Li Xiao's troops. Li Xiao, who grew up fighting Jurchen Tartars and barbarian tribes since he was a child, would never show mercy to any Jurchen tribe.

After Nurhachi led the troops from Jiefan City to Hetuala City, the cavalry brigade of the West Route Army had broken through the Eight Banners soldiers and arrived outside Jiefan City. Zhenghong Banner and the newly formed Eight Banners were fighting. On the third day after Nurhachi's eastward advance, Yang Dacheng's 9000 main infantry troops of the Second Division of the West Route Army and the main artillery brigade arrived at Sarhu. Li Xiao was still trekking in the jungle Moving forward, Yang Dacheng's old battalion didn't know where his troops were.

In fact, Li Xiao was a little lost at this time. Although he was familiar with the terrain outside the Liaodong wall, he had never penetrated so far into the Jurchen tribal area. Soon, he found that the dense forest in front of the troops had disappeared, replaced by a bush. And there were obvious traces of a large group of people walking. At this moment, he had to catch some Jurchen captives to ask for directions, and only then did he find that he had come to the south bank of the Suzi River, around Gule Village.

Only some Jurchen and Han hunters will come here, it is completely undeveloped wasteland, Li Xiao only has a few Jurchen captives and a rough map of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he can't help but hesitate: go to Jiefan City to cooperate with the West Road The main force of the army attacked the city, and continued to go west to support the East Route Army. Now his troops only had 5 days of food supply left. The first time the Jurchen villages along the way found them, they set their grain warehouses on fire. Therefore, the soldiers of Li Xiao's First Battalion of the Chinese Army's Cavalry Brigade, after more than 20 days of hard marching, basically could only live on the dry food they had with them when they set off.

Most of the land in Liaodong has not yet been developed. According to the latest "Meritorious Land Distribution Order" issued by Yin Feng, the vast land is waiting for the meritorious soldiers of the Chinese Army to divide it.

Through the interrogation of the captives captured along the way, Li Xiao knew that Nurhachi had already begun to march eastward to Hetuala, and issued summons orders to all villages along the way, removing all men over the age of 12 and under the age of 60. Near Gule Village, Li Xiao's men I also met a few soldiers from the Second Regiment of the Fifth Division of the Chinese Army who were separated from the brigade, that is, the defenders of Gule Village who broke out from Gule Village with Zhang Pan, so everyone knew: Nurhachi was in Hetuala front.

Most of the 600 soldiers of the First Vanguard Battalion of the Chinese Army Cavalry Brigade had the same idea as Li Xiao, marching eastward to Hetuala, following in Nurhachi's footsteps, striving for greater merit and obtaining more land.

Li Xiao crossed the Suzi River by night and attacked Gule Village. Gule Village had already been almost turned into ruins in the tug-of-war between the Chinese Army and the Eight Banners soldiers. At this moment, there were only dozens of Eight Banners defenders in the village, so they were caught off guard. All of them were killed by the cavalry of the Chinese Army. Li Xiao is now marching eastward along the original route of the cavalry reinforcements of the West Route Army, intercepting and killing the logistics troops and scattered soldiers of the Eight Banners soldiers along the way.

Li Xiao didn't know that when he started to follow Nurhachi's footsteps to the east, Nurhachi's Eight Banners army had already fought a battle with the Chinese Army's East Route Army under the city of Hetuala.

……

In the dense forest of Changbai Mountain, more than a hundred miles to the north of Li Xiao's army, a Chinese army navy and marine team with more than a thousand people was also in a predicament of almost running out of food.

The supervisor of the Tumen River Task Force is Fan Tao, the commander of the Navy's First Northern Fleet, and the marine commander who led the landing team is Yang Qi, the captain of the Northern Corps of the Navy Marine Corps.

After he landed, he went upstream along the Tumen River, broke through the obstruction of the Haixi Jurchen tribe, defeated the obstruction of the newly organized Eight Banners, and marched westward along the Hunhe River to Sarhu. , intending to copy the back road of Jiefan City, but the Han hunter who had no choice but to lead the way lost in the dense forest because he was not familiar with the road, and led Yang Qi's vanguard troops around in circles.

When Yang Qi finally couldn't bear his temper and planned to kill the guide, the marines who explored the way came to report that a village was found ahead.