Dominate the Country

Liu Yong's death can be regarded as a turning point in the Battle of Northern Jiangsu. Prior to this, the Qing army was aggressive and marched southward, bold and fearless; while the Fuhan army retreated step by step. Although it was effective in avoiding the enemy's front, it was certain that the army had lost its spirit. Moreover, the morale of the Fuhan army was not high and the news of lack of fighting spirit was even heard by the Qing army.

No matter how you look at it, the Qing army has the advantage and the Fuhan army is at a disadvantage.

However, with the assassination of Liu Yong and the rumors spread by the Fuhan Army about nearly 10,000 Shandong soldiers, the morale of the army was weakened. The obvious disadvantages have turned into advantages. At least it can be a 50-50 split on both sides!

In order to rectify their morale, the Qing army temporarily stopped in Yancheng. The more than 100,000 refugees who gathered in Yancheng, including tens of thousands of people in the city, fled in pieces. It severely spread the bad reputation of the Qing army going south.

The Fuhan Army stopped its troops in Taizhou. With the original city of Taizhou as the center, Chen Ming gathered all the troops he could muster and mobilized all the cannons he could mobilize. Shiploads of ammunition and food were constantly transported to Taizhou, covering a radius of There are military camps for dozens of miles.

——Everything serves the battle of Northern Jiangsu!

In the Fuhan Army, Chen Ming's will was the highest will. Although there were many hills, large and small, in the Fuhan Army, these hills were absolutely obedient to Chen Ming. Who knows that the Fuhan Army is a very traditional Chinese centralized force. All power belongs to the "central government". If he finds anything wrong, Chen Ming can kill him with a wave of his hand. Therefore, although the situation in Jiangnan is not very good, large quantities of military firearms and military supplies are still being transported to Taizhou in an endless stream. The Fuhan Army, which has been entrenched in this land for half a year, has not established any local government offices or anything like that. The term "military control" is very suitable to describe the rule in the Jiangnan Fuhan Army area. This method is naturally not suitable for long-term rule, but the power of this system is absolutely extremely powerful.

Chen Ming was not the Taizu of the Red Dynasty. When the Taizu of the Red Dynasty came to power, although there were many factions in the party, there were already many outstanding figures such as Duke Zhou. Chen Ming's backer, the Chen family of Lushan, is just a small country squire. How can he have many outstanding people and elites at his disposal?

He had also hoped that his hometown Tumenji would become the second "Pei County" or "Fengyang". Didn't Liu San'er achieve great success by relying on his group of fair-winner brothers? The same is true for Zhu Baba. With only Fengyang and his childhood playmate, how many talents can he gather around him?

After seeing such an example, people will have the feeling that times make heroes, and even excessively believe that their relatives and friends around them just did not encounter good opportunities and times, otherwise they would be the second Xiao He, Cao Shen, Zhou Bo, etc. Xu Da, Li Wenzhong, Tang He and so on. And he is the second Liu Bang and the second Zhu Yuanzhang.

Since the Chen family started the army, the three sons of Chen, Huang and Gao have shed their blood and sacrificed their lives for the Fuhan Army. Many of their descendants have died on the battlefield, and they have indeed cultivated a number of talents. But to say that There is really no one in the team who can stand out from the crowd.

As one of the two leaders of the Fuhan Army and the commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force, Chen Ming had to shoulder many responsibilities. The military's local operations, numerous internal problems, many external problems, and the wars he would face from time to time made Chen Ming very doubtful about how much time he had left to rest, or whether he still had time to rest.

This should be a challenge that travelers who have "big ambitions" must face.

Chen Ming has thought about this problem for a long time. His success is not simply based on personal talent, but based on his vision being higher and longer-term than the current era. He doesn't have any "bastard spirit". Not to mention the talents from outside, even the talents from southwest Henan are very few who join the Restoration Han Army. For example, Pang Zhenkun, I heard that he has resigned. Chen Ming doesn't think there is anything domineering about him. He led the army all the way south, and the team continued to expand and expand, and countless outsiders became his own. It can only be said that Chen Ming was able to come up with an effective solution-win the battle, so that countless people could live better, and the army can develop better.

The Taizu of the Red Dynasty in the original time and space relied on his unparalleled talent, while Chen Ming relied on the knowledge accumulated in history. In the era of the Red Party, people below were free to work, and you could be promoted or dismissed at any time if you performed well or not. If the problem is serious, they will be beheaded immediately. Chen Ming is now learning the same method. Whether it is the expansion of the secret camp or the management of local territories, many of those who came over to join the army and government officials have secured their positions, and many have been killed by the Fuhan Army themselves. Head.

Under this situation, Chen Ming tightly grasped all the strength of the expeditionary force. Therefore, Jiangnan was in urgent need. When given an order, Nanjing, Zhenjiang and other places did not dare to disobey.

The army stayed in Taizhou, with 40,000 soldiers alone, plus 50,000 support troops. The number of people, horses and chews every day was an astronomical figure. There is an endless supply of water boats traveling between Jiangdu [Yangzhou Fucheng] and Taizhou every day.

Now that the morale of the army has improved, the Qing army has suffered a heavy setback, and Chen Ming feels somewhat confident.

But his eyes were still looking at Yancheng. Today, as he was thinking about how to stumble the Qing army in Yancheng, Liu Wu came in with the confidential personnel in the attendant's room. The confidential officer held a very thick document bag and said, "Grand Governor, this is the latest information sent from the secret camp."

Chen Ming had just started to have bad intentions, but now the serious business was coming, so he had to give up his theoretical construction of the "stumbling block". He took the document belt, asked the confidential clerk to go out, and began to read the thick bundle of intelligence handed over by the dark camp.

The first is the death of Liu Yong. The Qing Dynasty's reaction was a bit slow, and it was unknown how long Liu Yong's death could delay the Qing army heading south in Yancheng.

There are two major sources of the current intelligence. One part is the basic information collected by the dark camp, such as the basic situation of the Manchu and Han soldiers and the training soldiers in and outside Yancheng; the other part is the information bought by the dark camp, many of which were provided by low-level military officers of the Qing Dynasty. The information provided by the officials is also divided into two categories: one is the situation of their internal official struggles, fighting for power and profit. The Shandong militia was so chaotic so quickly, not only because of Liu Yong's death and the rumors spread by the dark camp, but also because of the internal infighting and the many dissatisfactions of the training soldiers' leaders with Zhou Peixun. Who made Zhou Peixun's presence in Lianyong so low in the past? In the past, he was just a money and grain official. All the power of Lianyong was in the hands of Liu Yong alone. He didn't even control the militias of Dengzhou Prefecture and Laizhou Prefecture, let alone the entire Lianyong team.

Moreover, Zhang Gu had already removed his position as the battalion commander of the personal guard camp and was ready to take a group of Zhucheng soldiers to carry Liu Yong back to his hometown in Shandong. This immediately caused chaos in the personal guard camp, and then the Qingzhou camp was also in chaos.

Zhou Peixun's foundation in Lianyong was very weak. Now that he was suddenly promoted, how could he be "promoted"? Feng Sheng'e was a good commander of the army, but he was not an emperor with golden words. Moreover, the emperor's words were not allowed on some matters. Without ability and strength, no one could lift him up.

Don't think that he is the only official in this Lianyong army except Liu Yong. How many officials in Shandong province who were dismissed or failed to get back on duty after mourning were watching this group of warriors? There were six officials in the army. Although they were not as good as Zhou Peixun, a fourth-rank Daotai, in terms of rank, two fourth-rank prefects and a fifth-rank doctor of the six ministries made Zhou Peixun tremble in his heart. What's more, there was a Yansheng Duke standing behind this group of warriors. Liu Yong relied on his father's power to block the Kong family, but the Kong family could not intervene, but the hand that reached out was something that even gods and Buddhas could not extinguish.

In a word, the background of Shandong Warriors is very complicated. After Liu Yong died, Zhou Peixun could not convince the public regardless of his rank, personal ability, or reputation. The nearly 10,000 Shandong Warriors, who were originally twisted into a rope, now seem like a nine-headed snake. This is the biggest reason for the chaos of Shandong Warriors. The rumors in the dark camp only promoted the intensification of the contradictions.

Around the issue of command of this Lianyong, a large-scale "internal struggle" broke out within the Lianyong and the Qing army. The Qing army in the Shandong battlefield wanted to rely on the "geographical advantage" to win this force, although many of them were from the Zhili Green Camp; the Zhili armed forces represented by Feng Sheng'e, especially the Eight Banners, hoped that this Lianyong would be cannon fodder. The cannons of the Fu Han Army are very sharp; Wang Jintai himself has not spoken yet, but he has hinted that he does not agree with Feng Sheng'e. After all, he is a Han Chinese.

Chen Ming actually did not believe the intelligence of those so-called officials. He compared the intelligence collected by the dark camp with the intelligence provided by the officials and found that the Qing army was indeed not very peaceful. Chen Ming believed that the news was true.

Anyway, the intelligence showed that the morale of the Qing army had dropped a lot in the past few days. In addition to the death of Liu Yong and the rumors spread by the dark camp, their internal struggles caused confusion in the army.

Regardless of whether this brave armed force can "regroup" when the decisive battle begins, they have already helped the Fu Han Army a lot.

The momentum and fighting spirit of the Fu Han Army are rising day by day. If the Qing army stays in Yancheng for a month, Chen Ming will probably take the initiative to launch a counterattack against Yancheng.

"Kill--"

"Kill--"

In the camps of the Fu Han Army, the shouts of the Fu Han Army soldiers who were training were deafening. Whether it was the main camp wearing iron armor, the musket camp holding muskets, or the new recruits camp, the improved morale, the cohesive military spirit, and the little bit of fighting spirit that was inspired could all be revealed in the shouts of killing.

In addition to handling the troops, Chen Ming would lead people to patrol the camps every day to check the morale and fighting spirit of the soldiers. As the Grand Commander, his appearance in the army and among the soldiers also encouraged and inspired the soldiers.

It has been a year since the army left Henan. Among the more than 10,000 veterans who went south from Xiangyang, at least 20% to 30% died in battle or were disabled. In any case, they left the team. While manufacturing guns and cannons, the gun and artillery bureaus in Nanjing and Jiujiang did not forget to make armor, whether it was iron armor, rattan armor made of pure rattan, or rattan iron armor with leather and iron sheets. However, compared with the expansion speed of the Fu Han Army, the number of armor increased too slowly.

Chen Ming could only trust the old battalion leaders in armor. The total number of these people was only 20,000-including those soldiers wearing the captured Eight Banners cotton armor, and those musket battalions. Sixty to seventy percent of the soldiers in the latter took off their iron armor and replaced them with simple rattan armor. These people had to be divided into a group and scattered in Jiangnan, Anqing and Jiujiang. Chen Ming only had 24 main battalion leaders in his hands. Even if the Right Guard Battalion and the Cavalry Battalion were both large battalion leaders with overstaffing, the main force did not exceed 15,000 people.

"As long as the merits are met, the equipment will be replaced immediately and upgraded to the main force battalion."

"The number is too far back?"

"If you fight well, the number will naturally be at the front. Don't worry about whether you are the main force or not. If you fight well, you are the main force. If you don't fight well, no matter how high your number is or how good your equipment is, you are still a coward."

"The Fu Han Army wants heroes, not cowards..."

Chen Ming said this in front of the non-main force camp leaders. But what is the reality? In his plan, this camp of more than 20,000 recruits is still just a vassal force, a cheerleading team waving flags and shouting and beating drums.