Dominate the Country

The wall of Shangshui collapsed. It was destroyed!

"Rush..."

Earth-shaking slogans resounded throughout the Shangshui front line, and a bloody tiger flag had been planted in Shangshui West City.

After three consecutive days of heavy bombardment, the entire Shangshui County changed its appearance under the shells.

One after another, the Fuhan Army troops rushed to the top of the city and rushed into Shangshui County.

There are no volleys of guns here, just bloody hand-to-hand combat and fighting. The Qing army retreated step by step. The city was already destroyed. The Shangshui Qing army was driven into a state of lunacy by the round-the-clock shelling and explosions. How many of them were brave enough to fight in the streets as determinedly as Enhui imagined? The business is over.

The Qing army in front did not flee immediately, and Enhui was already cruel and ruthless. At the county school closest to Beicheng, En Hui, who was in charge there, had cut off thirty or forty heads with a knife, including the heads of some military officers.

The Fuhan army had just entered the county, and it was difficult to think of "recruiting surrender" for a while. The hard-pressed Qing army could only resist very hard. What's more, there are supervisory troops among them - Eight Banners soldiers!

Zhu Yan put his foot on the corpse of the flag soldier and pulled out his bayonet. The stab was not in the right place and was stuck by the bone.

"Huh..." Breathing heavily. Zhu Yan did not continue to rush forward, but sat down on the ground.

"Team officer..." The concerned voices of his subordinates immediately sounded around him. Just like when he was the leader of the Anlu Militia, he was watched by his brothers all the time.

"It's okay." Zhu Yan waved his hand and did not stand up immediately. Instead, he took out a small silver pot from his waist and drank the remaining half of the pot of wine in one gulp. "Don't rush too fast, try to recruit them to surrender, see if they surrender."

Zhu Yan looked at the Qing army retreating again and again, and cursed: "Damn it, the city has been destroyed, and I have lost all my courage. How can I still carry this shit?"

If there is one, there are two. When one person shouts, "Hand in the gun and don't kill," there will be a second person shouting. When the shouts of "Hand in the gun and don't kill" are heard loudly on the battlefield, the students in the county school Enhui closed her eyes helplessly.

Enhui withdrew from the county school, and then the Fuhan Army's soldiers advanced to the front of the county school.

There were forty or fifty flag soldiers gathered inside, plus two to three hundred green battalions.

The Fuhan Army did not attack the county school head-on. Instead, they sent flag soldiers to shout flags outside. The lookout soldiers on the hot air balloon immediately passed the message down after seeing the flags, and the order was sent to the artillery position as quickly as possible. .

"Boom, boom, boom..." the sound of cannons engulfed the area around the county school.

The Fuhan Army's offensive troops found Qing army quilts and a square table from the barracks under the city wall, put two layers of quilts on them, sprinkled them with water, and a standard earthen tank was completed. Two or three soldiers were carrying tanks, or rather two layers of quilts, as they rushed towards the county school. Behind them were more or less Fuhan Army soldiers with bayonets drawn.

When more than a dozen earthen tanks moved with difficulty to less than thirty meters away from the county school, a Fuhan Army officer jumped up, swung his saber and slashed downwards. A rain of grenades was thrown inside and outside the county school. .

"Boom, boom, boom..." The sound of the grenade exploding, the huge shock wave and the flying shrapnel directly made the Manchu and Han Qing soldiers in the county school cry like wolves and howl like ghosts. As soon as they raised their heads from the Fuhan Army's bombardment, they were immediately hit hard.

The Fuhan Army soldiers behind the tanks took the opportunity to charge towards the county school with bayonets drawn.

A fierce but short-lived battle left more than thirty wounded and dead bodies, and all the Qing troops inside and outside the county school surrendered. Then half of the twenty remaining flag soldiers were eliminated on the spot. "Surrender without killing" and "surrender without killing" have never been applied to the flag soldiers. Even the flag soldiers themselves knew this, but they still couldn't help but surrender in the face of death.

If you surrender, you still have a slight chance of survival. If you don't surrender, you will only die.

The whole city rang out with cries of ‘surrender but not kill’ and ‘surrender but not kill’. Enhui did not sit in the dilapidated county government office waiting to die. Instead, they gathered the last controllable troops in their hands, and after gathering at the county government office, they quickly rushed towards the incoming Fuhan Army.

Enhui, who had not slept well for three days, had bubbles at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes were bloodshot. Looking at the troops in front of him, he knew very well that attacking would be a recipe for death, but as a loyal minister of Da Qingguo, Enhui hoped that he could fight as hard as possible to kill all Chen Ni who could fight to the death. As for how many of his soldiers could survive, he didn't need to care. Because he is going to die soon!

Hundreds of sharp swords and guns merged into a dazzling sea of ​​silver, and Enhui was facing the north. He wanted to say a few words to boost the morale of the soldiers, but when he opened his mouth, his throat could not utter a single syllable.

"Let's go -" After a while, a dry word burst out of his mouth.

Behind him, a bannerman military attache with a lightning rod on his head drew out his sword and struck it hard towards the north. All the words and thousands of words merged into one sentence: "Support and protect the Qing Dynasty!"

"Kill..."

There were seven or eight hundred people, and there were at least two to three hundred flag soldiers among them. Some of the flag soldiers bravely rushed to the front.

Hysterical shouting echoed through the ranks.

Fuhan Army's artillery shells also began to fall into the crowd.

When cannonballs suddenly fell into the crowd of Qing soldiers, large groups of Fuhan soldiers rushed out from both wings. The sound of artillery disappeared, but dense rains of bullets and grenades continued to fall on the Qing army. The last Qing soldiers in Shangshui City were also in chaos.

Pieces of Qing soldiers fell to the ground. Bullets and grenades rained down.

A "whoosh" sound rang in his ears, and a bullet rubbed Enhui's cheek and smashed the head of one of his guards.

Enhui's expression did not change at all. He died, and the most important thing was to kill the enemy to the maximum extent.

The sound of gunfire rang out like frying beans. The last fierce battle in Shangshui County, when the gunfire stopped and the fighting sounded, Enhui had already fallen on his back on the ground, and his cotton armor was soaked with blood.

Agui looked at Shangshui County, where the sound of gunfire gradually became quiet, with a face full of loneliness. In these three days, he led the team to really cut off the connection between Zhoujiakou and Shangshui. The roads between the two were originally dug up by the Qing army. The Fu Han Army paved the way and filled the pits. It was just a line, and it was very easy to block it. But Shangshui still fell.

Only three days!

The Fu Han Army concentrated at least 150 cannons to bombard day and night, three days and two nights of fierce bombardment, and countless rockets...

Such firepower is crazy in this era.

"What should Shangshui County look like now?" Ah Gui couldn't see the scene in Shangshui City, but he felt that Shangshui County must be full of desolation and ruins at the moment.

At night, the cold wind blew on the banks of the Fen River [not the Fen River in Shanxi].

Tens of thousands of Qing army cavalry quietly set up camp, and Wang Tenglong led his troops to join Ah Gui.

The sparkling river water shone brightly under the light of the fire, and Ah Gui picked up a pen to write a memorial.

The rockets of the Fu Han Army were far beyond their expectations. The appearance of this weapon almost turned the originally powerful tunnels into a cemetery. However, this weapon was not mastered by the Qing Army. The Qing Army's tunnels lost their effect on the Fu Han Army, while the Fu Han Army's tunnels could easily resist the Qing Army's counterattack.

There are also hot air balloons. The appearance of these two new "weapons" directly changed the war mode, making the large number of fortifications built by the Qing Dynasty last year and this year at a great cost of manpower, material resources and financial resources useless.

The hot air balloons can allow the Fu Han Army to take full control of all the Qing Army's arrangements. When the Qing Army's outer defensive positions are all lost, the Fu Han Army's artillery can, under the guidance of the hot air balloons, carry out intensive and very accurate bombing of the barracks, arsenals, command posts and other key areas in the city.

This is simply a nightmare for defense.

The deterrent power of the cavalry on the Fu Han Army is also quite limited. Agui described the battle of Li Shiyuan and his own series of thoughts after the war in detail to Emperor Qianlong.

That was just a small unit of the Fu Han Army.

If the target is replaced with the main attack force of the Fu Han Army, or if they only need to be equipped with 20 or 30 cannons, the Qing Army must first pay a heavy price to cause enough damage to the Fu Han Army.

Only with huge casualties can we get the opportunity for close combat, a precious opportunity!

The number of cavalry required in this way is far from what can be satisfied by a few thousand cavalry or tens of thousands of cavalry. It must be a cluster of tens of thousands of cavalry. With the current financial resources of the Qing Dynasty, Agui was lost in thought. How could the Qing Dynasty maintain a large number of cavalry for a long time? Moreover, the Fu Han Army appeared in Shandong, Beijing, Tianjin and southern Liaoning, and cavalry was needed everywhere.

"I think that since the tunnels and trenches are useless, they should be abandoned. Chenzhou has been lost, Runing and Guangzhou cannot be held..." Since there was a big loophole in the original plan, he would take advantage of the fact that the capital has not been put on the gambling table and pull it off early to make new plans.

But it was not his style to withdraw in vain. Agui wanted to take the Qing army in Runing and Guangzhou, as well as his cavalry, to play a big "experiment". No matter what Emperor Qianlong's reaction would be after this memorial arrived in Beijing, Agui's military order had been conveyed before he wrote this memorial at night.

...

On October 16, a full month after Chen Ming sent troops, a large-scale Qing-Han field battle that had been rarely seen since last year officially started in the fields outside Zhengyang County, Runing Prefecture.

The Qing army was composed of the defenders of Guangzhou and Runing Prefecture—30,000 main Qing troops, equipped with at least 3,000 flintlock rifles, and the cavalry unit led by Agui to the south. The Qing cavalry that quickly attacked Chenzhou and went south left behind the large northern Fu Han army that relied heavily on supplies.

The Fu Han army was composed of the 14th Brigade of the 2nd Garrison Division in Lulong and part of the 4th Division in Xiangyang.

The 15th Brigade of the latter was still stationed in Hunan, and the 16th and 17th Brigades each left a regiment in Xiangyang, while the 14th Brigade also left a regiment in Nanyang. It seemed that there were three brigades and one division, but in fact, the Fu Han army attacking from the south had only two brigades of regular troops, and the rest was an extra brigade headquarters and a half-missing division headquarters. The comparison of the forces of the two sides—1:3.3, Fu Han army versus Qing army.

The position was located on the north bank of the Qingshui River, with flat terrain and unremarkable scenery.

If Agui had not chosen the battlefield here, the Qingshui River would probably not have been noticed by the Fu Han army’s staff.

This river is very short, just a very small tributary of the Huai River.

Chen Wenzan, who commanded the 4th Division, and Lu Long, who guarded the 2nd Division, led their troops into the battlefield set by Agui without hesitation. This is a field battle, and it is hard to imagine that the Qing army suddenly wants to fight a field battle with the Fu Han Army.

Even though Chen Wenzan and Lu Long knew that there must be something fishy here, they were not afraid to lead more than 10,000 Fu Han troops here.

In the process of preparing for war, Chen Wenzan deployed the army in a mediocre way, basically divided into four groups: right wing, center, left wing and reserve.

The three brigades lined up, and then each of them separated a regiment as a reserve. From south to north, the military horn sounded at the moment of the decisive battle...

The Qing army's thirty or forty cannons were all arranged in front, and they could only carry so many cannons in a hurry to retreat. Although they were selected from the best, the cannons they brought out were almost all new cannons, and they were good cannons cast according to the new method of the Manchus.

Behind the artillery positions were musket formations, and there was nothing to block the vast plain. The Qing army's cavalry was deployed on both wings.

Agui raised his flag.

The Qing army had already arranged the positions. He looked at the dark night, and imagined in his mind the Fu Han army soldiers who were busy building artillery positions, waiting for the dawn to come calmly. All the orders had been issued, and Agui asked everyone around him to go down and rest, but he had not slept all night. He paced back and forth in the room, his mind was constantly thinking, and from time to time he stood in front of the table covered with maps, looking at the map and thinking carefully.

The 54-year-old Qing army commander was speculating on every possible action that the Fu Han army on the opposite side might take.

The location of Agui's headquarters is a village, which is now a huge barracks. It is late at night, but the Qing soldiers around the campfire are still talking quietly, and not many people are sleeping.

Many fellow villagers gathered together to discuss how to let the survivors convey their last words to their relatives if they are unfortunate. Some soldiers who are related to each other also gathered together to say goodbye quietly. The Fu Han Army is not easy to deal with, otherwise Daqingguo would not have lost half of its territory so quickly. After tomorrow's battle, who knows how many people in the current crowd will survive? Many soldiers are silently wiping their weapons and staring at the night sky quietly.

In the early morning, the war started with the rumbling of artillery from both sides.

Agui first gave the order to attack, and a team of Qing troops appeared on the opposite side of the position. Taking advantage of the mist before the sky turned white, the Qing army launched an attack.

The sound of the artillery startled Chen Wenzan, who was behind the position. He had not slept all night and did not feel any fatigue at this moment. Walking to his post calmly, the entire command center immediately started.

The Qing army launched the attack under the cover of the light morning mist. The Fu Han army soldiers guarding the artillery position fought back without showing any weakness, and the cannons began to roar. However, the main force of the Qing army was not placed in the most central position of the front line, but pointed its spearhead at the left wing of the Fu Han army. Agui wanted to take advantage of the cover of the light fog to see if he could take down the left wing position.

Accompanying the elite of the Qing army were more than 3,000 cavalry from Wang Tenglong's unit. They moved to the rear of the left wing of the Fu Han army.

Even if he couldn't do it, Agui had to mobilize the Fu Han army from the front line and force them to come to the rescue, so that the cavalry on his side, which had an absolute advantage on the way, could start a massacre.

The front position at the southern end of the front line was a rudimentary stronghold position, and the Fu Han army only placed a broken squadron there. After being attacked fiercely by the Qing army, the defenders gave up the stronghold after a little resistance and retreated.

However, Lu Long, who was in charge of the left wing, did not care, because the main position of the left wing was still behind.

The initial victory of the battle could not determine the final outcome of the war. The central position had already started, and only the right wing was still quiet.

Commander-in-chief Chen Wenzan was not worried about the left wing position that was attacked the most fiercely, because the main artillery group of the Qing army was always in the center.

The sound of gunfire from the left wing was intense, and the artillery power of the Fu Han army, which had an absolute advantage, soon merged into an uninterrupted roar. The left-wing troops, with shrapnel and buckshot, two powerful weapons in hand, allowed more and more Qing army infantry and cavalry to gather there in front and on the flank. The 14th Brigade was not given for nothing!

Two regiments plus the brigade headquarter supervised by Lu Long himself, with more than 4,000 troops and the combat power buff of rockets, the left wing remained motionless in the thick smoke.

The Qing army used the irrigation canals and ridges in the fields as cover, and the morning fog that had not yet dissipated as cover, to quietly approach the central position of the Fu Han army from the side, hoping to cross the baptism of artillery shells and directly engage in fire with the musketeer array in front of the artillery position. However, their movements were too big, and before they achieved their goal, they were bombarded by the artillery of the Fu Han army. A battalion of four or five hundred people fled backwards without even a chance to fire a shot, and the battalion officer who led the team was dead on the spot.

The artillery battle between the two sides was very fierce.

In the middle of the artillery positions on both sides, whether it was the Fu Han army or the Qing army, both sides had to accept the test of the other side's artillery fire before a close-range confrontation.

One by one, iron bullets and shrapnel shells passed through the square formations of both sides, traversed the space, and stirred up bloody waves in the bilateral arrays.

"Puff! Puff!" The sound rang continuously, with the sound of blood splashing and the sound of penetrating bones and flesh.