Qingyuan and Sanshui, both on the banks of the Beijiang River, are nothing more than one north and one south, about 200 miles apart.

This distance is not long, but it is not short. Since they decided to join forces to go south, Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao hurriedly rushed back to Guangzhou to mobilize the feudal troops. On the side of Zhu Mala, when he was in Ganzhou, he called himself Xiema couldn't do it for three months, but the army took a boat all the way from the capital to Ganzhou, and then marched to Qingyuan.

After resting for three days, the army immediately moved south. This time it was downstream, but Qingyuan did not have too many ships, and Guangzhou could not provide enough reinforcements to quickly go south, so they could only go by land. As a result, when Zhu Mala's army arrived in Sanshui, it was already seen that the Ming army had relieved the siege of Sanshui and crossed the Beijiang River in an orderly manner under the leadership of Jin Tongwu.

"Master, the Eight Banners of Manchuria are invincible, and the thieves actually fled when they heard the wind, haha."

A useful Niu Lu Zhang Jing said with a smug smile on his face, and the generals also had many echoes. This scene, in Zhu Mala's eyes, always felt that the Ming army retreated a little too simply, reminiscent of the victory in Hengyang back then, Li Dingguo played to lure the enemy deep, and he has always been very good at it. However, this time he went south, not only his Eight Banners reinforcements, but also Su Yangzhi and other generals transferred from Nanjiang, these green battalion generals looked at the Eight Banners Army with pride, and they seemed to be quite excited, and he was not good at hitting the high morale of the generals under his command.

"Let's take a look first, and then I'll talk about it when Prince Pingnan arrives."

Geng Jimao was ill, and Zhu Mala didn't trust the general of the defeated army, so this time the big battle was led by his monk Kexi, and Geng Jimao sat in Guangzhou City to provide them with food and grass, and sat in the rear. This is not only contempt, but more importantly, in addition to Li Dingguo, there is also a soldier Chen Kai under the city of Dongguan, who has always been known for his cunning and resourcefulness, and now he has placed the fleet in the south of Guangzhou, God knows if he will take advantage of the time when the feudal soldiers are moving south to copy their back road.

Soon, Shang Kexi led the army to Sanshui. Arriving here, the news of the Ming army's relief had already been known, and those who saw it were originally used by the Qing army, and on the Beijiang River, there were many Ming military ships still swimming, under the banner of Chen Qice.

"It's not impossible to cross the Beijiang River."

Jumala and Shang Ke met happily, and the generals of both sides were divided into two sides. As Shang Kexi's confidant general, Xu Erxian, the general of the left wing, immediately spoke, citing some of the usual methods used by the inferior side of the water division in such a water network.

"Although there are many ships of the bandits, the hydrological situation is complicated, and it is difficult to guard too closely at night. Officers and soldiers can first raid Dazhou Sha, and then take advantage of the night to pull up the iron cable to block the river. With this, even if it is tossed until dawn, the thief's sailor does not have a very good way. When the time comes, the pontoon bridge can be calmly built to transport the troops over. ”

Using Jiangxinzhou, the length of the pontoon bridge can be shortened, and people and horses can be transported here, and there can also be better strain conditions. Xu Erxian pointed out the key points in various places on the map, and analyzed it, not only the generals of the Pingnan Domain and the Jingnan Domain nodded frequently, but even the Manchurian and Mongolian masters of the Eight Banners reinforcements were all like this.

"Master, it's better to follow General Xu's method and directly cross the Beijiang River and chase those thieves!"

A word is spoken, and there are many echoes. However, at this time, Zhu Mala looked at Shang Kexi, who thought about it, but shook his head.

"It seems that the prince and I want to go together."

The two of them played dumb riddles, and they didn't intend to hang their appetite all the time. Soon, confirming the other party's thoughts, the two revealed the mystery: "The year before last, Prince Jing Jing confronted the old thief, and he was lured into the ambush point by the old thief, and he died on the battlefield." This time, and look at the old thief's general retreated so simply, although there is a sailor to block the river, but the speed of the retreat on the other side is not fast, it always seems to be procrastinating, if nothing else, he still plans to use this partial division to hang us and introduce us all into his ambush circle. ”

Li Dingguo won three great victories in one year, and killed two princes, even on the side of the Qing army, he was the commander of the Ming army who had to be taken seriously. This person's way of using soldiers, after the analysis of the top management of the Eight Banners Army, does not seem to like dignified confrontations very much, but is good at luring the enemy and setting up ambushes.

The usual tactics used when his reputation was not obvious in the past are unknown, but in the past few years, as long as he has played tricks, he has basically won, but if he attacks head-on, he will not fight well, but it is all clear proof in front of him.

Shang Kexi has analyzed these on his own, and Jumala has seen them clearly before he came and on the road. During this period, Li Dingguo did have the possibility of copying the tactics of Hengyang's great victory, which could not help but make them feel panicked. Because of the panic, they can't continue to follow Li Dingguo's script, otherwise they will probably end up worse than Nikan!

"If nothing else, that Jin Tongwu is likely to retreat to Gaoming, or go south along the Xijiang River. But no matter what, he wants to hang us, but he can't let him get his way. ”

Shang Kexi made it clear that the Ming army was likely to lure the Qing army south all the way and then set up an ambush on the road. However, in the current battle situation, they are not only facing Li Dingguo's opponent, they must always cut through the chaos quickly, solve one way first and then face the other, so as to realize the strategy of each breakthrough.

In this case, it is imperative to continue south, and they do not intend to follow Li Dingguo's script, then there is only one way.

"Our army will make a detour, and the thieves will be saved, and the thieves will fight a decisive battle with our army, so as not to continue to drag on like this, and more variables will be born!"

War, at least is a game. The Qing army made a move, and the Ming army took over; The Ming army made a move; The Qing army took over. It's all perfectly normal. They did not know that they were actually the victors of the Battle of Xinhui in history, but this time the discussion was in place, and the Qing army set out early the next morning, and returned by the official road that Shang Kexi had rushed from Guangzhou. But halfway through, it turned south, passed through Foshan, and made a posture of going straight to Shunde.

For a time, the Ming army in Shunde was in a hurry, and Liancheng Bi hastily converged the army, and after Wang Xingdian, the army rushed south, and stayed away from the elite of the Qing army that was far superior to them in terms of quantity and quality as soon as possible.

The Ming army abandoned Shunde without a fight, but the Qing army did not take advantage of the situation to take over, and even the partial division was not divided, but went south. The army has the local green battalion as the vanguard, opening roads and filling bridges in the mountains, and their familiarity with this place as the head snake is not much better than that of the Ming army in western Guangdong, or even better. In just a few days, it traveled more than 100 miles, and by the eighteenth day of the lunar month, the army had already crossed the river from Jiangmen!

Jiangmen, because it is located at the confluence of the Xijiang River and its tributary Pengjiang River, Yandun Mountain in the south of the Yangtze River and Penglai Mountain in the north of the Jiangbei face each other like a door, so it is named. This is the northern gateway of Xinhui, and it was also an extremely prosperous market in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, "merchants gathered, and millions of transactions were made."

The geographical location here is quite important both internally and externally, and later through continuous development, Xinhui County, which was originally subordinate, became a district under its jurisdiction, and established an independent city, which is very similar to Jingdezhen, Jiangxi.

Since the battle of Xinhui, the Ming and Qing dynasties fought for each other here, and the Qing army provided military supplies and soldiers for Xinhui, and the Ming army seized this place after several confrontations, and defeated the Qing army's water division, completely cutting off the supply line of the Xinhui Qing army. This time, Shang Kexi and the Jumala army arrived, and there is no need to say more.

The army arrived, locked the river upstream, quickly built a pontoon bridge through the two Jiangxinzhou on the river, and went straight to the Jiangmen on the opposite bank. At this time, most of the sailors of the Ming army were still in the upper reaches of the Beijiang and Xijiang rivers, and the Qing army went around in a circle, and also got rid of their sight, and did not continue to pursue Jin Tongwufu, but directly attacked the Ming army's must-defend place - the Xinhui county town that had just been taken for more than a month and the city wall had not yet been repaired. Because as long as the county seat of Xinhui is recaptured, it will be extremely difficult for the Ming army to join forces again, and they can use time to achieve each breakthrough!

This time to the south, the Qing army concentrated the only 7,000 soldiers left after the loss of the Pingnan Domain in Xinhui, and the Jingnan Domain also produced 7,000 soldiers, led by Xu Degong, the general soldier of the left wing, and Lian Decheng, the general soldier of the right wing, to participate in the battle, and the remaining 3,000 soldiers of the domain were led by Geng Jimao to guard the city of Guangzhou to prevent Chen Kai from stabbing in the back. In addition, the 3,000 Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners and 5,000 Han Army Banners led by Zhu Mala all arrived. In addition, there are 12,000 green battalion soldiers from Jiangnan and Southern Jiangxi, totaling 34,000 troops.

In this regard, Li Dingguo has an advantage in intelligence, even if he was caught off guard by the Qing army, but in the internal battle, his response was never slow, and he quickly transferred back to the army. By the time the Qing army had all passed through the waterways of Jiangmen, occupied Jiangmen, and moved south, Li Dingguo had already built a defensive line north of Xinhui, just like the battle of Xinhui in history.

On the nineteenth day of the lunar month, the Qing army successfully crossed the river and occupied Jiangmen, and then threatened Xinhui. After observing the deployment of the Ming army, the Qing army immediately launched an attack, and had no intention of continuing to give Li Dingguo time to prepare.

Li Dingguo set up a formation in the north of the city, gathered an army of 40,000 cavalry under his command, divided his troops to hold the dangerous points of the valley, and blocked the road with elephant arrays and artillery. The Ming army set up a position, and more troops such as Zhou Jintang, Deng Yao, Wang Xing, and Chen Qice rushed here, which made the Ming army's strength advantage continue to expand.

The left flank of the Ming army was a valley, and the army occupied a high place and connected with the large array of the Ming army in power. From this, the battle line was connected to the right flank and connected to the river, and the Qing army could only break the current Ming army if it wanted to pass through first, and there was no other way.

On the same day, the Qing army launched a fierce attack, but the Ming army occupied the geographical advantage first, relying on the firing angle of the artillery, the counter-charge of the war elephants and the strict formation of the battle formation, so that the Qing army several fierce attacks were in vain, and had to take the initiative to retreat before nightfall, and retreated to Jiangmen in an orderly alternation.

At night, Li Dingguo naturally did not remain idle, and sent a force to take advantage of the fatigue of the Qing army to carry out a night attack. This attack was not intended to achieve much success, but the Qing army's night arrangement was reasonable, which played an effective defense against the night attack of the Ming army, and the two sides fought fiercely in the dark night, and the Ming army knew that the effect of the night attack could not be achieved, so they simply gave up the night attack operation.

Soon, the news of the failure of the night attack reached Li Dingguo. He really didn't have much hope for this, so the number of troops mobilized was not much, but this Qing army made a detour all the way from Sanshui, and it took only a few days to march to this point.

After arriving, after a fierce battle, although he was not able to succeed, but he could not attack, and he was also out of the battle in an orderly manner, and he was not given a chance to take advantage of. By the end of the night, the ordinary troops were already so tired that they fell asleep, and even if they didn't collect it all night, many of them were so tired that they secretly took a nap. This is all human nature, after all, it is limited physical fitness, and there are always times when it can't hold on, but the performance of the Qing army is not bad, whether it is offensive or defensive, it seems to be orderly, and there is no panic at all.

"The Eight Banners Army is really a difficult opponent."

So far, Li Dingguo has been the commander of Nanming's best performance against the Eighth Banner Army in the past ten years. However, several times they clashed with the Eight Banners Army, whether it was the mixed formation of the Eight Banners of the Manchu and Mongolian Han Army, or the feudal soldiers hanging under the banner of the Han Army, in fact, they mostly used stratagems to gain an advantage in advance, and then fought with them in the field.

Today, face-to-face field battles, even if they occupy a geographical advantage, they are actually not able to have much advantage. At the very least, most of the troops under his command were recruited and converged since they entered Yunnan and went out of Yunnan to resist the Qing Dynasty, and there was indeed a gap between the combat experience, technical and tactical level of those soldiers and those who had experienced a hundred battles on the other side, and this is undeniable.

On the first day, the twentieth and twenty-first of the lunar month, the Qing army launched an attack on two days in a row, but there was still no way to break through Li Dingguo's defensive line. At this time, Zhou Jintang, Deng Yao, Wang Xing and other troops of the Ming army had also arrived, only Chen Qice's fleet should have been the first to rush back, but there was still no trace.

After three days of fierce fighting, the Ming army was also a little tired. Li Dingguo decided to rotate the defensive line and transfer the more energetic follow-up troops to continue to consume the strength of the Qing army.

In field battles with a scale of tens of thousands of people, the Eighth Banner Army has basically not been defeated in these years. Almost every victory was the killing of hundreds of Ming troops, and then a Ming army of tens of thousands suddenly collapsed. There is a considerable gap between the two sides in their ability to endure casualties, and there is no lack of problems with combat experience, but more because of the serious corruption of the Ming army in the system, and the gap between the organizational and executive power of the Qing army when it was the beginning of the new regime.

Fortunately, the Ming army led by Li Dingguo is not the original old Ming army, but under the banner of the Ming army, and the inside is the legacy of the Great Western Army. Even after three days of fierce fighting, both sides lost a lot of troops, but they still strictly held the battle line and did not back down.

The tenacity of the Ming army was very bad for the Qing army, and it was getting worse and worse. Shang Kexi and Jumala are increasingly worried about their current situation, but for the sake of now, all they can do is continue to attack, and there is no other way. Because, even if they can return to Guangzhou now, they will only face the result of Li Dingguo and Chen Kai besieging Guangzhou City. At that time, it will be even more difficult to turn defeat into victory.

On the twenty-second day of the lunar month, the Qing army fought again. The Ming army blocked the passage to Xinhui in the south, and they had to continue the offensive as they had done for the previous three days.

This time, after Shang Kexi and Zhu Mala consulted, it was decided that Shang Zhizhi would lead the feudal soldiers Niu Lu who belonged directly to Shang Kexi to attack the Ming army's left flank defense line first.

After receiving the military order, Shang Zhizhi personally led the team, and the accompanying Dongjiang veterans also held weapons, calmly followed behind, and the formation was strict, without the slightest advance or lag. The feudal army advanced step by step, the Ming army was condescending, occupying a great advantage, three days down, the Qing army, whether it was the green battalion, or the feudal soldiers, or even the Han army flag, there was no way to take this hillside.

The newly replaced troops had already seen how the troops in front of them repelled the Qing army, and they simply rushed down the mountain when the feudal army was halfway through the march and started a fierce battle with the Qing army.

One side is condescending, the other side is attacking on its back, and the two sides are already superior and inferior before they have even played each other. However, I thought that I would be able to repel the current Qing army as I did in the previous three days, but I didn't know that the technical and tactical level of this Qing army was even one or two grades higher than that of the previous three days. As soon as the two sides clashed, the condescending Ming army was the first to be pressed and beaten by the opponent, as if it was the Ming army instead of the Qing army that was attacking at this moment.

The Ming army is still the Ming army, and it is still a new force that has just been replaced. But these feudal soldiers are all real old-fashioned troops, Niu Lu, who has the strongest combat effectiveness in the Pingnan Domain, and Shang Kexi, the elite of the headquarters developed by the pro-soldier family Ding team when he was in Dongjiang Town. They have survived in such a cruel environment in Liaodong to this day, and they have fought countless battles. Even those Mongolian Eight Banners may not be a unified enemy in front of them. Even, even if it is real Manchuria, whether it can directly defeat them is also unknown.

The Ming army was unfavorable for covering up, and after a while, it was defeated by the Qing army. Li Dingguo had already noticed the abnormality at the beginning of the battle, and hurriedly sent troops to reinforce the left flank, but it took time to mobilize and climb the mountain, but the Ming army on the left flank collapsed too quickly, and the Qing army had already attacked the top of the mountain before the reinforcements arrived.

Next, the Qing army condescendingly began to throw stones, and the reinforcements of the Ming army had to retreat, and even those defeated Ming troops retreated towards Li Dingguo's main formation.

In this way, the Qing army already had a geographical advantage, and Li Dingguo had to adjust his position as soon as possible to prevent the Qing army from launching an attack from the left flank. The wavering of the battle array is bound to be inevitable, Shang Kexi and Zhu Mala are both veteran generals who have been fighting for many years, of course they understand this truth, even if they start to dispatch Xu Erxian, Lian Decheng, Su Yangzhi and other Qing troops, just waiting for Li Dingguo to make this mistake.

Historically, Li Dingguo in the First Battle of Xinhui was because the left wing fell and had to adjust the battle formation, which caused the battle formation to waver, and the superior cavalry of the Qing army found an opportunity to take advantage of it, so that the army collapsed and was out of control. At this moment, the bad luck is imminent, unexpectedly, the battle array over there has not moved, and a fast horse is galloping from the north, and the knight is holding the waist card of the Pingnan Palace, and the Qing army does not dare to stop it, so he has rushed to the horse of Shang Kexi.

Looking at the knight's attire, it is obvious that he is a feudal officer, and he is quite good at riding a horse and galloping. Who knows, at this moment, I rushed to Shang Kexi's horse, rolled the saddle and dismounted, and a dog gnawed mud and planted it on the ground. When he looked up again, his face was covered with blood and dirt, and he had become a panicked landless.

"Why are you so embarrassed?!"

The officer was born as his own soldier, and he managed the night of his headquarters, and he was always competent. Even though his heart trembled, he never dared to show half a point on his face, lest he would shake the morale of the army.

Hearing this, the officer didn't care about the blood and dirt on his face, nor did he care about taking a breath, he subconsciously looked left and right, and when he came to Shang Kexi's side, he tried his best to lower his voice: "Lord Wang, something is wrong, there is a fleet of thieves in Zhoujun Village in the north." ”

In this way, it is really not a good thing. Fortunately, the opponent was about to reveal his flaws, Shang Kexi calmed down, and immediately lowered his voice and asked the officer under Zhu Mala's suspicious gaze, "Can you see clearly whose banner you are flying?" ”

"It's a pseudo-hanging seal Chen Qice!" This name is not unusual, Gai Yipeng died at the hands of this person a few months ago, and the same was true of Sheng Dengke back then. However, when the words came out, there seemed to be a greater fear next, which made him subconsciously swallow a mouthful of saliva: "There is also the pseudo-Hou Zhou Hezhi, and, and the traitor Chen Kai!" ”