Chapter 499 and Ten Rules

As soon as the formalities were completed, more than 10 receiving teams were formed, and they had been waiting in the camp for a long time.

Each of these demoted officers signed an oath, drew a pledge, received a confession, and soon scattered in all directions.

Each squad had less than 30 people, and Zhang Chenfeng and Shi Lang were composed of soldiers drawn from their respective units according to the ratio of one to two.

Judging from the performance of these "leading the party", Zhang Chenfeng finally believed that the idea that Lin Xiao gave him was really good, which not only avoided many sideways branches, but also saved a lot of manpower......

After sending these "leading party" away, Zhang Chenfeng summoned Ji Chenxiang and others again non-stop, asking him to immediately find suitable people to act as guides, so that when he entered Shanyang and Qinghe County tomorrow, the reception operation would be smoother.

According to the current situation, since it will take several months for the cadres trained by Li Tao to be in place, in order to maintain local public order, he must find his own way to take over the county government of each county as soon as possible.

Zhang Chenfeng looked at the military map on the wall, from Anton along the Yellow River, there are still fifty miles of waterway to Shanyang, and it is less than eighty miles away from Matou Town and Wujiadun on the east bank of Hongze Lake.

According to the information sent back by the reconnaissance company, Chen Jin took the lead in running away, and most of the prefects and county commanders either fled or committed suicide, and there was almost no decent resistance along the way.

Of the main force of the Qing army originally stationed in Shanyang City, only Chen Jin's "Cao Biao" was less than 3,000 people, most of whom had fled from Anbei with Chen Jin and Zhang Tianlu, and less than 600 people remained there.

The rest, mainly the Cao soldiers and training troops scattered everywhere, now he has sent people to recruit surrender, and the military pressure is not great.

The real tough battle is in Yangzhou.

"Call the reconnaissance company commander for a moment."

Zhang Chenfeng ordered.

……

On the afternoon of 14 July, Zhang Chenfeng's ship "Qinzhou" arrived outside Shanyang City.

Basically the same as his estimate, the troops did not encounter large-scale resistance along the way, and the Cao soldiers along the way all fell in despair, and the hundreds of elite "Cao Biao" had already fled and crossed the river to the north.

Shi Lang's main fleet then arrived, and at this moment, hundreds of large and small warships were moored on the surface of the ancient canal outside the city.

After they stayed for a while, after unloading the Iron Man Army, as well as some supplies and civilian workers, they would be stationed at Wujiadun through Qingjiangpu.

In this small city on the shore of Hongze Lake, so many galleons poured in at once, which suddenly broke the silence of the past, and the people of the whole city rushed to tell each other, men, women and children flocked to the wharf, vying to see the demeanor of this Ming army......

Shi Lang set up his headquarters on the west gate tower of Shanyang County, and outside the city was the ancient canal wharf.

At this moment, Shi Lang was busy, Zhang Chenfeng was very leisurely, he held a cup of tea, standing quietly by the window of the headquarters, looking at the rows of tents in the open space outside the West Gate, which was the temporary camp of his soldiers.

The first battalion and the second company have already rushed to Qinghe, and the main force will camp here for only one night, and will start tomorrow morning and go all the way south along both sides of the canal to start the journey of recovering Yangzhou Capital.

The soldiers are busy shuttling and helping the Iron Man Army, the long-term garrison of Shi Lang, to carry food and grass supplies.

The soldiers were in high spirits, and in the loud military songs, a loud slogan was shouted from time to time: "Go to Luzhou and capture Hong Chengchou alive!" ”

The slogan was loud, but Zhang Chenfeng understood that the slogan was a slogan after all, and they had no task of going west to Luzhou during their trip.

Even if he wants to fight, Hong Chengchou will not obediently stay in Luzhou and wait to be caught, once the soldiers of the captive army are approaching, he may immediately slip away west to Henan, or flee north to Shandong.

Of course, this is not something he can decide, and it is more likely that the Qing court ordered him to stay in Luzhou and defend to the death, and finally committed suicide in the city - the death of a standard governor......

Zhang Chenfeng had no interest in capturing Hong Chengchou alive - he was extremely disgusted with Hong Chengchou and felt that this traitor should have died a long time ago.

Right now, his duty is to fight a beautiful war of annihilation in Yangzhou.

Successfully winning Yangzhou, the most important salt transportation center in the country, to solve the urgent needs of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and Hunan provinces, is his next top priority.

However, it is not easy to fight a war of annihilation.

There is a cloud in the art of war: "Ten are to surround it, five to attack it, and to fight it if it is doubled, the enemy can divide it, if it is less, it can escape, and if it is not, it can be avoided." ”

But Zhang Chenfeng's current strength is only about 2,000 people, even if you count the sailors on the five gunboats, there are only more than 2,200 people.

More than 2,000 people set off, divided their troops all the way, and when they arrived at the city of Yangzhou, it was estimated that there were less than 15,000 left.

And his captain Lin Xiao, he has a lot of people at hand, but because he is in charge of the coastal salt works, in addition to 5,000 migrant workers, the combat unit has only one special operations brigade and Duan Zhenghong's two machine gun companies.

A force of only a few hundred people, far from the main battlefield, could not be counted on at all......

According to intelligence, Yangzhou City, which is more than 300 miles away, will be a fortified city guarded by a large number of Qing troops.

Ma Jinbao, the commander of the Qing army, had already heard the wind and quickly reduced his forces, and withdrew all the Cao soldiers from Baoying and Xinghua counties to Gaoyou Prefecture, with about 2,000 people, as the first line of defense.

At the same time, despite the threat from Chongming, he actually abandoned Tongzhou and gathered almost all the remaining troops under the city of Yangzhou, with a total of more than 8,000 soldiers.

In addition, Ma Jinbao, who was cunning, also left a sailor battalion of more than 1,000 people on the riverside of Yizhen County (now Yizheng City), which on the one hand echoed with a battalion of Chuzhou Mancai, maintaining the surveillance of the Ming army in Nanjing, and at the same time retaining the westward escape channel at the last moment.

In this way, counting some local villagers in Yangzhou, Ma Jinbao's troops are more than 10,000, which is no longer as easy to deal with as Huai'an.

At present, the ratio of enemy and enemy forces is about five to one!

Of course, Zhang Chenfeng naturally wouldn't really take such a huge disparity in strength seriously.

At the beginning, when they had just returned to China, when Lin Xiao led them to ambush Kong Youde in Guangxi, the ratio of friend to enemy reached more than ten to one, and they still wiped out this bandit.

However, back then, it was they who begged the army to wait for work, taking advantage of the terrain to catch turtles in the urn, but now it happened to be the opposite, nearly 10,000 people under the command of Ma Jinbao were nested in Yangzhou City, and they would never start a "wild wave battle" with his cavalry regiment.

If it was a field battle, Zhang Chenfeng didn't care about the 10,000 green battalion soldiers under Ma Jinbao at all, in the eyes of his cavalry regiment, it was just 10,000 dead corpses, or prisoners!

The problem is that Ma Jinbao now intends to refuse to defend the city, relying on the city defense of Yangzhou City and the terrain of the surrounding lakes and ports, and vowing to fight the Ming army to the end......

As the salt capital of the rich country, after hundreds of years of operation, Yangzhou City not only has extremely strong city defense, but also the mansions of hundreds of local tyrants and squires inside and outside the city are also like forts, which can be used as fortifications by the Qing army......

According to intelligence, under the pressure of the Qing court and Hong Chengchou, Ma Jinbao's will to defend the city in Yangzhou was very resolute.

In fact, it is impossible for him not to be resolute.

As the military commander of Zhejiang Province, he first lost Taizhou and Shaoxing and other prefectures, and then lost Hangzhou and 20,000 subordinates, and fled all the way to Yangzhou with Chen Jin.

The fact that the Qing court has not punished him for his crimes does not mean that they have tolerated him -- defending Yangzhou and cooperating with Hong Chengchou's main force to wait for an opportunity to counterattack Nanjing is his last chance to atone for his crimes......

(End of chapter)