The winter of the Xiaoice River period finally came, and after several blizzards, the great plains of Luxi and Lubei were covered with a vast white snow. The canals, the Daqing River, the Tu River, the old Yellow River, and these large and small rivers that lie across the land of western and northern Lubei are all frozen, and they can no longer stop the iron hooves of the Qing army.

Just when Kong Youde killed himself, sacrificed his life for righteousness, and drank arsenic wine, in Yucheng County and Jiyang County, which are one hundred or dozens of miles away from Liaocheng and belong to Jinan Prefecture, a long marching dragon composed of eight-colored cavalry and green horse (mule) infantry, as well as horse-drawn Hongyi small cannons and one-pound general cannons, is rolling forward, with an unstoppable trend, all the way to Jinan, the capital of Shandong, the capital of the Ming Dynasty!

This army is led by Boluo, the king of Duanzhong County of the Qing Dynasty, to attack Jinan, all the "four legs", it may not be possible to travel seventy or eighty miles a day, but in this ice and snow, it is not a problem to walk fifty miles a day.

Of course, Zhu Cihong's new army can also do this, but the premise of a fast march is that it cannot be frequently harassed and blocked by the enemy, and the road is in good condition and unimpeded. Road conditions aside, it is not easy to achieve a goal that is not frequently harassed and blocked by enemy troops during the march on the front line. On the North China Plain, to achieve this goal, it is necessary to have a powerful cavalry that can suppress the enemy!

And cavalry is precisely the weakness of the Ming army and the strength of the Qing army!

In the Daqing River and Tuhe River basins in Jinan Prefecture, the territory of the two sides is intertwined and stirred up!

The Qing Dynasty placed in this area are twenty or thirty Niu Lu of the Zhenglu Banner, and on the side of the Ming Dynasty are the armed landlords under Gao Hongtu - there are knives on both sides, and there is a deep hatred! The land in this area was originally owned by the landlords in Shandong, but now there are so many green flags in the Qing Dynasty, how deep this hatred is, you can understand it if you think about it with your heels.

Therefore, in the past two years, the Daqing River and Tuhe areas have been fighting a small fight every three days and a big fight on five days, and the thugs on both sides have been trained.

Now that the green battalion soldiers on the side of the Qing Dynasty have shrunk, is that not the tail of the Ming Dynasty's landlord arm?

If there were no strong cavalry to clear the way, just dealing with the harassment and ambush of a small force along the way would have to greatly slow down the march of Bolo's Qing army.

But how could the small landlord armament be the opponent of the old Eight Banners cavalry under Bolo?

As a shock cavalry, the Eight Banners Cavalry may not be very good in the world in this era, but as a reconnaissance cavalry and light cavalry, it is definitely one of the best.

Moreover, the old Eight Banners are configured with an all-horse team, and everyone can juggle on horseback, which is enough to undertake the very important "chores" of reconnaissance, search, and pursuit. The main body of the green cavalry mixed with the old Eight Banners is also the border army in the northeast and northwest of the Ming Dynasty, among which there are many excellent cavalry, basically everyone can ride a horse, and everyone has a horse to ride.

Therefore, there are a lot of rangers who can be scattered in Bolo, there are thousands, not to mention the small group of landlord armies, even the large force of the new army cavalry does not dare to compete with them for control of the battlefield!

How many cavalry is Zhu Cihong? However, it was only two regiments of heavy cavalry, plus seven battalions (each battalion was in the middle of 300 men) and light cavalry (attached to the division), which was only a little more than 5,000 when added together.

Half of them did not pass the horseback kung fu very well, and they could not beat the elite of the old Eight Banners at all, and they were even worse than the horsemen of the Green Banner - this is because a large number of elite soldiers with good horseback kung fu (most of them were from the old battalion of Jiading and Liukou) have been promoted in the past few years and become officers who lead the troops.

And Emperor Zhu didn't have many good horses to use on his side. Of the 5,000 cavalrymen in service, more than half of them did not have decent horses available.

The cavalry of the Ming army is not good at horseback kung fu, and the war horse under the crotch is not good, so naturally there is no capital to start a fierce outpost battle with the Qing cavalry on the vast battlefield.

The serious cavalry of the Ming army was not an opponent, and the landlord armies in the Daqing River and Tuhe area were even worse.

This is not worse, what is even worse is that they not only can't delay the action of the Qing soldiers, but they can't even hold their own fortress wall dock - there is a Hongyi small cannon Niu Lu on the road in Boluo, equipped with 6 three-pounder guns and 6 one-pound guns, it is not enough to fight the kind of fortified city in Jinan, but how can the ordinary landlord fortress withstand it?

Fortunately, Bolo's purpose here was not to demolish the landlord's house, and he didn't have the time to fight the forts one by one. Therefore, as long as the stockades that he fancied handed over a certain amount of food, they could escape......

After escaping the catastrophe, of course, he tried his best to report to Jinan!

The main force of the Qing army seems to have arrived in Jinan Mansion!

Similar to the encounter here in Jinan Prefecture, there are also Huang Degong's Huaibei Town and Gao Jie's Xuhai Town.

The more than 10,000 Nine Banners strong army led by Man Dahai also took advantage of Zhu Cihong's main force to besiege Liaocheng, and went south from Guide Mansion to Suzhou in Huaibei Town, which was also unstoppable!

The territory of Suzhou in Huaibei Town is all Zhuangzi who grant field soldiers, and they also live in the village. A battalion of military households lived in one place, but the fort they lived in was much stronger than that of the landlords in Shandong, and they were all forts made of wood for bone, rammed earth for meat, and sandbags for skin. There are also trenches on the periphery, and large general's cannons are erected on the forts.

Moreover, Huang Degong also prevented his lair from being ravaged by the Tartars, so he left a hand when he was ordering, and each stockade left at least a hundred regular soldiers. Together with the women and boys who were able to go to the city among the military dependents, plus the tenants of each family, a village could always gather three or five hundred people to go to the city.

There are not many people, but the Qing army will have a hard time breaking them, and they may suffer heavy casualties!

However, Man Dahai is also a famous general in the world, and he can see at a glance the shortcomings of Huang Degong's deployment - there are too few villages! The distance between the various stockades was also too large, and it could not play a role in blocking the invading Qing army.

Therefore, Mandahai simply passed through these improvised fortresses, followed Suishui all the way east, and drove directly to the boundary of Suining County, which was disputed by Huaibei Town and Xuhai Town. There is no fortress for the landlord here, and because Suining County is far away from the front line, it is not particularly important, so it has not been rebuilt. As a result, it was broken by the Qing army of Mandahai in one fell swoop!

Now the problem is serious! Suining County is located in the southeast of Xuzhou, and Suqian and Pizhou are only separated by a river (Yellow River) on the two canals, and it is also a Yellow River that has been frozen!

Xing (Gao Jie's wife), who stayed in Pizhou, gathered troops and organized defense, and at the same time sent 600 urgents to Zhu Cihong, who was far away in Liaocheng.

And Zhu Cihong was also a little dumbfounded after receiving emergency military reports from Jinan and Pizhou at the same time!

He thought that he was advancing step by step, but he didn't expect that the gap left behind him was so big......

"Your Majesty, Jinan Mansion is not in a hurry, but Xuzhou and Haizhou can't afford to lose!" In Liaocheng, the military advisor Li Yan immediately suggested to Emperor Zhu, "Please move to Xuzhou immediately!" ”

Zhu Cihong acted with two infantry divisions, two cavalry regiments, two artillery regiments, and a guard battalion. If he moves to Xuzhou, it means that the large corps currently gathered in Liaocheng will be divided into two.

Zhu Cihong hesitated and asked, "Do you know how many people and horses are in the east that broke into Suining?" Is it Dorgon's workhorse? ”

Li Yan shook his head: "I don't know!" Even the beacon fire in Huaibei was not lit in time...... The reality of the enemy is even more unknowable. But they were able to break through Suining County in one fell swoop, and they obviously had some strength. It was reported that the eastern captives of the division used a lot of artillery during the siege of the city. There are only a total of eight Hongyi small artillery Niu Lu in Dongyu, and the troops that can move with artillery must not be a small unit, and they must not be taken lightly! ”

Zhu Cihong stood in front of the map, looking at the seventeen or eighteen fortresses along the more than 400-mile canal between Liaocheng and Pei County on the map, and just sighed: "I really didn't expect that the 400-mile fort line was bypassed by Dolgon......"