As the city of Isfahan was gradually completely occupied by the Ming army, Dolgon left some Manchu Eight Banners and other Qing troops to break off, so he ordered the remaining 400,000 Qing troops to withdraw in the direction of Baghdad in three ways.

And the Isfahan defense line is not finished because of this, because Isfahan City is only a part of the Isfahan defense line, and more is a large number of cities behind Isfahan.

Behind the city of Isfahan, facing the valley of the two rivers, is a large mountain range dominated by the Gobi, and many of the cities here are easy to defend and difficult to attack.

While Dolgon ordered the Qing army to withdraw in the direction of Baghdad, he also left part of the Qing army along the way to garrison various dangerous cities and arteries, etc., not to seek how many Ming troops could be killed or wounded, at least to delay the offensive of the Ming army, and constantly consume the ammunition of the Ming army, so as to pave the way for the subsequent decisive battle in Baghdad as much as possible.

Ammunition is very expensive, no matter how quickly the Ming army captures the city, it is unstoppable, but it always consumes a lot of bullets and shells.

According to Dorgon's assumption, the Ming Dynasty was very powerful, but the consumption of too many bullets and shells could still consume some of the Ming Dynasty's national strength.

The purpose of the Qing Dynasty was to repel the Ming army, whether the Ming army was defeated or retreated on its own initiative, it was what the Qing Dynasty wanted. According to Dolgon's understanding, the Ming Dynasty was mainly in the Central Plains, even if the Ming Dynasty had a railway to transport materials to the border of the Qing Dynasty, but after arriving in Isfahan City, it had already penetrated thousands of miles into the Qing Dynasty.

If the Qing Dynasty can drag on until the Ming Dynasty's national strength is weak, the Ming Dynasty may not give up continuing to attack the Qing Dynasty and withdraw its troops back to China.

Dolgon thought very well, and it could be regarded as a kind of extravagant hope, he hoped to defeat the Ming or the Ming to retreat on his own initiative, so that the Qing Dynasty could continue to continue and continue to have time to grow.

It is a pity that after the defeat of the Central Plains, Dolgon moved west with the Manchurians for more than 30 years, and now he can't imagine that after so many years of exhibition, the national strength of the Ming Dynasty is so strong, and the level of science and technology is more than 100 years ahead of the world.

Speaking of the 35 years of Zhongxing last year, the total population of the Ming Dynasty in the territory of more than 80 million square kilometers has exceeded 1 billion, and the fiscal revenue has exceeded 300 billion silver dollars, which is equivalent to 3 billion taels of silver in that year.

With such strong economic strength and the support of science and technology, if Daming does its best to produce, the shells produced every month can be calculated in billions.

Don't look at the attack on the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty mobilized 500,000 troops, but in fact, the Ming Dynasty does not even need to mobilize the support of the people, and the economy does not have any momentum to transform into a war economy, it is just ordinary attrition.

Therefore, Dolgon's attempt to bring down the Ming Dynasty through the consumption of ammunition and materials is really just a luxury, and there is no possibility at all.

In any case, after the capture of Isfahan, the Ming offensive did not change, and continued to advance in an orderly manner.

The Ming army changed horses and became cavalry again, attacking the Manchu cities behind Isfahan in multiple ways.

Although Dolgon left some Qing troops in each city, some dangerous cities or passes even deployed tens of thousands, tens of thousands of heavy troops.

However, most of these Qing troops were cold weapon troops, there were not many flint spear teams, and the rifle team, the core force left for the final decisive battle, was even more pitiful, and no city or pass could block the attack of the Ming army for more than two hours.

These Qing troops defending the city and the pass were about to collapse at the first touch, and even fled in despair, or simply surrendered to the Ming army.

"Boom! Boom! Boom! This is a Ming army of only 5,000 people all the way, not even field artillery is needed, only ten mortars fired a few rounds of mortar shells into the city, the Qing army guards in the city took the Qing army out of the city in panic and surrendered, and the Ming army easily occupied another city.

Even if they were more loyal to the Manchus, or because there were Manchus supervising the war, they could only resist, but the Ming army quickly broke through the city gates, and even collapsed the city walls and entered the city.

The Isfahan Line stretched for more than 200 kilometers and almost crossed the Persian border into the valley of the two rivers.

In ten days, the Ming army advanced to the end of the Isfahan defense line, annihilating nearly 200,000 cold-armed Qing troops, tens of thousands of Qing flint armies and thousands of Qing rifle armies.

At the end of the Isfahan line, there were not many important places worth defending in Persia, and in a few days, the Ming army could fight out of Persia and enter the two river valleys, and the city of Baghdad in the two river valleys was the place where Dolgon scheduled the next battle was planned, and it was also the place where the original decisive battle was originally planned.

In front of the city of Baghdad is the plain of the two river basins, blocked by two rivers, and in the rear is the Cesar plateau, the terrain is very suitable for defensive decisive battles, and to the city of Baghdad, it is thousands of miles away from the border of the Ming Dynasty, and it also represents the depth of thousands of miles of the Qing Dynasty.

Theoretically speaking, when the Ming army invaded such a large depth of the Qing Dynasty and came to Baghdad, it must have consumed a lot of strength, and the decisive battle in Baghdad was extremely beneficial to the Qing army.

Of course, it is only theoretical, maybe it will cost a lot of ammunition and money to conquer cities along the way, but this ammunition and money is far from reaching the point of consuming much national strength of the Ming Dynasty.

In the 36th year of the Ming Dynasty, on August 22, 410,000 iron horsemen of the Ming Dynasty crossed the Persian border and entered the plain of the Lianghe River Basin.

"Boom ---" hundreds of thousands of Ming troops rode their horses and galloped into the wide and gentle two river basins.

"Your Majesty, Dolgon has gathered no less than 1.4 million Qing troops in a radius of 100 miles around the city of Baghdad in the upper reaches of the Two Rivers Valley!" After the intelligence spy returned, he reported to Zhu Ci.

"No less than 1.4 million Qing troops? This must be all the strength of the Manchu Qing Dynasty at the moment, it seems that Dolgon is preparing to fight my Ming in the Baghdad area! Zhu Ci staggered and said: "Also, after Persia was captured by my Ming Dynasty, after the two river valleys were crossed, it was Asia Minor, where the new capital of Manchu was located, and Dolgon had no way to retreat!" ”

Although the Ming Dynasty has not yet sent troops into India, but all the way down, the Braha Gobi steppe south of the Aral Sea, Afghanistan, and Persia have been occupied by the Ming Dynasty, and the Manchu Qing and India's 6 upper connections have been cut off.

The plains in the middle and lower reaches of the two river basins are very rich, with a lot of people and cities, but the terrain is not dangerous to defend, not the focus of Dolgon's defense, and the Qing troops left behind are all less than 20,000 together, and they are all Qing soldiers who use cold weapons, and the Ming army occupied the middle and lower reaches of the two river basins without much effort, and marched towards the city of Baghdad in the upper reaches.

On 24 August, after leaving some Ming troops to garrison and occupy the middle and lower reaches of the two river valleys, 400,000 Ming troops approached the city of Baghdad and held off against the 1.4 million Qing troops in the city's extremely rear defense line, and a major battle of nearly 2 million men on both sides was about to begin.

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(End of chapter)