Unlike the officials and lords in Beijing who were obsessed with fighting, Yang Hongzhang, Xiang Siwen and others were now both excited and nervous. The excitement is naturally due to the fact that after the Battle of Funiu Mountain, the morale of the defenders in the entire Hejian City was high, and the morale of the army and the people was available. The nervousness is because Duoduo suffered such a big loss in Funiu Mountain, and he will definitely not be good at resting, plus Yue Tuo and Haoge are in the river, Yang Hongzhang can do whatever he wants after the Qing Army's right army on the Eastern Front leaves, which is definitely not what the Dorgon brothers want to see.

When Yang Hongzhang returned to Hejian Cheng from Funiu Mountain, he was thinking about a question, why didn't Duoduo pursue Yang Sichang? In the case of Funiu Mountain being ambushed, it is unreasonable to rush to break through, and it is unreasonable to say that he is in a hurry to recapture Hejian and rescue Yuetuo, then the only possibility is that he and Kupilon Yiyang received a military order from Dolgon, asking him to rush to a certain place to assemble within the specified time.

Thinking about it, there is only the vicinity of Baoding, and with the arrival of soldiers and horses in Shanxi Town, Dolgon must have also felt the pressure. Then the next step of pressure is Hejian.

However, what Yang Hongzhang didn't expect was that Cangzhou sent a message that Ma Gaocheng and Shi Lang had come to Cangzhou with the fleet, it turned out that since the news that Yang Hongzhang stayed in Gaoyang went back to the north, they took the fleet north, and after hearing that Yang Hongzhang had won several big battles, both of them wanted to participate in the war. Yang Hongzhang couldn't cry or laugh, those sea ships and sailors were his last family background, the key is that they are all sailors, good at sailing, sailing and cannons, if they fight hard with the Qing cavalry in Beizhili, it is too cost-effective.

However, considering the enemy he was about to face, Yang Hongzhang also made a big decision, that is, to transport all the 2,000 catties or so artillery that was easy to disassemble the fleet to the river!

This time, the prayers of Yang Hongzhang and others seemed to be heard by the gods in the sky, and they not only safely transported artillery from Cangzhou, but even the fortifications in Hejian City were constantly strengthened, so that lime, clay, gypsum, and even bamboo in the city became scarce.

The scouts in Hejian City kept searching for information around the city day and night, and people were surprised to find that the radius of fifty or sixty miles centered on Hejian had become an area that had been avoided by the Qing army in the past or deliberately, and everyone knew that there would be a demon when something went wrong, but in their hearts they still hoped that this situation would be maintained, and the Qing army would never come to Hejian again.

The bad news finally came on the seventh day after Yang Hongzhang returned from Funiu Mountain. As Yang Hongzhang expected, Duoduo hurried from Linqing to Baoding in a hurry that day in order to intercept the soldiers and horses from Shanxi Town, and the two sides first fought in Julu. Duoduo used the cavalry raid to win a game against Hu Dawei, and then Lu Xiangsheng rushed to the aid from Baoding, and Hu Dawei attacked Duoduo once, Duoduo was defeated, and then Dolgon chased Lu Xiangsheng closely, and the two sides took Julu as the main battlefield.

The two sides fought fiercely for several days without winning or losing, but when Lu Xiangsheng came out of Baoding, there was a shortage of food, grass, soldiers and horses, and the phenomenon of weak follow-up gradually appeared. had no choice but to ask for help from Baoding and Guanning Tieqi and the imperial court. After receiving Lu Xiangsheng's battle in Julu, the imperial court immediately sent Sun Chengzong out of Beijing to supervise the war, Sun Chengzong first went to Gu'an to personally dispatch Guanning Iron Cavalry to the south, and then sent messengers to strictly order all people and horses to immediately rush to the aid of Julu, and those who violated the order will be killed!

After listening to the messenger's narration, Yang Hongzhang looked at Sun Chengzong's warrant and shook his head helplessly. Is this providential? He told him thousands of times, hoping that Lu Xiangsheng would stay away from the giant deer, but he still stepped in, and the situation was quite dangerous. originally thought that Sun Chengzong had finally gone to Beijing City safely, but now he has come out of Beijing again, and the destination is also a giant deer!

Sun Ge has an order, Lu Xiangsheng is a threat, and Yang Hongzhang can't sit in peace between the rivers. After discussion, Yang Hongzhang took away 3,000 people in the city, mainly including the main force that had been following Yang Hongzhang to fight in the Gaoyang River, the part of the people that Yang Hongzhang rescued in Qingxian County, and the Gaoyang Minzhuang led by Sun Fei. Because of successive victories, these people already had enough armor to be fully armed. There were only 1,500 horses.

After careful consideration, Gao Keng decided to stay in the river and stick to the river with the more than 2,000 people who had been left by Xiang Siwen.

Xiang Siwen showed that he regarded death as home, and vowed to live and die with Hejian, but in the end, he staged a drama like life and death, entrusting his daughter dressed as a man to Yang Hongzhang, and repeatedly asked Yang Hongzhang to protect him no matter what. Xiang Siwen's meaning is very resolute, it doesn't matter if he dies, as long as Yang Hongzhang can protect his son to survive the war, he will die without regrets. Yang Hongzhang was baffled by him, but he agreed to miss his beloved son.

When the 3,000 people left from the west gate of the river, Yang Hongzhang was a little in a trance, compared to the time when he left Gaoyang in a gloomy manner, the team had grown a lot, but the future was still uncertain.

It's just that less than two days after Yang Hongzhang's team left Hejian and marched to the southwest of Julu, Julu came with the news that the Qing army besieging Julu went north and intercepted the Guanning Iron Cavalry in Baoding. The Julu Ming army immediately poured out of the nest and chased the Qing army north. The two sides had several major battles along the way, and Lu Xiangsheng and Hu Dawei were injured one after another, but finally arrived safely in Baoding to join Sun Chengzong.

So Yang Hongzhang led the team to turn around and go northwest. After walking for another four days, news came from the direction of Baoding that the two armies of the Ming and Qing dynasties fought fiercely in Baoding for two days, and the casualties on both sides were not small. The Qing army suddenly retreated on all fronts. Disappeared in Baoding, according to the information collected by the scouts in Baoding, the Qing army should have gone north. Sun Chengzong and others judged that there were two possibilities, one was that the Qing army withdrew from the pass, and the other was that what everyone did not want to see was that the Qing army besieged the capital.

Yang Hongzhang, who got the news, did not dare to continue to go north recklessly, knowing that his 3,000 people could hold on to the city for a while, and if they were surrounded by tens of thousands of cavalry of the Qing army in the field, they would be slaughtered in an instant.

Yang Hongzhang decided to go to Gaoyang first to have a look, and then move east along the southern line of Baiyangdian, at least using Baiyangdian as a barrier.

It's just that when everyone arrived in Gaoyang, they were still stunned by the tragic situation here, the cement piers outside the city were still there, but there was almost no complete house in the city. The Qing army burned Gaoyang. There are still many refugees crying on the ruins of the city, obviously the people of Gaoyang who wanted to come back to see after the Qing army left.

Soon they discovered Yang Hongzhang, discovered Sun Fei and others, and almost all of them knew about the discord between Gaoyang Zhixian and the garrison. Now I see Yang Hongzhang coming back with soldiers and horses. Looking at the safe and sound appearance of Sun Fei and the others, these simple people thought that Wang Lenian, the magistrate of the county, had harmed them. Hopefully, General Yang will be able to avenge them.

Yang Hongzhang also wants to find Wang Lenian, but where to find Wang Lenian?

What surprised Yang Hongzhang even more was that the team had a short rest in Gaoyang for half a day, but it attracted the return of the people hiding nearby, and they actually gathered nearly a thousand people. Almost everyone knelt on the ground and cried when they saw Yang Hongzhang, and then begged General Yang to take them away!

This made it difficult for Yang Hongzhang, he was going to fight, and now the enemy didn't know where it was, but he had to bring thousands of refugees, not to mention affecting morale and combat effectiveness, and the consumption of the team alone increased sharply.

In the end, Xiang Siwen's daughter Xiang Yunfang came forward to coordinate, and he gave Yang Hongzhang an idea disguised as a man, asking these people to follow behind the team, responsible for collecting grain and grass and transportation along the way, and the team was responsible for their safety. As long as they can follow General Yang, the people have no opinion on doing things. In the end, a few representatives were selected as temporary leaders, responsible for conveying Yang Hongzhang's orders and communicating with the team, and such a strange combination continued to set off, but what made Yang Hongzhang headache was that it was difficult to end with a beginning. When passing through some villages and towns along the way, those homeless people saw the team in front of them and thought it was the Qing army, and then saw that there was no rat tail on their heads, and the people followed behind were not tied with ropes. It is said that General Yang defeated the Qing army several times in Gaoyang and Hejian, and killed tens of thousands of Qing troops.

So the tail behind Yang Hongzhang's team is getting bigger and bigger, and it is impossible for Yang Hongzhang to stop it when he learns the news. Because they are all poor homeless refugees in Daming!

In desperation, Yang Hongzhang had no choice but to slow down the speed of the march, on the one hand, let people collect grain and grass along the way, and on the other hand, send people to the river to deliver letters, hoping to send more grain and grass to Siwen, otherwise the team would run out of food if they couldn't reach Bazhou.

It is fortunate to say that it is said that the Qing army's right army retreated in a hurry, and when the team marched to Renqiu, it found a grain and grass storage point of the Qing army, which was garrisoned by more than 500 people. When Yang Hongzhang and the others arrived at the city, they tried to resist, but a cannon came down, and these guys were so frightened that they threw down the corpses of forty or fifty of their companions and ran away. Yang Hongzhang let the cavalry chase for a while, snatched back some war horses, and then did not continue the pursuit.

After counting, the materials in Renqiu City are also very limited, and it is obvious that this is just a temporary transit station. Not good enough, Yang Hongzhang's team is not too much, and if you want to continue to go north, there are still a lot of such transfers.

After collecting Ren Qiu's war horses, armor, bows and arrows, etc., now the war horses of Yang Hongzhang's team have reached nearly two thousand. It's just that it can't be counted as having 2,000 cavalry, but it still works to scare people along the way. Because of their special experience, these people are still relatively disciplined, and with the training of some strange soldiers of the original Tianxiong Army along the way, they have also begun to look decent.

After the work, some of the refugees were willing to stay in Renqiu, and Yang Hongzhang distributed some food and cloth to them. But many more people who have no family members still refuse to stay, believing that the only way to stay is to follow General Yang. In fact, most of these people have the same thoughts as those people rescued by Qingxian, and now the soldiers are in chaos, and they are homeless and not expensive to follow General Yang as a soldier.