On November 23, 1644, Qingzhou Mansion, Shandong, northwest wind level 6, fine.

As the weather became colder, the tens of thousands of Qing troops gathered near Qingzhou also had to start cutting wood to keep warm, and at the same time, the surrender of Zhao Yingyuan's troops in Qingzhou City had gradually stopped recently. After getting through the initial period of psychological fear, this group of arrogant armed leaders from all walks of life eased their fear of the Qing army a little, anyway, there was a lot of food they stole in the city, enough for them to build for a while, so it was so consumed. Let's see if it's hard for the Qing army in the wilderness, or it's hard for them in the city!

However, the Qing army obviously will not blow the cold wind in the field indefinitely, because they are in a hurry to set off, they can be regarded as a lightly armed march, and many siege equipment are not with them, so they can only temporarily fight under the city of Qingzhou. The Eight Banners soldiers took whips and drove groups of cloths to the woods outside the city to cut down trees and build siege equipment, but this can be done in a while, so these Eight Banners are destined to blow a cold wind in the field outside Qingzhou City for a while.

Looking at the plight of the soldiers of the "I Daqing" outside the city, Zhang Wenheng in Qingzhou City was worried, and after persuading him to surrender to the Qing army several times without success, this guy has aroused the disgust and vigilance of many people. If it weren't for Zhao Yingyuan's reluctance to move him if he didn't know what he was thinking, Zhang Wenheng, who was eating inside and out, would have been hacked to death by those big bosses.

The situation in Shandong was chaotic, and at this time on the battlefields of Shanxi and Henan, the Qingshun and Qing armies, which had been fighting for three or four months, began to gradually enter the decisive stage in the middle game. After losing the important town of Taiyuan on the third day of October, Li Zicheng once again sent additional troops out of Tongguan and into Henan. All the way, Lianke Jiyuan, Mengxian, Wuzhi, Wenxian and other county seats, and then besieged Huaiqing Mansion. The Qing army defended the city with artillery fire, killing and wounding a large number of Shun troops. In order to deal with this Qing army with strong firepower in Huaiqing Mansion. Tian Jianxiu, the commander of the Shun army, urgently dispatched Guo Sheng, who was still in Hebei, to lead the army to rush over, preparing to use yellow-coated cannons against the red-coated cannons of the Qing army.

In order to relieve the siege of Huaiqing Mansion, the Qing army organized several offensives, but they were all repulsed. Among them, after the most powerful Qing army Dong Xueli Department (formerly Shun Army, which has been surrendered to the Qing Dynasty) was defeated and surrounded, the back road of the Ye Chen Department of the Qing army entering Taiyuan was cut off. For this. Luo Jinxiu, the governor of Henan in the Qing Dynasty, began to complain to the Qing court again and again.

In order to completely solve the problems of Henan and Shanxi, the Qing court began to organize a large number of reinforcements. On October 19, the Qing court appointed King Azig as the general of Jingyuan. He led an army of more than 30,000 and prepared to enter northern Shaanxi after defeating the heavy army group of the Shun army in the northwestern part of Shanxi. Azig was accompanied by Wu Sangui and Shang Kexi's subordinates, and after the requisitioning of the troops of Xuanfu and Datong, the strength of this Qing army has exceeded 80,000. If you add tens of thousands of Qing troops near Daizhou. It already had a crushing advantage over the Shun army in northern Shaanxi, both in terms of quantity and quality.

When I saw hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the Shun army and the Qing army strangled together. Shi Kefa, the governor of the Southern Ming Dynasty, was overjoyed and began to strictly order the four towns in Jiangbei and the Henan landlords loyal to the Southern Ming Dynasty to attack the local Shun army, which objectively greatly responded to the offensive of the Qing army, making the Dashun troops scattered and the situation becoming increasingly tense. In Sichuan, Zhang Xianzhong's subordinates also began to march into Hanzhong, preparing to seize Hanzhong when Li Zicheng's main force was attracted by the Qing army, the Hui people and Mongols in Qinghai and Xining, so as to complete his first step of "conquering the world" hegemony.

At this time, there was already a rugged and muddy road between Qingzhou City and Anqiu. A large "army of pigtails" is marching "rapidly". And this speed obviously corresponds to the previous turtle speed, before Li led Tai's troops to march only five to ten miles a day. It's so slow that you laugh out your teeth. And after the bad weather gradually approached, and the peace of Qingzhou repeatedly sent people to urge, Li Shutai finally sighed and ordered to speed up the march. Now, if it weren't for the strict order to advance behind his back, he would have wanted to lead his army back. In this battle, he was becoming more and more bottomless, the scouts were hunted down and killed in large numbers, and the battlefield was one-way transparent to the enemy, and he couldn't even figure out how many enemy troops there were now.

The scouts, who were lucky enough not to encounter the enemy, reported to him that the group of yellow-clothed pirates were still stationed in Anqiu City, and it seemed that they had sent people to the countryside to collect a little grain from the old rich two days ago, and at the same time coerced a few landless "scoundrels" to go with them by the way. However, it has been difficult to see them in the countryside in the past two days, and it seems that most of them have retreated back to the city. It's understandable that it's freezing outside, so fools are hanging around in the field.

When Li Shutai advanced the army with a tangled and complicated mood, the people on the east bank of Anqiu County were also waiting for the arrival of the Qing army in a tangled and complicated way. And when he learned that Li Shuotai led an army of tens of thousands of troops to march at a speed of five to ten miles a day, Mo Ming even wondered if he had killed too hard in the scout battle, which made Li Shuotai's old fox frightened and did not dare to come to Anqiu. However, fortunately, the news that came later was quite comforting, Li Shutai may not want to delay more in the bad weather, he greatly increased the speed of the march, and then finally arrived three miles outside Anqiu County in the afternoon of this day (November 23), a short distance of 100 miles let him walk for six days, which is really strange.

The people on the east bank of the city used binoculars to roughly observe the Qing army brigade that was camping outside the city, but because of the distance, they could not see very clearly. I only know that they seem to have chopped some wood from a distance and came back (the near ones have been cleaned up) and set up camp, although the whole camp is noisy, but it is still orderly, and it can be seen that it has a certain military quality. The Jiaozhou Army and the Qingzhou Army of Li Shiyuan's Department that the people on the east coast encountered a while ago could not be compared with it at all.

"In the end, it's the Han Army Banner, I've been fighting with the Eight Banners outside the gate, and I'm still quite lawful. This Li Shutai has been fighting for so many years, and it stands to reason that he should also be a general, and it is estimated that it will not be easy to fight tomorrow. Mao Desheng took off the binoculars on his chest, shook his head and asked, "Do you want to do it tonight?" In ancient times, there were plots in the drama to steal the camp when the enemy army first came and had an unstable foothold, and I think they can't finish this camp until midnight today, so it seems that they can steal it. ”

"Steal a fart!" Mo Ming also put down the binoculars, wrapped the cotton coat on his body, and said: "Let the Korean soldiers of the military team ride out to harass and harass at night, it is dark outside, and it is dark and freezing. There is no need to fight, just bring some military trumpets to blow not far from the camp, and then secretly throw a few bombs to listen to the sound, and then fire a few random shots, and then change places. Let the men of the military team start shifts from the second half of the night, and in the first half of the night, the gang is estimated to repair the camp, try to make them sleep well, and wait for the decisive battle tomorrow to give them a fatal blow. ”

Mo Ming also couldn't figure out the combat effectiveness of the Qing army outside the city at this time, according to the information sent back by many scouts a few days ago, the number of this Qing army was about 10,000, of which there were about 4,000 well-equipped and high-morale soldiers, and the troops who had no combat effectiveness such as wrapping clothes and followers accounted for about 4,000 people, in addition to a force of about 2,000 people who had not even had time to shave their hair and wore tattered Ming army clothes. After collective deliberation, the officers on the east bank in Anqiu City thought that they might be able to advance outside the city and fight against the city, just as the Qing army's peace wanted to try the quality of the people on the east coast.

Early in the morning of November 24, the Qing army, which had been tossed by the people on the east bank for half the night last night, began to line up outside the camp gate that had been hastily completed. The auxiliaries who had not slept all night were ready to put on armor and feed their horses for the battle that might break out next, and they were familiar with it, but today was a little different. There was no longer the relaxed atmosphere in the camp, and according to the gossip circulated by some officers, these yellow-clothed pirates seemed to be more difficult to fight than the elites of the old battalion of the Shun army. But fortunately, it was not them who took the lead, it was the former Ming army of Zhang Ruxing's troops who had just surrendered not long ago.

The officers and soldiers of the Han Army Banner under Li Shutai looked at the officers and soldiers of Zhang Ruxing's troops who had not yet shaved their hair with complicated eyes, and a strange pleasure surged in their chests. So that you don't shave your hair! Let you not be a cow and a horse for the masters of the Qing Dynasty! Let you look at the braids on our heads with strange eyes! Hmph, let you take the lead today, that's how I came here at the beginning!

Zhang Ruxing frowned and looked at the Anqiu County Gate that had been opened in front of him, and looked at the soldiers in yellow clothes who came out of the city gate, these people actually wanted to go out of the city to fight! Zhang Ruxing suddenly felt that something might be wrong today, what did Li Shutai mean by letting his troops take the lead, he knew very well, didn't he just figure out that Guò tried out those yellow-clothed thieves by himself? These people are new annexes, and it is normal to be driven to be cannon fodder, but if the opponent is the East Coast Pirates, it will not be good.

As a former Ming general who once surrendered to Dashun, Zhang Ruxing, who served as Guo Sheng's general in Shandong for two or three months, understood that the people on the east coast were "sharp guns" and "resolute and daring to fight", which was definitely not a good stubble. Now let yourself lead the troops to take the lead with the people on the east coast, and the two thousand people on hand will probably be consumed.

As a small army leader who has initially awakened the consciousness of a warlord, Zhang Ruxing deeply understands that in this troubled world, the army is his own capital. The warlords who lost their army are not farts, and Li Shiyuan, who was beaten by the people on the east coast a while ago and walked away, is a role model. But thinking of this, Zhang Ruxing was even more entangled, Li Shiyuan couldn't defend the city with two or three thousand people, how strong is this people from the east coast!

But there's no time for him to think further. The East Coast people on the opposite side have already finished their formations and are already slowly moving forward in formation, while their own side, which came out earlier than the East Coast people, is still arranging in a noisy formation, how can this gap be so big. Behind his large array was Li Shuotai's large array of the Chinese army, and he led about 2,000 elite cavalry troops there to supervise the battle, while the left and right wings each had 1,000 soldiers with about 2,000 auxiliaries lined up in two large horizontal formations.

From the formation, it can be clearly judged that Li Shutai wants to let himself test the people on the east coast, and if the battle situation is good, he will then put in the left and right infantry formations to join the battle group; If the situation is not good, then analyze it in detail, or Li personally led the main cavalry to the rescue, or simply pressed the whole army together in an attempt to save the defeat; Or simply leave Zhang Ruxing's troops on the battlefield, and Li Shutai led the army back to the camp to hold on, the more Zhang Ruxing thought about it, the more he felt that maybe the last option was what Li Shutai would do. (To be continued......)