On April 20, 1685, on a mountain path in the north of Zhenxiong Tufu, Chen Ming, a special observer of the army from the Republic of East China, had just lowered the telescope on his chest.

Today's weather is a little stuffy, not as cool and crisp as the usual in the mountains, which makes people want to untie the brass wind buckle on their chests. However, looking at the Dashun generals around him, Chen Ming, who still had to be decent, ended this thought rationally, and continued to stand on the path wrapped in a thick woolen coat.

About a few hundred meters ahead, a small walled city has been surrounded, and thousands of elite soldiers from the Dashun Left Battalion are scattered everywhere, attacking in an orderly manner. On the plains or hills farther away, the banners of the Dashun army appeared at most of the communication nodes or dangerous places on the mountains, leaving only a few directions unoccupied, which was also to not completely cut off the enemy's hope of breaking through and weaken their will to resist.

"Joker, you dare to resist my Dashun Heavenly Soldiers, I'm really impatient." A few meters in front of the left, a military general wearing a red forehead said: "Okay, let them know the strength of our army this time, so as to deter the small group, and save the old men of Tusi Village in the future, they will always have a fluke mentality, thinking that we dare not do anything to them." ”

"I don't know what they think in their heads, do they think that the world is still the same as hundreds of years ago? Occupying more than a dozen cottages and joining forces with tens of thousands of soldiers, can you force the imperial court to take them without any way? Another younger general shouted, "No, the world is very different now. The gun factory in Changsha can repair the equipment of several commanders in a day, and if you go up the river by boat, it will not be long before the supplies can be transported to the middle of the river. These toast heads still have things from the pre-Ming era in their heads, no wonder they are so stupid. ”

"Actually, it's not that they're stupid, it's that there are people behind them." After hearing this, a slightly older man stroked his beard and said in a sinister manner: "Those lost dogs in Xiying actually took refuge in the remnants of the former Ming Zhu family who had no way, and that's it, but in the past few decades, when have they not been thinking about making small moves from behind our backs?" Especially after our left camp entered Sichuan, they felt that they had robbed them of the food in their mouths, and they were so crazy that they wanted to mess with us, which was simply unreasonable. ”

"Hehe, Li Dingguo and Sun Kewang fought with Wu Sangui's old thief in Guiyang for two years, and the fight was dark. Wu Lao Thief even lost his body because he had been on the front line for a long time, and his condition deteriorated not long after he came back, so we picked up a bargain. The people in Xiying probably think the same way, how many veteran elites and Wu Sangui fought to the death in Guizhou, but they didn't get much benefit, doesn't this hate us? The malevolent man also came over with a haha and said.

Of course, his statement is not entirely nonsense. Guy Nanming has always believed that they fought Wu Sangui to the death in Guizhou, and the battle of Guiyang was even more vigorous, although the success was successful, but it also greatly killed and injured Wu Sangui's men and horses, and even made him himself in poor physical condition because of continuous foreign battles, and finally couldn't support it when Dongchuan and Zuoying fought fiercely, and fell, which made the front completely collapse, and the army moved into Sichuan.

However, from the perspective of the Shun army, their entry into Sichuan was not for nothing, but a bloody battle with a knife and a gun. Which of the fierce battles with Wu Sangui in Dongchuan, the decisive battles with the Qing army in northern Sichuan, the last battle with the Wu army in the Chengdu Plain, and the suppression of various independent or rebel forces in Sichuan, etc., can be easily accomplished? To put it mildly, with the little capital of your Xiying, even Wu Sangui's men and horses can't fight, let alone the Shaanxi-Gansu Green Camp led by Zhao Liangdong and others.

Chen Ming has been in Sichuan for a long time, and he also knows a lot about the past between Xiying and Chuangying, so he will listen to this group of Dashun generals talk about this, he is not unfamiliar, but he is not involved. And these people have not shied away from Chen Ming when they talk about it, and it seems that they don't care at all, which seems to confirm the high morale of the military and civilians in Dashun today.

Thinking about it, now controlling Jiangxi, Hunan, Sichuan and half of Hubei, the territory cannot be considered small, and the population is also large, and it is the second largest force after the Qing court among the many princes in Chinese mainland today. As for the left battalion, they fought continuously in Sichuan and won victories, laying down a huge piece of territory, and the entire military and political group showed a very strong upward trend. If you don't have confidence in your words and deeds, it's impossible!

"The artillery team fired!" In the midst of his reverie, an officer suddenly pointed to the battlefield in front of him and said loudly. His roar quickly attracted the attention of the others, and everyone stopped talking and looked ahead together.

Chen Ming took out a notebook and pen from his pocket, and carefully recorded them as he read them. Even this kind of battle against Tusi is also very valuable for reference, allowing the big men of the local War Department to better assess the combat effectiveness of the Shun army and even their opponents. Some guys who sit in the office all day long, thinking still stuck in thirty years ago, thinking that the Shun army is still the lost dog that was chased by the Qing army and had no way to enter the sky. However, in fact, it is because they have been running the central region for many years, have a deep foundation, and have carried out economic reforms and reused new-style talents, so that the national strength is rising day by day, and the army building is also steadily advancing, and the combat effectiveness cannot be said to be the same as in the past.

Chen Ming was entrusted by Ma Wenqiang, the former captain of the Southern Pioneer Team, who had left his post and returned to China, to focus on investigating the combat effectiveness of Liu Zhonggui's subordinates in Sichuan. Chen Ming's path was under the command of Zhang Guangcui, the military envoy of the Left Wing, focusing on Zhenxiong Mansion, Wumeng Mansion, and parts of neighboring Guizhou, where Tusi power had always been deep-rooted.

To be honest, this kind of behavior is a bit suspicious of sideshow. Wumeng Mansion and Zhenxiong Mansion were originally subdued by Li Dingguo of the Southern Ming Dynasty in the Battle of Zuoying into Sichuan, and later in the battle with the Wu army, these Tusi have also been producing strong men, money and grain, and have contributed a lot. As a result, after Li Dingguo led the army back due to internal problems in the Southern Ming Dynasty (it is said that he is now in poor health and may die of illness at any time), these Tusi leaders lost their restraints, so they all quickly lived to be the overlords of the Tu, until the Dashun court turned its attention to them.

This time, the Dashun court took advantage of the tense situation in the northwest of the Qing Dynasty and began to vigorously develop internal affairs, eliminate the internal Tusi forces, open up trade routes and liberate the population at the same time, so it mobilized tens of thousands of troops in Sichuan and Hunan provinces. Among them, Changsha sent more than 30,000 people from the middle and rear battalions to the west, and Zhang Nengsuo, who was subordinate to Changsha on the Sichuan side, returned to Chongqing Prefecture, and then raised troops to the southeast to work together to clear the Tusi secession regime.

If the imperial court is like this, Liu Zhonggui naturally can't help but express it, not to mention that they themselves also want to clarify the internal relationship, so they sent more than 20,000 troops from Wu Sangui to march eastward to clear the remaining Tusi in Banzhou and other places, and at the same time cooperate with the imperial court's actions in the western Hunan area. In addition, Liu Zhonggui's shogunate also sent Zhang Guangcui, the commander of the left wing, to lead 15,000 elite soldiers to the south, and along the way, the prefectures also sent some unity soldiers (that is, local militia arms) to cooperate, with a total strength of more than 30,000 people.

Seriously speaking, Liu Zhonggui's move violated the principle of "no invasion of each other" of the two major military and political systems of Dashun and Nanming set by the people on the east coast, after all, if those Tusi leaders really studied it carefully, they all had the letter of appointment, canonization, and confession issued by Li Dingguo on behalf of the Southern Ming Dynasty at home. Liu Zhonggui sent troops to beat them, but in fact, they were hitting the face of the Southern Ming court, although they did it under the pretext of cleaning up the Tusi forces.

But then again, no matter how much the people on the east coast oppose it, how convincing can it be in Sichuan, where the emperor is far away? Yes, the Liu Zhonggui shogunate has a lot of dependence on the people of the east coast, but this dependence is not enough in the face of the fundamental interests of expanding territory and stabilizing rule, right? Moreover, people are actually very face-saving, saying that if they don't play Nanming, they won't play Nanming, and they just make a sideline ball to play the local toast in Sichuan that tends to Nanming, do you need to make a fuss?

This is actually the general meaning of the Sichuan shogunate's explanation to Chen Ming, Chen Ming also smiled bitterly, after the persuasion failed, he reported these back, and the southern pioneer team decided, and then he strongly asked to go south with the army, in order to observe what the people of Dashun were going to do nearby.

Now that more than half a year has passed, the soldiers and horses led by the veteran Zhang Guangcui first quickly entered the most noisy Wusa Mansion, and broke through more than ten villages in a row with the autumn wind sweeping away the leaves, capturing countless people, cattle and sheep, and grain. After obtaining the consent of the shogunate, two prefectures of Shiojin and Oseki were set up in the northern part of Usa Province to resettle many captured populations and return the land to the river. At the same time, Chengdu also relocated tens of thousands of descendants of the former Wu Sangui army and their families to settle here, divided the land and carried out military reclamation, in order to digest these lands that originally belonged to Tusi as soon as possible and restore the direct control of the shogunate.

Subsequently, after separating some people to enter Mahu Mansion to continue to clear the Tusi, except for the few sergeants who stayed behind, the rest of the main forces were taken away by Zhang Guangcui and rushed east into Zhenxiong Mansion. In the first battle, he took the Baishui Jiangsi and broke its main force on the bank of the Baishui River, killing and wounding more than 8,000 people, and frustrating the enemy's momentum in the first battle, and then logically pacified the northwest part of the Zhenxiong Five Tusi.

After occupying the Baishui Jiangsi, Zhang Guangcui's soldiers and horses rested here for half a month to wait for supplies. Not long after, after the reinforcement and logistics materials were in place, the ministry continued south, entered the naturalization chief's lawsuit, and launched a persuasion offensive against it. After the persuasion failed, they were not surprised, they started directly, and won one victory after another in October, which made those Tusi village owners very surprised when they wanted to cry without tears, when did the soldiers and horses of the court be able to fight so much? Think about the rebellion of the Yang family in Banzhou during the Wanli period of the former Ming Dynasty, the rebellion of luxury in the year of the Apocalypse, etc., when did the imperial court not mobilize soldiers and horses from several provinces in the southwest, spend countless times, and take many years before it was finally pacified?

But this time to clear the Tusi in the territory, there were only tens of thousands of soldiers and horses, and half of them were united soldiers, so neat and neat, it was also an anomaly. This is probably not only due to the fact that the southwest Tusi has just been cleaned up during the Wanli and Tianqi years, but also because the combat effectiveness of the Shun army is much stronger than that of the guards in the southwest at the end of the former Ming Dynasty. You really don't look down on these armies that use new tactics such as muskets and artillery, and are relatively disciplined, if the logistics supply is sufficient, it is really more than an order of magnitude stronger than these toasts.

Unbelief? Look at the end of the Qing Dynasty in the history of the earth, don't look at the people are about to die, but the magic is that the national strength has been on the rise in the last few decades, the main reason is that people are trying to get out of the trap of agricultural society, adding a lot of industrial production elements, and the transportation conditions have also been greatly improved, making the country's productivity level much stronger than even the ancient feudal dynasties in their heyday. As a result, they were able to calmly quell the various rebellions in the country, and eventually maintained their territory for the most part until the day of the fall of the dynasty.

Although Shunguo is not as good as the level of social productive forces in the last years of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the folk ideology has been slowly civilized, domestic commerce is becoming more and more active, and although industrial production is mainly done with government investment, mainly military production, all kinds of private investment has also had a rapid growth momentum in recent years, and the overall development is very good. And more importantly, over the past few decades, the rulers of Shunguo, under the advice of the people on the east coast, have persistently built many high-grade war-ready roads or wharves in their jurisdictions, and some rivers that can be navigated have also been widened and dredged, and the transportation conditions have been improved, all of which have really increased the national strength.

Although Sichuan is a newly occupied land, it has been several years, and the new policy is also being steadily implemented, and the progress of the productive forces is also visible to the naked eye. In addition, the army under the command of Liu Zhonggui's shogunate has not been corrupted or degenerate, and they have maintained quite high combat effectiveness after fighting with the Qing army and the Wu army for many years.

So you can see how Zhang Guangcui's soldiers, who can be called elite soldiers and horses for the local forces in the southwest, attacked the city with the autumn wind sweeping away the fallen leaves. The toasts originally thought that the opponent's combat power was only a little stronger than theirs, but they could still rely on the locality, environment, and climate to deal with them, just as they had used their old tricks against the central court for hundreds of years. But in this era of radical social change and increasing productivity, these old tricks are becoming less and less powerful, so that they can no longer maintain their local domination. I believe that if this development continues for a few more decades, when the productivity level of the whole society is further improved, whether it is the southwest Tusi or the northwest nomads, it should no longer be a problem, this is a conclusion that has been slowly proven in the West, and I believe that China will not be too exceptional.