Liu Haiyang finally agreed to Wang Chaoxian and Ruan Jin's plan, that is, to first plunder the rich Suzhou Prefecture off the coast, and then try to find other places. The reason why he made such a decision was mainly due to the fact that he had been in Ningbo for the past four months to gather troops, reorganize training, and hoard military funds, which was too loud, and I was afraid that the Qing court, which had many eyes and ears in Ningbo, had already received the news.

Thinking about it, the plan of Wang Chaoxian and others is not unreasonable: the Qing army in the Jiangnan area was originally no more than 300,000 soldiers and horses, but now more than 100,000 people have been gathered in Zhejiang, and then the tens of thousands of people led by Zhao Guozuo, the governor of Fujian, and the 100,000 people led by the two generals Geng Zhongming and Shen Zhixiang in Jiangxi (after absorbing part of the Jin Shenghuan army, there were only 40,000 or 50,000 people), and the remaining soldiers and horses were only 50,000 or 60,000 people.

These 50,000 or 60,000 green battalions are the largest mobile force of the Qing army in the south of the Yangtze River, and Nanjing, as a city with heavy symbolic significance, cannot be said to have left heavy troops to garrison; Zhenjiang, as a barrier to Nanjing, is also an important node of Caoyun, and has to leave troops to defend; These two things add up to at least 20,000 or 30,000 green camps. As for the remaining 20,000 green battalions, it is estimated that they have been led by important generals of the Qing army at this moment, and it is difficult to say where they will be stationed, but this is really important? Now Liu Haiyang has more than 40,000 people, 1,000 warships (including a large number of offshore boats in Ruan Jin and Hong Xishan), thousands of elite troops on the east coast, dozens of cannons, and sufficient food and grass, and high morale, even if they meet 20,000 green battalions, there is still a chance of victory.

At this time, there are at least 20,000 green battalions in Nanjing, and it is estimated that there are still 10,000 or 20,000 elite Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners, and then counting the temporarily requisitioned landlord regiment to train their arms, the strength is still very thick, so it is indeed not wise to touch it now, so it is necessary to temporarily modify the plan to engage in Suzhou Mansion first?

Lieutenant Júnior was not very interested in Liu Haiyang, the army commander who was served by a naval general, and when he heard that he was actually led by the nose by a group of Ming Guoqiu Ba to revise the battle plan that had been formulated a long time ago, he suddenly felt a little powerless. However, Liu is his direct superior, although Júnior came to the south to supervise the battle with Shao Shude's sword, but this sword could not be cut on Liu Haiyang's head, so he could only pinch his nose and admit this kind of "chaotic life" under Liu Haiyang.

Or was it decisive when Mo Dashuai was there, and were there any local commanders, kings or warlord generals who dared to talk crookedly in front of Mo Dashuai? In the early days, there may have been, but since Mo Dashuai buried more than 100 people alive under Yantai City at one time, no one dared to talk nonsense, and the military discipline was extremely solemn since then, and there was no one who disobeyed the order.

That's the gap! Lieutenant Júnior secretly slandered himself while summoning all the staff officers under his command to give orders to the army.

Tens of thousands of troops landed on the riverbank around Taicang Prefecture in Suzhou Prefecture in the early morning of April 28. Because of the huge number of troops and the different flags, golden drums, and orders of each department -- although they conducted a concentrated training and drill during the Dinghai period, in the final analysis, the time was still too short, and the various departments were still quite unfamiliar with each other -- and what was even more devastating was that the various departments even spoke different languages, which made the staff officers of the Southern Theater Command, who were in contact with the various departments, very confused.

In particular, some staff officers of Liwonian descent, their accents were already rather strange, and wherever they went, they were even more of a kind of onlookers, especially the more than 3,000 strong men forcibly pulled by Zhang Huangyan's troops before the expedition, and they couldn't get the job done without spending half a day, so angry that Liu Haiyang threw several cups in a row, and scolded these rabbles for being really unreasonable, and they were still so messy after practicing several times, and they didn't have a good memory at all.

However, after six or seven days of noisy and noisy, nearly 30,000 officers and men finally completed the landing at the scheduled landing site with a large amount of supplies. After the landing was completed, according to the plan made temporarily in the past few days, the armies of all walks of life maintained a posture of advancing in unison, and it was strictly forbidden to divide troops and plunder them, so as not to be taken advantage of by the Qing army.

But when it comes to the Qing army, this is another question that annoys Liu Haiyang. After a series of events since the expedition, he now has no hope that this rabble, numbering as many as 40,000, can defeat the main force of the Qing army and sweep Jiangnan. But isn't it, Mo Dashuai's strength back then was so strong, he didn't dare to guarantee that he could win when he was on a hard bar with a large number of Manmeng Eight Banners, and the 40,000 people he had on hand were more mixed, more uneven, and weaker in combat effectiveness, was he a combat genius? Do you have a strong personality? Do you have outstanding oratorial talents that can unite people's hearts? If he didn't have the skills above the full level, how could he Liu Haiyang go against the sky? It's impossible!

The biggest advantage of their so-called "allied army" is probably the strategic advantage of the Qing army's empty strength and scattered everywhere, once it comes to the tactical and campaign level of the confrontation between the two armies, his 40,000 army is a little enough! Not to mention anything else, those "parallel goods" in the singular number of troops, the 3,000 mud legs brought by Zhang Huangyan were only trained for four or five months, and it is said that the army is very reluctant, and the combat effectiveness is basically zero (if there are things that affect the morale of the army, such as bombing the camp, collapsing, and escaping, it is not surprising that the combat effectiveness is assessed as negative); Zhang Mingzhen and Wang Chaoxian brought more than 5,000 decent army, but the proportion of veterans was also very low, and the army had only been formed for one or two years, and the combat effectiveness was just like that, slightly inferior to the general Qing army's Jiangnan Green Battalion, but higher than the landlord's regiment training.

As for the officers and soldiers of the Navy Division under the jurisdiction of Ruan Jin and Hong Xishan, which have a total of more than 7,000, it is okay to let them wave their flags and shout, but if they want to go into battle to kill the enemy, it will be difficult for some strongmen. What the? Can't you see that the tanned Fujianese are actually fishermen by the sea? Counting on them to fight, you don't have water in your head, right? Their combat effectiveness is not as strong as the spear-wielding soldiers on the east coast of our country, at least the morale of the military team is okay, and they will practice from time to time, and if they really want to go into battle, they dare to compare with the green battalion, but they are much stronger than the group of fishermen in the hands of Ruan Jin and Hong Xishan. Among their 7,000 subordinates, 2,000 of them were able to fight in battle, and there could be no more!

Of course, having said that, the number of the "Allied forces" is there after all, as long as they do not divide their troops and do not go out of the big basket, and there are relatively elite East Coast armies to suppress the formation, as long as they do not encounter the large number of Qing army brigades, they will still be able to win the battle, at least they will not collapse without warning -- just like Zhang Mingzhen and other eastern Zhejiang armed forces in the south of the Yangtze River in history.

Fortunately, during the initial landing period, the Qing army brigade did not come to harass, of course, the more likely reason is that they are not sure where the people from the east coast will land, so the main force is still far from this place and has not yet arrived. However, when tens of thousands of allied troops began to search and advance from Taicang Prefecture to Changshu like locusts, if the Qing army did not react, it would be a dead man, and the local officials who surrendered early to "my Great Qing" watched with concern the descendants of King Lu contacting the gentry and inspiring, and they felt that if the Qing Dynasty did not come to "relieve the people from hanging upside down", it would be difficult for the Suzhou Mansion to change color.

In fact, their worries are not unreasonable, they have been captured by the East Coast army in Taicang Prefecture and Changshu County in the past few days, and there are countless local gentry who have come to visit Zhang Mingzhen, Zhang Huangyan and others in private, and the two Zhang are also gentle and comforting to them, which makes Liu Haiyang nod his head, and said in his heart that although these people are not good at fighting, they are good at engaging in local united front work, and Nanming's brand did not expect to have such a big appeal, no wonder there are still people shouting against the Qing Dynasty and the restoration of Ming at the end of the Qing Dynasty hundreds of years laterThe Ming Dynasty still has a large market in the gentry, of course, only in the gentry.

These gentry came to Zhang Mingzhen to walk around, and naturally brought a lot of news, such as the Qing army commander Mei Lezhangjing, Zhao Butai, Tong Tulai, Liu Zhiyuan and others led the Manchu and Han army "tens of thousands of people" had left Nanjing half a month ago, and ten days ago, more than 3,000 people of the Manchu and Mengma vanguard led by Zhao Butai had arrived in Wujin County, the capital of Changzhou, and it is not known where they are now.

This information is still relatively timely for the people on the east coast, because it is very helpful for them to make all preparations in advance. No, on May 6, the various units that had already marched to Changshu County began to gradually move closer, and some of the "rebel troops" who were scattered in the grass valley also reluctantly withdrew with a large amount of money and grain under repeated orders. Among them, the money and grain were their own spoils of war, and Dingkou divided the account in half with the people on the east coast, who were not well populated on the territory of Ningbo and Shandong, and urgently needed the population to reclaim the wasteland.

In the ten days from the 6th to the 15th, the 40,000 troops who were not very far apart gradually approached the side of the river at the junction of Changshu County, Suzhou Prefecture and Jiangyin County, Changzhou Prefecture.

Liu Haiyang didn't want to go head-to-head with the Qing army here, all he wanted to do was to attract the attention of the Qing army, mobilize its troops, and then use his superior mobility to throw off its main force and attack another place in the void. It's just that whether this plan can work or not, whether the Qing army will respond passively like when Luck Dehun was led by the nose by Mo Dashuai in Shandong, it's not entirely difficult to say - according to common sense, the Qing army, which has been fighting for so long and understands the combat style of the yellow-clothed thief, should also have grown a little.

Within 10 days, the people on the east coast hastily built a series of camps on the banks of the river by using Sakhalin logs, standard plates, barbed wire, reinforced concrete, and other parts brought with them by the ship, and they also took the trouble to dig fire ditches and arrange artillery positions on high places. During this period, a large amount of money, grain, and materials taken from Taicang Prefecture and Changshu County -- Suzhou was so rich -- and more than 16,000 Dingkou began to go down the river toward Chongmingsha under the escort of thousands of officers and men of the two divisions of Hong Xishan and Ruan Jin.

As for the next move, it is probably to spy on the intelligence of the Qing army while withdrawing troops in batches. Their next target is likely to be Zhenjiang Mansion - and this has a premise, that is, to confirm that a large number of Qing troops have indeed been transferred to Suzhou Prefecture, otherwise they would rather not retreat and continue to toss and fight the autumn wind in the vicinity. R1152