After the beginning of spring, the situation in Daming did "move" again.

The reason why we say "moving" is that it corresponds to "quiet" at the end of last year. Last year, Liu Haiyang, commander of the Southern Theater of Operations, led a total of 40,000 land and water troops, starting from Chongmingsha and marching westward along the Yangtze River, and the riverside towns of Suzhou, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Yingtianfu, Chizhoufu, Ningguofu, and Taiping were warned everywhere. There they will work in groups, recuperate, and then transport them back to the East Coast in batches.

Although the battle of the Yangtze River only killed, wounded and captured about 16,000 Qing troops (this is the statistics of the people on the east coast, in fact, it is far more than that, the Qing army was mobilized by the people on the east coast thousands of miles under the scorching heat, and the non-combat attrition was also quite powerful), but it greatly dealt a blow to the prestige of the Qing court, and the towns along the river were completely powerless to resist under the command of the allied soldiersIn the future, maybe the people on the east coast will not have to fight too many tough battles, which is the benefit of disturbing the hearts of the enemy.

The Qing court is not a sparse court with low execution ability like the Ming court, on the contrary, they have a group of reliable helmsmen, and their execution ability at the beginning of the new dynasty is also extraordinary, and once they see that something is wrong, they will immediately give corresponding countermeasures. It's not. After seeing the hearts of Jiangnan people. Geng Zhongming and Shen Zhixiang, who had advanced west from Jiangxi to Ningguofu, were not in a hurry to return west. Instead, he began to clean up law and order and suppress the places in the provinces that had been attacked by the people on the east coast, and it took a lot of tossing and turning to stabilize the situation, and this time it was already March of the New Year.

The main force of the Qing army in Jiangxi led by Geng Zhongming was trapped in Nanzhili, and his old opponent, Guo Sheng, who had already conquered the 17 counties in western Jiangxi, would not let go of this opportunity, and his troops of more than 70,000 people (half of whom were strong in combat) could not be easily suppressed by anyone. For this reason, the Qing army had to slow down the offensive on the Hubei battlefield, and sent a large number of men and horses into Jiangxi, and pressed back Guo Sheng's troops, who had already invaded Nanchang Mansion.

Speaking of which, we have to lament that the Ming army failed to carry out effective coordinated operations. A group of Southern Ming relics who rushed from Guangxi to southern Jiangxi had too heavy a view of the door. After a small setback on the way north to Fuzhou Mansion, he stopped directly, allowing the Qing army to calmly adjust its deployment and besiege Guo Sheng's headquarters on all sides. It's a pity that Wang Deren had 100,000 troops, but he was blocked by more than 30,000 green battalions and could not launch an offensive from the flank, reducing the pressure on Guo Sheng.

Of course, in any case, the Qing army was mobilized by the Yangtze River Campaign on the east coast this time, and the offensive of the Qing army, which was originally in a high-flying posture on the Hubei battlefield, began to slow down day by day: after compressing the main force of the Shun army to the Yangtze River line, the attack was somewhat weak. After all, they only had a total of 1450,000 horses (including some of the Dashun troops who surrendered last year), and after sending tens of thousands of more capable soldiers and horses east into Jiangxi. In the face of the two battalions on the left and right of Dashun with a total of 150,000 or 60,000 soldiers, he was also a little weak-hearted.

In particular, those Eight Banner masters have also fought a lot of battles recently, and the total number of casualties has exceeded 2,000, plus those who are sick and unsuitable, the total number is close to 3,000, which makes the Qing court quite unbearable. No matter how many deaths the Green Battalion makes, no one will feel distressed, and the Han Army Banner is just high-level cannon fodder, but the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners are the "national capital," and it is difficult to replenish everyone who has lost -- Recently, the yellow-clothed thieves have been making a lot of trouble in the Heilongjiang area, and our Qing Dynasty has almost lost the right to control the Jiangbei and Jiangdong regions, and recruiting troops has become an empty word. In such a situation, the precious Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners are still used sparingly, is it possible to go to the desert to recruit Mongolians in the future?

The main forces of both Qing and Shun were a little tired and slowed down their offensives, but the partial divisions never stopped fighting for even a day. For example, the 70,000 or 80,000 people of the Dashun Front Battalion in the western part of Wuchang Prefecture have been fighting endlessly with the Qing army in Wuchang headed by Kong Youde and Shang Kexi, and the current battle lines of the two sides are staggered, and the casualties are extremely staggering, so that Li Guo, who is sitting in Baling County (that is, Yueyang City, which is the Dashun logistics transfer base, has been operating for many years, and has a complete fortress group), is ready to send part of the middle camp to support them. As for the more than 40,000 elite people in the rear battalion that are still in his hands, this is Li Guo's general reserve, and the proportion of veterans is extremely high, and it is not time to use it for the time being, because this is a trump card that can change the situation of the battle at a critical moment.

However, during the year-end and New Year holidays when the offensive slowed down, the Qing court was not without action. Henan, as the rear of the army, transferred a large number of equipment, armor, and livestock to the Qing army on the front line in Hubei, and also sent 20,000 supplementary soldiers -- Li Zicheng's vigorous restoration of agricultural production in Henan since the 15th year of Chongzhen's reign finally bore fruit after the Qing army entered the customs, and after 10 years of restoration, Henan, a province with a large population, recovered from only 8 million people to more than 10 million, and agricultural production was also quite good. It can also be seen from this that the Qing court's ability to govern is completely exploding the Ming Dynasty, and the strictest stage of the Xiaoice River period was in the early Qing Dynasty rather than the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing court could survive the restoration of local order, but the Ming Dynasty could not, it was indeed rotten to the bone, and there was no reason for heaven to die.

After a large number of grain and military supplies and supplementary troops arrived at the front, the Qing court resumed the long-accumulated offensive again in early March, and they launched several attacks in a row, all of which were victorious, and then most of the right battalion of the Shun army was driven to the south bank of the Yangtze River, and only one fortified and rebuilt Jingzhou city remained on the north bank of the Dashun; In addition, the Yunyang Prefecture in western Hubei was also in the hands of Liu Fangliang's troops in the left battalion of Dashun, who used the complex terrain to repeatedly maneuver with the Qing army, making it impossible to conquer it, and then connected with the Qing army in Sichuan.

However, the Qing army's offensive may end here, and in the next stage, in the face of the large number of walled cities built by the Shun army on both sides of the Yangtze River, I am afraid that they will have to work hard to gnaw through one by one. And in this process, the casualties of the Qing army will inevitably increase dramatically, with their not a lot of troops, even if they are good at fighting in the Eight Banners of Manmeng, it is very difficult to face this turtle shell. Perhaps, what they should be looking forward to is a breakthrough in the Sichuan battlefield in the west, otherwise unless more reinforcements are added, the Huguang battlefield will not be able to make great progress in a short period of time.

As for the current situation in Sichuan, the people on the east coast are not very clear, they only know that there is probably still fighting there, and although Zhang Xianzhong and others are at a disadvantage, they are still resisting stubbornly. The Dashun Hezhen Department at the junction of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Hubei provinces also fought out of Shangluo Mountain from time to time and attacked the rear of the Qing army, which greatly delayed the offensive of the Qing army and expanded the influence of the Dashun armed group here.

The situation has developed to this day in 1653, and the Qing court may also adjust its strategic deployment, because the situation has changed somewhat, although they still have a great advantage, but the front of the army is dull, and the opportunity to conquer the whole country in the past is gone. What they should do in the next step is to take action from both the military and political sides, insist on holding high the banner of safeguarding the interests of the landlords and gentry, unite the local tyrants and inferior gentry all over the country, and then rely on their strength to use a small number of Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners to supervise a large number of green battalion cannon fodder, fight steadily, and unify the whole country step by step.

And their style of play is naturally what the people of the East Coast like to see. Without him, because this is equivalent to the Qing court admitting that it cannot quickly unify the whole country in a short period of time, it naturally gives the people on the east coast a chance to get their hands on it, and what the situation will develop in the future, everyone will see, and if it is not, it will become a confrontation between Song Jin and Song Yuan.

And based on such a strategic consideration, Shao Shude naturally couldn't agree to Wei Boqiu going out on a ship and going to Japan with a mouthful. Because he was worried about what would happen to the battlefields in Jiangnan, Huguang, and Sichuan this year, and when the time came for the people on the east coast to go into battle to respond, he found that the ships had been occupied in large quantities, wouldn't he be dumbfounded? Besides, Japan is a feudal kingdom with a population of more than 20 million and a unified government, and the army has not yet had time to be corrupted, and the number is quite large. Of course, Shao Shude also admitted that the thousands of skilled workers who could be brought back from Tanegashima and Kii Domain were a huge fortune that even the East Coast would covet, but he couldn't make up his mind if he didn't send troops now.

What's more, Chang Kaisheng in the northeast has also been applying to concentrate troops to carry out a military operation to sweep the Manchu Ningguta area in depth after the spring channel thaws at the beginning of this year; Mao Desheng, who was stationed in Laizhou Mansion, was also asking whether he could gather troops and horses to kill North Korea and teach them how to behave at the invitation of the Qing court.

In the face of the applications submitted by all parties, Shao Shude was also very troubled, so that he couldn't make a final decision after thinking about it for a long time. It was not until April 8, when the 1652-53 migration season had just ended and major ships had sailed into the shipyard for routine maintenance, that the all-steam-powered ship "Tahiti" from the east coast brought Shao Shude a letter from the Executive Committee, which made him make up his mind and clarify the direction of his next move. (To be continued......)