The rumbling of artillery had just stopped.

Outside the Maojiakou Fortress, the auxiliary soldier Zhang Xiaomao walked on the muddy ground, walking deep and shallow. Not long after the Qing army retreated, there was no one in the four fields, and in addition to the whirring wind, there was only the faint groaning of some wounded. Obviously, these wounded were all Qing soldiers, and because of the hasty retreat, the Qing army did not even have time to take away the bodies of their own dead brothers, let alone these wounded.

The fate of these wounded soldiers of the Qing army is actually doomed, that is, the auxiliary soldiers of the Shun army who cleaned up the battlefield will make up for it and take off the head as the basis for calculating merit. Of course, maybe the lightly wounded can live, because they are still valuable, but how many of these people can there be, very few.

The battlefield was a bit muddy, half because of the weather, half man-made. Speaking of the weather, it is actually very easy to understand, in recent days, heavy snow has fallen, and after the snow has thawed, it has been muddy everywhere. And it is said that it is a human factor, mainly because even on dry days, Maojiang Kouzhai will find a way to put a little water in front from time to time to make the ground more soft and muddy, which is not conducive to the action of the army, of course, this kind of behavior is not common, and it is not easy to complete.

It would be late in the evening, the sky was getting dark, and the muddy ground was slowly starting to freeze. Zhang Xiaomao sped up his movements, and successively replenished the knives for the two wounded soldiers of the Qing army who were still panting, and then commanded several strong men who listened to his orders to gather the corpses together and load them into a truck, planning to pull them to a farther place for centralized incineration.

Although the climate is relatively cold now, if the corpse is not disposed of as soon as possible, it is still easy to cause a series of problems, such as epidemics and so on. The Qing and Shun armies fought in Hubei in recent years, and the corpses were generally dug in mass graves to bury or burned directly, just as the officers and soldiers of the former battalion of the Shun army in Maojiakou Village did.

Yes, Zhang Xiaomao and others belonged to the former battalion of the Shun army, and they all commanded the subordinate part of the Dang Jintang (the son of Dang Shousu) to guard the Maojiakou fortress. Located in Maoshi Town, Jianli County, Hubei Province, on the north bank of the Yangtze River, this fortress is a mixed brick and wood fortress. Its scale is not large, probably can only be stationed more than 2,000 soldiers, but the geographical location is more critical, surrounded by the Yangtze River, Xiashui, Honghu and other water systems, the rivers and streams in the territory are vertical and horizontal, not conducive to the Qing army's iron cavalry drive, and the water transportation is more developed, conducive to the exchange of personnel, materials and money and food with the outside world, so it was occupied by the Shun army very early and built a fortress, installed a cannon, stationed a man.

Moreover, perhaps because the Qing army's naval division was disabled on the east bank, in this Hubei and Jiangxi area, the Shun army has developed a medium-sized Yangtze River inland water division after decades of painstaking management, with a total establishment of about 30,000 people. The ships of the Shunguo Navy are still mainly based on traditional Chinese ship types, and only a few ships have absorbed the characteristics of Western and East Coast ships and made some improvements, but the overall number of such ships is relatively small, because they may not be suitable for China's climate and river characteristics.

But in any case, even if this Shunguo naval division is not as large as the naval divisions under the jurisdiction of the previous dynasties that divided the southern regimes, but there is no major problem in suppressing the Qing State, controlling the big rivers, and crisscrossing rivers and lakes in Hubei and Jiangxi, because the Qing naval divisions are far from being comparable to the regimes of the Northern Dynasties in previous dynasties, what else can be said about this?

And it is the existence of this dominant naval division that allows Shunguo to retain a considerable number of strongholds on the north bank of the Yangtze River as a powerful supplement to its Dajiang defense line, such as Hao**, Maojiakou, Bailuoji, Huangpengshan, Xintan Town, and so on. These strongholds, with a few garrisons of two or three thousand people, and a large number of six or seven thousand people, were high and deep, and were extremely strong. And the model is also designed by the East Coast engineers or imitated the East Coast design of the fortress, with a bit of fortress characteristics, the wall has broken lines, and there are many protrusions, if the enemy attacks, it will be very embarrassing to find that the flank also has to bear fire - in this regard, the Qing army has learned many times - very conducive to defense. So, don't look at a fortress with only a few thousand soldiers, but if you have sufficient reserves of arrows, ammunition, food, and other military supplies, it is generally difficult to attack head-on.

Unbelief? Let's take a look at the actual battle situation between the Qing and Shun countries on the Hubei front over the years! Taking the Wujiaxue Town in Huangzhou Prefecture as an example, it was occupied by the front battalion of the Shun army at the beginning, with more than 2,000 troops stationed. Later, Xiangyang promised to mobilize a total of soldiers and horses from Huangzhou, De'an and the neighboring Anqing and Luzhou to besiege it, which lasted a year before and after, and lost more than 15,000 soldiers and horses. Moreover, this is only the loss of personnel, the loss of artillery, firearms, siege equipment and other aspects, I don't know how much. Therefore, after capturing here, the Qing army also knew that it was powerful, so it also learned the tactics of Shunguo, using fortresses against fortresses, and fortified cities with fortified cities, and then making it difficult to move an inch along the front line of Hubei. Not to mention, rivers, lakes, and swamps can be found everywhere, which is not conducive to large-scale army gathering, mobilization, and combat, and it is believed that if it were not for some pressure on the Shun side and containing some of its men, the Qing State would not have tried to attack the Shun army-controlled area in Hubei.

Of course, even if the Qing army attacked the area controlled by the Shun army, it would directly attack the fortress in a minority. What they did the most was to try to eliminate the Shun army that rescued these fortresses by encircling the points and sending reinforcements, and by the way, they attacked their transportation lines and plundered places.

Therefore, when he saw more than 10,000 Qing troops attacking the Maojiakou fortress, the auxiliary soldier Zhang Xiaomao was still quite surprised, and I believe that the commander of the castle made the adults more surprised: although the power of the artillery was greatly discounted because of the muddy ground, but just with a large number of bows and crossbows and muskets in the city, it was enough for you to suffer a lot of losses. However, when he thought that sometimes the Shunguo side would also organize a land and water army to besiege the fortress garrisoned by the Qing army, Zhang Xiaomao was also a little speechless, and felt that the commander with a bad brain seemed to be not only on the Tartar side, but also many generals in the front, middle, and back camps at his own end.

"Wang Jiu, what do you say you are still living here? It's better to cross the river to go to relatives, and maybe you can divide the land. You see, there aren't many people in the town now, right? If there is a war between two ends in three days, no one can settle down. Zhang Xiaomao said to a man who followed him while searching the corpse neatly.

This auxiliary soldier named Wang Jiu was actually a man from a nearby village who was recruited because of the war. In fact, you don't have to be surprised, in history, the tug-of-war area between the two armies is said to be a blank field, but it is not really a lack of grass, there are still some residents who live, although life is very difficult, but they always persist in the local area for various reasons. Not to mention, a place like Maojiakou with fertile land and a suitable climate. When the Qing army came, the whole family ran to the boat, and then went straight away, and returned again after the war, and the days were maintained with great difficulty, as was the case with Wang Jiu in front of him.

"The ancestral tombs are all here, and I can't bear to go lightly." Wang Jiu, who had also gone outside when he was young, sighed and said sullenly: "Besides, where can you go this way?" My two sons are carrying guns to eat under the commander of the envoy (Dang Jintang), and it is not interesting for me to go to Jiangnan as a bad old man, so it is better to live here. ”

Zhang Xiaomao sighed when he heard it. He was a person in Jianli County in the south, and he originally followed a tea merchant to carry the work, but Jianli County had no choice but to face the Qing army, and the business situation was not good, and the businessman could not make money, so he simply crossed the Yangtze River to Yuezhou City (Baling County) to develop. Zhang Xiaomao had no livelihood, so he didn't do anything, ran to the county to enlist as a big soldier, and then was transferred to Maojiakouzhai, and it has been a year.

During this year, Maojiakou Village was not peaceful as a whole. Xu was because the left battalion entered Sichuan to kill the Quartet, and the Qing army's Xiangyang battalion launched a series of offensives on the Hubei front line (there were also counteroffensive offensives in Jiangxi), attracting a large number of men and horses, including the front battalion and the middle battalion.

Although this kind of offensive of the Qing army was intermittent, it lasted more than two years at a time, which is also surprising. Perhaps because they didn't want to see a large number of troops in Hubei easily transferred westward and then join the battle in Sichuan, they have been trying to carry out a diversion war. However, now this kind of diversionary operation seems to be coming to an end, firstly, because the situation in Sichuan has undergone a fundamental change, the situation is very clear, the Qing army has retreated to the northern part of Sichuan, the defeat has been decided, and there is no need to support desperately in the second battlefield; Second, the long-term offensive on the front line in Hubei, although it has been fought for a few months and rested for a few months, but on the whole, the consumption is also very large, whether it is soldiers, food or materials, it is not a small amount, and it is in urgent need of rest and replenishment.

Therefore, taking these two factors together, the Qing court estimated that it would soon stop this meaningless and costly offensive on both sides. Next, if they have the heart, they should find a way to seek a breakthrough in the Jiangxi area, after all, there are no endless fortresses there, and it will be easier to attack - of course, what Zhang Xiaomao does not know is that the government of the southern pioneer team of the people on the east bank has already signed a peace agreement with the Qing State, and the two sides have officially completed the boundary and started mutual trade, and the Qing Hangzhou Battalion can draw out a considerable number of troops to support the Nanjing Battalion, so that it will have more troops to move westward and be stationed in the border area between Jiangnan Province and Jiangxi Province of Shunguo. Wait for an opportunity to attack.

"Keep it, keep it, I guess the hard days are almost over, and there should be a long period of peace next." After working for a while, Zhang Xiaomao was also tired, so he found a relatively dry place to sit down, gasped and said: "I was eating in the village a while ago, and I was fortunate to meet the commander, and I vaguely heard him mention that there are a lot of troubles in the north on the Tartar side. At that time, I was killing sheep for the commander, and I was a little far away, so I didn't hear it clearly, in short, it meant that the northwest of the Qing Dynasty was in trouble, and the pressure was very great, so I had to stop fighting in our area. Well, the commander also listened to what the commander said, and he wasn't sure, but I wondered if it was fake. So, Wang Jiu, if you stay up for a while, the hard days will be over. ”

"That's for the best." Wang Jiu was still busy on the ground. He just found half a string of copper coins on a corpse, Zhang Xiaomao motioned for him to quietly put it away, so this will be more motivated, and he is not tired at all to fold the corpse of the Qing army with the uniform taken off on the cart - although the Qing army's uniform is useless, and it cannot be worn openly in the area controlled by Shunguo, but it is still okay to take it back and disassemble it for other purposes, or to sew and mend the damaged clothes or something, so according to the usual practice, they are all to be taken off, and the corpses of the Qing army are basically burned naked.

"Zhang Tou, in fact, you are right, I think it is true." After being busy for a while, Wang Jiu also sat down to rest for a while, only to hear him say: "Recently, many people have said that the Shaanxi cubs who fought the most fiercely are gone, or even if they are seen, they are much less. I think ah, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Gansu Green Battalion of the Tartars has always been able to fight and fight, and it is extremely brave, and it is always very difficult for us to encounter field battles here. These people haven't all been wiped out, have they? No one can do that, right? So, these people should have been transferred! In the past, I thought they had gone to Sichuan, but now that I heard Zhang Tou say this, I feel that they have all returned to their hometown in Shaanxi, so what kind of border trouble should I beware? ”

In fact, just as Zhang Xiaomao and Wang Jiu said, in the past six months, the Qing army has indeed taken the opportunity of fighting to frequently adjust the troop allocation and arrangement of the front line, and has transferred a large number of Shaanxi-Gansu-Gansu green battalions that can fight well to the northwest in batches to guard against possible harassment by the Mongols. You must know that as Galdan digests the southern Xinjiang and Oirat Mongol tribes move faster and faster, now he can draw more and more soldiers and horses to the east.

According to the Qing court's own statistics, in the past three years, Galdan and his servant army have invaded the Hexi Corridor five times, although they were all forced back by the Qing army who were waiting for the battle, and there was no exchange of fire between the two sides, but the situation was undoubtedly quite serious, and the Kangxi Emperor in Beijing did not pay attention to it.

What's more, the infiltration of Galdan in the Mongolian steppe is even more of a headache for them, because it is in danger of shaking the foundation of their "Manchurian and Mongolian unity". Therefore, due to various considerations, the Manchu court decided to start as soon as possible, both militarily and politically, to eliminate the threat of Galdan.

And to do this, a large number of soldiers and horses are indispensable! You must know that in the vast desert, there are often hundreds of miles of uninhabited, and if you want to block Galdan's elite cavalry, you have to mobilize several times his number of infantry cavalry to encircle and suppress (this is the case in history), otherwise I am afraid that I will not be able to encircle his cavalry. From this point of view, it seems that the suspension of the offensive in the south and the dispatch of men and horses north to deal with the threat of the Oirat Mongols have become the inevitable choice of the Qing court.