In the second half of 1648, the whole of southern China was turbulent and changeable. First of all, Li Chengdong rebelled against the Qing Dynasty and defected to the Ming Dynasty again in Guangdong, and launched an attack on the neighboring Qing army, and the old Zheng generals Shi Fu, Shi Lang, Huang Ting, Hong Xishan and others who were originally under his command also left him with tens of thousands of soldiers and took refuge in Zheng Sen in Xiamen. So far, the soldiers and horses under Zheng Sen's command have increased from "thousands" at the beginning of the army to nearly 100,000.

Of course, these 100,000 people have a lot of water, and only 10,000 or 20,000 can really fight, and the rest are all masters and miscellaneous sailors who play soy sauce. Moreover, the 20,000 so-called "capable of fighting" are only relatively speaking, and they cannot guarantee victory in battle when they encounter those weak chicken green battalions left in Fujian, and it is conceivable how much their combat strength is, and it is not unreasonable for Li Chengdong to discriminate against them at the beginning, these people are really unbearable for land warfare!

However, fortunately, the Qing army left in Fujian with few troops, since Boluo returned to Beijing and took away most of the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banner generals, now the Qing court appointed the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, Zhang Cunren, under the command of no more than 40,000 or 50,000 soldiers, and most of them are gathered in northern Zhejiang and the main transportation routes, and the troops in Fujian Province are very scarce. Originally, the Qing court was counting on Li Chengdong in Guangdong to assist in the defense, but now that Li Chengdong has surrendered, Fujian is naturally extremely empty.

At the end of 47 and the first half of 48, Zhu Yihai, who was based in Zhoushan, frequently went ashore to attack the coast of Fujian and Zhejiang. At the beginning, his troops did not have a good record, and they especially lacked the ability to attack fortifications, so that even if they spent a lot of effort to conquer a certain city, they were forced to give up due to the arrival of Qing reinforcements, and they did not have time to raise supplies, so they became poorer and poorer the more they fought. Until the East Coast gave it a batch of light weapons. And at the same time went ashore to respond to its offensive. The shape of King Lu's department gradually improved.

From June. They avoided Zhejiang, where the Qing army was strong, and gained the support of the local gentry and some Zheng officers and soldiers in northeastern Fujian, and then took advantage of the lack of Qing troops to attack the city on a large scale. Although their combat strength was weak, they had a great advantage in politics, and they gradually squeezed the Qing army out of the 27 counties of the three prefectures in northeastern Fujian through guò contact with the righteous army and the generals of the Qing army. It can be regarded as a preliminary piece of territory, and the strategic maneuver space has been greatly enhanced.

Liu Haiyang, who was sitting on Daisan Island, also generously opened the arsenal and subsidized a large number of bows, crossbows, arrows, leather armor, knives and guns (produced by the Jeju Island Ordnance Workshop) newly transported from the north. Of course, now that Zhu Yihai and others have territory, they are embarrassed to take things for nothing, so they exchange local products (tea, raw silk, porcelain) with people on the east coast. Of course, it is said to be an exchange, but Zhu Yihaibu has not yet gained a stable foothold and has no military production capacity, so the people on the east coast sell some high-quality cold weapons to them. It's already a great piece of military aid, and these ordnance is in this era. You don't have to be able to buy it anywhere if you want to.

Why did the Chuang army gradually lose strength in the battle with Kong Youde and others? It's not just that the ordnance production capacity is insufficient! It is an irrefutable fact that there will be attrition in the war, and the attrition is very staggering, whether it is to replenish troops or ordnance, failure to replenish it in time will lead to a decline in combat effectiveness. At the beginning, the 60,000 Chuang army defeated Wu Sangui's 50,000 horses in Shanhaiguan, so that he went out of the pass at night to ask Dolgon for help, but a few years later, when the Chuang army faced Kong Youde, Shen Zhixiang and other old Liaodong people who were almost all the way to Wu Sangui, they fought quite hard, and the field battle was often not pleased, not because the ordnance and personnel loss could not be replenished! If it weren't for the fact that Zhang Xianzhong was still in Sichuan and did not die, and the people on the east coast made a big fuss in Shandong to attract a large number of Manchurian and Mongolian main forces, Li Guo, Gao Yigong and others would have been unable to mix in Hunan for a long time.

The Lu regime echoed with the Zheng clan along the coast of Fujian and Zhejiang, attacking the city, and in any case, Jin Shenghuan, Wang Deren, and Li Chengdong were also in Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces to suppress the forces loyal to the Qing court. Among them, Li Chengdong took 70,000 or 80,000 soldiers and horses brought by himself from Henan and Jiangbei to constantly attack the local troops in Guangdong that surrendered to the Qing court, and at the same time sent people to contact Jin Shenghuan and the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty to prepare to help each other. Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren claimed to have more than 100,000 troops, and after obtaining two long-tube siege cannons on the east coast (two were lost) in the Nanming regime of Tongguò, they finally broke through Ganzhou City in August 48 in one fell swoop, annihilated the Qing army defending the city, and connected the territory of Jiangxi with Li Chengdong's department in Guangdong.

The Emperor of Yongli of the Southern Ming Dynasty was overjoyed when he heard the news, and began to send people to urge He Tengjiao, who lived in the south of Hunan and northern Guangxi, to urge the soldiers and horses of his headquarters and the 130,000 troops of the original army Hao Shaoqi and Wang Jincai who had taken refuge in the army, and to the north, echoing with Li Guo, Gao Yigong and others of the Shun army who insisted in the areas of Yueyang, Changde, and Liuyang, and recovering the northern expedition to Hubei--of course, this may be just a beautiful dream, when will the Ming Dynasty be able to fight together with the thieves who are still fighting under the banner of rebellion? If they don't fight first, they already have a big picture.

In this way, in the second half of 1648, the provinces of Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang south of the Yangtze River were already in a full-scale chaos. Among them, Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangxi provinces have almost all fallen into the hands of Nanming, and half of Hunan is also in the hands of He Tengjiao, and the shape is very good. Encouraged by this, Li Guobu of the Shun army once again organized men and horses to dispatch from Baling, Linxiang, Pingjiang, Lizhou, Yiyang, Liuyang and other places where they had built fortifications (fortress groups, which began to be built in October 46 and were guided by engineers on the east coast) to attack Hubei to the north, which caught Kong Youde and others, who had only been attacking but not defending for two years, by surprise and suffered some losses.

For more than two years, Shunjun has been pressed and beaten by Kong Youde and others, and he is very aggrieved. Although Kong Youde and others did not get reinforcements from the main force of the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners in history, and the green battalion from the direction of Nanjing was also transferred to Jiangbei on a large scale because of the yellow-clothed thieves, the strength of these guides Kong Youde and others was only less than half of that in history, and there was no elite Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners to suppress the formation, but they still only spent more than a year to gradually expel the Shun army, which had a maximum of 300,000 horses and horses, out of Hubei by virtue of the advantages in logistics and personnel and equipment replenishment. Then they were pressed hard to the fortified area of Hunan, and then they stopped.

After all, the forts (bastions) where many of the yellow-coated cannons were placed were small and strong. And most of them are built outside the city (with the big city as a horn of each other) or on the traffic channel. It is far from being something that Kong Youde's troops who lack the ability to attack fortifications can deal with. Therefore, this allowed the split Shun army to survive in some areas of Hunan.

This time, the Shun army took advantage of the overall decline of the Qing army in Jiangnan to counterattack, which really surprised the Qing army, and some of the generals of the green battalion of the Han army did not resist effectively (they had a different mind in their hearts and began to pay attention to preserving their strength), so they actually made the Shun army attack the territory of Hubei in one fell swoop, which made Kong Youde jump like thunder.

Faced with such a thorny predicament, the Qing army did not dare to slack off, and immediately began to collect as many troops as they could. They sent Chen Jin, who had lost his army and land in the Battle of Denglai, again. Together with Ke Yongsheng, the former chief soldier of Jiaozhou Town, who had just recovered from his wounds, Dong Alai of the Zhenglan Banner Meile Zhangjing, Li Yanling, the squire of the Criminal Department, Ji Xiha, who had carried out the "beheading operation" in Mobei to pacify the Sauron Department, Zu Zeyuan, the nephew of Zu Dashou, and others, under the leadership of the squire of the Ministry of Rites and Chen Tai of the first class of the Yellow Banner Lazhangjing, went to Fujian and Zhejiang to reinforce Zhang Cunren, a major general who lacked troops (Zhang Cunren had returned to his hometown after illness at this time in history), and tried to counterattack Fujian and rescue Fuzhou, the provincial capital that had almost become an isolated city at this time.

These reinforcements are generally not much, but their combat effectiveness is not weak, among which Ji Xiha can be called a fierce general, Chen Tai and Dong Ally are also veteran generals who have fought for many years in the Eight Banners, and Chen Jin, Ke Yongsheng, Li Yanling and others are all old men of the Han Army Banner, and they are also very rich in combat experience. Zu Zeyuan is the nephew of the great traitor Zu Dashou, and his soldiers and horses are all from Jinzhou. It's also quite combative. Therefore, after arriving in Zhejiang, this reinforcement force with a total strength of no more than 15,000 troops quickly pacified some of the anti-Qing rebels with the momentum of sweeping away the leaves, and then almost without much delay went straight to northern Fujian and engaged the troops of the Lu Jianguo.

At the end of 48, the Qing reinforcements entered Fujian, and Zheng Cai, who held the actual military power of Zhu Yihai's department, and other manpower could not resist, and they were defeated in successive battles. The morale of the Qing army was like a rainbow, and there was a shocking scene of Ke Yongsheng leading more than 2,000 remnants of Jiaozhou Town to chase tens of thousands of anti-Qing rebels to beat their butts.

If the people from the East Coast were here at this moment, they would be so shocked that their jaws would not close. Ke Yongsheng's 2,000 or so people are still some of the old and weak soldiers left in Jiaozhou Town! At the beginning, the main force of Jiaozhou Town was defeated in Yantai, and the rest of the troops were caught and beaten by Mo Dashuai on the bank of Weishui, and they were beaten to the head of the rat, and tens of thousands of people died on the spot More than 2,000 people, and no less than 2,000 people died in the water.

But now after these old and weak soldiers who stayed in Jiaozhou and escaped by luck ran to Fujian, they turned into a division of tigers and wolves, and defeated all the troops of Zheng Cai, Liu Zhongzao and others, which was not majestic. It can also be seen from this how vulnerable the Nanming army, which lacked professional and systematic military training, would not have been able to hold out if they had not relied on the armed bandits, because most of Nanming's own army had a negative combat effectiveness.

After Jin Shenghuan and others were reversed in history, it didn't take long for Dolgon to send his cronies Tan Tai to lead the main force of the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners to the south, and with limited troops, the fastest speed, and the greatest Cheng dù, he took advantage of the internal contradictions in the Southern Ming Dynasty to defeat Jin Shenghuan, Wang Deren, Li Chengdong and other troops one by one, so that this great crisis was resolved invisibly. But now it's different, Tan Tai has more soldiers and horses than in history (25,000 people), but they are all trapped in Shandong, where it is even more troublesome. At this time, if Tan Tai's men and horses were dispatched south to attack Jin Shenghuan, would Shandong not turn the sky upside down?

Similar to Tan Tai, there is also Luck Dehun, in history, this person led a group of elite people from Mongolia and the Eight Banners to urge Kong Youde and others to fight all the way from Hubei to Guangxi, almost penetrating the entire South China, but at this time, this guy is also squatting in Jinan with five or six thousand people, urging the encirclement and suppression of the Yuyuan army, and at the same time monitoring the elusive and super-mobile yellow-clothed thieves, almost unable to move an inch. Counting the 20,000 or 30,000 Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners who are fighting in Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan and other places, as well as the 40,000 or 50,000 people stationed in Nanjing, Tianjin, Xi'an, Jinzhou and other important places, the strength of the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners is also very tight. At this time, if you want to send a large army south to fight Jin Shenghuan and Li Chengdong, you can only draw troops from Beijing and the above key points, otherwise you will not be able to gather enough men and horses.

And whenever I think of this question, I can't help but make the Manchu court sigh for a long time. Without him, Shandong, which is elbowed and armpit land, has never been pacified, and it is unreasonable to drag the mobile troops of the Northern Green Battalion (Seventh General Army) and Tan Tai and Le Ke Dehun here. If Shandong was only a trouble for the Qing court in the past, then it is obvious that it is now quite deadly, and Shandong alone has attracted more than 100,000 green battalions and 30,000 elites of the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners. Not to mention that the news of the crushing defeat of the northern Ningguta side at the hands of the yellow-clothed thieves also reached Beijing at the same time, which is even more disturbing. You must know that those places can provide at least 2,000 Jurchen troops for "my Great Qing Dynasty" every year, but now that they are being troubled by the yellow-clothed thieves, it would be good to be able to accept a few hundred people a year.

Yellow-clothed thief, why are you targeting me so much?! It's like a maggot on the tarsal bone, and it's too deceitful! (To be continued......)