Ever since Ao Bai came to the riverside with his troops, he has been anxious, constantly urging his troops to find ferries, build pontoon bridges, or directly use ferries to transport troops over.

By the time Brother Zhu realized that something was wrong, Aobai's 30,000 troops had already crossed most of the troops, and all the important troops of the entire army had crossed the river, leaving some clothed servants to guard the riverside, and a Manchu cavalry infantry unit of 2,000 people, transporting baggage and supplies back and forth across the river.

After crossing the river, Aobai sent cavalry to explore the surrounding terrain and reconnoiter nearby enemies, scattering 6,000 cavalry and covering a range of 30 miles.

The cavalry reported that he was a little worried, after crossing the river, the fifteen miles of land were mostly flat, but after that, he had to cross a small mountain range, a few small villages, and then an important road made him worry, a long and narrow canyon area of fifty miles, on both sides were peaks and cliffs as high as two or three hundred meters, this terrain made it impossible for a person who led troops all year round not to worry.

What if the enemy had already sent troops to occupy this place?

For this reason, he postponed the march and waited for all the troops to cross the river, and then sent nearly 10,000 cavalry to search for nearly eighty miles around, while the Chinese army was stationed fifteen miles from the river, a small fishing boat, waiting for news.

Just after noon, the cavalry of the first team of searchers came back and reported that after the search of the fifty-mile gorge had been completed, until the strength of the exit was out, no enemy troops were found lurking, only a group of ragged bandits fled in a hurry.

And the cavalry on the riverside came back to report that the figure of the scout cavalry of the Huaxia Army appeared on the riverside, searching around, or looking this way.

Ao Bai's heart sank, and the enemy's scout cavalry arrived here, indicating that his broken cavalry troops were more auspicious, and his heart ached, it was his own headquarters of soldiers and horses, among which there were three tribesmen and horses of his banner of Niu Lu, which were all lost.

I don't know what happened to that kid from Sony's house.

He felt a little sorry for a boy from Sony's family, after all, that kid bought him a day, let him cross the river, and successfully completed the task he had given him, and he wasted half a day's effort sitting here at this time, according to his assumption, at least two days, about a hundred miles, so that the enemy wanted to catch up with his full cavalry troops, at least another day's effort.

This is a large army, if it is a small group of men and horses, a few hundred cavalry, a day's effort can soar out of 200 miles, but his 30,000 troops can not soar out of a hundred miles.

After regretting it for a while, he put it down, after all, several princes of the Qing Dynasty were lost, and the son of a Manchu minister couldn't make him feel sorry too much.

Knowing that the Huaxia army appeared by the river to snoop, he immediately ordered the camp to be pulled, and it took an hour for the 30,000 cavalry to gather and half an hour to pull out the camp, and in the afternoon, the army began to flee frantically.

Now he ran eighty miles in one go, and only entered a small town to rest ten miles at the exit of the canyon, and it was already the second half of the night.

Fortunately, the enemy did not follow, and did not arrange to intercept the troops at the front.

At this time, the Huaxia army had already arrived at the ferry, and even Zhang Qiang's guards brigade came, and Zhu Ge's forward cavalry troops had already built a pontoon bridge at the ferry.

The cavalry had already sent 4,000 men and horses to scout the nearby terrain and reconnoiter the enemy's whereabouts.

Zhang Qiang received a messenger from Wang Yuqun, and they had already set up an interception force, which was in the hilly area at the intersection of the roads of a small town eighty miles away.

Zhang Qiang didn't expect Wang Yuqun to run so far, this was almost a few miles deep into Hubei.

Then he was startled when he received the report of the scout cavalry sent out by Brother Zhu, your uncle, this is only ten miles away from the army of Aobai who has just settled down, not a straight line distance, but a horizontal line distance, that is to say, the town turns a corner, and then goes up three or four miles, and the two sides can go to war directly, maybe at this time the two sides have already discovered each other, and they are already tense and ready to go to war.

Because that place happened to be stuck at an important pass where the Aobai army broke into Hubei, where there was a small pass, as long as you got out of the pass, you could immediately escape into Hubei.

Thinking of this, Zhang Qiang immediately sent someone to send Brother Zhu and asked his cavalry troops to immediately support Wang Yuqun, the uncle, who ran far enough, originally thought that he was intercepting by the river, or crossing the river to intercept, and at the worst intercepting in the canyon.

It was the best place to intercept the enemy's army and ambush the enemy, who would have thought where he would go.

If you think about it carefully, it's a good place not to let the enemy pay attention, and the strong people stumble in front of their horses, often when they just get rid of the danger of mental relaxation, this Wang Yuqun, or Tong Dawei, is also a good person, and he also has a hand in this war, and he actually played this with a big kite and a big bomb.

However, their 10,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, against the enemy's 30,000 cavalry army, is also a little unreliable, after all, in Hubei, that is the enemy's large rear, not far away, dozens of miles away there is a town of the enemy's new army stationed, near the far river there are a lot of Qing troops stationed in an unknown number, not good, was wrapped dumplings instead.

This is equivalent to the beginning of Zhang Qiang's roundabout outflanking tactics, the end of the first stage, the first stage, is to take all the territory of Huguang, and then hold on, implement the rule of the Huaxia army, and sit in Huguangzhou, and then Xiao Fei with a large army just like the German army surrounded the French Maginot Line, go to the rear to copy the enemy's rear road, so that the Qing army with a lot of energy and funds, personnel, troops, piled up the Yangtze River defense line to lose its value, completely collapse the Qing Dynasty, after this battle, the Qing Kingdom will be like a girl who has stripped naked, Let the Huaxia army insult arbitrarily.

After arranging for Brother Zhu to leave as soon as possible, Zhang Qiang called Xiao Fei again and asked him to quickly arrange for the musketeers and artillery units who still had the strength to pursue to start the pursuit.

In the end, 2,000 musketeers, 1,000 artillery brigade soldiers, pushing nine-pounder guns, six-pounder guns, plus the baggage pulled by carts, quickly set off in pursuit to reinforce Wang Yuqun and Tong Dawei's interception troops.

The 24th Field Brigade will be stationed in Changsha Province, and the militia units that will follow up will quickly clear the territory of Huguang with the cooperation of separate cavalry units, reassure the people, and carry out the preliminary occupation work.

Fortunately, the Second Guards Brigade has already taken over the defense work of the center, and some garrison regiments can be transferred from the center to enter Huguang, and some garrison battalions and militia units can also be transferred from Jiangxi Prefecture into Huguang, and the Huaxia Army has already achieved the first-stage strategic goal set by itself.

After completing these, Zhang Qiang found another place to operate the war eagle to check the battlefield to see how Wang Yuqun and them intercepted the enemy, and the command was handed over to Xiao Fei.

(End of chapter)