Chapter 684: The Qing Army's Counterattack

Chen Yongfu and Zhou He arrived in Nanjing with their troops the next day, but they did not enter the city, but were stationed outside the city. Since Huang Desheng was the oldest, Huang Desheng was temporarily under the unified command, and Chen Yongfu and others were allowed to rest and recuperate while helping to clean up the hostile elements around Nanjing.

Although Nanjing is surrounded by granges of dignitaries and nobles, and the land rent of tenants reaches fifty or sixty percent, the output of paddy fields in the south of the Yangtze River is much higher than that in the north, so the people basically do not worry about starvation.

Although the yeoman farmers bear more taxes, the commercial atmosphere here is very strong, the water and land transportation is convenient, and the farmers are cooperative, one household grows grain for their own use, and the other grows cash crops. And what the imperial court collects happens to be silver, and they can pay taxes directly after selling their crops, which is also convenient. Unlike the peasants in the north, there are not many economic means, when taxes are collected, everyone exchanges grain for silver, resulting in low grain prices, and when the green and yellow are not available, the price of grain is high, and after receiving various levies and contributions from officials, they will be exploited by merchants again.

As for large and small merchants, there is no problem. Thanks to the court's relaxed attitude towards commercial taxes, the big merchants made a lot of money and had almost no burden, and the small merchants were just coping with the officials, and they lived easily.

Moreover, the literary style in Jiangnan is prosperous, and there are more people who study and test their fame, and those talents are not afraid of the government, and everyone has gathered to attack the official yamen. Therefore, the local government did not dare to come nonsense, and the burden on the people was not as heavy as in the north. Therefore, the people in Jiangnan are doing well, which is also the reason why Li Zicheng went all the way east, and almost no people were willing to join.

Huang Desheng and Chen Yongfu were both concentrated in Nanjing, while Zuo Menggeng and Gao Jie in Jiangbei coincidentally took advantage of the weak forces of Li Yan on the south bank of the Yangtze River to cross the river from Jiujiang and Anqing to the south. Zuo Mengeng went to Zhang Xianzhong to grab the territory, while Gao Jie went to Nanming's territory to toss, whether to cut off Zixiong or continue to eat Nanming's food, it depends on the situation.

Even if there were no garrisons of Li Yan in many counties along the Yangtze River, they just grabbed some money and food and quickly went south, for fear of provoking Li Yan's troops again. All of a sudden, the Jiangnan region, which was already a mess, became full of smoke.

Li Zicheng led his troops to Hangzhou to pursue Zhu Yousong, and Zhang Xianzhong asked Zhang Kewang to lead his army to attack Shi Kefa, and he also wanted to capture the Hongguang Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty. He and Li Zicheng are both cooperating and competing, Li Zicheng has forced Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen to death, if he doesn't do a big thing, I'm afraid he won't be able to compete with Li Zicheng in the future.

And Gao Jie's southward movement has added new variables to Jiangnan, who knows if Li Zicheng will be revengeful and chase Gao Jie? If that's the case, it's hard to say whether Remnant Ming can ease up.

That is, at about the same time, a battle between cavalry was also going on on the grassland outside the Saiwai.

Bai Shixiong led 2,000 cavalry to patrol outside the Great Wall and attack the small units of the Qing army that destroyed the city. They have achieved remarkable results in the past two months, and only five of the more than ten mutual market locations along the Datong Xuanfu line are because the local Mongolian tribes in the Qing Dynasty did not dare to provide venues, and the others are open as usual.

And the closer they got to the east, the more the Mongol tribes feared the Qing state. Although the opening of the mutual market allowed them to obtain the materials they needed, it also allowed the Mongol nobles to get taxes in exchange for new and good things in the south. But after all, it was closer to the Qing Kingdom, and they had to take care of it.

No, after all, the Qing State would not watch its sweet potatoes leave him, and finally sent the Manchurian Iron Cavalry to clean up this group of Han cavalry. And these Mongol tribes, although they do not need to send troops to help in the war, are to provide intelligence and food and grass to the Qing army, after all, the Qing and the Han people have not yet divided the victory and defeat, and they cannot stand in line in advance for the sake of these small interests in front of them. Moreover, if the Qing State has the advantage, they will come to the Guannai to loot, and they can also get everything they want.

Bai Shixiong and they are now running away, running southeast, in the direction of the Great Wall. The place where they were at this time was eighty miles away from the nearest tiger-killing mouth. Their previous actions were so smooth that even if they killed the Qing cavalry who came to inspect, those Mongols did not react much, and seemed to be in a neutral state. Therefore, they wanted to go deeper and explore the way for the future army to conquer Mongolia in the north.

Fortunately, they had not relaxed their vigilance and let the scouts out twenty miles, so that they could find the Qing cavalry approaching them in time. The Qing army came from the northeast and northwest directions, and there were about 5,000 people on each road, and their 2,000 men and horses naturally couldn't fight hard, so they could only retreat in the direction of killing the tiger's mouth.

However, after running for a while, Bai Shixiong felt that the situation was not good. The two cavalry of the Qing army were slowly pursuing and did not seem to be in a hurry. Although the distance of eighty miles is not close, for the cavalry, especially the cavalry with one man and two horses, it is only a journey of more than an hour.

"Change horses." Bai Shixiong instructed his own soldiers: "Let the war horses rest for a while, and they will all get on the auxiliary horses." There may be a blocking force of the Qing army in the south, so don't run out of strength to rush at that time. ”

Their guns and bombs are all on their main horses, and if they can't ride their horses during battle, they won't have much combat power left.

After the cavalry heard the order, those who were on their horses immediately changed their horses. During this time, they galloped on the prairie outside the Saiwai, and they were already familiar with the light car for changing horses between the marches.

Sure enough, after a while, the scouts in front came back to report that there was a cavalry of the Qing army in front, appearing in the mountain pass more than ten miles away, and they had to pass through the road.

"Speed up, don't let the Qing army get ready!" Bai Shixiong gave a loud order, and at the same time whipped his mount, so that the horse galloped faster.

The speed of the whole team increased, and when they reached the mountain pass, they finally let go of half of their hearts. Because the Qing army had just arrived, it did not set up artillery or set up a rejection horse. However, there are a lot of Qing cavalry here, with tens of thousands of horses.

Bai Shixiong stopped at a distance of 500 steps from the Qing army, and immediately asked his subordinates to change horses, check the ammunition, and feed the horses a little Xie Shui and bean cakes. They are now intercepted in front and pursued in the back, and they can only rush out in one go, so that they can have a way to live. Therefore, although each cavalry was a little nervous, they also gave birth to the determination to put themselves to death and survive.

Bolo, who led the team to intercept, was surprised and angry. The information provided by those Mongols was really unbelievable, he only knew that Li Yan's cavalry was about 2,000, but no one told him that Li Yan's cavalry was all one man and two horses. He was originally intercepting here, one was relying on a lot of people, and the other was thinking of waiting for work with ease to block Li Yan's tired army.

But now it's good, he has only arrived at the place for a while, nothing is ready, and the artillery has not followed, and Li Yan's cavalry has come. If the cavalry was just hedging, he knew that their Qing Dynasty's iron cavalry did not have any advantage. But now there is no way but to bite the bullet.

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