April 25, 1647, at the mouth of the Yangtze River, fine.

The migrant transportation season that began in October last year was finally over, and after hurriedly completing the maintenance of the ships, Mo Ming immediately issued a general mobilization order in the control area, and then a large number of materials that had been prepared long ago began to be loaded on the ship one by one, and after the materials were loaded, people and animals were loaded. After completing the preparations for the expedition in mid-April, except for a small number of troops left to defend Yantai, the rest of the main forces (including the 6th Army, the Black Eight Banners, and the Advance Team) were dispatched to prepare for a large-scale Deng6 operation in the Yangtze River valley to cope with the increasingly bad Fujian, Jiangxi, and Huguang battlefields.

On the river near Zhenjiang today, warships gathered. The "Amur" class river gunboats, which had been expanded to eight ships, had just returned from the front, and they raided two water villages of the Qing army on the rivers around Zhenjiang and Yizheng. Although the Qing army may still have a large number of small boats hidden in the inland ports, it will not be a threat to the east coast fleet in the short term.

Speaking of the "Amur River" class inland river/offshore general-purpose gunboat, it is definitely a great weapon at hand of Mo Dashuai, equipped with ten small and medium-caliber cannons, this kind of ship has strong firepower and shallow draft, and many large ships can go to places that cannot go; Moreover, the speed (1o knots), the standard displacement is only 25o tons (full load displacement 33o tons). Among them, the ship's weight is less than 9o tons, plus artillery, fresh water, boilers, steam engines, personnel, coal and spare parts will only be about 16o tons (including 3o tons of coal, and wood and charcoal can be cut in emergencies), which can be described as extremely light. The two coal-fired boilers consume a total of 3oo kg of coal per hour (if you change to Tacheng refined coal), you can sail continuously for more than 1oo hours under standard conditions. The endurance is close to 1ooo nautical miles.

If 8o tons of cargo storage space is added with some additional coal. It is very easy to greatly increase or even double the endurance again. Other words. This kind of gunboat has the ability to fight independently on the Yangtze River. Of course, in most cases, the Amur-class gunboats will move with the steam engine sailboat, because it is difficult to do both because there is more coal and less ammunition, and less coal if there is more ammunition.

Earlier today, eight gunboats broke away from the fleet near the mouth of the Yangtze River, and then went all the way up the river, successively destroying a number of water villages of the Qing army in Jiangyin, Zhenjiang, Yizhen and other places, and sinking and burning 100 small boats of the Qing army with a tonnage of only 1o tons. The soldiers of the Qing army's naval division also suffered heavy casualties under the sudden blow and scattered in a hurry. Due to the speed of this kind of gunboat, after the Qing army's downstream water village was attacked, often before the messenger could reach the upstream, the gunboats of the people on the east coast had already rushed there and attacked. I don't know if the Qing army will set up chimney piers on both sides of the Yangtze River to warn after suffering from this painful blow, and it would be too joyful to do so.

After destroying these water villages, 8 gunboats began to rush in the direction of Nanjing, but this time the Qing army finally moved quickly, and first withdrew the boats into the river with complicated terrain, and the gunboats on the east bank did not dare to pursue. I had to go back.

While the Qing army's naval division was hiding in Tibet to preserve its strength, a large number of East Coast troops with nine sailing ships, two armed transport ships, two flute-type merchant ships, and 18 medium-sized fishing boats (15o tons) began to board the 6 operation. The location of Deng 6 was selected at the junction of Taixing and Jingjiang counties east of Yangzhou. On the periphery of the 6th Boat Regiment, two fast cruisers and two escort gunboats were cruising slowly, and a Qing army horse team was stationed in Jiangyin County on the other side of the river.

The troops on this expedition include all the 1st Brigade of the battle-proven Advance Brigade and the 4 squadrons of the 3rd Brigade with a large number of recruits, the elite security team and the cavalry brigade, a total of 61oo soldiers; The 1O2 Company, 1O4 Company, 1O5 Company, and Yantai Artillery Company (with 16 guns) of the 6th Army on the East Coast were also all dispatched, with a total of 92O soldiers; In addition, the "loyal" South African Eight Banners New Army also dispatched most of it, counting 23oo people in three infantry battalions. Eventually, Zhai Congge from Jeju Island also came here with 2,000 of his subordinates. All in all, more than eighty percent of the armed forces under the control of the East Coast people were used here, with more than 11,000 soldiers and more than 15,000 masters (75oo military team + 8ooo Jeju Island Korean masters), if one qiē shun lì, this is almost the largest Deng 6 combat operation in the history of the East Coast people's movement.

The reason why such a big offensive was launched was mainly to deal with the two forces of Dashun and Nanming, which were now becoming more and more bad. Let's talk about the Southern Ming Dynasty first, since the Luwang regime was destroyed in Hangzhou by the Mongol horse team, the Ming army in Zhejiang and Fujian took a sharp turn. First, the regimes of King Lu and King Tang attacked each other, giving the Qing army valuable time to adjust their deployment and clean up people's hearts. After straightening out the internal clues of the Ming army and preparing the grain and grass materials, Hong Chengchou (who replaced Duoduo), who had already gone south to Nanjing, calmly transferred his troops, and quickly defeated the forces of King Lu and occupied most of Zhejiang, with the surrendered four towns of the Nanming River and the North Towns, Yuan Jixianjiang's Jiangxi soldiers (he himself did not surrender), and Zuo Mengeng's troops as the main body.

In this process, the Tang King of Fujian did not want to sit still, but Zheng Zhilong, who had the strongest troops and the largest military salary, was unwilling to fight hard with the Qing army. In desperation, the Tang king wanted to go west to Ganzhou, but the Ming army in Guangxi, Hunan and other places had an extremely cold attitude towards him, as if he wanted to support the army and respect himself.

On the Huguang battlefield, there were great changes within the Shun army, which had fought vigorously with Kong Youde, Shang Kexi, Shen Zhixiang and others in Jingzhou and Yuezhou. Li Zicheng died on the outskirts of Changsha at the beginning of this year because of his injuries. After Li Zicheng's death, the relationship between the major military leaders of the Shun army was very delicate. Although Li himself designated Li Guo as his successor, he was not Li Zicheng after all, and the strong foreign generals Hao Shaoqi, Wang Jincai and others (with 70,000 and 60,000 troops respectively) seemed unwilling to recognize Li Guo's leadership, and at the same time they hooked up with He Tengjiao, who had already traveled far away in Hengyang, and the shape was even more subtle.

In addition to Gao Yigong and others who supported Li Guo from Ningxia and Gansu together, Li Zicheng's old man Yuan Zongdi, Liu Fangliang, Liu Tichun and others only had thousands to more than 10,000 soldiers respectively (they were famous, they were hunted down by the Qing army very fiercely, and they lost many soldiers), and their influence was greatly reduced in this era of emphasizing strength.

In addition to Hao Shaoqi and others colluding with Nanming, Yuan Zongdi and others were also discussing the surrender with Qinggu Shanezhen Tongyang, who was stationed in Wuchang (Azig had led his army back to Beijing after Li Zicheng's death). Coupled with the increasing dispersion of civil officials in the Dashun Group, ineffective local governance, and financial embarrassment, the current Dashun really has a sense of exhaustion.

Mo Ming, who received an urgent report as soon as the immigration transportation operation ended, immediately organized a large army and drove to the Yangtze River valley to prepare for a large-scale offensive in the Jiangbei region, where the Qing army was relatively weak, in order to contain and deal with these two battlefields. As long as a few victories were fought in Jiangbei and a few prefectures and counties were defeated, the prestige of the Qing army would inevitably be greatly damaged, and the morale of the anti-Qing forces in various places would also be boosted.

However, this is just the wishful thinking of Mo Ming and others, it is really difficult to say what the real effect is, with the current Manchu Qing Dynasty in the country, those people such as Zheng Zhilong are really strange if they do not surrender to the Qing Dynasty. However, as the saying goes, success is done in the sky, and it is in the people, and now there are only dead horses as live horse doctors, who let the native country draw 45oo soldiers from the Far East, and at the same time can't use ships for half a year every year? The fact that the shape shì has been corrupted so far has a lot to do with the weakening of the offensive of the people on the east coast for more than a year. So, as soon as the fleet was idle, Mo Ming immediately dispatched a large army to fight the grass valley of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and by the way, to contain the Qing army and give Dashun and Nanming a breather. He estimated that if he didn't move again, the living forces of Nanming and Dashun would suffer even greater losses.

The Qing army did not have many troops in Jiangbei, so the Deng 6 operation of the people on the east bank was not greatly hindered. In fact, at this time, the Qing court did not have too many troops in Jiangnan, unless Nanjing had about 1-20,000 Eight Banner soldiers stationed, there were not many Qing troops in the rest of the prefectures and counties in Nanzhili. At present, most of the Qing troops in the Jiangnan region have been transferred to southern Jiangxi, eastern Zhejiang, and Fujian to clear the Southern Ming armed forces there. As for the Huguang battlefield, Kong Youde, Tong Yanghe, and the two who were in charge of commanding the local war situation even asked for help again and again, asking Nanjing to transfer real Manchurian officers and soldiers and a large number of green battalions to attack Yuezhou.

Before Li Zicheng's death, Kong Youde and others had just fought a big battle with the Shun army in Jingzhou, although they defeated the Shun army and recaptured Jingzhou City, but the losses were not few, and a large number of ordnance and soldiers were urgently needed. In particular, the several red-coated artillery pieces destroyed by Dashun made Kong Youde's heart hurt to the extreme, and at this moment, facing the Dashun group that had built a city fortress in Yuezhou and the area south of it, Kong Youde urgently needed new support. And this, it is not difficult to understand why the Wuchang side is currently focusing on the political and subduing the generals of Dashun, which is really inadequate. In fact, at this time, Li Guo and others did not have the idea of surrendering, and the frequent entry of Qing army envoys into the camp of the Shun army is a clear proof, but because they wanted to shave and change clothes, most of the generals of the Shun army did not accept it for the time being. Tong Yanghe also regretted this, but he didn't dare to say anything more about this policy, so he could only continue to send people to persuade him to surrender.

Therefore, under such circumstances, the army on the east bank began to climb in the area of rich Yangzhou6 and cut off the nearby river, which should have had a considerable impact on the overall strategy of the Qing army. (To be continued......)

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