"Lianzhou and Wuzhou, two poor places. The people are not making a living, and all industries are withering, so there is really nothing to look forward to. However, the geographical location of Wuzhou is extremely critical, it can be said to be the center of the two Guangzhou, and today it was taken by our army on the east coast, which can break the dream of the Shun army to take Guangzhou in the east. Army Major Tang Moyu stood on the bank of the sparkling Xijiang River and said with a smile.

He does have reason to rejoice now. Because he had just resigned from such a disliked position as the head of the Haizhu Island Merchant Station, he was then appointed by the War Department as the commander of the 3rd Mixed Battalion. And this 3rd Mixed Battalion, which was only transferred to the Far East this year (1687) to change its defense, became the elite force of the Far Eastern Domains, together with the famous 1st Mixed Battalion.

The first battle after the 3rd Mixed Battalion arrived in the Far East was to be ordered to go south to Guangdong, and then take various ships upriver to occupy Wuzhou, an important town on the north bank of the Xijiang River. Undoubtedly, this is the best way to give full play to the advantages of the people on the east coast on the water, because the Xijiang River is down from Wuzhou, the river is wide and deep, and can be navigated by most ships, including sail warships, which is very suitable for the people on the east coast who have always liked to fight by the sea and the river. Here, they are playing at home, and no one can challenge their superiority on the water.

In this raid operation, because of the urgency of the situation and the inconvenience of mobilization, the southern pioneer team only collected six 72-ton small steamers and two "Yaksa" class armed transport ships to come to Guangdong in a hurry, and even the navy's inland river shallow gunboats that undertook the escort task were still being maintained at the Dinghai Port in Ningbo, so they had to decide to temporarily requisition many Chinese-style sailing ships from Guangdong for material transportation, and this was undoubtedly necessary to get the actual rulers of Guangzhou, Huizhou, Zhaoqing, and other provinces. The approval of Li Yuanhao, the Duke of Huiguo of Nanming.

To be honest, Li Yuanhao's mood at the moment is extremely conflicted. On the one hand, he was frightened by the fierce generals of Dashun and the power of the two routes, so he subconsciously strengthened the defense of Nanxiong and Shaozhou, the two important passes, and even transferred more than 30 newly cast artillery pieces of various types, and his determination can be described as very firm.

On the other hand, Li Yuanhao himself was also extremely vigilant against the people on the east coast. These powerful enemies from abroad have had a very bad impact on him in recent years, and they openly supported his cheap brother and seized Chaozhou, so that he, the newly promoted Huiguo Gong, could not sleep peacefully day and night. In such a situation, how can you expect Li Yuanhao to have a good impression of the people on the east coast.

On the one hand, he was afraid that the territory would be seized by Dashun, and on the other hand, he was afraid that the people on the east coast would do something, so Li Yuanhao was very entangled in the east coast's request to sail all the way up the Xijiang River.

Many of Li Yuanhao's deployments are closely related to the people on the east coast, but at this time, it is difficult for them to stand up and say anything, because they are afraid of being suspicious of their own suspicious lord, which will outweigh the losses. Hao Shangjiu, who was also an old qualification, went to see Li Yuanhao with his sick and stumbling body, but he didn't say anything famous, and the entire eastern Guangdong provinces are still in a state of chaos.

On July 25, 1687, without waiting for Li Yuanhao's reply, four 72-ton small steamers and two Yaksa-class armed transport ships carried the 3rd Mixed Battalion of the East Coast Army to the west and headed for Wuzhou Mansion. The Guangdong local government along the Xijiang River never waited for Li Yuanhao's order to intercept (in fact, they had no effective means to intercept it, and they died firing some artillery on the river), so they could only give up and let the people on the east bank go along the Jiangxi - in their opinion, the people on the east bank were sharp and vicious, and they were going to fight the Guangxi Yankees, so why bother making more trouble, and let them go.

However, after the people on the east coast tested the attitude of Guangzhou, they had to move forward again, openly hiring shippers to help transport materials and personnel to Wuzhou at a high price on the ground in Guangdong, and the Huiguo Mansion was silent. As soon as this gesture came out, there was no doubt that everyone understood what Li Yuanhao, the Duke of Huiguo, thought, didn't he just stay out of the matter and strictly abide by neutrality. Okay, this attitude is enough, and I didn't expect you to help send troops to attack Wuzhou, Lianzhou and other places.

The main force of the 3rd Mixed Battalion of the East Coast arrived at the port of Wuzhou in early August. Before that, the two infantry companies that arrived in advance had already captured the capital city of Wuzhou. Some people may ask, how can two infantry companies with less than 500 officers and soldiers capture such a big city as Wuzhou?

Perhaps Major Tang Moyu, who was in command at the front line at that time, can give you a clear answer: after they arrived at the wharf of Wuzhou Port in the early morning of July 30, two infantry companies of the army occupied the wharf without encountering any resistance, and then quickly advanced towards Fucheng. After experiencing the lesson of the rapid fall of the Lianzhou Mansion without firing a shot - perhaps it is an exaggeration to say this, in fact, the Lianzhou Mansion just didn't react, and the Lian Gao General Army appointed by Nanming is already organizing a counterattack, after all, the warlords still value the territory - the Wuzhou Mansion has long been extremely vigilant, and heavily deployed troops to defend various key areas.

But the problem is that they have placed too many troops on the border with Lianzhou, where more than 8,000 troops from the east coast are eyeing each other. But they didn't expect that the people on the east coast used the waterway to quickly transport troops, and went straight to the capital Wuzhou with elite force, which caught them off guard. Five hundred elite infantry on the east coast, under the cover of a small number of land field artillery, defeated more than 4,000 Ming soldiers guarding the city outside Wuzhou City in a battle. The Mini rifles they were equipped with played an extremely crucial role in the battle, and the rifles with ultra-long range and high accuracy bit the flesh, and the hit rate was so high that the Ming soldiers could not bear it.

It can be said that this battle was a great victory for technological weapons. How could the Ming army in the countryside like Wuzhou Mansion ever see a murderous way of fighting! Doesn't it seem to them that the musket is just a sound? The real battle to win still depends on the face-to-face white-knuckle fight (the courage of the Guangxi soldiers in the white-edged fight is still okay)! But who would have thought that they didn't even see the faces of the soldiers on the east bank clearly, and they were beaten to the ground, and the officers and soldiers standing in the two rows in front of the military formation were all selected athletes from the army, but they were so aggrieved that they hung up as soon as they looked at their faces, and it was no wonder that the people behind were frightened, this battle was really impossible to fight!

The main force of the field was defeated, and the two thousand old and sick people who defended the city suddenly lost the courage to continue fighting. As a result, dozens of officials and more than 100 gentry under Xia Junbo, the prefect, simply opened the city gate and surrendered, allowing the people on the east coast to seize this hub of the two provinces without much effort.

Major Tang Moyu had also received training in the relevant procedures in front of the station, so he quickly appeased these surrendered Nanming officials and gentry, and then announced the opening of the warehouse to release grain, giving benefits to the ordinary people in the city and inviting people's hearts. Even the Ming soldiers who had been captured in the defeated battle were paid three months' arrears (which was naturally paid by the gentry of the whole city), and everyone rejoiced and was in harmony, as if nothing had happened except for the flag of the east coast and the flag of the army hung at the head of the city.

The 500 people brought by Tang Moyu controlled the government office, the official treasury, the city gate and the wharf, and all the others were entrusted to the original officials to manage. In addition, he released some prisoners from the prison who did not look like good people, and let them directly control some of the selected soldiers to form a security force. One of them, a certain Kong Wu named Ou Dayong, who was born as a smuggler of salt, was directly appointed by Tang Moyu as the acting head of the security regiment of Cangwu County (i.e., Wuzhou City), and took the more than 300 chaotic people under his command to maintain daily order inside and outside the city.

The follow-up troops of the 3rd Mixed Battalion did not make Battalion Commander Tang wait long. On 10 August, with the arrival of a large flotilla, the remaining battalion personnel, artillery company, baggage company, engineering platoon and two infantry companies landed at the wharf.

Along with the follow-up troops, there were also a large number of military supplies, weapons and ammunition, which were indispensable for the follow-up operations. Of course, the third mixed battalion only killed more than 1,000 people, and the elite was elite enough, but it was still too strong to effectively occupy the entire Wuzhou Mansion, so recruiting and rebelling became the only option.

On August 13, the position of Dayong in the Cangwu County Security Regiment was officially corrected, and the troops were rapidly expanded to more than 2,000 people. The main force of the third mixed battalion is here, and Tang Moyu feels that he has the strength to control the whole city, so he released the Ming army troops who have been locked up in the barracks these days, and added them to the security regiment under the picking, so that they can become cannon fodder thugs subordinate to the people on the east coast, so as to facilitate the next operations around the attack.

For the whole of the following August, the two prefectures of Lianzhou and Wuzhou were shrouded in war. The two sides of the war were the East Bank Army and part of the Southern Ming Army that was unwilling to surrender, and one of the major features of the war was that large-scale battles were almost non-existent, and were replaced by small-scale battles with less intensity but many times, which made the East Coast people very uncomfortable.

Guangxi's complex topography, hot and humid climate, and unfamiliarity with local conditions greatly weakened the advantages of the people on the east coast. They have modern combat ideas, advanced weapons and equipment, and well-trained soldiers, but they cannot bring into full play half of their real strength, and can only constantly lure the local armed forces, and sometimes even bandits and bandits do not make mistakes, in order to fight a quick battle, seize the time to calm the situation, and control more territory.

According to the plan drawn up in advance by the Southern Pioneer Team, the Tang Department of Wuzhou (which had recently been supplemented with a local armed force of more than 1,000 people from Xiangshan County) would continue to march westward by boat to the Xunjiang River upstream, defeat or surrender the local Ming army, and then go all the way up the Nanjiang River (Yujiang) to join the troops heading north along the Qinjiang River in the direction of Lianzhou.

This route of march is basically the land in Guangxi that the people on the east bank intend to occupy this time, and the intention is to use these natural rivers to build a defense line on the spot, so as to achieve the strategic purpose of containing Shunguo to the greatest extent. You must know that if the people on the east coast of the north and south roads can successfully complete this advance task, then the outlet of Lianzhou Mansion to the sea will not be related to Shunguo, and they will still be a pathetic landlocked country. In addition, the loss of Wuzhou was another heavy blow to the Shun state, because it meant that they could not send troops from Guangxi to march down the Xijiang River to defeat the weak but rich Huiguo government in Guangdong, and gain a province that was very strong in terms of both population and economic strength. Without Guangdong, Shunguo would not be able to conduct direct transactions with foreign merchants, and at the same time, it would not be able to make up for its financial shortcomings, and its strategic depth would not be further improved.

Of course, there are also people who say that Shunguo can send troops from Ganzhou in Jiangxi Province to attack Guangdong in the south, but no military commander with a brain will be very optimistic about this route of march. The existence of the Great Yuling makes the traffic between Jiangxi and Guangdong extremely difficult, and the only traffic channels have also built fortress passes, which is a place where soldiers must fight for in ancient times, Li Yuanhao is not a fool, he knows the importance of these places well when he deployed elite troops in Nanxiong and Shaozhou early, and it is impossible for Shunguo to easily get it from Jiangxi.

In fact, the direction of Guangxi is also very different. The Mengzhu Ridge lies between Guizhou and Guangdong, so that the attack on Canton from land is destined to become a military adventure of a labor expedition, and it is unknown whether the Shunguo side dares to make this determination to cross the lofty mountains and attack Guangdong, because it is likely to lead to a tragic fiasco. Therefore, to put it simply, the best way to attack Guangdong from Guangxi is to occupy Wuzhou, and then go down the Xijiang River, all the way to the top of the mountain, like a bamboo, extremely easy. But now Wuzhou has been taken by the people on the east coast, and they will also develop further upstream along the Xunjiang River to build a forward defense line, which further squeezes the room for Shunguo to move around, making them farther and farther away from Guangdong.

In this way, even if they successfully take most of Guangxi (which is almost a certainty), it seems to be a little delicious. Guangxi is barren and poor, the transportation is inconvenient, the folk customs are still very strong, and the only slightly similar places have also been gnawed away by the people of the east coast, and the idea of going east into the world of flowers in Guangdong has been eliminated, which is simply to make the monarchs and ministers of Shunguo vomit blood. If they want to reverse this very unfavorable situation, they can only wage war on the east coast, take advantage of their unstable foothold, not be afraid of sacrifice, grind down a small number of vanguard troops on the east coast with superior forces, and quickly seize Wuzhou.

It's just that this kind of resolute action, do the people of Shunguo dare to do it? The East Coasters were skeptical. The Dashun Emperor of Changsha was not stupid enough to be so stupid, their greatest enemy was not the East Bank, but the Manchu Qing. It is not an exaggeration that they did not dare to do anything seriously hostile to the East Bank until the Manchus fell, which would only seriously harm themselves and even lead to the collapse of the regime. To wage war to the east coast for the sake of Wuzhou is simply an act of Li Lingzhi's faintness, Li Laiheng will not commit this stupidity, and the military generals in Changsha will not be so stupid, they will only verbally express their protests, and then lie dormant in secret, accumulate strength, and wait for the favorable time for the final showdown with the east coast, if there is such a day.