April 15, 1649, outside Zhangqiu County.

The large battalion, which had been set up in strict accordance with the military system on the east bank, stretched out for several miles, spanning both sides of the Xiaoqing River. Between the two banks of the Xiaoqing River, the military team has also erected a strong pontoon bridge and water transport wharf, where thousands of spear-wielding soldiers are guarded, while transporting all kinds of materials from the Gaojiagang Yanchang Military Station, while ensuring the smooth flow of both sides of the Xiaoqing River.

In the camp in Hexi, Mao Desheng was carefully reading a letter that had just been forwarded by Yantai at this time. The letter was written by Navy Commander Liu Haiyang, and the main content was the anti-Qing form shì in the south today. Since 1649, the anti-Qing rebellion in the south has been in full swing, mainly concentrated in the four battlefields of Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian and Huguang.

In Guangdong, since Jin Shenghuan relied on the yellow-clothed cannon to collapse the city wall of Ganzhou and kill Gao Jinku, Li Chengdong temporarily extinguished his desire to go north to aid Jiangxi, and began to clean up places in Guangdong. It is also ridiculous to say that Li Chengdong was still in the Qing camp, and the remnants of the Ming army in some parts of Guangdong surrendered one after another; And when Li Chengdong returned to the Ming Dynasty anyway, these local troops in Guangdong refused to return to the Ming Dynasty again. In fact, it's no wonder that they made this choice, but at this time, the small court of the Southern Ming Dynasty didn't look like it could do things, so for the sake of their own interests, they naturally refused to return to the Ming Dynasty. This made Li Chengdong furious, so he began to take tens of thousands of his descendants of the "Northern Yankees" troops in Guangdong to conquer the city and clean up the place, so as to control the overall situation, so far it seems that the progress is not bad, after all, he is now the Ming army, and he has a bonus effect on politics.

The shape of the Jiangxi battlefield is much more dangerous than the leisure and comfort of Guangdong. Jierharang took 13,400 Manmeng Eight Banners and starry night to Jiangxi, and first conquered Jiujiang. Re-entry forced Nanchang. It's unstoppable. Jin Shenghuan led his elite troops out of the city and was defeated twice. The heart was cold, so he retreated into Nanchang City and devoted himself to defense. Although the generals led by Jierharang are relatively elite, they are not many in number, and it is difficult to completely besiege Nanchang City. At present, we can only order Wuchang and Nanjing to send some reinforcements over, and at the same time, they are also vigorously recruiting local regiments to practice miscellaneous cards, so as to rapidly increase the number of cannon fodder armies, otherwise the year of the monkey will be able to defeat Nanchang City? Now that Wang Zamao Wang Deren is still leading troops to be stationed in Ganzhou. I heard that his unit was born in the camp and had a certain combat effectiveness, so he had to send people to watch out, but he couldn't capsize in the gutter.

If the Jiangxi battlefield is very unfavorable, then the Fujian battlefield is a mess. Chen Tai led a patchwork of more than 10,000 mixed forces to drive King Lu's troops all the way to the sea, and then quickly broke Zheng Chenggong's troops ashore, and finally repelled Li Chengdong's north into Fujian. However, fortunately, they had few soldiers, only more than 15,000 people, and it was still insufficient to defend the whole of Fujian. The inability to enter Guangdong or Jiangxi at all also made the neighboring Li Chengdong, Wang Deren, and Jin Shenghuan breathe a sigh of relief.

And the time came to this point in April 1649. Perhaps the most optimistic anti-Qing forms in the whole of China are Huguang and Sichuan. Sichuan was strategically contracted by the Qing court due to Jiang Ping's rebellion, and a large number of elites of the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners and Wu Sangui's troops were transferred to Daibei to pacify the situation in Shanxi, so Zhang Xianzhong's Great Western Army and Shun Army He Zhen and other troops were active again, which made Meng Qiaofang, the governor of Shaanxi in the Qing Dynasty, very nervous. As for the territory of Huguang, as Jierharang ordered the Sanshun King and the Xushun Gongsuo Department to retreat to Wuchang, and at the same time dispatched a large number of troops to the east to support the Jiangxi battlefield, this qiē led the Dashun army to begin a counterattack on all fronts, Li Guo, Liu Fangliang, Yuan Zongdi, Gao Yigong and other troops attacked one after another, and now the entire territory of Hunan has been restored and began to advance towards Hubei, and the shape looks very optimistic.

It can be seen from this that at this turbulent time, after judging the situation in the whole country, the Qing court implemented only two provinces, Sichuan and Huguang, to implement the policy of strategic contraction. Because of the strength and resoluteness of these two opponents, they would not be able to take it for a while, but would trap their precious forces there, which was very unwise, so he decided to temporarily shrink and wait for the future. Speaking of which, I have to mention Fujian, to be honest, the Qing court was originally ready to give up temporarily, but the combat effectiveness of King Lu and the Zheng clan is really too scummy, and the 15,000 people in Chen Tai's department can beat them to the ground, so what else can be said? If these two families are competing, let alone Fujian, Zhejiang only has more than 40,000 Qing army green battalion troops, and they can completely go down in one go. It's a pity that the land combat strength of these two companies is completely negative, so naturally everything will be stopped.

Seeing this, Mao Desheng couldn't help but shake his head and sigh, the opportunity to create a zào for you came out, but you didn't grasp it yourself, you are still ignorant, being a monk for a day and hitting the clock for a day, so who can blame it? The aura of good luck will not always favor you forever, and it will leave you one day.

At the end of the letter, Liu Haiyang said that Nanming's troops were too scum, and he was ready to mobilize the 2,500 troops at hand (1,500 troops under Sun Shouzheng's department, plus more than 1,000 troops from Dashun Cai Huaze's troops who were originally stranded in Shandong) to carry out some small-scale landing and sabotage warfare in Fujian, Zhejiang, and Nanzhili. If necessary, contact the Zheng clan to work together, while containing and attacking the Qing army, and at the same time collecting some craftsmen, books and artworks and other things to transport back to the mainland.

"In the sabotage war on the southern coast, the number of troops is still too small, and it is difficult to achieve a big thing." Mao Desheng put down the letter in his hand and thought: "If you want to break the balance that the Manchu Qing is still trying to maintain in the whole country, then you can only seek a breakthrough at a certain point. This can be the capture of Wuchang by Dashun in Hubei, or the capture of Chengdu and Chongqing by the Great Western Army, of course, it is best for us to break through Jinan and take Shandong as the breakthrough point, after all, the geographical location of Shandong is too sensitive and cannot be abandoned. Although most of them will not be able to hold the whole of Shandong in the future, taking Jinan at this time and annihilating the main force of the Qing army in Shandong should make the Beijing court very sad. That...... So do it! ”

Once the decision was made, Mao Desheng no longer hesitated and began to order all units to attack the Qing army's positions on the outskirts of Jinan in turn. Every time you attack, which part serves as the main attacker, which part acts as the countermeasure, and which part acts as the reserve. There is a clear division of labor. Battle of Jinan. The combined battle between the two sides exceeded 110,000 men. It was a rare exercise for the servant army system under Mao Desheng, which was dominated by rabble, and its value far exceeded that of the previous Qingzhou Campaign.

On April 20, after five consecutive days of fierce fighting, the attacking troops mainly composed of Ding Mingwu and Xie Qian finally entered Zhangqiu County after paying more than 4,000 heavy casualties. In this battle, more than 5,000 people of the Qing army's Niu Chenghu Division were killed, wounded, and captured, and their own casualties were equal to the number of enemies killed, which was not a good thing for the East Coast army, which was at a disadvantage. After Niu Chenghu's troops were defeated and withdrew from Zhangqiu County, the Qing army soon arrived to meet the troops. The Qing army on the side of the Great Wall Ridge, Kong Xigui's troops, also pressed the east bank army from the north, so that Mao Desheng's troops could not effectively pursue Niu Chenghu's troops (the cavalry hurriedly pursued and killed more than 1,000 people), so as to continue to expand the results of the battle, which is very regrettable.

On April 26, when tens of thousands of soldiers from the two divisions of Dong Xueli and Chen Zhilong of the East Bank Army attacked more than 16,000 soldiers of the Qing Army Kong Xigui on the side of the Great Wall Ridge (nearly 10,000 soldiers, but there were many new recruits), the news that the Mongolian horse team of the Qing Army attacked the transport ship on the east bank of the Xiaoqing River came, and Mao Desheng had to send additional troops to protect the safety of the baggage troops, and at the same time sent people to measure the water depth of the lower reaches of the Xiaoqing River to determine whether the east bank gunboats with a draft of 0.8 meters could be passed.

April 28th. Du Chong led more than 10,000 armed people from all walks of life, after all, Zhang Qiuzhen, the node of Caoyun, although he was repelled by the defenders led by hundreds of Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners led by Qing Meile Zhang Jing Lai Annoyance. However, its momentum also attracted the attention of Luck Dehun in Jinan, and he began to consider separating a part of the troops and horses from Jinan to strengthen the defense of Zhang Qiu Town.

On May 3, the army on the east bank captured the Qing army camp on the side of the Great Wall Ridge, clearing a major threat to the flank. This time, the casualties of the East Coast army were much smaller, and the combined number of Dong and Chen troops was less than 3,000, but they achieved the heavy result of killing, wounding, and capturing nearly 5,000 Qing troops. Of course, this is also the result of Mao Desheng's main choice of assigning a large number of artillery to them to fight, and the regular army on the east coast did not hesitate to consume a large amount of gunpowder and shells to help them achieve this victory. Nearly 10,000 remnants of Kong Xigui's remnants retreated to Tai'an Prefecture at night, and were cut down and captured by the chasing Dong Xueli Department along the way, more than 2,000 prisoners, coupled with self-trampling and desertion, when the dignified Hebei general army finally ran into Tai'an Prefecture, there were only about 6,000 people left, and most of the ordnance and materials were lost, and it was difficult to become a threat again in a short time.

However, just when a large number of army artillery on the east coast was transferred to the southern battlefield to support Dong Xueli's department, Le Kedehun, who was sitting in Jinan, seized the opportunity to take the initiative to attack and once again recovered Zhangqiu County. Ding Mingwu's troops defending the city were beaten to the point that they were beaten and collapsed, and there were three or four thousand casualties in one night, plus those who ran around in the dark without knowing the direction, and as a result, the nearly 10,000 people of the department withdrew to the safe area, and there were less than 3,000 people. Ding Mingwu was so angry that he wanted to wipe his neck, but he was stopped. Fortunately, after dawn, more than 2,000 people came back one after another, but they were no longer in the morale of yesterday, and they had to be withdrawn for training.

After more than half a month of fighting, Mao Desheng finally found that he still overestimated the combat effectiveness of most of the servant troops under his command. The rabble is the rabble, such as Ding Ming's more than 15,000 people, when Mo Ming was there, he was ready to cut off more than half of it, but he failed to do so because of the urgency of time, and the current battle scene really showed that the department was the most unbearable, and the Zhangqiu County that had been conquered was lost to the Qing army again.

Of course, he also underestimated the Qing army's will to fight. Now that the situation in the Manchu Qing Dynasty is tense, how does Luck Dehun not know the key? Therefore, he fought hard to defend Jinan City, and he must not let the yellow-clothed thieves conquer it, otherwise, there will be unimaginable bad effects on politics and military. Because of this, in this Jinan offensive and defensive battle, Luck Dehun was very ruthless, and the materials and salaries of the various departments of the Qing army were not only replenished, but also many other benefits were promised to encourage these Qiu Bamen to fight. In addition, under the propaganda of the Qing court, the gentry in various places also began to work hard to organize regimental training to fight against the yellow-clothed thieves.

The Han landlords' regimental training was also a double-edged sword for the Qing court, but when the battle was fought, the Qing court could not take much care of it. Countless gentry in one hundred and four prefectures and counties in Shandong Province can obtain the right to set up regiments and train armed forces as long as they report to Jinan to know about it. These landlord armies may seem vulnerable and even extremely ridiculous to both the Qing court and the east coast at this time, but as time goes by, how do they know that they will not soar into the sky?

On May 10, the East Coast Army, which had adjusted its attack sequence, launched another offensive. In this battle, the artillery unit was no longer stingy with the use of gunpowder and shells, and all 24 artillery pieces were pulled out to bombard Zhangqiu. Finally, after paying more than 3,000 casualties, he conquered Zhangqiu County for the second time. The Qing army defending the city, Li led the Tai troops to be disabled, and the wolf bèi fled back to Jinan.

After these three battles, the cumulative casualties of the East Coast Army have reached 13,000, and even if the number of people counted is removed, the actual casualties have exceeded 10,000, and less than 40% of them can return to the battlefield. Such heavy casualties (20% casualty rate) greatly demoralized the servant army, and this made Mao Desheng begin to turn his attention to the battlefield behind enemy lines, hoping that the victory behind enemy lines would force the Qing army to disorganize and reduce the casualties of frontal attacks. (To be continued......)