In February of the first year of Hongguang in this time and space, that is, in March of 1645 A.D. in the solar calendar, Ning Nanbo Zuo Liangyu wrote to the imperial court, saying that he was sick and was really unable to lead the army. However, his son did not have the talent to lead the army, so he asked the imperial court to send a general to lead the Ming army in the Huguang area instead of him to resist Li Zicheng's attack.

After Zuo Liangyu wrote the book, the model army originally stationed in Jiujiang immediately took action, they went up the river and reached the city of Wuchang, and the army that was attacking Wuchang did not even dare to fight with the model army after seeing the banner of the model army, and directly broke the siege.

The imperial court quickly replied, and Emperor Hongguang personally issued a holy decree to praise Zuo Liangyu as the Marquis of Ningnan, rewarded 10,000 taels of silver, and posthumously sealed the ancestors for three generations. He also ordered Zuo Mengeng, the general of the Ping thief, to temporarily replace his father, lead his department, and return to the control of King Anping. Of course, this so-called "temporary replacement of the father's position and leading his subordinates" is just a cover. In fact, the day after the holy decree was issued, Zuo Mengeng left Wuchang with hundreds of family members on the order of the prince of Anping, saying that he was going to handle the army's grain and grass, but in fact, Zuo Mengeng took these people not to handle the grain and grass, but directly got on the ship and went to Jeju Island. According to the agreement between the two parties, Zuo Menggeng's family members were to be reloaded with advanced flintlock pistols (in fact, the civilian version) and 24-pounder fortress guns, and undergo a period of thermal weapons training (mainly in artillery) before boarding the ship again and heading south. The Zheng family's navy will send them to the southern island of Illian (i.e., the island of New Guinea).

Irian Island is a very large island, it is the largest island in the Pacific Ocean, covering an area of 780,000 square kilometers. The island is rich in natural resources, in addition to some of the common teak and mahogany found on the Pacific islands, there are also very rich copper resources here. This is also the reason why Zuo Liangyu and his son chose this place among the several locations provided by the Zheng family. But at this time, the Europeans had not yet discovered the island, but in search of Australia, the Zheng family's expedition fleet visited here and established its first small stronghold here. This small stronghold is a port with a good natural environment, and it is not far from a high-grade copper mine, but the Zheng family's manpower is of vital use, and there is no time to develop it for the time being, so this small stronghold was quickly abandoned for the time being, and only left a record on the chart. Now the Zheng family simply transferred this place to Zuo Mengeng, and according to the agreement they reached, the Zheng family will send the 200,000 or so people of the Zuo family's army to him one after another. And for the next six months, they were guaranteed food supplies.

Of course, Zuo Mengeng will not go over at this time, because the conditions on Irian Island are still very poor, and he is not willing to endure hardship. So the leader of these people will be his subordinate Li Guoying. He will only go to see after the basic situation has stabilized.

After the model army relieved the siege of Wuchang, the breaking army did not wait for the model army to attack, and took the initiative to retreat from Hankou and Hanyang. It's just that they set a fire before retreating, as usual, and burned the two cities to the ground.

It turned out that the destruction of Hankou and Hanyang by the Chuang army was quite successful, and it took half a month for the people of the river fleet to restore the wharf to use, but it took more time to rebuild other supporting things, such as warehouses and so on. The Chuang army had intended to abandon these two cities, so they began to destroy them almost from the moment they first occupied them. These destructions include not only the burning of houses and docks, but more importantly, the relocation of people. The army used coercion to move all the population of the two cities northward. By the time the model army had recovered the two cities, not only did not have a single intact house in the city, but not even a single one could be found. This also makes it impossible to use local people to repair some of the infrastructure. Fortunately, the more than 200,000 people under Zuo Liangyu are now under Zheng Sen's control, although according to the standards of the model army, the training level and physical condition of Zuo Liangyu's 200,000 people are not qualified to be a militiaman, and of course they are even less qualified compared with the logistics troops of the model army, but they are also considered strong laborers after all. Of course, it is not possible to fight a war or something, but it can barely be used if it is dragged over to repair warehouses and houses. Although these guys will be lazy at the first opportunity, they have no sense of responsibility when they do their work, and the work they do is often unwatchable, and they even need to rework from scratch.

Fortunately, the wharf and facilities in Wuchang are still there, so the model army can also use Wuchang as a distribution center for combat materials, and use Wuchang as a base to support the model army's northward advance.

The Chuang army sank into many artificial reefs in the Han River. The location of these reefs was quickly figured out by the sailors of the Model Army. This is actually not difficult, in the river, the presence of reefs will definitely cause a certain disturbance to the water flow. Experienced sailors will be able to tell if there is a reef underwater by looking at the waves on the surface. Then let people get closer in a small boat to explore, and naturally the location of these reefs can be determined.

It's not enough to just judge the location of the reef. They also had to be moved out of the way to guarantee navigation, which was relatively difficult. The people in the logistics department estimated the situation and finally came to this conclusion: "It will take at least three months to dredge the river and ensure the most basic shipping support." It could take a full year to fully restore the previous capacity. ”

"We can't give Li Zicheng so much time. Three months, too much. Because in a few months, the Liaodong side will be warm, and the troops will be able to be used again. If our main force is still dragging here, we can't keep Huang Taiji from making trouble. Zheng Sen said to a few people around him, "Actually, this is also an opportunity for us, an opportunity to completely solve Li Zicheng." If Li Zicheng still fights like before, although it will not be a big deal, considering the limited number of our army, it is really not easy to solve him. But now, he obviously plans to use the Xiangyang area as his Guanzhong Hebei to operate. If he can really take advantage of our supply troubles and make us fortify the city before we have to retreat, then he has a great future. It's just that he probably doesn't know at all, what level of our ability to attack tough problems has reached, right? Also, we fought them in the field, and they never saw us attacking the city. This time, I can let them see it. ”

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