In mid-February, Li Banghua, the Minister of Military Aircraft, took a battalion of 3,000 mines under his command to hire the same number of horsemen near Tongzhou, and then escorted a large amount of grain and wages from the Tongzhou Hubu warehouse, and went to Shunde Mansion all the way. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

If you talk about the distance to enter the Jin Dynasty, starting from the Beijing Division, whether it is to go to the military capital outside the Yong Pass, or to go to the Flying Fox Pass, or to go to the Jingcheng Niangzi Pass of Zhending Mansion, it is much closer than the Fukou Pass between Shunde Mansion and Zhangde Mansion.

However, Li Banghua still chose to take the team south to Shunde Mansion, planning to cross Taihang from Fukou and enter Shanxi.

Taihang stretches for thousands of miles from north to south, the mountains are steep, the strange peaks stand in a forest, and it has been a natural barrier between Shanxi and Yanzhao and the Central Plains since ancient times.

However, although the Taihang Mountain is majestic and steep, it is difficult for people, horses and livestock to climb, but since ancient times, there are also eight valleys that can be passed, commonly known as Taihang Bashan.

These east-west horizontal valleys in the Taihang Mountains are formed by rivers originating in Shanxi, which have lasted thousands of years and have been continuously cut and eroded.

From north to south, once it is the military capital, Puyin, Feihu, Jing, Fukou, Bai, Taihang, and Yiguan.

These eight Taihang Eight Mountains, which can cross the Taihang Mountains, are the eight throat passages that have connected Shanxi, Hebei and Henan since ancient times, and are also the places where the important military passes of the three places are located.

Among them, you can enter Datong and Daibei by taking the military capital and Puyin, you can enter Taiyuan by taking the flying fox and Jingcheng, and you can directly enter Lu'an Mansion by going to Fukou.

As for Baicheng, Taihang and Yiguan, they are all in Huaiqing Mansion, Henan, which is too far away from Jingshi, and of course it cannot be used as an option.

Li Banghua did this, of course, with his considerations.

First, if you choose to go to Fukou, you can join Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong camp before entering Shanxi.

Li Banghua's mine battalion is a pure firearms team, while Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong battalion is more of a traditional army, although it has also trained a certain musket battalion and a car artillery battalion in accordance with the "New Army Drill Code", but Lu Xiangsheng prefers the traditional formation, and has put more effort into the training of spear wolf milling and sword and shield hands.

The Tianxiong battalion, which has a full strength of 5,000 people, has only one 1,000-strong Chinese firearms battalion, including 500 musketeers and 500 car gunners, while the remaining 4,000 people are all battalion leaders with cold weapons.

Among them, there were a cavalry battalion of a thousand people, a thousand pikemen, a thousand wolf swordsmen, five hundred archers, and five hundred sword and shield men.

Under the current circumstances, this kind of strength and organization can be regarded as a relatively safe one that is both offensive and defensive.

Although Li Banghua has enough confidence in his own mining camp, if he can join Lu Xiangsheng's 5,000 people and enter the Jin Dynasty together, the momentum will naturally be very different.

Second, Li Banghua became the governor of Jin, and there were other tasks assigned by the emperor, that is, to convey the emperor's will to Zhu Chengyao, the king of Shen whose fief was in Lu'an Mansion.

It is necessary to let Shen Wangfu and his family give 300,000 taels of silver and 300,000 quintals of grain to support Shanxi's anti-thief affairs.

Although Li Banghua carried a large amount of military salaries, grain and grass by himself, as the governor of Tianjin, he knew very well that the more food and salary, the better.

Especially now, it is the time when the green and yellow are not available, and Shanxi has been in drought for many years, the price of grain in the territory has skyrocketed, and the victims and displaced people can be seen everywhere.

If the Jin Palaces in Taiyuan and the Shen Palaces in Lu'an can provide half of the food and salary for the Jin army, then the pressure on Li Banghua can be reduced a lot.

In Li Banghua's plan, part of the food and salary supplied by the Jin Wangfu in Taiyuan would be used to support Sun Chuanting's army in Yansui Town and Wang Guoliang's army in Shanxi Town, while the food and salary he carried and the part supplied by Shen Wangfu would mainly support his own mine camp, Hong Chengchou's Shaanxi soldiers, and Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong camp.

Moreover, this problem must be solved as soon as possible as soon as it enters Jinjin, otherwise the army's morale will be unstable.

Third, and it is also a very important point, that is, the terrain of Taihang Eight Mountains, only the Fukou is the shortest, the flattest, and the easiest to pass.

The army led by himself not only carried a large amount of food and baggage, but also equipped with the Chongzhen rear-loading sub-mother cannon that was only finalized and mass-produced by the Armament Institute in addition to the Shenji Battalion.

The two artillery factories of the Armament Institute were in full production, but only one hundred and twenty guns were produced, and this time, with the emperor's permission, Li Banghua took away half of the entire output, that is, sixty guns.

Don't look at the inconspicuous 60 Chongzhen rear-loading sub-cannons improved by the Buddha Lang machine, plus the net weight of each mother cannon of the gun carriage is 800 catties, plus the eight sub-cannons equipped with each mother cannon, that is 2,400 catties.

Although the wheels of the carriage were installed on the gun carriage of each mother gun, and after the muzzle of the gun was charged, a horse was put on and dragged forward, which had already saved a lot of effort, but counting the eight sub-guns equipped with each mother gun, even if a gun squad was expanded to twenty people, it was still overstretched and in a hurry.

Because these twenty people, in addition to taking care of the gun carriage of the mother gun, also have to take care of the carriage that transports the sub-cannon, and also take care of a baggage cart that transports ammunition and projectiles.

Just this new-style artillery battalion under Li Banghua's command, if you go the wrong way, it is very difficult to cross the Taihang Mountain smoothly.

Like the Wangdu Pass of the Flying Fox Pass and the Niangzi Pass of Jingcheng, that is the dangerous pass on the Taihang Mountain, although there is a road, but the mountain is steep and precipitous, the road is narrow and difficult to travel, and it is difficult for the vehicles transporting food, baggage and artillery ammunition to pass.

After calculating it, it is still the most suitable to go south from the Jingshi to Shunde Mansion, and then converge with Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong camp.

In this way, Li Banghua, the minister of military aircraft, led the team under his command, left Beijing in mid-February, stayed overnight all the way, successively passed through Baoding and Zhending, traveled more than 800 miles in half a month, and finally at noon on the first day of the first month of March, in the north of Shunde Mansion, he met Lu Xiangsheng, who had already received the news and came to greet him.

Then, under the guidance of Lu Xiangsheng, the military garrison of the three prefectures, and Wang Zhidao, the prefect of Shunde, the group entered the city of Shunde Mansion to settle down and rest.

The Shunde Mansion of the Ming Dynasty was the Xingtai area of the later generations, and the Shexian County where Fukou was located belonged to Xingtai in later generations.

However, at this time, Shexian County did not belong to Beizhili, but to Zhangde Mansion in Henan.

Shexian County, located at the eastern foot of Taihang Mountain, is set up across the mountain from Licheng, Shanxi, and there has been no change for thousands of years, but sometimes it belongs to Hebei and sometimes belongs to Henan.

In the mountains of Shexian County, there is a Fuyang River that flows intermittently, it is this small Fuyang River, in the towering Taihang Mountain, carved such a strategic channel of east-west traffic, Fukou is from this.

The two ends of Fukou are related to the city, the one at this end of Shexian County is called Fukou Pass, and the one on the side of Licheng in Shanxi is called Dongyang Pass.

After resting for three days in Shunde Mansion, Li Banghua and his entourage packed up their baggage and re-embarked on the road with Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong camp, passing through Wu'an County for another day of rest, and finally came to the front of the Fukou Pass in Shexian County on the tenth day of the first month of March.

At this time, Fukou Pass has long lost its previous glory in history, and it seems that like other dilapidated customs cities, there is no official military garrison except for the inspection department and townsmen who have collected tariffs and silver in Shexian County.

Historically, the thieves who entered Shanxi finally could not survive in Shanxi, and it was from the South Taihang that they were abandoned because of the long period of peace, such as the Fukou Pass, and flowed into the Central Plains.

Seeing this situation at Fukou Pass, Li Banghua had a brief discussion with Lu Xiangsheng, and asked Lu Xiangjin, one of Lu Xiangsheng's younger brothers, to immediately return to the Daimyo's Mansion not far from here, and lead two thousand Tianxiong battalion reserves to garrison here.

Although Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong battalion was full of 5,000 people, it had recruited tens of thousands of people at the beginning, and in addition to the 5,000 regular soldiers, there were also 5,000 reserve soldiers.

Moreover, these reservists are also equipped with a large number of sharpshooter firearms that have been eliminated by the Jingshi Shenji Battalion.

This so-called magic gun is actually a combination of hot weapons and cold weapons, because after the barrel of the magic gun is filled with gunpowder, it is not a projectile that is put into it, but a long arrow.

In fact, it harnesses the power of gunpowder to fire bows and arrows.

Although it seems a bit strange, it is an important stage in the transition from cold weapons to hot weapons, and the range and power are not weaker than the bows and arrows fired by ordinary archers.

Li Banghua and Lu Xiangsheng waited until two days later at Fukou Pass in Shexian County, and Lu Xiangjin arrived at Fukou Pass with the reserve troops of the 2,000 Tianxiong Battalion before they were relieved to enter the pass and walked towards the other side of Taihang Mountain.

While Li Banghua left Lu Xiangjin some of the food and salary, he also left an order for him and the county commander of Shexian County, asking Lu Xiangjin to take the reserve soldiers of the 2,000 Tianxiong Battalion to recruit the people of Shexian County and renovate the wall and city of Fukou Pass.

In this way, after a two-day delay at Fukou Pass, Li Banghua, who had joined the Jin Governor as a cabinet minister and minister of military aircraft, finally passed through Fukou Pass on the evening of 14 March and arrived at the humble gate of Dongyang Pass, which is at the exit of Licheng in Shanxi.