Between Dengzhou Port and Lushun Port, there is only a narrow Bohai Strait.

According to the calculations of later generations, the two places are only more than 70 nautical miles, and when converted into miles, it is only more than 200 miles.

Even in the Ming Dynasty, if you take a sea boat to ride the wind, it only takes two or three hours to arrive at Lushun Port from Dengzhou Port.

This time it was like this, after eating in the morning, Li Xin, accompanied by Zhang Keda, the chief soldier of Denglai, boarded the warship of the Lushun Mouth Naval Division that came to meet him, and then rode the wind and sailed, and the journey was smooth, and in less than three hours, he arrived at the Chengshan Fort Naval Division Camp in the mouth of Lushun.

Due to the main force of the Denglai Naval Division, it had already poured out of the nest at this time, and transported the prisoners of the thief army captured by Lu Xiangsheng's troops from the Shanxi battlefield to Yingzhou Island.

Therefore, whether it is the soldiers of the town guard government brought by Li Xin from Henan, as well as the homeless fathers and elders who need to be resettled, a total of more than 12,000 people, they can only rely on Li Weiluan's sailor battalion to and from Lushunkou to transport them back and forth.

The naval division battalion under Li Weiluan is just a partial division in Denglai Town, with a total of more than 3,000 people in both land and water armies, and there are only more than 20 large and small warships together.

Moreover, most of them are small boats, and there are only two large ships, and on average, each warship is crowded with people, and it can only hold a hundred or ten people.

Although Dengzhou is not far from Lushun, it can only make one round trip within a day by boat, and one round trip can only transport about 2,000 people at most.

In order to ensure safety, on this first trip, Li Xin only took 1,500 people under Liu Guoneng to cross the sea to the north.

Needless to say, the situation of the mountains and seas in Lushunkou can be regarded as the most dangerous situation on the Liaodong Peninsula, and it is also the easiest place to defend and difficult to attack.

Not to mention that there is no sailor at all in the Jianyu of this era, even if they have a sailor, it is difficult to capture the fortified Lushun Pass.

Nearly 300 years later, in the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese Navy and Army jointly launched one after another offensive against the Russians who held the Port of Arthur, dispatching 130,000 troops and finally suffering more than 60,000 casualties, before finally forcing the Russian troops in the Port of Arthur to surrender.

The reason why the Russian troops guarding Lushun finally surrendered was not because the Russian troops holding Lushun had too many casualties, but because they had been besieged by the Japanese army for nearly a year and had run out of ammunition and food.

In particular, the Russian fleet and reinforcements from all over Europe were completely annihilated by the Japanese fleet before they could approach the Port of Arthur.

If the Russians swore to die at that time, and the Japanese wanted to finally take the Port of Arthur, I don't know how long it would take to kill and wound tens of thousands of people!

Now the reason why Emperor Chongzhen took a fancy to the location of Lushunkou and wanted to operate it into a Ming army fortress standing at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula was because he had been to Lushunkou in his previous life and knew the tragic history of Lushun's offensive and defensive battles during the Russo-Japanese War.

The terrain of the whole Lushun is like a big crab facing south and backing north, and the East Cockscomb Mountain and the West Cockscomb Mountain are like two powerful pincers of this crab, one left and one right, protecting the Ming army fortresses, official offices, and camps such as the Lushun Port and the Chengshan Fort Sailor Battalion in the Lushun Mouth, leaving only a narrow waterway, which can allow large and small sea ships to pass.

In addition to the east and west cockscomb mountains, in the north, west and south of the outer periphery of Lushunkou, there are also countless mountains and mountains of all sizes such as Golden Mountain, Baiyu Mountain, Chengshan, Erlong Mountain, Laotie Mountain, etc., which completely enclose the wide bay in Lushunkou and the relatively flat land around the bay.

All of this makes Lushun not only a natural harbor with superior terrain, but also a natural fortress that is easy to attack and difficult to defend.

Of course, the reason why the Russians, nearly 300 years later, were able to kill or wound 60,000 or 70,000 Japanese people here was not simply because of the steep terrain.

What's more, the Russians spent a lot of manpower and material resources to build a large number of fortresses and forts here along the mountains and seas.

Therefore, after Li Xin landed at Lushunkou, the first thing he had to do was to take Liu Guoneng and Li Weiluan, accompanied by Zhang Keda, the general soldier of Denglai, to once again survey the terrain around Lushunkou.

Calculate in my heart where to build a lookout tower and set up a sentry, where to build a fort to garrison troops, and where to build a fort and place the Hongyi cannon.

Fortunately, in the mountainous area less than 100 miles from Jinzhou to Lushunkou, there are a large number of Ming army fortresses left, and it is not a blank.

When Shen Yourong, the general of the Ming army, was stationed on the Liaodong Peninsula, in order to resist the continuous southward invasion of the Jianzhou Jurchens, he also spent a lot of manpower and material resources, and built a large number of forts and forts in the south of Jinzhou and many dangerous places in Lushunkou.

If it weren't for the veteran Shen Yourong, with the support of Yuan Keli, the governor of Denglai, who insisted on doing so, then in the context of the comprehensive defeat of Liaodong at that time, the Liaodong Peninsula would have been lost from north to south, where could it still hold on to the present? !

Historically, in July of the sixth year of Chongzhen, after Huang Long, the last chief military officer of Dongjiang Town, died in Lushunkou, the strategic place of Lushunkou was finally occupied by the Manchu army.

Among them, the reason why the Manchu Qing Dynasty was able to finally capture Lushun was because of Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming, two traitors.

Many of these two men and their subordinates had been stationed in Lushunkou and knew the topography and defense of Lushunkou.

At the same time, these two men also brought Jianyu a large number of naval warships and artillery necessary for the attack on the fortification, which they urgently needed.

Correspondingly, the remnants of more than 3,000 people under the command of Huang Long, who retreated to Lushunkou.

It is precisely because of the fall of the remnants of the Huanglong army in July of the sixth year of Chongzhen, and the ensuing final fall of Lushunkou, that the Jin State, which was located in Liaodong, no longer has any worries and has a complete strategic initiative.

Since then, every once in a while, or every time there is a shortage of money and food in the Later Jin Dynasty, Huang Taiji will send troops to make a detour through Mongolia to invade the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty, and plunder the property and population on a large scale in order to pass on and solve the problems in the Later Jin Dynasty.

In this sense, it is not an exaggeration to say that the fall of Lushunkou in the summer of the sixth year of Chongzhen was a strategic turning point in the final demise of the Ming Dynasty.

The fall of Lushunkou in the sixth year of Chongzhen, in addition to the traitors leading the way, the abandonment of the Ming army fortress along the way from Jinzhou to Lushun was also an important factor.

When Shen Yourong was stationed on the Liaodong Peninsula, he advocated the construction of fortresses, which cost the imperial court a lot of manpower, material and financial resources, but it was also very effective in keeping the southern tip of the peninsula south of Jinzhou, leaving a living chess for the Ming Dynasty, and it was a very important strategic chess piece.

But all this ended with the transfer of Yuan Keli in the fourth year of the Apocalypse, and the subsequent dismissal of the veteran Shen Yourong.

After arriving in the Chongzhen Dynasty, the finances of the imperial court were even more difficult, and the priority was to ensure the Ningjin defense line in the western Liaoning corridor.

As for the strategic point from Jinzhou to Lushun on the Liaodong Peninsula, because it is separated by the sea, no one thinks that this place is important.

Not to mention continuing to invest material and financial resources to build fortresses and forts, even the troops stationed in them were cut and reduced, because the imperial court did not have enough food and salary to supplement them.

In this life, Emperor Chongzhen certainly would not make the same mistake again.

Not only all the muskets and half of the artillery produced by the Armament Institute in June were approved to the Lushun Town Guard, but also an order has been issued to Bi Maokang and Sun Yuanhua to ask them to allocate all the artillery produced by the Armament Institute in July, whether it is the improved model of the Franc machine or the improved model of the heavy Hongyi cannon, to the Lushun Town Guard.

At the same time, the Ministry of Industry also directly managed the military cement produced by the Baiyecheng Cement Factory, as well as the civilian cement produced by the Emperor's father-in-law, Jiading Bo Zhoukuijia Cement Factory, to be allocated and sold to the Lushun Town Guard.

Not only that, when the news of Li Xin's arrival at Lushunkou reached the palace, Emperor Chongzhen immediately issued an order to Liang Tingdong, the governor of Tianjin, and Sun Guozhen, the governor of Denglai, asking them to either dispatch Tianjin sailors or hire civilian merchant ships to transport the military and civilian salaries and materials of the garrison of Lushun Town stranded on the coast of Dengzhou to Lushunkou as soon as possible.

After transporting the population and materials, these naval fleets and requisitioned civilian merchant ships had to continue to the Dagu Pass in Tianjin, and then transfer cannons, cement and other materials to the Port of Lushun.

When Emperor Chongzhen was busy transferring all kinds of strategic materials for Li Xin in the Forbidden City, Li Xin took Li Weiluan, Liu Guoneng and others, under the auspices of Zhang Keda, the chief military officer of Denglai, to Jinzhou, a lonely city more than 80 miles north of Lushunkou, and went through the handover procedures with Qu Chengen, the chief soldier on the left side of Dongjiang Town.

From then on, the land south of Jinzhou to Lushunkou, as well as the islands in the Bohai Sea such as Shuangdao, Tieshan Island, Snake Island, and Pig Island off the coast of Lushunkou, were all under the jurisdiction of the Lushun Town Guard.

The coastal zone north of Jinzhou and all the islands in the sea east of the Liaodong Peninsula, such as Silk Island at the mouth of the Yalu River, and Dalu Island, Guanglu Island, Shicheng Island, Ocean Island, Zhangzi Island, and Dachangshan Island in the waters east and south of Silk Island continue to be under the jurisdiction of the General Military Office on the Left Road of Dongjiang Town.

In this way, the jurisdiction of the Lushun Town Shoufu and the jurisdiction of Qu Chengen, the chief soldier of the Left Road General Military Office of Dongjiang Town, are somewhat similar to the defense division of the Luda Garrison Area and the Foreign Changshan Fortress Area more than 300 years later, at least the respective jurisdictions and regions basically coincide.

Of course, all these arrangements are due to the situation on the Liaodong Peninsula, not just the intentional actions of Emperor Chongzhen alone.