As the vanguard of the counterinsurgency army and the main force of this counterinsurgency army, the new army went out of the scope of the Beijing division along the official road, passed through Baoding Mansion, Zhending Mansion, Shunde Mansion and Guangping Mansion into Zhangde Mansion in Henan, and then crossed Weihui Mansion and crossed the Yellow River at the boundary of Kaifeng Prefecture, and then turned to the west and advanced all the way along the Yellow River to Tongguan. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Tongguan south of the Qinling Mountains, there is a danger of forbidden ditches and deep valleys; There are Wei and Luo in the north, and the Yellow River hugs the pass; There is a barrier of Huashan Mountain in the west; The mountain peaks in the east are connected, the valley is deep and the cliff is absolute, the sheep intestine trail is passed in the middle, only one car and one ride, people walk in the meantime, overlook the Yellow River, the danger is extremely precipitous. As the gateway between Shaanxi and the Central Plains, it has always been the most important pass of the Guanzhong Dynasty, and its military significance is extremely important.

All dynasties, especially the Qin, Han, Sui and Tang dynasties, had many wars around Tongguan. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Sun Chuanting and Li Zicheng fought a decisive battle in Tongguan, and Li Zicheng and the Qing army fought in Tongguan, which determined the rise and fall of the Dashun Dynasty respectively.

However, after that, the war was no longer between Guanzhong and the Central Plains, and Tongguan was once spared from war. But today, Wu Sangui raised an army in Shaanxi against the Qing Dynasty, and the Qing army wanted to retake Shaanxi and prove to the world that it still had the ability to crush the rebels, and this place once again became the key point of contention between the two sides.

As the main force of the counterinsurgency army, the new army is a hinterland along the way, whether it is Zhili or Henan, and the strategic movement speed is very fast, and it has even reached the point where the follow-up Eighth Banner Army is thrown farther and farther away. The new army was organized and trained in accordance with the European method of warfare, supplemented by some training methods that Liu Cheng learned from Chen Wen, and it was no longer the Eight Banners Army of the past.

However, the strategic movement of the new army was fast enough, but it was not as fast as the partial division led by Tunqi. Because this partial division was not only composed of cavalry and cavalry infantry of the Manchu and Han Eight Banners, but more importantly, they did not bypass Shanxi like the new army, but went directly west from the Beijing division, and then forcibly crossed the Yellow River in Shanxi, and appeared directly on the ground in Shaanxi.

After the capture of Xi'an, Wu Sangui began to recover the entire territory of Gansu and Shaanxi, and the first was the area on the west bank of the Yellow River, because he wanted to rely on the natural danger of the Yellow River to block the road of the Qing army from Shanxi to Shaanxi.

However, the Yellow River is thousands of miles long, and the Jin-Shaanxi Gorge between the two provinces alone is no less than 1,500 miles long. Seeing this, Wu Sangui chose to focus on guarding against the central and southern sections of the Jinshan Gorge, and for the northern section, only a small number of troops were left to contain and warn, and more troops were placed on the front line of Yan'an Fucheng, which was used as the center of defense in the north.

The Tunqi division crossed Shanxi, forced the crossing in the northern section of the Jin-Shaanxi Gorge, and then went south to harass various places, but it was still far from Xi'an, the center of Wu Sangui's rule in Shaanxi. However, the Qing army advanced westward, and from Henan, the Eight Banners Army under the banner of the new army was on the way, and Wu Sangui had to shrink his forces from the west and south and concentrate on defending Xi'an, and the key to defending Xi'an was in the Tongguan fortress.

Wu Sangui had heard of this new army for a long time, but the Qing court tried to keep secret how this army was organized, how it was tactical, and even what the specific strength was. In particular, since its establishment, this new army has never participated in military operations, and has only been trained in the new army battalions, and it is impossible to estimate how effective it is.

However, this time, the new army was dispatched, and its strategic movement speed was much worse than that of the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Ming armies, but it was already unimaginably fast compared to the armies of other forces.

"I'm afraid it's a hard stubble this time."

The new army is getting closer and closer, Wu Sangui is worried, not only because of Tunqi's partial division in northern Shaanxi, the strength of that army is limited, whether it can break through the Yan'an defense line is two words, the key is the battle of this new army, and he is likely to face the dilemma of fighting alone this time.

In the winter of last year, Wu Sangui recovered Xi'an, and the edict envoy of the Yongli court rushed to the front of the army that night, not only canonized the title of the prince, but also informed Wu Sangui that the 50,000 army of Liu Wenxiu, the king of Shu, was on the way, and it was possible to arrive at any time and march east with Wu Sangui.

said that it was 50,000, Wu Sangui estimated that there were about 30,000 auxiliaries, but it was also a great supplement for him to be able to have an additional 20,000 strong troops of the Southwest Ming Army. However, Wu Sangui waited left and right in Xi'an, but Liu Wenxiu and his army seemed to have disappeared into the no-man's land of Sichuan.

Historically, Wu Sangui marched south from Hanzhong in Shaanxi to attack Yungui, set out in February, arrived at Baoning in early March, rushed to Chongqing in early April, and less than a month, by the end of April had already captured the Zunyi military and civilian government. Wu Sangui's whole process took only more than two months, and it was still in the "thorny bushes, dense forests, although the township guide did not know what to follow." but trace the logging, cut a way of wood, and enter a way of soldiers".

Relatively speaking, Liu Wenxiu's army traveled north from Sichuan, and the road was two hundred miles away. It stands to reason that three months should have arrived. But it's already February, and more than four months have passed since the angel's departure, but Liu Wenxiu has never been seen. So much so that Wu Sangui once suspected that the last edict envoy was sent by Chen Wen to pretend to be in order to use his hand to consume some of the Manchu Qing Dynasty's vital forces, or that Liu Wenxiu attacked him in order to avenge the revenge of the Baoning War that year, and wanted to take advantage of the fisherman.

"Lord Wang, do you want to send someone to Huguang and talk to His Royal Highness King Qi about one or two."

"It's useless, Chen Wen won't send troops. This person's temperament is resolute, and it is not something that ordinary people can easily shake. Now that he is in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, as long as he steadily follows the route of Emperor Taizu Gao's Northern Expedition to the north, the Tartars can only passively respond to the battle. Why bother to cross Henan and go to such an area as it is not convenient for military transportation and even more unfamiliar to come to the aid of our Guanning army. ”

Wu Sangui is very shrewd, and many things are calculated carefully, which is actually related to his family heritage, after all, his father Wu Xiang is a businessman, and careful calculation and judging the situation have long been melted in the blood.

It's like back then, Wu Sangui led the Qing army into the customs, why is this so, is it a red face when he is angry, a concubine born as a prostitute, it is a common thing to give it away, let alone break with the Great Shun that is determined in the north for the sake of his people. In the final analysis, it was because the Dashun army's policy of torturing and plundering the gentry offended the Confucian scholars, and at first glance it was not a regime that could stand firmly.

At the end of the bet, Wu Sangui was also conscientious in history, and even killed Yongli for this, offending the people who restored his sight all over the world, and he had no intention of leaving a glimmer of room for the future anti-Qing Dynasty. So much so that when Kangxi cut the feudal domain, he was forced to rebound, most of the Han people who were anti-Qing were unwilling to go out of the mountain to help him, and when the momentum of the chaos had passed, the Qing court eased up, and quickly completed each breakthrough by relying on the advantage of occupying most of the world.

Now, with the sudden rise of Chen Wen and the end of the Manchu Dynasty, Wu Sangui chose to re-bet. Unexpectedly, the bet was finished, but the increase that Ming Ting said had not arrived, and he had already finished the game, so he had to play this game alone, and there was no other way.

"It's come to this, it's impossible to go back, and we can only rely on ourselves. Fortunately, this king was not idle during this time, and he formed a Spanish phalanx of ten battalions, otherwise it may not be enough to rely on those ten battalions alone. Even if it is newly organized, the daily drill is not comparable to those old battalion leaders after all, and this time it seems that it is inevitable to rely on the ten battalions of loyalty and bravery. ”

In the first battle of Xi'an, the Spanish phalanx trained by Wu Sangui worked, crushing the elite of the Eight Banners Army and the Green Battalion on the battlefield. When Western France showed results, Wu Sangui naturally wanted to expand the scale, and the inventory of Shaanxi and Gansu provinces and part of the wealth of Mancheng were enough to support the cost of the old camp of the Guanning army to reorganize the Spanish phalanx.

Now, the difference is that the training time is too short, the run-in degree of combat methods is low, and the number of firearms is too small, and it is still necessary to rely on the foot bow to make up for some of the lack of long-range killing.

"Let Hu Guozhu strictly defend Tongguan, and send a force over to reinforce Tongguan. Only after staying there can we continue to persevere, sit and watch the smoke rise in the north, and the Tartars are exhausted. ”

Wu Sangui dispatched troops to reinforce Tongguan, and he would also order the scattered troops to be regrouped in Xi'an, because if there was a loss here, even if there were other places, he could not afford the losses in all aspects.

This side is actively preparing, and the new army has not stopped at all, along the way, the government is responsible for grain and grass, people's husbands, camps, and even the rice is ready, just waiting for these Eight Banners masters to rush to the place to eat and rest. But even so, it could not ignore the speed of their strategic movement, the army set off at the end of the month, it only took two months, and by the end of February, it had already arrived in Lingbao County in the west of Henan Province, and it was not far from Tongguan.

The current situation of the Manchu Qing Dynasty prompted the new army not to dare to stay at all, and the army arrived at Tongguan 20 miles away and set up camp. When the new army arrived, the soldiers needed time to recuperate, and the auxiliary soldiers recruited in Henan prepared everything under the supervision of the local green battalion, the camp, the siege equipment, and everything, especially the transfer of military grain and grass, day and night, but they gained very little, and those who died of hunger and cold were thrown directly into the Yellow River to avoid breeding plague.

"How long will it take for them to arrive?"

"Back to the prince's words, Prince Xian's department has already crossed Kaifeng and is coming at full speed."

"Grinding."

Got this answer, Ji Du was quite dissatisfied, this new army was the first to set off, but it was only a day earlier that Fu Shou led the Eight Banners Army, look at the present, the difference is no longer a day's journey, but the worse the worse, the worse.

From the capital to Tongguan, according to their way of bypassing Shanxi, it is also more than 2,000 miles away. This distance is hundreds of miles farther than the distance from the capital to Nanjing. It is precisely because of the long enough distance that the difference in the speed of strategic movement between the new army and the old Eighth Banner Army has become more and more obvious.

"When I was in the capital, there were still some banner people who said sour things, what new army wasted money and food, and they didn't go into battle just squatting in the barracks to practice, and it was a bamboo basket to draw water. Now it seems that the speed of the march and the toughness of the soldiers have been greatly improved compared to before, and the Western method does have merit compared to the old style of warfare, and you minion also put his heart into it. ”

"It's still the emperor's blessing, the prince's leadership is well-organized, Lord Guerjia praises him well, and the slave is just running errands, and he can't afford to be praised by the prince like this."

"You Hans, Han Army Banner, are hypocrisy."

With that, Jidu laughed, apparently very satisfied with the performance of the New Army up to this day. The myth of invincibility was shattered by Chen Wen of the Eight Banners of Manchuria, and the losses of the Eight Banners Army were not only in terms of troops, but also in spirit.

After two years of trembling, the new army has been trained with great pains, and now there are initial results, hope is seen, and a sense of satisfaction arises spontaneously.

"You don't have to wait for the rich ribbon to them, the minions below have been repaired in the past two days, and they will send troops to attack Tongguan early tomorrow morning, and we don't have time to spend it with Wu Sangui."

"What the prince said is very true, the world is ignorant, the new army has been repairing here for a long time, what he knows is waiting for the follow-up troops to follow up, and those who don't know must think that the new army is afraid of Wu Sangui."

Having said that, Jidu still sent someone to urge Fu Shou's itinerary. In the final analysis, the new army only has more than 17,000 people, and the Tongguan Pass is narrow, which is not conducive to the deployment of the large army, and their attack force is not easy to deploy, and Wu Sangui cannot put in too many troops here. When Tongguan fell, it would be difficult to achieve a decisive victory over Wu Sangui without enough troops in the next Guanzhong Plain, especially Wu Sangui's Spanish phalanx was clearly placed in Xi'an.

Of course, to attack Xi'an, the first thing to do is to kick open the gate of Tongguan. Early the next morning, the new army set out and marched towards Tongguan.

In the Ming Dynasty, the number and intensity of the battles encountered by Tongguan were much lower than those dynasties with Guanzhong as the ruling center, but the scale of Tongguan in the Ming Dynasty was larger than that of the previous generation, and it was easier to defend and difficult to attack.

During the Hongwu period, the Ming court expanded the Tongguan, the city wall was tortuous and winding according to the mountain, the southeast included Qilin Mountain, Yantai Mountain and Bijia Mountain, the southwest included Phoenix Mountain and Scorpion Mountain, and the section of the Tong River into the Yellow River included in the Guancheng, so that the Tong River flowing into the Yellow River from south to north passed through the Tongguan City.

As a result, Tongguan City's defensive capability was greatly enhanced. The water of the Tong River is actually irrigation water and drinking water in the city, and there are more than 1,000 acres of land in Tongguan, so the defenders can hold on to it for a long time in the absence of supplies.

The Qing army arrived, and from a distance, Wu Sangui's Guan Ning army was obviously prepared and was waiting for it at this moment. After careful observation, as the minister of the conference, Liu Cheng pointed to Ji Duyao in the distance, and said categorically: "Lord Wang, the slave thinks that if you want to pull out Tongguan, you must first take this place!" ”