Chapter 185 Reopens the Jiangnan Battlefield

The horn of the Eastern Crusade was sounded from Guangxi first, and at the same time, various columns from Guizhou also broke into Guangxi and Hunan. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Among them, the Qiandongnan Independent Column and the Qiannan Independent Column had 150,000 people (only earthen guns and earth cannons, as well as the captured Qing army flintlock guns dispatched by Yang Dongfang, as well as mortar cannons. Changed to an eastward column.

They are the first column of eastward expansion led by Zhang Xiumei, the second column of eastward expansion led by Jiusong, the third column of eastward expansion led by Yang Daliu, and the fourth column of eastward expansion led by Liu Tiancheng.

The fourth column crossed the mountains from the area of Sanjiang and Longsheng and launched an attack on Guilin.

The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd columns marched eastward to attack Hunan from Tianzhu Mountain and Tongren respectively.

Chuandong!

"New clouds! From now on, you will be the commander of Chuandong, you have to wear this hat of mine, don't disgrace me. Li He taught his subordinate deputy division commander Lan Xinyun Dundun.

At the beginning of the Eastern Expedition, he was appointed as the commander of the Middle Route Army of the Eastern Expedition, leading half of the 3rd Division and the Eastward Division to attack Hunan and Hubei from the Yangtze River, and assisting the Right Route Army to eat Liangguang and Hunan.

Although it is an assist, Li He is very willing, thinking about the eldest brother Yang Dongfang running all over the map, it is so cool, but it is so boring for him to stay in Sichuan.

"Commander! Can I swap with you? Why don't you give the hat of Commander Chuandong to someone else, and I'll go outside with you to top the thunder. Lan Xinyun had the same idea as Li He, but Li He squeezed out a very insincere smile and said:

"You just obediently stay here, who called you my most powerful assistant, the rear of my middle route army is in your hands, you are my backing, don't lose the chain."

Lan Xinyun wanted to say something, but at this time, someone came to report: "Commander, the sharpshooter company has arrived." ”

"Sharpshooter!"

The two looked at each other and smiled, both with strange expressions.

"Commander, do you think this sharpshooter company is really so powerful?"

"I don't know if it's powerful or not, but I believe in the eldest brother, none of the things he does are simple." Li He said with a smile:

"If you think about it, it took two months for the Sharpshooter Company to select a thousand elites from Chengdu and the South Sichuan Military Region, but half of them were eliminated in half a month, half of them were eliminated in a month and a half, and there was only one company left in three months.

"Then their marksmanship should be very good, they can really shoot a head, and they don't know if they know it."

"Do you want to wipe it and use it as a live target for them?" Li He joked, so frightened that Lan Xinyun shook his head: "Then I'll still keep my head and be the commander, I don't dare to die before I take my wife." ”

The two didn't talk for a while, and then someone came to report: "Commander, the Dongjin Division has taken Badong, and now it is advancing towards Yichang." ”

"Very good, tell Hong Xing. If my 3rd Division, 3rd Regiment and 31st Regiment all rushed to Yichang, he had not yet taken this Yangtze River waterway to rush, it would be better to go back to Chengdu to hug the baby, and not to call the Dongjin Division in the future, they will call the Dongjin Division old. ”

Subsequently, Li He took the 3rd Regiment and the 31st Regiment of the 3rd Division, as well as the Sanjiang Water Division, to start the Middle Road Eastward Expedition.

Among them, the Sanjiang Naval Division is extremely magnificent, with two boiler-driven gunboats, four capital warships converted from armed merchant ships, two small steamers, a French troop carrier, and a French transport ship, and the others are all wooden naval warships of different sizes made of Sichuan, with thirty or forty ships, riding the wind and waves and sailing straight down the clouds.

"Haha, let's give these 600 rifles to Ge Hui first! The return of the northwest still needs to be deterred. ”

Just snatched Liu Mingchuan's vote, Yang Dongfang took the new guards to Pingyin, and the county commander consciously raised his hands to face the wall, as if this Uncle Yang had never been to Pingyin.

Yang Dongfang led people to Tai'an overnight. This time, he had to cooperate with the right-hand expeditionary troops to attract the attention of the Xianghuai army and follow the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to Nanjing.

He wants to reopen the battlefield in the south of the Yangtze River and eat the last money bag of the Hunan army and the Manchu Qing in one fell swoop.

In Yang Dongfang's heart, Zeng Guofan's threat is the greatest, Yixun can be killed at any time, and he can launch the people to rebel when he fights Yixun, he is justified and famous, and Tongzhi and the empress dowager of the two palaces are political chips in their hands, no matter how they are counted, they will win.

But the Hunan and Han regimes could not let them last long.

Zeng Guofan was called the emperor, and the confusion of the Han people was too great, and the longer the time passed, the more stable the power of the Hunan and Han dynasties, and the more it would be recognized by the people, after all, this was the Han regime, and the Hunan army had a group of literati jumping up and down to bewitch the people.

Once Zeng Guofan has a firm foothold, if he wants to eliminate the Hunan and Han dynasties in the future, he will spend hundreds of times more energy, consume more financial resources, and consume more national vitality.

So the next first goal is to kill the Hunan and Han regimes and compress their living space, and at the same time, because the Taiping army withdrew from Jiangnan and was unable to force the main force of Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang and others, he also had to reopen the Jiangnan battlefield and firmly attract all kinds of armies to the land of Jiangnan, so that the two of them were incapable of separating themselves.

Originally, there was only one way to the eastward expedition of the army, but he was changed to the left, center and right three roads, and he led the left army to the south to the east, of course, he did not forget to give Li Hongzhang some eye medicine, passed through the control area of the Huai army, and established the third coordinate point of the north-south longitudinal line.

That is, from Jinan Tai'an, along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal line Yanzhou, Tengzhou, Xuzhou, Pizhou, Suqian, Huai'an, Gaoyou, Yangzhou and Nanjing and Shanghai to form a line.

In this way, South China, Central China, and East China are all shrouded in a coordinate network.

"What, Yang Dongfang blatantly killed Tai'an, and is advancing along the canal line to our department."

The first to feel uneasy was naturally Li Hongzhang, who moved his headquarters to Huai'an and made a gesture of retreat, hoping to reach a tacit understanding with Zeng Guoquan in Nanjing, and had no intention of attacking Nanjing.

I didn't expect that Yang Demon was making wind and rain in Shanxi, and he came to his territory all of a sudden, how not to panic.

"Order Pan Dingxin to bring the 'Ding' word camp to Linyi, Shandong Province from Suqian to the north immediately!"

"Ordered Zhang Shushan to guard Xuzhou, Zhang Shusheng led the 'tree' battalion to the front line of Tengzhou, and once the new bandits were discovered, they resolutely attacked and blocked them from going south to the east."

"Order Yang Dingxun, the governor of Shandong, to take his headquarters and Shandong soldiers and horses to the south to pursue the new bandits."

"Please ask Liu Changyou, the king of the Song Dynasty in Henan, to send people eastward to block the area from Heze to Shangqiu, and we will encircle and annihilate this thief."

Li Hongzhang was sweating profusely, and quickly gave a plan, planning to put a pocket and surround the Xinmin Legion led by Yang Dongfang, and from now on concentrate all his forces to kill Yang Dongfang is his No. 1 goal in Tianzi.

Zeng Guofan of Nanjing was also a little uneasy after hearing that Yang Dongfang was going to kill Nanjing, and at the same time received the news from Liangguang and Hunan, his brows furrowed, and he quickly made arrangements: "King Jin sits in Hunan to supervise Liangguang and Hunan, and is responsible for resisting the Eastern Expeditionary Army on the middle and right roads of the New People's Army. ”

"It's the emperor!" Zeng Guoquan is now the king of Jin under one person and above 10,000 people, and the governor of the three provinces has 200,000 horses, and no one has any opinions.

"Xueqin is responsible for the defense of the Yangtze River, I see what Yang Dongfang will take to fly through the sky!"

Peng Yulin, the newly appointed Yangtze River Naval Inspector in Xianghan, was ordered to stand up: "It's the emperor!" There is no one in the Yangtze River Naval Division who can cross the river defense, and the only doubt is whether the army of the puppet Qing Huainan King can block the new bandits, whether Yang Dongfang will bypass Zhenjiang and come from the Jiangyin Qing region, can we strike first, take the Jiangyin fortress over, and take the land on the south bank of the Yangtze River. ”

Now Shanghai and Suzhou on the south bank of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu, as well as Wuxi, Jiangyin, Changshu, Taicang, and Kunshan, are Li Hongzhang's territory, so Peng Yulin said this, but was rejected by Zeng Guofan.

Zeng Guofan shook his head and said: "Xueqin, don't worry, now is not the time when we break with the pseudo-Qing Dynasty and fight against Li Hefei's teachers and students, one of the two tigers must be injured, and he must not fight with the snipe and the clam first, and let him annihilate Yang Dongfang in the land of Qisu with peace of mind." ”

After speaking, Zeng Guofan said: "To show sincerity, first take away part of the soldiers and horses in Changzhou, don't put pressure on Li Hefei, Yang Dongfang is very human, it is likely that he will really fight the land of Lianghuai and drill under our noses, be more careful, I don't want to be a Tongzhi." ”

Guarding the river must guard the Huai, now the barrier of Nanjing, the north of the Great Wall of the Hunan and Han regimes, turned out to be the Huai army of the pseudo-Qing Dynasty, it is really a bit ironic to say, everyone knelt down in fear and said: "Yes!" Emperor! We will defend the Holy Heaven to the death. ”

Then Zeng Guofan adjusted the various departments, Yunhou Liu Kunyi was the governor of Jiangxi and stationed 80,000 horses in Nanchang, and the general director was Ji'an, Fuzhou, Nanchang; Huhou Yang Changjun stationed 50,000 horses in Huzhou, and the general affairs of Huzhou Xuancheng Taihu Lake.

He also ordered Fuhou Yang Yuebin to garrison 20,000 horses in Wuchang, in charge of the Yangtze River Water Division, responsible for the upper reaches of the Yangtze River; Liu Songshan (Liu Jintang's uncle) was stationed in Xiangyang with the Zhuzi battalion, 100,000 horses, and the general affairs of Xiangyang, Jingzhou, and other northern Hubei were responsible for expelling the Twist army.

Ordered Bao Chao to garrison 60,000 horses in Fengyang Mansion with the Thunder Army, guarding the Huainan and Fuyang lines, and the 30,000 horses of the Thunder Army General Sun Kaihua guarded Xinyang and Fuyang. (To be continued.) )