Chapter 81: A Fork in the Road (I)
On the night of March 16 in the seventh year of Yongli, on the avenue leading to Zhoujiapu in Baoqing Mansion in Huguang, a Ming army of tens of thousands of people set off from Baoqing was silently hurrying in the heavy rain. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. biquge。 infoThis Ming army is the leading army of Sun Kewang's Qin Palace, and it is the most elite and trustworthy army under the command of Sun Kewang, the king of Qin.
In February, Sun Kewang strongly invited Li Dingguo, who was in Yongzhou, to Jingzhou to participate in the military conference. However, in late February, Li Dingguo did not go, but sent a letter to talk about the righteousness of loyalty to the king, hoping to prompt Sun Kewang to work with him to help Ming. However, Sun Kewang originally had the intention to be self-reliant, but he thought that Li Dingguo was ridiculing him, so he beat the messenger and bombed him away, but soon got the news that Li Dingguo gave up Yongzhou.
For this righteous brother, Sun Kewang has long been murderous. When Zhang Xianzhong died in battle, they were forced to kill Zhang Xianzhong's wife and prime minister when they went south, Li Dingguo planned to use Fuming to wash away the thief's name, and Sun Kewang never planned to be a loyal minister to the Ming court. In the following days, the two sides became more and more different on the issue of whether Fuming was self-reliant, but the Manchu Qing Dynasty was a great threat, and it had more than 20 years of brotherhood, so they were able to work together to fight the Qing army so far, and last year achieved a series of great victories, expanding the land by 3,000 miles.
Sun Kewang was the head of the four princes of the Great Western Army when Zhang Xianzhong was still alive, but there was little difference in the status of these four people at that time. By quelling the Shadingzhou Rebellion, all Yunnan was owned, and Sun Kewang completely overwhelmed Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu in strength and name by absorbing the army of Ai Nengqi who died in battle and the flag-raising incident at the martial arts field, and became the supreme commander of the Great Western Army, but Li and Liu still had heavy troops, and Sun Kewang was more afraid that they reached a consensus with the Son of Yongli, thus threatening his position as the lord of the Qin Kingdom.
With the help of the defeat of Baoning, Sun Kewang seized Liu Wenxiu's title and military power, and threw him into idleness. This originally greatly improved his strength, but Li Dingguo killed Kong Youde in July and achieved a great victory in Guilin, which made Sun Kewang suddenly find that he had begun to be surpassed by Li Dingguo in terms of prestige.
"The northern soldiers are easy to kill, but I didn't take charge alone."
He had said this when he learned that Nikan was going south and Sun Kewang forced Li Dingguo to return to the Huguang battlefield, but in fact, while Li Dingguo was preparing to encircle and annihilate Nikan in Hengyang, Sun Kewang also personally won the victory of Chenzhou and killed Xu Yong, the green battalion general of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, making Yungui, the base of the Great Western Army, safer.
For Sun Kewang, this was supposed to be a great victory for him to increase his prestige, and at the same time, he also secretly ordered Feng Shuangli to go against Li Dingguo's plan to encircle the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners army.
Originally, Sun Kewang increased his prestige by annihilating the Green Battalion, and the plan to demolish Li Dingguo was enough for him to surpass Li Dingguo's prestige in the army. But unexpectedly, because Feng Shuangli and Ma Jinzhong did not arrive, although Li Dingguo failed to encircle the army of the Eight Banners of Manchuria, Nikan was still ambushed and killed by Li Dingguo on the spot.
The Qing army's losses in Hengyang's victory were not very large, but the shock caused by the killing of the commander was extremely amazing. For a time, Li Dingguo became a famous king twice, and the world shook. Sun Kewang's limelight in Chenzhou was once again suppressed, and even in later generations, many people knew about Li Dingguo's Hengyang victory, but they didn't know that Sun Kewang presided over the Chenzhou victory at the same time as the Hengyang victory.
Under the prodding of his cronies, Sun Kewang, who already hated Li Dingguo, decided to take the opportunity of the military discussion to plot against Li Dingguo, and the army of 40,000 or 50,000 people led by Li Dingguo was handed over to his confidant Feng Shuanglilai to lead, thus completely integrating the entire Great Western Army Group.
From this point of view, although Sun Kewang is ugly, he thinks beautifully. But it was useless to just think about beauty, the conspiracy was somehow leaked, and Li Dingguo not only didn't come, but he gave up Yongzhou without even saying goodbye. And with Li Dingguo's abandonment of Yongzhou, after having to give up Hengyang and pick up a large piece of land for nothing because of the deep penetration of the lonely army, Dorobele Tunqi once again took over Yongzhou.
On February 28, the Dingyuan general Dorobele Tunqi guarded Hengzhou with Admiral Ke Yongsheng, and sent troops to occupy Yongzhou, which had been abandoned by Li Dingguo. On the sixth day of the first month of March, the army of Tun Qi Shuai went north, and on March 15, the Han army was stationed at the fork and Huajiezi in the blue banner of the blue banner, and the Ming army stationed in Zhoujiapu was separated by 30 miles.
The next day, the Qing army made a big move, intending to defeat the Ming army in Zhoujiapu, but the Ming army camped on the top of the mountain, and the torrential rain suddenly came, and the Qing army had to give up the plan to attack the army.
"Tartar soldiers won't be so hard to kill, I just don't have a chance."
With this thought in mind, under the heavy rain, Sun Kewang drove the front army to continue to advance, and soon entered the Ming army camp in Zhoujiapu, and used the cover of this rainy night to achieve a confluence with Feng Shuangli and Bai Wenxuan.
The Ming army suddenly changed from more than 40,000 people to nearly 100,000 troops overnight, but the Qing army did not know it. By the next day, the rain had stopped, and Tunqi led the army again, and soon arrived at the foot of the mountain of the Ming army camp in Zhoujiapu.
Zhoujiapu camp is extremely huge, originally Sun Kewang had the intention of bringing it here for reorganization after the annexation of Li Dingguo's army, who knew that Li Dingguo gave up Yongzhou, and the Qing army did not dare to chase Li Dingguo after obtaining Yongzhou, but went north to threaten Baoqing Mansion. Baoqing was located east of Chenzhou and Jingzhou, which was a shield for these two prefectures, and the Qing army intended to invade Guizhou from there, and Sun Kewang could ignore them. At this time, the Zhou Jiapu camp came in handy.
In the camp, Sun Kewang listened to the report of the horse probe, the Qing army had arrived, and obviously did not find the fact that the Ming army had increased its troops. The plan has been decided, and since the Qing army has not yet discovered it, Sun Kewang hurriedly ordered the army to leave the camp.
Looking up at the top of the mountain at the bottom of the mountain, the Qing army could not see the situation of the Ming army clearly. After Sun Kewang gave an order, the Ming cavalry of the brigade began to fight out from the various camp gates that had just been opened.
Sun Kewang's banner had been raised, and the Ming cavalry of the brigade rushed out of the camp, while the war elephants and infantry followed. The shouting of killing shook the sky, and Tun Qi and the Qing army under his command watched in amazement as Sun Kewang's front army suddenly came out of the camp of Feng Shuangli and Bai Wenxuan, and the scene of being designed by Li Dingguo and the death of the commander a few months ago appeared in the minds of the Qing army. The two sides only collided slightly, and the rangers in front had not completely collapsed, but the Qing troops in the rear brigade turned to flee, and the infantry in the back were even more eager to grow a few more legs.
"Haha, what's so great about the Tartar soldiers, you Li Dingguo can kill it, and my grandson can hope to kill it too!"
Seeing the Qing army abandon some war horses and corpses and flee south, Sun Kewang under the dragon flag let out a smug laugh.
Since Li Dingguo killed Kong Youde, Sun Kewang felt that his prestige had been suppressed, which was extremely unfavorable to his attempt to usurp the throne. It was easy to fight a great victory in Chenzhou, killing the Qing army general Xu Yong, and recovering Chenzhou Mansion, but what he didn't expect was that Li Dingguo, who was calculated by him the next day, was not only not defeated by the Qing army, but slaughtered the commander of the Qing army, Prince Jingjin Nikan.
The two famous kings, the world shook, Sun Kewang decided that this brother of more than 20 years had a great threat to him, even to the point of life and death.
Not long ago, although he failed to plot his people and seize his army, but at this moment he also defeated the heavy army group composed of the Eight Banners of Manchu and Mongolia, even if the results were only these dozen, but in Sun Kewang's view, as long as he vigorously publicized it, he could naturally get similar results. Besides, the opportunity to fight again is not impossible, and now that he knows that the Eight Banners is not as terrible as he imagined, there will always be a chance in the future.
Thinking of this, Sun Kewang rejected the suggestion of his generals to continue the pursuit, made up his mind not to take risks again, and directly used this small victory to add momentum. However, just a moment later, in the direction where the Qing army had just marched away, the Qing army came back again, with light cavalry out in all directions, and the infantry also took firm steps, as if they wanted to fight him to the death! (To be continued.) )