Between September and October, the thousand-mile front confronting the Qing army along the Yellow River and in Shandong suddenly lost its original calm.

Battles as small as a few dozen people, as many as hundreds, started one after another.

Caught off guard, the Qing army along the line suffered some big losses. Young officers like Lu Dalei have all achieved beautiful results, cutting off human heads and captured war horses, as well as well-preserved fine iron armor, and all kinds of weapons made of fine iron, these trophies are also sent to Qingjiang in a steady stream.

In the matter of Lu Dalei's disposal of the spoils of war, Qingjiang Xingying held a supportive attitude.

The crown prince Zhu Cihong personally issued an edict that the Ming army along the route would no longer send the gold, silver and grain seizures back to Qingjiang, but distributed them to the local people on the spot.

If there is a shortage of grain, you can apply for shipment from the Qing army.

From Henan to Shandong, military supplies and support of the soldiers are also sent in a steady stream, from the beginning of the small-scale harassment war, to successive successes, the morale of the whole Ming army is invigorated, including Suizhou and Shandong along the garrison towns also began to gather their reserves, with these reserves to garrison the city and Xuntang card point, and the battalion soldiers completed the initial assembly, began to expand the results of the battle, and took the initiative to attack the Qing army garrison area.

For a while, the storm is coming!

………… The official road from Qingjiang to Xuzhou was only rebuilt in early October, which was equal to the status of the official road from Yangzhou to Qingjiang, and the manpower and material resources used were also very large.

When the battle at the front became increasingly fierce, the guards of the Generalissimo's Mansion surrounded the crown prince out of the camp, and rushed to an extremely important junction from Qingjiang to Suqian, Sizhou, Xuzhen, Haizhou and many other state capitals, accompanied by a group of civilian staff.

Huai'an is located in the center of Jiangbei, connecting Xusi in the north and Huaiyang in the south. Just from the handover of these official roads and the extremely dense pedestrian exchanges, we can also see the clues.

And at a glance, you can also find that the state of these official roads is obviously different.

From the south to Qingjiang here is a half-section of the road, in the eye of the place, there are still a lot of masters and people from the Department of Military Industry to build the road, Huaiyang to Qingjiang official road to build three months, there is still a little time to complete.

The rammed earth layer, the simplest cement layer, the roadside drainage ditch and the planting of trees, this road cannot be compared with later generations, but at that time it was far beyond the level of the times.

The rest of the official roads are mostly ordinary dirt and stone roads, which are leveled and filled with pits at most, and they don't look much different from before.

The biggest change is the line from Qingjiang to Xuzhou, and the crown prince's attention is on the two avenues to Xuzhou and Sizhou.

The rebuilding of the official road to Xuzhou is the Generalissimo's Mansion from the end of July, and the funds and materials have been allocated and manpower has been gathered.

Compared with the slow-moving official road from Yangzhou to Qingjiang, the official road to Xuzhen was repaired quickly and urgently, and the engineering standards were lowered, but in the requisition and distribution of road repairers, the allocation of materials, and the preparation of materials, the Qingjiang camp has always been in the first place.

Everyone knows that if the entire Huaiyang theater is threatened by war, it will be two main places.

One is the route of Henan into Huai, from Luoyang to Guide, east into Shangqiu, and then cross the Huai River, go straight down to Sizhou, and then go down to Xuyi, the sky is long, and it is close to Yangzhou.

In fact, after the main force of the Southern Expeditionary Army led by Duoduo fought the Battle of Tongguan and forced Li Zicheng away, the southward route of the Southern Expeditionary Army was this one.

The other route is cheaper and much more convenient on the march.

That is, from Shandong directly to the south, along the canal to supply the army's military supplies, to face is Xuzhou Town, which has always been a battleground for soldiers.

After Duoduo led the army south, the Qing army stationed in Shandong was led by Gushan Ezhen Huaita, went south along the canal, went straight to Xuzhou, and then conquered Suqian, Huai'an, Xinghua, and Tongzhou.

In addition, Azig pursued Li Zicheng all the way, from Shangluo Mountain to Dengzhou, down to Xiangyang, and then from the waterway straight down to Wuchang, Jingzhou, all the way to Jiujiang.

This is the Western Route Army, in addition to solving Li Zicheng, it also surrendered the rest of Zuo Liangyu by the way.

In addition, Duoduo went to Nanjing and solved Huang Degong and Liu Liangzuo, and the Eastern Route Army solved Liu Zeqing.

The towns of Nanjing, all of them are looking forward to the wind, and there is no one who fights.

It is no wonder that Azig felt that the world was at peace after Li Zicheng's death and the arrival of Nanjing City, leaving a small number of Qing troops and a part of the Han army to the governor of Huguang, Tong Guowei, to stabilize Huguang, and he himself returned to Yanjing with the main force.

Duoduo's thoughts were also the same, after taking Xu Huai and Jiangnan Huguang, the south had actually lost the center and core of resistance, and after a short time apart, he also led his army back to Yanjing.

The entire campaign of the Qing army to extinguish the Ming Dynasty was only after the promulgation of the shaving order was a situation of swarming and fires in all directions.

The first battle of resistance in the real strategic area with the strength of the remnants of the Ming Dynasty, with Nanjing as the center, and Xu Huaisi as the grand strategic area, ended inexplicably in a situation of a kind of nest and extreme pessimism, and did not even exert a little strength.

The performance of the entire battlefield, the Qing army has always taken the initiative, and the Ming army hardly fought a beautiful battle.

Even if it was the battle of Yangzhou under the personal command of Shi Kefa and several general military officers, after Shi Kefa desperately fled south from Baiyangkou and wanted to defend Yangzhou, the defense work of this city was always in a state of chaos and disorder.

The trees outside the city were not cut, and a deputy general proposed to cut them, Shi Kefa was noncommittal, and as soon as the Qing army arrived, they immediately cut down trees to build siege equipment, and then began to attack the city, a male city within a radius of twenty miles, and it changed hands in two days.

The dignified head of the Cabinet Department, the Shi Inspector who bears the hope of the world, is actually really worthy of his identity and reputation, that is, he died unyieldingly after being executed.

The southward route of the Qing army was not concealed, and there was no need to conceal it.

It can be said that the active offensive posture of the Qingjiang camp on the line from Shandong to Suizhou was to attract the attention of the Qing army, so that they would not treat Nanming as a paper tiger, free up part of the strength of the Qing army, and create some opportunities for Li Zicheng.

Second, even the new army, which has been trained by itself for several months, also needs to be tempered in actual combat.

Facts have proved that the results of military training are extremely good, and although there are some unsatisfactory points, such as the command of large-scale battles has never had the opportunity to engage in actual combat, and the communication and information transmission on the battlefield have not made much progress compared with before, and so on, the results of the entire battlefield training have been very perfect and the expected goals have been fully achieved.

The third is not a reason for outsiders.

Along the line of the Huai River, Sizhou is a strategic point and center, and the Qing army crossed the Huai River from Shangqiu to the south, and it was necessary to conquer Sizhou.

However, the crown prince's intervention in the affairs of Sizhou did not go very well.

Sizhou was first the area where the chief soldier Zhang Tiande was stationed, and then he was replaced by an unknown third-rate general soldier, and then Liu Liangzuo was transferred to the top.

This "Flower Horse Liu" is a famous bastard, his character and Liu Zeqing are bright for a while, the eldest brother does not let the second brother, as for the combat effectiveness of the troops, Liu Zeqing has been trained in Denglai, and he has also fought a few battles in Shandong.

Liu Liangzuo can rely on all mixed skills, in recent years, fighting and walking, protecting strength first, he is indispensable in the scourge place, and at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Ba turned against Tan, and he actually became one of the important towns!

His younger brother surrendered the Qing army as early as Liaodong, and it is conceivable how this Liu Liangzuo will make when he encounters a large number of Qing troops going south.

But now it is impossible to remove or swallow his parts.

The crown prince and Liu Zeqing were surprised when they were in the army, and they suddenly succeeded in striking a blow. This matter can no longer be repeated, and people are already on guard, unless it is an open rupture, the army is pressing, or forcing Liu to surrender and reorganize, or it may force people directly to the side of the Qing army.

At the moment when the enemy is in front of him, Zhu Cihong's image is a little too rigid, and now he has offended too many people, such a tough method is obviously not the best choice.

In this way, the only option is to buy.

As early as around June, Zhu Cihong sent someone to greet Liu Liangzuo, and Huang Degong, who followed Ma Shiying wholeheartedly, Liu Liangzuo couldn't talk about the word "festival", he asked for silver, allocated grain and collected it, and transferred him to Sizhou, and he honestly pulled out the camp and went on the road.

It stands to reason that there is a town in Sizhou where there are soldiers, and they dare not speak of progress, and there should be no problem in defending the city.

If the ancient warlord was determined to defend the city, and the attacker pulled out the city with the method of ant-attached siege, it would have to pay a considerable price.

Tang Dynasty's Zhang patrolled Suiyang, Song Zhi guarded Xiangyang, and the most famous Yan Yingyuan guarded Jiangyin, that is, the soldiers and civilians in the city had the will to defend to the death, and the generals who were responsible for it had the talent to defend to the death.

With 30,000 soldiers in one town and one state city, if you make a solid contribution, defend the Qingjiang camp and mobilize troops to help, or resist step by step, and slowly consume the strength of the Qing army, there is no problem.

But it is doubtful that things will develop like this.

As for the roads that Qingjiang Xingying brought to Sizhou, there are several, but there are no waterways, and the roads are also difficult to repair, most of them are small roads that have been in disrepair for a long time, after all, they cannot be compared with the north-south thoroughfare like Qingjiang and Xuzhou.

At this time, the defense of the Sizhou area is enough to make Zhu Cihong very worried.

............ "Good guys, it's such a big convoy again. ”

Zhu Cihong's eyes were heading towards Sizhou, but the staff and officials behind him were always staring at the direction of Xuzhou.

Of course, the most detailed and clear battle report at hand is the General Staff Department, and the people from the rest of the divisions are all anxious to jump up and down, asking everywhere, but some things are confidential, and they can't inquire even if they ask.

At this time, everyone looked at the endless convoy all the way to the north, all of which were two-horse and four-wheeled carts, which were tightly covered with tarpaulins, and at this time, everyone's eyes were of course looking at Gong Dingyu.

(To be continued)