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Just as the Qing army withdrawn from Hengzhou and the Ming army led by Zhu Dadian were marching towards Hengshan County one after another, Duoduo still led the army to confront Pang Yue and Li Guosuo in Hengshan County. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Since the large-scale battle on the morning of the 10th day of the first lunar month, the two sides have only engaged in some tentative skirmish offensive and defensive battles, with each side winning and losing, and neither side taking much advantage. Seeing that Huguang Town still maintained its combat effectiveness and had the assistance of more than 20,000 fresh troops, Duoduo did not order a large-scale attack, but silently stopped in place to rest. In the face of this situation, the Ming army did not take the initiative to attack the Qing army, after all, more than 30,000 Eight Banner soldiers gathered together, the combat effectiveness should not be underestimated, and they will definitely not be able to eat a bite, and they will add to their own losses in vain. As a result, the two armies faced each other silently, and during the 10th and 11th days of the first month, the smoke of the cooking in the camps of both sides rose almost simultaneously, and a strange situation arose in which nothing happened to each other.

The reason why Duoduo led his army to stop outside Hengshan County was not because he was attracted by the nearby landscapes, nor because the mind of killing Pang Yue was not dead. In fact, he hoped to lead his army north immediately. Because he had received an urgent report from the rear, Yuan Zongdi, the former general of the camp, was leading his army to attack Xiangyin City. This is not good news, Xiangyin is currently the hub of the entire army grain and grass transportation line, hoarding a lot of grain and grass from Hubei, Henan and other places. However, the defensive strength in the city was relatively thin, only a part of the Wuchang Green Battalion and a small number of Eight Banners soldiers requisitioned from Hubei, and the total number was less than 4,000. Once conquered by Yuan Zongdi, the grain and grass of the entire army will be unsustainable. At present, most of the green battalions in Hubei have been withdrawn, and the 20,000 soldiers and horses under Changsha City have also been entangled by another Ming army, and they cannot go to the rescue. Therefore, Duoduo could only personally lead the army back to help, and strive to defeat the Ming army before the city was broken, so as to keep the grain route intact, otherwise tens of thousands of troops could only be trapped alive in the hinterland of Huguang and starved to death. But before leaving. Duoduo still had to wait for the blue flag and the white flag soldiers and horses under the city of Hengzhou to meet and return together. If that partial division was all green battalion soldiers, Duoduo would not bother to wait any longer, but they were all Manchurian soldiers, and if he led the main force to go first, these thousands of precious Manchurian strong men would be surrounded by the Ming army. Nor could he imagine the punishment of his temperamental brother Dorgon in his rage.

In the two days of confrontation with the Ming army, and waiting for the white flag and the blue flag to come to the round. Dodor was in a terrible mood. He had already predicted that the southern expedition would probably return in vain, although he kept the southern expeditionary army intact and killed and wounded many Ming troops, but still failed to complete the set goal of completely destroying the Longwu court. After this return to Changsha and Xiangyin. It's going to be hard to go south right away. The reinforcements of the Ming army have come one after another, assembled, and are bound to be more fully prepared than before, but their own men and horses have suffered a lot of losses in the previous battle, the Han army has been inlaid with white flags, the Huangzhou green battalion has almost been wiped out, and the rest of the green battalion and the men and horses of the king of Sanshun have also been greatly injured. The combat effectiveness is probably less than half of what it used to be. Even if you continue to fight compulsively, it will be difficult to achieve the original goal.

Duoduo has thought about this more than once: If there was no damn Pang Yue who came out to remove most of the vitality of his army, if the puppet Ming Emperor Zhu Yujian was greedy for life and afraid of death like the Hongguang puppet emperor, and if the puppet Huguang governor blocked Yinxi like He Tengjiao and did not dare to take the initiative to attack his own grain and grass transportation line, how good would it be? It's a pity that God seems to be mean, so none of his ideas have come true.

In an extremely bad mood, Duoduo had to comfort himself from the other side: although the pseudo-Ming escaped this catastrophe for the time being, he only had one breath left. The vast majority of the world's land, population, and taxes have been brought under the rule of the Qing Dynasty. Even if the goal is not achieved this time, the Qing Dynasty, with its strong manpower and material resources, can launch another southern expedition in a year or even a few months, and the puppet Ming court cannot have such good luck every time.

At the thought of this, Duoduo's mood was slightly relieved.

……

These two days. Taking advantage of the fact that there was no large-scale battle, the soldiers of Huguang Town seized the time to rest in the city to recover their strength as soon as possible. After Pang Yue went to the defensive areas of each battalion every day, he and his subordinates were busy summing up the combat experience and lessons learned during this time, visiting the wounded, and so on, and at the same time, he did not forget to get close to Gu Yinxi, Li Guo and others. For example, whenever he has time, he will discuss the current situation with Gu Yinxi, and exchange experience in leading troops and managing the army with Li Guo, etc. Because Pang Yue knew that if he wanted to truly complete the great cause of resisting the Qing Dynasty. It is absolutely impossible to rely on oneself, no matter how much the domineering in oneself leaks out, all forces that can be united must be united to achieve this goal.

In fact, when it comes to strategic vision and political talent, Pang Yue thinks that he is far inferior to Plug Yinxi, and when it comes to leading troops to fight, he is only two years of practical experience and a bunch of theoretical knowledge, and he is not as good as Li Guo, who was killed from the sea of corpses and blood.

But fortunately, Pang Yue has hundreds of years of knowledge more than Gu Yinxi, Li Guo and others, and the number of channels and the breadth of knowledge of later generations to receive information in all aspects are not comparable to those of the ancients. Therefore, during the conversation, Pang Yue's "prediction" of certain situations made Du Yinxi almost have a feeling of being stunned, and sighed again and again for Pang Yue's unique vision. And some of the views on operations and army management mentioned by Pang Yue also aroused the great surprise of Li Guo, Dang Shousu, and others, and they asked questions again and again, and with a common topic and speculation, the distance between the two sides naturally narrowed a lot. And through the exchanges with Li Guo and Dang Shousu, Pang Yue also gained a lot of knowledge that was not in books.

After getting along with each other in less than two days, Li Guo, Dang Shousu and other former generals found that Pang Yue was completely different from the imperial generals they had met before. In Pang Yue, there was no trace of the superiority and disdainful attitude of the military generals of the imperial court to the soldiers of the former Chuang army who accepted the recruitment, and some were only modest, friendly and shameless.

Li Guo even had a trace of doubt in his heart about Pang Yue's identity as a descendant general, feeling that he was more like himself, and he was also a rebel recruited by the imperial court, and he also asked sideways. But the result was beyond his expectations, Pang Yue was indeed a descendant of Jiangmen and a descendant of the official army. Moreover, Li Guo also asked a result that made all the loyal battalion generals feel a little uncomfortable, Pang Yue was actually from Datong, Shanxi. Although Pang Yue only mentioned his hometown and did not mention the situation of his family, Li Guo and Dang Shousu still realized something, but it was not good to continue to ask.

……

On the morning of the 11th. The Qing army outside Hengshan City still did not move, the camp was heavily guarded, but the whole army showed no signs of attacking.

Pang Yue still went to inspect the defensive areas of each battalion as he had done two days ago, and when he walked up to the north gate, he saw the cavalry of the loyal battalion that aroused his extreme curiosity. It seems that he has just finished training. Rushing all the way from the direction of the east gate, back to the camp just outside the north gate.

Two days before, he had seen this cavalry, which numbered about six or seven hundred. Most of the officers and men among them were unsightly in appearance and indifferent, except for the fact that each person was equipped with two horses, the other places were unremarkable, and they looked very inconspicuous in the army of tens of thousands. However, their strength was really seen by Pang Yue, on the morning of the tenth day of the first month. In the battle when the loyal battalion first arrived in Hengshan County, this cavalry did not fall behind after several hedges with thousands of Manchurian cavalry with white flags. Such a strong combat power attracted Pang Yue's attention at that time, but because there were more things later, he didn't ask too much.

The cavalry with such strong combat effectiveness is definitely the elite of the camp back then, and it should have a name that belongs to their collective in history. Pang Yue carefully searched his mind for the historical information he had read in his previous life, and after a while, his eyes finally lit up: Could it be them?

Then. Pang Yue happened to see Li Guo coming in from outside the city, so he walked down the city, ready to verify the answer in his heart.

"Xingguohou!"

Li Guo suddenly heard someone calling him, turned his head and saw that it was Pang Yue. So he smiled and arched his hand: "It turned out to be Ding Wubo!" Is Dingwubo also inspecting the battalions? ”

"Exactly," Pang Yue also had a smile on his face, "Just now Pang Mou walked around and inspected it, and found that the morale of the soldiers of the loyal battalion was very high. With a strong military demeanor, it is worthy of being the elite who has been fighting for many years! ”

There is naturally some exaggeration in these words. Li Guo also seemed to be very useful when he heard it, but he was still very modest: "Uncle Dingwu has won the award!" According to Li, the soldiers of Huguang Town are the real elite divisions, and it is not easy to have such morale after a hard battle! ”

This is Li Guo's heartfelt words, since he heard about Huguang Town's previous achievements, and after seeing the mental outlook and performance of the soldiers of Huguang Town in the past two days, he immediately realized that without strict military discipline and continuous high-intensity training, he would never be able to train this kind of strong soldier.

Pang Yue continued to be polite, and then went straight to the point: "Huguang Town is not an elite, at least not as elite cavalry as the Marquis of Xingguo. For example, the one that has just returned to the camp. If Pang didn't guess wrong, they were the three walls of the camp at the beginning, right? ”

Pang Yue remembered that the three walls were a sharp cavalry formed by Li Zicheng at the beginning, and the members were all horseback riders selected from the righteous armies in Henan, Shaanxi and other places, each equipped with two horses or even three horses, and belonged to the core elite of the camp.

Li Guo was stunned at first, as if he was surprised that Pang Yue was so familiar with his people, and after making sure that Pang Yue had no other meaning, he nodded: "Uncle Ding Wu is right, they are the original three walls of the camp. At the beginning, the three walls were formed by King Chuang's painstaking efforts, and it was indeed an elite in the camp, with as many as four or five thousand people at its peak, and they were in Kaifeng... Oh, in the battle of Huaiqing in the first year of Hongguang, they defeated more Tartar cavalry than them, but they also suffered a lot of losses, and after several years of repeated battles, the number is getting smaller and smaller, and now there are only six or seven hundred people left. ”

Speaking of this, Li Guo's tone carried a hint of loss: "I also thought about expanding, but now I don't want to say that money, food, and war horses are scarce, even if there is no shortage, it is difficult to find that kind of horseback rider again." The current six or seven hundred people are basically one less dead, and I don't know how many years they can last. I rarely let them fight again unless I have to. Alas, when I think of the cavalry that had been formed with the effort of King Chuang, it became what it is now when it arrived in my hands, and I felt really guilty in my heart. ”

Hearing Li Guo say this, Pang Yue pondered for a moment, and finally gave up his plan to dig the foot of the wall, at least for the time being, and instead comforted Li Guo: "The Marquis of Xingguo doesn't have to be so sad, the current three walls are still good." Although there is no way to expand it at the moment, I believe that one day, this elite cavalry will recover or even surpass its original peak condition! ”

……

Near noon, with the smoke and dust rolling up from the south, the Manchurian soldiers with blue and white flags rushed back to Hengshan County and joined the main force of Duoduo. Less than half an hour later, the Wuchang Naval Division, which had rushed back with the Manchurian soldiers, also arrived on the Xiangjiang River west of Hengshan County, and the Eight Banners Army, which had been divided for several days, finally merged into one again.

About an hour later, Xiao Kuang, the Xuan Department of the Huang Dynasty led by Zhu Dadian, and the 10,000 loyal battalion soldiers and horses led by Gao Yigong also arrived in Hengzhou. After entering the city, Zhu Dadian summoned Du Yinxi and all the senior generals to come and read out the holy decree of Emperor Longwu. In the face of Emperor Longwu's will, Du Yinxi and the generals had no objection and expressed their willingness to obey Zhu Dadian's moderation.

At this time, the Ming army assembled in Hengshan County has nearly 70,000, of which more than 30,000 are the officers and soldiers of Pang Yue, Xiao Kuang, and Huang Chaoxuan, and more than 30,000 are loyal battalions, which have surpassed the Qing army in terms of strength. Although there is still a certain gap in overall combat effectiveness compared to the Eight Banners Army under Duoduo, except for Huguang Town, the rest of the departments basically did not suffer any losses, and Huguang Town's previous achievements made their fear of the Qing army gradually replaced by ideas such as "Tartars are just like this", so their morale is still quite strong, and they can fight a battle.

After meeting the soldiers and horses with the white flag and the blue flag, Duoduo did not delay in the slightest, and after the whole army had lunch and rested for an hour, he officially returned to the north.

Seeing the Qing army leaving, Zhu Dadian also ordered all units of the Ming army to set off from camp and follow the Qing army several miles away.

In the face of the approaching Ming army, Duoduo did not have the slightest idea of war, and only sent a few small groups of men to harass the slow pace of the Ming army. However, the Ming army was almost unaffected, dispersed the Qing cavalry that came to harass them, and continued to advance.

In this way, the two armies belonging to different camps, totaling more than 100,000 people, began to march in the direction of Changsha one after the other, and the long smoke and dust rolled up on the official road were like a long yellow dragon, winding towards the north.