On June 5 of the first year of Hongguang, after more than half a month of arduous trek and a distance of more than 600 miles, the soldiers and civilians retreating from Yangzhou finally arrived at the Yangtze River in Nantong Prefecture, which is only separated by a river from Chongming Island. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Mao 18 came to the mouth of the Tongzhou River early with the fleet to greet him, and the people would be transported to Chongming Island by sea ship in batches.

"Hikonao has worked hard!" Mao 18 said sincerely to Li Yanzhi who got on the boat, in the past month, Li Yanzhi and others have been fighting for life and death in Yangzhou, but he can only stay on Chongming Island and watch, which makes Mao 18 feel quite uncomfortable.

"I just obeyed Lord Hou's arrangement to do some things, Brother Mao, you have to be responsible for the entire army and the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people, it is really hard." Li Yanzhi said humbly, although he was reused by Ren Siqi, Li Yanzhi did not dare to hold up in front of Mao 18 and other elders.

"I didn't do anything," Mao Shibai waved his hand, "Lao Sha, Liang Jiu and others are in charge of the construction of the island. By the way, how many people have moved to the island this time? ”

"More than 35,000 people were with me." Li Yanzhi said softly.

"More than 30,000, easy to settle. The newly built city can be accommodated. Mao 18 waved his hand.

"But behind me, there is a large group of people marching with Hou Ye, and I am afraid that there are not 200,000 people in total." Li Yanzhi continued.

"That's a lot!" Mao Eighteen suddenly grew his mouth, "This, this is a little difficult." ”

How big is Chongming Island, the newly formed sand island, most of which are in a barren state, how can so many people be resettled? If nothing else, it's a big trouble to fill the bellies of so many people.

"Let's not talk about anything else, let's transport them to the island first." The later resettlement of the people has their own worries about Ren Siqi and others, Mao Shibai shook his head and sighed secretly, Xiucai is still too kind-hearted, what trouble has this made for himself!

Dozens of small boats docked on the banks of the Yangtze River, transferred a large number of people and materials onto the ships, and then sailed to the center of the river, and then transferred to large ships. There are dozens of miles of river road from Chongming Island on the Nantong River, and it takes a day to take even a boat.

According to the pre-designed plan, some people and all their baggage were boarded in Nantong and retreated along the river road to Chongming. Most of the people walked east along the riverside and walked for more than a day to reach the north bank of the Yangtze River, the closest to Chongming Island, and then crossed the Yangtze River from there.

In addition to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, a large number of materials were also transferred, not to mention that the materials of the entire Yangzhou treasury were carried out, and even all kinds of goods in most of the shops were loaded onto the ship. Most of the thousands of ships of all kinds withdrawn from Yangzhou were used to carry goods, and these materials worth tens of millions of taels of silver were the guarantee for the re-emergence of the Daishan Army in the future.

The purpose of Mao 18 leading the fleet was to ensure the absolute safety of this batch of materials.

From all kinds of large and small ships from the salt river into the Yangtze River, under the protection of the Daishan military fleet, down the river, continue to Chongming Island.

Some of the old and weak people got on the river boat brought by Mao 18 and went to Chongming by boat, while most of the young and strong people could only continue to walk east. No way, the number of ships is not enough to carry all the people.

Li Yanzhi refused to rush to Chongming by boat, and after meeting Mao Shiba, he got off the boat, and he decided to personally lead the troops to continue to escort the people to Chongming on foot.

When the Ming army and civilians reached the banks of the Yangtze River, Tulai, who was following and trying to sneak attack, knew that their attack had failed. A river thirty zhang wide thwarted his plan, and the Eight Banners cavalry was almost invincible on land, but there was nothing they could do with this river. All the Ming people chose to walk on the other side of the river, so that Tulai had nowhere to attack if he wanted to. In the past ten days, he has also tried to cross the river, but whenever he finds a boat and tries to cross the river, there will be Ming ships rushing over and desperately firing at the Qing troops crossing the river. Most of the soldiers of the Eight Banners were landlubbers, how dare they compete with the Ming army in the river, they could only retreat helplessly.

Why hasn't the bastard tower arrived yet? Thurai cursed secretly in his heart. Didn't Prince Yu order Zhun Ta to go south quickly, if he could arrive in time, most of the Ming army and civilians would definitely be left under the attack on both sides!

In fact, Turai wronged Zhun Tower. On the 21st, Zhunta received an order from Duoduo, and at that time he had not yet captured Huai'an. After capturing Huai'an, Zhun Ta immediately set off, it is said that from Huai'an along the canal to Yangzhou is the nearest distance, but in Zhun Ta's view, Yangzhou has more than 200,000 troops, why bother to seek far from let himself attack the retreating Ming army from Huai'an. Moreover, the holy decree he received was to attack the vast area east of the canal, so Zhun Ta did not choose to follow the shortcut road of the canal to the south, but took a boat down the Yellow River to the east, entered the canal in the south, and attacked and advanced south along the Yancheng area, so that the entire east of the canal would be under the rule of the Qing Dynasty.

As for the fleeing Ming army, in the eyes of Zhunta it was completely a disease of scabies, and its importance was not as important as Liu Zeqing, who fled along the Yellow River to the seaside. It was with this consciousness that Zhun Ta attacked all the way forward, and successively captured several counties of Yancheng in Funing, but this also delayed some time, and when he arrived in Hai'an, Ren Siqi and the soldiers and civilians who fell behind had already gone south for several days, and they could no longer catch up.

The two armies met at Rugao Zhun Pagoda and Tulai, and as soon as they met, Tulai complained that Zhun Pagoda was late.

"You have 3,000 elite cavalry and more than 20,000 green battalion soldiers to assist, how can you not leave a broken and fleeing army?" Junta asked impatiently.

"I, don't I have no water army?" Thurai said angrily. In that failed attack, more than 20,000 green battalion soldiers entered the trap of the Ming army, the general soldier Liu Zhong was killed, Xu Dingguo was captured by the Ming army, although there were more than 10,000 people in the green battalion who escaped, but most of them scattered, and in the end only more than 5,000 people were gathered. But these people lost their leader, and then they were so frightened that they could no longer fight.

Junta shook his head and stopped talking. But Thurai could see the deep contempt in his eyes, and he could not help but be furious in his heart.

You haven't seen the power of that Ming army, if you see it, you won't laugh at me again! But he didn't say this, just sneered.

Since the two armies converged, the next step was naturally to continue to attack the fleeing Daishan army. In addition to the 5,000 Eight Banners, there were more than 20,000 green battalion sailors who followed Zhun Pagoda south this time, all of whom were under Liu Zeqing, who surrendered in Huai'an.

Now the two armies have a total of more than 7,000 soldiers from the Eight Banners, 30,000 soldiers from the Green Battalion, and more than 500 ships.

After discussion, the two armies merged into one, with Gushan Ezhen Zhun Tower as the leader, Turai and Ah Shan as the vices, and the army marched to Chongming Island to kill! (To be continued.) )