Yangzhou City

This is another unprecedented victory, not only killed the pride of the Qing army but also greatly encouraged the will to fight of the whole Ming army, in front of the two armies, the thrilling battle of Wu Zhuangyuan, so that all the soldiers were impressed, these soldiers admired in their hearts, respected this kind of hero, followed this kind of person, even if they died on the battlefield, it was also a great honor.

Maybe when he is old, he can say to others: You know, I witnessed the demeanor of the world's number one martial artist back then.

The battalions of the champion army returned to the camp one by one, still relying on each other and complementing each other with Yangzhou City, only Zheng Sen's battalion was still ambushed outside the city, and Wang Lanping would not use them at the critical moment.

The city of Yangzhou was full of joy, all the people took to the streets, the streets were covered with red and green, the sound of firecrackers was in the sky, and the storyteller had a new joke.

Wang Lanping didn't care about this, he knew that these were the real ones that angered Kong Youde, and the next siege must be even more dangerous, he had to be fully prepared, the original plan was not implemented today, but everything fell into place, just waiting for Kong Youde's army.

At night, there was a military report from the south of the Yangtze River into Yangzhou City, saying that the reinforcements of the imperial court had arrived, and the 50,000 troops had crossed the river and were marching towards Yangzhou, and they would arrive in less than three days.

There is also news that it seems that the Yangtze River Naval Division is also going to join the Yangzhou battlefield and enter the base camp of Sizhou Duoduo from the waterway.

Hearing the news, Shi Kefa was so excited that he burst into tears, the imperial court finally did not forget Yangzhou, and the reinforcements came, really came.

But Wang Lanping was not as optimistic about this news as Shi Kefa, and he only asked the imperial court for reinforcements, and did not expect them to really come. But here they were, even though it was a good thing. But Wang Lanping couldn't be happy, he always felt that something was wrong. The Ming and Qing armies have been confronting each other in Yangzhou for more than a month, and they will not come early or late, and they must have other plans to join at this time.

On the battlefield, if the situation is in a stalemate and confrontation, it will be a test for both sides. It is not only to examine the tactical ability of the two commanders, but more importantly, the logistics supply and the coordination of the whole army, and it is not easier or even more difficult to worry about the food, drink, and Lazar of tens of thousands of people than to win a war.

Kong Youde can be said to have a deep understanding in this regard, he has never commanded an army of 100,000 people in his life, and now his strength has suddenly increased to 100,000, which makes him feel that his strength has increased greatly, and on the other hand, all kinds of troubles are rolling indefinitely.

Kong Youde's Ma Shun mainly comes from two aspects, one is that the soldiers are uneven. Han, Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners are mixed, and there must be at least three backbones alone, although he is nominally the commander of the whole army, but the soldiers of all ethnic groups are dissatisfied with each other in private. Even hostile and despised it, Kong Youde also realized this, and all he could completely control was the Eight Banners of the Han Army. He was unable to solve the contradictions within the barracks at the root, and could only use a relatively simple and practical method. That is to launch one attack after another, and defuse it with war. This really works, at least in the shadow of the war, and the soldiers of all ethnic groups have to stand on the united front for the time being, so as to maintain the general stability of the army.

Kong Youde's second trouble comes from the pressure of Sizhou, as a Han general, he commanded 100,000 soldiers of the three tribes, if the Manchu and Mongolian soldiers died too much, he couldn't explain to Duoduo, if the Han army died too much, it was equivalent to digging a grave for himself, and also chilled the hearts of his Han brothers, after all, he was a Han man, and this contradiction has never been solved since he went south.

The third trouble is even more difficult, eating, this seems to be the most common but the most troublesome trouble, the old saying is more than 100,000 soldiers, and this is what is said to be defeated, to maintain the food of the 100,000 army is definitely more important than fighting, behind the 100,000 army there are at least 50,000 people in ensuring logistics supply, if the food delivery troops arrive a few days late because of an accident, the barracks will immediately turn upside down, and even mutiny, the consequences are unimaginable, but Kong Youde has a headache in this regard, because his subordinates are mixed with three clans, and the southern Han army likes to eat rice, the Central Plains and Guanwai Han troops and some Manchu soldiers love to eat pasta, while some Manchu soldiers and Mongolian soldiers are born without eating rice noodles, and they have to eat meat and drink alcohol every meal.

Now the problem comes, the ration in the military camp is fixed, 100,000 people consume about 5,000 catties of meat a day, 4,000 quintals of rice and flour, and 6,000 catties of various vegetables, and they will eat about 15,000 taels of silver a day, while the Mongolian people almost do not eat rice and noodles, so most of the meat in the army belongs to them, and other camps can only drink a little broth every few days to satisfy their hunger.

But where people have a shortcoming, people have me, then you are a bastard, that is unfair, although you have something I don't really need, but as long as you have what I don't, then I have to have, even if I have a time I would rather throw maggots in the pit, then I also have to have, lack of what to think about the mentality.

The soldiers of the battalions in the Qing army fought for a food, Kong Youde was caught in the middle and was really in a dilemma, if it was placed in the past, his approach was to try to favor the Mongolian Manchurian soldiers, whether it was right or wrong, it was to punish the Han army, but now it can't be done, since the Manchurian Eight Banners entered the Central Plains, its own corruption speed is faster than his march into the Central Plains, one by one has become the master, the combat effectiveness has plummeted, and some of the Manchu soldiers are behind the background, maybe it is related to which princes and nobles, and they can't be killed or beaten, the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners and the Han Eight Banners and soldiers are completely opposite, the Han army is mostly civilians, and they are mostly composed of nobles.

As the territory occupied by the Qing army became larger and larger, and the number of Manchu and Mongolian soldiers was not large, it was naturally the Han Eight Banners that became the main force of the Qing army.

When Kong Youde was still only 50,000 or 60,000 soldiers, his way of solving this contradiction was like this, the Manchu and Mongolian soldiers were not born to eat meat and hunt, that's okay, Lao Tzu turned a blind eye and let you grab points around the barracks, and feed the war with war, which not only satisfied them, but also allowed the Han army to eat more meat, killing three birds with one stone.

But now it's different, an army of 100,000. He didn't dare to let the Manmeng soldiers plunder anymore.

But as a result, the Manchurian soldiers were well fed and drunk. There was nothing to do and bullying the Han army. The Han army was the absolute main force in the Battle of Yangzhou, which would kill Kong Youde, and all kinds of contradictions were exposed.

Kong Youde was in charge of so many soldiers for the first time, but he had not yet figured out the way to coordinate the overall situation, which led to chaos in the military discipline of the whole army.

Since Ao Bai's death, he has felt even more powerless, with him, at least the soldiers don't dare to make too much trouble, but there is one thing that Kong Youde understands very well. That is the war, and they will only stop when they send these soldiers to the battlefield all day long.

At the moment, the progress of the battle is not good, and almost the first attack on Yangzhou did not take advantage, but Kong Youde did not dare to stop, and he more when he stopped.

Therefore, Yangzhou City and the Zhuangyuan Army Camp have been fighting all the time for the past two days. The Qing army constantly harassed you with small and scattered troops, killing a few of your lurking posts in the morning, slaughtering a patrol in the afternoon, and sometimes running to Yangzhou City to show off their might. As long as the Ming army counterattacked, they would immediately run away and never fall in love with war.

Kong Youde so. That has two purposes, one is to balance the contradictions within the barracks. The second is the tired Ming army, so that you can't have a moment of peace. Anyway, these Manchu and Mongolian troops will get into trouble as soon as they are idle.

In this way, Wang Lanping and Shi Kefa were really annoyed, and finally on the fifth day, Wang Lanping heard that a small force full of more than 200 soldiers was operating on the outskirts of Yangzhou.

Wang Lanping immediately ordered Song Dali to personally order a thousand men and horses, surrounded the past with lightning speed, an hour of fighting, two hundred full soldiers, none of them survived, twenty war horses, carrying two hundred heads, returned to the Qing army camp.

That night, the Qing army dispatched a team of several hundred people, followed by a patrol of dozens of champions, and also cut off dozens of heads, and the next morning, these heads slipped on the edge of the moat outside Yangzhou City.

Confrontations are like this, there are no big battles, small encounters happen from time to time, and even poisoning the opponent's water source is used, and both sides are waiting and accumulating strength.

Kong Youde specially pleaded guilty to Duoduo for the death of Aobai, and promised that within a month, he would not take Yangzhou and come to see him.

Time passed day by day in this kind of mutual gift of heads, Kong Youde's artillery battalion was also trained a little better, and the shells were prepared very sufficiently, and in another three or five days, Kong Youde would be able to launch the final blow to Yangzhou, after this battle, Yangzhou City would be in ruins.

When Prince Qingyu, who was far away in Sizhou, heard that Ao Bai died at the hands of Wang Lanping, he was so angry that he wanted to unload Kong Youde into eight pieces, and the general died in front of the battle, which was a shame and thrown to his grandmother's house.

Unfortunately, when the news of Aobai's death reached Duoduo, another holy decree also came from Beijing, a good news, in early October, the Qing Emperor Shunzhi in the southern suburbs of Beijing to worship the heavens and tell his ancestors, and re-held the ascension ceremony, the king of the world, in order to show that the world officially returned to the Qing Dynasty.

In such a happy day, he Duoduo's southern expedition did not make the slightest progress, he couldn't take Yangzhou, and he didn't go to Beijing to face the saint.

In order to go to Beijing with a supreme halo on his head, Duoduo has mobilized all the troops he can mobilize, and the last 80,000 Qing troops are coming to Sizhou from Hebei, Shandong and other places to assemble, and he wants to personally go to Yangzhou to supervise the war.

When Kong Youde heard the news that Duoduo was going to come to Yangzhou to supervise the war, he was horrified, and he understood that the day of Duoduo's arrival would be the time when he was deposed.

There was not much time left for Kong Youde, and he had to do everything he could to break through Yangzhou before Duoduo could get it.

Regardless of whether Kong Youde was dismissed or not, one thing cannot be changed, the Qing army's strength in Yangzhou will only increase, to the point that Wang Lanping can not imagine, hearing that the Qing army is assembled in Sizhou again, Shi and Wang both immediately felt unlimited pressure in their hearts, and Kong Youde's idea is similar, we must completely solve the war in Yangzhou before the arrival of Duoduo reinforcements.

As the old saying goes, blessings are incomparable, disasters are not one-way, Wang Lanping invited reinforcements to come, 50,000 Ming troops crossed the river mightily, but set up a large camp a hundred miles away from Yangzhou, and urged Yangzhou to ask for food, threatening that there is no 100,000 stone military food, 200,000 military salaries, they will never go forward again.

Another way of reinforcements, the purpose of the Yangtze River sailor Wang Lanping also figured out, Liu Kongzhao led 600 warships and 30,000 sailors five days ago, entered the canal, waved the army north, when marching to the Huai'an boundary, Liu Kongzhao, who was still on the warship, suddenly shaved his hair and descended to the Qing Dynasty, and received the title of King of Ningjiang canonized by the Qing court, and 30,000 sailors were all returned to the Qing court.

Waiting for this result, Shi Kefa once again fell into an extreme delusion of will, unable to take care of Yangzhou's military and political affairs, borrowing wine all day long to drown his sorrows, and people gradually became confused.

This is thanks to Wang Lanping stabilizing the overall situation, he is not much surprised by these negative news, the catastrophe is coming, they fly separately, this is a very common thing, how long can this day be supported, people with a little long-term insight can guess,

A support army stopped, and the sailor suddenly rebelled, this news was undoubtedly a bolt from the sky to the defenders in Yangzhou City, and the officers and soldiers all hated the officials in the court, and the Ming Dynasty raised a group of bastards.

Wang Lanping did not give an order to stop the gossip in the army, and for the lone army of Yangzhou, there may be no hope more beneficial than hope.

At this time, the Yangzhou soldiers were no longer what they used to be, and the more than 10,000 recruits who were incorporated into the various armies also experienced the joy of victory and the pride of being victors from the previous great pursuit.

The residents of Yangzhou City are still fleeing from the outside day by day, a month's time, nearly a million soldiers and civilians of Yangzhou City at this time like a dead city, the soldiers and civilians together are less than 100,000, even the Yangzhou salt merchants with a big business are extremely reluctant to leave, the war is too cruel, every day you can see a large number of bodies pulled from here to there, every day you can see black smoke billowing outside the city, that is burning corpses.

Under the pressure of this environment, the government also encouraged urban residents to stay away, and who dared not to leave.

It is precisely because there are not many residents in the city that Wang Lanping dares to let go of Yibo, and it is a big deal to start all over again, as long as the confidence is still there, then there is nothing that cannot be discarded.

In order to further undermine the morale of the Qing army, Wang Lanping has been looking for various methods these days, and for this reason, he deliberately chose a place at the foot of Jiming Mountain in the middle of the confrontation between the two armies as a place for daily field training.

Jiming Mountain has actually been controlled by the Qing army for a long time, and there are a large number of Qing soldiers in ambush in the deep forests in the mountains, which Wang Lanping has long heard.

On this day, Wang Lanping led more than 2,000 soldiers out of the camp as usual, and the team drove neatly to the foot of Jiming Mountain, but one thing was different from usual, in the 2,000 champion army, dozens of prisoners of the Qing army were coerced, but they were all escorted by the champion army and put on the military uniforms of the Ming army, which could not be seen from the appearance at all.

Coming to the foot of the mountain, Wang Lanping still let people put on the drink, surrounded by two hundred soldiers and sat outside the field to watch the drills of the soldiers, he glanced at the Qing army ambushed in the mountains in the distance from time to time, the figure on the mountain swayed, hazy, but did not dare to show up, Wang Lanping is also difficult enough these days, why doesn't Kong Youde march, late and late is a knife thing, too ink.

But what really made Wang Lanyu feel pressure was that if she didn't go back to Nanjing, there would be a big mess, and Yangzhou couldn't stay any longer.

The sun passed noon, and the champion army practiced all kinds of combat movements, in an orderly manner, and today's requirements were particularly strict, even if the action was half a beat slower, they would be punished on the spot, and the soldiers were miserable for half a day, but they didn't dare to complain, of course, this was a play arranged by Wang Lanping in advance.

Only the Qing captives caught in it did not understand what was going on, most of them were Mongols and Manchus, and they did not understand the Chinese dialect very well.

After the impact training exercise, Wang Lanping beckoned.

Song Dali smiled and immediately understood.

"Stop, all of them are like soft eggs, stop, Lao Tzu has something to say, a soldier is a bear, a nest of bears, Lao Tzu and you can't afford to lose this person"

Song Dali shouted loudly, and the soldiers rushed towards him. (To be continued.) )