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On the Zhejiang side, the Qing army and the Zheng army also fell into a stalemate stage, Zheng Jing went all out for Zhejiang, constantly driving men and horses from Taiwan to replenish the attrition, and the strength of the army marching into the mainland has reached 50,000, reaching seventy percent of all the soldiers and horses of the Zheng family. With these 50,000 soldiers and horses, plus the young men who were anxious from the city to defend the city together, several cities were as stable as Mount Tai for nearly half a year, and there was no damage at all.

At this stage, the most fierce attack was Huzhou City, which was smaller than Jiaxing City, but the Qing army attacked the most fiercely. On the Anhui side, more than 30,000 troops attacked for a month and a half, losing more than 10,000 people, but still did not take Huzhou City, so they had to retreat to Guangde, Anhui. Guangde County is located at the southeast end of Anhui Province, the junction of Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. This Guangde County is surrounded by mountains, like a giant castle standing at the southeast gate of Anhui. Guangde Xi'an City is only 100 miles away from Huzhou City, and the remaining more than 20,000 soldiers and horses of the Qing army are all stationed in Guangde County, which is far away from Huzhou City.

As for the Qing army in Jiaxing, it was also divided into two parts after failing to attack the city in turns, one with 20,000 soldiers and horses retreated to Shengze Town, Wujiang County, the southernmost part of Jiangsu, and another with 18,000 soldiers stationed in Jiashan County, Jiaxing, and surrounded Jiaxing City from the east and north. However, even the county town of Pinghu in the south of Jiashan County was also taken by the Qing army, but it did not send many troops to garrison it.

Although the Zheng army defended several cities as steadily as Mount Tai, other internal counties were repeatedly attacked, and the baggage teams that transported grain and grass for the soldiers and horses in several cities were also repeatedly attacked by the Qing cavalry. This means that the Qing army was bullying the Zheng army for not having enough cavalry, and often sent cavalry to harass all parts of northern Zhejiang with extremely strong mobility. Let Zheng Jun not be bothered. However, there was no way to take the cavalry units of the Qing army. Every time the grain and grass were transported, a large army had to be sent to escort them.

The cavalry of the Qing army galloped in an area between the three cities of Jiaxing, Huzhou and Hangzhou, the most direct is to make the Zheng army's local control of these provinces was severely weakened, originally after these provinces were captured, the Zheng army left a part of the soldiers and horses to garrison, not to mention that the local stability is as stable as Mount Tai, but it is true that no one dares to move the crooked mind, but now the situation has become serious, if the Zheng army does not take action. Actively responded, but I am afraid that except for Huzhou, Jiaxing, and Hangzhou, which are garrisoned by the army, other places are afraid that they will fall one after another. In this way, even if they occupy the northern provinces of Zhejiang, it is useless, although the city is important, but the whole place is the focus.

So Zheng Jun also thought of a way to deal with it - the naval fleet went north into the Yangtze River. Taiwan's soldiers and horses are somewhat similar to Fujian's Mawei Army, and at the moment the navy is stronger than the army, both in terms of numbers and equipment. Of course, now that the Mawei Army is rapidly expanding its army, the number of the army is surpassing that of the navy. And more than double the number. However, the combined cost of all the land forces is less than one-third of that of the navy, mainly the warships and artillery on the navy's side. It's all a pile of silver, and it costs far more to train a competent navy than it does to train a proper army.

Jiaxing was personally led by Shi Lang, resisting the largest number of Qing soldiers and horses from the direction of Suzhou. The division of the Navy Division was led by Liu Guoxuan, who had just arrived in Zhejiang, and the northward entry into the Yangtze River was also commanded by Liu Guoxuan. This strategy was not proposed by Liu Guoxuan alone, but the final result of the joint discussion of several generals of the Zheng army, and they were not willing to be passive in this way, and unanimously decided to lead a more powerful naval fleet into the Yangtze River to directly attack Jiangning, an important town in the south of the Yangtze River, that is, the city of Nanjing!

To put it bluntly, the Taiwanese sailor is the private fleet of the Zheng family, after Zheng Jing's grandfather Zheng Zhilong and his father Zheng Chenggong's development for decades, and then passed to his hands for so many years, it is already a top force in the South China Sea, of course, if there is no strong rise of Geng Jingzhong's horsetail navy, this entire Chinese sea can still be his Zheng Jing's final say, and those pirates in the past did not have the courage to provoke the Zheng family.

At this moment, up and down the Yangtze River, the Qing army has prepared a lot of naval fleets, and the overall number can be said to be nearly double that of a year ago, but more than 90 percent of the new ships are small ships, even if they are called big ships by the Qing army, they are only about 30 meters long, and the number is only 20. Most of these new warships did not even have a decent artillery, and many of them were only equipped with one or two bowl-mouth guns, which shows that the combat strength of the Qing army's naval divisions was quite worrisome. However, it is no problem to use these to deal with Wu Sangui, Wu Sangui does not even have a fleet of sailors, and the middle section of the Yangtze River has always been controlled by the Qing army, which is also one of the reasons why Wu Sangui has not fought the Yangtze River.

In fact, the Qing army's sailors are basically the inherited former Ming sailors, and so far there are only three Eight Banners Sailors formed by themselves, namely the Heilongjiang Eight Banners Sailors, the Jilin Eight Banners Sailors and the Fengtian (Liaoning) Eight Banners Sailors. Before the Qing army entered the customs, out of the needs of the war, the Jilin Eight Banners Naval Division was the first to be created. At that time, there was no fixed organizational establishment, and it was not until the eighteenth year of Shunzhi that the Qing court officially established the Eight Banners Sailor Battalion in Jilin City.

At present, the Jilin Eight Banners Naval Division has one chief manager of the third grade, two fourth-grade officers, 20 military attaches at other levels, and 3,000 sailors and craftsmen. It has 30 warships and 80 grain ships, and this year it has added 20 oars and rowboats. In addition, the city of Wula was originally built on the bank of the Songhua River in the northeast of Jilin City, which was the concentration of civilian ships along the river, with seven large pearl fishing boats and 400 Weihu boats (single or double boats for pearl mining), all of which were under the management of the Jilin Naval Division, and were now requisitioned during the war.

The Fengtian Naval Division was built a little later, but it was also in the early years of Shunzhi, the Qing court set up a Jinzhou Naval Division Battalion of 800 people in Lushunkou, and the ships were transferred from the Shandong Luying Naval Division, and there were only ten rushing boats, as well as some other small boats. As for the four sailor battalions that Kangxi set up two years ago in Heilongjiang City (Aihui), Qiqihar, Morgan (Nenjiang), and Hulan on the basis of the original Heilongjiang Naval Division, the total number of naval divisions was slightly higher, with 2,800 people.

At this moment, the three Eight Banners Naval Division Battalion has already been transferred to Tianjin. The Tianjin Eight Banners Water Division was formed. Gong guards the safety of the Jing Division. However, many of the Jilin Eight Banners and Heilongjiang Eight Banners were people, but the ships could not come over when they arrived in Tianjin. Only the Fengtian Water Division came over, and the others could only be raised from Tianjin. However, the Qing court has always ordered the provinces to build ships, so the problem of this ship is not big, in addition, many civilian ships along the river have also been requisitioned, although the Qing court nominally issued a document saying that it gave silver, but to the bottom, the specific officials are greedy for ink.

Except for these Eight Banners Sailors. The focus is on those green camp sailors in the Yangtze River Mountain. These green camp sailors are completely inherited from the former Ming dynasty, and there is still a lot of development over the years. After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing court built a lot of warships in Jiangnan and Fu in order to prevent Zheng Chenggong's navy, and at the same time implemented a sea ban and carried out strict ship management. It's just that the hundreds of large and small ships in Fujian have been merged by the Mawei Army, which makes Kangxi hate it so much.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen had to resist the attacks of the Qing army and Li Zicheng's rebel army in the north, as well as the attacks of the Zheng armed fleet in the south. Exhausted, he prepared to build a large sea ship. First, the Minister of War asked the emperor for 3,000 warships. Then the Ministry of Industry replied: According to the objective laws and the "old practice of the Huidian", including the supply of materials "oil nail board and wood", the guarantee of the quality of ships and other issues, only 1,500 warships can be built. Unexpectedly, Emperor Chongzhen listened to the reply of the Ministry of Industry, and really ordered Zhu Zhengse, the shipbuilding director of the Ministry of Industry, to officially go to the Qingjiang Shipyard in Huai'an to supervise the construction of sea ships.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Qingjiang Shipyard in Huai'an mainly produced inland river ships and "Zhili, Nanjing, Zhongdu, Jiangbei, Shandong, North Zhili and other general shallow ships". Zhu Zhengse first supervised the construction of a small batch of naval warships for testing to see if they met the requirements of ocean-going operations in the north and south. During the construction process, Zhu Zhengse also carried out surprise supervision and quality inspection of this small batch of naval warships to ensure that they could sail to sea.

However, after this small batch of naval warships was built, Zhu Zhengse inspected the quality of the ships and found that "the planks and woods are different, the nails are different, the styles are different, the stern is different, and the rope is used differently." He believed that the type of ship built was still an inland river boat, which did not meet the requirements of far-sea warfare and navigation, and that if 1,500 such "naval war ships" were produced in large quantities, the fate of the Ming Dynasty would be seriously endangered. So Zhu Zhengse built a yì to Emperor Chongzhen, and did not build naval warships in Huai'an Shipyard.

Zhu Zhengse learned from his experience and then requested that 1,500 naval warships be built in the Guangdong and Fujian shipyards, where shipbuilding technology was more mature. Chongzhen once again accepted his Jianyì. Geng Jingzhong has always admired Emperor Chongzhen, the Ming Dynasty, which was ruled by the Han people for hundreds of years, and he never compromised with other countries. The Ming court would rather die than negotiate with the Qing army or Li Zicheng's rebel army, or sign such and such a treaty. So, later, Li Zicheng led the peasant army to invade Beijing, Chongzhen hanged himself in Jingshan, and the Ming Dynasty fell. In October of the same year, the Qing Dynasty drove away Li Zicheng and set the capital in Beijing.

After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, all the sailors were accepted by the Qing court, and many warships in the Yangtze River and Mountains were still old-fashioned ships of the year, and there were not many sea ships. However, it cannot be ignored that in the early years of Shunzhi, Emperor Shunzhi issued an order to divide Haikou with Jingkou and Hangzhou sailors, which is of course the Green Camp Sailors. In the eighth year of Shunzhi, he began to follow the old system of the Ming Dynasty in the provinces along the river and along the coast, and set up commanders, commanders, adjutant generals, and guerrillas and military personnel, following the system of land battalions. Shipyards are set up in each province, and the construction period of the ship is fixed, with three years for minor repair, five years for major repair, and ten years for dismantling. In addition to the establishment of the naval division, in the sixth year of Shunzhi, the Qing court began to set up shipyards in various provinces.

In the early Qing Dynasty, after the warships in the shipyard were built, in accordance with the quality inspection regulations, the shipbuilding contractors of each province and the shipbuilding supervisors of each province inspected the quality of the ships; Then the governor of the provincial government appointed the Chinese army and other high-ranking officials to the shipyard to inspect the ship's quality again; Finally, the sailors and battalion officers who received the warships entered the factory to carefully inspect the quality of the warships. After there were no problems, the sailors sailed the warship back to the water village and officially incorporated it into the local sailor combat formation.

Now up and down the river, from the largest 36-meter-long big boat to the smallest sampan, the total number exceeds 2,000. Of course, most of them were small sampans or other small boats, and the largest of them was only thirty on the entire river. The reeling boat is the main warship of the current Green Camp Naval Division, among which the large reeling ship is more than 36 meters long, about 7 meters wide, has 24 cabins, and can carry 1,500 stones. Each ship has more than 30 sailors and boatmen, and 100 sailors. The medium-sized ship was 23 meters long, 6 meters wide, and 2 meters deep, with more than 20 sailors and boatmen, and only 60 sailors. However, the large and medium ships are all two-masted, double-rudder, and double-iron anchors, and the speed on the river is very fast, and the maneuverability is very good, and the only deficiency is that the firepower is not good.

At present, the other main warships of the Qing Army's Green Battalion Naval Division are sand boats, but most of these sand boats are requisitioned from the mouth of the Yangtze River in Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture, and most of them originally belonged to civilian merchant ships. It is also in this area of the Yangtze River estuary that there are flat-bottomed sea boats in the whole country, and the structure of the sand boats is unique. The sand boat has a square head and a square tail, commonly known as 'square ship'; The deck surface is spacious, the depth is small, and the freeboard is low; The use of girder arches allows the deck to quickly drain waves; There is a 'out of the canopy' for easy installation of the elevator, and a 'virtual canopy' for easy maneuvering. The ship is equipped with many masts and sails, the speed is relatively fast, the rudder area is large and can be lifted and lowered, and part of the rudder blades are lowered below the bottom of the ship when going to sea, which can increase the effect of the rudder, reduce the horizontal drift, and the rudder can be raised in shallow water. In addition, the sand boat has a shallow draft, low resistance, can sail quickly at sea, and has good seaworthiness; The load capacity is large, so it is even easier to use on the Yangtze River, where the wind and waves are much smaller than those at sea.

The load of the sand boat is not small, the largest can reach 3,000 stones, that is, 800 tons, and the smallest can reach more than 1,000 stones and 200 tons, so it has become the new main warship of the Green Battalion Naval Division in the Jiangning area of the Yangtze River estuary. At this moment, in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, it is common to see Jiangning Luying sailors cruising on the river, and large and small sand boats and other boats are densely packed and almost blocking the river. After Liu Guoxuan led the Waiwan Naval Division into the Yangtze River, Wang Zhiding, the commander of the Jiangning Green Camp Naval Division, received the news, and immediately led the naval fleet of his headquarters to the mouth of the Yangtze River to meet the enemy.

The warships of Taiwan's naval divisions are generally large, and the main body is Fu ships, five Dafu ships and 12 No. 2 Fu ships, among which there are two No. 2 treasure ships that are not inferior to Western sail warships and eight warships built in imitation of Western warships, and the others are all small clippers. More than 120 large and small ships sailed into the Yangtze River on the east wind. And Wang Zhiding's exhibition here is not more numerous, the largest warship is five ocean-going ships, in Liu Guoxuan's eyes can be called armed merchant ships, the hull is fifty meters long, it is the largest ship, other kinds of large and small sand boats are more than 200 large, 30 rushing boats, and the rest of the sampans and other small boats are more than 1,000 ships, but these small boats have been converted into fireships on standby at any time, on the Yangtze River, I am afraid that Liu Guoxuan's fleet will suffer a big loss if it does not deal with it carefully! (To be continued......)

PS: What is missing will be made up tomorrow and doubled