Seven or eight miles north of Dingyuan County, Duan Qirui, like the ordinary soldiers under his command, marched forward on foot with long military boots, and behind him were more than a dozen senior officers of the Anhui army.

These dozens of horses can be used as the mounts of Duan Qirui and other senior generals, and they are naturally first-class high-headed horses, and in an army, the best war horses are not the war horses of the cavalry, but the mounts of senior generals and heralds. It's just that the mounts of Duan Qirui and the others were all panting and sweating at this time, and it was obvious that they had just gone through a gallop.

Duan Qirui, who was walking in front, didn't care about the slow dust on the dirt road with the long barrel ordnance, but said to Zhang Yongcheng beside him while walking: "The supplementary brigade should have arrived in Dingyuan by now!" ”

Zhang Yongcheng said: "The supplementary brigade set off half a day earlier than other troops, plus they didn't have too much baggage delay, the speed of the march was still relatively fast, if nothing else, it should have arrived in Dingyuan by now!"

And when we arrived in Dingyuan, was it a short rest for half a day, a long and rapid march for a few days, and the brothers' physical consumption was very large! ”

Duan Qirui shook his head: "It's okay to rest for a few hours, but after a long time, I'm afraid that the third division behind will catch up." When we rest, Gu Lanyu won't rest! ”

Zhang Yongcheng couldn't help frowning when he heard the name of Gu Lanyu: "This Gu Lanyu is like a leper dog, no matter how you shake it off!" ”

Duan Qirui disagreed: "What's so strange about this, we can abandon some of the baggage and lightly armed march, they can naturally too, and look at them chasing faster and faster, yesterday there were still more than 20 kilometers apart, and now it has been shortened to about 15 kilometers, I think they should not have brought too much baggage, and took a light and rapid march to pursue us!" ”

"In that case, we've been watching them close the distance to us?" Zhang Yongcheng wondered: "Is it better to let the cavalry regiment delay their pace, even if it is for a few hours!" ”

"Although our cavalry regiment is larger than the cavalry regiment of the Feng army, it is very difficult for a thousand cavalry forces to delay the third division, and our fourth cavalry regiment cannot be used lightly, otherwise how can we control the surrounding shapes?" Duan Qirui had no intention of letting the cavalry regiment delay the third division of the Feng army.

This Fourth Cavalry Regiment is the only large-scale cavalry unit under his command, and the cavalry units in the southern provinces have been extremely rare since the pre-Qing Dynasty. During the war, he simply could not obtain enough horses from the northern provinces on a large scale, and there was no way to expand the cavalry force without horses.

Although a lot of war horses were collected from the defeated army of the Southern Federation when they went south to Liangjiang, the number was extremely limited, most of which were used to supplement the battle losses of the Fourth Cavalry Regiment, as for the other troops, only the Second Mixed Brigade had a cavalry battalion of more than 200 cavalry, and the other Liangjiang Army, Zhejiang Provincial Army, or something, basically did not have any cavalry, and there were only 100 cavalry, dozens of cavalry.

Before this cavalry fought with the Feng army, the cavalry of the entire Anhui army was only more than 1,600 horses (not including officers riding war horses), this scale was not even comparable to the nineteenth town under the command of Zhao Erxun in the Southern Federation, the nineteenth town of the people had a whole cavalry association, nearly 3,000 cavalry, and the recruits were all Hui cavalry, and the combat effectiveness should not be underestimated, at least the cavalry troops under Wu Fengling, that is, the second cavalry regiment under the second division, suffered a lot of losses under Zhao Erxun's cavalry.

Due to geographical factors, among the many warlords in the country, there are basically only three with more cavalry. The first was the Feng army, then the nineteenth town of Zhao Erxun, and the direct army that had been destroyed.

Although the direct army before the fall was not organized into cavalry brigades, the 1st, 7th, 11th, 12th, and 1st mixed brigades of the direct army all had complete cavalry regiments, which means that they had a total of four cavalry regiments and one cavalry battalion before the Feng army entered the customs. It is worth noting that the establishment of their cavalry regiment is far greater than that of the Feng army, and unlike the Western-style Dalian small regiment system adopted by the Feng army, they still follow the small battalion and large regiment system of the Beiyang Standing Army era, and each cavalry regiment has more than 1,000 horsemen. The total number of cavalry units of the four regiments and one battalion of the direct army reached more than 4,000 cavalry, which was the second largest cavalry unit after the Feng army at the beginning.

As for the Feng army, there are more, on the eve of entering the customs, there are two cavalry brigades, three divisional cavalry regiments, three mixed brigade cavalry companies, and there are many patrol cavalry battalions in the patrol force, with a total number of cavalry of more than 8,000 people, but the cavalry losses in the customs combat are also relatively large, and the second cavalry brigade is even more because of the attack on Shijiazhuang, although it has created a military feat of marching more than 300 kilometers in a short period of time, but there are many casualties on horses, and now the second cavalry brigade fighting in Jiangbei is said to be a cavalry brigade, but in fact it has become a cavalry cavalry, The total number of remaining war horses will not exceed eight hundred, and this is still the case of the captured war horses after Duolun supplement, if there is no captured war horse supplement, the Second Cavalry Brigade is estimated to be without a single war horse.

However, although the Second Cavalry Brigade was severely damaged, the cavalry size of the Feng army as a whole is still rising rapidly, although it has accepted a large number of cavalry horses from the direct army, and after accepting the cavalry troops under the command of Wang Ruxian, Zhang Huaizhi and others in Shandong, Henan and other places, the existing cavalry scale of the Feng army has exceeded 12,000 cavalry.

Unlike the Feng army, which had a large number of cavalry, although the total strength of the Anhui army was as high as more than 100,000, their cavalry was extremely small, and there was only one fourth cavalry regiment and the second cavalry battalion.

This small-scale cavalry shoulders an extremely important combat mission, they want to open the way for the army, provide the army with surrounding military intelligence, they are Duan Qirui's eyes in this war, so he is not willing to risk this fourth cavalry regiment unless it is absolutely necessary.

So Duan Qirui rejected Zhang Yongcheng's offer!

Anyway, it will take time for Gu Lanyu to chase after him, and when they catch up, maybe they have already arrived in Chuzhou, and on the north bank of Jinling, there is already the first mixed brigade of the Liangjiang Army going north to Chuzhou, preparing to meet the fourth division, and then with the response of the first mixed brigade of the Liangjiang Army, after his fourth division replenishes ammunition and food and other materials, it will be able to restore the combat effectiveness of the heyday in a short time, and then he Gu Lanyu's third division without artillery and other baggage troops will catch up. At that time, it may not be clear who will fight whom.

Therefore, Duan Qirui simply gave up the idea of sending the broken troops to intercept the 3rd Division of the Feng Army, and just ordered the remnants of the 1st Brigade of the Liangjiang Army to continue to resist.

Under Duan Qirui's order, the Fourth Division continued to run southward, and after arriving at Dingyuan County, it only rested heavily for half a night.

This made Gu Lanyu, who was chasing behind him very depressed, how could you Duan Qirui have the same virtue as Wang Zhanyuan, and there was a fourth division with strong combat power that didn't even block it, so he knew that he was trying to escape.

In Dingyuan County the next afternoon, the Fifth Brigade led by Kong Weibei of the Third Division once again defeated the First Brigade of the Liangjiang Army, and more than 1,000 of the more than 3,000 remnants were left to continue to flee south, and the rest were not many killed, most of them were scattered and fled, and some of them simply surrendered on the spot if they didn't want to continue to escape.

Speaking of which, the First Brigade of the Liangjiang Army is actually really unlucky!

When fighting in the direction of Xuzhou, this first brigade was defeated once in the area of Xiao County, and then after the Anhui army fled south, it was defeated twice by the third division in Bengbu and Fengyang County, and now it finally escaped to Dingyuan County, and was defeated by the third division again.

And it's also strange that the first brigade of the Liangjiang Army was able to gather the remnants in a short period of time after every time it was defeated, and the interesting thing is that the casualties they suffered every time they were defeated were not large, and after several collapses, there were still more than 3,000 people left when they fled to Dingyuan.

This kind of organization is unimaginable even for a strong army like the 4th and 3rd Divisions of the Central Army.

However, it was defeated one after another, and the first brigade of the Liangjiang Army had been completely beaten and lost its temper, and when it saw the fifth brigade of Kong Guanbei attacking in Dingyuan County, it didn't even have the courage to resist, so it broke up directly, and left more than 800 prisoners to the Feng army.

It is not accurate to say that it is a prisoner, because there is no resistance at all, and they surrender directly in the city, Nima fled hundreds of kilometers south from Xuzhou, and this first brigade is still the last unit, and has been chased by the Feng army with the tail, which is as strict as the blow to the morale of the army, and it is impossible to escape anyway, as for being a deserter after the breakup, to be honest, it is not the best choice for many soldiers.

In the civil war in the past year, there are still not many deserters in the major warlord forces, because if they can't fight, those officers may still have all kinds of worries, but for ordinary soldiers, surrender is the best option.

Why? Because they are here to be soldiers, they don't care who they are soldiers for, these ordinary soldiers don't have much concept of loyalty, anyway, they are soldiers to eat food, and there is not much difference between being a soldier for Duan Qirui and being a soldier for Zhao Dongyun.

In addition, whether it is the Feng army or the Anhui army, they are more welcome to the enemy's surrender soldiers, generally speaking, whether they take the initiative to surrender or are captured, as long as they are willing to join, they will basically accept it, so surrender for ordinary soldiers, to be honest, the impact is really not big.

For example, many soldiers of the Anhui Army accepted by the Feng Army in the Northern Jiangsu Campaign, in fact, many of these soldiers were soldiers of the Southern Federation at the beginning, and after Duan Qirui defeated many troops of the Southern Federation, he reorganized these soldiers of the original Southern Federation into the Liangjiang Army, but after these troops were defeated by the Feng Army, they were absorbed into the Feng Army.

Today, although the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the Liangjiang Army fled thousands of people on a large scale after the First Battle of Dingyuan, it has basically completely lost its combat effectiveness.

However, even if the First Brigade of the First Division of the Liangjiang Army was quite rubbish in the three battles of Bengbu, Fengyang, and Dingyuan, in Duan Qirui's eyes, they had already completed their task.

At least two days blocked the Third Division before and after, just two days seemed short, but for the retreat of the Fourth Division, it was already quite good, which at least made the distance between the Fourth Division and the Third Division open to dozens of kilometers, even if the Third Division marched lightly and quickly, it was difficult to shorten this distance.

However, Duan Qirui obviously didn't expect that Gu Lanyu's determination to pursue them would not give up just because a Fifth Brigade of the Liangjiang Army blocked it.

After taking Dingyuan County, Kong Guanbei's Fifth Brigade just rested for three hours in a hurry, and then set off again, their target was still the Fourth Division!

As the Fourth Division and the Third Division chased after me, seeing that Chuzhou was already in sight, and at this time, the way of light and rapid marching, and even day and night marching, the tired and exhausted Third Division finally caught up with the tail of the Fourth Division.

Gu Lanyu looked at the Fourth Division in the distance in the telescope, his face was full of exhaustion, and he couldn't help but show excitement: "After chasing for so many days, I finally caught up!" ”