In Wuchang City, Lin Daji rushed to find Li Yunzhong and said: "Your Highness, great joy, the people in the city heard that we were going to abandon the city and march eastward, and many people were willing to follow us." ”

Li Yunzhong said with a 'huh' and said, "Did you burn down other people's houses again!" I warned you when I entered the city! From now on, we are not allowed to harass the people, we are a regular army, not bandits, and those who win the hearts of the people will win the world......"

Seeing Lin Daji's sluggish appearance, Li Yunzhong said with satisfaction: "It seems that my words have touched your soul, I won't say more, and there will be those who dare to do this in the future, and they will not be spared." ”

Lin Daji hurriedly shook his head and said, "Your Highness, it was the people who came spontaneously, not by us. ”

Li Yunzhong's old face turned red, and he said embarrassedly: "Why didn't you say it earlier, it would cause His Highness to waste so much saliva." After a while, Li Yunzhong doubted again: "Now the consciousness of the common people is so high?" ”

Lin Daji explained: "The people in the city were afraid that the officials and soldiers would come back to retaliate, but they saw that we had not committed any crimes when we entered the city, were disciplined, and trusted us very much, and they heard that they could be exempted from taxes for three years if they followed us eastward, so they decided to do so."

Li Yunzhong said: "How many people are there?" ”

"There are more than 300,000 men and 100,000 women." Lin Daji replied.

"So much, you really didn't use special means." Li Yunzhong said meaningfully, seeing Lin Daji blushing and shaking his head to deny it, he no longer pursued it.

After Tang Zhengcai became the commander of the navy, in a short period of time he collected a lot of small boats on both sides of the Yangtze River in Wuchang, plus the original ones, a total of more than 13,000 ships, Li Yunzhong's second and third armies advanced along both sides of the Yangtze River, attacking important cities along the coast, and the rest of the army and the people took boats and acted with the navy, and the Qing troops on both sides of the Yangtze River were frightened to the point of urine.

On March 1, Li Yunzhong arrived in eastern Hubei and ordered Tang Zhengcai's navy to attack, and soon captured the Mouse Gorge, and the general soldier En Chang was killed in battle, and most of the 5,000 river defense troops fled, and the rest were killed either by surrendering.

The defeated army of Guangji County fled to Jiujiang, and Lu Jianying abandoned his division overnight and fled first, and did not enter Anqing City, but fled back to Jiangning directly, claiming that he wanted to live and die with Jiangning.

On March 4, the Han army came to Jiujiang smoothly, and Li Yunzhong knew that Jiujiang was the barrier of Anqing, so he expanded Li Qirong's "Qi" battalion to 3,000 people, promoted him to division commander, stationed in Jiujiang, and promised to allow him to recruit 10,000 troops in the local area, and later promote him to be army commander.

After crossing the Jiujiang River, Li Yunzhong, a large and small city along the Yangtze River, left troops to garrison them, most of them were expanded to 1,000 people in companies, and some were expanded into 600 people in two or three squads.

On March 7, arrived in Anqing, Hu Yihuang had broken through Anqing two days ago, and greeted him outside the city, it turned out that Hu Yihuang led the first army to rest during the day, march at night, bypass the large and small cities garrisoned by the Qing army along the coast, and drove straight to Anqing, pretending to be the Qing army to break into the city, and captured more than 30 officials of the Qing army left in Anqing, including the governor Jiang Wenqing.

Li Yunzhong ordered the army to continue to move forward, appointed Hu Yihuang as the governor of Anhui and the prefect of Anqing, responsible for Anhui's military and political affairs, and took back the military power of the First Army, with Luo Outline as the acting commander, and expanded the regiment with Li Desheng to the Seventh Army, with Li Desheng as the commander, the whole army was rated at 30,000 people, leaving only 10,000 for him, and the rest of the orders were recruited locally.

Beijing

At the same time, Xianfeng received the loss of Jiujiang and Anqing, and understood that Jiangning was in danger, so he hurriedly ordered Xiang Rong to lead his troops to Jiangsu, and ordered Qi Shan to lead his troops into Anhui to intercept the Han army and buy time for Xiang Rong.

Not to mention that Xiang Rong received the holy decree and marched in the direction of Jiangsu under the stars and nights, Qi Shan received the holy decree but was full of sorrow, asking him to lead his troops to fight with the powerful Han army. Isn't this asking for his old life, if he wins, the Han army is blocked in Anhui, Jiangning is saved, and the thief army will definitely take revenge on him, and the credit is still Xiang Rong and Lu Jianying. Defeated, needless to say, will be dismissed at least and beheaded at worst. After thinking about it for a long time, I found that it was safest to only passively sabotage and march at a suitable distance from the Han army.

On March 9, the prefect of Chizhou heard that the Han army was coming, and fled out of the city in a hurry, Li Yunzhong did not enter Chizhou City, and directly ordered Liu Cai to defend the town, and asked him to send troops to take over the important prefectures and counties in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the headquarters was expanded into divisions, separated from the Seventh Army, and directly obeyed Hu Yihuang's orders.

On March 10, the army conquered Tongling and Wuhu, and the Qing army collapsed when they heard the wind and did not dare to fight.

On March 14, the army reached the outside of Jiangning City, and the Second and Third Armies on land also arrived in the afternoon, quickly encircling Jiangning City and cutting off Jiangning from the outside world.

Jiangning is a famous city and political, economic and cultural center in the south of the Yangtze River, and its strategic position is very important. Its city wall is high and thick, the circumference is more than 90 li, the northwest is close to the Yangtze River on both sides, the east is surrounded by Zhongshan Mountain, the nearby hills are surrounded, the situation is dangerous, and it is said that it is "the dragon and the tiger". The Qing army in Jiangsu had a total of more than 30,000 green battalion soldiers and thousands of Eight Banner soldiers, guarding various key points, and less than 10,000 mobile soldiers. After the Han army captured Wuchang, Lu Jianying transferred 4,800 green battalion soldiers from the province, of which 3,000 were brought to the upper Mouse Gorge to prevent blockage, but were completely annihilated by Tang Zhengcai, and the remaining 1,800 remained in Jiangning. Jiangning has a Jiangning general with more than 3,000 flag soldiers. Today, there are more than 5,000 banner soldiers and green battalion soldiers in the city, and there are 8,000 or 9,000 brave people temporarily recruited by Qi Suzao, the political envoy of Jiangning, to assist in the defense.

After Lu Jianying fled back from Jiujiang, he was frightened by the Han army, hiding at home all day long, ignoring political affairs, Jiangsu governor Yang Wending heard that Wuhu had fallen, Jiangning Dynasty was not safe, and left the city under the pretext of defending Zhenjiang, which was very bad Jiangning General Houxiang, he transferred all the Qing troops outside the city to the city to hold on, and jointly impeached Lu Jianying with Jiangnan Governor Fuzhu to fight against the enemy, Yang Wending abandoned the city and fled, but unfortunately it was sent out of the city, and Jiangning was also surrounded.

Outside the city of Jiangning

All the generals gathered in Li Yunzhong's flagship, and they laughed and boasted to each other about the results of the city in the past few days.

I only heard that Ling Eighteen had a loud voice, suppressed the rest of the voices, and boasted that he led the army to attack Chuzhou, and before the army arrived, someone went out of the city to greet him, and the officials in the city were scared away.

Seeing that they couldn't talk about Ling Eighteen, everyone turned to pat Li Yunzhong's ass.

Meng Sheng said: "His Royal Highness the King of Han is really wise, when I heard about the march to Jiangnan, I really sweated, thinking that it would be in vain, but I didn't expect that it was really where the army went, the enemy was invincible, and it took less than half a month to attack Jiangning, I really admire." ”

Jiao Liang said: "I didn't expect the Qing army in Jiangnan to be so vulnerable, Jiangning can go down every day, and then His Royal Highness can establish a country here, and the Great Han Kingdom is the Han family." ”

Zhang Weikun also said happily on the side: "Recently, there have been more scholars who have come to vote, which shows that the people's hearts are wanted, and His Royal Highness is the destiny of heaven." ”

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