On the fifth day of the fourth lunar month of the second year of Jianlong, Xu Shao'an and Zeng Zhilin, who were advancing rapidly in the direction of Chizhou, met with Song Deming's cronies who rushed back quickly, and got a good news and a bad news. The good news is that the commander of the Chizhou garrison has been persuaded to agree to surrender the city; The bad news is that Chizhou Assassin Shi, who is his superior, has a strong will to resist, and it may be difficult for Ge Yan to persuade him to surrender. At present, Ge Yan is secretly and actively contacting his cronies and allies, preparing to find a suitable opportunity to arrest or kill the Chizhou assassin Shi Kongzhì or kill him altogether, and then open the city gate to welcome the Zhou army into the city.

In this regard, Xu Shaoan and Zeng Zhilin did not care. In the eyes of the two of them, it was best for Ge Yan to be able to control the situation in Chizhou and welcome the Zhou army into the city. Even if it is difficult to succeed for a while, it will not have much impact on the Zhou army's capture of Chizhou City, and the Western Route Army and the Central Route Army of the Southern Expedition are just delayed for one and a half days under Chizhou City, which is not a big deal. Therefore, after rewarding the messenger and ordering him to march east with the army in order to communicate with Goyan, Xu and Zeng's troops rushed to Chizhou City without stopping.

Although he had made up his mind to live and die with the city, in the face of the fact that Ezhou and Jiangzhou were unable to resist the attack of the Zhou army before, and both cities were declared to have fallen in less than half a day, Chizhou Thorn Shi was still a little uneasy in his heart. Therefore, after learning from Tanmakou that the Zhou army had advanced to Yin Village, which was only fifty miles away from Chizhou City, he could no longer maintain his previous calm state, but urgently convened a meeting of all civil and military officials in the city to discuss a good strategy to resist the enemy.

Contrary to the situation in Jiangzhou at the beginning, the strongest will to resist on Chizhou's side was the assassin Shi, and it was the commander Ge Yan, who was bent on surrendering without a fight, who was deeply impressed by the interests of his friend Song Deming's letters. However, unlike when Hu Ze took the opportunity of assassinating Shi Xie Yanbao to convene a meeting of his subordinates to kill this boss who was greedy for life and fear death, and seized power in Jiangzhou, Ge Yan's power in Chizhou was much worse than Hu Ze's power in Jiangzhou. Therefore, Goyan decided to hold back for the time being, and then take action when the time is right.

However, forbearance is forbearance, and the small actions that should be done still have to be done. Therefore, when the Chizhou Assassin Shi consulted him, the commander of the state, on a strategy to defend against the enemy, Goyan put forward two suggestions after pretending to think about it. First, drawing on the successful experience of Jiangzhou, some elite soldiers were dispatched to take the initiative to ambush and attack the Zhou army at appropriate locations, killing and injuring its vital forces and hindering its advance speed. Second, increase the number of defenders at the mouth of the gorge in the south of the city, and send capable generals to lead 5,000 soldiers and horses to garrison here, so that the Zhou army had to divide troops to attack, so as to reduce the pressure on the main city.

Goyan's two constructions seem to have some truth, but in fact they are hidden mysteries. On the one hand, although the Jiangzhou army used ambushes and sneak attacks to achieve heavy results, this method can be used once but not twice. With the lesson of the last time, the Zhou army will definitely strengthen its vigilance, how can it be possible to let the Chizhou army succeed again, it can be said that Ge Yan's construction is to let the Chizhou army go to death. On the other hand, although Xiakou Village is an important gateway to Chizhou City, and it is a horn with Chizhou City, it is common sense that a certain number of elite soldiers should be stationed to defend it. But the problem is that in the face of the powerful artillery fire of the Zhou army, the resistance of the small Xiakou village is far inferior to that of Chizhou City, which has strong and tall walls. Moreover, Xiakou Village is a pure military village, and there are basically no civilians living in it, so the Zhou army can have no scruples at all when shelling. In addition, the total strength of the Zhou Army's West Route Army and the Central Route Army was more than 50,000 people, and it was more than enough to divide troops to deal with Chizhou City and Xiakou Village. Therefore, if according to what Ge Yan said, sending 5,000 soldiers and horses to defend the Xiakou village will not only fail to contain the Zhou army, but will give these more than 5,000 soldiers and horses to the Zhou army as an excellent artillery target, which will only increase the opponent's results.

It is a pity that as the defender of Chizhou, all the civil and military officials of Chizhou, including the Assassin Shi, were convinced of Ge Yan's Jianyì and not only fully accepted it, but also handed over the decision to send ambushes, sneak attack generals and select the main general to garrison the Xiakou Village to Ge Yan, and let him decide. The result of this is that it gave Ge Yan the opportunity to eliminate Chizhou's cronies and ensure the safety of his henchmen. As a result, the three generals who had always been good friends with the Chizhou Assassin and were valued by him became the main generals who led the army to ambush the Zhou army and garrisoned the Xiakou Village, and were sent out of the city by Goyan on the same day.

The two soldiers and horses in the city left Chizhou City, and Ge Yan sent his henchmen to send the relevant news to Xu Shao'an and Zeng Zhilin who were stationed in Yin Village.

was already at a disadvantage, and at this time, there was an inner ghost who fully revealed his own troop deployment, and the defeat of the Chizhou army was fateful. On the eighth day of the fourth lunar month of the second year of Jianlong, the 5,000 Chizhou army that had set up an ambush at Eagle Mountain was counter-surrounded by the Zhou army, which had long known the location of the ambush and the arrangement of its troops, and surrendered to the Zhou army after resisting for an hour and suffering nearly 2,000 casualties; On the ninth day of the fourth lunar month of the second year of Jianlong, after the Zhou army completed the encirclement of Chizhou City and Xiakou Village in two ways, it concentrated all its artillery to carry out a fierce bombardment of Xiakou Village. The nearly half-hour shelling not only almost completely destroyed the Xiakou Village, but also caused nearly 4,000 casualties among the Chizhou Army in the village, and all its survivors surrendered.

So far, more than half of the Chizhou army has lost, and almost all the soldiers and generals who stayed in the city are Goyan's henchmen. So, on the morning of the eleventh day of the fourth month of the second year of Jianlong, Goyan, who thought that the time was ripe, suddenly attacked, beheaded the Chizhou assassin on the spot, and detained all the officials who were not his confidants and cronies.

At the beginning of the tenth day of the fourth lunar month of the second year of Jianlong, Ge Yan, who had completely mastered the entire Chizhou city, led a group of his men out of the city and surrendered to the Zhou army.

On the day that Xu Shao'an and Zeng Zhilin led their troops into Chizhou City, the huge boats and rafts used by the main force of the First Fleet of Jiangfang to escort the construction of the pontoon bridge before the land troops marched eastward had entered Tongling, 140 miles northeast of Chizhou City, and met with the first section of the Jiangnan Navy that had advanced westward from Jinling to support.

Due to the previous division of troops in Wuchang and Jiangzhou, there were only more than 60 warships available in He Haisheng's hands at this time, while the enemy's ships were as many as 300. Seeing that the number of his own warships was five times that of the opponent, and that the other side had a large number of giant boats and rafts that were inconvenient to move, and that there were no soldiers and horses on the shore to cooperate, the commander of this Jiangnan naval army thought that he was in control of the victory, and the opportunity for his meritorious service to be rewarded had come. Therefore, regardless of the fact that the enemy's main battleships were several times larger than his own main battleships in tonnage, and without waiting for the follow-up ships to set up an offensive formation, he led more than 100 warships of the front army to rush towards the First Fleet of Jiangfang, in a vain attempt to win by quantity, taking advantage of the small and flexible size of his own warships, preemptively sticking them before the opponent's attack, engaging in close-range "hand-to-hand combat" with the opponent, and taking the opportunity to launch a fire attack, thus taking the initiative in the battle in his own hands.

It's a pity that this kind of battle in which both sides of the battle are not at the same level in terms of equipment and combat concepts, and the result is not at all suspenseful. In the face of the fierce artillery bombardment of several capital ships of the First Fleet of Jiangfang, more than 100 ships of the former army of the Jiangnan Navy were quickly scattered and became the target of hunting by other warships of the First Fleet of Jiangfang. And as the front army was quickly eaten by the First Fleet of Jiangfang, and the flagship of its commander was the first to be sunk, the Chinese army and the rear army of the Jiangnan Naval Army, which had no leader at this time, suddenly fell into chaos. The more than 200 ships that had lost their unified command went their own way, some wanted to rush up and attack the First Fleet of Jiangfang to avenge their superiors, some wanted to retreat to protect themselves and avoid a possible attack by the enemy, while others were at a loss and stopped in the middle of the river in a daze and drifted with the current.

The enemy's chaos is our opportunity, and seeing that the Jiangnan naval army is becoming more and more chaotic, not only did it fail to launch an effective attack, but collided with each other in the chaos, damaging many ships. He Haisheng, the deputy commander of the First Fleet of Jiangfang, immediately ordered the whole team to attack and attacked the Jiangnan Navy in an arc front. After a rapid impact, the Jiangnan Navy was completely defeated. In the end, in this battle, which lasted only an hour and a half, the First Fleet of Jiangfang sank more than 110 enemy warships, captured 205 warships of various types, and captured more than 800 Jiangnan naval officers. With the defeat of the naval army, the defenders of Tongling also lost their fighting spirit, and abandoned the city and fled without waiting for the arrival of the Zhou army's troops and horses on land.

On the thirteenth day of April in the lunar calendar of the second year of Jianlong, Xu Shao'an and Zeng Zhilin's troops entered Tongling City, which was no longer defended.

On April 16 of the lunar calendar of the second year of Jianlong, Xu Shaoan and Zeng Zhilin's troops conquered Wuhu.

On April 18 of the lunar calendar of the second year of Jianlong, Xu Shao'an and Zeng Zhilin's troops arrived in Dangtu, Wei Yu, the judge of the Xiongyuan Army in the south of the Yangtze River, surrendered the city, and the Zhou army captured the last important city west of the quarry rock ferry without blood.

On April 20 of the lunar calendar of the second year of Jianlong, Xu Shao'an and Zeng Zhilin's troops began to erect a giant pontoon bridge on the river. However, because the rainy season in the south of the Yangtze River has arrived, the river water rises and the water flow is more rapid, and the erection of the quarrying rock pontoon bridge is far more difficult than in Qiyang, and it was not until April 24 of the lunar calendar that the erection was finally completed.

On April 25 of the lunar calendar of the second year of Jianlong, Wang Kunjun led the Eastern Route Army of the Southern Expedition to start crossing the river from the pontoon bridge, and on April 28 of the lunar calendar, nearly 50,000 troops all crossed the river.