Due to the limited strength of the Qing army in Hunan, after Bayansan arrived in Yuezhou, in order to seek safety, the focus of defense was mainly on Yuezhou City, which led to the Xinghan army to capture Linxiang, the county seat at the junction of Honghu Lake and Dongting Lake, without much effort, killing 47 people below Ge'an in Zhixian County, capturing more than 200 people from the township Yong Ya, 8 bird guns, and a small cannon.

Because many people in the Xinghan army have recently joined, some have cut their braids, some are braided for their hair, and they wear red hats with the word Xinghan, so when Ge An of Zhixian County was killed, he scolded the Xinghan army for having long hair.

Before long, the scornful term "long hair" spread.

It was the 4th and 5th brigades of the 1st Division that captured Linxiang.

Qiu Ba, the commander of the Fourth Brigade, was a native of Huanggang, Hubei, a member of the Tiandihui, who helped the Xinghan army annihilate the Jingzhou Eight Banners Naval Division in the Jingzhou Campaign, and later captured the outer city with the help of his fellow villagers, thus completing the final encirclement of Jingzhou Manzhou.

Breaking through the city of Jingzhou, Qiu Ba also contributed a lot, in order to repay his merits, Gu Zhengdao, the commander of the Xinghan Army, awarded him the post of brigade commander.

When asked why this Qiu Ba exposed the anti-Qing Dynasty, Qiu Ba actually said that he was the Duke of Qi of the Ming Dynasty and the first minister of Jing Nan, after Qiu Fu.

And Qiu Ba is just a fake name for him walking in the rivers and lakes, and his real name is Qiu Xingxiang.

I don't know if it's true or not, after all, more than 300 years have passed.

The commander of the Fifth Brigade was Zhou Linwang, the former commander of the Hubei Green Battalion, who had accompanied the deputy general Zheng Tai on the expedition to Jinchuan, and later retreated to Jingzhou and joined Zheng Tai and others to sack the gentry in the outer city of Jingzhou.

Three months ago, in Xianning, he was accused of blackmailing a local gentry and sent it to Zheng Dajin, the governor of Hubei, who was furious and ordered Zheng Tai, who had just been promoted to the rank of chief soldier, to punish him and send him to the governor's station, and kill him as an example.

After Zheng Tai received the official letter from the governor, he sent someone to tell Zhou Linwang to lead more than 500 soldiers to surrender to the Xinghan army with Xianning City.

And said: "This is the meaning of the organization. ”

As soon as Zhou Linwang heard that it was the arrangement of the meeting, and Zheng Dajin, the governor of Hubei, wanted to kill him, he knew that he couldn't get along with the green camp, so he led his troops to rush into the county government on the ninth day of the winter month and killed all the officials such as the magistrate, and then scattered the pigtails on the spot and sent people to contact the nearby Xinghan army.

In order to let his brothers follow him with all their hearts, Zhou Linwang even circled hundreds of large households in Xianning, and then ransacked and slaughtered these large households with his subordinate soldiers, saying that they were prospering for the heavens, killing large households to help the poor, and as a result, more than 3,000 people were killed in one day.

The gentry and landlords in Xianning County were almost uprooted, and few escaped.

After being incorporated into the Fifth Brigade of the First Division by the Xinghan Army, Zhou Linwang took the initiative to ask Ying to capture the two cities of Puqi and Chongyang in the south.

According to the generals of the green battalion of the Qing army guarding the second city, they were all former colleagues of Zhou Linwang, or they were strategically transferred under the arrangement of the organization, or they left in a dashing manner after receiving Zhou Linwang's money to buy the city.

As a result, the landlords of the two counties were immediately poisoned by Zhou Linwang, and there were no less than thousands of deaths.

When Wang Ang, a former Qing Dynasty scholar in Yichang, who was appointed governor of Hubei by Gu Zhengdao, the commander of the Xinghan army, learned of this, he scolded Zhou Linwang for putting the Xinghan army in opposition to the gentry and landlords, and even more so that the Xinghan army could not be supported by scholars.

In any case, the general idea is that slaughtering tyranny will not win the hearts of the people.

Gu Zhengdao thought that Wang Ang's opinion was correct, so he ordered someone to go to Chongyang to restrain Zhou Linwang.

Zhou Linwang was so difficult to find out that he didn't argue with Gu Dashuai's people, obediently relinquished control of the three cities of Chongyang, and went to Luxikou with his subordinates and the looted goods to accept the command of the division commander Gu An.

And because most of Zhou Linwang's subordinates were from Hanyang, there was an endless stream of ships transporting goods from Luxikou to Hanyang for a period of time.

At the same time as the money returned home, a large number of Hanyang people called friends to join Zhou Linwang's troops, resulting in Zhou Linwang, the brigade commander, actually having more than 4,000 troops.

The Xinghan Army was organized in the form of a Zhou ceremony, with five people as a team, five soldiers as one or two, four two as a pawn, five pawns as a brigade, five brigades as a division, and five divisions as an army.

The first brigade has exactly 500 men, the five brigades have 2,500 men into one division, and the first army has 12,500 men.

Officers from low to high are captains, two commanders, pawn commanders, brigade commanders, division commanders, and army commanders.

At that time, Jia Liu, who was far away in Beijing, had opinions on his father-in-law's military method, because his father-in-law's method was too unqualified, 500 people could be a colonel brigade commander, 2,500 people could be a major general division commander, and 12,500 people could be a general commander, which was really a bit unworthy of the name.

However, considering that the Xinghan Army had only 4,100 people at that time, and more than 1,000 of them were soldiers from the Jiangsu and Jiangxi Green Battalions incorporated by Yunmen Victory, he did not raise objections to his father-in-law's bluffing army formation.

Now the Xinghan army occupies half of Fuzhou County in Hubei, and the number of soldiers has snowballed to more than 40,000 after the breakthrough of Wuchang, so there are actually four army soldiers.

However, because the new units were either members of the Hubei civil society, or prisoners, or newly recruited poor peasants, or opportunists, or former Green Battalion generals like Zhou Linwang, who had brought their own dry rations to take refuge, although the number of the new units had increased tenfold compared with before, their combat effectiveness plummeted, and they were basically the same as those of the Green Battalion.

To this end, Gu Zhengdao focused on tilting resources to the first division commanded by his nephew Gu An, which was also the earliest division established by the Xinghan Army, with an establishment of 2,500 people, but actually more than 13,000 people.

The core backbone is a thousand veterans of the Xinghan Army, and the rest are activists such as Qiu Ba and Zhou Linwang.

Qiu Ba's Fourth Brigade actually had 2,800 soldiers, and half of them were members of the Tiandihui in various parts of Hubei, as well as members of non-governmental organizations related to the Tiandihui, so although its combat effectiveness was not as good as that of the old Xinghan troops, its cohesion was not weak at all, and its influence on the local area was even stronger than that of the Xinghan army.

Gu Zhengdao attacked Hunan with more than 10,000 people from his nephew's first division, and the troops were obviously insufficient, so in order to improve the morale of the army, he promised the brigade commanders who participated in the war, especially Zhou Linwang and others who brought their own dry food to vote, as long as they took Hunan, they could use these people as army commanders (general soldiers).

Gu An even convened the brigade commander and the military council, announcing that after the city was broken, "all big households can be divided".

The two orders of the grandfather and grandson made the morale of the Xinghan army going south strong, but in order to break through the important town of Yuezhou, it was first necessary to clean up the Dongting Lake Water Division on the periphery, otherwise the Xinghan army would attack the Dongting Lake Water Division on the back of the attack under the Yuezhou City.

Although Gu An was young, he followed his third grandfather to fight against the Qing army at the age of eleven, and he can be said to be a member of the anti-Qing guerrillas of the remnants of Jinchuan.

The old men of the Xinghan Army all said that Gu An was a little tiger, and some people said that this kid could fight better than a flower dog and a bear.

On the 27th of the lunar month, the 5th Brigade of Zhou Linwang, the vanguard of the 1st Division, arrived at the outskirts of Yuezhou, and then Qiu Ba also led the 4th Brigade to arrive, and the 2nd General led more than 7,000 officers and soldiers to attack Yuezhou City the next day.

It's just that although the momentum is strong, it is thunder and rain.

The reason is that the order received by the second general is to attack the sheep in order to divert the attention of the defenders of Yuezhou.

Gu An's strategy was to pull out the Qing army's naval division in Junshan first, ensure that the next attack on Yuezhou City would not be disturbed by the Qing army's naval division, and at the same time block the Qing army's waterway reinforcements.

In order to achieve this goal, Gu An led the main force of the third brigade to be stationed in Chengling Alum, dozens of miles northwest of Yuezhou City, and built bamboo rafts there, recruited civilian boats, fishing boats, and recruited water-based fishermen to help in the war.

Although the Xinghan army inevitably destroyed the place in the process of rising, the military discipline of the Qing army was obviously much better, and the buying and selling were paid according to the price, and the marching army did not enter the people's fields and could not live in the houses, so that the poor people in the Yuezhou area did not resist the Xinghan army.

Moreover, Xinghan Jun proposed "everywhere is uneven, everywhere is full of warmth." The slogan of "the world's people are in the field, and the people of the world are cultivating together" is very popular and has a lot of fan power, and then there is the sadness and heroic color of the relics of the former Ming Dynasty, which has attracted many Dongting Lake fishermen to join the army.

These fishermen, who live in Dongting Lake all the year round and even rarely come ashore several times a year, not only brought the Qing army's naval division garrison intelligence to the Xinghan army, but also brought hundreds of fishing boats, solving the biggest problem of the Xinghan army's capture of Junshan.

Just when the Xinghan army was in full swing and preparing to capture the water camp of the Qing army in Junshan, Li Zhongyuan, the deputy general of the green battalion of the Hunan governor Bayan and the three temperances, also saw the importance of the entrance to Dongting Lake, and he proposed to the governor to lead his troops to work with the water division to seize the city alum in one fell swoop.

Bayansan, an illiterate person who knows how to use soldiers in addition to making money, has an advantage, that is, he doesn't know how to pretend to understand, and he listens carefully to the opinions of professionals.

So he sent a letter to Admiral Wan Xiu and ordered him to cooperate with Li Zhongyuan to use troops to kill Lingling.

Wan Xiu's great-ancestor is Wan Zhengse, the commander of the Kangxi Dynasty who is as famous as Shi Lang.

Shi Lang contributed to the Qing Dynasty with the platform, and Wan Zhengse made great contributions to the war against Wu Sangui's rebels and was awarded the title of Prince Shaobao.

If Wanxiu cooperated with Li Zhongyuan's infantry to seize Chengling Alum with the naval division, even if he could not capture this point, it would also bankrupt the tactical idea of Gu An of the Xinghan army to seize Junshan.

I never thought that this Wanxiu was unwilling to obey Bayan's three temperances, or wanted to wait until the end of the New Year before acting, and the result was to delay under various excuses.

Without a water master, Li Zhongyuan couldn't get around Yuezhou City, so he could only do it in a hurry.

Bayansan's side felt that Li Zhongyuan's seizure of important land was reasonable, and he felt that Wan Xiuda's New Year's Eve was afraid that the soldiers would not use their lives to be reasonable, so he thought about it and let Yuezhou stick to it, and then make a big move after the New Year.

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, fishermen quietly came to report that the Qing army on Junshan Island was celebrating the New Year and was completely unprepared.

Gu An made a move.

He led 2,000 people to enter the lake at night by fishing boats, civilian boats, and bamboo rafts, and quietly rowed to Junshan.

The surface of the lake was pitch black, and if it weren't for the old fishermen who lived on the lake all year round as guides, Gu An and the others would probably be able to get hooked on the lake for a few days.

In the second half of the night, the Xinghan army arrived at Junshan in the night.

"Up!"

Gu An, a 20-year-old general, was the first to jump into the icy waters of Dongting Lake, wading knee-deep ashore on the water, and then ordered someone to set fire to the reeds near the Qing army's water camp.

After the fire started, the Xinghan army that went ashore shouted loudly, and the wind helped the fire blow to the Qing army's water camp, and the Qing army that was celebrating the New Year was in a panic and shouted in fright: "The long-haired thief is coming, the long-haired thief is coming!" ”

Cannibalism and crushing.

The guerrillas Tang Shan, Zhang Bing, Qian Zong, Zhao Youku and others were killed in the chaos.

Wan Xiu was lucky enough to escape in a small boat under the escort of his own soldiers, and more than 1,400 officers and soldiers of the Yushui Division surrendered to the Xinghan Army under the leadership of Dusi Jiang Yangyuan, Li Guohui and others.

At dawn, in addition to the surrender of troops, more than 2,000 Qing soldiers were either killed, or died in trampling, thrown into the water and froze to death, and more than 80 large and small warships were captured.

It can be called another fiasco of the Qing army's water division after the Jingzhou water camp.