After receiving the bad news that the fifteenth brother led the army deep into the south of the Yangtze River, he was finally besieged and did not know his life and death because of the reckless advance and the destruction of the naval division, and Dolgon was naturally very shocked.

He was having breakfast and was so shocked that his chopsticks fell to the ground.

"What? This is impossible, the fifteenth brother has brought the main force of three banners, and the Han and Mongolian armies to help in the battle, and the soldiers and horses he has at hand account for thirty percent of the total strength of the imperial court!"

Dolgon couldn't imagine that he, who had always been invincible in the Qing Dynasty, could still have a strong army of this scale, besieged by those cowardly and unarmed southern barbarians.

At this moment, the person who came to help Dolgon staff the military aircraft was the subordinate Hong Chengchou, who said without worry:

"Lord, Kong Youde and Nikambel really don't know the recent situation of Prince Yu, but the Ming army was able to fight Prince Yu in Jiangnan at the same time, and at the same time, they also divided their troops to attack and counterattack Jiangbei, which shows the severity of the situation!

Maybe Prince Yu is indeed heroic and invincible, even if there is no sailor to help him fight, his tens of thousands of iron cavalry can still stir up the south of the Yangtze River, but he has not been able to break through the river defense to send back the news, which is also the truth.

It shows that the Ming army has done a very successful job at least in fortifying the walls and clearing the wilderness, even if there are prefectures and counties that are conquered by our heavenly soldiers, they can withdraw the warships before the city is broken, or burn the warships, so that even if Prince Yu gains a lot of land, he will not be able to raise warships to cross north for the time being."

Hong Chengchou's words were also trying to think about the benefits, and he was also putting gold on Duo Duo's face, and by the way, he was giving Dolgon some steps. It is well known that Dorgon and several of his siblings still have the best relationship with Dord, and this point is still to be overstated.

If this had not been the case, Dorgon would not have handed over the largest army of the expedition to Dordor.

Fortunately, Dolgon also knew the severity, and he quickly came to his senses and realized that it was not important to lose face at the moment, and the key was to send reinforcements immediately.

"How many soldiers and horses are there in Beizhili and Shandong now? Let the soldiers and horses near the left go to Huaiyang immediately, even if there is a lack of boats to cross the river, at least recover Yangzhou first, and completely crush the Ming army that dares to return to Jiangbei! In this way, it can attract and consume some Ming army troops, and buy time for the fifteenth brother to break through.

Then, let the various departments try to risk the death of the 15th brother with a small group of clippers to cross south as soon as possible. He is the same person, even if he can't defeat the Ming army for the time being, he can try to send a small boat back to contact him in the south of the Yangtze River, is it really so tightly surrounded, and he can't even steal a single boat on the hundreds of miles of river?"

Hong Chengchou promised one by one, wrote down the guiding ideology of the regent, and then slowly refined the plan and replied:

"The soldiers and horses of the North Zhili are heading south, and I am afraid that it will be delayed for a long time. I implore the prince to allow the various departments to change their guards, so that the imperial court in Shandong will all go south to Huainan to reinforce Prince Yu.

I will directly subordinate the soldiers and horses to the north, and then gradually take over the empty defense area after the soldiers and horses of Shandong go south, so that we can gain more than 10 days of preparation and marching time.

The Shandong garrison was originally to clear the remnants of the enemy and thieves along the canal, and to beware of Liu Zeqing. Thinking about coming to the cold winter of Layue, Liu Zeqing is also unable to forge ahead, this guy just wants to be a warlord and search places. It's okay to leave it alone for the time being, if he dares to venture, when the Beizhi official army arrives, he will be annihilated!

In addition, if you are worried that Shandong will not have enough troops and horses, you need to use Prince Wenying's troops to relax the offensive against Nanyang and Xiangyang as appropriate, and instead reinforce Huainan, or move to Xinyang and Hefei nearby, so as to divide the momentum of the Ming army in the north of the Yangtze River."

Dolgon played one by one, and counted the scale of the troops and horses everywhere, and a slight sense of crampedness arose in his heart.

He couldn't help but ask Hong Chengchou: "If my main force of the Qing Dynasty really suffers any injuries this time, in addition to supplementing the Zhengding army with various banners and households, I am afraid that I will have to think of other ways to supplement the army." Does Mr. Hung have a plan?"

Historically, after several years of fighting in the south of the Yangtze River, the Qing army gradually found that as the war continued in full swing, relying on the Eight Banners and the Han Army Banner alone was not enough. Therefore, since the beginning of the third year of Shunzhi, the green camp has been prepared to distinguish it from the original Han army flag and give more Han people who want to join the army a new upward channel.

Now, because of Dorgon's early crisis, Dorgon had to think about this imminent problem in advance.

In later generations, there were many officials, who always mistakenly thought that before the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, only

There are 60,000 or 70,000 Manchurian main forces, which is actually a misunderstanding-

The reason why there is a number of "60,000" that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people mainly comes from the original definition of the Eight Banners: 300 households and one Niulu, five Niulu and one Jiala, and Wujiala and one banner, so a banner is 25 Niulu and 7,500 households, and each household has one ding as a standing army, and one banner is naturally 7,500 cavalry, multiplied by eight is 60,000.

But in fact, 60,000 people are just the result of the initial compilation of households by the people in the Nuer Hachi period, just like any dynasty has to count the population and count the number of households at the beginning, and then if the census is not done for decades, I don't know what the increase will be. After years of growth, the front-line regular standing army of the Eight Banners has long exceeded the establishment of 10,000 people per banner.

The civil administration in the early Qing Dynasty was naturally sparse, so Nuer Hachijia Huang Taiji did not approve the household for a long time. In order to be less soldiers, the Manchu people naturally did not go to divide the households.

Therefore, no matter how big the population is, it often goes until the time when Shunzhi entered the customs, the household when the Eight Banners were compiled a few decades ago, and now it is still a family, in fact, the parents and even grandparents have died in old age and war, and the brothers and even cousins below are still living in one household.

Now Dorgon also knows this situation, and he has been turning a blind eye, not trying to change it rashly. His only requirement for these non-regular bannermen was that "if the Zhengding of a certain household dies in battle, or is too old to join the army, one of the other non-Zhengding of the household must be substituted for military service."

Therefore, before the Duoduo accident this year, there were actually more than 80,000 regular army cavalry in the Manba Banner, and there were about two non-regular "reserves" in each household, that is, about 150,000 people.

Counting the young and healthy men of the whole clan, the regular army and the reserves, the Manchurians can pull out more than 200,000 military service. If we include the old, weak, sick and disabled, the male population of the whole ethnic group can be more than 400,000, and the entire Manchu ethnic group is about 80 to 1 million people.

From this point of view, even if Dorgor lost tens of thousands of elite regular troops, Dorgon could still draw people from the reserves to make up for it. But if it were to happen once or twice, the Manchu rule would definitely collapse, and Dorgon would have to start thinking about the Green Camp in advance.

But in any case, the distant water does not quench the thirst of the near.

Dolgon was ordered on the 22nd of the lunar month, and the Qing army in Hebei could not be directly used to go to the south to help. And the Qing army in Shandong received an order on the 24th to prepare to leave, at least at the end of the month before it can set off.

The dispatch of the army is no more than the urgent messenger of eight hundred miles, and the assembly and march are very slow. From Shandong, 80 miles or even 100 miles a day to the south, the total distance of 1,200 miles will take half a month to reach Yangzhou.

The Azig side is similar, and it is estimated that at least on the tenth day of the first month of next year, a large number of reinforcements will rush to Yangzhou. This is also mixed with the New Year's Pass, which will definitely make countless soldiers complain.

Duoduo obviously couldn't wait that long.

……

The words are divided into two ends, on the 24th day of the lunar month, it was also after Cao Bianjiao's cavalry crossed the Yangtze River south again and maneuvered in place, and after three or four days of rest, it almost returned to at least eighty percent of the combat state in its heyday.

The reinforcement order of Dolgon in the north has just been sent to the generals of the Qing army in Shandong, and on the battlefield of Jiangyin, Duoduo is finally about to usher in a full-scale attack by the Ming army.

There is no doubt that in the past ten days, Duoduo is still stumbling around Jiangyin and is mired in the quagmire.

Previously, Zhu Shuren had assessed that the Battle of Nanjing cost at least 30% of Duoduo's arms and ammunition. Later, the battle of Jinshan Temple in Zhenjiang, although the intensity was not large, lasted longer, and the meat was once ground and consumed.

The battle of Jiangyin has also been attacked for half a month, and a lot of material energy has been spent on destroying the fortifications of the peripheral triangle fort set up by Yan Yingyuan. Just a few blasts, each time at least thousands of catties of black powder were filled, or even more.

Therefore, even if all the reserves of gunpowder in the musket units were transferred to the artillery units, it would still not be enough. Before the twenty-fourth day of the lunar month arrived, the gunpowder of the Duoduo Department was completely exhausted.

Or many Duo also had a premonition of the coming field battle, but perhaps what he thought was: gunpowder is used to attack fortifications, and it doesn't matter if there is no gunpowder in the field. Since there is only a little bit left, if you can't capture Jiangyin, it will be impossible to go elsewhere to fight a tough battle in the future, so it's better to make a desperate bet, and if you don't succeed, you can only fight in exile.

After the gunpowder was exhausted, although the artillery shells of the Qing army were almost exhausted, and there was not much waste, the bullets such as lead bullets and iron sand reserved by the musket troops were completely wasted and turned into decorations.

The gunpowder was misappropriated, the muskets were all turned into burning sticks, and the small lead bullets could only be thrown and played, or a few "featherless arrow Zhang Qing" type projectile masters were expected to emerge in the army.

In addition to the abolished firearms troops, the Qing army's arrows and bows are also very bad, although the arrows have not been shot out, but there are already a large number of second-hand arrows mixed with battlefield recycling-

These days, the Jiangyin offensive and defensive battles, every day the arrows are like rain, the reflection of the Ming army in the city is also as sharp, a lot of ground outside the city is like a reed, just after the fight is white and full of tail feathers, the Qing army will pull out second-hand arrows from the mud and even shoot back with three-handed arrows.

The iron clusters of these arrows are not easily damaged, and they can be shot when the ground is muddy. However, the feathers on the tail are the fastest damaged, which will seriously affect the shooting accuracy, so it can only be used for covering the projectile, and it will definitely be a mistake to make accurate shots for shooters with excellent marksmanship.

If you don't understand this, you can imagine that even if you play badminton a few more times in later generations, you will go around because of fried hair.

The speed of the arrow is many times faster than that of playing badminton, and the loss rate of the feather is at least equal to the square of the multiple of the flight speed.

And in such an environment that can almost be said to be exhausted, Zhu Shuren brought the heads of Yangzhou defender Liu Liangzuo and others, and he was also ready to take this pile of heads before the decisive battle, and the firing line would break the morale of Duoduo again.

In the evening of that day, the scouts of the Duoduo army in the Jiangyin camp reported to Duoduo the latest movements of the Ming army:

"Lord Wang, I found out this afternoon, the main force of the Ming army suddenly used unknown means to cause a civil strife and mutiny in the defenders of my Danyang County, and then the Ming army captured Danyang County!

Then the Ming army did not stop, surrounded Wujin County on three sides, and continued to advance eastward around the county, it has approached our army, and now it is still sixty or seventy miles away from our army's camp, and it will definitely be uniformed with my army tomorrow!"

Duoduo, who was tormented by three consecutive defeats, was depressed, and a glimmer of a gambler's glint flashed in his eyes: "Zhu Shuren, did he take the wrong medicine? He finally dared to fight with Lone Field?

Dinner for the whole army tonight! Let the soldiers recuperate! Let the cavalry in the defenders of Wujin County break through and join our army! Seduce the Southern Barbarians! If Zhu Shuren is willing to chase it, then it is best! Tomorrow, the fourth watch will make food, and the whole army will go out of the camp to meet the enemy!"