The news of the sudden landing of the Ming army naturally caused great confusion in the hearts of the top echelons of the Qing army.

In the face of Hauge's angry questioning, the messenger who was only responsible for reporting the military situation was of course unable to answer.

But Man Dahai, the prince of Li next to Haoge, heard that Haoge actually planned to return to the division to counter the Ming army that surrounded Ningyuan and Jinzhou, but he felt that it was inappropriate, so he made a suggestion out of the crowd:

"Prince Su! Now that the Ming army has landed in the rear of our army, it may not be necessary to think about whether it can counter-encircle the Ming army in Ningyuan and Jinzhou.

If they dare to come, they must have no fear, maybe there is something else to rely on, so we might as well avoid its edge and seek a safe place. Don't take the coastal Liaoxi Corridor to retreat, just retreat over Yanshan! ”

Hauge waved his hand and refused without even thinking about it: "No! Not to mention that now that the Ming army has just ventured around and landed and sneak attacked, it is not known whether Ningyuan and Jinzhou will be lost.

If either of these two places is not lost, my Qing Heavenly Soldiers are so frightened that they don't even dare to go to the rescue, and finally let the defenders of Ningyuan and Jinzhou be wiped out by the Ming army in despair.

】

In the future, the defenders of any city in Liaodong, except for our Manchurian soldiers and horses, who else would dare to die for my Qing Dynasty? It's not that he is completely scared by the Ming army, and when the time comes, a random smuggling attack may turn into a big thing! This kind of thing must be set an example from the beginning, and the Ming army's attempt to bypass the rear must not succeed even once!

Besides, even if we take 10,000 steps back, assuming that Ningyuan and Jinzhou have all been lost, then we should not bypass the western Liaoning corridor and withdraw through the grasslands north of Yanshan.

Our cavalry crossed Yanshan without baggage, maybe it could. The infantry army did not carry baggage, and hundreds of thousands of miles of grassland went down, and many of them were afraid of being scattered and starving to death. And the weight of the cane, how can it be quickly transported over Yanshan?

If you retreat north of Yanshan, it will be equivalent to completely giving up the heavy ordnance and grain that was hoarded here for the decisive battle of Shanhaiguan! The infantry was also destined to suffer heavy losses, being pursued and killed along the way. Only I, the Manchurian Cavalry, can retreat with all their bodies. Such a withdrawal from the law will inevitably hit the national strength hard, and what chance is there to turn the tables! ”

Speaking of which, even if the other high-ranking generals of the Qing army reacted slowly, they had already figured out the advantages and disadvantages of the two sets of plans.

Mandahai's path is more stable, which can ensure that the cavalry troops are withdrawn almost intact, but the baggage will be abandoned, and it is unknown how much the infantry can run, depending on whether the specific fight is stuck by the Ming army, and Ningyuan Jinzhou cannot be saved.

Haoge's way is a bigger gamble, and if he fights well, the infantry baggage and Ningyuan Jinzhou can be saved, but if he doesn't fight well, the main cavalry force has to take an extra part.

At present, the advantages and disadvantages of the two sets of plans cannot be directly seen, and the key is the follow-up improvisation and execution of the troops.

No one can bear the responsibility of "throwing away the heavy grain and part of the infantry if you don't try", so let Hauge give it a try.

If there is hope to drink medicine for conservative treatment and cure the lesion completely, who is willing to amputate and remove the limb as soon as it comes up.

The Qing army quickly accelerated its mobilization, and began to withdraw its camp on the same day, leaving only thousands of dead cannon fodder and some strong men to stay at Shanhaiguan, in order to delay the speed of the pursuit of the main force of the Ming army in Yongping Mansion and buy time for the main force.

……

It is a pity that the retreat of the Qing army did not escape the eyes of the Ming army at all, because the Ming army had already calculated the days, and in the past few days, it has sent a lot of large sand boats with shallow drafts and high mast cages to reconnoiter along the coast of the western Liaoning corridor.

Originally, the water depth on the north shore of Bohai Bay was shallow, and it was difficult for large ships to sail closely, but since the Ming army had built a navy in a targeted manner, this kind of problem could certainly be avoided.

It has been two years since the Ming army dug up the latest Western shipbuilders and ship designers from the Dutch. Under the design of the combination of Chinese and Western design, it is not difficult to learn from the experience of the Dutch potbelly ship in stuffing tonnage, improve the original large sand ship, and build a ship with a heavier tonnage with a draught than before.

The Ming army also installed higher masts than the old ships on these new sand boats specially used for the coastal theater of the Liaodong Peninsula, equipped with ladders and mast-top cages, supplemented by the latest high-precision and high-power telescopes, so that the army dispatch within dozens of miles along the coast could be clearly seen.

Therefore, the Qing army retreated along the Liaoxi Corridor, and the Ming army found out at the first time. Unless the Qing army chooses to cross Yanshan and take the road north of Yanshan, it can avoid detection.

After the Ming army detected the enemy's situation, it did not need to come back by boat to report, as long as it directly reconnoitred sand boats every 20 miles at sea and carried beacons as a relay, it could communicate with the Great Wall on a principle, and in one or two hours, the military information would be transmitted back to the main camp in Shanhaiguan.

Therefore, Haoge originally planned to secretly keep it secret, preferably for a day or two after the main force retreated, so that the Ming army could learn that Shanhaiguan was empty. In fact, only two hours after he left, the Ming army decided everything, and spread the news to the whole army, so that the soldiers knew that the Tartars had run away, and now they were going to the mountain customs to pick up the cheap.

The morale of the Ming army suddenly became more and more like a rainbow, and who would not be able to fight in a good wind.

For a while, the artillery once again prepared for fierce firepower, the rifle team crossed fire from the left and right, and the ironclad soldiers attacked the fortified and swept the tail.

In just a few hours, the thousands of regular troops of the Qing army that Haoge stayed behind the Shanhaiguan Palace were completely annihilated by the Ming army with an overwhelming superiority in troops.

Those strong men who were temporarily captured were even worse, and they were also annihilated by two or three thousand people, and the rest all collapsed and surrendered directly on their knees, turned their guns to help the Ming army.

Haoge's troops who stayed in Shanhaiguan to delay time only dragged on for half a day, and Huang Degong and Li Dingguo chased them out of Shanhaiguan, biting Haoge's tail, and the two armies were only separated by forty miles, all the way to the northeast.

This rhythm completely disappointed Hauge's original expectations.

Moreover, Huang Degong and Li Dingguo were not afraid that the troops would be disjointed in the pursuit and the Qing army would turn back and kill them. Because the Ming army already had an absolute advantage by sea, the flanks of the army were protected by sea ships during the pursuit, and there were Hongyi cannons on the sea ships that could be followed by maneuver.

Haoge didn't believe in this evil at first, and after fleeing in the direction of Ningyuan for a day, seeing that the Ming army was catching up behind, he wanted to take advantage of the rest of the camp at night and the lax vigilance of the Ming army, and organize the cavalry team to fight back at dawn and force Huang Degong back.

However, Huang Degong and Li Dingguo's march was always steady and steady by the sea, and they would not go too far inland.

When Huang Degong's front army encountered Haoge's cavalry and turned back to kill him, Huang Degong immediately let all his troops turn their backs to the sea to ensure that the back would not be surrounded by the Qing cavalry, and then fired on three sides with rifle fire, and the Qing cavalry had to pay heavy casualties if they wanted to rush up.

At the same time, because the Ming army was arrayed from the sea, the cavalry of the Qing army rushed up, and soon found that they were actually within the coverage range of the Ming navy's naval guns.

Therefore, although the Ming pursuers did not carry too much army heavy artillery with the army, as long as they marched along the western Liaoning corridor and did not go deep inland, they could be covered by naval artillery at any time. This thing is much more vigorous than Liu Yu's defeat of the Northern Wei cavalry a thousand years ago.

After several attempts, in the end, at the cost of the Qing army leaving thousands of cavalry corpses and wounded soldiers, they retreated in a panic, and Haoge could only completely give up the idea of "pulling the Ming army's pursuers out of touch in the process of escaping, not caring for each other, and then finding the right time to kill the horse pistol".

"The application of the Southern Barbarians to the navy is really sharp and vicious, it seems that in the future, even the Western Liaoning Corridor will not be able to be used in the army, so they can only go to the prairie. This is nothing, if all parts of the coastal areas of Liaodong are not safe, can I only completely abandon the coast and retreat inland? ”

The thought of this possibility made Hauge's heart almost overwhelmed with pain.

But now that it's come to this, what else can he do? can only look forward, see the moves, and take one step at a time.

It had not been enough to come out of the pain of the failure to return to the horse pistol, and the next morning, the Qing army received a new piece of bad news one after another, which once again dealt a heavy blow to their morale:

Both Ningyuan and Jinzhou have been confirmed to be lost! It was during the time when Hauge's army rushed back from Shanhaiguan to help! From the attack to the fall, the defenders of the two places did not survive for three days!

Hauge was furious and slapped the messenger with bad news, trying to find out the details. In the end, I was told that the Ming army crossed the sea, and actually brought a sufficient amount of siege heavy artillery, and suddenly stepped up the offensive yesterday, and then cooperated with some of the wavering soldiers in the city to respond internally, and there were many Liaodong defenders who were Wu Sangui and other Ming army generals The old troops surrendered to the army, and it took a multi-pronged approach to break the city so quickly.

After Hauge carefully sorted out this rhythm, a shudder actually rose in his heart.

And Man Dahai and Yue Le, who discussed and made decisions with him, also saw some clues. Man Dahai was relatively more experienced, and suddenly exclaimed:

"Not good! I'm afraid that either the Ming army pretended to fail to break through the city quickly at the beginning, or it was seducing our army to rescue Ning Yuan! The Ming army must have enough siege artillery to forcibly break the city as soon as it came up! But I didn't take it out the day before yesterday, and I only took it out yesterday, which is to show weakness and seduce our army at the beginning! ”

As for what to seduce specifically, people who understand it have already understood it at this point, isn't it to seduce Haoge who is reluctant to Ningyuan, reluctant to Jinzhou, reluctant to cross the Yanshan retreat and must give up the heavy grain and grass and broken infantry, so seduce Haoge to place a bigger bet on the card table!

These words were broken by Mandahai, and Hauge's prestige inevitably decreased a little. At this point, the Qing army has basically recognized that Hauge's level of dealing with the Southern Barbarians is at most the same as that of Duoduo Dolgon! It couldn't be stronger than them!

It's just that the Qing State has had enough civil strife, and after all, Dolgon has made a mistake at the grand strategic level, and its forces have been uprooted, so there is nothing to regret now, only to follow Hauge all the way to the dark.

The generals just sighed, but they didn't give birth to dissent, and at most they were demoralized.

……

At this point, everything that should have been lost has already been lost, and it is impossible to directly give up the baggage and infantry and then change to climb the mountain.

Because Ningyuan City is not a checkpoint after all, but just a lonely city.

Even if Zhang Mingzhen's division of the Ming army landed with Wu Sangui and took Ningyuan, it would not be able to completely intercept and cut off the entire Liaoxi corridor, and the Qing army could still retreat around the lonely city.

Unless Ningyuan can be the same as Shanhaiguan, and there is a supporting Great Wall to stop it completely, then it is called impossible to break through, there is only a lonely city, and if you don't give it a try, you will be too sorry for the sunk cost of the Qing army so far.

And the end result, of course, is "try and die".

On the sixth day of September, the Qing army gathered the main force and prepared to forcibly pass around the city from the northwest of Ningyuan City and continue to flee to the northeast.

When marching, the Qing army was also on guard, once Zhang Mingzhen and Wu Sangui, who had just entered Ningyuan City for less than two days, dared to go out of the city to harass, they would immediately fight back with the main force of the Qing army!

As a result, Wu Sangui was more iron-headed than Hauge imagined,

He didn't wait for the Qing army to pass half of the time, and then stop the waist to intercept, let alone wait for the main force of the Qing cavalry to pass most of it, and chase the rear to cover up the infantry and baggage team.

Wu Sangui directly chose to go out of the city a few hours in advance to line up when the vanguard of the Qing army had not yet bypassed Ningyuan City, and also seized the time to dig a little trench and rammed earth wall, and then blocked the road, just like Wang Ping in the street pavilion.

Seeing this scene, Hauge also understood:

"Wu Sangui has such a big appetite after this little bit of people? Counting on the encirclement and annihilation of the lone army to the west of Ningyuan? Just by his little bit of people? Zhu Shuren shouldn't trust Wu Sangui very much! I haven't heard that there is another elite army for Wu Sangui to deploy, and his subordinates are only that little bit of the old Guanning army, less than 30,000 people, and they still expect to stop my main force of the Qing Dynasty? ”

Although the Ming army sent troops from the sea as much as possible to circumvent the rear with a great dispatch force, after all, there were two places to be shared, Ningyuan and Jinzhou. Moreover, from Denglai to cross the sea, each ship will carry more than 100 people, and the troops on the sea will be left behind.

The entire capacity of the Ming army, including the sailors, is about 70,000 or 80,000 people, and after removing the sailors, the rest is divided into two halves, and Ningyuan and Jinzhou are each divided into less than 30,000.

Therefore, the current situation is that the total strength of the Qing army under Haoge is 60,000 or 70,000 Manchurian, Han and Mongolian, plus some auxiliary soldiers who transport grain. In the face of Wu Sangui's 20,000 or 30,000 people blocking the road in front of him, Huang Degong and Li Dingguo's army of more than 100,000 people pursued in the follow-up.

As long as Wu Sangui dragged Haoge for a day at most, or even more than half a day, Huang Degong and Li Dingguo would be able to catch up and cover up the rear army that backstabbed Haoge.

If Haoge wants to live, there are only two ways, either to break through Wu Sangui before Huang Degong and Li Dingguo catch up,

Either before Huang Degong catches up, he judges that he really can't break through Wu Sangui, then he flees north over Yanshan.

However, this kind of measure to cross Yanshan only at the end of the matter is destined to be dangerous and difficult, and the troops with poor mobility will definitely be bitten and turned into cannon fodder. At that time, only the cavalry will be able to escape, and not all of them will be able to escape with certainty. As for the infantry, they were all doomed.

"Assault of the whole army! Be sure to completely defeat and chisel through Wu Sangui's department before noon! Can't be delayed! After noon, Huang Degong will catch up at any time, and then our army will be attacked on the back of the enemy! In this battle for the survival of the Qing Dynasty, the generals must do their best to break through with 120,000 points of death! Kill! ”

Haoge knew that he didn't have time to hesitate Hanhu, so he directly ignored any rules and regulations, and rushed the whole army's combat power to the face of Wu Sangui, who was blocking the road.

……

Wu Sangui, who was on the other side, saw the Qing army assaulting and charging to the death, and his heart was also in a trance.

At that moment, he suddenly felt that the scene in front of him was very similar to that of more than seven years ago, in Shanhaiguan, when he and Li Zicheng were fighting!

It's a pity that he misjudged the situation back then, and he became a spurned wolf intruder.

In that battle, he also needed to fight with Li Zicheng for most of the day with the descendants of the Guanning army, and then Dolgon led the Qing cavalry to attack Li Zicheng from the flank.

And today, it has become that he needs to intercept Haoge's charge in the head, fight with Haoge first and drag on for most of the day, and wait for Daming's allies Huang Degong and Li Dingguo to catch up and cover the back stabbing behind Haoge.

"It's so similar, that war back then, and then almost ruined my reputation for the rest of my life. If we can win this battle today, maybe we can completely wash away the shame of the year? Leave a good name in the future? ”

Wu Sangui is also a person with courage and blood, in history he finally rebelled against the Qing, and now it is nothing more than abandoning the secret and surrendering to the Ming for ten years, although it is capricious many times, but only in terms of force, this person can still fight.

Moreover, since the decisive battle in Hebei, he also led the Guan Ning army to make meritorious contributions on the flank, Zhang Huangyan's trust in him has also increased a little.

Now, although the Guanning army is not equipped with the latest Wuchang-made rifles or even rifled guns, those early Wuchang-made five-year-old ones have been issued to him with thousands of rods, as well as 20 cavalry guns, which can be regarded as a good military treatment. With these new equipment at the bottom, his 20,000 infantry and three or four thousand Guanning iron cavalry also have the confidence to fight to the death.

"The whole army must fight to the death! Those who retreat without permission will be killed! The tartar is already a dead fish in the kettle, and I will win the whole thing! Rifle queue formation! Guan Ning Iron Cavalry is ready to make a roundabout side attack! As soon as you see that the Tartars are trying to make a detour to the north, go up and volley! ”

Wu Sangui personally brandished his sword and rode his horse to supervise the battle, and as the Qing army swarmed up, the two sides were quickly strangled together.

"Bang bang bang-" Thousands of Longwu three-year-old Wuchangzao opened fire one after another, and with the firepower of other birds, they took turns to shoot and shoot, and before the Qing infantry approached, they cut down rows of soldiers like wheat.

Haoge didn't want the Manchurian cavalry to rush the first wave and wanted to preserve the core strength, so he let the infantry cannon fodder of the Han army flag first. Unexpectedly, in the face of the organized interception of the Ming army, the Han army banner infantry rushed so inefficiently, and the casualties increased sharply but the progress was slow.

When firearms are out of order, infantry-to-infantry charges can easily turn into one-sided slaughter. After the Ming army fired wildly and inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy, the morale rose more and more, and the soldiers of Guanning shouted a fierce battle, and the sound shook for miles.

Haoge saw that Wu Sangui had boosted his morale, so he had no choice but to let the Manchurian iron cavalry take the lead in the charge at any cost, and at the same time, the infantry also followed at full speed, seizing every moment of the time difference between friendly troops and their lives.

Outside the city of Ningyuan, there was a flow of blood and pestles, and thousands of lives passed quickly in a short period of a few quarters of an hour, and the corpses and wounded soldiers were resting on their pillows.

The more Hauge fought, the more frightened he became, why did his subordinate Wu Sangui, who he thought was no big deal, become so tough and backbone now?

The Qing army was consumed in waves, and after repeatedly rushing and killing in waves, after paying a heavy price, there was indeed a part of the cavalry troops that completely penetrated Wu Sangui's defense line and rushed to the back of the Ming army.

The problem is that even though some parts of the front have been cut through, the remaining Ming troops still stick to their positions, neither retreating or collapsing because their flanks are exposed, nor even fleeing back to Ningyuan City out of fear and choosing to defend the city.

It can only be said that with the revival of the Ming Dynasty, everyone knows that the Ming Dynasty is the winning side, and after the morale comes up, everyone is bolder, not to mention that the Guan Ning Army is known for its bravery, and after such a blessing, it is even more unimaginable for Haoge.

On the contrary, after some of the Qing troops successfully broke through the siege, they didn't think about returning to help their comrades. Then the breakout troops left the battlefield directly......

There was a strange scene on the battlefield, although the Qing army had a small number of successful breakthroughs, but the advantage of troops was getting smaller and smaller, and those who stood out only fled for their lives, and did not turn back to backstab the friendly troops-

The main thing is that they know that it may not be useful to turn back, the Ming army's musket hollow phalanx broken cavalry has long been accustomed to the Qing army, and they know that the firepower behind the Ming army can also be very strong.

In this case, even though the Ming army was made some gaps in the local area by the Qing army at any cost, it caused the Qing army to flee by grabbing the road, and everyone wanted to rush through these gaps to find a way to survive for themselves.

Although Wu Sangui could not completely annihilate the enemy, he also desperately let the rifle team squeeze into the gap, and frantically strafed the gap from the left and right sides with crossfire.

All of a sudden, the road to death was full of corpses of the Qing army, and for every person who broke through, at least two or three died on the road.

The chaotic bloody battle lasted for half a day, and it was not until noon that the Qing army failed to completely defeat Wu Sangui, and the remaining strength ratio on the battlefield began to reverse.

Seeing that Huang Degong and Li Dingguo could appear at any time, Haoge had no choice but to grit his teeth and lead the cavalry troops that had not yet stood out at the end to cross Yanshan Mountain to the north, and escape around the grassland with the last time difference.

And the infantry and baggage that are still in the encirclement can only be used as the queen of the palace to delay time, and they are completely lost to Huang Degong.

In the early afternoon, Huang Degong and Li Dingguo finally arrived at the battlefield, and with the remnants of Wu Sangui, who had suffered heavy losses after the bloody battle, they attacked back and forth, completely annihilating the Qing army's infantry artillery and baggage team, which were exhausted in all aspects.

After this battle, Haoge was like a frightened bird, and he didn't dare to think about going through the West Liaoning Corridor and breaking through Jinzhou again, and the remaining remnants all went to the grassland north of Yanshan, and the wolf rushed back to Shengjing.

In the successive bloody battles since Shanhaiguan, the Manchu armed forces have lost at least 20,000 or 30,000 people, resulting in the total number of Manchu men falling from 70,000 to 40,000 or 50,000, which is extremely weak.

The Han and Mongolian troops and the cannon fodder of the strong men added up to tens of thousands, and the prestige of the Qing court was completely gone.

And what made Hauge most angry was that when he fled back to Shengjing, a few days later, he sent scouts to investigate, and he was still in a panic that the Ming army would take advantage of the victory to pursue.

However, after the Ming army won three big victories in Shanhaiguan, Ningyuan, and Jinzhou, it actually shook a shot and left only soldiers to guard Shanhaiguan, while Ningyuan and Jinzhou were abandoned by the Ming army, and directly emptied the money, food, and materials and the population withdrew to the pass, leaving the empty city to the Qing army.

Obviously, Zhang Huangyan's plan is to consume the living force of the Manchu Qing Dynasty!

He now has the advantage of the navy, as long as the Qing army dares to come back to occupy Ningyuan, the Ming army can cut off the road at any time and come to harvest another wave!

In contrast, if the Ming army defended Ningyuan, it would have to disperse its forces and leave various flaws for the Qing army, so it was better to shrink its forces and put the enemy closer to fight, with the core goal of killing more enemy soldiers and bleeding.

Anyway, killing a Qing soldier in Ningyuan is definitely much less labor-saving than going to Shengjing to kill a Qing soldier.

After Hauge figured all this, he was completely out of luck, and he didn't dare to occupy the empty city. The 400 miles of the Liaoxi Corridor has gradually become a no-man's land, and both sides are shrinking, not giving the enemy a chance to cut off the road after a roundabout.