The first half of the tenth year of Longwu is destined to be a golden harvest season in the history of the Ming Dynasty.

Decades of great troubles have been forced to surrender under the opening of the way called the Menqing Fort Sect.

What surprised Zhu Shuren the most was that although it was impossible for Haoge to be persuaded to surrender by this cowardly brother, the Horqin Mongols next door were coincidentally punished, and finally they were given the grace and power of the Ming Dynasty, and directly chose to surrender and send hostages.

and expressed his willingness to turn against him and help Daming fight Hauge together.

The reason for the persuasion and the steps given by the Ming Dynasty are actually very logical on the surface:

You, the Horqin Mongols, are estranged from the Manchus and seek to survive separately. It is nothing more than Hauge who killed his father's side concubine and the traitor Bumu Butai (Xiaozhuang), and Bumu Butai is your current Prince of Korqin, Borzigit. Wu Keshan's sister, that's why you broke with Hauge.

But now that the Manchu puppet emperor Fulin has surrendered to my Daming, and he came to call the door in person, Fulin must be opposed to Haoge killing his biological mother, Fulin is Wu Keshan's nephew, now give you a step down, why don't you surrender and survive quickly?

Borzigit. Wu Keshan was known to the Ming envoy for his benefit, and finally said that he could help fight Haoge in exchange for the Mongolian ministries not being liquidated by the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, Horqin's surrender and Qingbao Sect's call were only the last inducements, and the real decisive factor was that Liu Guoneng and Huang Degong completely hurt them last year.

Soon after Horqin surrendered, it was only two months after the Chahar tribe surrendered to the Ming Dynasty.

At this point, the eastern part of Mongolia in later generations, that is, the southern part of Mongolia, which corresponds to the north of Shanxi, Hebei, and Liaodong provinces of Daming, can be regarded as completely subjugating the Ming Dynasty.

These Eastern Mongolian tribes had a general category at that time, that is, Tatar, in addition to Chahar and Korqin, there were also Erut and Khalkha tribes composed of Buryats in northern Mo, as well as Ordos and Tumut tribes in southern Mo.

The Buryats, who were far north of the desert and could reach Lake Baikal, were gradually annexed by the Rakshasas in the following decades, and established the Yeniseisk and Krasnoyarsk strongholds in the homeland of the Erut and Khalkha tribes. At present, that place is too far away from Daming, and I can't manage it for a while, so there is no need to worry.

The Ordos Department of Monan has little strength, they are actually the followers of the Chahar Department and the Korqin Department, and they are semi-vassal. Since the Ming Dynasty conquered Horqin and Chahar, Ordos was only a little hesitant, and he surrendered after half pushing and half pushing, and also said that the ministers sent hostages, and also accepted a certain degree of dispatch from the Ming Dynasty.

It's just that Mongolia is very large, and even if all the Tatar tribes are wiped out, the half of Mongolia north of Shaanxi and Gansu in the west will still be in a state of self-reliance until it returns to Xinjiang. From west to east, there were also the Mongol Dzungar tribe and the old Ming rival Warat.

(Note: At this point in history, Warat had been renamed "Oirat Mongol" by the Central Plains Dynasty, but that was the name changed by the Qing rulers.) Now the Ming Dynasty is still there, so continue to use the old name of the Ming Dynasty for it)

The priority of these two opponents is definitely much lower than the complete pursuit of Haoge's remnants, and after Daming gets Haoge, he will recuperate for a few years, and it will not be too late to take care of them slowly. Anyway, they don't have a direct military conflict with the Ming Dynasty now, so they are not afraid to wait.

……

The Korqin Mongols surrendered in April of the 10th year of Longwu, and the Chahar tribe in June.

So in July of this year, as the entire territory of Liaodong was basically digested by the Ming Dynasty, and the two Mongolian tribes also defected, the Ming Dynasty was finally ready to launch a final battle against the Songnen Plain, where Haoge was entrenched.

Hauge has been cultivating Hokkaido's cold-tolerant rice and Sakhalin rye in the Songnen Plain for three years. Now in two months, it will be the harvest season of the year, but unfortunately the grain planted by Haoge this year is destined to be cheaper than Daming, and Daming will not give them the opportunity to eat new rice.

Before the war, I have to talk about how Hauge spent his last year.

Since he sold his younger brother Fulin in November of the ninth year of Longwu and let Fulin be besieged in Shengjing, he himself ran away with the main force and henchmen, and chose Jilin City as his temporary capital for Daxin.

Haoge obviously would not admit Fulin's surrender, so in Layue of that year, after hearing the news of Fulin's capture, the remaining 20,000 men and nearly 200,000 women and children of the Manchu Qing Dynasty supported Haoge to ascend the throne as emperor around Jilin and inherit his so-called orthodoxy in the Qing Dynasty.

When Haoge ascended the throne, it was the second month of the lunar month, and he was not in a hurry to change the year name, and stayed up until the first day of the first month of Longwu in the south on New Year's Day, and Haoge held a full set of ceremonies in Jilin, amnesty the world, walked the three-day ceremonial process, and changed the Yuan Zhaoxing, in order to show his ambition to rejuvenate the Qing Dynasty and restore his homeland.

At the beginning, Zhuge Liang gave Liu Chan the name of the year was Jianxing, and the picture was to revive the Han Dynasty and return to the old capital, and this era name was used from Liu Chan's accession to the throne to three years after Zhuge Liang's death. The Manchu high-level staff of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" master, of course, Haoge will also compare himself with this, hoping to revive the Qing Dynasty, so he changed the construction to Zhao, and the others remain unchanged.

After the change of Yuan ascended the throne, under the rule of Haoge, there were only the last 200,000 Manchus, including more than 20,000 adult men, and 600,000 Han and Mongolian people, a total of 800,000 people, who farmed in the Songnen Plain and a few other northern settlements.

There are no more than five or six cities in the territory, and the rest are township settlements, and there are no walls at all.

Because all the areas in the south with a certain industrial base have been lost, Hauge now has no production capacity for gunpowder and cannons, at most he only has a few craftsmen who still remember the experience and craftsmanship of pharmaceutical cannon casting, but he can't start work.

With the rest of his troops, he can only return to a pure cavalry and archery state, but fortunately, cold weapons and armor are still enough.

In such a situation, in July of the tenth year of Longwu, Haoge ushered in a full-scale attack by the Ming army.

The Ming army took advantage of the fact that the hottest season of summer had just passed, and the weather was going to turn a little cooler, but there were still two or three months before it would be cold, which was the best time of the year to use troops in the north.

Because there is no river and waterway connection, the Ming army did not use infantry to fight this time, and chose the whole cavalry to fight against Hauge in a field battle. At most, dozens of cavalry cannons can be pulled with the army, and if necessary, they can bombard the small county town of Jilin.

Ningguta and the county seat of Jilin are not strong at all, and the city has only been built for a few years, and the city walls are made of rammed earth without any additional reinforcement. This is already very good in the hinterland of the northeast, and there may not even be a city wall in other places.

The Ming army mobilized a total of 80,000 cavalry troops, as well as more than 20,000 Mongolian servants, 10,000 each in Chahar and Horqin, and thousands in Ordos, making a total of 100,000 troops and going straight to Jilin.

……

Hauge learned that the Ming army was coming, and it took only two or three days to find out the size of the Ming army.

When he learned that the Ming army was all cavalry, he was also shocked, knowing that he would definitely not be able to withstand the more than 20,000 Manchurian men in his hands alone.

"The Southern Barbarians can actually pull up 100,000 cavalry? That's impossible! A few years ago, during the decisive battle of Neihuang, the Ming army also attacked with all the strength of the whole country, and only mobilized 60,000 or 70,000 cavalry.

When Shengjing was broken last year, the cavalry was only harassed, and the number of users was only 30,000 or 40,000, and the main force still relied on infantry artillery to fight! How did it take so much time to be able to muster 100,000 cavalry? There are still some people with two horses? ”

The expansion rate of the Ming Dynasty's military strength has obviously exceeded Hauge's imagination.

In the end, Ao Bai and other generals who followed him also felt a little desperate, and Ao Bai could only persuade stubbornly: "Your Majesty! Now the crisis is afraid that it has surpassed the battle of Salhu of Taizu back then. The city of Jilin is low, and the Ming army has heavy artillery, and if you defend the city, the battle of Shengjing is a lesson from the past.

For today's plan, there is absolutely no chance to rely on my 20,000 remnants of the Manchurian army alone, only by arming all the Han and Mongolian servants, at least plus our Manchurian own soldiers, making up forty or fifty thousand, and then we 'no matter how many ways come, I will only go all the way', using the Ming army to attack together, before there is no division, break one of the roads, only have hope of survival! ”

Aobai's suggestion cannot be said to be unreasonable.

It turned out that this time, in order to better encircle and annihilate Haoge, the Ming army also chose the path of dividing its troops and attacking from multiple directions, in order to annihilate some more Qing soldiers and prevent them from becoming guerrilla forces and hiding in the white mountains and black waters after they were scattered, so as to fight an encirclement decisive battle on the Songnen Plain.

100,000 Ming troops, from the east, west, north and south, each side is 20,000 or 30,000 people, of which the 20,000 people on the north road are the weakest, that there are only thousands of elite cavalry of the Ming army to supervise, the leader of the Ming army is Zhu Wenzhen, and the main force is the defected Horqin and Chahar Mongols, from the Horqin grassland in the northwest to detour.

The east, west and south roads were relatively stronger, and the West Route Army was also outflanked from the direction of the grassland, but it was intercepted and killed from the junction of the Horqin and Chahar grasslands to the east, and the general of the Ming army was Li Fuming, with about 30,000 people.

The Southern Route Army is the strongest, directly from Shenyang to the north, there are also 30,000 people, the general with the troops is Huang Degong, the number is about the same as the West Route Army, but the South Route Army also brought the most cavalry artillery, once it encounters the Qing army defending the city, the South Route Army is responsible for steadily attacking and breaking the city.

The strength of the final Eastern Route Army is about the same as that of the Northern Route Army, with a total strength of 20,000 troops, which is slightly less than the Northern Route Army, but because the weapons and equipment are all genuine Ming Army, the actual combat strength should be stronger than the Northern Route Army, which is dominated by Mongolian cavalry.

The generals of the Eastern Route Army included Wu Sangui and Li Yu, Wu Sangui brought 10,000 Ming troops, and Li Yu also brought 10,000 Korean soldiers who nominally belonged to the Ming army (Li Yu was the general soldier of Dongjiang Town in the Ming Dynasty, but his blood belonged to the Koreans. The territory laid by the troops he led belonged to the Ming Dynasty), and was responsible for blocking the various passes from the Songnen Plain to the Changbai Mountains.

The reason for arranging this road is also to take into account the lack of troops in the Ming dynasty who have a better understanding of the geographical situation in the Changbai Mountains and are well versed in the mountain warfare in the Changbai Mountains, so they have to borrow some Korean tribesmen to reinforce them.

Of these four roads, there are 20,000 people at the weakest, and if Hauge only relies on his own 20,000 full soldiers to fight, even if "let you come several ways, I will only go all the way", it will be no fun.

He couldn't even beat a quarter of the total strength of the Ming army, let alone wheel warfare.

To put it mildly, the 20,000 full soldiers that Hauge still has on hand now must not be compared with the combat strength of Nuerha Chihuang Taiji, and even far from being compared with the full army during Dorgon's entry into the customs.

The remaining 20,000 people are old veterans who have died and died, and the reserves have been pulled up again to make up the numbers, and there is no way to guarantee the quality of the soldiers, and they have reached the point where they have to be soldiers if they are adult men. Among them, the rest of the veterans of a hundred battles, no more than a third,

Another third are old and weak, or disabled, and the last third are just adults or have never actually killed anyone on the battlefield.

Moreover, the weapons and equipment of the Qing army were significantly worse than those of the cavalry of the Ming army!

Hauge can only hope to expand the size of his troops, pull up 50,000 people, and concentrate 20,000 people on one of the Chong Ming troops, if he can break through the encirclement, then he can still escape for his life.

As for whether those Han and Mongolian soldiers would fight back like the slaves in the Battle of Muye, it was no longer something he could control.

……

Hauge hoped to give full play to the advantages of internal combat and pick an opportunity to break the Ming army, and the Ming army of course also knew this risk, so the scouts of the four armies were scattered far away, and they paid great attention to keeping the pace of the marching speed of each army, so as not to appear that a certain army arrived at the battlefield too early and gave the enemy too much time in vain.

After all, Daming has already encountered the lessons of the defeat of Salhu decades ago, and the importance of synergy has reached an unrepeatable level.

Almost every day, scouts traveling 300 miles a day would be sent to communicate with each other to confirm their respective positions and the positions of the enemy that had been detected, and to resynchronize.

I just hate that there is no radio station in this era, otherwise several troops that are more than 200 miles apart on the way to attack can also communicate instantaneously and know the real-time location of friendly forces-

Historically, Western tactics evolved from the "inner line advantage" of the Napoleonic era to the "outside line advantage" of Moltke's era, and the two most important technological breakthroughs relied on were radio and railroad.

Before the emergence of these two technologies, the inner line did have certain advantages, and the outside line could not make up for it completely, so it could only rely on frequent fast horse communication to alleviate symptoms.

And providence seems to be helping the Ming Dynasty, because the battlefield of this battle is far flatter than the battle of Salhu - the battle of Salhu took place in the area equivalent to Fushun today, which has left the Liaohe Plain around Shenyang and entered the edge of the Changbai Mountains, so the troops are inconvenient.

In today's battle of Songnen County, except for Jilin County, which is located on the edge of a relatively dangerous mountainous area, a large area of Songyuan, Fuyu and other places east of Jilin County are all Songnen Great Plains.

The black soil plain in the northeast is larger than the North China Plain. Fighting a large-scale cavalry encirclement and annihilation battle on such a large plain with a flat river, the mobility is much easier than that of the Changbai Mountain in Sarhu.

After hauge gathered his troops, he originally tried to find a breakthrough from the Horqin Mongol rebels in the north, but the Horqin cavalry scouts scattered far away, and when they saw Hauge's main force approaching, they actually slowed down, and even retreated and pulled for a while, so that Hauge could not catch up with the battle at all.

Haoge had no choice but to swing a shot, turn east, and assume the posture of wanting to drill into the Changbai Mountain guerrilla attack and break through Li Yu's North Korean soldiers. After Zhu Wenzhen in the north got the news, he urged the thousands of Ming cavalry under his command, as well as the Horqin Chahar cavalry as a servant, to speed up the pursuit and close the distance with the Qing army.

When confirming that Zhu Wenzhen and the Horqin cavalry were still a hundred miles away from him, he suddenly turned around and killed a horse pistol, and this time he did not hesitate to attack at full speed. Finally, half a day later, I caught up with Zhu Wenzhen, who wanted to turn around again.

However, after these two false pulls, the basic skills of the Ming army were not in vain, because Zhu Wenzhen and Li Yu gave Huang Degong and Li Fuming time to approach. As long as Zhu Wenzhen and Haoge are not defeated for a day, Huang Degong and Li Fuming can rush to make Haoge dumplings.