Throughout the first half of April, the Marines were attempting landing operations in the Liaoning West Corridor, covering more than 100 kilometers of coastline from Ningyuan to Jinzhou.

In the process, Li Zhaoji discovered that the Qing army today is no longer the Qing army during the Northern Expedition, and its army has undergone earth-shaking changes, and in the process of reforming the army, some distinctive types of troops have been born.

Causing problems for the Marines was the cavalry artillery corps, which consisted mainly of the Han army of the Eight Banners. The Han military banner improved the gun carriage for its light artillery, making it lighter and more durable, and mainly used a 150 kg Franc cannon, for which a low, four-wheeled gun carriage was made, and a prefabricated wooden shield could be placed on the gun carriage.

Whenever the marines landed on a certain beach, this mounted artillery unit would arrive under the escort of the musketeers, because the artillery was light, so it was easy to deploy, but upon arrival, the musketeers dismounted, and did not take the initiative to attack, but built fortifications, mainly breastworks, with shovels carried with their horses.

When the Marines finally completed the assembly near the coastline, they launched an attack with cavalry as the vanguard, which was both a field gun and a shield vehicle, and the flintlock muskets used by the Marines could not break their wooden shields, while the Furlong had a good range, and it was specially used for shotguns, which were sprayed at the line infantry from a distance of 300 meters, all the way to 150 meters.

Because in the early days of the landing, the field guns of the marines could not go ashore, and although the light 24-pounder mortar could provide support, the accuracy was too poor, and the Qing cavalry artillery units had a range advantage every time.

This artillery was not without its drawbacks, and its one-piece four-wheeled gun carriage was not easy to steer, so as long as the infantry charged, especially from both flanks, it could avoid its fire, but it would be hit by the Qing musketeers.

After four failed landings, Li Zhaoji decided not to be opportunistic, but chose Huludao as the landing site.

This is a peninsula deep into the Bohai Sea, surrounded by the sea on three sides, and there are hills and streams on the peninsula, and it was here that the Eastern Brigade covered the retreat of the Cantonese army in the war of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen.

On the peninsula, there are fortifications built by the Qing army, and heavy Hongyi cannons guard this sea area. The navy approached the capital ship and successively destroyed the Qing army's artillery positions by firing flowering shells with a ninety-pound gun, and then landed on Huludao.

The rugged terrain made it impossible for the Qing army's cavalry artillery units to approach, and the main force of the marines departing from Juehua Island completed the landing, and after the army's most elite Tamsui Brigade also landed, on the morning of 17 April, they occupied Lianshan Fort and Shuangshu Fort, the enlarged landing grounds.

It's just that the Qing army did not give Li Zhaoji the opportunity to land the main force here.

"Are you sure that Ning Yuan has no enemies anymore." Li Zhaoji had just received the news of the occupation of Lianshan Fort and Shuangshu Fort, and was about to go ashore to boost his morale, when he saw a dhow coming and gave him a surprising news.

The defenders of Ningyuan Fortress were all withdrawn, and there was no one around Ningyuan.

"Yes, all of them were withdrawn, not a single person, not even a living thing." The person in charge of reporting was the operational staff officer, and he brought the text signed by Zhao Dahe, which means that the news has been endorsed by Zhao Dahe.

However, the troops who landed on Huludao found no trace of the Qing army's retreat, but Li Zhaoji would not let go of such a good opportunity, and immediately ordered Zhao Dahe's army to land directly, and occupied Ningyuan Fortress that night.

Immediately, Ningyuan's army established contact with the marines in Huludao, and in this section of the Liaoxi Corridor, the Qing army was no longer visible, and the reconnaissance team only found that Azig stationed in Ningyuan did not retreat westward to Jinzhou, but went north into the Yanshan Mountains.

Zhao Dahe sent the landed cavalry troops to pursue along the tracks, but in the end they did not find the main force of Azig.

However, the disengagement between the two sides was not a bad thing for the Oriental Trading Company, which was able to complete all the landings, occupy the Ningyuan Fortress, have a solid foothold, and improve the port facilities.

The landing and reconnaissance lasted until 1 May, and half a month was enough time for Li Zhaoji to figure everything out.

The Liaoxi Corridor was a preset battlefield for the Manchu Qing Dynasty. In the aftermath of the Peninsular War, the brothers Bolo and Yue Le presided over the work of the Liaoxi Corridor and constructed a new defensive posture.

All the people of the West Liaoning Corridor, regardless of the Eight Banners or the Green Camp, all moved inward, but not to the east of Liaodong, but to the north, into the Songling, Montenegro two Yanshan remnants, not only the people of the West Liaoxi moved in, the Manchu Qing also moved from the Dynasty, Xian 40,000 households into this mountain range, in the valley areas such as the Big and Small Ling River, especially the Daling River, and the core is the Daling River Valley, which was called Chaoyang City in later generations.

This directly changed the disadvantage of the Manchus in western Liaoning. In the past, in the face of naval attacks, the narrow Liaoxi Corridor could be cut off at any time, but now it is different, whether it is the landing of the Eastern Trading Company at sea or the Shun army out of Shanhaiguan, as long as it attacks in the direction of Liaodong, the Qing army can attack from the northern valley and cut off its supply lines.

However, if the threat to the north is solved first, it will be necessary to go deep into the mountains with complex terrain, and the advantage of firearms will be greatly weakened, not to mention the heavy artillery that the Oriental Trading Company is proud of.

Li Zhaoji figured these things out and had to praise the wisdom of the Aixin Jueluo clan, but fortunately, he was not Wuxia Ameng.

The military power of the Oriental Trading Company has been expanded in the past few years, and the army under the command of Lee Zhaoji is the strongest force.

This army included the army's Second Army, the Third Army, two field armies, the First Marine Division, the Guards Division, and the 3,000 troops of Chen Ping's division sent by the Ming Dynasty.

In addition, Li Zhaoji also added a large number of heavy artillery and baggage troops to this corps, and established a separate cavalry division to strengthen it.

Of the main forces of the trading company, only the First Army was still stationed along the Han River, but that was no longer an elite force.

Originally, the First Army was the most elite, but in order to confuse the Manchus, Li Zhaoji transferred four battalions from each of the three infantry brigades of the First Army, and then mixed the garrisons of overseas territories and the army that had served in the army to form the Third Army, and the First Army was mainly recruited from the peninsula.

Both the Marine Corps and the Guards Corps dispatched divisional units, as well as a cavalry division, and the regiments that landed this time were equivalent to three field armies and one cavalry division, with a strength of more than 110,000 troops, or nearly 80,000 even if the number of combatants was counted.

What Li Zhaoji wanted was to finish the battle, and his opponent, the Manchu Qing Dynasty, was also determined, except for the Jilharang Department stationed on the peninsula, the elite was exhausted, with a total of 130,000 troops participating in the battle.

On 10 May, the Eastern Army, which had completely completed the landing, launched an attack to the east, leaving two heavily damaged regiments of the Marine Corps to garrison the Ningyuan fortress, and then quickly launched an attack on the Jinzhou fortress.

However, the Jinzhou fortress was not easy to fight, which was the support point of the Liaoxi defense line carefully built by the Bolo brothers.

This fortress is completely detached from Jinzhou City, but chooses to build a fortress fortress on a river bay high ground in the Xiaoling River, which is built on a high platform, and the north, east and south sides are all surrounded by the Xiaoling River, only the west side has a trumpet-shaped opening, but the width is only more than 1,300 meters.

Taking advantage of the terrain, the Qing army set up four fortifications on the west side of the fortress, with a depth of more than 1,000 meters, equipped with more than 70 red-coated cannons, and countless other light cannons.

There were more than 16,000 troops stationed in the fortress, claiming to be 30,000, and they were all carefully selected. Man Dahai led a total of 3,000 elites in Manchuria Zhenghong and Red as the supervising team, and the artillery was all dispatched from Kong and Geng, only the eight banners accounted for most of them, and the rest was most of the army under Wu Sangui, because he was worried that Wu Sangui had two hearts, and Wu Sangui himself was not in the fortress.

The Jinzhou Fortress learned from the experience of the Ningyuan Fortress, and the site was located more than four kilometers from the coastline, which meant that the fire from the sea could not shell the fortress at all, and even the east side was deliberately led into a ditch, and after the excavation, a large wetland was formed.

After carefully observing the fortress, Li Zhaoji's strategy was to besiege but not attack, the heavy artillery of the Eastern Army of ten and above had just arrived on Juehua Island at this time, and the shells were still in Lushun, so he would not use his life to fill the trenches of Jinzhou Fortress.

The Qing army was stationed along the Xiaoling River, and Li Zhaoji, after stabilizing the logistical supply line, began to deploy troops, and he deployed 55,000 troops of the Second and Third Armies on the 24-kilometer-long stretch from Songlingzi to the mouth of the Xiaoling River, and also sent the navy to feign landings along the coast, constantly forcing the Qing army to disperse its forces.

The cavalry division continued to maneuver along the Xiaoling River, and the engineer regiment also appeared repeatedly, and after Duoduo, who commanded the front, could not figure out the breakthrough point, Li Zhaoji sent the Guards Division to the north to move north to Songlingzi, and Duoduo also knew that this was the most elite unit under Li Zhaoji's command, so he immediately dispatched reserves to the north, and as a result, the seven battalions of the most exhausted Marine Corps completed the breakthrough crossing under the noses of the defenders less than two kilometers north of the Jinzhou fortress and established a bridgehead.

Duoduo sent mounted artillery units to reinforce them, but the pontoon bridge erected by the engineer regiment was very fast, and the six-pounder guns of the Marine Corps and an artillery battalion of the Guards Division quickly crossed the river and suppressed the small-caliber cavalry guns of the Qing army with field artillery, securing the bridgehead.

Li Zhaoji thought that the two sides would engage in a series of fierce battles around the bridgehead, but after Duoduo found that the counterattack of the cavalry artillery troops had failed, he immediately led his more than 60,000 troops to retreat north and entered the Xiaolinghe Valley, putting Li Zhaoji in a dilemma.

If you advance, cross the river to the Daling River defense line that Dolgon is responsible for, you will be attacked by the Jinzhou fortress and the Duoduo army, but if you stop, you will not be able to defeat the Jinzhou fortress if the siege mortar is not in place.

Li Zhaoji's command has always been tactically bold and strategically conservative, so he rejected the attack plan proposed by his subordinates, and instead prepared to pull out the nail of Jinzhou Fortress before moving on.

The reason why he made this decision was because he received information that the strategic reserve of the Dashun side, the army stationed in Qingzhou, had all gone north.

Although it cannot be assumed that Dashun stopped its plan to go south, it at least dispersed the pressure of the Ming State and gave Li Zhaoji more time for the Battle of Liaoxi.

Therefore, Li Zhaoji crossed the Xiaoling River with the main force and arranged it all the way to the east along the exit of the Xiaoling River Valley, forming a line of defense from the Xiaoling River Valley to the mouth of the Daling River.

Li Zhaoji's plan was to take advantage of the narrowness of the valley mouth and the wide water surface of the Daling River to block the Qing army's support for the Jinzhou fortress and gain a window of time to conquer the Jinzhou fortress.

It's just that the Qing army didn't follow Li Zhaoji's script, in fact, they had their own set of scripts, and the Jinzhou fortress was originally designed to be used as bait.

At the end of May, Duoduo sent Bolo with 20,000 men to appear on the northern section of the Daughter River, which was located on the west side of the Xiaoling River, where Li Zhaoji had only placed some vigilant troops, and the main force on the west bank of the Xiaoling River was the Guards Division responsible for the siege.

In desperation, Li Zhaoji could only order the troops on the front line to shrink and defend along the Xiaoling River, while the Guards Division moved north to block Boluo's headquarters.

This undoubtedly broke Li Zhaoji's original battle plan, and because of the mistake in the transmission of information, it led to bad consequences.

The Second Army, which was in charge of the defense of Songling, and the Third Army, which was in charge of the defense of the Daling River, miscommunicated, and the two sides invariably withdrew from the troops in the junction, resulting in a huge gap, through which Yue Le led the cavalry artillery and musketeers to quickly pass, creating countless chaos.