Dominate the Country

ps: Keep asking for subscriptions, especially first subscriptions. Brothers, the subscription for the third chapter of VIP is higher than the first subscription, what's going on? /(ㄒoㄒ)/~~

Two wooden rafts, one large and one small, are located at the narrowest part of the waterway at the mouth of the lake. There are not only cannons but also tall watchtowers on them. Although they are made of wood, they give people the feeling of an island in the middle of the lake when viewed from a distance.

Chen Ming has little experience. When he saw the wooden rafts for the first time, he was dumbfounded. It is really hard to believe that the Qing army could come up with such a thing.

This also highlights the true level of his history novice from the side. When it comes to some major events, his memory is clear, but he is completely ignorant of the specific process of these events.

Around the wooden rafts, there are also Qing army warships docked. Two wooden rafts, one large and one small, together with dozens of surrounding ships, this is the Hukou Water Jam.

Use a telescope to look at Jiujiang Prefecture on the other side of the lake. The wooden city of Meijiazhou on the opposite bank can be clearly seen. It is actually a high-standard camp. As long as it is still made of wood, everything will be easy for Chen Ming.

Of course, the prerequisite for Chen Ming to solve it is to be able to transport the cannon to the west bank.

In front of Chen Ming, on the shore of Hukou, more than a thousand Green Camp soldiers captured in the Battle of Hukou were being driven to build artillery positions. On the wooden raft in the center of the waterway, the Qing soldiers' shells were fired one after another, but they all fell on the shore and the water.

Even if cannons can be installed on the wooden raft, can the Qing army still install the general cannon? They are just small cannons under a thousand catties. The range is below the five-catty cannon of the Fu Han Army. The artillery team of the Fu Han Army can completely build positions outside the range of the Qing soldiers' cannons, and then bombard the wooden rafts completely safely.

So Chen Ming never took the threat of the Hukou water jam seriously.

The surface ships he had were powerless against the Qing army camp on the west bank of Hukou, and they were also powerless against the Hukou water barrier, but the artillery of the Fu Han army could completely clean up the Hukou water barrier on land.

"It's too late to attack Nanchang. Huang Zhenggang has entered Luzhou Prefecture." Chen Ming continued to look at the wooden boat with a telescope, lamenting the urgency of time. We have to race against time!

Where is Luzhou Prefecture? Luzhou Prefecture is Hefei in later generations, only 350 miles away from Anqing.

Although Chen Ming wanted to attack Anqing, he could reach it from Hukou in one day by going down the river.

But it would take less than ten days for the Qing army to reach Anqing.

Chen Ming decided to use five days to clear Jiujiang. Before, in Hukou, one small hill after another took him four days, which was too long. Now we have five days to sweep Jiujiang Prefecture, leaving some troops to garrison Jiujiang and Hukou, and the main force will launch a surprise attack on Anqing when it is about to meet the garrison. Chen Ming thinks that this may cause chaos in the Anqing garrison and catch them off guard.

Otherwise, the Fu Han Army will give up the fight for Jiujiang now and attack Anqing immediately.

This is exactly what the Qing army is most reluctant to see. Anqing, which is poorly guarded, and Jiujiang, which is fully strengthening its city defense, the leaders in Jiangning City obviously hope to see Chen Ming fight Jiujiang Prefecture to the death.

…

"Boom boom boom..."

The artillery battle kicked off around Chenshi. At the same time, the surface warships of the Fu Han Army gathered outside Hukou. After the seizure of the three towns of Wuhan, and a series of battles from Huangzhou, Qizhou to Ma'ao Town, how many surface warships does Chen Ming have? How many naval logistics soldiers are under his command? Even he himself can't tell.

Anyway, the entire Fu Han army has more than 1,200 ships, and at least half of them can be used for combat. It's just that there are not so many boatmen and sailors, so only 100 or 200 ships are actually used by Chen Ming as warships.

For the huge number of 1,200 ships, 100 or 200 ships are just a fraction. Especially these 100 or 200 ships have to be divided to protect the large forces in the Yangtze River waterway. But when hundreds of ships are gathered on the river outside the lake mouth, they are also dark like a dark cloud covering the top.

…

The Great King Temple on the west bank of the lake mouth, Meijiazhou, is the closest wooden city to the Qing army.

The Great King Temple has a very advantageous geographical location. The wooden city is here, which can resist the attack from the Yangtze River waterway and cover the back of Meijiazhou. In addition, it is only two miles away from the lake mouth waterfront, which can completely serve as the backup of the water card.

If the Fu Han Army was like the Taiping Army, and all the cannons were seized by the Qing Army, the Jiangxi Provincial Governor Kuiyi's arrangement would really make some sense. Unfortunately, the quality of the Fu Han Army's firearms was far superior to that of the Qing Army. Now many people in the world know that the Fu Han Army's armor is sharp and the firearms are even sharper.

But Kuiyi turned a deaf ear to it and insisted on setting up a wooden raft in the center of Hukou and deploying heavy troops. Jiangxi Governor Wu Shaoshi was a Taiping official who treated his colleagues well. Maybe it was because he fell too hard that year - he was sent to the military station to serve and allowed to redeem himself because of his mother's illness, or was this governor too deeply influenced by the doctrine of the mean? Anyway, he treated his colleagues in a way that did not offend them.

So Kuiyi did whatever he wanted.

Kuiyi took on the job of supervising the battle at Hukou, Jiujiang. No one knows how much money he has pocketed in the past two months. He colluded with Jiujiang Customs Supervisor Shu Shan [the one who took over the position of Jingdezhen Pottery Supervisor after Jianqi], Jiujiang Prefecture Prefect Huang Zhaolong, and the generals of Jiujiang Town and Nangan Town, and really emptied the treasury of Jiangxi.

Wu Shaoshi turned a blind eye and turned a deaf ear, which was a big deal. However, this man was inactive, but he had two good sons. The eldest son Wu Yuan was already the right assistant minister of the Ministry of Justice, and the second son Wu Tan was just promoted to the governor of Jiangsu last year.

In Chinese history, it was not uncommon for fathers and sons to be officials at the same court. However, it was rare for three fathers and sons to successively serve as governors and assistant ministers, and they all had great attainments in the study of criminal law and served in the Ministry of Justice.

"The rebels were rampant, and the whole province of Henan and Hubei was corrupt. Now the war has spread to Jiangxi Province. Wu Zhongcheng [Governor] is not good at using troops and is at a loss; the generals below the rank of governor are good at looting, but they are timid when they encounter bandits and are repeatedly defeated in battle. The state affairs are difficult..." In the Qing Dynasty, the governors of various provinces usually held the title of right censor, so the governors were also called Zhongcheng.

Not all people are blind. Kuiyi set up a water checkpoint in the lake, so as not to waste money and materials on the cannons and naval forces, and put the army in danger. There were many people who were disgusted. For example, Xie Hu, the magistrate of Dehua County, the first county of Jiujiang Prefecture, hated this matter. You Kuiyi can take the money if you want to, this is the rule of the Qing Dynasty, and there are few truly honest officials in the world. But you can't delay the business, right? Why do you throw the cannons and warships, which are the Qing army's reliance on guarding Jiujiang, on the wooden boats? They are all given to the rebels for nothing.

Wouldn't it be better to reinforce these soldiers and cannons on the west bank? ?

On the top of the wooden city of the Dawang Temple in Meijiazhou, Xie Hu and Zheng Wenzhi, the Jiujiang assistant commander who was guarding here, looked at the smoke-filled wooden boats with regrets on their faces. If Kuiyi hadn't been talking nonsense, with so much wood and cannons, and so much manpower wasted, two more wooden cities could have been built on the west bank.

You know, since the war in Henan, there have been so many Qing troops mobilized, and the required military pay was not all allocated from Beijing. Part of it was taken directly from the provincial treasuries. For example, the mobilization of the Qing troops in Liangjiang, such as the mobilization of the Qing troops in Hubei.

Now Henan is rotten, Hubei is rotten, and Jiangxi's deployment in Jiujiang and Hukou relies entirely on the money and grain of the province. If this battle is lost, Hukou will be controlled by the Fu Han Army, and the food and pay channel between Jiangxi and Jiangnan and Huguang will be cut off. With the empty Jiangxi treasury now, how can Wu Shaoshi reorganize the military force and recruit civilian warriors?

What these people are doing now is to send Jiangxi to a dead end. If they can keep Jiujiang, it will be fine, otherwise Jiangxi will also be rotten.

Xie Hu's eyes flashed with hatred. Kuiyi, this bastard, was always so arrogant when he spoke. It seemed that it was a great favor for him to say a word to a small county magistrate. Jiangxi was defeated by him. His blind sense of superiority could not cover up his ignorance and vanity. Xie Hu even didn't know where Kuiyi's high and firm self-confidence came from.

The current Fu Han Army is not the Chen family army last summer and autumn? From last year's Gunhe Battle to this year's defeat of Wuchang and the two rivers, Chen Ming and the Fu Han Army he led are really famous in China. Shaanxi Green Camp, Hunan Zhenxiang Soldiers, and elite soldiers from all over the country have been defeated by him. Where does Kuiyi get such great confidence?

Xie Hu was puzzled. But he didn't know that in this world, in this Qing Dynasty, there is such a group of ignorant and stubborn people who hold real power.

Kuiyi is just one of them.

He is blindly confident, he is a hundred times more confident, what can you do to him? He was the governor, not Xie Hu, a small county magistrate, who was the governor of Jiangxi.

At noon, more than ten Qing navy ships ran to Meijiazhou in a panic, and all the wooden boats were destroyed. The Qing army's artillery could not reach the artillery positions of the Fu Han army on the opposite bank, but the Fu Han army's shells could easily fall on the wooden boats.

In order to blow up the wooden boats as soon as possible, Chen Ming specially asked the artillery team to fire hot bombs. The red iron bullets burned in the furnace could leave a series of fire marks wherever they passed, and ignited gunpowder barrels several times, setting off many large fireworks on the surface of the lake. If it weren't for the unexpected excellent effect of the hot bombs, the Fu Han army artillery team would have to work for a long time just for these two wooden boats.

The Qing soldiers stationed on the wooden boat had already fled. After seeing that the artillery fire of the Fu Han army could hit the wooden boat, even the officers stationed on the wooden boat jumped up and cursed the emperor.

Fortunately, they were all good at swimming. Even though the water was turbulent at the mouth of the lake, a large number of Qing soldiers swam to the west bank and were "taken in" by the Qing army in Meijiazhou. The others followed the boats of the navy camp and ran to Poyang Lake. In the end, only more than ten navy ships "returned" to Jiujiang.

After cleaning up the water card at the mouth of the lake, the Fu Han army fleet on the river outside the mouth of the lake swaggered in. If they fought to the death with their thin bodies against the military camp along the west bank, they would be courting death. Chen Ming wanted them to go straight to Gutang!

Gutang Town is thirty miles away from Jiujiang Prefecture. It is on the eastern foot of Mount Lu and the shore of Poyang Lake. As one of the four famous towns in Jiangxi, Gutang's economy and trade are very prosperous. In the first year of Yongzheng, the Qing court established the Jiujiang Chaoguan Gutang Branch here. It is the only golden waterway from Poyang Lake to the Yangtze River. The trade port and commodity distribution center. "Thousands of people bow in the day and thousands of lights are on at night" is a vivid portrayal of Gutang's prosperity.

At the same time, this is also the southernmost end of the defense line of the Jiujiang Qing army.

"Tell Yang Shijin, don't be careless." Gutang is the southernmost stronghold of the Jiujiang Qing army. After the Hukou water gate was broken, the Jiujiang Qing army knew very well where the Fu Han army would be most beneficial to launch an attack. The navy's attack on Gutang would not be an easy victory without a fight, but a hard battle.

Chen Ming looked at the fleet heading south on the water not far away. The small civilian ships hoisted their sails and rowed their oars. It was really too low.

Yang Shijin was the commander of this fleet. He was the leader of the Paijiao, originally from Xiangyang. When he was involved in the Fu Han Army, he and his family were in Yunyang. Now that his whole family has arrived in Ruzhou, Yang Shijin's reliability is guaranteed. Since the sailors and boatmen he recruited in Yunyang are very prestigious among the Pai Han, and they dare to fight, Chen Ming boldly promoted him.