Struggle in Russia

According to the liaison personnel, Dmitry will soon go south to recapture Piyagin, but the news brought back by Kornilov's scouts is that neither Piyagin nor Zogtonosa has any Russian troops. traces of the army.

Even according to rumors, Dmitry's offensive troops were frustrated at Piyagin and retreated.

This is not good news for Kornilov. After all, his purpose of going north is to meet up with Dmitri, but Dmitri cannot come down. It is not close from Cherkasy to Piliatin. The existing troops are simply unable to move northward.

And this means that he will fall into full passivity next. Once the rebels in the direction of Kiev and even the rebels in the surrounding areas of Cherkasy see through his falsehood, it will be clear to Kornilov what will happen to him. .

But he couldn't give up Cherkasy and run away like this. After all, he finally regained the city. He couldn't watch hundreds of thousands of people in the city fall into the hands of thieves again, right?

For a moment, Kornilov felt that he was in a dilemma and was a little hesitant.

At the same time, Dmitri and Li Xiao led their troops to attack Konotop, and their first target was Bahmachi.

This small city is located to the west of Konotop. Going west can lead to Icinia and Nezhin, and it is regarded as the gateway to the west of Konotop.

As long as we capture Konotop here, the door will be opened.

Of course, the most critical reason why Dmitry wanted to regain this place was to join the Russian 17th Infantry Brigade and the 12th Cavalry Division in the direction of Mena.

As a diversionary force, these two forces had been feinting near Mena. Only after capturing Bahmachi did they dare to move south boldly.

Why are these two armies so timid? Mainly because they were scared by the rebels. They had been stationed in Konotop before and once went out of the city to wipe out the rebels.

As a result, he was beaten so hard by the rebels that he could no longer take care of himself, so he had to flee north in a hurry.

At this time, these two troops were seriously lacking in combat power and were seriously short of personnel. The actual strength of the army is only 6,000, which can barely be regarded as a brigade.

Not only was there a shortage of personnel, but more importantly, there was a serious shortage of weapons and ammunition. They lost all the equipment they could when escaping from Konotop. They didn't take any artillery with them, and they lost even half a dozen rifles. , the only thing taken away was the horses.

Anyway, apart from being able to run, their combat effectiveness may not be as good as a regiment of the Black Sea Fleet's naval infantry.

It is impossible to expect them to take the initiative to go south to capture Bahmachi. Dmitri can only help them clear the obstacles first, and then try to replenish their equipment after reuniting.

Yes, Dmitry really has no shortage of equipment. After the battle losses and seizures along the way, he collected a large number of weapons and ammunition. After equipping the surrendering troops, there were still more than 30,000 light rifles left, a mere 6,000. Multiple people were completely drizzled.

The only problem is that these rifles are not very good. Most of them are the standard muzzle-loading smoothbore flintlock rifles of the Russian army before the Crimean War.

This rifle has been proven to be severely backward during the Crimean War and is about to be eliminated. It's just that Russia's post-war finances are extremely tight, so the pace of elimination is not fast, and the Ministry of War is transforming it into a hinged breech-loading rifle based on the principle of waste utilization.

Anyway, both Dmitry and Li Xiao disliked this stuff. Most of the stuff they captured from the rebels was thrown into the warehouse. If they hadn't heard that the two troops above were short of weapons and ammunition, they wouldn't have planned to take it out.

When Li Xiao and Dmitry rushed to Bachmachi with their main force, the 17th Infantry Brigade and the 12th Cavalry Division were still moving southward from the north. They were still twenty or thirty kilometers away from Bachmachi. The speed was simply It’s no different than a turtle crawling.

That's because they don't really want to go south. After all, there are tens of thousands of rebels in Bachmachi and Konotop. They don't think that Dmitri's men can regain this important transportation hub.

According to their thinking, it would be a day if they could delay it. It would be best to delay it until Dmitri was defeated by the rebels, so that they would naturally not have to risk going south.

It's just that they didn't wait for the news of Dmitri's failure, but instead waited for Dmitri's stern reprimand.

Dmitri ordered them to arrive at Bachmachi within one day, otherwise they would be charged with delaying the military plane.

Under Dmitri's strict orders, the division commander and brigade commander could only greet Dmitri's eight generations of ancestors in their hearts while hurried on reluctantly, and they were really full of complaints.

Dmitri would not tolerate them. In fact, the reason why he forced these two people to go south was to scare the monkeys. None of the Russian generals who were frightened by the rebels north of Konotop were disobedient and had a strong fear of war. They often violated the orders of him, the commander-in-chief.

He beat them up during the previous meeting, but obviously they didn't take him seriously, so Dmitri had to kill two chickens to let others know that he was not joking. If he didn't obey, he would be slapped to death. He doesn't have the energy to argue slowly!

The next day, Dmitri was standing on the road outside Bachmachi City waiting. According to his order, the 17th Infantry Brigade and the 12th Cavalry Division must be in place before ten o'clock this morning, but now they are already in place. It was half past eight, and according to the scout cavalry, there was no sign of these two troops yet.

Obviously the two guys still didn't take his orders seriously, but he wasn't angry at all. If the two guys arrived on time honestly, he would feel embarrassed.

After all, his fundamental purpose was to deal with people. As for their few troops, to be honest, he didn't take them seriously at all. He does not lack these six thousand people. What he lacks is orders and prohibitions.

Dmitri stood by the road and waited. Not to mention ten o'clock in the morning, he waited until twelve o'clock at noon without seeing the 17th Infantry Brigade and the 12th Cavalry Division.

It was not until 3:30 in the afternoon that the scout cavalry reported back and discovered that they had appeared, but they were still nearly ten kilometers away from Bachmachi.

In one day and one night, the total distance was only a little more than thirty kilometers. After walking for so long, there was only one-third of the distance left, which was just a little faster than climbing.

It was not until 6 p.m. that the two troops arrived belatedly. When Lenin, commander of the 17th Infantry Brigade, and Hobich, commander of the 12th Cavalry Division, discovered that Dmitri was waiting on the roadside, they had not yet arrived. Realize the seriousness of the problem.

They walked slowly to Dmitri, saluted, and explained nonchalantly: "Your Excellency, Commander, I'm sorry that we are late, but the roads along the way are rugged and the traffic is inconvenient, and there are always rebels attacking, and there are also Please forgive me..."