On April 25, 1647, the estuary of the Yangtze River was sunny.

The immigration transportation season, which started in October last year, finally ended. After hurriedly completing the maintenance of the ships, Mo Ming immediately issued a general mobilization order in the control area, and then a large number of materials that had been prepared were loaded one by one. After the materials were loaded, people and animals were born. After completing the preparations for the expedition in mid-April, the people on the east coast, except for leaving a little force to guard Yantai, the rest of the main forces (including the Army, the Black Eight Banners, and the Standing Team) were dispatched in full swing to prepare for a large-scale landing operation in the Yangtze River Basin to support the battlefields of Fujian, Jiangxi and Huguang, where the situation is getting worse and worse.

Today, warships gathered on the river surface near Zhenjiang. The "Amur River"-class inland gunboats that had expanded to 8 have just returned from the front. They raided two Qing army's water camps on the river surface of Zhenjiang and Yizheng. The Qing army navy, caught off guard, scattered and a large number of small boats were burned. Although the Qing army may have hidden a large number of small boats in the inland river port, it will no longer threaten the East Coast fleet in a short period of time.

Speaking of the "Amur River" class inland/offshore universal gunboat, it is definitely a powerful weapon at hand by Mo Dashuai. This kind of ship equipped with ten small and medium-sized caliber cannons has strong firepower and shallow draft, so many places where large ships cannot go; and the speed is fast (10 knots), the standard displacement is only 250 tons (full load displacement is 330 tons). Among them, the ship's own weight is less than 90 tons, and the cannons, water feed, boilers, steam engines, personnel, coal-fired and spare parts will only be about 160 tons (including 30 tons of coal burning, and in emergencies, it can be cut into wood and burned charcoal). It can be said to be extremely light. The two coal-fired boilers consume a total of 300 kilograms of coal per hour (if it is replaced by Tacheng fine coal and coal consumption is lower), and can sail continuously for more than 100 hours under standard. The endurance is close to 1,000 nautical miles.

If some additional coal is installed in the 80-ton cargo storage space, it will be easy to significantly increase the endurance again or even double. In other words, this kind of gunboat has the ability to operate independently on the Yangtze River. Of course, in most cases, the "Amur River"-class gunboats will be accompanied by steam engine sailboats, because more coal is loaded, less ammunition will be installed, and less coal will be installed, so it is difficult to achieve both.

Earlier today, eight gunboats left the fleet near the estuary of the Yangtze River, and then went up the river and destroyed several Qing army water camps in Jiangyin, Zhenjiang, Yizhen and other places, sank, and burned hundreds of small boats like the Qing army with a tonnage of no more than 10 tons. The Qing army naval soldiers also suffered heavy casualties and scattered in a sudden attack. Due to the rapid speed of this gunboat, after the Qing army's downstream water camps were hit, the messenger often had time to reach the upper reaches, and the gunboats from the east coast had already arrived first and launched an attack. I wonder if the Qing army would set up a syringe on both sides of the Yangtze River after suffering the pain. If they really did that, it would be too funny.

After destroying these water camps, eight gunboats began to pounce towards Nanjing. However, this time the Qing army acted quickly and took the initiative to retreat the boat into the river bank with complex terrain. The gunboats on the east bank dared not pursue it. They had to return in a bad mood.

Just when the Qing navy was hiding in Tibet to preserve its strength, it took nine sailboats, two armed transport ships, two flute-shaped merchant ships, and a large number of East Coast troops, which started the landing operation. The landing location was at the junction of Taixing and Jingjiang counties east of Yangzhou. On the periphery of the landing regiment, two fast cruise ships and two guard gunboats were slowly cruising. Jiangyin County on the other side of the river was stationed in Jiangyin County, and it was necessary to keep a close eye on it and not let the other party smuggle over.

The troops set out this time include the first brigade of the forward team and the corps headquarters, the 4 squadrons of the third brigade, which is mostly recruits, and the elite security team and cavalry brigade, with a total of 6,100 combat soldiers; the 102nd Company, 104th Company, 105th Company, and Yantai Artillery Company (over 16 artillery pieces) were all dispatched, with a total of 920 combat soldiers; in addition, the "loyal" new army of the Eight Banners of South Africa also dispatched most of them, and the three

There were 2,300 soldiers in the camp. Finally, Zhai Cong-he, on Jeju Island, also brought his two thousand subordinates to the place. In short, more than 80% of the armed forces controlled by the East Coast people were almost used here, with more than 11,000 soldiers and more than 15,000 masters (7,500 military men + 8,000 Korean masters from Jeju Island). If everything goes well, this is almost the largest landing operation in history launched by the East Coast people.

The reason for launching such a large offensive was mainly to support the increasingly unfamiliar forces of Dashun and Nanming. Let’s talk about the Southern Ming Dynasty first. Since the Lu Wang regime was defeated by the Mongolian horses in Hangzhou, the situation in the Ming army in Zhejiang and Fujian took a sharp turn. First, the Lu Wang regime and the Tang regime attacked each other, giving the Qing army valuable time to adjust and deploy and win people’s hearts. After streamlining the internal clues of the Ming army, the food and supplies were prepared, Hong Chengchou (substituted Duoduo), who had already moved south to Nanjing, calmly allocated troops, with the surrendered four towns of Jiangbei in Nanming, Yuan Jixian, the Jiangxi soldiers (he did not surrender), and Zuo Menggeng's troops as the main body, quickly defeated the Lu Wang forces and occupied most of Zhejiang.

During this process, the King of Tang in Fujian did not want to sit and wait for death, but the strongest troops under his command and the largest military pay was the Rat, the Rat, who was the Rat under his command, was not willing to fight with the Qing army. In desperation, the King of Tang wanted to travel west to Ganzhou, but the Ming army in Guangxi, Hunan and other places was extremely cold to him, as if he wanted to support his troops. The King of Tang's ambitions were restored in these places. The warlords' shirked responsibility and avoided the war, until the Qing army was defeated in the defeat of the troops in Fujian.

On the Huguang battlefield, there was a major change in the Shun Army, which was fighting in Jingzhou and Yuezhou. Li Zicheng died in the outskirts of Changsha at the beginning of this year because of his injuries. After Li Zicheng's death, the relationship between the major military leaders of the Shun Army was very delicate. Although Li himself appointed Li Guo as his successor, he was not Li Zicheng after all. The strong foreign generals Hao Yaoqi, Wang Jincai and others (with 70,000 and 60,000 troops respectively) had an attitude of not wanting to recognize Li Guo's leadership. At the same time, they had a relationship with He Tengjiao who had already gone far away in Hengyang, and the situation was even more subtle.

In addition to Gao Yigong and others who supported Li Guo, Li Zicheng's old men Yuan Zongdi, Liu Fangliang, Liu Tichun and others had only more than tens of thousands of soldiers (he was famous, was very fiercely chased by the Qing army and suffered a lot of losses). In this era of strength-oriented, their influence was greatly reduced.

The disagreement of opinions from foreign generals Hao Yaoqi and others will inevitably lead to the split of the Dashun Group, and there are already signs of this. In addition to Hao Yaoqi and others being hooked up with Nanming, Yuan Zongdi and others are also discussing surrender with Tong Yanghe, Ezhen, Qinggushan stationed in Wuchang (Ajige has led his army back to Beijing after Li Zicheng's death). In addition, the civil servants of the Dashun Group are increasingly fleeing, local governance is ineffective, and financial difficulties are difficult. Now Dashun really has a sense of end of its reach.

Unexpectedly, the situation that Li Zicheng could barely cover before his death had undergone such a huge change after his death. Mo Ming, who was urgently reported at the first time, immediately organized a large army and headed to the Yangtze River Basin to launch a large-scale offensive in the Jiangbei region where the Qing army had relatively weak forces to restrain and support these two battlefields. As long as a few victories are fought in Jiangbei and a few prefectures and counties are captured, the prestige of the Qing army will inevitably be greatly damaged, and the morale of the anti-Qing armed forces in various places will be boosted. In this way, some speculators may not surrender to the Qing Dynasty so quickly.

However, this is just the wishful thinking of Mo Ming and others. It is really hard to say what the real effect is. With the current situation of the Qing Dynasty in the country, those people, such as Zheng Zhilong, would be really strange if they did not surrender to the Qing Dynasty. However, as the saying goes, the success depends on heaven and the plan is with people, and now they can only be treated as dead horses. Who has let the local people withdraw 4,500 warriors from the Far East, and at the same time they can't use ships every six months? The corruption of the situation is also closely related to the weakening of the offensive among the East Coast people over the past year. So, as soon as the fleet is free, Mo Ming immediately dispatched a large army to attack the Qing Dynasty Caogu, and then restrained the Qing army and gave Dashun and Nanming a breath. He thought that if he did not move, the vitality of Nanming and Dashun would suffer greater losses.

The Qing army did not have many troops deployed in Jiangbei, so the landing operations of the people on the east coast were not greatly hindered. In fact, the Qing court did not have much troops deployed in Jiangnan at this time. Unless there were about 10,000 to 20,000 Eight Banners stationed in Nanjing, there were not many Qing troops in other prefectures and counties in Nanzhili. At present, most of the Qing army in Jiangnan area had been transferred to southern Jiangxi, eastern Zhejiang, and Fujian to clear out the armed forces of the Southern Ming there. As for the Huguang battlefield, Kong Youde, Tong Yang and the other two who were responsible for commanding the local battle situation, they even asked for help, requesting Nanjing to allocate Zhen Manchu officers and soldiers and a large number of green camps to attack Yuezhou.

Before Li Zicheng's death, Kong Youde and others had just fought with the Shun Army in Jingzhou. Although they defeated the Shun Army and recaptured Jingzhou City, the losses were quite large and a large number of weapons and soldiers were urgently needed. Especially the few red-clothed cannons destroyed by Dashun made Kong Youde feel extremely distressed. At this moment, facing the Dashun Group, which had already built a city blockage in Yuezhou and the south area, Kong Youde urgently needed new support. This is not difficult to understand why Wuchang is currently focusing on political inducing surrender to the generals of Dashun, which is really not strong enough. In fact, at this time, Li Guo and others did not have the idea of ​​surrendering. The frequent entry of Qing army envoys into the Shun Army camp is a clear proof, but they wanted to shave their heads and change their clothes, so most Shun Army generals did not accept it for the time being. Tong Yanghe was also quite regretful about this, but he did not dare to say much about this policy, so he could only continue to send people to persuade them to surrender.

Therefore, under such circumstances, the East Coast army began to land in the prosperous Yangzhou area and cut off nearby rivers. It is conceivable that it would have a significant impact on the Qing army's overall strategy. (To be continued...)
Chapter completed!