As soon as the Perak Navy warships arrived at Guankou Village, the defenders fled. First, the news of the tragic defeat of Hengyuan Fort reached Guankou Village, and then Huoli, the secret agent, led the defeated army to retreat to Chengdu from the Daojiang City Ferry 20 miles downstream. People in the village were already panicking.
Just before the Pili Army warships arrived, the 200 Mongolian cavalry guarding the stronghold received orders to withdraw to Pengzhou, leaving only 500 new attached troops to guard the stronghold.
Seeing the Mongols retreating, how could these new auxiliary troops be willing to stay and eat artillery shells? They seized the door and fled in all directions. Some chased the Mongolian cavalry, some fled along the official road to Wei and Mao prefectures, and some fled into the nearby mountains and forests. There were also about a hundred new auxiliary troops who simply headed towards the river. Come on, just drop it.
Huang Dagen sent people to accompany the troops to take over the village, and left some warships to assist. He led the ships to patrol the Jinma River to prevent the Mongolian army from counterattacking.
The task given to him by Ouyang Xuan was to guard the river from Guankou Village to Xinjin City and cut off the Mongolian army on both sides of the Jinma River to ensure the next military operation of the Perak Army.
After the Battle of Hengyuan Fort, Ouyang Xuan immediately held a joint military and political meeting. According to the strategy of the meeting, the Perak Army will use naval forces to control the Jinma River, Wenjing River and Nanhe Waterway. Under this premise, they will seize Pujiang City and encircle the Mongolian troops in Chongqing Mansion and Qiongzhou, forming a closed-door and dog-fighting trend.
To say that this strategy is indeed bold enough, the encirclement area covers three prefectures (prefectures and armies) and ten counties, with a population of about 100,000, about 3 million acres of fertile land, and 30 Mongolian army strongholds and newly attached army settlements. More than one.
These three places belong to the core area of the Kingdom of Abundance, and the Mongolian army also attaches great importance to this fertile land. Even though the secret fire has almost all the available troops to besiege the Perak Army, 800 cavalry are still stationed here, and two new auxiliary troops are stationed here. Thousands of people.
After the Battle of Hengyuan Fort, the 300 cavalry stationed in Chongqing Fucheng fled back to Chengdu. There were still 500 elite Mongolian cavalry and 2,000 new auxiliary troops in the encirclement, which was still a combat force that should not be underestimated.
If there is a field battle in the wild, even if the Pili army is fully equipped, it will be a disaster. In view of the characteristics of the Mongolian army in the encirclement, the plan formulated by the staff is to first use the main force to attack the Mongolian army in Qiongzhou City while ensuring control of the Nanhe waterway, and at the same time send partial divisions to attack and capture small cities such as Yizheng, Dayi, Huojing and so on. And the newly attached army's settlement point made it impossible for the Mongolian army to look at each other.
After the joint military and political meeting, Ouyang Xuan led his army to Qiongzhou. In addition to the naval forces of Le Quan'an and Liao Nilu, the main force of the troops attacking Qiongzhou this time was the field camp that was already gearing up.
In this battle of Yokoyuan Fort, the navy showed great splendor again, which gave the field battalion, which regarded itself as the main force of the Perak Army, a sense of crisis. In Cao Ergou's words, if the field battalion did not make contributions, it would have to look up to the navy brothers.
They went to Qiongzhou this time with great efforts, showing that they were able to move ammunition onto the ship when loading, and also tried to move heavy artillery onto the ship. This made Le Quan'an jump in panic - the ship had too much equipment. It will sink.
In the end, it was Ouyang Xuan who came forward to suppress the dispute: the field camp only carried light artillery and only three bases of ammunition. As for fire support, it was provided by navy warships.
After the field battalion went to Qiongzhou, the task of guarding Hengyuan Fort was left to the internal guard battalion. It was not an easy time for Dong Hu and the Internal Guard Battalion. In addition to guarding Hengyuan Fort, the workload of screening the more than 10,000 new auxiliary troops and civilians who surrendered was really too heavy. It was impossible to screen them one by one in a short time, so they had to adopt Cheap measures such as reporting rewards and mutual guarantees also uncovered dozens of heinous individuals and Mongolian spies.
It is estimated that there are at least hundreds of such people because they are hidden deep enough and cannot be discovered for the time being. The guilty people after screening were naturally sent to work in the mines. A small number of old, weak, sick and disabled people were placed in Wugen Mountain and Hengyuan Village. In addition, Zhou Jianshen, the leader of the new auxiliary army who surrendered, was authorized by Ouyang Xuan to select 500 people from the new auxiliary army. A reformed battalion was formed to accompany the army.
As for most of the converted soldiers and civilian husbands, they have more arduous work-building forts and strongholds.
According to the division of labor at the military-government joint meeting, Yu Zhu is responsible for this work. Li Shuang, who was in charge of government affairs, had trouble with his legs, and he was also very busy planning many complicated matters such as industrial layout and political power construction at the foot of the mountain.
If it weren't for the assistance of Yang Xiucai, Lu Dezhi, Li San'er and others, he would have been extremely busy just dealing with the converted population and the captured grain.
Since the autumn harvest season will be in one month, everything has to make way for harvesting food. Therefore, Ouyang Xuan's request to Yu Zhu was to establish a series of strongholds along the Jinma River before the autumn harvest, which made Yu Zhu look solemn.
The core of Ouyang Xuan's plan for Yu Zhu to build a river defense is to transform Guankou Village and build it into a strong fort like Hengyuan Fort. At the same time, he must also build strongholds in Daojiang County and Jiangyuan County.
In addition to building a small fortress at Sandu River, a naval dock will also be built. After the autumn harvest, these laborers will turn to reinforce Pujiang City and build a series of strongholds along the Nanhe River.
After these tasks are completed, we will also assist in the construction of industrial facilities in the plain... Although these projects are all along the river, and cement, wood and other building materials can be transported through efficient waterways, and are protected by navy gunboats led by Huang Dagen, management and coordination are still extremely arduous. For this reason, Yu Zhu put on guard this time The battalion's ten key companies.
This is not only to prevent someone from inciting trouble, but also to prevent harassment by bandits. It is also to clean up the remnants of the Mongolian army that went to Guankou Village and other places.
Currently, the Mongolian troops in Daojiang County and Jiangyuan County have fled under naval shelling. On the way to Hengyuan Fort to build a stronghold, there are still new auxiliary troops stationed in Yongkang County and Qingcheng County.
After the Mongols defeated Pu Zhezhi and reoccupied the two cities, they recruited bandits from the mountains to cooperate with the old, weak and new auxiliary troops to defend the city.
Although the ten basic companies led by Yu Zhu are the second-line troops of the Perak Army, they are more than enough to deal with these ragtag groups.
After informing Li Shuang and Dong Hu about matters related to the mountain, Ouyang Xuan took the field camp and the reformed camp down the river from Hengyuan Fort by boat.
When passing by Chongqing Fucheng, he ordered Zhou Jianshen to lead the Guizheng camp to recruit the defenders. When the Mongolian cavalry defending the city escaped, the 500 new auxiliary troops in the city also tried to escape to Chengdu. However, they marched slowly on two legs and were beaten back by the warships of the Perak Army when they reached Sandu River.
Now the new vassals in the city are worried. Seeing the mighty warships in the river, they know that they can't defend and there is no way to retreat. Now that Zhou Jianshen has built a ladder to go down, how can he not surrender?
Most of the 500 newly attached troops left the city and surrendered. There were also dozens of people who joined the Mongolian army and did a lot of bad things. Knowing that the Perak Army would not take them lightly, they escaped secretly.
Subduing the enemy's troops without fighting, this kind of political offensive is a win-win situation for both sides, but it makes Cao Ergou on the ship quite upset.
In his opinion, these wallflowers who are greedy for life and fear of death are really hateful, and they should be allowed to taste the power of the new field artillery.
Ouyang Xuan gave him another hard education for this reason. Blindly killing indiscriminately will only make the new annexed troops fight to the death and resist, and at the same time it will also consume the strength of the Thunderbolt Army.
Not to mention that labor is an extremely important resource, even if the Perak Army captures Chongqing Fucheng without any damage, it will consume a lot of ammunition.
The raid on Chengdu and the battle of Hengyuan Fort had almost exhausted the ammunition. In fact, the production capacity of the Pili Army's military factory is not saturated, mainly because the production capacity of nitrate is far from keeping up with demand.
Therefore, Ouyang Xuan's task for Zhou Jianshen, who was accompanying him, was not only to recruit surrender, but also to go to the houses in various cities and settlement points to scrape saltpeter.
Ouyang Xuan also knew that scrapping saltpeter was just a drop in the bucket. To truly solve the problem of saltpeter shortage, one had to find mineral sources. He had ordered the mining company to be prepared. Once the Mongolian army was annihilated, he would send people to Qingcheng County, Dayi County and Qiong County. Linqiong County and Huojing County in the prefecture went to search for minerals.
On the other hand, he was also preparing to start making saltpeter. A few days ago, he worked with industrial companies and research institutes to trial-produce artificial fire saltpeter, but gave up because of the lack of raw materials for making saltpetre.
