On June 22, 1788, the 5,000-strong Northern Navy Western Front Force led by Liu Sheng finally arrived in Heilongjiang City. After hearing the news, the people who came to see the excitement were surprised to see the river covered with boats of all sizes. Among them were two river patrol boats of the Northern Navy, two catamaran passenger ships, two flat-bottomed barges hastily built in Khabarovsk, and twenty Yaksa warships captured in Ninguta.
When attacking the Ningguta Camp, because the river from the north of the Shangjian River to the south of the Hualan River was blocked by artillery fire, only a few Yaksa warships of the Qing army on this stretch of water escaped, and the remaining twenty Many of them became trophies of the Northern Navy. After dismantling the artillery on it, it would be perfect to use it as a troop transport ship.
The Yaksa warship is a sloop with a flat bottom and a square bow, with a displacement of 52.8 tons and a load capacity of 20 to 25 tons. The ship is divided into three layers. The bottom layer is made of materials and stones as ballast, while the middle layer and part of the deck can be used for human habitation. Based on 80 kilograms per person, a boat plus sailors can seat up to 200 people.
Seeing the waves of the Northern Navy coming off the docked ships, including Li Bi and Li Yansheng, the onlookers who had served as officials in the Manchu and Qing court were filled with worries; if such a large army were to march towards In the west, important places such as Mergen, Qiqihar and even Hulunbuir may not be safe.
Although Li Bi was an exiled prisoner, he was once the county magistrate of the Manchu Qing Dynasty after all, and his family members who accompanied him in exile are still in Qiqihar; and Li Yansheng was a third-rank military general of the Qing court, and his living father was granted the title of emperor based on the Li family lineage. With the mentality of kindness and loyalty to serve the country, every day in the house in Guanzhuang outside the city, apart from eating and sleeping, he would scold Bei Haijun and his son for why they didn't kill themselves to serve the country.
After Liu Sheng and Fan Tong disembarked and took a short rest, they first went to the old city of Aihun to visit the Russian prisoners of war. After a hasty meal, they held a military meeting with their regimental and battalion-level officers and Zhao Xin.
First, a small staff officer named Fang from the staff department explained to everyone present the key points and garrison situation of the Qing government in Heilongjiang General's Mansion. This information mainly came from inquiries about the Qing army's wounded and the information sent back by the reconnaissance team. .
Zhao Xin has cast a wide reconnaissance net in these days. With the cooperation of the local Daur people, the Northern Navy's reconnaissance team reached as far north as Murususu and as far southwest as Kolor, only a few meters away from the city of Mergen. Ten miles. At the same time, several army staff officers also inquired among the wounded Qing soldiers to learn about the garrison situation in various places, but it was only an approximate number.
The main points of the Qing government's headquarters in Heilongjiang include the six military fortresses of Qiqihar, Mergen City, Heilongjiang City, Hulan River, Hulun Buir, and Butha Dasheng. Qiqihar is the top priority and is also the headquarters of the General's Office in Heilongjiang. location.
Of these six cities, although Hulan River City in the south is a subordinate of Heilongjiang City, the two places are more than a thousand miles apart, but it is only more than a hundred miles away from Alchuka, which is under the jurisdiction of Jilin General Mansion; Qiqihar is 800 miles away from Heilongjiang City, and 200 miles south is the Zhelim League of Nezasak Mongolia; Mergen City is located southwest of Heilongjiang City, 380 miles away; Butha is southwest of Mergen Eighty-five miles; the farthest is Hulunbuir, 760 miles northwest of Qiqihar.
Fan Tong asked at this time: "Who is the director of animal hunting in Butha?"
Zhao Xin, who had specifically inquired about this matter, explained: "This is the military and political agency used by the Qing government to specifically manage the Daur, Ewenki, Oroqen and other ethnic groups. It is also called the Eight Banners of the Animal Control Department. It is mainly responsible for collecting the mink skins paid by the livestock every year. , of course there are military needs. Other places are under the control of deputy capital commanders or assistant commanders. Butha is managed by a collegial system of three general managers, with one person each for Manchuria, Daur and Sauron."
Liu Sheng said: "Is this a tribal collegial system?"
Zhao Xin nodded and said, "That's pretty much what it means."
Regarding the Qing court’s garrison situation in the other five cities, the staff officer surnamed Fang explained: “According to our investigations these days and the statistics after the Ningguta war that were sent before, the Qing army is currently stationed in the entire Heilongjiang General Area. There should be more than 10,000 troops stationed there, including 2,000 in Butha City, 4,000 in Hulunbuir due to its strategic location on the border river, more than 600 in Hulan River City, 3,000 in Mergen City, and 3,000 in Qiqihar. people."
The situation of the Qing army has been discussed, and next is the situation of Tsarist Russia. However, since Tsarist Russia has now retreated across the board to the Yaksa area, the reconnaissance team heading to Ulusumudan has not yet sent back any news. The current situation is that there is no trace of the Tsarist Russian army from the north of Zhongan to Murususu.
Now that the situation has been introduced, the next step is to decide on the next action. Everyone at the meeting now looked at Zhao Xin. After all, this was the boss in charge of the military and political affairs of Beihai Town.
In fact, regardless of the fact that the Beihai Navy is invincible in every battle, if it really takes down the other five cities in the Heilongjiang General's jurisdiction, it will be very difficult to manage.
From a strategic perspective, if we capture Qiqihar, we must directly face the Mongolian tribes of Nezasak; if we capture the Hulan River, the Qing army of Alchukha must attack, and then in order to cut off the Qing army's troop transport route to Heilongjiang, they must attack further south. Bertune must also be defeated.
With more than one million square kilometers, countless waterways, post roads, and countless barren mountains and ridges, if you want to rely on the more than 200,000 people in Beihai Town to control it, you will definitely drive Zhao Xin and others crazy and bring Beihai Town down.
Zhao Xin estimated that the population of Beihai Town would need to reach 400,000 to control the Heilongjiang General Mansion. This is why he pressured Xu Dayong to transport at least 100,000 people this year.
The current spread of Beihai Town is too big, covering hundreds of thousands of square kilometers in the outer northeast, the three counties of Southern Kyushu, Kuye Island, Ezo, and the southern islands of the Kuril Islands. Zhao Xin took over wherever there was a gold mine, including the Linggao Gold Mine, the Hongzhimu Gold Mine, the gold mine on Ulupu Island, the gold mine in Solenji, and even there was an "old man" from later generations in the south of Heilongjiang City. Gou Gold Mine.”
"Let me tell you what I think." Zhao Xin pointed to the map hanging on the wall and said to everyone: "Everyone knows how complicated the geography of the outer Northeast is, with high mountains and narrow roads. The so-called post roads can only be used by small troops. It is not suitable for large troops to travel with fast horses that report news. From Shunzhi to Qianlong, the Manchu and Qing Dynasties mobilized troops, horses and supplies through waterways.
Whether we can fully control the five major water systems of Heilongjiang, Ussuri River, Songhua River, Hulha River, and Nen River is also the key to whether we can seize the entire outer Northeast. Only by mastering the two major grain-producing areas of Sanjiang Plain and Songnen Plain and fully developing them can we compete with the landlords and gentry in the Central Plains and even Jiangnan when we go south in the future. "
This was the first time that Zhao Xin explained his combat strategy against the Manchus to the regimental and battalion-level officers of the Northern Navy. Everyone present was attentive. The core of what he said was to prepare for the future southward entry into the customs by seizing land and expanding food production.
Take Shandong as an example. As of the 52nd year of Qianlong's reign, the population of Shandong as a whole exceeded 25 million, and the per capita cultivated land was less than 2.5 acres. The land fertility had been exploited to its limit. This was the case in Hubei, Henan and even Zhili Shanxi.
Moreover, due to the large number of floods and droughts in recent years, people's livelihood in the entire north has been extremely difficult. After years of disasters, land has been concentrated into the hands of landlords and powerful people, and the situation is getting worse day by day. In fact, whether it is Shandong or Henan, more than half of the cultivated land has been divided up by landlords, and many farmers have become tenants or bankrupt farmers. As the saying goes, “Two out of ten people occupy land, forty-five out of ten people share farmland, and three to four out of ten people have no land to cultivate.”
The relatively famous big landowners during this period, such as the Hao family in Huairou on the outskirts of Beijing, owned thousands of hectares of high-quality fertile land; the Zha family and the Sheng family in Wanping were also famous wealthy people.
The military minister He Shen had 8,000 hectares of land, and his domestic slaves Liu Quan, Ma Baishan and others occupied more than 600 hectares of land. Bai Ling, the former governor of Guangdong, occupied 5,000 hectares of land less than a year after he took office. hectares of fields.
A salt merchant named Kang from Pingyang Prefecture in Shanxi Province had a family fortune of tens of millions, tens of thousands of acres of land, and more than a thousand large and small granaries. Even Qianlong said, "I have always thought that there is no richer person in the world than a merchant (salt merchant). Now when I hear about the Kang family, it is like a little witch seeing a big witch!"
The reason why no peasant uprising broke out in such a dire situation is because the Qing government continued to provide disaster relief, which kept these people from having enough to eat and starving to death. It seemed that there was always a glimmer of hope; just like a carrot hanging in front of a donkey, You can see that you can't eat it. The second is that the Manchu and Qing officials attached great importance to local civil unrest and quickly sent troops to put it out at the first sign of trouble. With the policy of obscuring the people and the huge number of people, who would dare to rebel?
In such an era of great bankruptcy, countless people had no choice but to sell themselves and join the powerful landlords as slaves. When a Taoist official takes office, there will be hundreds of domestic servants accompanying him. They cheer in front and support each other, which is very majestic.
Beihai Town is now a rebel in the eyes of the people. It wants to compete with the Qing government for population and let the people travel across the ocean to the outer northeast. No one is willing to follow if they think they can survive. Then there is the Chinese people’s inherent concept that “people are inferior when they leave their hometown.” Even if they stay in a thatched hut and nibble on grass roots, as long as the phantom of the “carrot” remains, they are unwilling to take a boat out to sea.
If the Northern Navy goes south and enters the customs, it does not control the fields or a large amount of food. Faced with the military counterattack of the landlords and gentry class and the economic plunder, will it keep a bunch of feudal dignitaries to make fun of itself?
Isn't it a joke to expect the landlords and gentry who have been deprived of a large amount of remaining land, labor and even the right to speak, and even think about counterattack and counterattack, to cooperate with Beihai Town in completing the process of industrializing the country?
To put it bluntly, no matter how powerful the machine guns and artillery are, it is all in vain if the people cannot have enough food and clothing!
When Zhao Xin finished speaking, everyone here suddenly realized, and they heard him continue: "Now, except for the Nenjiang River system, among the other four water systems, the Ussuri River has been completely controlled by us, and we only have partial control of the other three. And Bo Once Li and Sanxing City are established, together with Ninggu Tower and Heilongjiang City, the river courses of Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang and Songhua River can be basically controlled. In this way, the military and political system of Beihai Town can be freely mobilized throughout the outer northeast. Therefore, My attitude is not to fight Mergen City and Hulan River City, but to strengthen the defense system of Heilongjiang City. There is only one enemy at the moment, and that is Tsarist Russia!"
Fan Tong asked: "Then what's our next move?"
Zhao Xin's answer was resounding: "Go up the river, recover all the lost territory, and seize Irkutsk before winter this year!"
At the same time, on the construction site of Yaksa City.
The serfs who were moved here by the Queen's order were taken to the construction site to work as soon as they got off the ship, cutting down trees and digging earth and rocks. Not far away, several brick kilns emitted black smoke day and night. The fired bricks were quickly transported to the construction site and became part of the building.
What was built here was a large four-pointed star-shaped bastion. After the invasion of Tsarist Russia, a large number of Cossack serfs who stayed in Nerchinsk and Chita followed the Russian army to Yaksa and became the main labor force in building the castle.
The walls of this military fortress are low, and each two sides of the fort wall join together to form a sharp wedge-like protrusion. In front of each wall, there is an unobstructed anti-gun wall; the anti-gun wall and the rear The city walls are all sloped structures, with a wide and deep trench in the middle. Outside the main entrance of the bastion, there is also an outer bastion of lower height that is independent of the city wall. This is used to protect the city gate and is connected to the city wall through a drawbridge.
Since the advent of mobile artillery in the sixteenth century, someone has keenly grasped the fundamentals of the concept of countermeasures. Since artillery can cause the most damage to high walls, the new walls must be built low. However, the city wall was low, and it was easy for the enemy to launch a surprise attack and climb over the city wall along the ladder to enter the interior of the fortification. The new fortification system required being able to withstand artillery fire while keeping enemy infantry away, so the bastion that traded depth for height was born.
In fact, the most powerful thing about the bastion is not its defensive power, but the sloping design of the wall increases the thickness of certain areas in disguise. The thickness of the front wall is much thicker than that of a flat wall. Therefore, the appearance of the bastion is actually to better utilize firepower, rather than to pile up passive defense capabilities. The wide trenches and low walls allowed a large amount of earth to be piled in front of the trenches to build an anti-gun wall.
The striking surface of the front-mounted cannon of this era was a line rather than a point. When a cannon with a straight trajectory faced an anti-artillery wall with an inclined design, it was impossible to adjust the artillery position to reduce the risk of ricochet. Thanks to the extremely small angle, the anti-gun slope will not collapse and bury the trench in the face of shelling.
For the defender, the anti-gun wall with carefully calculated angles and slopes can in turn use the ricochet of the smoothbore cannon to form a terrifying continuous kill zone, causing serious damage to the attacker from the side. At the same time, the anti-gun wall greatly compressed the shooting dead zone within the maximum depression angle of the artillery at close range, turning the safe city walls into a corridor of death.
Suvorov was very satisfied with the design of the castle in Yaksa, with its multi-layered defenses, strong firepower coverage, and no blind spots for firepower.
What he needs now is time. He feels that with such a castle, even if the Qing army comes to 5,000 people, they will be beaten to death.
