Zhu Gui's guess was correct. He Xiwen did not have a plan to capture Wuzhou, and he did not have enough troops to defend it after it was defeated. An eighteenth-century city with more than 40,000 inhabitants could not control the strength of any regiment.
Six thousand troops would definitely be enough for just fighting. The problem is that due to the structural problems of the Northern Navy, the Qing prisoners who surrendered would not be immediately converted and absorbed, so Lianzhou and Yulinzhou must have enough left-behind troops. If the Qing troops in Qinzhou and Leizhou were allowed to take the retreat, He Xiwen would be embarrassed and would not be able to explain to Zhao Xin. Therefore, the troops attacking Teng County this time only amounted to more than 2,000 people per regiment.
Liang Wenying had previously proposed to recruit and convert a group of surrendered Qing troops to make up for the lack of local garrison strength. However, after sending a telegram to the General Staff, the reply was that he disagreed.
The Green Camp of the Manchu Qing Dynasty adopted the "soldier system", that is, if the father and brother served as soldiers, the children would serve as the remaining soldiers at home. If there were vacancies in the guards, they would be filled from among the remaining soldiers. If there were no remaining soldiers, they would be recruited from the private sector. Once they join the military, they have been soldiers for generations, and their descendants cannot even take the imperial examination. Over time, many green camp soldiers have become soldiers.
Among the Green Battalion soldiers who were captured and surrendered before, there were many people in their forties or fifties. Such people could just collect taxes and catch thieves, but they would definitely have no chance of being transformed into combat troops.
At present, all the prisoners of the Qing army have been sent to Bailong City in the south of Lianzhou to clean up the ruins and expand the wharf. When the people from the Bacheng Public Security Police Department arrive, they will be screened. Those who are physically qualified and have an honest personality will undergo three months of training and become public security police officers; those who fail will be given travel expenses to go home and farm. Anyway, there are no military households under the rule of Beihai Town.
At midnight on August 15th, the dock at the foot of Wangfu Mountain outside Beiliu County was brightly lit.
Under the command of regiment leader Wei Chao, two thousand soldiers from the Hui Camp lined up to carry the bamboo raft into the river - something they had practiced twice before. The tied bamboo rafts are all stacked in a large shed built with reed mats and moso bamboo on the shore. Each raft is nine meters long and about two meters wide. It is made of 12 thick moso bamboos, with both ends raised high.
Although bamboo rafts are easier to build than boats, there are still a lot of things to pay attention to when making them. For example, moso bamboo must be dried after being dried for several months, otherwise it will be easily deformed during fire roasting. In order to collect a sufficient amount of dried moso bamboo, the logistics department of the southern front army swept away the stocks of all bamboo and wood shops in Lianzhou, Yulinzhou City and Beiliu County a few days ago, and also purchased a large amount for binding. hemp rope and bamboo nails.
Then there is the tip. The angle of the tip is required to be 50 degrees. Because the bamboo body at the head of moso bamboo is thin, if the heat is not controlled properly during baking and it is too high, the bamboo body will crack with iron pliers, and the whole bamboo will crack. The moso bamboo is useless.
Many things are like this. The officer's words can lead to his legs being broken. It seems easy to say, but in practice there are a lot of details.
As large bamboo rafts were launched one after another, soldiers lined up to board the boats. By the time more than a hundred bamboo rafts were all launched into the water, nearly an hour had passed.
"Set off!"
When Wei Chao ordered his men to wave the torches and give the order to set off, the soldiers standing at the stern of the ship used long bamboo poles to push forward. After entering the waterway, the soldiers on the bamboo raft took out their engineering shovels and rowed them in an orderly manner to the low whistle. The entire fleet was majestic and winding, like a water snake, quietly swimming northward in the darkness.
The waterway from Beiliu to Rongxian is more than 70 miles. It is impossible for a fleet of more than 100 large bamboo rafts to not be discovered, let alone walking five miles ahead of the fleet and driving an assault boat. of the reconnaissance team.
At dawn, on the river twenty miles away from Rongxian County, two father and son who were fishing in a small boat suddenly heard a roar from the south, and then saw several black shadows coming from the south. Coming quickly from the waterway to the south.
"Dou, did you throw something away?"
Hearing his son Ah Shui's inquiry, fisherman Zhou Ada looked at it carefully and said in astonishment: "What are you doing with that in your mouth? Why don't you close the net quickly!"
The father and son hurriedly closed the net, but the black shadows were getting closer and closer, and it was too late to avoid them by rowing a boat. Seeing that he was about to hit him from the waist, Ah Shui screamed in fright. At this moment, the black shadow at the front suddenly turned to the right, drew an arc on the waterway, and passed around the fishing boat. Immediately afterwards, the two black figures behind also took the same action.
Just when Zhou Ada and his son were stunned, the last black shadow slowed down and came closer. At this time, someone said in Cantonese Mandarin: "In the countryside, if you are fishing in the middle of the river, there are so many boats behind it."
"." Only then did the father and son realize that what was coming was a boat with several people sitting on it. It's just that it's different from the usual boats. The hull of this boat is black. It's about two feet long and seven or eight feet wide. The material of the hull is not like bamboo. It looks round and bulging. There are also hanging on the sides of the boat. Red rope.
The boat is weird and the people on it are weird. More than a dozen people were all wearing grass-green double-breasted jackets and green dome hats with a net covering their heads. Their faces under the hats were smeared with black and white, making it difficult to see their faces. In addition, these people were holding strange oblong objects in their hands, with a black cylinder at the top at the end.
Oh my god! Could it be a water ghost? But who has ever seen water ghosts gathering in groups? If one is not enough, there are a bunch of them! Zhou Ada and his son were so frightened that they collapsed in the cabin with their hands and feet sore.
"Countryside?"
"." The father and son's teeth chattered, but they could still speak.
"Countryside?"
"Kekeke~~"
The squad leader who asked the question saw that the two men were trembling but did not speak, so he reminded him again: "In the countryside, we are not fishing here. There will be many boats coming later. Let's go to the shore. Let's go !”
As soon as he finished speaking, the motor of the assault boat roared again, and then it rushed north through the waves until it turned into a black spot as big as a sesame seed. Only then did Zhou Ada and his son, whose faces turned pale, let out a sigh of relief.
"Dou, is he a human or a ghost?"
"You're a loser! You can't tell the difference between humans and ghosts. He's a pirate from the south and from the north! Get out of the way!"
These assault boats of the reconnaissance team appeared on the Beiliu River, panicking the brave men in the villages along the way and the Qing troops in charge of the flood pond. The key is that no one has ever seen this thing. The roaring sound of the motor alone is like thunder. Coupled with the boat's top speed of 60 kilometers per hour, it is really shocking.
After these boats arrived on the river near Rong County, two of them were specially responsible for intercepting the boats going north. The other boats were circling back and forth on the river outside the city, which puzzled the county magistrate who came to the city wall after hearing the news. My heart says what is this going on?
"Master, do you want a shot?" A soldier asked the county magistrate, his face full of a desperate and eager look.
At the crenel not far behind him, there was an iron cannon more than two feet long, with a rusty exterior and several iron hoops on the cannon body for reinforcement. This is a squatting tiger cannon from the Ming Dynasty. It has been used as a trust cannon before. If this thing can hit an assault boat a mile away, it won't work even if the ancestral graves are smoking, they have to be roaring with fire!
"Put that thing down in your hand! It's crazy!" Magistrate Wang closed the fan in his hand, his face was livid, and he was so angry that he even spat out his hometown dialect.
The county magistrate's name was Wang Tingju, also known as Xianchen. He came from the Wang family in Niedian, Yuci, Shanxi, and was a well-known wealthy man. The Wang family started out as a land manager and loan shark in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty. Today, they have opened more than 200 pawnshops in Jiangnan, Guanwai, Henan, Shandong, Zhili and other places, with assets exceeding tens of millions.
Wang Tingju was the second eldest child in his family. After studying for more than ten years, he could not even pass the examination to become a scholar. But this man wanted to live a life of being an official, so he could only spend money to pay donations. Finally, he took the path of Liu Quan, the housekeeper of Hefu, and spent 50,000 taels of silver to come to Rong County to become the county magistrate.
Don't think it's too expensive, this is a real gap that will be filled immediately after taking office, and countless people are competing for it. Although Rong County is a small and poor place, the county magistrate is also a seventh-rank official. The problem is that the official Jinshi are distributed only for this position, and there may not be a real vacancy.
"This is all a fucking nonsense! Didn't you say that everyone is celebrating by eating moon cakes and watching a big show? They actually did this to deceive this county!"
Dian Shi, who was on the side, was from Wuzhou. He didn't quite understand Magistrate Wang's Shanxi dialect. He blinked and asked, "Sir, how should we deal with this? We can't just watch the Beihai pirates attack the city."
"Otherwise, these boats are just wandering around on the river without docking, and they will be beaten early." Wang Tingju opened his fan, fanned himself hard a few times, and sighed: "There are thousands of soldiers and horses in Yulin Mansion to stop them. If you don’t hold on, we in Rong County will only use this young man No. 10 to manage football!”
"Then just look at it like this? Will Magistrate Hu blame you then?"
"Blame it? I don't know if Mr. Hu can survive this disaster."
Others don't know how powerful the Beihai Navy is, but Wang Tingju, who was born in Shanxi merchants, knows it all too well. At this time, he had made up his mind that the Northern Navy would only attack the city and raise the white flag to surrender without any hesitation. Anyway, this official was donated with money, and the court didn't show much kindness to him. He didn't want to be like that idiot Jinshi from Beiliu County, causing his whole family to hang himself, so why bother?
What the people of Rong County on the city wall didn't know was that it was the county magistrate's order that saved them. Half an hour later, when everyone on the city wall saw a fleet of hundreds of bamboo rafts meandering towards the river, densely covering the river, they all turned pale with fright. They thought to themselves that it was really dangerous, but it was a good thing that the master did not step aside and fire the cannon.
Before setting off, He Xiwen told Wei Chao that if the defenders of Rong County did not attack or block them, they should ignore them. It was not worth wasting time for a small county.
The soldiers and civilians of Rong County just lay on the city wall, watching the fleet that had set up camp pass the county town without any danger. As for the county magistrate Wang Tingju, when he was convinced that the Northern Navy fleet on the river had no intention of attacking the city, he hurried back to the county office, called his personal servant brought from his home in Shanxi and gave detailed instructions, and took out the written letter he had already written. A good surrender letter asked the other party to leave the city through the south gate at night and go to Beiliu County to contact them about the surrender.
He has already seen it, and the attitude he showed just now on the river, let alone Teng County, Wuzhou is also very difficult. I am afraid that I will not be able to become an official in the Qing Dynasty in the future, so it is better to make plans early.
There is no shame in surrendering to Beihai Town. Nowadays, there are several Shanxi merchants doing private business with Beihai Town. They are doing business in tea, fur, ginseng, matches, lanterns, wool products, soybeans, etc., and everything is prosperous. For example, the Chang family of Yuci Ririm, the Cao family of Beiguan, the Qiao family of Qixian County, and the Wu family of Taigu, among which the Chang family and the Wu family were the largest, almost monopolizing the Changbai Mountain ginseng market in the north.
One day later, the fleet encamped in Hui'an passed the intersection of Beiliu River and Huanghua River. The sixty-mile waterway from here to Teng County is called "Jianjiang". This area has Tiantang Ridge and Lingshan Mountain to the east, Du Bang Ridge and Luo Man Ridge to the west. It has high mountains and lush forests, and the waterway is sandwiched between the mountains. From the shore to halfway up the mountain, it was filled with mist, and mosquitoes were flying densely on the water, which was very annoying. The sun beat down mercilessly in the sky, making the soldiers on the bamboo rafts sweat profusely.
The official annals of Teng County in the Ming Dynasty called autumn "Zhengqiu", which means that after the sultry summer season, the weather becomes hotter in autumn, and it will not cool down until after the Double Ninth Festival.
Fortunately, the people who camped in Huihui had lived in a hot and humid environment since childhood, and cooling oil had become a standard in the army, so there were not many people suffering from heat stroke, but their faces and hands were all covered with large and small bites. , when you land to camp at night, you must be more careful of poisonous insects and wild beasts.
This was the case in Lingnan in ancient times. The hot, humid and mosquito-filled environment made it impossible for northerners to survive. It would be better to be an official, but if you were exiled here, you would be dead if you contracted malaria.
This shows the importance of the Northern Navy setting up a base in Ganchengao. All troops going south must undergo at least one month of adaptive training there. Otherwise, let alone fighting, the non-combat attrition alone can drive the officers crazy. This is why Zhao Xin asked He Xiwen to lead the attack on Guangxi. Nowadays, most of the generals of the Northern Navy are northerners. They have lived in the northeast for many years and have difficulty adapting to the sultry weather in the south.
Along the way, Wei Chao asked his men to drink only boiled water from the kettle when they were thirsty, and to eat canned food and compressed biscuits when they were hungry. The river water was absolutely not allowed to be drunk, but it was okay to wash their faces and cool off.
Since Guangxi is mountainous, water and land stations run parallel to each other. Due to the high speed of the reconnaissance team, after leaving Rongxian County, Doujiazhai, Longtantang, Pandongtang, Huanghuatang, Yichangtang and other waterway stations were captured without any time to react. The postmen were all dumbfounded as they watched the Beihai navy's assault boat quickly rush onto the beach. When the scouts armed with rifles jumped off the boat and waded through the water, all they could do was escape and be captured.
Traveling on a five-hundred-mile waterway cannot be smooth sailing, and there will always be fish that slip through the net. Unable to travel by water, they resorted to the tactics of a "thousand-mile horse" and followed the land post road through mountains and ridges to rush to Teng County to report the news. When the reconnaissance team came to a place called Ma'an Pass south of Teng County, they found that they could not get through.
This is the most dangerous place on the river before entering the Xunjiang River. There have been water barriers since the Zhengtong period of the Ming Dynasty, and there are walled cities on the slopes of the left and right banks, overlooking the river from a high position.
After the news of the Northern Navy's occupation of Yulin reached Wuzhou, Xu Guocai, the deputy general of the Wuzhou Association, immediately thought of Ma'an Pass. At his suggestion, the prefect Hu Youren convened a large number of craftsmen to build iron chains overnight, then transported them to Ma'an Pass, set up six iron cables on the river, and asked the magistrate of Teng County to recruit brave men to guard the city and observe the movements to the south.
These six iron cables were not just lying across the river. Xu Guocai asked Teng County to sail several civilian boats worth 500 pieces to Ma'an Pass and scuttle them all. Hanging from the hull of the boat above the water. As a result, not to mention the three to five hundred masted merchant ships, ordinary small boats will not be able to pass.
When faced with this kind of obstruction, the ancients generally had no good solution. The only way to eliminate it is to send a death squad to set up a stove on the bow of the ship, and when they get close, they will burn and chop the iron chains. At the same time, they will have to send sailors to dive into the water to remove the wooden stakes that nail the ship and remove the sunken ship. While destroying the chains, you also need to send troops to help defend; you must know that the enemy on the opposite side will not just watch.
This kind of water battle is often a life-and-death bloody battle, who has more soldiers, whose generals are braver, and who can find a way to quickly destroy or hold the iron rope.
Tengxian County, like Rongxian County, is a small county. It can't even run across the river with its own strength, but now Zhu Gui, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, is here. On the second day after he arrived in Wuzhou, native soldiers and wolf soldiers who came from Guilin Prefecture and Heping Yuefu to support him also arrived.
The title "Wolf Soldier" is actually related to "Werewolf". Don't get me wrong, they are not the kind that become hairy and full of fangs when the full moon comes. They are local aborigines like the Zhuang and Yao people. These people usually live scattered among the mountains in western Guangdong, and start practicing martial arts when they grow up to teenagers.
Many people think that local soldiers from Guangxi are "wolf soldiers", which is wrong. There are many kinds of native soldiers, including the Zhuang and Yao tribes, but only the native soldiers who are mainly from the werewolf tribe are wolf soldiers, also called "real wolves", while the others are fake wolves.
The name "Wolf Soldier" first appeared in the Zhengtong period of the Ming Dynasty. At that time, the mountains in the Xunzhou and Dateng Gorge areas were close to each other, and Yao pirates were infested. However, in the Tusi areas on the left and right rivers, because there were many people and few fields, many people made a living as soldiers, and they fought bravely, which made the Yao people very afraid.
The Guangxi Wolf Soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were a powerful force that cannot be ignored. Their peak number was more than 100,000, and they participated in almost every war in the late Ming Dynasty. However, now, many werewolves have been transformed into farmers, and there are only more than 2,000 wolf soldiers left in Guidong area.
The reason for this situation is that after the "San Francisco Rebellion", there were fewer and fewer military activities in Guangxi. Especially after the reform, the management system of the wolf soldiers was completely disrupted, resulting in a sharp decrease in the number of wolf soldiers.
Zhu Gui saw that it was just right. Regiment training was his pinnacle. He didn't want to move for the time being. The Green Battalion had too few troops and the level of fighting was really not good. There are no more than two thousand wolf soldiers, and they are most suitable for guarding the dangerous terrain of Ma'an Pass. Furthermore, it is not far from Wuzhou to Teng County. It is a 160-mile waterway and can be reached by boat in two days.
Before setting off, each of the wolf soldiers received ten taels of silver, and their morale was greatly boosted, as if every one of them had been given a shot of blood. What they originally wanted was a reward, so they couldn't come here just to eat old rice after all the hard work.
There is no word "laoxiang" in Cantonese, but "xiangli".
(End of chapter)
