While Luo Zhixue was sitting in Zhongxiang handling affairs of all parties, various units of the Baoxiang Army on the front line were also attacking cities and territories.
Xu Hedong's detachment, with the Second Infantry Brigade as its core, moved the fastest at that time. The detachment set off from Zhongxiang and went straight to Jingshan.
After approaching Jingshan, the magistrate of Jingshan County directly rubbed oil on his feet and fled.
This can't be done without running.
There are not many officers and soldiers stationed in Jingshan City, only two to three hundred guardsmen. Even if civilians are temporarily recruited to defend the city, only a thousand people are recruited.
Such a small number of miscellaneous fish want to stop the invasion of the thieves. People themselves don’t believe it...
The magistrate of Jingshan County was unwilling to commit suicide, let alone surrender to a bandit, so he had no choice but to run away.
Although the court will hold you accountable after running away, it is still better than death.
As soon as the county magistrate ran away, no one took care of the affairs in the city. Most of the two to three hundred guardsmen in the city dispersed on the spot when they saw that they were not running. The remaining hundred or so people thought that running away would be no better. If you go, you might as well surrender to the thieves.
So, when Xu He led his army to Jingshan, the more than a hundred guardsmen in the city took hundreds of civilians who had not fled, and gathered with the few low-level officials left behind in the city to present the city.
Needless to say what happened next, Xu He's troops captured Jingshan without spending a single group of troops, and then continued heading southeast to Yingcheng.
The Ming army in Yingcheng was relatively tough. Under the leadership of the county magistrate, more than 400 local guardsmen and more than a thousand civilians resisted.
But this resistance is meaningless.
The Xuhe detachment did not even need to put up a posture. They just used artillery bombardment to defeat the enemy forces in the city. The subsequent siege did not even encounter any resistance.
After the city was broken, there were many casualties among the recalcitrant officials in the city, and the remaining troops surrendered or fled.
After winning these two places in succession, the Xuhe detachment continued to march into the Yunmeng and Xiaogan areas.
On the way, they also divided their troops and went to Anlu, the city of De'an Prefecture. However, Anlu City had a lot of troops, at least seven or eight thousand troops were stationed there. Therefore, the battalion detached from the Xuhe detachment did not dare to attack immediately, but was outside. garrison.
This reassured the civil and military officials of the Ming Army in Anlu City, and they felt that they had done the right thing by accepting the deserters from Yicheng.
The reason why there are so many defenders in Anlu City is that in addition to their own troops and the reinforcements coming from Runing Mansion, the remaining half are actually Ming troops who escaped from Yicheng.
After these Ming armies joined together, the city's military strength reached more than 7,000 people.
Since there are relatively many troops in the city, and Xu He also thinks that if he avoids attacking Anlu City directly, he might just run straight to the third pass of Yiyang.
The group of defenders in the city had escaped all the way from Yicheng, and there was no guarantee that they would not escape again.
But once you scare them and scare them into giving up Anlu and retreating to the Three Passes of Yiyang, it will be more troublesome.
After all, the difficulty of attacking the three passes of Yiyang is much more difficult than attacking Anlu City.
Therefore, Xu He was very cautious. When he saw that there were many enemies in Anlu, he ignored them. Instead, he continued south to attack Xiaogan in order to cooperate with other troops of the First Division to capture Hanyang.
As for the Anlu side, we can wait for a while, wait for the First Division to be free, and wait for some of the troops of the Third Division to form initial combat effectiveness, and then annihilate them in one fell swoop, and strive to directly engage in an encirclement and annihilation battle to avoid They retreated to the third pass of Yiyang.
Under such circumstances, the main force of the eastward detachment attacked Xiaogan.
On the other side, the main forces such as the 1st Infantry Brigade of the 1st Division also successfully captured Qianjiang and other areas along the Han River, and finally fought their way to Hanyang City.
When the two main forces of the First Division merged, the fall of Hanyang City could be announced.
After all, there are not many troops in Hanyang City, and not only Hanyang City, most of the Ming troops in other places have been mobilized and lost one after another in the battles of Yicheng and Zhongxiang.
The total number of Ming troops who escaped was only four to five thousand, of which more than three thousand fled to Anlu City, and more than a thousand fled back to Wuchang with Tang Hui.
After the Yicheng and Zhongxiang battles, the Ming army in northern Chu and even parts of southern Chu had lost most of its troops. Tang Hui, who now fled back to Wuchang, began to focus on plundering troops from southern Chu and other places to deploy Wuchang-centered troops. The Yangtze River Defense Line still has the energy to care about the life and death of Hanyang City across the river.
It's impossible to hold on anyway, so it's better to just give up.
The Ming army themselves had no intention of resisting, so the First Division's attack on Hanyang City naturally went smoothly. Facing the Hanyang City defenders who had been abandoned in the city and didn't even have many soldiers.
The First Division took Hanyang City in just one day.
There were more than three thousand people in Hanyang City in name, but in fact most of them were civilians. The remaining officers and soldiers were also old, young and weak ordinary guardsmen who did not put up much resistance at all. They were simply defeated and surrendered.
When the city of Hanyang fell, Tang Hui, who was on the south bank of the Yangtze River and at the top of Wuchang City, stood on the high city gate tower, looking at Hanyang on the north bank of the river.
At this time, the rebel army had captured Hanyang, but there seemed to be a fire somewhere in the city, so thick smoke billowed up.
Faintly, you can still see the bandit army's Baozi flag flying at the top of Hanyang City and the docks.
Chu Bei was completely finished.
Tang Hui knew very well that with the fall of Hanyang, it meant that the entire northern Chu region would fall into the hands of the rebels. However, Tang Hui was powerless to deal with all this.
Now he doesn't even have ten thousand troops under his command, and most of them are guard soldiers who can't fight. There are only about two thousand soldiers who can fight to death, and there are only one or two hundred elite soldiers and servants.
There is also a serious shortage of ordnance, especially artillery. When Tang Hui commanded the army in northern Chu, he still had hundreds of artillery pieces of various kinds, even if most of them were dozens of kilograms. Cannons, tiger-crouching cannons and the like, but they are still there anyway.
But now, he doesn't even have twenty or thirty artillery pieces, and these artillery pieces are basically the old artillery pieces that were deployed on the top of Wuchang City. Some of the artillery pieces are older than his grandfather...
Under such circumstances, let alone counterattack Hanyang or Chubei, he now doesn't even have much confidence to defend Wuchang.
"Things are hard!" After watching for a long time, Tang Hui left the city gate tower with this lament.
He still had to figure out where to allocate troops and recruit civilian men, and he also had to think of ways to collect military supplies such as weapons, food, and fodder.
In addition, another more important thing is to find ways to reduce the impact of the defeats in Yicheng and Zhongxiang as much as possible.
Although he had extensively contacted a group of mentors and friends to reduce his culpability, the responsibility for the loss of Chubei and the loss of tens of thousands of troops could not be escaped.
Nowadays, Tang Hui has no ambitions. He doesn't even expect to keep his official title. He doesn't even expect to be demoted to Guangxi like before!
He just wants to get through this transition period well, and then go home to retire...
However, even this is difficult, because the negative impact of losing Chubei is too great, and even he, the governor of Huguang, cannot get it.
If this doesn't work well, it will result in being imprisoned or even exiled.
In recent years, the governors of several surrounding provinces have fared badly, and Tang Hui is also very afraid.
In the past few years, Lu Xiangsheng's predecessor, the governor of Yunyang, was exiled... The governor of Henan, Xuan Mo, was dismissed from office first, but before the dismissal was completed, the security forces had already captured Nanyang Mansion, and the court was furious.
Xuanmo, who could have retired with dignity and served as an official, was arrested and brought back to the capital. He is expected to be imprisoned. It is unknown whether he will be exiled later.
There are also governors of Fengyang, governors of Shaanxi, governors of Shanxi and so on.
Anyway, in recent years, the governors of various provinces who have caused trouble have had a difficult time, and basically they have not ended well.
Not to mention these governors, even Hong Chengchou, the governor of the five provinces, has had a hard time in the past two or three months. In fact, he has not had many fights with the security forces. In recent months, he has been fighting with Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, etc. The thieves fought hard, and the results were great.
But, the coalition forces of Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong that he sent to Nanyang to encircle and suppress the Baoxiang Army were defeated!
Zuo Liangyu suffered a huge defeat and could only bring back a few thousand people. He Renlong even led his troops to surrender to the thieves...
In the end, the Baoxiang Army took control of the Nanyang Basin, endangering the entire northern Chu.
This was in June and July, before the Baoxiang Army attacked Zhongxiang City.
However, because of this, Hong Chengchou was reprimanded by the court and asked to end the war in Shaanxi quickly, and quickly led his troops to Chubei.
And when the court later finds out that the Hometown Protection Army has occupied the entire northern Chu, it is estimated that more people will be unlucky.
The only thing Tang Hui hopes now is that he can protect himself and his life and return home to retire. As for the rest, he simply doesn't dare to hope for it.
However, Tang Hui waited month after month, starting in April and May, and now in August, he still has not been able to wait for his replacement.
He didn't know it at this time, but he himself had been promoted again...
The most direct wish is that Lu Xiangsheng died in the battle.
Originally, the imperial court had made good arrangements for Tang Huigun, who was demoted due to Chen Qiyu's involvement, to go to Guangxi to take up a post.
Lu Xiangsheng, who was deeply trusted by the court officials and highly expected by His Majesty, took over as governor of Huguang. Within a few months, Lu Xiangsheng was given the opportunity to prime minister of military affairs in Huguang, Henan, Sichuan, Shandong, Jiangbei and other places.
However, Hong Chengchou, who was originally the governor-general of many provinces' military affairs and had little ability to divide his time, concentrated on the military affairs of Shaanxi and other places.
In this way, both inside and outside, the two teamed up to strangle thieves from all over the place.
But what the court officials did not expect was that in April and May, a rural protection army suddenly appeared.
This rural protection army quickly captured Nanyang and Xiangyang Prefectures with lightning speed, and also directly defeated Lu Xiangsheng's troops in the Battle of Sanyuanzhuang.
Lu Xiangsheng's death in battle not only caused the Nanyang Basin to fall, but also directly disrupted the Ming Dynasty's high-level personnel arrangements in Huguang and other places.
Since the news of Lu Xiangsheng's death in battle reached the capital at the end of May, the big guys in the capital have been arguing about who should replace Lu Xiangsheng as governor of Huguang and prime minister of the military affairs of the provinces.
It was not easy to decide on this candidate. The cabinet bosses all had their own opinions. Chongzhen himself also had his own small thoughts. Then he had to consider the opinions of the existing governors, commander-in-chief, Hong Chengchou and others in various parts of the Central Plains.
After more than two months of discussion, no conclusion has been reached until now in August.
Moreover, at the end of July, the princes of the imperial court felt that since the prime minister's supervisor of military affairs outside the customs could not be decided for a while, someone had to be in charge temporarily.
After all, whether it is a stray thief or a protected thief, they all need to be beaten.
Considering that Tang Hui is still acting as the governor of Huguang, he doesn't bother the two masters at the same time. He simply lets Tang Hui take charge of the military affairs of Huguang, Sichuan, Henan and other places first, and then one person handles the military affairs of the five provinces.
After they select the real prime ministers of the five regions, they will be sent to take over the military power of the five regions.
The imperial envoy carrying the imperial edict set out at the end of July, hurriedly and slowly, and finally arrived in Wuchang in mid-August.
Then Tang Hui, the former governor of Huguang who should have gone away a few months ago, and who had just suffered a huge defeat not long ago and lost the whole of northern Chu, not only continued to act as governor of Huguang, but was also promoted.
Became the agent for military affairs in the five provinces of Huguang, Henan, Sichuan, Shandong and Jiangbei.
After receiving the imperial edict, Tang Hui was dumbfounded...
