In order to capture Jinling City before it snowed, the Chu army moved relatively quickly after capturing Hukou. Even in order to continue to advance eastward, they did not allocate the main force to attack some small surrounding cities.
These small cities were basically left to the garrison to attack, although the Chu army also sent a small number of main troops as the core backbone.
However, these main forces are mainly used to suppress the situation, prevent the garrison from being ambushed, and incidentally serve as a supervisory team.
As for the work of siege, in addition to the artillery support of the main force, the battle between infantry is still dominated by the garrison infantry.
In this way, we can take advantage of the large number of surrendered troops collected in the battle to the east, so as not to let them eat for free...
In the Eastward Campaign, a large number of surrendered troops were reorganized according to the Chu army's previous rules. In addition to some elites from the New Standard Army who were directly added to the main forces, some of the other New Standard Army and battalion sentries were Soldiers, etc. are basically incorporated into the garrison.
In a series of battles in Jiujiang, as well as a series of subsequent battles such as the attack on Wuchang, the Chu army accepted a large number of surrendered troops and reorganized the 11th Garrison Division and the 12th Garrison Division. At the same time, half of the original troops were transferred The 7th Garrison Division was also fully staffed again.
These three garrison divisions were also the main forces used by the Chu army to fight in Jiangxi and even Chizhou Prefecture, Huizhou Prefecture and other areas to attack non-strategic places.
When the Chu army continued to advance eastward, they successively captured Chizhou Prefecture and reached Taiping Prefecture.
Luo Zhixue selected people from the surrendered troops to establish the 13th Garrison Division.
At the same time, the 14th Garrison Division was also established in the Jiangbei area with surrendered troops.
After capturing Wuhu, Luo Zhixue formally established the Anlu governorship area, which governed Chizhou Prefecture, Huizhou Prefecture, Ningguo Prefecture, Taiping Prefecture in the south of the Yangtze River, and Anqing Prefecture, Luzhou Prefecture, and Hezhou in the north of the Yangtze River.
The governor's headquarters was Anqing, and the Anlu Garrison Headquarters was established, which temporarily took charge of the 13th Garrison Division and the 14th Garrison Division.
However, in the Anlu Prefecture Province, there are actually more than just these two garrison divisions fighting, there are also the Fifth Garrison Division and the Seventh Garrison Division.
It’s just that the Fifth Garrison Division belongs to the Chubei Garrison Command, and the 7th Garrison Division belongs to the Jiangxi Garrison Command.
At the same time, because these two garrison divisions are fighting abroad, they are actually directly under the command of the staff headquarters. If nothing unexpected happens, these two garrison divisions with relatively strong combat effectiveness will continue to accompany the First Army and the Second Army respectively. Will not stay in Chubei or Jiangxi.
The combat effectiveness of the Chu army's garrison was naturally not good enough in front of the main division. Both the quality of the soldiers and the level of equipment were far inferior.
But if compared with the battalion sentries in the Ming army, they are relatively capable of fighting.
After all, the garrison in the Chu army, except for a few former New Standard Army soldiers who were not selected into the main force, most of them were actually elites selected from the sentries of the Ming army camp, and were mainly combat soldiers.
Not all prisoners of war could join the Chu army's garrison if they wanted to. The overall proportion of those selected was about one-half or even one-third.
At the same time, even if these are garrison troops, their equipment may not be good, but their food supply is not bad.
After all, the Chu army is not short of food, and they will not treat their soldiers as harshly as the Ming army. As long as they are soldiers fighting for Luo Zhixue, they can at least have enough to eat.
The quality of this food supply may be slightly worse than that of the main force, but the quantity is definitely sufficient.
When the food supply arrived, it immediately affected the morale and morale of the soldiers in the garrison.
On the one hand, there is not enough to eat every day, and on the other hand, there is enough to eat every day. Just this difference is enough for the soldiers of the Chu army garrison to burst out with stronger morale than the Ming army camp sentries.
At the same time, the equipment is generally better. Although the weapons and armor they are equipped with are all weapons and equipment captured from the Ming army, due to the large amount of captured equipment, and during the reorganization process, only a part of the surrendered soldiers were selected to be selected into the garrison. Therefore, the reorganization process was Here, the garrison basically did not use traditional equipment such as swords and spears.
The armor and artillery may be a little inferior, but proportionally speaking, they are much stronger than the Ming army's battalion sentries.
In addition, there is another more critical point, that is, the garrison divisions in the Chu army are also equipped with field artillery. Even if it is only two and a half kilograms of field artillery, a division only has a mere twelve field artillery battalions, but this is some.
The soldiers in the traditional camp and sentry force, coupled with field artillery, this path is actually similar to the path taken by Hong Chengchou.
Hong Chengchou also continued to use the old battalion sentries, and then directly paired them with the new thieves-killing cannon, which was also the field cannon.
Not to mention, the effect is pretty good.
The cost of building an army is low, the consumption is relatively small, and the combat effectiveness can be guaranteed.
This kind of Chu army garrison is often very good at attacking some small cities and taking charge of some secondary fronts.
So much so that some of the Ming Dynasty civil and military officials on the opposite side were greatly puzzled.
These Chu thieves were obviously part of their officers and soldiers not long ago, and their combat effectiveness was not very good.
How come when we get to the Chu thieves, the people are still the same, and even the equipment is still the same. How come the combat effectiveness suddenly soars.
This is unreasonable!
While a large number of local officials in the Ming court were puzzled and even cursed, several garrison divisions from the Chu army attacked the city and plundered the territory.
On the southern line of Jiangxi, the 11th Garrison Division first captured Ruizhou Prefecture, then Yuanzhou Prefecture, and finally successfully joined forces with the 10th Garrison Division affiliated to the Chunan Garrison Command in the Pingxiang area.
Another garrison division of the Jiangxi garrison headquarters, the 12th garrison division, is located in Raozhou Prefecture and Guangxin Prefecture. Now the troops have reached the Jiangshan area of Zhejiang Province adjacent to Guangxin Prefecture. If the fight continues like this, if the Ming army in Zhejiang is not strong enough, the 12th Garrison Division may not be able to fight all the way to Jinhua in the hinterland of Zhejiang in one go.
These two garrison divisions continued to fight on two lines, one in the east and one in the west. This also allowed the 7th Division, the main force of the Chu army in the Jiangxi region, to free up its hands to continue attacking important cities in the Ganjiang River Basin and other areas.
The Seventh Division first captured Fengcheng, then moved south to Linjiang, while the other brigade captured Fuzhou.
Immediately afterwards, two brigades of the 7th Division attacked Ji'an Mansion from two directions.
There were not many Ming troops in Ji'an Prefecture, and they could not stop the Seventh Division's onslaught. In early October, after the Chu Army's Seventh Division captured Wan'an and Longquan in the southernmost part of the Ganzhong Plain, they basically The entire Ji'an Prefecture was declared to be completely under the rule of the Chu Empire.
However, the 7th Division later took the initiative to stop and continue to move south.
This is because if you continue to go south, you will enter the Ganzhou Prefecture area, and this area has many mountains and rugged roads. It is very unfriendly to troops like the 7th Division, which has a large number of artillery and ammunition and baggage. …
It is difficult to guarantee the mobile marching speed of the troops, and it is difficult to guarantee the logistics safety, and it is easy to be ambushed by the enemy.
The Chu army had encountered this kind of trouble before in the southern and western regions of southern Chu and even in eastern Sichuan.
It’s not that you can’t beat it, but it’s more troublesome and takes much longer time.
Not to mention other things, it is not easy just to pull these five-pound field cannons weighing thousands of kilograms or even nine-pound field cannons weighing two to three thousand kilograms.
Without these powerful field artillery, the Chu army's combat effectiveness will immediately drop by at least half. If you don't want to directly risk the lives of the light infantry, then you can only slowly open roads and build bridges, and wait for the field artillery to slowly Come up.
This is also the reason why the Chu army's progress in the above-mentioned areas is very slow.
Nowadays, the Chu army's operations in the Jiangxi area have also entered this stage. They are restricted by the terrain, and at the same time, the Chu army is unwilling to inflict a large number of casualties on the main force. Naturally, there is no way to achieve a quick victory.
But more importantly, after the Chu army captured Ji'an Prefecture, the Chu Empire basically controlled most of the population gathering places and grain-producing areas in central and northern Jiangxi.
As for Ganzhou Prefecture in the south and some other mountainous areas, they will not be very attractive to the Chu army in a short period of time.
Under such circumstances, most of the resources of the Chu Empire need to be supplied for the eastward campaign to maintain the army's continuous operations in the Jiangbei and Jiangnan regions.
In the case of limited resources, especially ammunition supply, the Logistics Department of the Military Academy of the Dachu Empire basically gave priority to replenishing various types of ammunition to the Jiangbei and Jiangnan regions. As for the ammunition supply in Jiangxi, with the capture of Ji'an Prefecture Later, the Logistics Department simply cut off the supply of most ammunition to Jiangxi.
Now the Seventh Division is fighting in Jiangxi. It seems that there are a lot of artillery, but they dare not let go to fire. Otherwise, they will run out of ammunition in minutes and the artillery will become scrap metal.
Without ammunition supplies, the Chu army's main force's large-scale offensive in the Jiangxi area actually came to a halt after October.
However, the main force was unable to fight due to lack of ammunition, but the garrison with few firearms could still continue to fight.
Especially the 12th Garrison Division, even after entering October, even though it is far away from the rear supply depot, it still relies on local conscription of food to strongly maintain the combat effectiveness of its cold weapon troops.
Relying on fighting with traditional cold weapons, they captured Jiangshan and Changshan, completely opening the door to the western region of Zhejiang. This frightened the governor of Zhejiang and other officials, who began to mobilize troops from all over the province to reinforce Quzhou Prefecture and Quzhou Prefecture. To prevent Chu thieves from entering the hinterland of Zhejiang.
The outstanding performance of the 12th Garrison Division even attracted the attention of Luo Zhixue, the Emperor of the Chu Empire who was currently in Dangtu.
Looking at the battle report of the 12th Garrison Division sent from Jiangxi, Luo Zhixue nodded slightly and said: "It seems that Chen Yongfu was the right choice to be the division commander. He is indeed very good at fighting."
Xu Zhixian said: "His Majesty is still a wise man with a pair of wise eyes. If it hadn't been for Your Majesty who promoted him to be the teacher, Chen Yongfu would not have been able to display all his abilities!"
"The same goes for He Renlong. Now he is leading the 14th Guards Division to fight in Jiangbei with great success. This is all because of your wise use of people, Your Majesty!"
Luo Zhixue laughed after hearing this. Although he knew that Xu Zhixian was complimenting him, Luo Zhixue was in a good mood after hearing this.
Not everyone dares to use surrendered generals so confidently and boldly, and even allows surrendered generals to directly serve as commanders of the army.
But Luo Zhixue just dares!
Although Han Tong placed a lot of An Tan around these two people, if these two people made any slight changes, they would basically be dead.
But...
Almost every senior general in the Chu army was surrounded by Han Tong's spies, so Luo Zhixue did not treat Chen Yongfu and He Renlong specially.
All are treated equally.
And this kind of equal treatment is not something that every superior person can give to those who have been demoted.
But Luo Zhixue dared to give it!
As long as Luo Zhixue works hard for him, Luo Zhixue will never begrudge the high-ranking official and his title.
Similarly, as long as Luo Zhixue dares to have second thoughts about him, Luo Zhixue will never hesitate at all, and those who should be exterminated will be exterminated.
Fortunately, at least there are no high-level young men in the Da Chu Empire yet. After all, the empire is currently expanding at a rapid rate, and the prospects are quite good. And many discerning people can also see that the Da Chu Empire does not dare to continue to expand like this. It is appropriate to say that China will be unified but half of the country will be divided.
Now is the time to make achievements. With a little effort, you will get glory and wealth. There is no need to be a traitor.
As for mid-level and low-level traitors, they were inevitable, and Luo Zhixue didn't take them to heart.
Because of the expansion of the Chu Empire, many people saw hope for further progress, which led to the ability to unite the civil servants and generals under their command.
But on the Mingting side, the scene was reversed.
When the Ming court ordered Wang Jiazhen to be dismissed from his post, arrested and imprisoned, he was replaced by Queen Fan Jingwen, who only talked about living and dying with Jinling City every day, but in fact had no solution at all.
Many people in Jinling City have strange thoughts.
Those who only want to run away can be considered worthy of Mingting and Chongzhen.
There are still many people who do not want to run away or resist. Instead, they want to hook up with the Chu thieves and want to become officials of the Great Chu.
Many people even use Jie Xuelong and Shi Kefa as examples to convince themselves and others.
The governors, Jie Xuelong and Shi Kefa, who were deeply favored by the emperor, could defect to the Chu bandits. Moreover, Jie Xuelong became the chief envoy of Jiangxi and Shi Kefa became the right minister of the Ministry of War. Why couldn't they?
We are all ministers of the Ming Dynasty, and no one is more noble than anyone else.
What Shi Kefa and the others can do, we can do too.
Therefore, many people have really hooked up with the Chu thieves. They want to use Jinling City, Fan Jingwen and others, or other things as proxies, so that they can continue to be high-ranking officials after joining the Chu Empire.
Among these people, one person was very special, and that was Li Yuankui, the right minister of the Ministry of Industry in Nanjing.
Because this person is the real boss behind Fenghe Trading Company.
Fenghe Trading Co., Ltd. is the first-tier supplier of various strategic materials to the Chu Empire, and is also the largest single supplier of strategic materials.
This year alone, the Dachu Empire purchased various strategic materials totaling 1.6 million taels of silver through Fenghe Commercial Bank.
The rise of the Great Chu Empire was due to the huge contribution of Fenghe Trading Company.
As the real big boss of Fenghe Trading Company, Li Yuankui also made great contributions to the Dachu Empire.
The Chu Empire had promised Li Yuankui a long time ago that when the army entered Jinling City, it would be the beginning of the top-notch glory and wealth for his Li family.
But just like this, Li Yuankui was uneasy and not satisfied.
He wanted to show more of his value so that he could obtain a real high-ranking official position in the Chu Empire, not just a dispensable position.
He has even set his sights on the target official position: right minister of the Ministry of Commerce and Trade.
Not the right minister of the Ministry of War in name only like Shi Kefa, but the right minister of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry with real power!
But if you want to gain real power, you need to show your own value and pay a sufficient price.
And he has already done this. Now when Fenghe Commercial Bank purchases various materials from Dachu, except for the cost of goods, channel transportation costs, and maintenance operating costs, Fenghe Commercial Bank has no net profit at all, let alone huge profits. .
But this was not enough. Li Yuankui wanted to play a big game, so big that the Chu Empire was willing to give him the position of right minister of the powerful Ministry of Commerce and Trade.
