Huang Tinghao led his army to surrender when the situation was irreversible!
With Huang Tinghao's surrender, the Battle of Gaoyouzhou came to an end.
In this battle, as for the Ming army, Huang Tinghao's New Standard Army lost more than 600 people, and there were still 500 to 600 people who were seriously injured. The remaining intact people plus those with minor injuries were less than a thousand.
There were also many casualties among the guardsmen, at least nearly a thousand casualties.
As for the Chu army, because it had an absolute advantage in strength and firepower, the casualties were not large. The main reason was that they suffered several counterattacks by the enemy's new standard troops in the early stages of the battle, and some people were killed or injured in the melee.
At last count, more than 100 people were killed and more than 200 wounded.
In addition to killing the enemy and capturing Gaoyou Prefecture, the Chu army's victory also captured a lot of loot.
Including the weapons and equipment of the Ming army, including more than 600 matchlock guns made by the Ming army locally, more than 800 blunderbuss, four field guns of two and a half kilograms, and more than ten short-barreled general cannons of more than two hundred kilograms. , Folang machine cannons, etc., in addition to dozens of bowl-mouth cannons weighing tens of kilograms to a hundred kilograms, tiger squatting cannons, etc.
There are even more armor, swords, spears and fire portal guns.
In addition, dozens of war horses and more than a hundred batches of draft mules and horses were seized.
Finally, a batch of grain and cash were also seized.
The gold and silver among them were naturally the result of ransacking the homes of officials and recalcitrant gentry in the city. The grain was the original military rations of the Ming army, as well as the grain stored in some grain stores in the city controlled by officials and recalcitrant gentry.
Overall, the harvest is quite good.
Lieutenant General Li Dongshao was also in a good mood about this.
After the Battle of Gaoyouzhou, Li Dongshao left a strengthened battalion to guard the area. In addition to guarding and reorganizing thousands of prisoners of war, he himself led the main force south along the canal to Yangzhou City.
Just as he said before, the Fourth Division was still waiting for his First Guards Division outside Yangzhou City.
The Ming army in Yangzhou City was much more powerful than here in Gaoyou Prefecture. Song Zushun deployed about 10,000 of the main force of the Jiangbei New Biao Army in Yangzhou. In addition, there were about 10,000 local guardsmen in Yangzhou to assist in the defense.
The entire Ming army in Yangzhou City had about 20,000 troops and more than 20 long-barreled artillery pieces.
Although the strength of the Fourth Division that attacked Yangzhou City in the early stage is not bad, it is still more troublesome to attack Yangzhou City, which has complete defense fortifications and a large number of enemy troops. One person may not be able to capture Yangzhou in the end. City, I am afraid that the Fourth Division will also suffer heavy losses.
When one's own side has the advantage in strength, the Chu army's top brass will naturally not let the Fourth Division fight alone at Yangzhou City. Instead, they will let the First Guards Division capture Gaoyou Prefecture first, and then turn south to fight with the Fourth Division. Together with the division, they launched the final general attack on Yangzhou City.
The Fourth Division arrived in Yangzhou City first. In addition to carrying out numerous preparations and clearing out some of the Ming Army's outlying strongholds, it was also to contain the Ming Army in the city and prevent them from sending troops to reinforce Gaoyou Prefecture or simply running away!
The Chu army's core goal in this Jiangbei battle was to occupy the Jiangbei area, but they also wanted to kill all the main Ming forces in the Jiangbei area.
They were allowed to flee back to Shandong, Henan and other places in the north to continue fighting against the Chu army.
When most of the main troops of the First Guards Division moved south to Yangzhou City, several other troops of the Chu Army also successively engaged the Ming Army and battles broke out.
On the Haizhou front line, the Army's 23rd Mixed Brigade escorted by the Navy, with the cooperation of the Navy's 1st Marine Regiment, began to advance inland after capturing Yuzhou Island, and successfully captured Haizhou City three days later.
Immediately, a large number of Chu army's ships transporting logistics supplies began to use the dock of Haizhou City to unload a large amount of combat supplies, including numerous grains, ammunition and artillery.
The previous batch of nine-pound field artillery was too heavy, and when they landed on Yuzhou Island, they landed directly on the beach. Such heavy field artillery was not easy to move down directly, so they waited until the Chu army captured the outside of Haizhou City. A batch of six nine-pound field guns were moved down behind a pier that could berth sea-going ships.
These six nine-pound field guns are the main artillery of the 23rd Mixed Brigade. With these six nine-pound field guns, the 23rd Mixed Brigade continued to advance inland and lost the navy's naval gunfire. After receiving strong support, it can also ensure that it still has the support of large-caliber artillery.
The 23rd Composite Brigade, the designation of this composite brigade was actually obtained in recent days. Previously, they were actually directly affiliated with the 15th Division, and the 15th Division was actually the 15th Composite Brigade. The brigade was expanded.
In order to land on Yuzhou Island, capture Suqian, and cut off the connection between Huai'an and Xuzhou, Shandong and other places, the Army directly transferred an infantry regiment, a supply battalion, five artillery posts, and one from the 15th Division of the new main force. The cavalry battalion formed a mixed force.
Considering that this unit will fight independently on the front line in the future, for better command, the Army simply reported that this mixed unit was separately organized into the 23rd Mixed Brigade of the Army. The vacancies in the original 15th Division were Direct replenishment at the rear.
In other words, the current mixed force is no longer directly under the control of the 15th Division, but an independent combat unit.
And this independent combat unit is different from the Chu army that participated in the Jiangbei Campaign and even other battles in the past!
They are a new force that uses rifles and their infantry are all musketeers.
So, after several days of fighting with the 23rd Mixed Brigade of the Chu Army, thousands of Ming Army Guardsmen were stationed in the local area. Not a single spearman was seen...
This made the local Ming army guards very confused...
At the same time, they also discovered that the muskets of these Chu thieves musketeers were different. They could fire without a match rope, and when fighting, they could advance in a very dense formation...
When these Chu thieves advanced in dense formation, their firepower was extremely fierce, completely exceeding the Ming army's expectations.
These Ming troops had actually seen the firepower of the New Biao Army, but compared to the firepower of these Chu thieves, the firepower of the New Biao Army was at least several times worse.
The powerful firepower of the infantry was also the reason why the Army's 23rd Mixed Brigade was able to quickly capture Haizhou City after landing despite the lack of large-caliber field guns and mortars.
Flintlocks and matchlocks seem to have similar rates of fire, but because fusiliers can form denser formations side by side, they can concentrate more troops in a fixed width, forming a more powerful firepower density.
The stronger firepower density, coupled with the bayonet, is enough for the gunners to directly undertake all infantry combat tasks on the battlefield. They do not need spearmen to cover...
After the spearmen were no longer needed, these spearmen were transformed into fusiliers, further doubling the firepower density of the troops.
This also leads to the fact that the firepower intensity of the new infantry using flintlock muskets is at least three or four times higher than that of the old main force using matchlocks and spearmen!
This is why the flintlock gun can completely eliminate the matchlock gun!
A fourfold or more increase in firepower density will create a huge tactical advantage on the battlefield.
But the local Ming army did not know this. They were just amazed by the sharp guns of the Chu thieves, and then they either fled or surrendered after they could no longer resist.
Few people even paid attention to the Chu army's infantry firepower, why it suddenly became so powerful.
The Ming Army's thoughts were naturally ignored by the Chu Army. After the 23rd Mixed Brigade captured Haizhou City, they only rested and replenished supplies for a day, and then began to fight towards Suqian the next day.
As for the garrison work of Haizhou City and Yuzhou Island, it was fully handed over to the Navy's First Marine Regiment.
The 23rd Mixed Brigade of the Army fought all the way towards Suqian. At the same time, another new unit of the Chu Army, the 10th Division, also arrived in Sizhou and launched an attack.
The Tenth Division was actually the first new division-level unit in the Chu Army to be formed, earlier than the Tenth Division.
Although this is the first time this unit has participated in large-scale actual combat, it has been training for more than a year, and has participated in some low-intensity operations to encircle and suppress illegal armed forces in Jiangnan, Southern Anhui and other places many times.
Therefore, although it was a bit naive at the beginning, after two days of fighting, the 10th Division showed the combat effectiveness that the main force should have.
They quickly captured Sizhou.
Thousands of Ming troops in Sizhou either surrendered or fled, but did not put up a strong resistance.
In fact, in the first ten days of the Jiangbei Campaign, the Chu army launched three large-scale battles: the Haizhou Campaign, the Gaoyouzhou Campaign, and the Sizhou Campaign.
Only Huang Tinghao's troops in Gaoyou Prefecture resisted!
The Ming armies in the Haizhou and Sizhou directions were mainly composed of local guardsmen and even young civilian men. Their will to resist was very weak and their combat effectiveness was very poor. Not to mention their equipment level. Not to mention the new guns and cannons, even the old ones. The general's cannons don't have many...
Therefore, their resistance was more of a symbolic one, and it did not play any role other than serving as a grindstone for the two new units, the 23rd Mixed Brigade and the 10th Division.
As the 10th Division of the Chu Army captured Sizhou, it had initially cut off the water contact between Zhu Dadian's headquarters in the direction of Hefei and Fengyang, and the editors of Yang Sichang's headquarters in the direction of Huai'an.
After all, by controlling Sizhou, the Chu army can directly strangle the inland traffic in the middle and upper reaches of the Huaihe River entering Hongze Lake.
Without the water channel of the Huaihe River, although Huai'an and Fengyang can still maintain contact, it will not be so convenient, especially large-scale troop mobilization will be even more troublesome.
And this was also the tactical goal of the Chu Army's Tenth Division to capture Sizhou first.
Immediately afterwards, the 10th Division did not stop its pace, nor did it mobilize eastward to Huai'an. Instead, it divided its troops into two groups. The reinforced regiment with the 38th Infantry Regiment as the core marched directly westward along the Huaihe River in an attempt to capture Jiuxian and other places. , fought all the way to Fengyang City.
A reinforced regiment with the 39th Infantry Regiment as its core, under the cover of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, headed north to Taoyuan County, trying to join forces with the Army's 23rd Mixed Brigade heading towards Suqian.
At the same time, the 1st Cavalry Brigade also traveled from Fengyang to Sizhou, closely monitoring and intercepting large-scale enemy cavalry that might appear, and protecting the safety of the main infantry, artillery, and baggage units in the rear.
Looking at the attack direction of the 10th Division and the 1st Cavalry Brigade, it is not difficult to see that the strategic task of the 10th Division is to cut off the connection between Zhu Dadian's headquarters and Yang Sichang's headquarters, and at the same time cooperate with the 23rd Mixed Brigade to cut off Yang Sichang's headquarters. The headquarters and rear areas were connected with the Ming army in Shandong and Henan.
If you look at it on a map, you will find that the 10th Division and the 23rd Mixed Brigade are like two fists, one left and one right swinging towards the hinterland of the Ming Army. Once these two fists meet.
Then a huge strategic encirclement will appear!
Whether it was Yang Sichang's troops or Song Zushun's troops, they would all be surrounded by this narrow area along the Jiangbei Canal.
This is why the Chu army only fought on the periphery in the early stages of the battle, but did not attack Yangzhou or rush to Huai'an.
Because as long as the Chu army captured the peripheral places such as Suqian, Taoyuan, Sizhou, Gaoyouzhou, etc., Yang Sichang's troops and Song Zushun's troops would be the two dishes of the Chu army's wine.
Even if they huddled in the cities of Huai'an and Yangzhou, it would not change the outcome of their entire army being destroyed.
