Outside Liaoyang City, Peng Sihai, who was a horse robber last year but is now a Ming Dynasty household, has been staring at the fortified city in front of him for a long time. The two general banners beside him, Dong Zhong and Chen Shou, also followed his uncle and nephew that day.
The horse thieves have now become low-level military attachés of the Jinzhou Army by virtue of their achievements in suppressing the rebellion in Dengzhou.
When Dengzhou expanded its army, the Wolf Cavalry was divided into two battalions: light and heavy. The heavy cavalry was personally led by the battalion commander Cao Bianjiao, but the light battalion was handed over by Dayong to Peng Dachui. After landing at Wanghai Fort, the Wolf Cavalry served as the vanguard and fought all the way north.
, a large number of horses were captured, Dayong selected elites from the surrendered soldiers of the original Ming army and the surrendered Mongolian soldiers to expand the light cavalry, so that the number of light cavalry was expanded from 1,200 to 3,000.
The heavy cavalry could not be expanded immediately due to the lack of heavy armor. However, despite this, Dayong also expanded the 500 auxiliary soldiers dedicated to the heavy cavalry to 1,600 people. Two auxiliary soldiers were responsible for one heavy armored soldier. This configuration made Cao Cao laugh.
I couldn't help but smile, because this configuration allows heavily armored soldiers to march as quickly as light cavalry without having to worry about losing horsepower.
Dayong repeatedly emphasized to his subordinates the importance of speed in war. Cao Bianjiao, who was born in a family of cavalry, also experienced this firsthand. Two years ago, he personally witnessed his uncle Cao Wenzhao leading only 700 cavalry for 400 miles to seize the opportunity of the people.
The army had previously blocked the encirclement, and then defeated more than 60,000 civilian troops in one fell swoop. The battle that made Cao Wenzhao famous in the northwest was actually not worth mentioning at all. It was simply a matter of speed. Whoever is fast enough will win.
Whoever can get ahead of his opponent will win.
Limited by the number of heavy armored cavalry, Cao Bianjiao knew that most of the future battles of the Wolf Cavalry would not be heavy armored battles, but would be more like light cavalry battles. Therefore, he could let the heavy armored cavalry
He has always dreamed of being as fast and mobile as the light cavalry. In the past, heavy armor played a greater role due to the lack of horses, but now it is different. With enough auxiliary troops, the heavy armor cavalry can be as fast as the light cavalry.
Mobile. This time the light cavalry sent to Liaoyang. Cao Bianjiao wanted to personally supervise the formation, but because Dayong needed him to lead the heavy armored cavalry with the main force to prevent an unexpected surprise attack by the Jin army, otherwise he would have led the heavy armored cavalry to Liaoyang long ago.
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There are currently 1,000 light cavalry outside Liaoyang City. Most of them are from Jinzhou's own army. The commander is Peng Sihai. The other 2,000 cavalry are led by Peng Dachui to clean up the bannermen's fortresses on the line from Anshan to Liaoyang and from Haizhou to Lianshuiguan.
There is also a group stationed at Nanguan south of Jinzhou with the infantry left camp, closely monitoring the movements of the Jin army in Lushun, and preparing to attack Lushun from the north and south when Pi Dao Huanglong and his troops arrive, completely clearing out the last stronghold in southern Liaoning.
Fortress of the Jin Army. Dayong intends to build Lushun into a bridgehead for the Jinzhou Army in southern Liaoning to facilitate subsequent operations. However, this depends on the intensity of Tai Hong's actions in southern Liaoning. If the pressure is too great, Dayong does not want to do it.
A mediocre bridgehead loses little of its own strength.
Originally, after the Anshan Massacre, Dayong was hesitant about whether to go north, but due to Wu Heyin's constant advice, he still took certain actions, but instead of the main force going north, he ordered a light cavalry unit to approach Liaoyang City.
In order to shock the Liaoyang defenders, they must not act rashly; secondly, it is to see if there is a chance to break the city (this mainly depends on whether the Han people in the city will riot); thirdly, it is to obtain an early warning buffer time for the army. If the Jin army comes to Shenyang to help,
Dayong can also make an early decision to fight or retreat, so as not to be caught off guard like the Jin army.
If conditions permit, Dayong would not mind seizing Liaoyang or even making a gesture of "approaching" Shenyang. After all, Shenyang, a big city that was renamed Shengjing by the Manchus, is too important. If Dayong can capture Shenyang, even if it only takes one day , his reputation will be unprecedentedly huge, and his weight in Chongzhen's mind will be as heavy as a rock. At that time, whether it is what happened in Dengzhou or Zu Dashou, it will not affect his influence in Liaodong. I'm afraid that on that day, his image in the eyes of the important officials in the court would be taller than that of Sun Chengzong and Zu Dashou. I wonder if a general who could break into the capital of the Jin people for the Ming Dynasty and make the Jin people gnash their teeth would be the so-called thief with evil intentions!
No, never![
Dayong believed that the young emperor would be shocked by the miracles he had created and be moved by his sincerity and loyalty. He would make friends with the young emperor and his ministers, and protect the world that was about to collapse for the Ming Dynasty and the Han people.
The relocation and reorganization of the Han people and descendants of Liaonan are proceeding in an orderly manner. More than 40,000 Han people have been moved to Jinzhou one after another. The Han army flags and forts reorganized by the descendants of the Ming army, and the Ming troops working in the mines have also been reorganized. They were rescued, captured or surrendered one after another. This time the Jinzhou Army landed in southern Liaoning with great momentum. As the Jin Army continued to lose ground and retreat, the Ming Army surrendered soldiers and the Han people who became slaves renewed their hope for the Ming Army. Two steps The military camp has already recruited nearly ten thousand soldiers of the Ming Army, and the supply camp left behind at Wanghai Fort in Jinzhou has accommodated thousands of Han civilians. They were first trained as auxiliary soldiers and then used as combat soldiers after actual combat. The artillery battalion did not recruit the soldiers of the surrendered army, which made The technology of the cannon is too strong, and it will be useless no matter how many people there are. I just selected more than 100 cannons to reduce the number of soldiers of the Han army and the Ming army. No other changes were made.
In this process, Zhou Wuchang, the former commander-in-chief of Wanghai Fort of the Han Army of the Jin Army, who was dubbed by Dayong as "a strong man can only learn from Anlu Mountain", made great achievements. In five days, he actually recruited seven people for Dayong. More than a thousand original Ming troops surrendered, of which more than 3,000 had participated in the Battle of Guangning. In addition, there were more than 30 Sichuan soldiers who had participated in the Battle of Hunhe. For this reason, Dayong specially ordered Zhou Wuchang went to check whether there were any soldiers from the Qi Army who participated in the Battle of Hunhe River in this land in southern Liaoning, but the return was that there were none. This made Dayong sigh with emotion for a moment, thinking that the soldiers from the Qi Army who participated in the Battle of Hunhe River were really The entire army was wiped out.
Although most of the Han and Ming troops in the area occupied by the Jinzhou Army chose to return to the Ming Dynasty, there were still a considerable number of Han and former Ming troops who still chose the Jin Army. Most of these people were family members of the Han Army Banners and Yuan Tong Yangxing. ’, Li Yongfang’s Ming army, many of whom have family members who occupy a place in the Jin army, can be said to be hard-core pro-Manchu “traitors”. Naturally, Dayong will not have any good intentions towards these people, and those who have escaped He couldn't control those who arrived at the Jin Army's territory, but he could kill those who were still on the road and had not yet escaped.
For a time, scenes of Ming Army cavalry in small groups chasing and killing people fleeing north were being staged all over the land of southern Liaoning. More often than not, a few Ming Army infantry led dozens of vengeful Han people to chase and kill those traitors. A certain number of bannermen and Mongolians also resisted stubbornly, but in the face of absolute strength, their resistance was minimal and could not change anything. Even if they could kill one or two groups of Ming troops, as more Ming troops rushed to In the end, they will inevitably end up being killed.
The checkpoints in various places have fallen into the hands of the Jinzhou Army. The two battalions on the left and right of the infantry strictly implemented Dayong's orders. In addition to controlling the highway checkpoints, they also used the assistance of those Han people who had been Aha and slaves to pass every possible route.
The alleys were guarded, and there were even many Han people who voluntarily hid by the woods in the mountains. Once they discovered the bannermen and traitors fleeing north, they would rush out to hunt them down. There were many bannermen on the way to avoid being caught.
The Ming army and the Han people discovered that they brutally killed young children to prevent their cries from being heard by the Ming army, which would lead to the death of adults. Some people who were unable to do so would simply abandon the children on the road, with disastrous consequences.
Most of them died of cold and starvation. Those who were lucky enough to be discovered by the Ming army did not receive treatment or adoption. Instead, they continued to let them cry in the wilderness of the empty mine. Every night, someone would hear the sound of wolves howling.
In the vast southern Liaoning, people are killing people everywhere, whether in the plains or mountains, and corpses can be seen everywhere. Fortunately, it is already winter. If it were summer, I am afraid that the Jinzhou Army would not be defeated by the Jin Army but by the plague. The Jinzhou Army
They can't get rid of the corpses for the time being. What they have to do now is to move the Han people to Jinzhou, find all the food they can find, burn all the houses that can be burned, blow up all the city walls that can be blown up, and blow up all the city walls that can be blown up.
All wells that can be filled should be filled, and all materials that can be transported away.
The scorched earth and fertile southern Liaoning were turned into ruins under Shi Dayong's bloodletting policy. Even if Hong Tai moved manpower again to enrich Liaonan, he would not be able to obtain food in Liaonan that could support his Eight Banners Army for at least ten years.
and supplies.
The massacres of bannermen in various places were somewhat bloody, and the liquidation of Han people who were qualified as traitors was also fierce. The birth of the "nine-grade Han traitor system" caused heads to fall one after another. In the process,
The officers carried out the purge based on the principle of preferring to kill the wrong person rather than let them go. There were many people who had not done many bad things for the Jin people, but they were killed because of their status.
More than a thousand Han people were killed in the city of Fuzhou, and many of them were just serving as bannermen, so they died unjustly. When Dayong received the report from Song Qing, he frowned
Wrong, but Song Qing is right. It is wartime now, and we have no officials in southern Liaoning, so it is impossible to screen them one by one. If we do that, we will not be able to keep up with the time, and there will not be so many literate people.
Officials with broken records can easily give opportunities to "treacherous" people. The so-called "troubled" times should use heavy codes. Since our Jinzhou Army landed in Liaonan to drain the blood of the Manchus, there is no need to follow the rules.
, what is the kindness of a woman, first kill them all and completely control the situation. As long as the situation is controlled, our army can successfully carry out the strategic purpose of this expedition, and there is no need to worry about unexpected events in the rear. In short, no matter
Whether they were unjust or not, there was no way to save those who had already been killed. What we could do now was to move the living Han people to Jinzhou intact and without starving or freezing, and then send them to Dengzhou.
Dayong was convinced of this and asked Song Qing and the others to go ahead and stop reporting these things to him in the future. What he was concerned about now was Liaoyang, Shenyang, and Hong Tai's army thousands of miles away.