Negotiations with the Bolivian army collapsed, and the Chinese Independence Army had no choice but to join forces with the Indians and the Bolivian army to fight.
The long-distance turning road is difficult to walk, and the heavy artillery required for siege is attached to the artillery brigade at the back.
Li Mingyuan led the forward troops to station near the Aymara village, waiting for the arrival of the artillery brigade.
In the past few days while waiting for the follow-up troops to converge, Li Mingyuan had negotiated with the Aymara people to jointly deal with the Bolivian army. The Aymara people also sent a large number of personnel to contact the Indians of other tribes and persuade them to join forces to fight against Mel.
Garejo's army.
It had only been two years since the Great Indian Revolt in 1866, and the Indians in Bolivia had a profound memory of the tragic experience. Now someone has taken the initiative to lend a helping hand and provided weapons and promised to jointly fight against the Melgarejo regime. Of course, they are happy to agree.
There is no conflict of interest between the Chinese Independence Army and the Indians. What the Indians want is to take back the land that belongs to them, while the Chinese Independence Army just wants to pass through Bolivia safely.
The Indians did not have to worry about the Chinese Independence Army snatching land from them after the uprising was successful. Therefore, the two parties hit it off immediately and reached an agreement without a long period of wrangling.
The Indians in La Paz Province were the first to arrive at the Chinese Independence Army station and accept the weapons allocated to them by the Chinese Independence Army.
After four days of negotiation, a total of fifteen groups of Indians gathered at the Chinese Independence Army station, numbering five thousand.
There were 700 muskets initially captured from Bolivian soldiers. After excluding the 200 muskets given to the Aymara people, there were still 500 muskets left. Five hundred muskets were not enough to distribute among the 5,000 Indians.
Therefore, Li Mingyuan ordered the cavalry brigade to divide the cavalry brigade into three groups to attack and capture the small cities in La Paz Province. The large city of La Paz was difficult to break without heavy artillery, but other small cities were not so complicated and were often charged by Chinese cavalry.
They stormed into the city or surrounded the city and fired guns. The Bolivian soldiers defending the small town surrendered voluntarily.
South America is sparsely populated. Except for some strategic locations, other small cities have low walls and some even have no wall protection. Therefore, the Chinese cavalry achieved rich results. They broke through nine small cities in a few days and captured 1,500 muskets.
The fifteen hundred plus the remaining five hundred make a total of two thousand muskets, which can arm two thousand Indian soldiers.
Two thousand Indian musketeers were a large number. Li Mingyuan did not intend to continue to expand the size of the Indian musketeers, because the main force fighting Bolivia was the Chinese Independence Army, and the role of wooing the Indians was to appease the locals and make them join the Chinese Independence Army.
Provide stable logistics support.
In the military tent, Li Mingyuan stood in front of the map and carefully examined the terrain near La Paz.
La Paz is located in the La Paz Valley in the eastern part of the Bolivian Plateau, with plateaus to the southwest, mountains to the southeast, tropical valleys to the east, and rainforest belts on the edge of the Amazon River Basin to the north. La Paz is a typical mountain city, surrounded by mountains, making it easy to defend and difficult to attack.
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Moreover, La Paz is located at the intersection of the Peruvian plains and the Bolivian plateau. The increase in altitude will have a certain impact on the operations of the Chinese Independence Army who have just entered the plateau area.
Li Mingyuan stared at the city of La Paz for a long time, thinking about how to attack the city.
Because the terrain of La Paz is high and the roads are difficult to walk, it is very difficult to attack the city with artillery.
In the past few days when the Chinese Independence Army has been stationed, garrisons from various cities in La Paz Province and reinforcements sent by Melgarejo have arrived in La Paz City. According to reports from Indians who have inquired about the news, the total number of troops stationed in La Paz City exceeds 10,000.
, and in two days, Melgarejo will personally lead reinforcements of 10,000 Bolivian troops.
By then, it will be even more difficult for the Chinese Independence Army to conquer La Paz.
Without attacking the city of La Paz, it is theoretically feasible for the Chinese Independence Army field troops to march directly into the hinterland of Bolivia. However, in this case, the subsequent large force of 90,000 people carrying a large amount of supplies will encounter resistance.
The 90,000 Chinese troops are not as powerful as the main force of the field army, and they are burdened by a large amount of supplies. Once they are attached to the army in La Paz, it will bring very bad consequences.
Li Mingyuan had no intention of leaving the problem to the follow-up troops. In his plan, the city of La Paz must be captured, otherwise the Chinese Independence Army's movement across Bolivia will be very difficult.
The fortress is easiest to break from the inside. In order to break the city of La Paz, Li Mingyuan selected a hundred Indian soldiers to sneak into the city of La Paz, preparing to assist the Chinese Independence Army in breaking the city at the critical moment of the siege.
The subsequent large force set off one day earlier than the main force of the Chinese Field Army. However, due to the burden of the disabled soldiers and large amounts of supplies in the team, they followed the field army.
The field army stayed near La Paz for four days, and the distance between the follow-up troops and the field army gradually narrowed. According to a letter from Liu Pu, who was in charge of the follow-up troops, the front of the follow-up troops was less than thirty miles away from Li Mingyuan's location, and there were two more troops a day.
The troops can then make peace.
In the letter, Liu Pu reported to Li Mingyuan some problems encountered during the transfer process.
After the subsequent Chinese troops set off from Arequipa, they first arrived in the city of Puno, and then headed towards Bolivia along Lake Titicaca.
Because there were field troops leading the way, in the early stages of the transition, the follow-up troops were safe and secure along the way and encountered no difficult problems.
However, when they entered the end of Lake Titicaca and were still seventy or eighty miles away from the Bolivian border, the follow-up troops entered the densely forested area.
The road is difficult to walk deep in the mountains and forests. Even if there are marks left by the field army, the advance speed of the follow-up troops has been greatly slowed down, from sixty miles per day at the beginning to less than thirty miles per day.
Affected by the terrain, although there are no strange venomous snakes and beasts in the tropical forests in the mountains and forests on the border between Peru and Bolivia, the high-altitude mountains and forests still caused huge difficulties for the advancing follow-up troops.
Food, gunpowder, and artillery required carriages and a large number of manpower to move forward. In order to transport these important weapons and materials out of the mountains, Liu Pu sent five thousand Chinese soldiers to level the mountain roads and build simple bridges across the rivers.
Then the healthy Chinese were divided into three groups and took turns transporting supplies.
After leaving Arequipa, a distance of several hundred miles, the Chinese troops followed for eighteen days. During these eighteen days, one hundred people fell to their deaths in the mountains while transporting supplies and weapons, and twenty-four others fell into the water and died.
Ninety-one people were attacked by Indians living on the shores of Lake Titicaca, and 45 of them died.
The Indians around Lake Titicaca are tribes that escaped the rule of the Inca Empire. They were isolated on the islands in the lake and had no contact with the outside world. Therefore, they showed great hostility to the incoming Chinese troops.
The Indian attacks in Lake Titicaca greatly delayed the transfer of Chinese troops. Later, Liu Pu sent a regiment of Chinese soldiers to capture five Indian villages in one fell swoop and executed more than 120 Chinese attackers.
The Indians frightened them and did not dare to attack the Chinese troops again.
When Liu Pu wrote the letter, the follow-up troops lost 400 people due to various reasons during the transfer to Bolivia. Among them, in addition to 169 Chinese who died due to accidents and Indian attacks, the others died of injuries and illnesses.
old and weak Chinese.
The loss of four hundred Chinese was not a small amount. Liu Pu admitted his mistake to Li Mingyuan in his letter and blamed the loss of the Chinese on his own handling errors.
After reading the letter, Li Mingyuan sighed. It was his decision to transfer to Brazil, and he had already expected the losses suffered by the Chinese. However, seeing the number of losses of the Chinese Independence Army, he still couldn't help but feel sad.
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The field army went into battle lightly and did not take much time to cross the shores of Lake Titicaca. Moreover, because the field army was marching some distance away from Lake Titicaca, they did not encounter attacks from the Indians living on the small islands on the lake.
However, the follow-up troops were attacked by Indians, which Li Mingyuan did not expect.
Writing a reply to Liu Pu, Li Mingyuan advised him that during the transfer process, the losses of the Chinese were inevitable. Only when the Chinese Independence Army successfully established a country in southern Brazil could the Chinese who died be worthy of it. What we have to do now is to improve the transfer process.
A comprehensive security and protection system to minimize the casualties of Chinese soldiers.
After writing the letter, Li Mingyuan exhaled and ordered the messenger to deliver the letter.
