The decisive battle between Li Dingguo and Mang Bai should have been without any suspense.
The Ming Dynasty's Zhennan elite soldiers were all the backbone of Li Dingguo's command and served as officers at all levels. Those veterans over forty years old had all participated in the war to destroy the Qing Dynasty. They were the elites who were killed in the mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
With advanced weapons, overwhelming confidence and indomitable morale, shouldn't it be a matter of minutes to crush the ancestors of those scammers on a frontal battlefield?
But crushing after crushing, the entire war process was still full of various small accidents. The pre-war intelligence work of both sides obviously had more or less problems.
After Li Dingguo entered Myanmar, for the first ten days or so, due to the advantage of the sneak attack, he did not encounter any decent resistance, and the main force of the Myanmar army was still being dispatched and assembled.
It was not until Li Dingguo entered the country more than 200 miles away, successively attacked Mubang and Lashio along the Nu River Valley, and cut off the Mengyang Xuanweisi enclave in northern Myanmar that the Burmese reinforcements organized heavy troops in the Lashio area.
Defense group.
As an aside, whether it is a wooden state or a fortress state, it was actually one of the "Three Propaganda and Six Weasi" of the Ming Dynasty. Theoretically, before the Jiajing period, due to the division of Myanmar, the Toungoo dynasty had not yet risen to strive for unification.
In Myanmar, the chieftains of these loose small states all regard the Ming Dynasty as the main one.
It was only later that the Toungoo Dynasty gradually encroached and annexed small neighboring countries, and the Ming Dynasty declined day by day after Jiajing and Wanli, so the Three Proclaimations and Six Weis were gradually annexed by Myanmar.
Now, even if Li Dingguo reaches Lashio, he will only regain the Ming Dynasty's original land of Mubang, and cut off the transportation links between Mengyang Xuanwei Division and the hinterland of Myanmar.
And because Li Dingguo's march route relies on the Nu River, which is a waterway cut out of deep valleys and dense forests on the Shan State Plateau in northern Myanmar, if they leave the Nu River basin too far, neither army will be able to maneuver, nor can they move.
supplies, so naturally we have to fight an upright decisive battle.
The two armies formed a stronghold to confront each other near Lashio, and after a lot of small-scale fighting, Li Dingguo and Mang Bai soon discovered some unexpected situations.
"How can the Burmese army be so large? Although there have been sentries over the years, they have underestimated the intensity of the Burmese king's forced recruitment. And why do they have so many red barbarian muskets? Although they are not as good as those made in Wuchang of the Ming Dynasty, they should not be underestimated.
Looked at."
Li Dingguo couldn't help but think to himself.
The first thing that surprised him was that the number of Myanmar troops was much larger than expected.
He originally discovered that the Burmese king had a standing army of 70,000 to 80,000 people directly under his command, as well as local troops from chieftains from various states, plus a militia of strong men who could be mobilized temporarily during war.
At this moment, what he encountered head-on was at least hundreds of thousands of Burmese troops, maybe even close to two hundred thousand. Especially since Mangbai did not bring all the troops directly under Bago, maybe only seventy or eighty thousand miles away.
Forty to fifty thousand were mobilized, and the rest had to guard the royal capital.
From this point of view, the total number of chieftains and temporary militiamen from various states accounted for at least hundreds of thousands.
When he discovered this number, Li Dingguo also wondered how many people there were in Myanmar. As a result, he interrogated various civilian prisoners in isolation, and the final figure was nothing more than "the permanent population of the core territory of Toungoo is about four million, and the rest are several
The three Xuan and Liuwei areas that were taken away from the Ming Dynasty nearly a hundred years ago have a combined population of one to two million. There are also other vassal chieftains under the rule of Ji Su, who also have a population of about two million."
In other words, the total population of Myanmar from the direct descendants to the Jisi is about 8 million, which is equivalent to 30 to 40% of the Fusang Kingdom in the same period. And among these 8 million people, at least 400,000 troops were pulled out, and among them
Two hundred thousand were brought to the Lashio front line.
This is a force that cannot be underestimated. You must know that Li Dingguo's vanguard only has 20,000 people, and the follow-up Chinese army only dispatches more than 40,000 people. This is equivalent to Li Dingguo's battle in Lashio alone.
On the front, you have to fight against the numerical disadvantage of one versus four.
But the Ming army really couldn't invest more people quickly. After all, it was an expedition to provide supplies to the army from the remote areas of Yunnan and Guizhou. With the scale of local grain surplus and transportation capacity in Yunnan and Guizhou, they could only use so few troops to sustain a long-term war.
Otherwise, the logistics will never be able to survive.
…
While Li Dingguo was shocked by Myanmar's military strength and mobilization capabilities, Mang Bai was also shocked by the sharpness of the Ming army's firearms.
This is no wonder that after all, Mangbai is located in a remote place in the south of the world. There has been no conflict with the Ming army before, and Myanmar has been relatively peaceful in recent decades. The Toungoo Dynasty's conquest of surrounding tribes was almost completed as early as the end of Wanli.
Therefore, in the past 40 years or so, Myanmar has not had any subsequent wars except for a conflict with the Dutch East India Company when they first arrived.
The peaceful era has been long, and the geographical location is remote, so the information is not very well-informed. Mang Bai's previous impression of the Ming army's combat power was still a few decades ago. As a result, at first glance, he saw the new Wuchang-made model commonly equipped by Li Ding's army.
It was actually much sharper than the latest fire gun given to him by the Dutch, and his momentum was immediately suffocated.
This situation of being afraid of both sides made the military decisions of both sides become more prudent.
Relying on his elite troops and sharp weapons, Li Dingguo chose the narrow terrain of the valleys on both sides of the Nu River south of Lashio to camp. He often relied on the fortress to take the initiative to set out camp and form a majestic formation to seek a decisive battle.
In such a battlefield environment, because the terrain is not conducive to the deployment of large corps, even if the Burmese army has nearly 200,000 troops around Lashio, they cannot enter the battlefield at once. It is destined to become a wheel-and-wheel battle with fuel tactics. Such a single soldier of the Ming army
Advantages can be maximized.
At first, Mangbai saw that the Ming army's camp was strong, and Li Dingguo actually dared to leave the defense line and take the initiative to attack in the field, so he tried to challenge it twice. Unfortunately, the Burmese army's individual soldiers were too weak, and they were beaten everywhere by the Ming army's musket corps.
There were dead bodies everywhere, with tens of thousands of casualties accumulated in the two battles.
It was found that Li Dingguo could not defeat the Ming army on the battlefield chosen by Li Dingguo. The strength of the frontal battlefield was too disparity. Mang Bai had to temporarily change his tactics and instead adopted a long-term siege and stalemate. No matter how Li Dingguo challenged him, he would not accept the challenge.
When Li Dingguo continued to march south to attack the camp, the Burmese army even chose to abandon the camp after resisting for a while, retreating step by step to resist.
Since the Ming army was unable to penetrate into other rugged and dangerous areas of the Shan State Plateau, it could only attack along the Nu River Valley. As a result, the deeper the Ming army advanced, the more completely its wings were exposed, and the logistical supply lines left for the Burmese army to attack were also stretched.
The longer.
Of course, Mangbai's abandonment of the city and loss of territory was also a very serious blow to the morale of the Burmese army. In just over half a month, Li Dingguo achieved three more victories in three battles and advanced for more than a hundred miles. Although there was nothing nearby
It is an important city, but it is also closer to Ava City, the former capital of the Ava Dynasty in Myanmar.
Today's Toungoo Dynasty in Myanmar was divided into northern and southern parts of the Ava Dynasty a hundred years ago. The situation was similar to that of the Northern and Southern Dynasties in China. Later, the Taungoo Dynasty in the south used Bago as its base to make a northern expedition and captured the city of Ava before unification.
The whole territory of Myanmar was invaded. This was in the early Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. In the following decades, Toungoo further annexed the three Xuan and Liuwei expansions.
Therefore, the geographical location of Ava City is also very important. This place is roughly equivalent to Mandalay in later Myanmar and is the second largest city in Myanmar, while Bago is Yangon in later generations.
The Taungoo dynasty must be defended, otherwise even if Myanmar is not defeated by the Ming Dynasty, it is very likely that the Ming Dynasty will again support puppets to divide the north and the south.
Therefore, in the face of Li Dingguo's advance, the resistance of Mang Bai's soldiers became more and more serious, and they all asked for battle and demanded a fight with Li Dingguo, and they could never retreat anymore.
In this regard, Mang Bai was quite heroic. He strongly suppressed the aggressiveness and impatience of his subordinates, and at the same time explained the truth to his main confidants and generals:
"Don't worry, everyone! Although I have given up part of the territory from Lashio to the west of Ava, I will definitely defend Ava! Although Li Dingguo has penetrated deep into our territory, he is still not afraid!
His previous offensive was sharp, relying on the Ming army to rely on the Nujiang waterway in Yunnan for supplies. But now, he has only two options, or continue to go south along the Nujiang River.
But when the Nu River leaves the Shan State Plateau and rushes into the plains of southern Myanmar, the gap is too big, and there are even multiple waterfalls. It is impossible for the Ming Army’s supply ships to pass! So we don’t have to worry about the Ming Army drilling all the way through Myanmar along the Nu River to Mao
Dan cotton enters the sea!
We have been living in Myanmar all our lives. How can Li Dingguo be as good as us in terms of understanding the hydrology of the rivers in the country? In Myanmar, the only river that can run north-south shipping is the Indrabhatu River (Inlovati River).
And only the section from Ava City to Bago can be sailed.
Therefore, if Li Dingguo wants to continue his attack, he must cross a section of the Shan Plateau, cross from south of Lashio to the west to Ava City, and switch from the Nu River channel to the Indrabhatu River channel. And he passed between the two rivers.
The land route over the mountains of Shan State was where he died!
The Han people are not good at marching in high mountains and dense forests, and supplies from Yunnan and Guizhou will also be cut off. By then, Li Dingguo will be in a desperate situation. If the delay lasts for a long time and there are many diseases in the army, how can he fight against my Burmese army!"
Mangbai's plan is not easy to understand unless you look at a map or have a good understanding of Myanmar's geography. However, the generals under his command are all locals and are well versed in geography, so there is no difficulty in understanding it.
.
It turns out that there have always been two relatively parallel transnational rivers from Yunnan to Myanmar, which can be used as water transportation channels.
To the west is the Yinlowaddy River. The Han people in the Ming Dynasty called it Dulong River or Lishui. When it came to Myanmar, the ancient Burmese people called it the Indrabhadra River. To the east is the Nu River, which is called Lishui in Myanmar.
For the Salween River.
These two rivers flow from the mountains of Yunnan into the lower-lying Shan Plateau, then into the plains of southern Myanmar, and finally into the Indian Ocean.
However, because the Shan State Plateau is located in the east of northern Myanmar, the Indrabhadra River further to the west has a larger gap in the north. Soon after leaving the Yunnan border, it breaks out of the Shan State Plateau and leaves the plateau area.
That section of the river valley is very steep and rapid, making it impossible to sail.
As for the Nu River to the east, because it has to flow for several hundred miles more on the Shan State Plateau, the northern section is actually not that big and can be used for shipping from Yunnan to northern Myanmar. But continue south until it breaks out of the Shan State Plateau.
Only then will you face the problem of rapid drops and the river channel will be blocked by waterfalls.
Such geographical features result in the fact that only the upper and middle reaches of the Nu River are navigable, while the middle reaches and the lower reaches are blocked by natural barriers. On the contrary, the Indrabhadra River is navigable between the middle and lower reaches, and there is a natural barrier between the middle reaches and the upper reaches.
.
None of these two rivers can "sail directly from Yunnan to the Indian Ocean", unless later generations of water conservancy projects are so awesome that they directly build hydropower stations and lift locks to overcome waterfalls and dangerous shoals with large drops. Before the emergence of lift locks,
This problem has no solution.
To get from Yunnan to the Indian Ocean, one must switch between two rivers. The first section is along the Nu River, and the latter section is on the Indrabhatu River. For the Ming army, the most dangerous part was the crossing of the Shan State when the two rivers were switched.
Mountain road.
At this location, there is a relatively low mountain range called Jiaoshan. After climbing over Jiaoshan, you can reach the Indrabhadra Valley Plain. However, even if this section of the road is only more than a hundred miles, it is the biggest obstacle for the Ming Dynasty to completely defeat Myanmar.
.
Even in the 20th century, during the Anti-Japanese War, the expeditionary force entered Burma to fight. It was at the west exit of the road over the Kyauksan Mountains that it was severely attacked by the Japanese army in Myitkyina and suffered heavy losses. This tragic situation was shown in the later movie "One Day".
In "942", the scene where Chang Kai applied for breakfast with Li Peiji was also shown.
Mang Bai's bet was that "except for the Jiaoshan Gorge that connects the two rivers, all other places are available. As long as Li Dingguo dares to abandon water transportation and cross the Jiaoshan Mountains, he is sure to kill Li Dingguo in the high mountains and dense forests. If not killed, at least he will be killed."
Let Li Dingguo be killed by the tropical disease plague!"
What's more, this year, the Ming army took action in advance without waiting for winter. It was the end of August when Li Dingguo first entered the country, and now after the continuous fighting, it is only the beginning of October, which is not the driest and coolest season of the year.
If the weather is favorable to Mang Bai, he will be more confident.
…
Mang Bai's abacus was very good, but since Li Dingguo on the opposite side dared to come, of course he had something to rely on.
If you want to blame it, blame it on the Burmese people who have been offline for too long and don’t understand the world’s technological progress!
In the southwest area of Lashio, after successively seizing the positions along the Nu River and at the eastern foot of Jiaoshan Mountain, and then consolidating them a little, supplying several more batches of supplies from the rear to ensure that there would be no shortage of medicine and ammunition in a short period of time, Li Dingguo prepared to cross the Jiaoshan Mountains.
Mountain, fight to the city of Ava.
The two main generals under his command, Bai Wenxuan and Feng Shuangli, were a little scared and couldn't help but remind them: "Master Hou, don't be careful! There are high mountains and dense forests along the Jiaoshan Mountain, and there are heavy rains from time to time, and the climate is still a bit hot.
, it is better to continue to be cautious."
Li Dingguo was very determined: "When our army quickly captured Mubang and Lashio and wiped out tens of thousands of enemies, what did it rely on? Isn't it just surprise and taking advantage of the Burmese people who never expected that we would send troops in autumn instead of winter! Now it is happening
This is a good opportunity to expand the results, how can we miss it?
As for the heavy rains in the mountains and dense forests, there is no need to worry! A few days ago, I asked you to collect and transport sulfuric acid, carbolic acid, tiger balm and other medical drugs from the rear, as well as gunpowder and bullets. Is the quantity sufficient? As long as there is no shortage of these, we can climb over
Jiaoshan is no problem!
To debridement the wounded, you can use dilute sulfuric acid diluted thirty times to sterilize gauze in advance, and use sterilized surgical knives diluted twenty times. Carbolic acid can be used for general disinfection and cleaning, and tiger balm can be used for insect repellent. These are repeated over the past five years by the Institute of Biochemistry, Academy of Sciences.
The improved ones through experiments are already reliable enough and can definitely catch Mang Bai off guard!
As for food, it is indeed not easy to transport it across the mountains, but as long as we can take the city of Ava by surprise, Ava, as the former capital of Myanmar and its current capital, must have a large amount of food stored in the city. After breaking the city, just ask the Burmese for it!
As long as our army has half a month's supply of food and stores half a month's supply of food in Lashio, we can attack boldly!"