"Liangzhou and Wuzhou are two poor places. People are living in poverty and all industries are in decline, so there is no point in their attention. However, Wuzhou's geographical location is extremely critical. It can be called the central place of Guangdong and Guangxi. Today, it was taken down by our east coast army. It would be a way to stop the Shun army from the east to capture Guangzhou." Army Major Tang Moyu stood on the shimmering bank of the West River and said with a smile.

He really has reason to be happy now. Because he had just resigned from a position like the website director of the Haizhu Island Merchant Station, and was appointed by the Army Department as the battalion commander of the Third Mixed Battalion. This third Mixed Battalion was transferred to the Far East this year (1687) to replace the defense. Together with the famous First Mixed Battalion, he became an elite force to defend the Far East vassals.

The first battle after the Third Mixed Battalion arrived in the Far East was to go south to Guangdong, and then take various ships upstream and occupy Wuzhou, an important town located on the north bank of the West River. There is no doubt that this is a solution that best plays the water advantages of the East River. Because the Xijiang River goes down from Wuzhou, the river is wide and the water is deep, and it can navigate most ships, including sail warships. This is very suitable for the East River people who have always liked to fight by the sea and by the river. Here, they are fighting at home, and no one can challenge their water advantages.

In this raid, due to the urgent situation and the inconvenience of mobilization, the Southern Development Team hurriedly collected only six 72-ton steamer and two "Yaksa"-class armed transport ships to Guangdong. Even the naval inland shallow water gunboats that were responsible for escort tasks were still maintained at Ningbo Dinghai Port. Therefore, they had to decide to temporarily requisition many Chinese sailboats from Guangdong for material transportation, which undoubtedly needed to be approved by Li Yuanhao, the actual ruler of Guangzhou, Huizhou, Zhaoqing and other prefectures, and the Duke of Huiguo of the Southern Ming Dynasty.

To be honest, Li Yuanhao's mood was extremely contradictory at the moment. On the one hand, he was frightened by the power of the elite soldiers and generals of Dashun and the two attacking Ming. Therefore, he subconsciously enhanced the defenses of the two important areas of Nanxiong and Shaozhou. For this reason, he even dispatched more than 30 newly cast artillery types to the place, and his determination was very firm.

On the other hand, Li Yuanhao himself was also extremely vigilant against the people of the East Coast. These powerful enemies from abroad have had a very bad influence on him in recent years, and they openly support his cheap brother and separating Chaozhou, making him, the new Duke Huiguo, unable to sleep day and night. In such a situation, how can you expect Li Yuanhao to have a good impression of the people of the East Coast?

On the one hand, he was afraid that the territory would be taken away by Dashun, and on the other hand, he was afraid that the people on the east coast would do something. Therefore, Li Yuanhao was very worried about the request of the east coast to sail up the Xijiang River. Is this okay to agree or not?

Many of Li Yuanhao's deployments were closely related to the people of the East Coast, but at this time they were not able to stand up and say anything, because they were afraid of being suspicious of their suspicious lord, so that would be more than worth the loss. In other words, the veteran Hao Shangjiu supported his sickly body to see Li Yuanhao, but he did not say anything. The entire eastern Guangdong prefectures are still in a state of chaos.

On July 25, 1687, the people of the East Coast did not wait for Li Yuanhao to give a reply. Four 72-ton steamer and two Yaksa-class armed transport ships carried the third mixed battalion of the East Coast Army to the west and headed to Wuzhou Prefecture. The local governments of Guangdong along the West River never waited for the interception order issued by Li Yuanhao (in fact, they did not have any effective means to intercept, and they were killed and fired some cannons on the river surface). Therefore, they had to give up and let the people of the East Coast go along Jiangxi. In their opinion, the people of the East Coast are sharp and fierce. They are going to fight Guangxi again. Why bother causing trouble? Let them go.

After exploring the attitude of Guangzhou, the people on the East Coast have become more and more demanding. They openly hired ship owners to help transport supplies and personnel to Wuzhou at high prices on the ground in Guangdong. Huiguo Duke's Mansion was silent again. As soon as this attitude came out, there was no doubt that everyone understood what Duke Huiguo Li Yuanhao was thinking. Isn't it just to stay out of the matter and be strict with neutrality. OK, this attitude is enough. I didn't expect you to help you attack Wuzhou, Lianzhou and other places.

The main force of the third mixed battalion of the East Coast people arrived at Wuzhou Port in early August. Before that, the two infantry companies that arrived earlier had captured the capital city of Wuzhou. Some people may ask, how could the two infantry companies capture such a big city as Wuzhou?

Perhaps Major Tang Moyu, who was on the front line, could give you a clear answer: After they arrived at the Wuzhou Port Wharf in the early morning of July 30, the two infantry companies of the army occupied the wharf without any resistance, and then quickly developed into the city. After experiencing the lesson of the rapid fall of Lianzhou Prefecture, it might be a bit exaggerated to say this. In fact, Lianzhou Prefecture just didn't react. At present, General Lian Gao appointed by the Southern Ming Dynasty was already organizing a counterattack. After all, the warlords still valued the territory of Wuzhou Prefecture, which had long been extremely vigilant, and had heavily deployed troops to defend various passes.

But the problem is that they placed too many troops at the junction of Lianzhou Prefecture. After all, there were more than 8,000 East Coast troops eyeing them. But unexpectedly, the East Coast people used water to transport troops quickly and went straight to the capital Wuzhou with elite force, caught them off guard. Five hundred elite East Coast infantry, under the cover of a small number of land field artillery, defeated more than 4,000 Ming army soldiers guarding the city in a battle outside Wuzhou City. The Mini rifles they equipped played an extremely critical role in the battle. The rifles with extremely long range and extremely high accuracy were bitten by the rifles, and the hit rate was so high that the Ming soldiers could not bear it. The officers and grassroots backbones lie down for a little while as soon as they met, and then they were randomly bombarded by cannons, basically scattered like birds and beasts.

It can be said that this battle was a great victory for technical weapons. Never had the Ming army in the countryside like Wuzhou Prefecture ever seen a brutal way of fighting! In their impression, isn’t the musket just a sound? Really winning the battle depends on the face-to-face fighting (the courage of Guangxi soldiers in hand-to-hand combat is OK)! But who would have thought that they were beaten to run away without even seeing the faces of the soldiers on the east coast. The officers and soldiers holding various cold weapons standing in front of the army were all selected athletes from the army, but they died so frustrated. It’s no wonder that the people behind them were frightened. This is really impossible to fight!

The main athlete in the field was defeated, and the two thousand old, weak and sick who were guarding the city suddenly lost the courage to continue fighting. So dozens of officials and more than a hundred gentry below the governor Xia Junbo simply opened the city gate and begged for surrender, allowing the people on the east coast to seize the hub of Guangdong and Guangxi without any effort.

Major Tang Moyu also received relevant procedures in front of the station, so he quickly appeased the surrendered officials and gentry of the Southern Ming Dynasty, and then announced the opening of warehouses and grain, giving benefits to ordinary people in the city and inviting people to win people's hearts. Even the Ming soldiers who were captured after defeat and were captured were reissued for three months (this was naturally paid by the gentry of the whole city). Everyone was happy and harmonious. Except for the east coast flag and army flag hanging on the top of the city, nothing happened.

The five hundred people brought by Tang Moyu controlled the government office, the government tent, the city gate and the dock, and all the others were appointed to the management of the former officials. In addition, he released some prisoners who did not look like good people from the prison, allowing them to directly control some of the selected surrendered soldiers and form a security force. One of them, Kong Wu, was named Qu Dayong, was a private salt dealer and was directly appointed by Tang Moyu as the acting leader of the security group in Cangwu County (i.e. Wuzhou City). With these more than 300 messy people under his command, they maintained the daily order inside and outside the city.

The follow-up troops of the Third Mixed Battalion did not ask Battalion Commander Tang to wait for long. On August 10, with the arrival of a large fleet, the remaining battalion personnel, artillery company, baggage company, engineering platoon and two infantry companies landed on the wharf. Only the cavalry company on land was still traveling along, but it was not far from here, and Guangdong did not dare to keep them in trouble.

Along with the follow-up troops, there were also a large number of military funds, weapons and ammunition, which were essential for subsequent operations. Of course, the third mixed battalion had to die, and the elite was enough, but if they wanted to effectively occupy the entire Wuzhou Prefecture, they were still unable to meet the strength, so recruiting surrender and rebel became the only choice.

On August 13, Dayong's position in the security regiment district of Cangwu County was officially lifted, and the troops were quickly expanded to more than 2,000 people. In addition to some old brothers and peers who were trying every means to worry about (private salt dealers), there were also a large number of Ming army surrendered soldiers. The main force of the third mixed battalion was here, and Tang Moyu consciously had the power to control the whole city, so he released the Ming army surrendered soldiers who had been locked in the military camp these days. After picking and choosing, he added the security regiment to become cannon fodder thugs subordinate to the East Coast people, so as to facilitate the next step of the surrounding operations.

In the following August, the two prefectures of Lianzhou and Wuzhou were shrouded in war. The two sides of the war were the East Coast army and some of the Southern Ming army that were unwilling to surrender. A major feature of the war was that large-scale battles almost did not exist, and replaced by small-scale battles with low intensity but many times, which made the East Coast people very uncomfortable.

Guangxi's complex terrain, humid and hot climate and unfamiliarity with local conditions greatly weakened the advantages of the people on the east coast. They only had modern combat ideas, advanced weapons and equipment and well-trained soldiers, but they could not exert half of their true strength. They could only continue to induce local armed forces. Sometimes even even bandits and bandits could not miss it, in order to fight quickly, seize the time to calm the situation and control more territory.

According to the plan formulated by the Southern Development Team in advance, the Tang army of Wuzhou (recently added a local armed force from Xiangshan County) will continue to sail westward to the upstream Xunjiang area, defeat or surrender the local Ming army, and then go upstream along the Nanjiang (Yujiang River) and meet with the troops heading north along the Qinjiang River in Lianzhou.

This route of march is basically the land of Guangxi that the East Coast people intend to occupy this time, with the intention of using these natural rivers to build defense lines and achieving the strategic goal of curbing Shunguo to the greatest extent. You must know that if the east coast troops on the north and south sides can successfully complete this march mission, then the sea outlet of Lianzhou Prefecture will be no match for Shunguo, and they will still be a sad inland country. In addition, the loss of Wuzhou Prefecture is another heavy blow to Shunguo, because it means that they cannot send troops from Guangxi and go downstream along the Xijiang River with a high-level momentum to defeat the weak but rich Guangdong Huiguo Duke regime, and obtain this province with a very strong population and resources. Without Guangdong, Shunguo would not be able to conduct direct transactions with foreign merchants, and at the same time, they would not be able to make up for financial shortcomings, and the strategic depth could not be further improved. This attack on Ming would not be able to achieve full results.

Of course, some people say that Shunguo can send troops from Ganzhou Prefecture, Jiangxi and attack Guangdong south, but no brained military commander would be optimistic about this route of march. The existence of Dayu Ridge made the traffic between Jiangxi and Guangdong extremely difficult. The only traffic channels have also built fortresses and passes. It has been a place where military strategists must compete for since ancient times. Li Yuanhao was not a fool. He deployed elite troops in Nanxi early and Shaozhou, and he knew the importance of these places. It would never be possible for Shunguo to easily succeed from Jiangxi.

The direction of Guangxi is actually quite different. Mengzhuling is located between Guangxi and Guangdong, making the attack on Guangzhou from land destined to be a military adventure of a labor force expedition. Whether Shunguo dares to make this determination to cross mountains and ridges to attack Guangdong is an unknown number, because it is likely to lead to a tragic defeat. So, after all, the best way to attack Guangdong from Guangxi is to occupy Wuzhou, and then go down the West River, and be in a high position, with a strong momentum and an extremely relaxed way. But now Wuzhou has been taken first by the people on the east coast, and they will develop to the Xunjiang area upstream and build a frontier defense line, which further squeezes the room for Shunguo to move around and make them farther and farther away from Guangdong.

In this way, even if they successfully captured most of Guangxi (which is almost inevitable), it seemed a bit delicious. Guangxi was barren and poor, with inconvenient transportation, and strong customs. The only places that looked a little bit like a little were also eaten by the people on the east coast, and they also lost the idea of ​​entering the Guangdong Flower World. This made the ruler and ministers of Shunguo vomit blood. The people on the east coast made the surprise troops seize Lianzhou and Wuzhou's actions really hit the key to Shunguo. If they wanted to reverse this very unfavorable situation, they had to launch a war on the east coast, and take advantage of their unstable foothold and not afraid of sacrifice, and use their superior forces to kill a small number of the vanguards of the east coast to quickly seize the road of Wuzhou.
Chapter completed!