Shengjing City is about five hundred miles away from Zhenjiang Fort. If Huang Taiji really made up his mind to go on a personal expedition, he would calculate the days and it would be almost time to do so.

And this is the only situation that can explain why Jierhalang was able to remain calm and refrain from counterattacking after losing Zhenjiang Fort.

However, after Yang Zhen pondered and expressed his inference, he did not expect that his judgment immediately caused a commotion among the generals.

"ah?"

"this--"

"The Puppet Emperor of the Qing Dynasty?! This is a personal expedition by the imperial commander!"

The court officials present Liu Lin, Lin Qingye, Shen Qizhou, as well as the generals Yuan Jin, Qiu Zhenhai, Yu Liangtai and others from Jinhai Town were all unable to sit still for a while.

Yuan Jin, who had the highest position among the generals, suddenly turned to An Yingchang in the midst of the uproar and asked: "An Du said, based on what you saw visually on Zhenjiang Mountain today, the Qing captive army that came this time is about How many troops are there?”

When Yuan Jin asked this question, everyone who was in an uproar just now, especially those Li Dynasty figures, seemed to have found the direction of the question, and immediately went to ask An Yingchang:

"Yes, Andu pointed out, how many troops have come from the Qing army?"

"Using the experience of the humble army, we can estimate that the Qing army that came this time, with flags like a forest, is vast and mighty - estimated to be no less than hundreds of thousands of people!"

An Yingchang saw that everyone was asking him, and Yang Zhen was holding a tea bowl and nodded at him without saying a word, obviously hoping that he would answer, so after a little calculation, he came up with an answer.

As soon as his estimated answer came out, it once again caused an uproar.

"A crowd of hundreds of thousands?!"

"This, tens of thousands of people, is just an estimate based on past experience. In short, looking up, the Qing army coming this time, with flags standing in the sky and smoke filling the sky, is extremely powerful!"

It would be impossible for An Yingchang to give an accurate number based solely on visual inspection.

But just by making such a loud statement, everyone present was suddenly speechless and stopped asking any more questions.

Even Zhang Chen and Li Lu, who had not cared about the arrival of the Qing army or the possibility of Huang Taiji's personal expedition, also changed their expressions.

The two of them looked at each other and turned their gaze to Yang Zhen's face.

The other civil servants and military officers present were surprised for a while by what An Yingchang said, and then quickly turned their attention to Yang Zhen's face.

At this time, Yang Zhen saw Yang Zhen put the tea bowl in his hand heavily on the small table next to him, making a thud, then snorted coldly, and said lightly:

"What does it mean to be extremely loud? It's just a lot of people and horses. Of course, having more people and horses has the advantage of being able to divide our troops and encircle us tightly, so that water can't get in. However, having too many people and horses also has the disadvantages of having too many people and horses. Is this point? Can’t you all see it?”

Yang Zhen was quite dissatisfied with the startled behavior of everyone present when listening to the military situation. At this time, his face darkened, and he asked this question in a meaningful way, and the whole scene quickly became quiet.

"What's the harm in having more people?"

The generals present were stunned for a moment after hearing Yang Zhen's question, and then some started to use their brains to consider the disadvantages of having too many people.

In fact, among the generals present, whether they were the generals of Jinhaizhen or the generals of the imperial court, they were all battle-hardened figures.

They had just been a little panicked by the news that tens of thousands of Qing soldiers had gathered, and they were a little confused for a while.

Now that Yang Zhen reminded them, many of them immediately realized the disadvantage of having a large number of soldiers in the Qing Dynasty.

At this time, Liu Lin, the former military envoy of Ping'an Road in Li Dynasty and the governor of Pyongyang, suddenly bowed and clasped his fists at Yang Zhen and asked: "What the governor said about the disadvantages of large numbers of Qing captives is food and grass?"

Yang Zhen led his army on Lin Qingye's fleet and sneaked into the Yalu River estuary. When they arrived outside Zhenjiang Fort, Liu Lin happened to meet him and was in the city because he came to escort military supplies for the Qing captives.

If it weren't for the 100,000 shi of rice he escorted, which was extremely important to the Qing captives in Zhenjiang Fort and other places at that time, a cunning and cunning figure like Jierhalang would not have allowed him to lead the army to transport grain into the city so easily.

Of course, because of this, Liu Lin had a good understanding of the food shortage problem in the Qing Dynasty, and he was also particularly sensitive to the problem of food and grass military supplies.

"That's right! Let's just say there are only half of the Qing Dynasty army, let alone hundreds of thousands. Let's calculate it as 60,000. Think about it, how much food and grass they need?"

When Yang Zhen said this, everyone suddenly realized something and nodded in approval. The atmosphere of the discussion, which had been a bit oppressive and dull just now, immediately became much more relaxed, as if even breathing became much smoother.

"Haha, even if we calculate it with 60,000 troops, the food and grass consumed by the Qing captives every day for eating horses and chewing horses should be measured in tens of thousands of stones. Therefore, the more Qing captives have more troops, the more days they will be stationed outside Zhenjiang Fort to besiege us.

The more temporary it is.”

Yang Zhen said this not entirely to reassure the generals present, but because he did have such a judgment.

In the past, every autumn and winter, the Qing captives always recruited their young men to go out to fight. In addition to the fact that they were not afraid of the severe cold and had their advantages in fighting in winter, there was also the problem of material shortage that always troubled them.

Recruiting young and strong men to go out to fight in autumn and winter is actually a process of gang robbery.

In this scene, they can not only save their own tribe's grain, livestock and other food for the elderly, weak, women and children, but at the same time, they can provide food to the enemy, fight to support the war, and snatch what they need from other tribes or other places.

Grain, livestock, slaves and property.

As for robbing others, they are not ashamed, but rather proud. A large part of the reason is that they are not engaged in production and cannot solve their own material supply problems.

As the saying goes, warehouses know honor and disgrace. They have been dishonest for a long time, so naturally they don't understand etiquette, justice and shame.

Of course, no matter how the Qing Dynasty relied on looting to replenish supplies and help them survive the long cold winter, in short, their approach has not been very effective since last year.

Last year, they attacked Ningyuan, Jinzhou, and finally Songshan, but they were unable to break through the city, so they were unable to obtain supplies of grain, grass and ammunition from these places.

At the same time, their channels for obtaining various strategic materials from Shanyou merchants in Zhangjiakou were temporarily interrupted by Yang Zhen.

Correspondingly, since this year, due to the opening of Jinhai Town in Yangzhen and Huang Taiji's illness, the Eight Banners Army of the Qing Dynasty has almost never gone out to fight.

Although at the beginning of the year, Huang Taiji sent Dorgon as the commander-in-chief, commanding tens of thousands of troops from the Liangbai Banner, Zhenglan Banner and Xianglan Banner, to attack Fuzhou City in an attempt to destroy Jinhai Town, but in vain.

Not only did they lose a lot of soldiers and horses, but they also spent a lot of food, grass and ammunition.

Moreover, the strategy of building the city southward by Dorgon and others that followed immediately consumed a large amount of manpower, financial and material resources of the Qing Dynasty.

By September, when they made the decision to conquer Jinhai Town by land and water, they had no choice but to start collecting military supplies from the Koreans.

All these signs indicate the fact that the Qing Dynasty is also facing food shortages.

If this is the case, then the more soldiers and horses the Qing captives dispatch to besiege Zhenjiang Fort, the less lasting their siege of Zhenjiang Fort will be.

However, my situation in Zhenjiang Fort was opposite to that of the Qing captive army. Not only had Jinhai Town's cultivation of seed potatoes harvested a large amount of sweet potatoes, but also during the surprise attack on Zhenjiang Fort, the ten soldiers Liu Lin escorted into the city were obtained out of thin air.

Thousands of stones of military rations.

At least in the next few months, my troops will basically not have to worry about food shortages in Zhenjiang Fort.

In this case, what do you have to fear?

In this case, the person who should worry about the disadvantages of the war is Huang Taiji, not himself.

So, Yang Zhen immediately wrote down a note and explained the situations that he had thought of one by one. After everyone listened, they suddenly realized.

At this time, Yuan Jin, the chief military officer of Jinhai West Road, who had just delivered a new batch of ammunition and sweet potatoes to Zhenjiang Fort, let out a sigh of relief, laughed and said:

"Listening to the Governor's words is simply better than ten years of reading! The Art of War says that those who were good at fighting in the past first made themselves invincible, and then waited for the enemy to become victorious.

"Now we have well-equipped soldiers and a fortified city by the river to rely on. Haha, no matter how many captives are eliminated in this battle, as long as we can hold on and keep food supplies, we will be in an invincible position!"

After Yuan Jin made his words clear, others nodded and expressed cautious approval of his statement.

At this time, Qiu Zhenhai, who had always had a special status among the generals, also took over Commander Yuan Jin's words and said to everyone with a smile:

"In this way, in the next battle, we not only don't have to worry about too many Qing captives, but we have to worry about not having too many others! Hahahaha..."

Qiu Zhenhai laughed like this. When the others thought that this was really the case, they also started laughing.

When the generals first heard the warning, the atmosphere that once seemed a little frightened and anxious disappeared in an instant.

"Okay, even though we have said this, if Huang Taiji, the puppet emperor of the Qing Dynasty, really comes, we must not be cautious and prepare for it."

Seeing that the generals were no longer as afraid of the arrival of the Qing army as when they first heard the news, Yang Zhen did not hesitate and immediately interrupted everyone's laughter and made arrangements for the upcoming war.

"Andu means!"

"The humble position is here!"

"Since the Qing Dynasty army has arrived, they will not come without artillery. If so, the camp on Zhenjiang Mountain may not be able to defend it. So, you go back to the camp immediately and lead the loyal and loyal troops to burn down the camp as soon as possible.

Withdraw Zhenjiang Fort to assist in defense."

"I humbly obey my orders!"
Chapter completed!