To the north, the Manchu and Qing court used Sushun to carry out reforms. On the surface, the situation was calm, and the bandits in the northeast went to cause trouble to the Korean Kingdom.
The bandits in Henan were also suppressed, and Ying Gui was able to surround them in sight.
Yinggui is a very adaptable person, and he is not prepared to fight to the death against the bandits.
According to the spies' report from the imperial court, one of Luo Gang's gangsters was named Huang Hao. He was in a high position at a young age because of his exploits. The key was that he held Hong Xiuquan's son in his hands.
Yinggui has sent people to contact him, hoping to recruit him to surrender.
As long as Huang Hao is willing to surrender, it shouldn't be difficult to kill Luo Dayou's team by cooperating internally and externally.
As for dealing with people like Huang Hao, Yinggui has many ways at his disposal. As long as such people use the power they want, they can blindfold them.
Seng Gelinqin returned to Chahar to take over the post of Commander-in-Chief of Chahar, and organized the Eight Banners of Chahar to pursue the Taihang Horse Bandits heading north. The original Commander-in-Chief of Chahar was arrested and investigated by Xianfeng's order because of his defeat.
But when Seng Gelinqin arrived at the Xilin Gol Prairie, he saw an empty grassland. The grass on the grassland in early autumn had withered and turned yellow, but there were still no shepherds coming to harvest it.
You can only occasionally see wandering wolves and timid yellow sheep running away in groups after being frightened by the sound.
The smoke of the burned grazing land has not been completely extinguished. The clean and chewed bones of cattle and sheep are scattered on the grass and piled up in piles.
The corpse of the tribal leader hanging on the wooden stake has been pecked out of flesh and blood by crows. There are only a few tendons connecting the white bones together. It is like an artificial skeleton specimen.
Seeing all this, Seng Gelinqin was already furious. He sent a small force out to investigate the whereabouts of this group of horse bandits.
However, the scene I saw was similar to that of this pastoral area. The herders on the entire Xilin Gol grassland seemed to have evaporated, and their cattle, sheep and horses also disappeared.
Lu Guoyi now has nearly 50,000 herdsmen under his command. With so many people, he himself is a little scared to look at them.
If this group of people united to launch a riot, even the more than two thousand cavalry under his command would not be able to suppress it.
Fortunately, these people all come from different banners, alliances, and serve under different Mongolian princes.
The Xilin Gol League was divided into five tribes and ten kings, and the personnel were even more dispersed. This in itself was a strategy of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to rule the Mongols.
Lu Guoyi assigned them to different auxiliary battalions based on their different origins. The auxiliary soldiers who joined early served as grassroots officers, and the soldiers of the former Second Regiment served as battalion officers.
In this way, the 50,000 people were divided into dozens of camps, and they were allowed to disperse their herds across the vast grassland and head north.
The width of this team reaches more than ten kilometers. Because the cattle and sheep have to eat autumn grass while advancing, the entire team has to move forward in a horizontal direction. This is no problem at all in the vast grassland.
The liaison officers who went north in advance have successfully contacted the defenders of Nerchinsk City and reported the specific situation of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade heading north.
After the main force of the Heilongjiang Military Region moved westward, Teng Ziquan's Second Regiment was left behind in Nerchinsk City as the remaining troops here. At the same time, they continued to build Nerchinsk City and stocked up on supplies for the winter.
A large amount of food, ammunition and other materials were also continuously sent to Nerchinsk City from downstream.
Thanks to the large number of small transport ships brought by Muravyov, the Huaihai Navy's transportation capacity has been greatly improved.
Throughout the summer, the Huai Navy's transport fleet has been continuously transporting immigrants and food supplies to Temple Street. But further upstream, it is inconvenient for these large ships to travel.
If it were just a single-masted wooden boat, it would still be too slow going upstream.
Fortunately, there were more than a dozen Huaihai Navy steam tugboats following the big ship.
This kind of tugboat is just like a locomotive. It is specially manufactured by the Huaihai Navy Shipyard for inland water transportation. They have no carrying capacity. There are four steam engines installed on the small hull, and otherwise they are all used.
Coming to load coal.
The Temple Street shipyard transformed these Russian transport ships into vehicles that could be towed behind tugboats.
So a strange scene appeared on the Heilongjiang River, a strange ship with several chimneys stretched out, and a long string of wooden boats behind it.
When the wind is favorable, the sails of the wooden boat are spread out to save power for the tugboat. When the wind is going against the wind, the sails are lowered and the sails are moved forward entirely by the power of the tugboat.
This makes transportation on the river much more efficient.
…
Outside Nerchinsk.
In a lumberyard in Huaihai Haijun, several technicians are installing a large steam sawmill. This was just shipped from downstream.
With this machine, the felled wood can be processed into fixed-size boards nearby and then transported back to the city.
Not only the soldiers of the Huai Navy, but also the Russian women were extremely surprised when they saw such a machine.
The Russians may have such equipment, but they certainly won't use it in remote places like the Far East.
In the center of Nerchinsk City, the original warehouse location was continuously expanded. A large amount of food was transported, and each warehouse was continuously filled.
Seeing so much food, people in the city, including the captured Russians, felt at ease.
Residents living in severely cold places have the habit of stocking up on food in autumn. In winter here, people generally do not go out for activities unless necessary.
The grains transported are mainly rice, corn and soybeans. Corn and soybeans can be used as concentrated feed for war horses.
Most of the rice is shipped from Southeast Asia and shipped directly along the coast. All of it is high-quality Siamese rice.
The future garrison here will basically be cavalry, so not only must people be eaten, but horses must be chewed as well.
The construction of corrals has begun one after another behind Nerchinsk.
Messengers from the south brought news about the Second Cavalry Brigade and Dong Shuheng's latest military orders.
Nerchinsk will be the headquarters of the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Brigades in the future.
The First Brigade was formed from the cavalry regiments of the original Fourth and Fifth Divisions. The balance would be supplemented later by local Mongolians.
The Second Brigade no longer sends people. When they arrive at Nerchinsk, the first thing they do is to lose weight and eliminate the old and weak from the team who are not suitable for combat.
Now the lower class people of the Mongolian people are very servile. They already consider themselves Merlin's subordinates, so Merlin must give them a home.
Teng Ziquan now has a headache. It turns out that he only needs to build houses for tens of thousands of people to live in.
But now not only have the number of people doubled, but there are also millions of livestock.
The key is that with so many livestock, they need to prepare fodder for the winter.
"Fuck, you treat me like a contractor, it's not over yet." When he was alone in the office, Teng Zi couldn't help but swear.
Now in the city of Nerchinsk, those Russian women are completely treated as men. There is no way, the task is too tight.
However, Huai Haijun did not treat them badly, at least he let them have enough to eat.
The main troops attacking Chita and Ulan-Ude this time were two cavalry regiments and an infantry regiment from the Huai Navy.
In order to ensure mobility, even the infantry was equipped with horses.
They followed Nerchinsk to the west and crossed the hilly grassland to reach Chita in a few days. The distance between the two was only more than 300 kilometers.
This time Muravyov attacked the Heilongjiang Basin, and the place where he deployed the most troops was Chita.
At this time, there were only 2,000 defenders left in Chita and less than 20,000 residents.
They haven't received news from the front line yet, and under the sudden attack by the Huai Navy, the consequences can be imagined.
The Huai Navy left some people to guard the prisoners here, while the rest rushed towards Ulan-Ude without stopping.
The city of Ulan-Ude was founded by the Cossacks in 1666. It is located in the Zabaikal Selenge Valley, on the right bank of the river. It is an important stronghold of the Russians in Eastern Siberia.
As long as Ulan-Ude is eliminated, Tsarist Russia will no longer have a large stronghold east of Lake Baikal.
If Tsarist Russia attacks again, the Huai Navy will have a geographical advantage.
When the battle reached this point, Lin Wei, who came with the troops, hesitated a little.
Dong Shuheng's order was not very clear. He did not say whether to completely destroy these strongholds or to occupy them.
Instead, it gave Lin Wei a lot of freedom to deal with the situation.
After conquering this place, Lin Wei saw it on site and realized how difficult it was to build a city on the vast tundra grassland.
It is easy to destroy this place, but it will be very difficult to build it up again.
The navy encountered a formidable opponent in Ulan-Ude-Huai, which is the headquarters of the Eastern Siberian Cossack cavalry.
At the same time, the indigenous Buryat Mongols here were also tamed by Tsarist Russia, and many Cossack cavalry were from Buryat Mongolia.
The Buryat Mongols living around here were the spies of Tsarist Russia. The Huai navy failed to make a surprise attack, but instead suffered a counterattack from 5,000 Cossack cavalry.
Fortunately, when Lin Wei came out this time, he brought some barbed wire with him, which he originally planned to use when setting up camp on the grassland.
This time the Cossack cavalry counterattacked very fiercely.
So much so that not all the cavalry sent out by Lin Wei to conduct reconnaissance came back.
After receiving the news, Lin Wei quickly sent people to pull out the barbed wire fence, and the infantry regiment dismounted to set up a line of defense to attract the enemies.
After preventing the cavalry from directly engaging the opponent, the battle would evolve into a hand-to-hand combat with the cavalry. This would be very disadvantageous for the Huaihai Navy cavalry equipped with lances.
The Cossack cavalry is famous for its bravery in battle. As soon as it sees the enemy, it rushes towards them desperately.
No wonder after the advent of machine guns, we no longer hear about the Cossacks, a notorious military unit!
Lin Wei divided the two cavalry regiments into left and right groups and placed them behind the infantry regiment.
Seeing how fierce the attack of the Cossack cavalry was, Lin Wei's palms became sweaty at the rear.
This time Lin Wei did not dare to ask his general to move closer and fight the Russians.
Instead, as soon as they entered the firing range, they ordered the artillery to fire with all their strength.
The Cossack cavalry obviously also had tactics against the artillery, and they skillfully kept the distance between them.
In this way, even if someone is hit by a cannonball, it will not cause too much loss to the cavalry team.
The Cossacks saw that the two thousand infantrymen obviously wanted to outflank the group, so they made dumplings for this group of people.
The Huaihai Navy's infantry tightly packed their forces together to increase the density of firepower.
In this way, if the Cossack cavalry attacked the infantry regiment, they would have to move closer together.
When these Cossack cavalry approached two hundred meters, an invisible wall suddenly appeared among the withered autumn grass.
The running horses touched the wall and fell to the ground.
The attacking cavalry moved at a speed of one beat.
"Bang bang bang..." The sound of intensive musket shooting rang out.
The Cossack cavalrymen who were near the barbed wire fence were knocked off their horses one after another.
At this time, these Cossack cavalry finally reacted. What they hit was a wire fixed to the ground with wooden stakes, the height of which was just at the level of the horse's knees.
Some Cossacks braved the hail of bullets to knock down the wooden stakes that fixed the barbed wire fence. Then they moved the barbed wire fences away and opened a path between the barbed wire fences.
In this way, the cavalry in the rear successfully broke through these gaps.
Lin Wei, who was in charge of the cavalry regiment, decisively issued the order to attack.
Huai Haijun's two cavalry regiments surrounded him from the left and right wings.
The Cossack cavalry that originally outflanked the infantry regiment was now counter-surrounded by the Huaihai Navy.
These Cossacks obviously did not know the route of the Qing troops coming from the east.
Not only were there so many artillery that fired grenades, but there were also muskets with a longer range than their flintlock muskets, and barbed wire hidden in the grass that could block the impact of war horses.
These things are beyond the knowledge of the Cossack cavalry.
But these fierce cavalry are not afraid of death.
Facing the enemy, they have only one tactic, and that is assault.
There are only Cossacks who die on the way forward, and there are no Cossacks who retreat.