Chapter 745: The iron rope crosses the river and the wolf soldiers come
Zhu Gui's guess was correct. He Xiwen indeed had no plan to capture Wuzhou, and he did not have enough troops to defend it. An eighteenth-century city with more than 40,000 residents could not control the strength of any regiment.
Six thousand troops would definitely be enough for just fighting. The problem is that due to the structural problems of the Northern Navy, the Qing prisoners who surrendered would not be immediately converted and absorbed, so Lianzhou and Yulinzhou must have enough left-behind troops. If Qinzhou is allowed to
After taking the retreat with the Qing army from Leizhou, He Xiwen would be in great disgrace and would not be able to explain to Zhao Xin. Therefore, the troops that attacked Teng County this time only amounted to more than 2,000 people per regiment.
Liang Wenying had previously proposed to recruit and convert a group of surrendered Qing troops to make up for the lack of local garrison strength, but after sending a telegram to the General Staff, the reply was that he disagreed.
The Green Camp of the Manchu Qing Dynasty adopted the "soldier system", that is, if the father and brother serve as soldiers, the children will serve as the remaining soldiers at home. If there are vacancies in the guards, they will be filled from the remaining soldiers. If the remaining soldiers are not enough, they will be recruited from the civilian population. Once they are enrolled in the military, they will serve as soldiers from generation to generation.
As a soldier, future generations could not even take part in the imperial examination. Over time, many Green Camp soldiers became soldiers.
Among the Green Battalion soldiers who were captured and surrendered in the past, there are many people in their forties or fifties. Such people are fine just for collecting taxes and catching thieves, but there is no chance of being transformed into a combat unit.
At present, all the prisoners of the Qing army have been sent to Bailong City in the south of Lianzhou to clean up the ruins and expand the dock. After the people from the Bacheng Public Security Police Department arrive, they will be screened. Those with qualified physical fitness and honest personalities will be screened.
After three months of training, they were transferred to security police; those who failed were given travel expenses to go home and farm. Anyway, there were no military households under Beihai Town.
At midnight on August 15th, the dock at the foot of Wangfu Mountain outside Beiliu County was brightly lit.
Under the command of the regiment leader Wei Chao, two thousand soldiers who had set up camp lined up to carry the bamboo rafts into the river - they had already practiced it twice before. The bamboo rafts were all stacked on the shore in a greenhouse built with reed mats and moso bamboo.
In the middle, each one is nine meters long and about two meters wide. It is made of 12 thick moso bamboos, with both ends raised high.
Although bamboo rafts are easier to build than boats, there are still a lot of things to pay attention to when making them. For example, moso bamboo must be dried and dried for several months, otherwise it will easily deform when roasted and processed. The logistics department of the Southern Front Army recently ordered
A sufficient amount of dried moso bamboo was gathered to clear out the stocks of all the bamboo shops in Lianzhou, Yulinzhou City and Beiliu County. In addition, a large amount of hemp rope and bamboo nails were purchased for binding.
Then there is the tip. The angle of the tip is required to be 50 degrees. Because the bamboo body at the head of moso bamboo is thin, if the heat is not controlled properly during baking and it is too high, the bamboo body will crack with iron pliers, and the whole bamboo will crack.
The moso bamboo is useless.
This is the case with many things. A commander's words may cause his legs to break. It seems easy to say, but in practice there are a lot of details.
As large bamboo rafts were launched into the water one after another, the soldiers lined up to board the boats. Nearly an hour had passed since more than a hundred bamboo rafts were all launched into the water.
"Set off!"
When Wei Chao ordered his men to wave the torches and give the order to set off, the soldiers standing at the stern of the boat used long bamboo poles to push forward. Once they entered the channel, the soldiers on the bamboo rafts took out their engineering shovels and followed the low chant in an orderly manner.
The whole fleet was moving in a mighty and winding way, like a water snake, quietly swimming northward in the darkness.
The waterway from Beiliu to Rongxian is more than 70 miles. It is impossible for a fleet of more than 100 large bamboo rafts to not be discovered, let alone walking five miles ahead of the fleet and driving an assault boat.
reconnaissance team.
At dawn, on the river twenty miles away from Rongxian County, two father and son who were fishing in a small boat suddenly heard a roar from the south, and then saw several black shadows coming from the south.
Coming quickly from the waterway to the south.
"Dou, did you throw something away?"
Hearing his son Ah Shui's inquiry, fisherman Zhou Ada looked at it carefully and said in astonishment: "You are holding that in your mouth? Why don't you close the net quickly!"
The father and son hurriedly closed the net, but those black shadows were getting closer and closer. It was too late to try to avoid them by rowing. Seeing that they were about to hit them halfway, Ah Shui screamed in fright. At this time, he saw the ones in the front.
The black shadow suddenly turned to the right, drew an arc on the waterway, and passed around the fishing boat. Immediately afterwards, the two black figures behind also took the same action.
Just when Zhou Ada and his son were stunned, the last black shadow slowed down and came closer. At this time, someone said in Cantonese Mandarin: "In the countryside, we are fishing in the middle of the river. There are so many boats behind us."
"..." Only then did the father and son realize that what was coming was a boat with several people sitting on it. It was just different from the boats they usually saw. The hull of this boat was black and was about two feet long.
It is long and seven or eight feet wide. The material of the hull is not like bamboo. It looks bulging. There are red ropes hanging on the side of the ship.
The boat is weird, and the people on it are also weird. More than a dozen people are all wearing grass-green jackets, and they have a green round hat on their head, with a net covering it, and their faces under the hat are all black and white.
It was hard to see their faces. In addition, these people were holding strange oblong objects in their hands, with a black cylinder on the top at the end.
Oh my god! Could it be water ghosts? But who has ever seen water ghosts in groups? If one is not enough, a group will come! Zhou Ada and his son were so frightened that they collapsed in the cabin with their hands and feet sore.
"Countryside?"
"..." The father and son's teeth chattered, but they could still speak.
"Countryside?"
"Kekeke~~"
The squad leader who asked the question saw that the two men were trembling but did not speak, so he reminded him again: "In the countryside, we are not fishing here. There will be many boats coming later. Let's go to the shore. Let's go
!”
As soon as he finished speaking, the motor of the assault boat roared again, and then it rushed north through the waves until it turned into a black spot as big as a sesame seed. Only then did Zhou Ada and his son, whose faces turned pale, let out a sigh of relief.
"Dou, is he a human or a ghost?"
"You're a bastard! You can't tell the difference between humans and ghosts. He's a pirate from the south and from the north! Get out of the way!"
These assault boats of the reconnaissance team appeared on the Beiliu River, causing the brave men in the villages along the way and the Qing troops in the flood pond to panic. The key is that no one has seen this thing before, and the sound of the roaring motor is just like thunder.
Like, coupled with the ship's top speed of 60 kilometers per hour, it is really appalling.
After these boats arrived on the river near Rong County, two of them were specially responsible for intercepting the boats going north. The other boats were circling back and forth on the river outside the city, which puzzled the county magistrate who came to the city wall after hearing the news.
My heart says what is this doing?
"Master, do you want a shot?" A soldier asked the county magistrate, his face full of a desperate and eager look.
At the crenel not far behind him, there was an iron cannon more than two feet long. The exterior was rusty, and there were several iron hoops on the cannon for reinforcement. This was a Ming Dynasty tiger crouching cannon, which had always been used before.
They are all used as trust cannons. If this thing can hit an assault boat a mile away, it will not even smoke from the ancestral graves, it will have to roar into flames!
"Put that thing down in your hand! It's crazy!" Magistrate Wang closed the fan in his hand, his face was livid, and he was so angry that he even spat out his hometown dialect.
The county magistrate's name is Wang Tingju, also known as Xianchen. He comes from the Wang family of Niedian, Yuci, Shanxi, and is a famous wealthy man. The Wang family started their business by managing land and loan sharking in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Today, they open pawnshops all over Jiangnan, outside the customs, and Henan.
There are more than 200 companies in Shandong, Zhili and other places, with assets exceeding tens of millions.
Wang Tingju was the second eldest child in the family. After studying for more than ten years, he could not even pass the examination as a scholar. But this man had to live and die as an official, so he could only spend money to donate money, and finally left Liu Quan, the housekeeper of the house.
He spent 50,000 taels of silver to come to Rong County and become the county magistrate.
Don't be too expensive, this is a real vacancy that will be filled as soon as you take office, and countless people are competing for it. Although Rongxian County is small and poor, the county magistrate is also a seventh-rank official. The problem is that only this position is distributed among genuine Jinshi.
There must be a real deficiency.
"This is all a fucking nonsense! Didn't you say that everyone is celebrating by eating mooncakes and watching a big show? They actually did this to deceive this county!"
Dian Shi, who was on the side, was from Wuzhou. He didn't quite understand Magistrate Wang's Shanxi dialect. He blinked and asked, "Sir, how should we deal with this? We can't just watch the Beihai pirates attack the city."
"Otherwise, these boats are just wandering around on the river without docking, and they will be beaten early." Wang Tingju opened his fan, fanned himself hard a few times, and sighed: "There are thousands of soldiers and horses in Yulin Mansion to stop them.
If you don’t stop, we in Rong County will only use this young man No. 100 to manage football!”
Dian Shi said: "Then just look at it like this? Will Magistrate Hu blame you then?"
"Blame it? I don't know if Mr. Hu can survive this disaster."
Others don't know how powerful the Beihai Navy is, but Wang Tingju, who was born in a Shanxi merchant family, knows it all too well. He is currently at war with heaven and man in his heart. If the Beihai Navy attacks the city, should he surrender? Or should he surrender with the Jinshi magistrate of Beiliu County?
Same, the whole family hangs themselves.
The reason why he thought this was because the military laws of the Qing Dynasty were extremely strict on the officials who defended the city, and those who retreated were not allowed to be executed, including the followers and the three relatives and disciples. To put it simply, "If one person does not die, the whole clan will be destroyed. If one person commits suicide,
, the whole family is honored.”
For example, if Wang Tingju escapes, great! Zhu Gui can behead him without reporting it to the court after he is caught. The slaves, masters, officials, and three generations of relatives in his hometown who ran away with him will all be sentenced to imprisonment.
"Prison" in the Ming and Qing Dynasties specifically refers to hard labor, where you have to do all kinds of dirty and tiring work in shackles at the local post station or yamen, and you have to be beaten half to death before serving your sentence. One year is 30 big boards, and three
The life limit is 80, and if you don't pay the bribe, you will probably be beaten to death. If the men are like this, the women will be tortured and ravaged.
Chinese people have always believed in filial piety. It doesn't matter whether you escape or surrender and survive. Your parents in your hometown have to do hard labor. How can you still be considered a human being? You will die in society and you will be looked down upon for the rest of your life. Your descendants will have no hope of taking the imperial examination.
Someone said that the worst case scenario is to start over somewhere else. The problem is that it is not easy even for modern people to do this, let alone the ancients. If the land is gone, what will happen to the ancestral graves? What will happen to the ancestral home?
What the people on the city wall didn't know was that it was the county magistrate's order that saved them. Half an hour later, when everyone on the city wall saw a fleet of hundreds of bamboo rafts winding towards them, they were densely covered with water.
When they reached the river, they all turned pale with fright. They thought it was very dangerous. It was a good thing that the master didn't step aside and fire.
Before setting off, He Xiwen told Wei Chao that if the defenders of Rong County did not attack or block them, they should ignore them. It was not worth wasting time for a small county.
The soldiers and civilians of Rong County just lay on the city wall, watching the camped fleet pass through the county without any danger. As for the county magistrate Wang Tingju, when he was convinced that the Northern Navy fleet on the river had no intention of attacking the city,
, he hurriedly returned to the county government office and wrote a letter. He called the personal servant brought from his home in Shanxi and gave detailed instructions, asking him to leave the city through the south gate at night and go to Beiliu County to contact him.
What he said in the letter was very sincere. It's not that I, the king, don't want to surrender. It's because the court's laws are strict. Once the news of surrender spreads, it will harm my family. So, from now on, I will still be an official of the court in public. What should I do in private?
What's going on, it doesn't matter if you want money or food, but we are selling dog meat on sheep's heads. Do you think this is good?
One day later, the fleet encamped in Hui'an passed the intersection of Beiliu River and Huanghua River. The sixty-mile waterway from here to Teng County is called "Xiujiang". This area has Tiantang Ridge and Lingshan in the east, and Tiantang Ridge and Lingshan in the west.
Lindu Bangling and Luomanling have high mountains and lush forests, and the waterway is sandwiched between the mountains. From the shore to the mountainside, it is filled with fog, and dense mosquitoes fly on the water, which is very annoying. The sun is merciless in the sky
The intense sun exposure made the soldiers on the bamboo raft sweat profusely.
In the official annals of Teng County in the Ming Dynasty, autumn was called "Zhengqiu", which means that after the sultry summer season ended, the weather became even hotter in autumn, and it would not cool down until after the Double Ninth Festival.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Fortunately, the people who will camp have lived in a hot and humid environment since childhood, and cooling oil has become a standard in the army, so people who suffer from heatstroke are not
Not much, but everyone's face and hands were covered with large and small bites. When you go ashore to camp at night, you have to be careful of poisonous insects and wild beasts.
This was the case in Lingnan in ancient times. The hot, humid and mosquito-filled environment made it impossible for northerners to survive. It would be better to be an official, but if you were exiled here, you would be dead if you contracted malaria.
This shows the importance of the North Korean navy setting up a base in Ganchengao. All troops going south must undergo at least one month of adaptability training there. Otherwise, let alone fighting, the non-combat attrition alone will drive the officers crazy.
This is why Zhao Xin asked He Xiwen to lead the attack on Guangxi. Nowadays, most of the generals of the Northern Navy are northerners. They have lived in the northeast for many years and have difficulty adapting to the sultry weather in the south.
Along the way, Wei Chao asked his men to drink only boiled water from the kettle when they were thirsty, and to eat canned food and compressed biscuits when they were hungry. The river water was absolutely not allowed to be drunk, but it was okay to wash their faces and cool off.
Because Guangxi is mountainous, water and land stations run parallel to each other. Due to the high speed of the reconnaissance team, after leaving Rongxian County, various waterways such as Doujiazhai, Longtantang, Pandongtang, Huanghuatang, and Yichangtang were The post station was taken down without any time to react. The postmen were all stunned as they watched the North Navy's assault boat quickly rush to the beach. When the scouts armed with rifles jumped off the boat and waded over to the water, all they could do was Escape and surrender.
Traveling on a five-hundred-mile waterway cannot be smooth sailing, and there will always be fish that slip through the net in the post. When the waterway cannot be traveled, they resorted to the "thousand-mile horse" trick and followed the land post road through the mountains and ridges to rush to Teng County to report the news. .When the reconnaissance team came to a place called Ma'an Pass south of Teng County, they found that they could not pass.
This is the most dangerous place on the river before entering the Xunjiang River. There have been water barriers since the Zhengtong period of the Ming Dynasty, and there are walled cities on the slopes of the left and right banks, overlooking the river from a high position.
After the news of the Northern Navy's occupation of Yulin reached Wuzhou, Xu Guocai, the deputy general of Wuzhou Association, immediately thought of Ma'an Pass. At his suggestion, the prefect Hu Youren summoned a large number of craftsmen to build iron chains overnight and then transported them to Ma'an Pass. Six iron cables were set up on the river, and the magistrate of Teng County was asked to recruit brave men to guard the city and observe the trends in the south.
These six iron cables were not just lying across the river. Xu Guocai asked Teng County to sail several 500-material civilian boats to Ma'an Pass and scuttle them all, nailing them underwater with wooden stakes to make them immovable, and then scuttling the iron chains. Hang it on the hull of the ship above the water. In this way, not to mention the three to five hundred masted merchant ships, ordinary small boats cannot pass.
When encountering this kind of obstruction, the ancients generally had no good solution. The only way to overcome it was to send a suicide squad, set up a stove on the bow of the ship, and when they got close, they would burn and chop the iron chains. At the same time, they would also have to send sailors to dive into the water and remove the nails that nailed the ship. Use wooden piles to remove the sunken ship. While destroying the chains, you must also send troops to help defend; you must know that the enemy on the opposite side will not just watch.
This kind of water battle is often a life-and-death bloody battle, who has more soldiers, whose generals are braver, and who can find a way to quickly destroy or hold on to the iron rope.
Teng County, like Rong County, is a small county. Relying on its own strength, even if the iron cable crosses the river, it will be useless. But now isn’t it Zhu Gui, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, who came. On the second day after he arrived in Wuzhou, he came from Guilin Prefecture and Heping Yue Prefecture. The supporting native soldiers and wolf soldiers also arrived.
Regarding the title of "Wolf Soldier", it is actually related to "Wolf Man". Don't get me wrong, they are not the kind that become hairy and full of fangs when the full moon comes. They are local indigenous people like the Zhuang and Yao people. These people usually live scattered Growing up among the mountains in western Guangdong, he began to practice martial arts when he was young.
Many people think that any native soldier from Guangxi is a "wolf soldier", which is wrong. There are many kinds of native soldiers, including the Zhuang and Yao ethnic groups, but only the native soldiers who are mainly from the werewolf tribe are wolf soldiers, also called "real wolves" ", the others are all fake wolves.
The name "Wolf Soldier" first appeared in the Zhengtong period of the Ming Dynasty. At that time, the mountains in the Xunzhou and Dadengxia areas were close to each other, and Yao pirates were infested. However, in the chieftain areas of the two rivers, because there were many people and few fields, many people made a living as soldiers. , fought bravely and made the Yao people very afraid.
The Guangxi wolf soldiers in the Ming Dynasty were a powerful force that cannot be ignored. Their peak number was more than 100,000, and they participated in almost every war in the late Ming Dynasty. However, nowadays, many werewolves have been transformed into farmers.
There are only more than 2,000 soldiers left.
The reason for this situation is that after the "San Francisco Rebellion", there were fewer and fewer military activities in Guangxi. Especially after the repatriation, the management system of the wolf soldiers was completely disrupted, resulting in a sharp decrease in the number of wolf soldiers.
Zhu Gui saw that it was right. Regiment training was his magic needle. He didn't want to move for the time being. The Green Battalion had too few troops and the level of fighting was really not good. There were no more than two thousand wolf soldiers, and they were most suitable for guarding the dangerous terrain of Ma'an Pass.
Furthermore, it is not far from Wuzhou to Teng County. It is a 160-mile waterway and can be reached by boat in two days.
Before setting off, each of the wolf soldiers received ten taels of silver, and their morale was greatly boosted. They were all as if they had been given a shot of chicken blood. They were originally looking for rewards, so they couldn't come here just to eat old rice after all the hard work.