Chapter 1828
Reversal of the Battle Situation
Chapter 1828 Reversal of the Battle Situation
For North Korea, the confrontation on the Taedong River can be regarded as a long-lost victory. Even if the North Korean army only used naval ships to carry out personnel transportation and surveillance tasks on the river, no one boarded the three ships from the beginning to the end. The island was not directly involved in the combat process, and this will not prevent the civil and military officials on the front line of the Datong River from claiming credit for themselves.
Since the beginning of the war, although the North Korean army has tried to resist the Qing army's invasion in the north, they have basically had little effect and have been rubbed on the ground by the Qing army.The lost cities in the north had cost North Korea thousands of soldiers and horses, but the damage caused by the North Korean defenders to the Qing army was simply impossible.This time, the annihilation of more than a thousand Qing troops on the Datong River was enough to stabilize the main fighters, whose prestige in North Korea's domestic political arena was precarious, and regain the trust of King Li Ji.
As for the coalition troops participating in this operation, they will not compete with the North Koreans for the ownership of the military exploits. They value more the long-term rewards they can get from North Korea after the war. If they don't fight, there is no need for them to stand out.
But Wang Tom's calm attitude towards this has a deeper intention. After all, Haihan also needs to give a hand to the main fighters in North Korea's political arena so that he can get more logistical support from North Korea.Even if the North Koreans keep this credit for themselves, senior officials who really know the inside story will still realize that their credit is all provided by Haihan. If they want to continue the victory, they must cooperate with the command of the coalition forces and satisfy Various requirements put forward by Haihan.
Different from the increasingly difficult supply situation of the Qing army, the entire south of the Datong River can be regarded as the rear of the coalition forces. In order to be able to grasp the life-saving straw of the coalition forces, the Korean government and the opposition also made every effort to meet the logistical supplies required by the coalition forces.Southern regions such as Gangwon-do, Gyeonggi-do, Chungcheong-do, Jeolla-do, and Gyeongsang-do, which were not caught in the flames of war, were all assigned by the court to raise supplies. Operational for the preparation of the coalition forces.
Although the efficiency of the North Koreans is indeed not very high, and there are still many unavoidable delays caused by the bureaucratic system, it is still more than enough to provide material support for the coalition forces with the strength of half the country.At least in terms of the supply of food, quilts, medicinal materials, tents and other daily necessities, the coalition forces really can't find any faults so far.There are as many as hundreds of livestock such as pigs, cattle and sheep transported across the river to the base as food materials, and this is only part of the supply to the army.
Good logistical support has kept the morale of the coalition forces that have been in North Korea for a long time. Even many officers and soldiers of the independent regiment believe that the treatment during North Korea is a rare high standard in overseas operations.
Of course, compared with the coalition troops who received favorable treatment, the civilian husbands sent by North Korea to participate in the construction of the Datongjiang base did not have such a good life. All they could get was the minimum guarantee of survival.When the living conditions were not perfect in the early stage, all tents had to be given priority to the coalition troops. Most of the North Korean migrant workers could only live on the construction site without a straw mat under their bodies. In terms of food It cannot be compared with the coalition forces.
But even so, for ordinary Koreans, it is better than being enslaved by the barbarian nobles of the Qing Dynasty after the entire country fell.After all, it is only a few months to do hard labor for the coalition army, and it will be over after gritting your teeth. If the Qing army is allowed to continue to wreak havoc, then the children and grandchildren may only be reduced to slaves.
Of course, this kind of ideology was not entirely formed by the Korean civilians themselves, and the propaganda work of the civil affairs officials in Haihan during this period also contributed a lot.
After Liu Shang came here from Guanglu Island after receiving the transfer order, he took on the task of planning and implementing propaganda work, and at the same time he had to be responsible for the daily management of the large number of local Han refugees and Korean civilian husbands.Fortunately, there are sufficient troops from the Independent Regiment here to maintain social order, and most of the decisions he made can be implemented relatively smoothly.
In order to meet the construction deadline, about two-thirds of the Han refugees captured by the coalition forces from the Liaodong area were transported to the Datong River Base for resettlement. Grain output can support such a large population, so the rations of these Han refugees also come from North Korea.
Of course, the propaganda officers under Liu Shang will tell these Han refugees that all the living supplies they get are due to the benevolent decision of the Haihan Executive Committee, and whether they can become Haihan nationality in the future, they will arrange to go to those with better conditions. Local settlement depends on their performance in the Datongjiang base construction project.In other words, only those who work the hardest and perform the best will have the opportunity to be resettled in Haihan, where the living environment is the best. According to the propaganda officers, it is a prosperous and safe overseas paradise. Citizens who are truly loyal to Haihan are eligible to settle there.
For these Han refugees who had just escaped from the enslavement of the Qing Dynasty but still had an uncertain future, the words of Haihan officials were like a ray of light in the darkness, giving them more hope for the future and understanding of the current labor arrangements. More motivation.
Liu Shang has been in Liaodong for a long time. He already has very rich practical experience in how to mobilize the enthusiasm of the Han refugees and make them obey the management of the colonial authorities. Now he will apply these experiences to the daily management of the Datong River Base , also received quite good results.But personally, he doesn’t really want to stay and work in a foreign country for a long time. Even if he returns to Liaodong or Shandong, it would be better. The land entrusted to Haihan by North Korea.
Of course, maybe after a period of time, this place will become another overseas colony of Haihan, but at least for a foreseeable period of time, this place will continue to play the role of a military base.But Liu Shang has never been very interested in joining the military, otherwise Qian Tiandun and Wang Tom would be happy to find him a civilian position in the military responsible for propaganda work.
Although Liu Shang's establishment is not in the military, Qian Tiandun also gave special care to officials like him who can do things. In addition to enjoying the living standards of senior officers, the daily meals are also settled in the officers' canteen in the base. In terms of life, it is still passable.
After repelling the attack of the Azig Ministry, not only the troops participating in the war received rewards from the headquarters, but even civilian officials like Liu Shang also received rewards, with additional vegetables for dinner and a limited supply of liquor.Liu Shang didn't bother to enjoy it, but he remembered his own job and asked the propaganda officers to announce the victory to the local people.
Not long after, the results of the confrontation with the Qing army on the river near Pyongyang were also sent back to the base. The soldiers and civilians once again celebrated this new victory, and they were generally optimistic that the situation in North Korea had begun to reverse. The invincible Qing army It's time to pay for their bad decision to invade North Korea.
On July [-], the Qing army tried to organize a night crossing operation [-] miles upstream of Pyongyang, but because the coalition forces detected the mobilization of troops in advance, they were suddenly attacked from both upstream and downstream during the operation. The [-] Qing troops helplessly became the live targets of the coalition fleet, and the rafts they were riding on were not sensitive to steering on the river, and they could not withdraw from the battlefield in time.
Fortunately, more than 100 Qing troops who passed through the blockade of the coalition fleet in the dark and arrived at the south bank of the Datong River did not escape. They soon ran into a group of North Korean troops patrolling the river bank with torches, and quickly called There are more than 200 Korean cavalry in the vicinity.Then under the charge of the cavalry, the Koreans finally won their first victory on their own since the war began. Only five of the more than 100 Qing troops were captured, and all the others died in the battle. The North Korean side only paid the price of 30 casualties, and it finally took advantage of the confrontation with the Qing army.
The failure of this night crossing operation made the Qing army realize that the strategy they had used before crossing the river was no longer very effective. The opponent deployed patrol forces on the opposite bank of the Datong River far more than the previous few times to block the river. It was very difficult for the small units of the Qing army to cross the river to hide their tracks under their frequent patrols.
The current situation is no longer able to break the situation by changing the command of the troops. Facing the rolling river, even the brave generals cannot rely on manpower to fight against the heavily armed coalition fleet on the river.It can be said that all the passivity of the Qing army on the Korean battlefield was due to the lack of armed forces on the surface, but even if Huang Taiji and other high-level officials have realized this, they still have no way to change this serious imbalance in power in the short term. status quo.
Now that we have tried all kinds of methods, if we continue to send people to forcefully cross the river, the raft will not be able to defeat the strong boat and sharp guns after all.As a last resort, Huang Taiji could only order to continue to build rafts and other river-crossing vehicles in Pyongyang, making a gesture of forcibly crossing the Taedong River, but secretly let the main force go around in a circle from the west of Pyongyang, and then head south to the Taedong River downstream.
That's right, Huang Taiji finally decided to touch the Haihan base that popped up suddenly.He knew very well that in a battle on water, Haihan might not be his opponent in another 100 years, and this land battlefield might be the only chance for the Qing army to defeat Haihan.
Even though the troops led by Azig had encountered setbacks in the local area before, Huang Taiji still hoped that there were defensive loopholes in this seemingly hastily built base, so that the Qing army could find a chance to defeat Haihan.
But this kind of superficial article can't actually confuse the Haihan army. In the area west of Pyongyang, there have long been reconnaissance teams of the independent regiment lurking in the wild.The task of these small teams is not to scout the deployment of Qing troops in the Pyongyang area, but to monitor the area between Pyongyang and the Taedong River base. As long as the Qing army tries to advance to the Taedong River base, they will inevitably be unable to escape from these small teams. vision.
The main force of the Qing army was only fifty miles away from Pyongyang, and a team of scouts had already noticed its movements.Although these soldiers were not equipped with advanced communication equipment such as radio stations, they carried carrier pigeons that also had the function of transmitting information.These homing pigeons have been at the Datongjiang base for more than two months, and it is no problem to fly back from hundreds of miles away.
Several batches of carrier pigeons flew back to the base, clearly outlining the marching route of the Qing army after leaving Pyongyang.Although they carefully avoided the vicinity of the river bank, they still failed to escape Haihan's surveillance.So when he was a hundred miles away from the Datongjiang base, Qian Tiandun had already ordered the independent regiment to prepare for the battle, preparing to meet the Qing army's offensive.
On July [-], the Qianfeng Battalion of the Qing Army arrived at the north of the Datongjiang base and set up camp about ten miles away.Or because they were afraid of the defense of the base in Haihan, the Qing army did not launch an attack immediately after arriving at the destination like attacking the North Korean city, but chose a more secure method.
About half a day later, the main force of the Qing army began to arrive in this area one after another, and then two thousand-man cavalry units set off from the Qing army camp to conduct terrain reconnaissance along the small rivers on the east and west sides of the Datongjiang base.In fact, Azige had already done the same thing when he led his troops here before, but Huang Taiji still didn't give up on the last result, hoping to find a terrain that he could use.
Of course, such efforts were still in vain. The Qing army found helplessly that even in these two small rivers that were not very wide, there were still armed ships cruising back and forth.Of course, the Qing army can also choose to invest a large amount of artillery on a certain section of the river bank, so that the Haihan warships on the river cannot enter, but this is of little practical significance, because the Qing army has a limited number of artillery, and it may be possible to achieve such an effect. He had to give up using artillery tactics on the frontal battlefield, but Haihan could easily deploy a group of artillery on the other side of the river so that the Qing army could not cross the river.
Considering the gap between the two sides in terms of artillery performance and tactical application, Haihan only needs to deploy half of the Qing army's artillery or even less, and the Qing army's plans can be ruined.What's more, if the Qing army wanted to complete the river crossing operation here, it would have to spend at least a few days to cut down trees in the surrounding areas to make rafts. Haihan could afford this time, but the Qing army might not be able to afford it.
The reason why it took a few days to cut wood was because as long as there were trees as thick as an adult's arm within a few miles around the base, they had already been cut down to build various facilities in the base.If the Qing army wanted to make rafts, they had to go far away to log and then transport them back. This is obviously not an ideal combat plan.
(End of this chapter)
For North Korea, the confrontation on the Taedong River can be regarded as a long-lost victory. Even if the North Korean army only used naval ships to carry out personnel transportation and surveillance tasks on the river, no one boarded the three ships from the beginning to the end. The island was not directly involved in the combat process, and this will not prevent the civil and military officials on the front line of the Datong River from claiming credit for themselves.
Since the beginning of the war, although the North Korean army has tried to resist the Qing army's invasion in the north, they have basically had little effect and have been rubbed on the ground by the Qing army.The lost cities in the north had cost North Korea thousands of soldiers and horses, but the damage caused by the North Korean defenders to the Qing army was simply impossible.This time, the annihilation of more than a thousand Qing troops on the Datong River was enough to stabilize the main fighters, whose prestige in North Korea's domestic political arena was precarious, and regain the trust of King Li Ji.
As for the coalition troops participating in this operation, they will not compete with the North Koreans for the ownership of the military exploits. They value more the long-term rewards they can get from North Korea after the war. If they don't fight, there is no need for them to stand out.
But Wang Tom's calm attitude towards this has a deeper intention. After all, Haihan also needs to give a hand to the main fighters in North Korea's political arena so that he can get more logistical support from North Korea.Even if the North Koreans keep this credit for themselves, senior officials who really know the inside story will still realize that their credit is all provided by Haihan. If they want to continue the victory, they must cooperate with the command of the coalition forces and satisfy Various requirements put forward by Haihan.
Different from the increasingly difficult supply situation of the Qing army, the entire south of the Datong River can be regarded as the rear of the coalition forces. In order to be able to grasp the life-saving straw of the coalition forces, the Korean government and the opposition also made every effort to meet the logistical supplies required by the coalition forces.Southern regions such as Gangwon-do, Gyeonggi-do, Chungcheong-do, Jeolla-do, and Gyeongsang-do, which were not caught in the flames of war, were all assigned by the court to raise supplies. Operational for the preparation of the coalition forces.
Although the efficiency of the North Koreans is indeed not very high, and there are still many unavoidable delays caused by the bureaucratic system, it is still more than enough to provide material support for the coalition forces with the strength of half the country.At least in terms of the supply of food, quilts, medicinal materials, tents and other daily necessities, the coalition forces really can't find any faults so far.There are as many as hundreds of livestock such as pigs, cattle and sheep transported across the river to the base as food materials, and this is only part of the supply to the army.
Good logistical support has kept the morale of the coalition forces that have been in North Korea for a long time. Even many officers and soldiers of the independent regiment believe that the treatment during North Korea is a rare high standard in overseas operations.
Of course, compared with the coalition troops who received favorable treatment, the civilian husbands sent by North Korea to participate in the construction of the Datongjiang base did not have such a good life. All they could get was the minimum guarantee of survival.When the living conditions were not perfect in the early stage, all tents had to be given priority to the coalition troops. Most of the North Korean migrant workers could only live on the construction site without a straw mat under their bodies. In terms of food It cannot be compared with the coalition forces.
But even so, for ordinary Koreans, it is better than being enslaved by the barbarian nobles of the Qing Dynasty after the entire country fell.After all, it is only a few months to do hard labor for the coalition army, and it will be over after gritting your teeth. If the Qing army is allowed to continue to wreak havoc, then the children and grandchildren may only be reduced to slaves.
Of course, this kind of ideology was not entirely formed by the Korean civilians themselves, and the propaganda work of the civil affairs officials in Haihan during this period also contributed a lot.
After Liu Shang came here from Guanglu Island after receiving the transfer order, he took on the task of planning and implementing propaganda work, and at the same time he had to be responsible for the daily management of the large number of local Han refugees and Korean civilian husbands.Fortunately, there are sufficient troops from the Independent Regiment here to maintain social order, and most of the decisions he made can be implemented relatively smoothly.
In order to meet the construction deadline, about two-thirds of the Han refugees captured by the coalition forces from the Liaodong area were transported to the Datong River Base for resettlement. Grain output can support such a large population, so the rations of these Han refugees also come from North Korea.
Of course, the propaganda officers under Liu Shang will tell these Han refugees that all the living supplies they get are due to the benevolent decision of the Haihan Executive Committee, and whether they can become Haihan nationality in the future, they will arrange to go to those with better conditions. Local settlement depends on their performance in the Datongjiang base construction project.In other words, only those who work the hardest and perform the best will have the opportunity to be resettled in Haihan, where the living environment is the best. According to the propaganda officers, it is a prosperous and safe overseas paradise. Citizens who are truly loyal to Haihan are eligible to settle there.
For these Han refugees who had just escaped from the enslavement of the Qing Dynasty but still had an uncertain future, the words of Haihan officials were like a ray of light in the darkness, giving them more hope for the future and understanding of the current labor arrangements. More motivation.
Liu Shang has been in Liaodong for a long time. He already has very rich practical experience in how to mobilize the enthusiasm of the Han refugees and make them obey the management of the colonial authorities. Now he will apply these experiences to the daily management of the Datong River Base , also received quite good results.But personally, he doesn’t really want to stay and work in a foreign country for a long time. Even if he returns to Liaodong or Shandong, it would be better. The land entrusted to Haihan by North Korea.
Of course, maybe after a period of time, this place will become another overseas colony of Haihan, but at least for a foreseeable period of time, this place will continue to play the role of a military base.But Liu Shang has never been very interested in joining the military, otherwise Qian Tiandun and Wang Tom would be happy to find him a civilian position in the military responsible for propaganda work.
Although Liu Shang's establishment is not in the military, Qian Tiandun also gave special care to officials like him who can do things. In addition to enjoying the living standards of senior officers, the daily meals are also settled in the officers' canteen in the base. In terms of life, it is still passable.
After repelling the attack of the Azig Ministry, not only the troops participating in the war received rewards from the headquarters, but even civilian officials like Liu Shang also received rewards, with additional vegetables for dinner and a limited supply of liquor.Liu Shang didn't bother to enjoy it, but he remembered his own job and asked the propaganda officers to announce the victory to the local people.
Not long after, the results of the confrontation with the Qing army on the river near Pyongyang were also sent back to the base. The soldiers and civilians once again celebrated this new victory, and they were generally optimistic that the situation in North Korea had begun to reverse. The invincible Qing army It's time to pay for their bad decision to invade North Korea.
On July [-], the Qing army tried to organize a night crossing operation [-] miles upstream of Pyongyang, but because the coalition forces detected the mobilization of troops in advance, they were suddenly attacked from both upstream and downstream during the operation. The [-] Qing troops helplessly became the live targets of the coalition fleet, and the rafts they were riding on were not sensitive to steering on the river, and they could not withdraw from the battlefield in time.
Fortunately, more than 100 Qing troops who passed through the blockade of the coalition fleet in the dark and arrived at the south bank of the Datong River did not escape. They soon ran into a group of North Korean troops patrolling the river bank with torches, and quickly called There are more than 200 Korean cavalry in the vicinity.Then under the charge of the cavalry, the Koreans finally won their first victory on their own since the war began. Only five of the more than 100 Qing troops were captured, and all the others died in the battle. The North Korean side only paid the price of 30 casualties, and it finally took advantage of the confrontation with the Qing army.
The failure of this night crossing operation made the Qing army realize that the strategy they had used before crossing the river was no longer very effective. The opponent deployed patrol forces on the opposite bank of the Datong River far more than the previous few times to block the river. It was very difficult for the small units of the Qing army to cross the river to hide their tracks under their frequent patrols.
The current situation is no longer able to break the situation by changing the command of the troops. Facing the rolling river, even the brave generals cannot rely on manpower to fight against the heavily armed coalition fleet on the river.It can be said that all the passivity of the Qing army on the Korean battlefield was due to the lack of armed forces on the surface, but even if Huang Taiji and other high-level officials have realized this, they still have no way to change this serious imbalance in power in the short term. status quo.
Now that we have tried all kinds of methods, if we continue to send people to forcefully cross the river, the raft will not be able to defeat the strong boat and sharp guns after all.As a last resort, Huang Taiji could only order to continue to build rafts and other river-crossing vehicles in Pyongyang, making a gesture of forcibly crossing the Taedong River, but secretly let the main force go around in a circle from the west of Pyongyang, and then head south to the Taedong River downstream.
That's right, Huang Taiji finally decided to touch the Haihan base that popped up suddenly.He knew very well that in a battle on water, Haihan might not be his opponent in another 100 years, and this land battlefield might be the only chance for the Qing army to defeat Haihan.
Even though the troops led by Azig had encountered setbacks in the local area before, Huang Taiji still hoped that there were defensive loopholes in this seemingly hastily built base, so that the Qing army could find a chance to defeat Haihan.
But this kind of superficial article can't actually confuse the Haihan army. In the area west of Pyongyang, there have long been reconnaissance teams of the independent regiment lurking in the wild.The task of these small teams is not to scout the deployment of Qing troops in the Pyongyang area, but to monitor the area between Pyongyang and the Taedong River base. As long as the Qing army tries to advance to the Taedong River base, they will inevitably be unable to escape from these small teams. vision.
The main force of the Qing army was only fifty miles away from Pyongyang, and a team of scouts had already noticed its movements.Although these soldiers were not equipped with advanced communication equipment such as radio stations, they carried carrier pigeons that also had the function of transmitting information.These homing pigeons have been at the Datongjiang base for more than two months, and it is no problem to fly back from hundreds of miles away.
Several batches of carrier pigeons flew back to the base, clearly outlining the marching route of the Qing army after leaving Pyongyang.Although they carefully avoided the vicinity of the river bank, they still failed to escape Haihan's surveillance.So when he was a hundred miles away from the Datongjiang base, Qian Tiandun had already ordered the independent regiment to prepare for the battle, preparing to meet the Qing army's offensive.
On July [-], the Qianfeng Battalion of the Qing Army arrived at the north of the Datongjiang base and set up camp about ten miles away.Or because they were afraid of the defense of the base in Haihan, the Qing army did not launch an attack immediately after arriving at the destination like attacking the North Korean city, but chose a more secure method.
About half a day later, the main force of the Qing army began to arrive in this area one after another, and then two thousand-man cavalry units set off from the Qing army camp to conduct terrain reconnaissance along the small rivers on the east and west sides of the Datongjiang base.In fact, Azige had already done the same thing when he led his troops here before, but Huang Taiji still didn't give up on the last result, hoping to find a terrain that he could use.
Of course, such efforts were still in vain. The Qing army found helplessly that even in these two small rivers that were not very wide, there were still armed ships cruising back and forth.Of course, the Qing army can also choose to invest a large amount of artillery on a certain section of the river bank, so that the Haihan warships on the river cannot enter, but this is of little practical significance, because the Qing army has a limited number of artillery, and it may be possible to achieve such an effect. He had to give up using artillery tactics on the frontal battlefield, but Haihan could easily deploy a group of artillery on the other side of the river so that the Qing army could not cross the river.
Considering the gap between the two sides in terms of artillery performance and tactical application, Haihan only needs to deploy half of the Qing army's artillery or even less, and the Qing army's plans can be ruined.What's more, if the Qing army wanted to complete the river crossing operation here, it would have to spend at least a few days to cut down trees in the surrounding areas to make rafts. Haihan could afford this time, but the Qing army might not be able to afford it.
The reason why it took a few days to cut wood was because as long as there were trees as thick as an adult's arm within a few miles around the base, they had already been cut down to build various facilities in the base.If the Qing army wanted to make rafts, they had to go far away to log and then transport them back. This is obviously not an ideal combat plan.
(End of this chapter)