Chapter 1835
Chapter 1835
Chapter 1835
After the Qing army occupied Anzhou, about 70 Korean civilians and more than [-] shipbuilders were left there to build ships and rafts day and night.In addition, dozens of ships were dispatched from the Yalu River to Anzhou via the Yellow Sea to solve the shortage of vehicles on the Qingchuan River and the Daning River, and it was difficult to meet the logistics transportation needs.
However, these actions are all temporary cramming after all, and the effect they can play is really limited, and a few ships can be built in a hurry.The North Korean garrison obeyed the command of Haihan early on and emptied the ships in the Liangjiang River Basin, and even the shipbuilding wood on the riverside that was too late to be transported sank in the river. The Qing army had to prepare wood in order to build a ship. After one to three years of drying in the shade, even if the wood felled from the mountains and forests is barely used for shipbuilding, it can only be used in a short period of time.It is more trouble-free to build a raft, as long as the wood is cut off from the trunk and branches, processed to a similar length and fixed together, it can be launched into the water.
Of course, based on the planning of the Qing army, it probably didn't intend to use these temporarily built vehicles for a long time. It will be used for a month or two at the moment, and these vehicles will be useless when the war is over.Therefore, no one cares about its quality and durability, as long as it does not sink or leak in the water.At this time, no one could have imagined that not long after the army left Anzhou and went south, it would be driven back by the enemy in disgrace.And what's worse, the fleet of the Haihan people arrived at the Qingchuan River before their own army.
When two huge Majestic-class warships suddenly appeared on the Qingchuan River, the unprepared Qing army immediately abandoned all ships and rafts, and took the initiative to shrink the defense line to Anzhou City.Although the Qing army had more than [-] garrisons in Anzhou, no one dared to challenge this monster equipped with dozens of naval guns with bows, arrows and spears.
Wang Tom was worried about fraud, so he ordered to fire two rounds of cannons symbolically at the pier to confirm that there was no Qing army ambushing here.However, the active retreat of the Qing army made it much easier for the navy to clean up these small boats and rafts on the river bank, because it would be a waste of time to use naval guns to hit these small targets. Not only would it consume a lot of ammunition, but the cleaning efficiency would also be low It will be very low, far less fast than manual demolition.
After confirming that the Qing army had given up the river bank defense, Wang Tom ordered the marines on the ship to land immediately, scuttled the ships on the shore as soon as possible, dismantled the rafts, and even poured kerosene on the wood piled on the shore and burned them all.The current main task of the navy is not to eliminate the Qing army stationed in Anzhou City, but to try its best to destroy the vehicles that can be used by it to cross the river, so as to be able to intercept the main force of the Qing army returning north.
Fires have already been lit on the pier here, and the messenger who came from the south to order the local defenders to protect the vehicles on the river has just rushed into Anzhou City. The small boats and rafts on the river outside the city could not be rescued.
By the time the defending general listened to the order from Huang Taiji and led his troops out of Anzhou city in a panic to try to save the situation, the landed marines had already completed their mission and returned to the ship to evacuate here.Facing the raging fire on the pier and the wreckage floating on the river, the defenders could only cry without tears. When Huang Taiji led the army back to Anzhou, some people would definitely have to take responsibility for this situation.
Although not all the vehicles on the Qingchuan River were destroyed by Haihan's surprise attack, the Qing army's tens of thousands of troops wanted to pass through this area quickly, and it would take a long time to complete it with the remaining poor transport capacity. up.
Of course, this matter has not yet been settled. The two fastest warships of the Navy turned around and went downstream, and then turned into the Daning River at the confluence with the Daning River, and also carried out the investigation on the surface of this adjacent water vein. Same clean up.And the fleet that arrived here later will take over the work of the flagship, enter the Qingchuan River closer to Anju, and block the main river crossing points in the lower reaches of the Qingchuan River.
With the ability of the Fujian navy, it has successfully dragged the Qing army for nearly a month in these two river basins. Now the naval fleet commanded by Wang Tom himself is going to block the river here. The Qing army wants to cross the river and return to the north. It probably won't be any easier than when it came.
Because they did not want to abandon the thousands of civilians who had been plundered from North Korea, the main force of the Qing army retreated northward at a slow pace. It took more than two days to complete the 200-mile journey from the Datong River to Anzhou.Although the cavalry unit returned to Anzhou more than a day earlier, it was still several hours behind the Haihan fleet, and was eventually intercepted on the south bank of the Qingchuan River.
Naturally, it was impossible for Huang Taiji to remain calm after hearing the news, and even ordered Jiala Erzhenbutel who was stationed in Anzhou to be investigated for the crime of delaying the military plane.But even if this unlucky ghost's head was chopped off, the current passive situation could no longer be reversed, and this was the most troublesome problem for Huang Taiji.
Judging from the quick response of the Haihan army, Huang Taiji became more and more sure that this was one of a series of combat strategies that the Haihan people had formulated long ago. They deliberately sent the Qing army southward on the Yalu River, and launched a counterattack on the Datong River, and then the surface troops came again. Intercept the Qing army on its way back.In this process, the Qing army not only consumed a lot of time, materials and military expenses, but also had thousands of casualties. The combat objectives of this mobilization were not achieved.Although some people and wealth were captured from North Korea during the period, it was still not enough to make up for the losses in this operation.
At this time, if the fight with Haihan continues in North Korea, the casualties will be second, and the unsmooth logistics supply will be the biggest problem facing the Qing army.These tens of thousands of people need to consume a lot of supplies every day. Once the supply is interrupted, it may affect the combat effectiveness of the entire army.The generals of the Qing army knew this very well, but the terrible thing was that their opponents also knew this very well, and they would definitely try their best to block the route for the Qing army to obtain supplies.
After Huang Taiji settled down in Anzhou, he asked the various ministries to report the current grain reserves in order to calculate how much time he had left to break through the Haihan river blockade.Now that the Haihan people have planned a series of actions ahead, it is absolutely impossible to just send a few ships to block the Qingchuan River as the end, and there will definitely be some actions in the future. Only by leading the army back to the country as soon as possible can Huang Taiji feel at ease Come.
This trip to South Korea ended in such embarrassment. No one thought it would end like this before departure. Huang Taiji can only rejoice that although his army suffered setbacks, it was not to the point of being injured. Get rid of the Haihan army's interception and return to the country, and then slowly try to recover the losses from this expedition from Daming.
But the actual situation is not optimistic. After simple statistics of the military supplies, the figures reported by the various ministries are somewhat shocking.If the supply were to be interrupted, the current grain and grass reserves would not last for ten days at most, based on the strength of the Qing army in the area south of the Qingchuan River.And this has not included the food share required by thousands of North Korean civilians in the general, otherwise the time limit will be even shorter.And in the face of such a large demand gap, it may not be enough to send troops to plunder the villages and towns in the surrounding areas.
If you don't want to go back and seek a decisive battle with the Haihan army, then there are only two solutions before the Qing army. One is to resume cross-river supplies as soon as possible and continue to obtain food and grass from the north; Shorten supply lines.But no matter which method is used, it is not easy to solve the problem for the Qing army who currently lacks vehicles to cross the river.
Is it possible to cut down trees and build ships again?What a joke, the warships of the Haihan people have already sailed into the Qingchuan River to show their faces. At this time, even the Daning River may have been cleaned up, and the re-building of the ship is just a repetition of the previous scene of being blocked by the Fujian Navy when they went south. It's okay to sneak some people to the other side at night, but with such an army of tens of thousands, it will take a few rafts to send all the people back to the other side.
But Huang Taiji also understood that it was basically impossible to bring these tens of thousands of people back to the country intact under the current situation, and the method of throwing pawns to save the car had to be used.
Huang Taiji ordered that all the civilians in the current army be transferred to cut down trees and make rafts on the river bank near Anzhou, while the main force of the Qing army quietly marched towards Qichuan, [-] miles upstream of the Qingchuan River. A river crossing is carried out in a place where the river is narrow and the water is shallow.
This kind of attempt actually has certain risks, because the Qing army does not know whether Haihan has deployed surveillance upstream. Even if Haihan does not have time to take such measures, he can still hand over this task to the North Koreans.The whereabouts of the tens of thousands of troops cannot be concealed for too long, and the upper reaches of the Qingchuan River have entered the mountainous area, which is not convenient for the march of the large Qing army. It's been a tough fight.
But now that the situation is urgent, the Qing army has no more time to slowly plan a perfect plan. They can only make a gesture of forcibly crossing the river in Anzhou, so as to confuse the Haihan fleet that blocked the river and serve as their main force. The action of the troops buys time.
The more you fear something, the more it will come. Just as the Qing army was worried, Haihan did hand over the task of monitoring the surrounding areas of Anju to the North Koreans, and asked them to use the communication method developed by Haihan-homing pigeons.This can basically ensure that the news detected by the North Koreans on the front line can be transmitted to the Datongjiang base on the same day. Although it is not as fast as the radio, it is already the most time-effective method at present.
During the retreat of the Qing army to the north, part of the troops at the Datongjiang base had already taken boats along the river and went north to Pyongyang to stand by.On the one hand, this is to prevent the Qing army from rushing back to attack the Taedong River base. At that time, troops can be dispatched from Pyongyang to outflank the rear. The straight-line distance to the nearest point is less than forty miles, which can greatly shorten the time required to march to the vicinity of the Qing army.The Xichuan area, where the main force of the Qing army went, happened to be between these two water veins.
Not surprisingly, when the main force of the Qing army began to move upstream, the North Korean spies lurking in the forest outside Anzhou City had already noticed this movement, and promptly released the carrier pigeons to report the news to Haihan.
So the [-]st Battalion of the Independence Regiment in Pyongyang immediately continued on the road, together with more than [-] soldiers drawn from Annan and Portugal, each took more than ten troop carriers to the upper reaches of the Taedong River.In order to cooperate with the operation, the North Korean side also dispatched more than a thousand soldiers to coordinate operations. Although they may not be qualified to fight side by side with the Haihan Army at that time, at least they can serve as guides during wartime.
The Fujian Navy set off together with the remaining Haihan naval warships on the Datong River, and rushed from the sea to the Qingchuan River Basin to reinforce the Haihan fleet.So far, Haihan has mobilized the main force of the combat troops to the north. Only a small number of warships from the Annan and Portuguese fleets are left on the Datong River to cooperate with the North Korean navy, and the army in the Datong River base has also set off to march north. .
Due to the timely transmission of military information, when the first battalion of the independent regiment rushed to land about [-] miles south of Jiachuan, the Qing army's vanguard battalion had just set up camp on the river bank here in Jiachuan.It's just that they never imagined that the Haihan people were chasing so fast, and the combat troops were only half a day's journey away from their camp.
However, although the straight-line distance is not far, the terrain is dominated by hills, and the marching speed of the first battalion carrying some heavy equipment is not ideal.When the advance team arrived at Jiachuan, they found that this small town with only a thousand permanent residents had been plundered by the Qing army's forward battalion. The dozens of Korean corpses hanging on the big trees outside the town were probably the ones they fought against. the means of the victim.
Not far to the north of Jiachuan is the bank of the Qingchuan River, but this area is relatively flat, and there is no cover to bring the [-]st Battalion closer to the Qing army.After Gao Qiaonan arrived here, he decisively ordered his troops to enter the already empty Xichuan Town, and used the houses here to build a position.
The North Korean spies who were monitoring the movement of the Qing army in the vicinity quickly discovered the whereabouts of the Haihan army, and then rushed over to get in touch with the Haihan army.According to the information they provided, Gao Qiaonan judged that the main force of the Qing army camped by the Qingchuan River is not yet, so there is no need to rush to do it at this time, and the top priority is to pass the news back to the headquarters first.
After another night, the main force of the Qing army rushed to the vicinity one after another. At this time, Gao Qiaonan had commanded the troops to set up multiple surveillance points in the nearby area to ensure that the movements of the Qing army would not be missed.At the same time, the coalition fleet that received the news also began to march towards the upper reaches of the Qingchuan River, intending to continue to drive the main force of the Qing army into the upper reaches of the mountainous area.
As long as the Qing army can be driven into the mountains, the power of its cavalry will naturally be greatly reduced, and the independent regiment, which specializes in fighting in the mountains and jungles, can maximize its combat effectiveness in such an environment.
(End of this chapter)
After the Qing army occupied Anzhou, about 70 Korean civilians and more than [-] shipbuilders were left there to build ships and rafts day and night.In addition, dozens of ships were dispatched from the Yalu River to Anzhou via the Yellow Sea to solve the shortage of vehicles on the Qingchuan River and the Daning River, and it was difficult to meet the logistics transportation needs.
However, these actions are all temporary cramming after all, and the effect they can play is really limited, and a few ships can be built in a hurry.The North Korean garrison obeyed the command of Haihan early on and emptied the ships in the Liangjiang River Basin, and even the shipbuilding wood on the riverside that was too late to be transported sank in the river. The Qing army had to prepare wood in order to build a ship. After one to three years of drying in the shade, even if the wood felled from the mountains and forests is barely used for shipbuilding, it can only be used in a short period of time.It is more trouble-free to build a raft, as long as the wood is cut off from the trunk and branches, processed to a similar length and fixed together, it can be launched into the water.
Of course, based on the planning of the Qing army, it probably didn't intend to use these temporarily built vehicles for a long time. It will be used for a month or two at the moment, and these vehicles will be useless when the war is over.Therefore, no one cares about its quality and durability, as long as it does not sink or leak in the water.At this time, no one could have imagined that not long after the army left Anzhou and went south, it would be driven back by the enemy in disgrace.And what's worse, the fleet of the Haihan people arrived at the Qingchuan River before their own army.
When two huge Majestic-class warships suddenly appeared on the Qingchuan River, the unprepared Qing army immediately abandoned all ships and rafts, and took the initiative to shrink the defense line to Anzhou City.Although the Qing army had more than [-] garrisons in Anzhou, no one dared to challenge this monster equipped with dozens of naval guns with bows, arrows and spears.
Wang Tom was worried about fraud, so he ordered to fire two rounds of cannons symbolically at the pier to confirm that there was no Qing army ambushing here.However, the active retreat of the Qing army made it much easier for the navy to clean up these small boats and rafts on the river bank, because it would be a waste of time to use naval guns to hit these small targets. Not only would it consume a lot of ammunition, but the cleaning efficiency would also be low It will be very low, far less fast than manual demolition.
After confirming that the Qing army had given up the river bank defense, Wang Tom ordered the marines on the ship to land immediately, scuttled the ships on the shore as soon as possible, dismantled the rafts, and even poured kerosene on the wood piled on the shore and burned them all.The current main task of the navy is not to eliminate the Qing army stationed in Anzhou City, but to try its best to destroy the vehicles that can be used by it to cross the river, so as to be able to intercept the main force of the Qing army returning north.
Fires have already been lit on the pier here, and the messenger who came from the south to order the local defenders to protect the vehicles on the river has just rushed into Anzhou City. The small boats and rafts on the river outside the city could not be rescued.
By the time the defending general listened to the order from Huang Taiji and led his troops out of Anzhou city in a panic to try to save the situation, the landed marines had already completed their mission and returned to the ship to evacuate here.Facing the raging fire on the pier and the wreckage floating on the river, the defenders could only cry without tears. When Huang Taiji led the army back to Anzhou, some people would definitely have to take responsibility for this situation.
Although not all the vehicles on the Qingchuan River were destroyed by Haihan's surprise attack, the Qing army's tens of thousands of troops wanted to pass through this area quickly, and it would take a long time to complete it with the remaining poor transport capacity. up.
Of course, this matter has not yet been settled. The two fastest warships of the Navy turned around and went downstream, and then turned into the Daning River at the confluence with the Daning River, and also carried out the investigation on the surface of this adjacent water vein. Same clean up.And the fleet that arrived here later will take over the work of the flagship, enter the Qingchuan River closer to Anju, and block the main river crossing points in the lower reaches of the Qingchuan River.
With the ability of the Fujian navy, it has successfully dragged the Qing army for nearly a month in these two river basins. Now the naval fleet commanded by Wang Tom himself is going to block the river here. The Qing army wants to cross the river and return to the north. It probably won't be any easier than when it came.
Because they did not want to abandon the thousands of civilians who had been plundered from North Korea, the main force of the Qing army retreated northward at a slow pace. It took more than two days to complete the 200-mile journey from the Datong River to Anzhou.Although the cavalry unit returned to Anzhou more than a day earlier, it was still several hours behind the Haihan fleet, and was eventually intercepted on the south bank of the Qingchuan River.
Naturally, it was impossible for Huang Taiji to remain calm after hearing the news, and even ordered Jiala Erzhenbutel who was stationed in Anzhou to be investigated for the crime of delaying the military plane.But even if this unlucky ghost's head was chopped off, the current passive situation could no longer be reversed, and this was the most troublesome problem for Huang Taiji.
Judging from the quick response of the Haihan army, Huang Taiji became more and more sure that this was one of a series of combat strategies that the Haihan people had formulated long ago. They deliberately sent the Qing army southward on the Yalu River, and launched a counterattack on the Datong River, and then the surface troops came again. Intercept the Qing army on its way back.In this process, the Qing army not only consumed a lot of time, materials and military expenses, but also had thousands of casualties. The combat objectives of this mobilization were not achieved.Although some people and wealth were captured from North Korea during the period, it was still not enough to make up for the losses in this operation.
At this time, if the fight with Haihan continues in North Korea, the casualties will be second, and the unsmooth logistics supply will be the biggest problem facing the Qing army.These tens of thousands of people need to consume a lot of supplies every day. Once the supply is interrupted, it may affect the combat effectiveness of the entire army.The generals of the Qing army knew this very well, but the terrible thing was that their opponents also knew this very well, and they would definitely try their best to block the route for the Qing army to obtain supplies.
After Huang Taiji settled down in Anzhou, he asked the various ministries to report the current grain reserves in order to calculate how much time he had left to break through the Haihan river blockade.Now that the Haihan people have planned a series of actions ahead, it is absolutely impossible to just send a few ships to block the Qingchuan River as the end, and there will definitely be some actions in the future. Only by leading the army back to the country as soon as possible can Huang Taiji feel at ease Come.
This trip to South Korea ended in such embarrassment. No one thought it would end like this before departure. Huang Taiji can only rejoice that although his army suffered setbacks, it was not to the point of being injured. Get rid of the Haihan army's interception and return to the country, and then slowly try to recover the losses from this expedition from Daming.
But the actual situation is not optimistic. After simple statistics of the military supplies, the figures reported by the various ministries are somewhat shocking.If the supply were to be interrupted, the current grain and grass reserves would not last for ten days at most, based on the strength of the Qing army in the area south of the Qingchuan River.And this has not included the food share required by thousands of North Korean civilians in the general, otherwise the time limit will be even shorter.And in the face of such a large demand gap, it may not be enough to send troops to plunder the villages and towns in the surrounding areas.
If you don't want to go back and seek a decisive battle with the Haihan army, then there are only two solutions before the Qing army. One is to resume cross-river supplies as soon as possible and continue to obtain food and grass from the north; Shorten supply lines.But no matter which method is used, it is not easy to solve the problem for the Qing army who currently lacks vehicles to cross the river.
Is it possible to cut down trees and build ships again?What a joke, the warships of the Haihan people have already sailed into the Qingchuan River to show their faces. At this time, even the Daning River may have been cleaned up, and the re-building of the ship is just a repetition of the previous scene of being blocked by the Fujian Navy when they went south. It's okay to sneak some people to the other side at night, but with such an army of tens of thousands, it will take a few rafts to send all the people back to the other side.
But Huang Taiji also understood that it was basically impossible to bring these tens of thousands of people back to the country intact under the current situation, and the method of throwing pawns to save the car had to be used.
Huang Taiji ordered that all the civilians in the current army be transferred to cut down trees and make rafts on the river bank near Anzhou, while the main force of the Qing army quietly marched towards Qichuan, [-] miles upstream of the Qingchuan River. A river crossing is carried out in a place where the river is narrow and the water is shallow.
This kind of attempt actually has certain risks, because the Qing army does not know whether Haihan has deployed surveillance upstream. Even if Haihan does not have time to take such measures, he can still hand over this task to the North Koreans.The whereabouts of the tens of thousands of troops cannot be concealed for too long, and the upper reaches of the Qingchuan River have entered the mountainous area, which is not convenient for the march of the large Qing army. It's been a tough fight.
But now that the situation is urgent, the Qing army has no more time to slowly plan a perfect plan. They can only make a gesture of forcibly crossing the river in Anzhou, so as to confuse the Haihan fleet that blocked the river and serve as their main force. The action of the troops buys time.
The more you fear something, the more it will come. Just as the Qing army was worried, Haihan did hand over the task of monitoring the surrounding areas of Anju to the North Koreans, and asked them to use the communication method developed by Haihan-homing pigeons.This can basically ensure that the news detected by the North Koreans on the front line can be transmitted to the Datongjiang base on the same day. Although it is not as fast as the radio, it is already the most time-effective method at present.
During the retreat of the Qing army to the north, part of the troops at the Datongjiang base had already taken boats along the river and went north to Pyongyang to stand by.On the one hand, this is to prevent the Qing army from rushing back to attack the Taedong River base. At that time, troops can be dispatched from Pyongyang to outflank the rear. The straight-line distance to the nearest point is less than forty miles, which can greatly shorten the time required to march to the vicinity of the Qing army.The Xichuan area, where the main force of the Qing army went, happened to be between these two water veins.
Not surprisingly, when the main force of the Qing army began to move upstream, the North Korean spies lurking in the forest outside Anzhou City had already noticed this movement, and promptly released the carrier pigeons to report the news to Haihan.
So the [-]st Battalion of the Independence Regiment in Pyongyang immediately continued on the road, together with more than [-] soldiers drawn from Annan and Portugal, each took more than ten troop carriers to the upper reaches of the Taedong River.In order to cooperate with the operation, the North Korean side also dispatched more than a thousand soldiers to coordinate operations. Although they may not be qualified to fight side by side with the Haihan Army at that time, at least they can serve as guides during wartime.
The Fujian Navy set off together with the remaining Haihan naval warships on the Datong River, and rushed from the sea to the Qingchuan River Basin to reinforce the Haihan fleet.So far, Haihan has mobilized the main force of the combat troops to the north. Only a small number of warships from the Annan and Portuguese fleets are left on the Datong River to cooperate with the North Korean navy, and the army in the Datong River base has also set off to march north. .
Due to the timely transmission of military information, when the first battalion of the independent regiment rushed to land about [-] miles south of Jiachuan, the Qing army's vanguard battalion had just set up camp on the river bank here in Jiachuan.It's just that they never imagined that the Haihan people were chasing so fast, and the combat troops were only half a day's journey away from their camp.
However, although the straight-line distance is not far, the terrain is dominated by hills, and the marching speed of the first battalion carrying some heavy equipment is not ideal.When the advance team arrived at Jiachuan, they found that this small town with only a thousand permanent residents had been plundered by the Qing army's forward battalion. The dozens of Korean corpses hanging on the big trees outside the town were probably the ones they fought against. the means of the victim.
Not far to the north of Jiachuan is the bank of the Qingchuan River, but this area is relatively flat, and there is no cover to bring the [-]st Battalion closer to the Qing army.After Gao Qiaonan arrived here, he decisively ordered his troops to enter the already empty Xichuan Town, and used the houses here to build a position.
The North Korean spies who were monitoring the movement of the Qing army in the vicinity quickly discovered the whereabouts of the Haihan army, and then rushed over to get in touch with the Haihan army.According to the information they provided, Gao Qiaonan judged that the main force of the Qing army camped by the Qingchuan River is not yet, so there is no need to rush to do it at this time, and the top priority is to pass the news back to the headquarters first.
After another night, the main force of the Qing army rushed to the vicinity one after another. At this time, Gao Qiaonan had commanded the troops to set up multiple surveillance points in the nearby area to ensure that the movements of the Qing army would not be missed.At the same time, the coalition fleet that received the news also began to march towards the upper reaches of the Qingchuan River, intending to continue to drive the main force of the Qing army into the upper reaches of the mountainous area.
As long as the Qing army can be driven into the mountains, the power of its cavalry will naturally be greatly reduced, and the independent regiment, which specializes in fighting in the mountains and jungles, can maximize its combat effectiveness in such an environment.
(End of this chapter)