Chapter 517 The troops are approaching the city
Although the coalition troops quickly put out the fire after the fire, an inventory afterwards found that two-thirds of the various cultural and historical materials and files in the county government were burned. Most of the remaining parts were soaked by the water poured in when putting out the fire, and only a small proportion could be used.
After inspecting the fire scene, Zheng Ting could only admit that he was unlucky and had the bodies of the dead soldiers collected. As for how to report to Qian Tiandun, the blame could only be placed on the captured Chengmai County Magistrate and others. . Zheng Ting also specifically told the soldiers guarding the prisoners not to torture them too much, lest no one would take the blame if the culprit was forced to death.
Zheng Ting's troops spent the night in Chengmai County, leaving three hundred men to guard the city. The remaining troops left the city and continued to advance toward Qiongzhou City in the northeast. At this time, the large force that sailed out to sea from Lingao County had landed on the northwest coast of Qiongzhou Fucheng one day ago.
Organizing two consecutive large-scale landings by the coalition forces within ten days was a great test for both the physical strength of the participating troops and the coordination capabilities between various troops and transportation departments.
Qian Tiandun rode on a dark brown war horse and quietly looked at the troops gathering on the coast. Several heavy siege guns were stuck on the beach. The baggage troops were paving a passage with wooden planks and straw mats, and then trying to pull the guns out with animal power. By this time, news of the fall of Danzhou should have reached Fucheng. If the siege troops wanted to capture this target, they might resort to a forceful attack, and huge-caliber siege guns were prepared for this purpose.
So far, the plan to start a prairie fire has been implemented relatively smoothly. It has not encountered any decent resistance while advancing from Danzhou to the west. Three battles in one state and two counties were all won within half a day. With a very low casualty rate, more than 1,500 people were captured, and actual control of these three cities was completed.
As for the farms and villages scattered around the city, the coalition forces are not in a hurry to clean them up. Their mission is to capture the main strategic nodes in the northern part of Qiongzhou Island. As for the comprehensive cleanup of these sites, the Haihan Militia will take over in the future. conduct.
The land ownership situation in the northern part of Qiongzhou Island is far more complicated than in the southern part. The population density and the degree of cultivated land development here are far higher than in the southern part of the country where the land was vast and sparsely populated before. If the Haihan Executive Committee wants to implement public land ownership in the north, it will inevitably encounter difficulties. Opposition and resistance was far more intense in the South. Therefore, the coalition forces did not pay attention to the settlements outside the main cities during their rapid advance, but left all these troubles to the departments responsible for taking over in the future.
"Go to the communications platoon and ask if there is any latest news from the navy?" Qian Tiandun ordered. A naval fleet disguised as pirates is currently cruising in the Qiongzhou Strait, blocking the coastline near Qiongzhou City.
Soon the navy's reply was sent to Qian Tiandun. In the past two days, the navy had intercepted twelve ships heading to the mainland from Qiongzhou Fucheng, nine of which were merchant ships or civilian ships, and the other three were It was a small warship that was left in the water village and did not go into battle during the annihilation of the navy some time ago. The purpose of these ships heading to the mainland was naturally to seek help in an emergency.
Outsiders may not know how much the garrison in Qiongzhou weighs, but the senior officials in Qiongzhou City still know it well. After the news of the fall of Danzhou City reached Fucheng, there was an immediate explosion. Although there had been news a month or two before that pirates would attack Qiongzhou Island, the officials did not regard such folk rumors as early warning, and did not make any corresponding preparations. However, the pirates sent out a few days ago The lack of news about the fleet has made officials increasingly uneasy.
Thousands of pirates attacked Danzhou City and captured the city in just half a day. None of the dozens of officials in Danzhou escaped. After capturing Danzhou, the pirates were not in a hurry to loot the city, but continued to advance eastward without any intention of stopping there. From this piece of news, a lot of information can actually be interpreted.
First of all, the fleet sent out to suppress the bandits from Fucheng is likely to be in trouble - since the pirates have enough transportation capacity to deliver thousands of people to land in Danzhou Bay, the size of their fleet must be much larger than that of the navy fleet, and they did not send troops to Danzhou until many days after the navy set off, then there should be no possibility of the navy missing them at sea. In other words, this group of pirates most likely defeated the Ming Dynasty first The navy later implemented the landing plan in Danzhou.
Secondly, it only took half a day for the pirates to capture the city of Danzhou after landing. In addition to showing their terrifying combat power, it also showed that this was not an unprepared raid. Thousands of people could cross the sea and march twenty miles immediately. When attacking a fortified city, as long as you think about it with your brain, you will understand that this is definitely an action that has been planned for a long time, rather than the whim of this group of pirates.
Third, the pirates did not stop and loot in Danzhou, but continued to advance eastward, which just confirmed the rumor that the pirates wanted to capture Qiongzhou Island. When advancing eastward from Danzhou, the biggest target is undoubtedly Fucheng. To capture Qiongzhou Island, this place must be attacked, but between Danzhou and Fucheng, there is no decent defensive stronghold at all, not even a chance to slow down their advance. If the other party is really determined to attack Fucheng, the two places are two hundred miles apart, and it will only take a few days to advance to the vicinity of Fucheng.
Therefore, while Fucheng was preparing for war, it also sent messengers to Guangzhou to ask for help. However, this method of asking for help is obviously difficult to avoid Haihan's eyes and ears. As soon as they left the Nandu River, the fleet on the other side of the sea had already been notified by telegram. It is almost impossible for a ship going to sea alone to escape from a prepared interception. matter.
However, the combat plan formulated by the staff is not just interception, but to create enough tension through interception for Haihan's subsequent methods. After reading the Navy's report, Qian Tiandun ordered: "Those who informed the Navy can relax."
Songkouzi did not allow the dignitaries from Fucheng to escape to the mainland by boat, but gave the messengers sent by Fucheng the opportunity to send the news that Qiongzhou Island was attacked by pirates to Guangzhou, and then use this to prepare Haihan's next military plan. Intervene in creating a public opinion base.
When the Military Commission formulated the battle plan, it did not intend to storm Fucheng right away. After all, this is the administrative seat of Qiongzhou, and it is also the political, cultural and economic center of the northern part of Qiongzhou Island. If we destroy this place, we will eventually have to do it ourselves. Spending money to rebuild is just not cost-effective. The Military Commission hopes to take over the city in a peaceful manner if possible.
This is not an impossible task. The staff department has already had a comprehensive plan for this. As for whether it can be realized in the end, it depends to a large extent on the coordination ability of various departments. If it really doesn't work, then we can only rely on the nearly twenty siege cannons that took a lot of effort to transport here to teach us how to behave.
On October 11, the large coalition forces advanced to ten miles west of Qiongzhou Fucheng, where they met Zheng Ting's troops who had hurriedly arrived from Chengmai County. The garrison in Qiongzhou Fucheng did not sit still and waited for death. A two thousand troops led by a general came to the outside of the city to prepare for the battle. However, according to the battle plan of the staff, the coalition forces led by Qian Tiandun did not quickly clear out the Fucheng garrison. To be precise, the coalition's task was to besiege Fucheng and strive for better conditions for the subsequent Haihan intervention. After defeating the garrison here, quickly occupy the city.
Facing the Ming army who came to invite a fight, Qian Tiandun's order seemed brief and ruthless: "Just blast them away with artillery fire."
So the two artillery companies in the coalition quickly deployed in front of the formation, set up artillery, loaded ammunition, and then fired five rounds of rapid fire at the Ming army camp a mile away who was still watching the excitement.
At this distance, the accuracy and lethality of small-caliber artillery were greatly limited, but it still caused certain casualties to the Ming army. The Ming army did not immediately choose to retreat because of this, but also launched the artillery in their formation, trying to compete with their opponents. But their attempt was immediately hit. After the commander on the Haihan artillery position used his telescope to see that the other party was also launching artillery, he immediately directed the artillery to concentrate fire, using firepower density to make up for the lack of accuracy and lethality.
After only three rounds of shooting, an artillery piece that had just been pushed onto the Ming army's front line was hit by a concentrated shell. The flying gun body directly killed the two gunners next to it. Although the Ming army still set up artillery and conducted several rounds of bombardment with Haihan, it was obvious that the range of the Ming army's artillery was too disadvantageous and could not cause substantial damage to Haihan's camp. After more than an hour of sporadic artillery battles, the Ming army, which had cost more than thirty lives, angrily chose to retreat.
Qian Tiandun did not let his troops continue to pursue him. Now he only needed to arrange the march and garrison locations of each unit, and then gradually complete the encirclement of Fucheng. By this time, 90% of the combat missions responsible for the coalition forces had actually been completed. Qian Tiandun had already planned to sit down and watch the show and watch the situation develop.
However, Zheng Ting, who came here as a coalition general, did not quite understand Haihan's arrangement, and soon found Qian Tiandun to ask: "General Qian, the enemy is retreating at this time, why don't our troops take advantage of the victory to pursue it? If we dispatch the cavalry at this time and pursue them in tandem, we might be able to seize the city gate in one fell swoop and invade Qiongzhou City!”
Qian Tiandun shook his head and said: "General Zheng, you think things are too simple. This city is easy to fight, but just defeating it is not enough. How can we make the Ming court recognize our Haihan's actual control of Qiongzhou Island? This is the ultimate goal of this war. Our previous fast attack, our current slow attack, and all our tactical arrangements are actually to achieve this goal.”
Zheng Ting said in confusion: "I understand that you don't want to fall out with the Ming Dynasty. But how can you win the capital of Qiongzhou with this slow attack?"
Qian Tiandun smiled and said: "Don't worry, take your time and see. You will see the result in a few days."
After several consecutive active attacks were repelled by the coalition forces, the morale of the Ming army was also affected to a certain extent. Although they were the ones who took the initiative to attack, they were unable to cause effective damage to their opponents. Whether it was muskets or artillery, they were all inferior to their opponents in terms of range. The general who commanded the battle even had two artillery pieces with larger diameters removed from the city wall, hoping to use the range of these two guns to teach the opponent a lesson. However, I didn't expect that the opponent's formation not only contained small-caliber cannons that fired fist-sized shells, but also heavy artillery that could fire for several miles. Regardless of range or accuracy, the Ming army finally transported large guns to the line of fire. General artillery is still inferior to its opponents.
The two sides continued to fight again the next day. After a night's rest, Qian Tiandun sent a volleyball formation from the Annan army to engage in the battle. The reason why the Southern Army was arranged to take the lead was not that Qian Tiandun was worried about the battle losses of his troops, but that the weapons equipped by the militia army were short-range and powerful muskets, and their range was not as good as the Sanya-made weapons equipped by the Annan Army. Old-fashioned matchlocks and flintlock muskets, and the tactic of queuing to kill, made it more suitable for Annan Army troops to go up.
The Annan Army, trained by Haihan, relied on the sharp firearms in their hands and quickly gained a clear advantage in the battle. Although the Ming Dynasty is also equipped with a lot of muskets, their proportion only accounts for about 30% of the total force, while the proportion of musketeers in the Annan Army is as high as more than 70%. Just the density of firepower is not at the same level. Coupled with the performance advantages of the Annan Army's individual weapons, the battle loss ratio between the two sides was as high as one to eight. The Ming army's military strength was originally very limited, and naturally it could not sustain such rapid consumption. It only fought for a short time and then retreated.
Probably also aware of their own shortcomings in weapons and tactics, the Ming army continued to retreat that afternoon, and then this retreat did not stop and retreated all the way into the city.
The coalition's strength west of Fucheng at this time was only about 4,000, but after taking advantage of the battlefield, Qian Tiandun still commanded the troops and encircled Qiongzhou Fucheng unscrupulously.
Of course, with the existing military strength, a true encirclement on all sides is impossible. Basically, it means setting up camps outside the three gates in the southeast and west, setting up positions, and blocking the passages in and out of the city. Fortunately, there are only three city gates in Qiongzhou City, otherwise the coalition forces would be really stretched to besiege the city.
At this time, there were far more than the thousands of coalition troops participating in this war. As the offensive advanced from west to east, the coalition also recruited a large number of civilians along the way to be responsible for the transportation of logistical equipment. As for food, there isn't much of a problem. The logistics department has already prepared enough food for 5,000 people for two months for this battle. As long as the labor force is sufficient, it will be enough to ensure the supply line of food supplies from the coastline to the combat location.
(End of chapter)