Chapter 1425 The war is coming
When Liu Shang was in Sanya, he had the honor to witness how the Haihan Navy defeated the invading Spanish fleet on the sea south of Sanya. Although several months had passed, the magnificent scene at that time has always been deeply imprinted in his memory. He couldn't get it out of his mind. Now that they have arrived at another battlefield that is about to start, Liu Shang really wants to find a reason to stay and see how Haihan can deal with the Houjin armed forces that have always been a headache for Ming Dynasty.
Among the generals in Liaodong, he was only slightly familiar with Chen Yixin, so if he wanted to stay in Liaodong and watch the excitement, Liu Shang thought it was best to start with Chen Yixin and see if he could Stay as a temporary military secretary or something like that.
While Liu Shang was still thinking about his words, Chen Yixin spoke first: "You will have to work hard for a while. You can't return to Shandong until the operation here is over."
Liu Shang didn't react for a moment and subconsciously asked: "Why is this?"
Chen Yixin explained: "Secrecy is needed to avoid leaks about the spring offensive."
Haihan is currently stationing troops and food in Lushun with great fanfare, and is not doing it covertly. However, the Houjin Army stationed in the Jinzhou area in the north may not be able to receive the news in time and discover Haihan's actions. Naturally, it is difficult to do anything in advance. Effective response arrangements.
The few maritime armed forces of the Hou Jin Dynasty had long been lost in the repeated raids by the Haihan Navy last year. The few remaining armed sailing ships that were lucky enough to escape the pursuit were retracted and hidden in the northern inland rivers, and they did not dare to return. Easy to go out to sea. After the navy launched the wave of feint attacks in Dalian Bay before winter, it wiped out all the boats, large and small, on the coast near Dalian Bay. Now there are no fishing boats to be seen there. Even if the Jin army wants to dress up as fishermen, Reconnaissance near Lushun was also difficult.
At the beginning, the Hou Jin Dynasty captured all the Han aborigines in the Lushun area, trying to make it difficult for Haihan to gain a foothold in Liaodong. It seemed to have the effect of strengthening the wall and clearing the country, but in fact, after Haihan occupied the area, the disadvantages gradually disappeared. manifest. The most direct effect is that Hou Jin can no longer send spies to carry out reconnaissance missions in the Haihan occupied area. Any outsider appearing in the Lushun area will be very conspicuous and it will be difficult not to attract attention.
In the past month or so, all the few people south of the Jinzhou Isthmus have been sent by Haihan to the south for resettlement. Houjin sent many Han people who worked for him to Lushun, trying to obtain asylum from Haihan as refugees and then lurk there, but Haihan did not give these people a chance to perform. The military would rather spend more time immigrating immigrants from Pidao and Shandong than take the risk of allowing these Han people, who were said to have escaped from the north, to settle in Lushun.
No matter how many people came from the north, they were all packed up and sent away. Hou Jin's method was like beating a dog with a meat bun and never came back. Therefore, although Haihan has been continuously transporting people and materials to Lushun recently, for Hou Jin, the Lushun area is already shrouded in fog. They don't know what Haihan is doing in Lushun. , we can only subconsciously increase the number of troops stationed in the Jinzhou Isthmus to prevent the next round of attacks that will come after the spring.
In addition to carrying out intelligence shielding measures in Liaodong, Haihan also used similar methods in Shandong. Haihan's army only stayed on Zhifu Island for about a week. Except for a few well-informed outsiders who more or less guessed Haihan's purpose of mobilizing the army, the spring offensive remained a secret to most people. Even among the naturalized people in the occupied areas, there are still many people who don't know where this army is going.
Liu Shang is of course one of the insiders, and has witnessed with his own eyes the whole process of how Haihan transported people and materials to the Lushun area in winter. Because of this, Chen Yixin will not let him leave Lushun and return to Shandong now, because he will go back Then he might leak what he knows. This has nothing to do with loyalty and trust, but is due to the confidentiality system. Even if Liu Shang's position is replaced by someone else, the arrangement will still be the same.
However, this came with no effort for Liu Shang. He had originally wanted to find a reason to stay in Liaodong to watch the battle. Chen Yixin's arrangement was just what he wanted. He quickly bowed down and agreed, saying that he would abide by the arrangement and do his best. Try your best.
As troops continued to arrive in Lushun, the headquarters began to dispatch additional troops to the scheduled fighting areas in order to set up camps on the front line before the start of the spring offensive. Otherwise, when there are thousands of people fighting on the front line, they will have to move their belongings bit by bit from Lushun, which will be too delayed.
Naturally, the Army's ace force, the Special Operations Battalion, was responsible for this task. However, the special operations battalion was not mobilized by land this time because the mountainous area stretching for dozens of miles was not friendly enough for the transportation of large numbers of personnel and materials. For the sake of efficiency, the command headquarters arranged for the navy to dispatch ships to transport them to the front line.
More than ten troop transport ships docked at a river mouth more than ten miles away from the Jinzhou Isthmus. Gao Qiaonan was the first to jump from the bow of the ship to the sandy ground on the river bank. At this time, the area near the shore was already frozen, and the ground was extremely frozen. Gao Qiaonan's short and sturdy body fell down with a crisp sound, but it was the leather boots on his feet that broke the layer of ice on the ground.
There was originally a small river called the Shahe River here, but the boat could not sail into the upper reaches of the Shahe River at this time of year, so the men and horses of the special operations battalion could only be dropped off at the mouth of the sea. After confirming that there were no traces of the Hou Jin Army's activities in the nearby areas as far as the eye could see, several war horses that got off another troop carrier had been saddled and bridle loaded, and the cavalry got on their horses and headed north separately. They need to determine the security situation in the area from the landing point to the Jinzhou Isthmus, and at the same time find a suitable march route to the Jinzhou Isthmus to facilitate the subsequent march of the large forces.
Although it is still far away from the Jinzhou Isthmus, the headquarters plans to set up a material camp here, which will make it more convenient to supply the front line. Therefore, in addition to the scouts of the cavalry battalion, there was also an engineering company and more than 200 civilians operating with the special operations battalion this time. They will be responsible for building a simple camp here, and the task of the special operations battalion is to protect it during this period and establish a safe zone in the surrounding area.
Nearly twenty days have passed since the last time Morgan led the team to ambush the Jin patrol. After the special operations battalion completed the reconnaissance of the plain area south of the Jinzhou Isthmus a few days ago, it has shrunk its defense line to the mountainous area, so it is not possible to Naturally, one must be careful in determining whether Hou Jin has resumed patrols in this area. Of course, if the opponent's patrol team accidentally comes here, Takahashi Minami wouldn't mind harvesting some heads to warm up before the big battle.
Regarding the situation here, Takahashi Minami had already figured out the situation in previous reconnaissance operations. He dispatched a small team to a hill in the northwest to serve as a guard. Although the highest point of the hill is only more than a hundred meters above sea level, it already has an excellent view on this plain. When the visibility is best during the day, it can monitor at least a ten-mile radius, which is enough for the camp to prepare well. Ready for the challenge. Engineers and civilians transferred various construction tools and materials from the ship to the shore. They had to build a camp here in two or three days that could accommodate at least 500 people and store hundreds of tons of supplies. Of course, this must also include the most basic defense facilities such as wooden walls, barbed wire, deer villages, and horse pits. The amount of this project is really not small, so they have to hurry up every minute and every second from now on.
But after the camp is built, the special operations battalion will not be stationed here for too long. Before the war begins, they will go to an area closer to the Jinzhou Isthmus, where they will meet up with other army units and then act as the backbone of the frontal offensive on land. Main force.
Takahashi Minami was convinced that after the war started, it would be impossible for the enemy troops to go south to this place to raid the camp, so he ordered the engineers to only deploy one-time defenses outside the camp, and only to the north, in order to save engineering. required time. As for the south side of Linhai, Gao Qiaonan is not worried at all. If there are warships from Houjin coming here, they will not be able to go back.
In the evening, the cavalrymen who had gone out for reconnaissance came back. The news they brought back was not good, but it didn't seem too bad either. The cavalry encountered a Houjin patrol about fifteen miles away from the camp, and a small battle broke out between the two sides.
The cavalry wisely did not close the fighting distance with the opponent. Instead, they killed several people with volleys from a hundred meters away, and then decisively withdrew southward. The opponent, perhaps intimidated by the power of the rifle, did not pursue it.
Two things can be determined after this battle. One is that the Houjin Army has returned to the patrol range before the last attack by Morgan. The other is that the Houjin Army has learned its previous lessons and the current patrol has expanded to forty or fifty. human size, about a third of which were cavalry. Although such a team would still be uncomfortable if they bumped into the Morgan team ambushing in the wild, at least the Haihan cavalry who went out for reconnaissance today did not dare to fight when facing them. After taking advantage, they decisively withdrew from the battle.
Takahashi Minami marked the location of the battle on the map and then ordered to strengthen vigilance at night. Although the opponent did not follow his own cavalry all the way, Gao Qiaonan knew that many people in the Houjin Army were hunters. These people were good at tracking in the wild. They might be able to find this person by following the horse's hoof prints or even smelling it. Come by. Takahashi Minami is not afraid of the opponent's strength, but he will not be careless enough to let the opponent take advantage of him.
Sure enough, just as he feared, after nightfall, Hou Jinbing actually found this place gropingly. However, after discovering the Haihan camp where construction work was carried out, they did not dare to approach rashly. After watching it from a distance, they He left on his own initiative, and some of the methods Takahashi Nan had arranged in advance failed to come into use.
After the sky lit up, Gao Qiaonan used his telescope to confirm that there were several Jin soldiers lingering on the edge of a forest a mile away. It seemed that it would take a lot of effort to drive them out of this area. OK. This time there were no snipers in the troops led by Takahashi Minami, otherwise they could try to deal with these annoying spies from a long distance.
For safety reasons, he could not send out his limited cavalry to fight with the opponent head-on. After all, it was not easy to train his own cavalry, but he could not just randomly pull out thousands of cavalry to fight like Hou Jin did.
"Be patient for a while." In this situation, Gao Qiaonan could only use Qian Tiandun's teachings to comfort himself. Although he is warlike, he also knows that it is not the time to take action yet. Even if Hou Jin discovers his own movements, it will probably be too late to make adjustments or even mobilize troops to attack here.
In the blink of an eye, two days later, the camp has begun to take shape, and the number of Houjin cavalry monitoring from a distance has increased from the initial two or three to about ten times. However, this number of troops is still not enough to attack the Haihan camp. , so these post-Jin cavalry still maintained a wait-and-see attitude and did not try to further shorten the distance with the Haihan camp. But Gao Qiaonan can be sure that they should have sent someone back to Jinzhou to report the news.
Takahashi Nan looked at the sky and nodded with satisfaction. There has been no snow in the Liaodong Peninsula recently, and the ice at the mouth of the Shahe River near the camp is also showing signs of thawing. This indicates that the temperature has begun to warm up, the harsh winter is fading away, and Haihan’s long-prepared spring offensive is about to have its best moment. opportunity.
On March 2, more than a thousand Ming troops from Pi Island arrived at the camp where Gao Qiaonan was located, and they would then take over the defense here. Although the spring offensive was carried out under the banner of Pidao Ming Army, in fact, the troops sent by Pidao were mainly responsible for tasks such as logistics and camp protection. Only Shen Zhixiang and his two hundred soldiers could truly carry out the offensive. Go to the front lines and join the spring offensive.
Shen Zhixiang had already arrived in Lushun earlier to participate in various preparations before the war. Only at this time did he meet up with his troops on the front line. The materials, food, grass, and even military pay for the troops participating in the war on Pidao were basically provided by Haihan, so this army was more appropriately described as a mercenary than an auxiliary army. Of course, the purpose of Haihan paying to hire this army was not to expect them to perform exceptionally well on the battlefield, but to use their name to act. This was tacitly understood by both parties.
Therefore, after Shen Zhixiang arrived at the front line, he behaved very respectfully in front of Gao Qiaonan and actively directed his troops to participate in the camp expansion project. In addition, Pidao also sent more than 20 ships to participate in the war. Of course, the arrival of these ships was not to show off in front of Guan Gong. They were just responsible for the transportation tasks between Port Arthur and the front line. The real sea and land The Haihan fleet is responsible for all aspects of combat.
(End of chapter)