Chapter 1828 The reversal of the battle
For North Korea, the confrontation on the Datong River can be regarded as a long-lost victory. Even if the North Korean army only carried out personnel transportation and surveillance missions on the river with naval ships, no one boarded the three ships from beginning to end. This island did not directly participate in the battle, and this would not prevent the civil and military officials on the front line of the Datong River from claiming credit and rewards for themselves.
Since the beginning of the war, although the Korean army has tried to resist the invasion of the Qing army in the north, they have generally had little effect and have been pressed to the ground and rubbed by the Qing army. The loss of several cities in the north had caused North Korea to lose thousands of soldiers and horses, but the battle damage caused by the North Korean defenders to the Qing army was impossible to deal with. This time, the annihilation of more than a thousand Qing troops on the Datong River was enough for the main war faction, whose reputation in North Korea's domestic political arena was at stake, to stabilize its position and regain the trust of King Li Zhu.
As for the coalition forces participating in this operation, they will not compete with the North Koreans for the ownership of the military exploits. What they value more is the long-term rewards they can get from North Korea after the war. As for the military exploits, since the Haihan people are not planning to go If they fight, there will be no need for them to step forward.
Wang Tom's calm attitude towards this has a deeper purpose. After all, Haihan currently needs to help the main militant faction in North Korea's political arena in order to obtain more logistical support from North Korea. Even if the North Koreans take this credit for themselves, the senior officials who really know the inside story will still realize that their credit was provided by Haihan. If they want to continue the victory, they must cooperate with the command of the coalition forces and satisfy them. Various requests made 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 area of the coalition forces. In order to grasp the life-saving straw of the coalition forces, the Korean government and civilians also tried their best to meet the logistical supplies required by the coalition forces. The southern regions such as Gangwon Province, Gyeonggi Province, Chungcheong Province, Jeolla Province, and Gyeongsang Province that were not caught in the war were all assigned the task of raising materials by the imperial court. It can be said that the entire southern part of the Korean Peninsula has been in the war for more than two months. Operated for the preparation of the coalition forces.
Although the efficiency of the North Koreans is indeed not very high, and there are many unavoidable delays caused by the bureaucracy, it is more than enough to provide material support for the coalition forces with half the country's strength. At least in terms of the supply of daily necessities such as food, clothing, medicines, tents, etc., the coalition forces really can't find anything wrong so far. Just as many as hundreds of pigs, cattle, sheep and other livestock are transported across the river to the base as food materials every day, and this is only the part supplied to the army.
Good logistical support has allowed the coalition forces that have been in North Korea for a long time to maintain good morale. Many officers and soldiers of the independent regiment even believe that their treatment during their stay in North Korea is of a rare high standard in overseas operations.
Of course, compared to the coalition troops who received preferential treatment, the civilians sent by North Korea to participate in the construction of the Datong River base did not have such a good life. All they could get was the minimum survival guarantee. When the living conditions were not yet perfect in the early stage, all tents had to be provided to the coalition forces first. Most North Korean migrant workers could only live on the construction site under the covers, without even a straw mat under them. In terms of food, It cannot be compared with the coalition forces.
But even so, for ordinary Koreans, this is better than being enslaved by the barbarian nobles of the Qing Dynasty after the entire country fell. After all, it was only a matter of a few months to do hard labor for the coalition forces, and it was enough to just bite the bullet. If the Qing army continued to wreak havoc, then all the descendants might have to become slaves.
Of course, this kind of ideology was not entirely formed by North Korean civilians on their own. The civil affairs officials of Haihan also contributed a lot to the propaganda work they made during this period.
After Liu Shang received the transfer order and came here from Guanglu Island, he took on the task of planning and implementing propaganda work. He was also responsible for the daily management of the large number of local Han refugees and Korean civilians. Fortunately, there are sufficient troops from the Independent Regiment 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 kidnapped by the coalition forces from the Liaodong area were transported to the Datong River base for resettlement. However, in fact, this place did not have enough resources except for fishing some aquatic products from the Datong River. 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 survival materials they receive are due to the benevolent decision of the Haihan Executive Committee, and whether they can join Haihan nationality in the future, they will arrange to go to those with better conditions. Local settlement will depend on their performance in the Datong River base construction project. In other words, only those who work the hardest and perform best will have the opportunity to be resettled in the mainland of Haihan, where the living environment is the best - in the words of the propaganda officers, it is a prosperous and safe overseas paradise. Only nationals who are truly loyal to Haihan are eligible to settle there.
For these Han refugees who had just escaped from Qing slavery but still had an uncertain future, the words of Haihan officials were like a ray of light in the darkness, giving them more expectations for the future and understanding of the current labor arrangements. More motivation.
Liu Shang has been in Liaodong for a long time. He has rich practical experience in how to mobilize the enthusiasm of Han refugees and make them obey the management of the colonial authorities. He is currently applying these experiences to the daily management of the Datong River base. It has also achieved quite good results. But personally, he doesn't really want to stay and work in a foreign country for a long time. Even if it is to return to Liaodong or Shandong, it would be better. After all, there are overseas colonies that are truly controlled by Haihan, rather than temporarily controlled by Haihan. The land entrusted to Haihan by North Korea.
Of course, maybe after a while, this place will become another overseas colony of Haihan, but at least for the foreseeable period, it 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 give him a civilian official position in the army responsible for propaganda work.
Although Liu Shang's establishment is not in the military, Qian Tiandun also gives special care to officials like him who can do things. In addition to enjoying the living standards of senior officers, daily meals are also provided in the officer canteen in the base. Life is pretty good.
After repelling the attack of Azigh troops, not only the participating troops received rewards from the headquarters, but also civilian officials like Liu Shang were rewarded with extra dishes for dinner and a limited supply of liquor. Liu Shang did not just enjoy it, but he remembered his own job and asked the propaganda officers to announce the victory news to the local people.
Not long after, the results of the confrontation with the Qing army on the river near Pyongyang were also transmitted back to the base. The soldiers and civilians once again celebrated this new victory, and were generally optimistic that the war situation in Korea had begun to reverse, and the arrogant Qing army It's time to pay for their wrong decision to invade North Korea. On July 10, the Qing army tried to organize a night crossing operation forty miles upstream from Pyongyang. However, because the coalition forces noticed the troop movement in advance, they suffered a sudden pincer attack from upstream and downstream during the operation. The eight hundred Qing troops became helpless targets for the coalition fleet. The raft they were riding on did not turn sensitively on the river and could not exit the battlefield in time. The larger coalition warships directly collided with it and fell apart.
More than a hundred Qing troops who were lucky enough to pass through the allied fleet blockade and arrive at the south bank of the Datong River in the dark did not escape. They soon ran into a group of Korean troops patrolling the river bank with torches, and quickly called in They killed more than two hundred Korean cavalry nearby. Then under the charge of the cavalry, the Koreans finally won their first victory relying on their own strength since the war began. Only five of the more than one hundred Qing troops were captured, and all others died in the battle. The North Korean side only paid the price of thirty casualties, and finally took advantage of the Qing army.
The failure of this night crossing operation made the Qing army realize that the river crossing strategy they had used before was no longer very effective. The patrol force deployed by the opponent on the other side of the Datong River far exceeded the previous blockades of the river. action, it was difficult for the small force of the Qing army to cross the river to hide its tracks under its high frequency of patrols.
The current situation can no longer be solved by changing who leads the troops. Facing the rolling river, even the bravest 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 in the Korean battlefield was due to the lack of surface armed forces. However, even if Huang Taiji and other high-level officials have realized this, they still have no way to change this serious imbalance of power in the short term. current situation.
Now that various methods have been tried, if we continue to send people to forcefully cross the river, the raft will never be able to defeat the strong ships and cannons, and no matter how hard we try, we will only die in vain. 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 Tatong River. In secret, he asked the main force to make a circle from the west of Pyongyang, and then go south to the Tatong River. downstream.
Yes, that's right, Huang Taiji finally decided to try the Haihan Base that suddenly appeared. He knew that in a battle on the water, Haihan might not be his opponent in a hundred years, and this land battlefield might be the only chance for the Qing army to defeat Haihan.
Although the troops led by Azig had encountered difficulties in the area before, Huang Taiji still hoped that this seemingly hastily built base would have defensive loopholes that would allow the Qing army to find a chance to defeat Haihan.
But this kind of superficial article cannot actually confuse the Haihan Army. In the area west of Pyongyang, there have long been reconnaissance teams of independent regiments lurking in the wild. The mission of these teams is not to detect the deployment of Qing forces in Pyongyang, but to monitor the area from Pyongyang to the Datong River base. As long as the Qing army attempts to advance to the Datong River base, it will inevitably be unable to escape from these teams. vision.
The main force of the Qing army was only fifty miles away from Pyongyang when a group of scouts noticed their movements. Although these soldiers were not equipped with advanced communication equipment such as radios, they carried homing pigeons that also had the function of transmitting messages. These homing pigeons have been at the Datongjiang base for more than two months, so there is no problem in finding their way back from hundreds of miles away.
Several batches of homing pigeons flew back to the base, clearly outlining the march route of the Qing army after leaving Pyongyang. Although they carefully avoided the area near the river bank, they still could not escape Haihan's surveillance. So when he was a hundred miles away from the Datong River base, Qian Tiandun had already ordered the independent regiment to enter the combat preparation stage to prepare for the Qing army's offensive.
On July 14, the Qing Army's forward battalion arrived north of the Datong River base and set up camp about ten miles away. Or because they were wary of the defensive power of the Haihan base, the Qing army did not launch an attack immediately after arriving at their destination like they did when attacking the North Korean city, but chose a more secure approach.
About half a day later, the main force of the Qing army began to arrive in this area one after another. Then two thousand-man cavalry teams set off from the Qing army camp and conducted terrain reconnaissance along the small rivers on the east and west sides of the Datong River base. In fact, Azig had already done the same thing before when he led his troops here, but Huang Taiji still did not give up on the last result, hoping to find terrain that his side could use.
Of course, this effort was still in vain. The Qing army was helpless to find that even in these two small rivers, which were not very wide, there were still armed ships cruising back and forth. Of course, the Qing army could also choose to invest a large number of artillery on a certain section of the river to prevent the Haihan warships on the river from entering. However, this is of little practical significance because the Qing army has a limited number of artillery. To achieve such an effect, it is impossible They had to give up the use of artillery tactics on the frontal battlefield, but Haihan could just wait and deploy a group of artillery on the other side of the river to prevent the Qing army from crossing the river.
Considering the gap between the two sides in artillery performance and tactical application, Haihan only needed to deploy half the number of artillery of the Qing army or even less to thwart the Qing army's plan. What's more, if the Qing army wants to complete the river-crossing operation here, it will have to spend at least a few days in the surrounding areas to cut down trees and make rafts. At this time, the Haihan can afford it, but the Qing army may not be able to afford it.
The reason why it takes several days to cut down trees is because as long as there are trees as thick as an adult's arm within a few miles around the base, they have long been chopped down and used to build various facilities in the base. If the Qing army wanted to make rafts, they had to go far away to cut down the wood and then transport it back. This was obviously not an ideal combat plan.
(End of chapter)