Zhu Gui guessed correctly. He Xiwen did not have any plans to capture Wuzhou, and he did not have enough troops to defend it after the battle. A large 18th century city with more than 40,000 residents could not control the strength of a regiment.

If the 6,000 troops were fighting alone, it would definitely be enough. The problem was that due to the system of the Northern Navy, the surrendered Qing army prisoners would not be converted and absorbed immediately, so there must be enough left-behind troops in Lianzhou and Yulinzhou. If the Qing army in Qinzhou and Leizhou were allowed to seize the retreat, He Xiwen would be embarrassed and could not explain it to Zhao Xin. So this time, the troops attacking Teng County had only more than 2,000 people in total.

Previously, Liang Wenying proposed to recruit and convert a group from the surrendered Qing army to make up for the shortcomings of local garrison troops. However, after sending a telegram to the General Staff, the reply there was disagreement.

The Qing Dynasty green camp adopted the "world military system", that is, if the father and brother joined the army, their children would be the remaining soldiers at home. If the guards were vacant, they would be replenished from the remaining soldiers. If the remaining soldiers were not enough, they would be recruited from the people. Once they became military citizenship, they would be soldiers for generations, and their descendants could not even participate in the imperial examination. Over time, many green camp soldiers became soldiers.

Among the prisoners and surrendered Green Camp, there were many people in their forties and fifties. Such people were just collecting taxes and robbers, but there was no chance to convert into combat troops.

At present, all the Qing army prisoners have been sent to Bailong City in southern Lianzhou to clean up the ruins and expand the wharf. After the people from the Bacheng Public Security Police Station arrived, they will be screened and screened. Those with qualified physical fitness and honest personality will be trained for three months and become public security police. Those who fail will be paid for travel expenses to go home to farm. Anyway, there is no military household under the jurisdiction of Beihai Town.

At the end of the morning of August 15th, the pier under Fushan outside Beiliu County was brightly lit.

Under the command of regiment commander Wei Chao, two thousand soldiers from the Hoi Camp lined up to carry the bamboo rafts into the river - they had been drilled twice before. All the bamboo rafts were placed in greenhouses made of reed bamboo on the shore. Each one was nine meters long and about two meters wide. They were made of 12 thick bamboos, and both ends were raised high.

Although bamboo rafts are easier than shipbuilding, there are still many things to do when making. For example, bamboo must be dried bamboo that has been dried for several months, otherwise it will easily deform during fire processing. The logistics department of the southern line troops, in order to collect a sufficient amount of dried bamboo, swept away the inventory of all bamboo and wood shops in Lianzhou, Yulinzhou City and Beiliu County, and also purchased a large number of hemp ropes and bamboo nails for binding.

The other is the tip. The angle of the tip is 50 degrees, because the bamboo body with the brain is thinner. Once the heat is not well controlled when roasting, the bamboo body will crack and the whole bamboo will be scraped.

This is true for many things. The commander moves his mouth and runs his legs off. It seems quite easy to say, but there are a lot of details to actually execute.

As large bamboo rafts were launched in sequence, soldiers lined up to board the ship. After more than 100 bamboo rafts were all launched, more than an hour had passed.

"Set off!"

When Wei Chao ordered people to shake the torch and give orders to set off, the soldiers standing at the stern pushed forward with long bamboo poles. When they entered the channel, the soldiers on the bamboo raft took out the engineer shovels and rowed neatly and orderly with the low horns. The entire fleet was stormy and winding like a water snake, quietly swimming north in the dark.

The waterway from north to Rong County is more than 70 miles. It is impossible for a fleet of more than 100 large bamboo rafts to avoid being discovered, let alone a reconnaissance team five miles ahead of the fleet and driving a assault boat.

At dawn that day, on the river twenty miles away from Rongxian County, two fathers and sons who were fishing in small boats suddenly heard a roar from the south, and then they saw several black shadows coming quickly from the waterway to the south.

"Beans, have you lost anything?"

Hearing his son A Shui's inquiry, fisherman Zhou Ada looked carefully and said in surprise: "You're so sir, why don't you close the net quickly!"

The father and son were busy collecting the net, but the black shadows were getting closer and closer, and it was too late to go boating to avoid it. Just as they were about to hit each other, A Shui was frightened and screamed. At this time, the black shadow in front suddenly turned to the right, drew an arc on the waterway, and walked around the fishing boat. Immediately afterwards, the two black shadows behind also took the same action.

Just as Zhou Ada and his son were stunned, the last black shadow slowed down and leaned over. At this time, someone heard someone speak in Cantonese Mandarin saying: "In the countryside, don't fish in the middle of the river, there are so many boats behind it."

"..." The father and son realized that the person who came was a boat, with several people sitting on it. However, unlike the ships I usually see, the hull of this boat is black, about two feet long and seven or eight feet wide. The material of the hull is not like bamboo and wood. It looks round and there are red ropes hanging on the side of the boat.

The boat was weird, and the people on the boat were weird. More than a dozen people were wearing grass-green double-breasted jackets, a green dome hat on their heads, and a net was covered with. The faces under the hat were black and white, making people unable to see clearly. In addition, these people were holding a flat and long strange object in their hands, and there was a black cylinder on the top of the end.

Oh my god! Is it a water ghost? But who has ever seen a group of water ghosts? One is not enough, and there are a group of people! Zhou Ada and his son were already shocked, and their hands and feet collapsed in the cabin with soreness.

"Country?"

"..." The father and son's teeth trembled, and they could not speak.

"Country?"

“Geeh~~”

The squad leader who asked the question saw that the two of them were shaking their lips and not opening their mouths, so he reminded him again: "In the countryside, don't fish here. There are so many boats coming and going to the docking place later. Let's go!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the motor of the assault boat roared again, and then he rushed northward with a wave of waves until it turned into a black dot as big as sesame. The father and son of Zhou Ada, who had a pale face, breathed a sigh of relief.

"Dou, is he a human or a ghost?"

"You're so bad! You can't tell me about it. He's a pirate from the south and the north! Hurry up and go!"

The emergence of these assault boats of the reconnaissance team on the Beiliu River made the brave villages along the way and the Qing army guarding Xuntang panic. The key is that no one has seen this thing before. The roaring sound of the motor is like thunder, and the ship speed of the maximum speed of 60 kilometers per hour is really horrifying.

After these ships arrived at the river near Rong County, two were specially responsible for intercepting the northbound ships, while the others were just around the river outside the city, making the county magistrate who came to the city wall confused when he heard the news and thought to himself what he was doing?

"Grandmaster, do you want to have a shot?" A shop soldier asked the county magistrate, his face full of an ignorant look of dying.

At the mercedes not far behind him, there was an iron cannon more than two feet long, with rusty on the outside and several iron hoops on the cannon for reinforcement. This is a tiger squat cannon from the Ming Dynasty, which has always been used as a trust cannon. If this thing can hit a assault boat one mile away, it would be even better to smoke from the ancestral grave, and it would be a fire!

"Put down the thing in your hand! You're pinching the crazy ball!" County Magistrate Wang put the fan in his hand, his face turned pale, and he was so angry that he even spit out his hometown dialect.

The county magistrate was named Wang Tingju, whose courtesy name was Xianchen. He was from the Wang family in Niedian, Yuci, Shanxi. He was a famous rich man. The Wang family started with land management and usury in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Now the pawn shops opened are spread across Jiangnan, outside the pass, Henan, Shandong, Zhili and other places, with assets of over 10 million.

Wang Tingju was the second child at home. He studied for more than ten years and couldn't even pass the exam for a scholar. But this man wanted to live and die, so he had to spend money to pay donations. Finally, he left the path of the Hefu steward Liu Quan and spent 50,000 taels of silver to Rong County as the county magistrate.

Don’t think it’s expensive, this is a real vacancies that can be filled as soon as you take the post, and countless people snatch it. Although Rong County is small and poor, the county magistrate also comes from a seventh-rank official. The problem is that the official Jinshi is only assigned to this position, and there are not necessarily real vacancies.

"It's all a fucking thing! Didn't it mean that everyone, eating mooncakes and watching big shows? They actually made this trick to deceive our county!"

Dianshi on the side was from Wuzhou. He didn't understand the Shanxi dialect of Magistrate Wang County. He blinked and asked, "Sir, how should we deal with it? You can't watch the pirates in Beihai attack the city."

"Otherwise, these boats are wandering around the river and do not dodge. If you want to fight, you will be beaten long ago." Wang Tingju opened the fan, slapped himself a few times, and sighed: "Thousands of soldiers and horses in Yulin's mansion can't stop it. Our Rong County is only the 100th young and strong man in charge of the ball!"

Dian Shi said: "Then just watch it? Will Priest Hu blame him then?"

"Blame? I don't know if Lord Hu can survive this disaster."

Others don’t know the power of the Beihai Army. Wang Tingju, who was born in the Shanxi Merchants family, knew it very well. He was fighting against heaven and man in his heart. If the Beihai Army conquered the city, would he surrender? Or would he hang his family like the Jinshi County Magistrate in Beiliu County.

The reason why he thought this was because the Qing Dynasty's military law was extremely strict with the city guarding officials. Those who retreated were killed and those who followed him and his three relatives. Simply put, "One person will die, and the whole family will be ruined. One person will commit suicide, and the whole family will be glorious."

For example, if Wang Tingju escaped, it would be great! After being caught, he would not have to report to the court. Zhu Gui could behead him. The three generations of relatives who ran away with him were sentenced to imprisonment.

The "incarnation" in the Ming and Qing dynasties specifically refers to serving hard labor, wearing shackles in local inns or yamen to do all kinds of dirty and tiring work, and before serving the sentence, they must be beaten to death. The one-year period is 30 yuan, and the three-year period is 80 yuan. If you don't pay for a bribe, you will probably be beaten to death directly. If a man is like this, the female family will be even more tragic.

Since ancient times, Chinese people have talked about filial piety. It doesn’t matter if you escape or surrender yourself. Parents in your hometown have to be punished for hard labor. Can this be considered a personal person? They will die directly from the community and be looked down upon for the rest of their lives, and their descendants will have no hope of the imperial examination.

Someone said that at worst, you can start over again with another place. The problem is that even modern people are not easy to do such things as leaving their hometowns, let alone ancient people. If you want the land, what should you do with the ancestral grave? What should you do with the ancestral home?

What the people of Rong County on the city wall didn't know was that it was the county magistrate's order to rescue them. Half an hour later, when the people on the city wall saw a fleet of hundreds of bamboo rafts winding towards them, covering the river surface, they were all so scared that their faces were pale. They thought it was so dangerous, but the great master didn't let the cannon fire.

Before leaving, He Xiwen told Wei Chao that if the Rong County defenders do not attack or stop them, they will ignore it. It is not worth wasting time for a small county town.

The military and civilians of Rong County were lying on the top of the city, watching the fleet of Huianying pass through the county town without any danger. As for Wang Tingju, when he was convinced that the Beihai fleet on the river had no intention of siege, he hurried back to the county government to write a letter, calling the personal servants brought from his family in Shanxi to give him some instructions, and asked the other party to leave the city through the South Gate rope at night and contact Beiliu County.

He said in the letter that it was not that I, Wang, didn’t want to surrender, but the court’s laws were really strict. Once the surrender spread, it would harm my family. So, in the future, I will still be an official of the court in public, and I should do whatever I want in private, and I can ask for money and food. We sell dog meat under the guise of sheep. Do you think this is good?

A day later, the Huian camp fleet passed through the intersection of Beiliu River and Huanghua River. The sixty-mile waterway from here to Teng County is called "Xiujiang". This area has Tiantangling and Lingshan in the east, and Dubangling and Luomanling in the west. The mountains are high and forests are lush, and the waterway is sandwiched between the mountains. From the shore to the middle of the mountain, it is filled with fog, and dense mosquitoes are flying on the water surface, which is very annoying. The sun is exposed to the sun without mercy in the air, causing the soldiers on the bamboo raft to sweat profusely.

In the prefecture of Teng County in the Ming Dynasty, autumn was called "steamed autumn", which means that after the sultry summer season ends, the weather will be hotter and it will be cooler until after the Double Ninth Festival.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content later! Fortunately, the people in Huian camp have lived in a humid and hot environment since childhood, and cooling oil has become the standard for the army, so there are not many people with heatstroke, but their faces and hands are covered with large bags. When you go to camp at night, you must be careful of poisonous insects and wild animals.

This was the case in Lingnan in ancient times. The humid and hot environment made it impossible for northerners to gain a foothold. It would be better to be an official, but if you are exiled to this point, once you are infected with malaria, you will have no way to die.

This shows the importance of the Northern Navy setting up a base in Ganlingao. All the troops heading south must do adaptive training there for at least one month. Otherwise, let alone fighting, the reduction of non-combat officers alone can drive the officers crazy. This is also why Zhao Xin asked He Xiwen to lead the attack on Guangxi. Now most of the generals of the Northern Navy are northerners. They have lived in the northeast for many years and it is difficult for them to adapt to the sultry weather in the south.

Along the way, Wei Chao made his subordinates thirsty and could only drink boiled water from the kettle. When they were hungry, they would eat canned food and compressed biscuits. They would never drink river water. It would be okay to wash their faces and cool them down.

Due to the mountains in Guangxi, the water and land stations were parallel. Since the reconnaissance team's ship speed was very fast, since leaving Rongxian, Doujiazhai, Longtantang, Pandongtang, Huanghuatang, Yichangtang and other water route stations were taken down without any time to react. The postmen all stared at the North Navy's assault boats quickly rushed to the beach, and waited for the scouts holding rifles to jump off the boat and rushed over in the water. All they could do was escape and surrender.

It is impossible to sail smoothly when sailing on a 500-mile waterway. There will always be fish that miss the net among the postmen. If they can't walk on the waterway, they will use the "Thousand-mile Horse" to travel along the land route and cross the mountains and ridges to Tengxian to report the news. When the reconnaissance team came to a place called Ma'anguan south of Tengxian, they found that they could not get through.

This is the most dangerous place to enter the river channel before Xunjiang. It has a water grid since the Zhengtong period of the Ming Dynasty, and there are city walls on the hillsides on both sides of the left and right sides, overlooking the river from a high place.

After the news of the Northern Navy's occupation of Yulin reached Wuzhou, Xu Guocai, deputy general of the Wuzhou Association, thought of Ma'an Pass at the first time. At his suggestion, the prefect Hu Youren summoned a large number of craftsmen to build iron chains overnight, and then transported them to Ma'an Pass. Six iron chains were set up on the river surface, and the Teng County Magistrate recruited Zhuang Yong to guard the city and observe the movements in the south.

These six iron chains were not simply crossing the river. Xu Guocai asked Tengxian to sail several 500-foot civilian ships to Ma'an Pass and sank them all, nailed them under the water with wooden stakes so that they could not move, and then hung the iron chains on the hull exposed to the water. In this way, even if there are three or five hundred-foot merchant ships, ordinary boats cannot pass.

When encountering such a method of blocking, the ancients generally had no good way to do it. The means of breaking it was nothing more than sending suicide squads to set up stoves at the bow of the ship, burning and cutting the iron chains after approaching. At the same time, sailors had to sneak into the water to get rid of wooden stakes of nailed ships and remove the wreckage. While destroying the chains, soldiers were also sent to help defend; you should know that the enemy on the opposite side would not be able to look at it.

This kind of water battle is often a life-and-death bloody battle. Whoever fights more soldiers and braves, who can find a way to quickly destroy or defend the iron chain.

Tengxian is like Rongxian, both small counties. With its own strength alone, even if the iron rope is scattered, there is no chance, but now isn’t Zhu Gui, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi? Just the day after he arrived in Wuzhou, the local soldiers and wolf soldiers who came to support him from Guilin Prefecture Heping Yuefu arrived.

The title of "wolf soldier" is actually related to "werewolf". Don't get me wrong. It's not the kind of person who grows hair all over the body and mouth full of fangs when the moon reaches the full moon, but the local natives like the Zhuang and Yao people. These people usually live among the mountains in western Guangdong, and start practicing martial arts when they grow up to a young age.

Many people think that as long as they are local soldiers from Guangxi, they are "wolf soldiers", which is wrong. There are many types of local soldiers, including Zhuang and Yao, but only local soldiers mainly composed of werewolf groups are wolf soldiers, also called "real wolfs", and the others are fake wolfs.

The name "Wolf Soldier" was first seen during the Zhengtong period of the Ming Dynasty. At that time, the mountains in Xunzhou and Datengxia area were in conflict with each other, and Yao bandits appeared. However, the chieftains on the left and right rivers had a large population and few fields, so many people made a living by joining the army and fighting bravely, which made the Yao people very afraid.

The Guangxi wolf soldiers in the Ming Dynasty were a powerful force that cannot be ignored. The peak number was about 100,000, and they almost participated in all wars in the late Ming Dynasty. However, nowadays, many werewolfs have been transformed into farmers, and there are only more than 2,000 wolf soldiers in the eastern Guizhou area.

The reason for this situation is that after the "Three Feudal Rebellion", military activities in Guangxi became less and less, especially after the land was changed, the management system of wolf soldiers was completely disrupted, causing the number of wolf soldiers to decrease sharply.

Zhu Gui saw that the regiment training was his decisive needle. He didn't want to move for the time being. The Green Camp had too few troops and the level of fighting was really not very good. Two thousand wolves were not too many, so it was most suitable to guard the steep terrain of Ma'an Pass. Furthermore, it was not far from Wuzhou to Teng County. It was a 160-mile waterway that could be reached in two days by boat.
Chapter completed!