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Volume 1: Fierce Battle in Changsha Chapter 515: Conquering Chaozhou

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    Chaozhou Prefecture's Chao'an County, Chaoyang County, Jieyang County, Huilai County, Puning County, Chenghai County, Raoping County, and Fengshun County were known as the "Eight Chaozhou Counties" in history. After the Taiping Army captured Meizhou, they quickly outflanked Chaozhou Prefecture.  Within half a month, the counties of Huilai, Puning, Jieyang, Chao'an, Chaoyang, Fengshun, and Raoping were successively captured by the Taiping Army. Li Tingyu had to defend only two cities in Chaozhou and Chenghai.

    Chaozhou is the birthplace of the She people. Most of the She people in Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong and other places moved from here. There were many She soldiers in the Taiping Army's Fujian South Army Corps. They wanted to fight back to their hometown to save this place from the Manchus.  The oppressed She compatriots responded with great enthusiasm, but the actual situation is that there are actually many She soldiers in the local gentry regiment training and the Qing army.

    She warriors have been brave and good at fighting since ancient times. When the Taiping Army recruited troops in Fujian, many She warriors joined. However, the She warriors in the Qing army were drafted or recruited for money and food. The motivation for joining the war was  Very different.

    When Li Tingyu was stationed in Chaozhou, Ye Mingchen of Guangdong provided him with a large amount of money and food support, so he made the eight counties of Chaozhou Prefecture look like iron barrels.  Counties, townships, and villages have implemented a joint defense system of Baojia, Liangsi, and Baojia. Each village builds a fortress, and then each township and county garrison troops and horses to assist in the defense of each village. The entire Chaozhou Prefecture has built more than 300 village fortresses, and each county, township  The government also rectified the city defense and defended it tightly with battlements.  Li Tingyu thought that he had been running Chaozhou Prefecture for a long time, and it was well defended. He was also assisted by Chaozhou She people who were good at fighting. At the same time, he and Meizhou Wang Yide formed a mutual horn, so he should be able to be foolproof.  But I didn't expect the Taiping Army's offensive to be so fierce.

    Responsible for eastern Guangdong is the First Division of the newly formed First Army. As the two first-class veteran elite units, the First Division may not be as fast and powerful as the Third Division known as Zhao Zilong Division.  It is not as good at civil engineering attacks as the Second Division, but the First Division is the absolute mainstay of the New First Army because they have an unparalleled domineering power.

    From the beginning of the Battle of Wentai until now, Fujian's First Army and Li Tingyu's Qing army fought dozens of battles. The result was that Li Tingyu was driven from the Wentai defense line to Guangdong by the Taiping Army. The entire province of Fujian fell, and among them  Eighty percent of the battles were carried out by the First Division.  It can be said that both parties know the basics of the matter.  The Qing army under Li Tingyu was very afraid of the First Division. Li Xiucheng sent the First Division to the east just to deal with Li Tingyu and Wang Yide.

    When the First Division began to sweep across the east of Guangdong, the first target chosen by the commander of the First Division, Chen Alin, was Wang Yide.  Because he was weaker than Li Tingyu, and at the same time Chen Alin prepared the tactics of siege and reinforcements. He knew that Wang Yide was attacked, and Li Tingyu would definitely send troops to rescue.  The Qing army can only be eliminated if it leaves those village fortresses.

    Sure enough, everything was as Chen Alin expected.  When Wang Yide was attacked, Li Tingyu sent a Qing army of 8,000 trained troops to come to the rescue. Chen Alin was naturally not polite and defeated and annihilated the Qing army in a field battle, causing Li Tingyu to suffer a great loss.  Then Wang Yide had no foreign aid, and Meizhou Prefecture could not withstand the fierce offensive of Chen Alin's First Division and was defeated within three days.

    During the Battle of Meizhou, the First Division organized strong artillery preparations.  After practicing Xu Jin's barrage tactics, two groups of artillery units of the First Division alternated under the cover of infantry.  It smashed through Meizhou's city defense.  You must know that Wang Yide reinforced the Meizhou city walls and the residential buildings outside the city into an offensive. There were countless battlements, gun positions, and trenches, but they could not withstand the fierce bombardment of the First Division Artillery Regiment, so Meizhou fell in three days.

    Meizhou fell, Wang Yide committed suicide, and all Qing officials from the Fujian chief envoy to the next level were captured. In this battle, more than 30,000 Qing troops were annihilated, including more than 10,000 prisoners.

    Chen Alin was a natural-born general who led troops in war. In history, he once led the weak Little Sword Society to defeat the armies of the Qing Dynasty and other powerful powers in Shanghai. After he and Liu Lichuan surrendered to the West Palace, they entered the military academy and then took over the army.  As the commander of the first division, the first division became even more dominant in his hands.

    After Meizhou was solved, Chen Kai's Fujian Township Corps also came to take over. After Meizhou was handed over to Chen Kai for guarding, Chen Alin replenished ammunition and supplies and went south non-stop to attack Li Tingyu, because he received an order from the Corps Staff to solve Chaozhou as soon as possible.  Li Tingyu then marched westward.

    Although Li Tingyu painstakingly managed the defense of the eight counties of Chaozhou, this defense method that seemed to connect villages to form a village had a fatal weakness. This defense was not effectively connected, and there was no better connection between villages.  The village fortresses became isolated turret-style defenses, which were very similar to the Japanese army's turret blockade tactics in the later Anti-Japanese War.  This tactic may have been somewhat effective for the Eighth Route Army, which did not have artillery, but the Taiping Army's artillery at this time was the most advanced in the country, so Li Tingyu's tactics failed.

    Before starting to move south to Chaozhou, Chen Alin adopted the tactic of dividing and attacking together. The troops of one division were divided into several groups to attack several peripheral counties of Chaozhou.To attack a regiment in Fengshun County first, divide the troops into several tactical units, and then sweep the villages along the way. The basic mode is to first shout for the villages to surrender. If they surrender, they will be handed over to the following township corps to take over. If they do not surrender, they will  Artillery bombardment, infantry charge, and after finishing, quickly move to the next target.  In this way, several tactical units swept through, and finally met at the foot of Fengshun County, and then attacked the county.

    As a result, the village fortresses were like cans one after another, being knocked open by the Taiping Army with artillery shells and bayonets. Of course, many villages still knew that the end was over, and many She soldiers came forward to persuade them to surrender. The She villages that originally did not like the surrender of the Manchu Qing Dynasty  The fastest, but some Han villages resisted more, but after the battle, everyone also understood the power of the Taiping Army. So after taking Fengshun and Raoping counties, almost all the remaining village fortresses were at a loss.  drop.

    At this time, Li Tingyu wanted to cry loudly. There was no way to rescue Wang Yide. He lost the last mobile force of more than 8,000 people in Meizhou. When counties and villages were attacked, this troop could provide mobile support.  Fighting everywhere, but now that his mobile troops are gone, he can only watch the Taiping Army open cans one by one.

    Fifteen days later, out of the eight counties in Chaozhou, only one lone city, Chaozhou Prefecture, was left. After the troops of the First Division completed their sweep of the outlying counties, they gradually arrived at the city of Chaozhou Prefecture and gathered together.  Following Chen Alin, he still used Xu Jin's barrage tactics and gave Li Tingyu a lesson in modern artillery tactics.

    When he saw the battlements, trenches, fences, and residential fortresses outside the city being destroyed by artillery shells one by one, and the artillerymen of the Taiping Army carefully covered the area with artillery fire to cover the advance of the infantry, Li Tingyu spat out a mouthful of blood.  After saving the left and right, Li Tingyu looked up to the sky and sighed: "More than twenty years ago, I fought fiercely with the British and barbarians. I have never seen such a fierce artillery battle. My long hair and wings have become full. The situation is over. The situation is over"

    Li Tingyu was old and suffered a series of defeats, so he died of illness in front of the city of Chaozhou. After the Qing army lost their leader, they did not resist for long. Three days later, the city of Chaozhou was broken, and this was the last nail between Guangdong and Fujian.  was unplugged.

    After Chen Alin entered the city, he inspected Li Tingyu's body and he quite respected the Qing general.  During the Opium War, Li Tingyu led his troops to fight against the British, showing dignity and momentum.  Later, when he was old, he put on armor and fought fiercely with the Taiping Army for two years. Although he lost more than he won, he still blocked the Taiping Army for two years.  If the Taiping Army had not made a plan to land in Guangzhou and cut off the supply lines of Meizhou and Chaozhou from behind, Li Tingyu might have relied on the continuous supply of soldiers, money and food from the rear of Guangdong to continue to block the Taiping Army in Fujian.

    Chen Alin ordered the release of several of Li Tingyu's personal followers and asked them to take Li Tingyu's body back for a proper burial. Although Li Tingyu was foolishly loyal to the Manchus, his courage to resist the British was still worthy of admiration. Chen Alin did not use his head for anything.  To show everyone, respecting this old man who has been fighting with him for more than a year means respecting his own martial ethics.

    After the capture of Chaozhou, Chen Alin rested for three days and then rushed west non-stop. Recent battle reports continued to arrive. The Second Division also ended its clearing of Shaozhou and other places in northern Guangdong and began to rush to Zhaoqing to reinforce the Third Division.  At this time, the eastern and northern parts of Guangdong had completely fallen into the hands of the Taiping Army, and only the prefectures and counties west of Zhaoqing in Guangdong Province were still in the hands of the Qing army.

    Chen Alin knew that in Zhaoqing they had to face another Xiaoqiang who could not be beaten to death. This person's tenacity and tenacity were even greater than that of Li Tingyu. This person's understanding of the Taiping Army was unparalleled. This person was Jiang Zhongyuan.

    Chen Alin read in some newspapers the Manchu and Qing grand strategy proposed by Jiang Zhongyuan. The war between the Manchu and Taiping lasted for eight years. Jiang Zhongyuan proposed that the Taiping Army was very powerful at the beginning, but the Manchu and Qing Dynasties had not experienced a major war for many years.  In the beginning, the Qing Dynasty must be on the defensive, but the Taiping always has insufficient foundation. As long as the Manchu Qing Dynasty can limit its development within a certain range and successfully drag the war into a stalemate, relying on national power to slowly consume the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Manchu Qing Dynasty will eventually  Will be able to counterattack and quell the Taiping rebellion.

    Chen Alin admired Jiang Zhongyuan's strategic vision. Although he did not know that the Qing Dynasty wiped out the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in this way in history, Chen Alin found that Jiang Zhongyuan's strategy was indeed the best strategy for the Manchus from the perspective of a military commander.  Since Taiping occupied Nanjing, the Qing army has been mainly defensive, supplemented by local counterattacks. However, the Western King's Eastern Expedition broke the Manchu Qing's wishful thinking.  The loss of Shanghai, Ningbo and other places allowed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to obtain more money and food resources through trade. The Western King's modifications to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's doctrine and governing strategies meant that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was not fighting alone. On the contrary, the Western King grew stronger by coordinating anti-Qing uprisings in various places.  In the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, when internal strife broke out in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, King Xi was able to quickly stabilize the overall situation without causing serious harm.  As a result, the strategic stalemate that the Manchus hoped to emerge did not come, and the Taiping Army still maintained its position.However, Jiang Zhongyuan still insisted on his strategy. He kept defending, retreating, and defending again, always like a maggot in the tarsus.  , blocking the advance of the Taiping Army.

    Chen Alin knows that it is important to open the gate to the east and west of Guangdong. If they want to sweep through the southern nine provinces, they must get rid of Jiang Zhongyuan. Moreover, they have been harassed by this man for a long time. Everyone in the Taiping Army hopes to annihilate this beast in this battle!  (To be continued)
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