The Bashan and Chu River were desolate, and they were abandoned for twenty-three years.

I sing and hear the flute in nostalgia, and when I go to the hometown, I feel like a rotten person.

Thousands of sails pass by the sunken boat, and thousands of trees are spring in front of the sick tree.

Today I will listen to you a song and rely on a glass of wine to gain energy.

"Reward Lotte at the first meeting at Yangzhou"

Tang Dynasty: Liu Yuxi

——I am the dividing line—

In the Ba County town in Yuzhou, in the summer night rain in Bashan, Wang Qiu, wearing rubber rain cloth, also stepped across the pool of water and looked at the official army camp shrouded in the rain.

He has been taken away from his post and is also a white man left in front of the battlefield. However, whether it is his former subordinates, other comrades in the army, or the people in the garrison who have been retired from the city, he will greet him respectfully:

"Lao Wang..."

"Brother Wang..."

When performing duties, someone even took the initiative to hand him drinking water, fruits and sweat towels; even when he was making meals, the kitchen head would give priority to scooping up the bottom of the sedimented pot and filling his portion with it.

Just because of his unauthorized actions against military discipline on the way to retreat, even as an ordinary soldier, he was not very sad; especially when the material reserves and supply quotas are still sufficient.

In fact, although it seems that they are trapped in the city at the moment, and the soldiers are generally exhausted and injured, the actual situation is much better than the previous situation and recent situation.

Of course, most of the defenders, including Wang Qiu, wish that the more rain the better it would be, because it is rare to clear up during this period, which is the time for them to usher in a fierce bloody battle.

The main reason is that the continuous rain that was not sunny in the early summer was a long time ago. Although it greatly restricted the use of the firearms that the Taiping Army relied on as their superiority, it also brought great trouble and obstacles to the official army in the attack.

Especially the surge in the river water of various tributaries such as the Fu River has caused considerable trouble for the government army to carry out supply and transport ships along the water. After all, they do not have a steamer that can barely go upstream during the water rise.

Therefore, most of the ships that tried to force navigation were smashed on rocky beaches by rapids in the river, or rushed to the shore and stranded. After trying several times, the government and army gave up this effort.

In addition, the roads in Yuzhou Ba County (Chongqing City) have also become muddy and slippery, which is also an unavoidable obstacle to land march and transportation.

Although there may be those barbarians from Luzhou who don’t care; they are used to walking on the mountains and roads, and they are not bad enough to use them to restrain harassment and roundabout sneak attacks, but they are just a perfect and raw melon seeds when attacking.

Therefore, when Gao Renhou's vanguard of the Dongchuan Army came to Ba County, he had to set up a camp and stop and rest with exhaustion and mud; by the way, he had to collect the barbarian soldiers and earthen regiments who had laid sheep and plundered everywhere.

Then, Min Xu, the commander who was left behind by the Taiping Army, personally led the warriors to attack and injured hundreds of people, which somewhat boosted the morale and people's hearts in the city. At this time, the balance of power and the rise and fall of the situation in the battle also changed qualitatively.

Compared with the unfavorable situation in field battles, although the rain greatly restricts the power of the Taiping Army's sulphur bombs, bomb bombs and other throwing firearms; however, in the city guarding, there is little impact on the number of projective firearms such as three-eyed guns, short guns, and horn guns.

Especially when they set up a shed to shelter on the city wall to shelter and prepare many carbon fire braziers and raw ash as moisture-proof, these firearms of different shapes began to replace those crossbows that were prone to loose arms in wet and rainy weather, and unexpectedly became powerful.

Therefore, after tasting the sweetness, they even had a few three-inch (inner diameter) light cannons that were removed from the vehicles and ships, which could deal with the siege equipment made by the government forces who worked hard to cut trees and quarre to create. As long as they were hit, they would collapse and collapse.

Furthermore, although the retreating Taiping soldiers and the garrison battalions left behind in the city were only four or five thousand; but the more than 10,000 armed men who had received support from the rear states, and the people in the city who shared the same hatred of the enemy worked together; even the new soldiers who had just arrived at the city not long ago became sophisticated even if they did not die.

Therefore, although the officials who arrived one after another surrounded the Ba County on the riverside platform from the water and land direction, they could not take off the outside of Ba County. They were backed by the terrain and several camps on the Beishan and Dongshan, and even cut off the contact and exchanges between them.

With these high places, it is enough to threaten and control the key rush of Jiangxia. Although the remaining Taiping Navy is already quite weak, it is also unrealistic to cut off the backyard and transport on the waterway from the official warships.

Therefore, since there is a hope of helping outside Ba County, there is a fighting spirit to persevere within; although the situation once deteriorated, it is impossible for the official army to make a breakthrough like a roundabout way under Jiangliu City.

Although they also used and driven a lot of help and power to the mountain people and Tu people along the way, they could no longer exert the effect of omnipotent harassment and sneak attacks, and responding everywhere.

On this side, the Taiping Army, who came to support the downstream, has learned lessons, and used food and supplies to forcefully recruited and relocated the unstable factors/young and middle-aged people in the rear villages;

On the other hand, many temporary patrol teams were organized based on the villages and villages along the river, setting up checkpoints at the intersection of various large and small roads and mountain passes to investigate and block the suspicious people coming and going.

In addition to some observation points, many children were arranged for a fee to take turns to monitor and send messages; therefore, this time the official army naturally gave a great discount to the infiltration operations east of Ba County occupied by the Taiping Army.

In addition to organizing several failed sneak attacks, almost all the people who crossed mountains and ridges and headed to the lower reaches of Xiajiang Road were unable to come back or send any useful messages.

Wang Qiu himself was even recruited to participate in one of the ambush battles. It was the great merchant Meng in the city who sent his family out of the city, intending to contact the local tyrants and use their hidden troops and servants to respond to the official army and seize the camps to the north.

As a result, it happened to be seized by Deng Chuna, the light patrol captain under Min Xu. The plan was to take advantage of this and the soldiers who were hiding in the fields gathered together to surround and kill them on the spot.

Then, he pretended to join the official army camp outside the Book City in the name of Meng, seducing the official army to sneak attack the so-called "weak places" between the so-called Beishanzhailou and the Dongshan Defense Battalion. As a result, during the break of the rain, a mixed team of Tuman and the official army was attracted by more than 3,000 people.

If it hadn't been forcibly putting two short-barrel light cannons and some of the medicines at dawn, as a means of reserve; they had set a pre-scheduling ambush positions on the hillside, almost forcibly break through and penetrated by this unstoppable attacking man.

Finally, when the rain curtain fell again, the mountains and fields were filled with corpses soaked in the mud and wounded like maggots; and the ambush front of the Taiping Army also destroyed most of them, resulting in at least more than 400 casualties.

However, the results of the official army were even more miserable. They were defeated by the bombarded cannons, and the last bit of a strong spirit and the paranoia of victory. In the end, they fell to death and injured in the retreat, and trampled on each other in a push, which was even more than the chasing swords and muskets.

In the end, there were only about three or four hundred fish that escaped the net and were able to escape into the rain curtain at the foot of the mountain; and according to the spies sent afterwards, they took advantage of the rain to cover the incident and found that at least one important figure or leader of the Lushui barbarians should have been killed in battle.

Therefore, after these defeated soldiers fled back, they soon burst into continuous howlings and subsequent riots that could be seen by naked eyes in the turban camps; some even began to pull out the team and leave the camp.

Although it was quickly suppressed by the nearby official army, in the next few attacks, the morale and momentum of these barbarians as the first attack were obviously less hardworking and fierce than before.

Therefore, more official troops also appeared in the siege sequence one after another; further strengthened the intensity of the battle between the offensive and defensive sides. However, Min Xu, who summoned the generals and the schoolmen, declared in public with joy that this was the recruitment of the official troops who wanted to be poor in the future.

Therefore, except for some soldiers who maintain the most basic alert and corresponding forces on the city wall, everyone has been hit and repaired and repaired armored swords and weapons in turn; just waiting for that time to come.

But then, it took two days and three nights of rain, and the gap between the few stops was only half a meal. Therefore, both sides of the enemy and us had to maintain this low-intensity mutual warning and confrontation.

With the muddy eyes everywhere in the Zeguo, even the sporadic conflicts between the traveling posts and scouts outside the city stagnated. Therefore, according to the turn-on duty system, Wang Qiu, who went to set up temporary observation posts and shade contact points outside the city several times, also got a moment of leisure.

He sighed with such complex emotions, then raised the iron kettle in his hand, swallowed a large mouthful of ginger tea soup that had already cooled but seemed a little distorted because of the rain. He was thinking about finishing his service later, he went to the kitchen to get some sour and spicy Hu soup.

However, the whistle called on the inside of the city wall sounded again. Soon after, Wang Qiu, who was reopened, followed a team of light-loading out of the city and disappeared into the misty world outside the city facing the rain curtain.

When they were guided by the replacement outposts, one foot deep and one foot shallow, and even the specially reinforced leggings and rubber-faced boots were filled and soaked with cold mud, the vague sound of the snare drums and horses appeared in front of them.

Wang Qiu couldn't help but be shocked. Could it be that this time I came to sneak attack the official army's camp? However, Deng Chuna, the captain in charge of leading the team, suddenly cursed:

"I've been cheated..."

Then, the arrow wrapped in bamboo tube in his hand was fired on the standing figure in the nearest whistle tower, but it didn't move at all. Now everyone understood.

At this time, the roar of shelling sounded the first on the city behind. However, Deng Chuna, who was the leader of the team, couldn't help but be happy when he heard the sound, and then turned into a somewhat angry helpless color:

"The navy...reinforcements,...it's too late."

Then he turned his head to the specially selected veteran soldiers in the army:

"Or... chase me for a while..."

And on the riverside more than ten miles southwest of their country, the last established official army was also retreating towards the upstream in a kind of atmosphere of silence and still silence.

Wherever they passed, all kinds of vehicles and supplies that could not be taken away were abandoned all the way. At Hejiangkou, which was the starting point, Gao Renhou in the military tent was also listening to the report from the visitor:

"DaSanguan urgently reported that Huang Ni personally led the thieves to attack, and had broken through the forts and went straight to the gates;"

"Li Yu, the left envoy of the Yellow Head Army, died in battle, Gong Xian, the right envoy of the right envoy, escaped but did not know where to end. Only the first chief general of the capital Lu Hongyan and Xiao Yang, refused to retreat..."

"The Holy Lord has issued an edict to the troops under Da Yang (Fu Gong) the camps under the command of Shumi to return north to resist the enemy, and also issued an edict to accept the three capitals of Zhongwu led by Wang Jian to control the troops in front of the army. He ordered Song Hao's troops to return to the town quickly to transfer to Zibo in the front."

"In addition, the quick move made the minister think he was in charge of the two rivers..."

The messenger who arrived first paused and said:
Chapter completed!