Chapter 81: Fork in the Road
On the 16th day of March 19th, the road leading to Zhoujiapu in Baoqing Prefecture in Huguang was on the road leading to Zhoujiapu in Baoqing, a Ming army of tens of thousands of people set out from Baoqing was rushing silently in the heavy rain. This Ming army was the front army of Sun Kewang Qin Palace, and the most elite and trustworthy army under the command of Sun Kewang Qin.
In February, Sun Kewang strongly invited Li Dingguo, who was in Yongzhou, to Jingzhou to participate in the military convention. However, in late February, Li Dingguo did not go there. Instead, he sent someone to send a letter to talk about his loyalty to the emperor, hoping to use this to encourage Sun Kewang to work together with him to support Ming. However, Sun Kewang had originally wanted to be independent, and just thought that Li Dingguo was ridiculing him, so he beat the messenger and drove him away. As a result, news came soon, Li Dingguo gave up Yongzhou.
Sun Kewang had a long-awaited intention to kill this righteous brother. When Zhang Xianzhong died in battle and they were forced to kill Zhang Xianzhong's wife and prime minister who went south, Li Dingguo planned to use Fuming to wash away the thief's name, while Sun Kewang never planned to be a loyal minister for the Ming court. In the following days, the two sides had increasingly different differences on the issue of Fuming or independence. However, the Qing Dynasty had a great threat, and had more than 20 years of brotherhood, so they worked together to fight the Qing army to this day, and they achieved consecutive victories last year, expanding their territory by three thousand miles.
Sun Kewang was the leader of the four princes of the Daxi Army when Zhang Xianzhong was still alive, but the status of these four people was not very different at that time. By quelling the Shadingzhou Rebellion, all of them were Yunnan. Sun Kewang completely overwhelmed Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu in strength and name through the acquisition of Ainengqi's army who died in battle and the flag-raising incident in the martial arts field, and became the supreme commander of the Daxi Army. However, Li and Liu still held heavy troops, and what Sun Kewang was even more afraid of was that they reached a consensus with the Emperor Yongli, thus threatening his position as the lord of the Qin Kingdom.
With the help of Baoning's defeat, Sun Kewang seized Liu Wenxiu's title and military power and threw him away. This originally greatly improved his strength, but Li Dingguo killed Kong Youde in July and won a great victory in Guilin, which made Sun Kewang suddenly realize that he had begun to be surpassed by Li Dingguo in terms of prestige.
"The Northern Army is easy to kill, but I don't stand alone."
He said this when he learned that Nikan went south and Sun Kewang forced Li Dingguo to return to the Huguang battlefield. In fact, while Li Dingguo was preparing to encircle and annihilate Nikan in Hengyang, Sun Kewang also personally won the victory of Chenzhou and killed the Green Camp general Xu Yong, General Chenchang of Manqing, to make the base of the Western Army safer.
For Sun Kewang, this was originally a great victory that he could use to enhance his prestige, and at the same time, he also secretly ordered Feng Shuangli to violate the plan of Li Dingguo to encircle the Eight Banners Army of Manchu and Mongolia.
Originally, Sun Kewang used the annihilation of the Green Camp troops to increase his prestige and the plan to destroy Li Dingguo was enough to make his prestige surpass Li Dingguo in the army. However, unexpectedly, since Feng Shuangli and Ma Jinzhong had not arrived, although Li Dingguo could not encircle the Eight Banners Army of Manchu and Mongolia, Nikan was still ambushed and killed by Li Dingguo on the spot.
The Qing army suffered a great loss of troops in Hengyang, but the shock caused by the killing of the commander was extremely astonishing. For a moment, Li Dingguo's two famous kings fell, and the world was shocked. Sun Kewang's limelight in Chenzhou was once again suppressed. Many people even knew Li Dingguo's Hengyang victory, but they didn't know the Chenzhou victory hosted by Sun Kewang at the same time as Hengyang victory.
Under the instigation of his confidants, Sun Kewang, who had already hated Li Dingguo, decided to take advantage of the military discussion to plot against Li Dingguo. The army of 40,000 to 50,000 people led by Li Dingguo was handed over to his confidant Feng Shuanglily, thus completely integrating the entire Western Army Group.
From this point of view, although Sun Kewang is ugly, he thinks beautifully. But thinking beautifully is useless. Somehow the plot was leaked. Not only did Li Dingguo not come, but he gave up Yongzhou without even saying goodbye. And as Li Dingguo gave up Yongzhou, he originally had to give up Hengyang because of his own army and was forced to give up Hengyang and picked up a large area of land for nothing, Dorobeltunqi once again took over Yongzhou.
On February 28th, General Dingyuan, Dorobel Tunqi, guarding Hengzhou with his admiral Ke Yongsheng, sent troops to occupy Yongzhou, which had been abandoned by Li Dingguo. On March 6th, the army of Tunqi headed north, and on March 15th, the Han army's Zhenglan Banner Gushan Ezhen Tongtulai was stationed at the intersection of the road and Huajiezi, and was thirty miles apart from the Ming army stationed in Zhoujiapu.
The next day, the Qing army launched a large-scale move, intending to defeat the Ming army in Zhoujiapu, but the Ming army camped at the top of the mountain and the heavy rain came, so the Qing army had to give up the plan to attack.
"The Tartar soldiers will not be very difficult to kill, I just don't have a chance."
This idea came to my mind. In the heavy rain, Sun Kewang drove the army forward to continue advancing and soon entered the Ming army camp in Zhoujiapu. He used the cover of this rainy night to merge with Feng Shuangli and Bai Wenxuan.
The Ming army suddenly changed from more than 40,000 people to nearly 100,000 troops overnight, but the Qing army was unaware of it. The next day, the rain had stopped, and Tunqi led the army again, and soon approached the foot of the Ming army camp of Zhoujiapu.
The Zhoujiapu camp was extremely huge. Originally, Sun Kewang had planned to bring him here to reorganize after annexing the Li Dingguo army. Unexpectedly, Li Dingguo gave up Yongzhou. After the Qing army acquired Yongzhou, they did not dare to pursue Li Dingguo. Instead, they went north to threaten Baoqing Prefecture. Baoqing was located east of Chenzhou and Jingzhou, and was a barrier between these two prefectures. How could the Qing army intends to invade Guizhou from this? Sun Kewang could ignore it? At this time, the Zhoujiapu camp was just in handy.
While in the camp, Sun Kewang listened to the report of the horse probing, the Qing army had approached, and obviously did not find the fact that the Ming army had increased its troops. The plan was decided. Since the Qing army had not discovered it yet, Sun Kewang quickly ordered the army to go out of the camp.
When he was at the foot of the mountain looking up at the top of the mountain, the Qing army could not see clearly the situation of the Ming army. When Sun Kewang ordered, the Ming cavalry in the brigade began to break out from the gates of the battalions that had just been opened.
Sun Kewang's banner had been raised, and the Ming cavalry of the brigade rushed out of the camp, and the war elephants and infantry were closely behind. The shouts of killing were shocked, and the Qing army under him looked at Sun Kewang's front army suddenly emerged from Feng Shuangli and Bai Wenxuan's camp. A few months ago, the scene of being designed by Li Dingguo and even the head coach's death appeared in the minds of the Qing army. The two sides collided slightly, and the rangers in front had not completely collapsed. Instead, the Qing army in the brigade fiddled with their horses and turned to escape, and the infantry behind wanted to grow a few more legs.
"Haha, what's so great about the Tartar soldiers? You can kill Li Dingguo, and I, Sun Kewang, can kill you too!"
Seeing the Qing army leaving behind some war horses and corpses rolling south, Sun Kewang, under the Dragon Banner, burst into laughter with pride and full of enthusiasm.
Since Li Dingguo killed Kong Youde, Sun Kewang felt that his prestige was suppressed, which was extremely unfavorable for his attempt to usurp the throne. He finally fought a great victory in Chenzhou, killed the Qing army's strong general Xu Yong, and recovered Chenzhou Prefecture. However, what he did not expect was that Li Dingguo, who was plotted by him the next day, was not only not defeated by the Qing army, but instead killed Prince Jing Jin Nikan, the commander of the Qing army.
The two famous kings were shocked, and the world was shocked. Sun Kewang determined that this brother, who had been more than 20 years, had posed a great threat to him, even to the point of being at stake in life and death.
Although he had failed to conspire to kill the man and seize his army, he also defeated the heavy army group formed by the Eight Banners of Manchu and Mongolia. Even though the results were only a few dozen, in Sun Kewang's view, as long as he vigorously promoted it, he would naturally get the same effect. Moreover, there is a chance to fight again. Now that he knows that the Eight Banners Power is not as terrible as he imagined, there will always be a chance in the future.
Chapter completed!