Chapter 1838: Blockade in the front and pursuit in the back

In the past two years, Takahashi Minami has rarely participated in front-line combat operations, because he also understands that his most important function is to command operations, rather than going to the front line to kill the enemy. However, this special situation at the moment

The combat environment rekindled his passion for participating in the battle. When he was swimming in the Qingchuan River, the scene of the battle in Annam even popped up in his mind. Armed swimming was one of his strengths at that time.

The leaders even joked that if they threw him into the sea in Annan, he could swim all the way back to Sanya.

After so many years, Gao Qiaonan's physical condition is definitely not as good as it was back then, but swimming across the Qingchuan River, which is more than 100 meters wide, is not a problem, not to mention that he has several subordinates with excellent water skills around him who are crossing the river.

Acting as his bodyguard in the process.

Gao Qiaonan successfully landed on the Shitan River on the other side, and immediately ordered the troops to be assembled as soon as possible to distribute weapons. However, after crossing the Qingchuan River, hundreds of Han soldiers were scattered on the river bank for as long as 10 miles due to differences in swimming abilities.

It took quite some time to regroup at night. After final counting, three people still disappeared in the Qingchuan River, but the situation was better than Takahashi Minami expected. There was no time to look for these missing people at the moment. Complete

After gathering, we rested on the river beach for about half an hour, and then walked upstream along the river bank.

Although it was not easy to swim and complete the assembly at night, it was not that difficult to find the target. In order to complete the bridge construction as soon as possible, the Qing army also lit fires at night to continue the work. The bright light in the Xiangshan Valley could be seen from a long distance away.

The logging team that arrived on the north bank of the Chongchuan River by raft before dark also carried out logging operations overnight with the help of fire lighting. This was an extremely conspicuous target for the Haihan Army.

There are tens of thousands of Qing army camps protecting the bridge construction site in the river valley, and there is no need to worry about the Haihan army in the mountains and forests on the south bank of the Chongchuan River attacking it. However, due to limited transportation capacity on the north bank, apart from the logging teams, there are only

A small number of Qing troops served as guards.

The troops led by Takahashi Nan slowly approached the logging area in the night. In order to prevent the Qing army from setting up an ambush in the dark, he specially arranged for the troops to slow down the advance and placed scouts who were good at platooning at the front to clear the way.

And this arrangement did have a significant effect. The scouts indeed saw through several hidden sentries of the Qing army along the way, and used crossbow arrows and personal assassination methods to quietly take down these hidden sentries.

It wasn't until the Haihan army advanced to the edge of the logging area that the Qing army finally discovered their existence. But at this time, the Qing army was in the light and the Haihan army in the dark had already formed an arc on the periphery.

The battle turned into a one-sided scene. Hundreds of unprepared Qing soldiers soon fell under the crossfire. Although the remaining people wanted to resist, the enemies hiding in the dark made them unable to fight.

Unable to exert any strength, he continued to fall under the constant barrage of cold gunfire.

Takahashi Minami also personally participated in the battle with a gun. Although he was not a sharpshooter, he spent more time handling guns than most people in the army during his military service. His combat experience was also first-class and rich. Even if he was in a battle formation for a long time,

But when he returned to this environment, he was still able to exert his due combat effectiveness. He was also very aware of his own strength, so he specifically looked for clearing troops in bright places to attack, which he could achieve at such a close combat distance.

Extremely high hit rate, hitting several targets in a short time.

By the time the Qing army thought of extinguishing the fire to hide their whereabouts, the overall situation of the battle here had been decided, and it was too late to extinguish the lighting. Some Qing soldiers who were lucky enough to escape did not dare to turn back and fight, so they could only jump into the river.

Swim towards the stone beach in the middle of the river.

The Qing army had noticed the fighting on the north bank, but was unable to rush to the rescue in time due to lack of ships. They could only watch helplessly as their companions on the other side rushed out of the forest, and then jumped into the river to escape accompanied by gunfire.

No one can answer the question why there was an enemy ambush in the mountains on the north bank. But one thing is certain, the Qing army's plan to cut down trees on the north bank will definitely be delayed. Huang Taiji was also very upset when he heard the news.

I think we should try our best to send more troops to the north coast to serve as escorts, so that the Haihan Army will not have the courage to launch a night attack.

After the battle, Takahashi Nan ordered the troops to gather, count the number of people, and clean the battlefield. The Haihan Army suffered a total of more than 40 casualties in this battle, but the results were relatively satisfactory, with more than 300 Qing soldiers killed and wounded.

, as for how many people failed to escape by jumping into the river in panic, it is unknown. The logging team sent by the Qing army to the north bank had only cut down about twenty trees, and was interrupted by this battle.

Qiaonan ordered all the logging tools found on the battlefield to be thrown into the river, and then led his troops to retreat about two miles away from the battle site to prevent the Qing army from launching a night attack in the same way.

At this time, the Qing army did not dare to use rafts to forcefully cross the river. Otherwise, the Haihan army with unknown strength on the north bank would attack them halfway across the river, and the damage in the battle might not be limited to the troops who were attacked earlier. Even if they were to make a comeback, then

We can only wait until dawn.

At this time, the most uneasy thing was that besides the Qing army, there were also the coalition forces remaining on the south bank of the Qingchuan River. The officers of the first battalion disapproved of Gao Qiaonan's decision to go into battle in person, because after he left, the coalition forces lacked action.

An authoritative commander is responsible for the deployment. If the troops swimming to the north bank do not fight smoothly and Takahashi Nan is unable to rejoin the main force, then the next battle will not be easy to fight, and it may even happen because of

Without him as the commander-in-chief of the former enemy, chaos ensued.

Fortunately, the Qing army did not expect this cross-river night attack at all, so the operation went relatively smoothly. After the battle, Gao Qiaonan sent an orderly soldier back to the south bank with his own password to issue combat instructions to the coalition forces.

With the current strength of the coalition forces, it is a very dangerous choice to divide the troops on both sides of the bank to fight the Qing army. If someone is accidentally entangled by the Qing army, the troops on the other side of the Qingchuan River will not be able to rush to the rescue. Therefore, Gaoqiao Nan gave troops on the south bank

The order was not to advance rashly, but to wait until dawn to see the movements of the Qing army before choosing an opportunity to launch a surprise attack, but not to get into a fight with the Qing army.

After dawn, the Qing army couldn't wait to organize a wave of cross-river assaults, but they failed. There was no trace of the Haihan army in the logging area, only the corpses of Qing soldiers scattered on the ground. Of course, the corpses that should have been left on the ground were

All the logging tools were naturally missing.

At this time, the Qing army had no time to organize and clean up the surrounding mountains and forests, so they had to quickly organize the next group of logging teams. Although they no longer had enough logging tools, they could only send more people to attack with swords.

The sword was naturally not as useful as an ax or saw when it was used to chop down thick trees, and the blade would soon break. But there was no other way to think of it at the moment. It was important to cross the river to escape, so I had to make do with it.

But Haihan's offensive will not end here. Throughout the morning, the Qing troops on both sides of the Qingchuan River were constantly attacked by sneak attacks from nearby mountains and forests. Although the intensity of these attacks may not be too great, and they often retreat after a while, but in the end

This made it difficult for the Qing army to concentrate all its attention on the operation of building a bridge to cross the river.

If you ignore it, what was clearly a sneak attack of hundreds of people quickly turned into a surprise attack of thousands of people, forcing the Qing army to mobilize large forces to fight against it. But when the Qing army really got into full swing and was ready to fight, the enemy

But quietly disappeared into the mountains and forests again. Such guerrilla warfare made the Qing army very uncomfortable. Huang Taiji wanted to order the troops to disperse into the mountains and forests several times to carry out clearing operations, but his reason reminded him that this might be what the enemy wanted to achieve.

Purpose, I could only endure this tone of voice.

Despite the embarrassing situation of interception before and pursuit of troops, the Qing army successfully penetrated the marching channel across the Qingchuan River at noon that day. Two simple wooden bridges connected the north and south banks to the stone beach in the center of the river, allowing

The large Qing army on the south bank could finally withdraw to the north more calmly.

After all, the coalition follow-up troops coming from the lower reaches of the Qingchuan River failed to catch up with this opportunity. Although Gao Qiaonan was unwilling, he also knew that his troops had limited strength and could not take the risk of forcing the Qing army to cross the river.

We can still only carry out harassment operations on the periphery.

Although the Qing army seemed to be in a passive state of being beaten, tens of thousands of troops could still take turns to deal with the harassment of the Haihan army. The troops led by Takahashi Minami were already in a very tired state after marching and fighting in the wild for days.

There are not many supplies left, combat effectiveness is slowly declining, and battle losses are increasing.

Gao Qiaonan used a telescope to observe the traffic conditions of the wooden bridge built by the Qing army from a distance, and quickly calculated that its capacity was about three to four thousand people per hour. However, the rafts that the Qing army continued to launch could still carry at least three to four thousand people per hour.

Send one or two thousand people across the river, so at most the Qing army can basically move to the north bank after dark tonight.

Takahashi Nan waited patiently until the afternoon, and finally received news of reinforcements. An infantry battalion coming from the lower reaches by boat had arrived at the place where they swam last night, and found the mark they left on the stone beach on the river bank.

They had already landed on the shore and arrived. However, due to the limited navigation conditions in the upper reaches of the Qingchuan River, all the combat ships of the coalition fleet could not reach here, so there were only a few troop transport ships provided by the North Koreans, so there was no need to count on those coming from the river.

The heavy firepower on it was output.

But objectively speaking, in the face of tens of thousands of Qing troops, just one battalion of reinforcements cannot actually completely change the balance of strength between the two sides, nor is it enough to intercept the Qing troops in this valley. What Gaoqiao Nan can do currently is

It is to use the two infantry battalions in hand plus more than a thousand coalition soldiers to cause as much damage to the Qing army as possible and increase the consumption on their retreat.

The straight-line distance from the Xiangshan Valley to the Yalu River in the northwest is about two hundred miles. However, the Qing army has penetrated deep into the interior of Korea in order to cross the river to escape. From here to the Yalu River are continuous mountainous areas, so the actual journey is at least

About three to four hundred miles.

The supplies of the Qing army are about to bottom out, and they only have four or five days of rations left at most. Now they can't expect to get a lot of supplies in this sparsely populated mountainous area. They can only evacuate north as soon as possible and try to return to the Qing territory as soon as possible.

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In fact, the Haihan Army also faced the same problem. Because they were eager to catch up with the Qing Army, the two troops that rushed here did not carry too much supplies. After going deep into the inland, it was difficult for both the coalition forces and the North Koreans to attack the Qing army.

A logistics transportation line was built for them in a short period of time. Therefore, the troops led by Takahashi Minami will probably have to work hard for a few more days in the next battle.

Although there was no good way to take down the large Qing army, the coalition forces still managed to capture the 3,000 soldiers and horses left behind by the Qing army. After the two Jia La Er Zhen who led the team were each killed by stray bullets, the remaining

The Qing army soon became scattered and had no intention of fighting the allied forces. Some Qing troops couldn't wait to cross the river from the wooden bridge, so they jumped directly into the river and swam forcefully, while others chose to flee into the nearby mountains and forests.

, probably with the idea of ​​waiting for the limelight to pass before finding a place to cross the river and return home. However, a considerable number of Qing troops were still besieged on the stone beach on the south bank of the Xiangshan Valley. After some futile resistance, they quickly evolved.

It became a one-sided killing.

At least a thousand Qing soldiers were shot dead by the coalition forces with muskets and other weapons on the rocky beach. Their blood even stained part of the river downstream. The coalition forces were red-eyed, especially when they were suppressed by Gao Qiaonan in the past few days.

The Korean soldiers who were unable to go to the battlefield burst out with uncontrollable ferocity at this time and killed all the Qing troops on the river bank.

After hearing about this incident, Takahashi Nan did not give any special instructions. He knew that the Korean army finally had a chance to vent, and naturally he would throw all his long-suffering anger on the Qing army, which was unable to resist.

If these Qing soldiers were left to serve as prisoners of war, it would probably be difficult for North Korea to deal with them, and Haihan didn't want to take on such a hot potato. Killing them all would be a way to make it easier for all parties.

In the next few days, both sides escaped and chased each other, launching a brutal tug-of-war in the mountains and forests of northern Korea. In order for the main force to escape smoothly, the Qing army frequently resorted to tail-cutting to survive, each time.

Allocate a few powerful Qing soldiers to act as suicide squads to slow down the pursuers. Although this trick is simple, it is indeed effective. When the coalition forces encounter these desperadoes, they can only clean them out before they can continue to move forward.

Push forward. After two or three days, the main force of the Qing army had already stretched out half a day's journey, and basically no one could be seen.

However, the march route of the Qing army did not go directly to the Yalu River, because the other side was also deserted and rolling mountains, and even if they crossed the river, there would still be no supplies. Therefore, they planned to go to the lower reaches of the Yalu River first, looting Korean villages and towns along the way to obtain supplies, and wait for the march.

Arrive at Uiju and then cross the river to return home.
Chapter completed!