Moreover, Zhu You also found a way out and got more than a dozen Folang machines, which greatly enhanced the defense capabilities of Qingzhou City.

In addition, when the White Lotus Sect was in rebellion, it happened that the Shandong Left Administration Commissioner led 5,000 newly trained Ming army to go to Laizhou to follow Fan Jingwen to make a military contribution. He happened to arrive in Qingzhou and was forced to retreat back to Qingzhou City to defend, which also added 5,000 troops to Qingzhou.

In the past few days, information from all walks of life has been continuously summarized. He was quite satisfied with the results achieved by Deng Deming and Li Xianneng. He almost wiped out the forwards of Zu Kuan's troops and captured Zu Kuan himself alive. His goal was to achieve it.

Now they adapted to the situation. Before the main force of the Ming army arrived, they attacked several cities near Boxing and moved food and grass back in advance to increase the pressure on the Ming army's logistics supply. Kong Youde naturally agreed with this.

The navy is now preparing various preparations. According to Xu Wenyi's letter, their preparations went smoothly. After sending people to contact Dongjiang Town, eight islands, including Changsheng Island, have expressed their willingness to submit.

Of course, there are also oppositions. For example, under the rule of Shen Shikui, Pidao has clearly refused to surrender. I heard that if it weren't for his subordinates, no one who went to negotiate would come back.

There are also some islands, and there is no news yet, and most of them are still waiting and watching, but this doesn't matter. When the main force of the navy arrives, I believe they will make wise choices.

The military operation is scheduled for the third day of September. At that time, the main force of the navy will go straight to the islands of Dongjiang Town from Weihaiwei to receive the islands that have shown their intention to surrender, and then launch an attack on the islands that are resisting stubbornly, trying to end the battle before the tenth day of September.

In addition, the fleet responsible for harassing North Korea has set out, including two No. 1 Fu Ship, three No. 2 Fu Ship, three No. 3 Fu Ship, and four accompanying transport ships, a total of eleven ships.

They will directly attack Jeju Island according to the original plan, annihilate the Korean navy stationed at the port of Jeju Island, and then two infantry brigades landed and seize control of Jeju Island.

Then Jeju Island was handed over to the army to guard it, and the navy fleet headed to the south of Jeolla and Gyeongsang Road to attack coastal towns.

At the same time, they also brought the Third Independent Battalion, which was the previous Dongyang Camp, and they played the role of "Japanese pirates invading" to attract the attention of North Korea and prevented them from sending the navy to Dongjiang Town.

Based on these days, the search for all information about the North Korean navy and the evaluation of the strength of the North Korean navy has made this squadron sufficient to complete this mission.

In addition, the two battalion commanders Deng Deming and Li Xianneng did a good job. Mao Chengfu, as the commander of the Second Division, was not idle, and he was carrying out another important task.

According to Mao Chengfu's report, he had personally led the third battalion yesterday and arrived at the hinterland of Mount Tai, where he could launch an attack on Jinan at any time.

Of course, his mission was not to capture Jinan City, but to disperse the Ming army's forces.

This time, the imperial court dispatched 130,000 troops. Even if the five thousand people who were destroyed by Zu Kuan and the 20,000 miscellaneous cards were removed, there were still more than 100,000 people. Such troops even the Tartars had to avoid the edge.

In the Battle of Sarhu, the Ming army was actually not bad in all aspects, but due to the terrain, they had to divide their troops to advance. Finally, they gave the old wild boar skin the opportunity, used the intelligence and the advantage of familiarity with the terrain to fight a time difference, formed advantageous forces in the local area, and finally defeated them one by one.

Kong Youde also wanted to play like this, but unfortunately there was not such a good terrain for him to operate like this. Most of Shandong is plains, most of the mountains are located in Dengzhou and Laizhou, and the rest are mainly distributed in the Taishan Mountains south of Jinan. There is no such situation where there are mountains for hundreds of miles and only a few roads.

However, it is still possible to divide the Ming army into divisions. He fought defensive battles, and it was no problem to divide one or two cavalry battalions. Anyway, there were two cavalry battalions, as well as cavalry brigades, squadrons, reconnaissance squadrons, etc. under the other divisions, and there were nearly 10,000 people in total, which was enough to deal with the enemy's cavalry.

The order he gave Mao Chengfu was very simple, which was to do everything possible to restrain the Ming army's forces. No matter where he went to fight, it depends on his own wishes. Even if he went to fight Beijing, Kong Youde would not stop him. The purpose was to divide the troops and defend the Ming army.

However, they were still required to maintain military discipline, even in the enemy-occupied areas, food and supplies, and to seize them from the Ming army as much as possible, or from the local gentry and powerful people. They must not invade ordinary people, so as not to corrupt the reputation that the Tiance Army finally established.

According to the information sent back by Mao Chengfu, he meant to go and attack Jinan, and Kong Youde agreed. He asked him to do it himself, but he should try to minimize casualties. He cannot force it.

It is best to be able to defeat some prisoners. Then, maybe they can hold on in Jinan for a few days to attract more troops.

It doesn't matter if you can't fight. Don't force yourself to do it. It's not worth it to endure the loss in the end. As long as you attack with great fanfare, the goal will be achieved.

Jinan is not an ordinary place. First of all, Prince De is here. Although the prince is not as good as a pig, once the prince is killed, the political enemy can make a fuss on the charge of "losing a relative's vassal". I believe that Liu Yulie, the trusted governor of Shandong, dare not take this risk.

The official position of Liu Yulie was also specially established by the court. Fan Jingwen became the governor of Shandong because Xu Congzhi had been killed before this. However, when the court organized the second wave of rebellion, Fan Jingwen was still alive and could not be removed at a critical moment. He could only give Liu Yulie a new official position - the Governor-General of Shandong to suppress the rebellion and suppress the thieves.

In addition, Jinan's military location is also very important. It is located in the hinterland of Shandong. It is very convenient to attack Dongchang to the west, Yanzhou to the southwest, and Zhili to the north. Moreover, the Grand Canal of Jinghang is thousands of miles in Shandong, so it is easy to attack from Jinan at any point.

In this way, for the sake of Jinan's security, the Ming army must send more troops to defend themselves to prevent any mistakes in Jinan. In this way, the pressure on the front battlefield can be reduced a lot.

Kong Youde is still very confident about whether Mao Chengfu can achieve such an effect. Mao Chengfu is one of the oldest people in the army, and has a lot of combat experience and has a deep understanding of guerrilla warfare theory.

The third battalion was also formed based on the original cavalry battalion. There were only more than 20% of the new recruits, and the veterans were very strong. Now the troops of the three Western prefectures are empty. If the operation is done properly, it is not impossible for them to take turns to fight the three prefectures.

Speaking of which, the action arranged for Mao Chengfu this time is quite similar to that of the Li bandits.

However, the only thing to worry about is another vanguard led by Zu Dabi. When the Ming army divided two vanguard troops out, Zu Kuan's one attacked Qingzhou, and Zu Dabi's one went south along the canal, then went ashore from Linqing, heading eastward through Dongchang and Jinan, and then fell Qingzhou.

According to the information, Zu Dabi's troops did not know what happened. They just came ashore yesterday, and now they are probably only in Gaotang.

But Kong Youde had already figured out a way to deal with it. This method was very simple, which was to incorporate the horse thief. It was not a novel way, but also the old tricks used by Xu Congzhi and Xie Lian at the time. He copied them, and it could be used better than them.

The horse thief is a specialty of Shandong. There are many reasons for the horse thief. The first is the terrain conditions. Although there are no other mountains similar to endless mountains in the east and west of Shandong except for the Taishan Mountains, there are many hilly areas, which provide a place for the horse thief to hide.

Secondly, Shandong has been densely populated since ancient times. Compared with the two Denglai Prefectures, the population of Yanzhou Prefecture in the southwest is estimated to be 2.5 million or even 3 million. The land annexation is very serious. However, it is still a place where the Yellow River flows through, with many floods and droughts. Once a natural disaster occurs and the government's relief is unfavorable, large-scale famine will occur, and in order to survive, they will become bandits.

With the influence of horse politics, war horses are not scarce materials, so it is reasonable to gather large-scale bandits.

In the past six months, in order to deal with the increasingly expanding Tiance Army and the Bailian Cult, the Shandong government had to focus on fighting the rebellion and war, and the efforts to clear the rebellion in the country were greatly reduced. In addition, in order to raise military expenses, the lower-level officials took the opportunity to plunder the oil. The burden on ordinary people became increasingly heavy, so the rebellion became stronger naturally.

According to the information provided by the White Lotus Sect, most of the horses in Qingzhou Prefecture were incorporated by them. The scale of the horses in the Western Prefectures is not small. It is said that there are 20,000 to 30,000, and there are six or seven stocks with more than 1,000 people alone. The specific amount is still unclear.

Only a very small number of these horses are ancestral professions. Most of them choose to become bandits because of disasters or really unable to survive. Some people have committed suicide lawsuits, but only a few of them.

When Mao Chengfu set out this time, Kong Youde gave him a lot of appointment letters, including the organization of three cavalry battalions. As long as he is willing to surrender to the Tiance Army, his reputation is not too bad and he is willing to abide by the Tiance Army's discipline, he can be reorganized.

As for the unwillingness to surrender to the Xiangma thief, there is no need to pay attention to it for the time being. As long as they do not come up to cause trouble on their own initiative, they will go with them. Harassing the Ming army's defense is the most important thing.

On September 1st, according to the scheduled plan, Kong Youde brought a half-artillery battalion and an infantry division to the city of Qingzhou.

In addition to Wang Lin, the four senior officials of the White Lotus Sect, Hou Ba, Xu Shiming, Wang Haoda and Wang Haofei, have been waiting for a long time.

"Welcome General Kong!"

"You are kind to you!"

Hou Ba still looked servile, but the two brothers Wang Haoda, although they were very etiquette, could still see that they were not very interested in themselves, as if they were not convinced by themselves.

However, Kong Youde didn't care. Anyway, they were all cannon fodder, and after gaining a foothold, they still had to deal with them.

Xu Shiming no longer had the arrogance she had before, and replaced it with a sense of inexplicable stability and a hint of confusion. It seems that the setbacks in military operations over the past few months made her realize that war is not that simple. She has also grown up in the war and no longer looks like she is the eldest and the second.

It seems that the failure of this attack on Qingzhou has a great blow to her. Their forces were almost 120,000, and the defenders in Qingzhou only had 15,000. As a result, they fought for more than three months but failed to defeat them.

This made her very disappointed. She was a little confused. Why was Kong Youde able to defeat Fan Jingwen with 10,000 people? They had an absolute advantage in military strength, but could not win Qingzhou City.

Could it be that as Kong Youde said at the beginning, they only know some evil ways and bewitch people's hearts?

"Since everyone is here, I won't talk nonsense. I brought people here to help you take down Qingzhou City. Now it's time to talk about the main business!"

After scanning the surrounding environment, Kong Youde was straightforward.

"I wonder how many soldiers and horses General Kong has brought to assist us in the battle this time?"

At this time, an arrogant voice sounded. Kong Youde couldn't help but turn his head and look at it. He found that it was Wang Haoda. At the same time, he also found that Xu Shiming and Hou Ba were waiting for him with anger on their faces. Kong Youde understood what was going on.

But the answer said, "Ten Thousand!"

"What? Ten thousand people? Could General Kong come to spend the time we wait?"

"The guardian of the king, his three-year-old son is a human being, and a seven-foot-strong man is also a human being! My ten thousand people are not the same as your ten thousand people, don't confuse me! Kong Youde responded bluntly.

Wang Haoda's face suddenly turned red. How could he not hear it? Kong Youde's words were just disguised saying that he was full of waste, even a three-year-old child.

Seeing him like this, Kong Youde added, "Share good news with you. Just two days ago, our Tiance Army successfully destroyed the troops of Wu Sangui, the vanguard of the Guanning Army, and at the same time annihilated Zu Kuan's troops and captured Zu Kuan himself alive!"

Hearing this, Wang Haoda, who had originally planned to argue, immediately did not dare to answer the conversation.

If you continue, it would be a slap in the face. Wu Sangui's appearance at the beginning of "hundred cavalry defeating ten thousand enemies", which almost made him lose his life. Now Kong Youde suddenly mentioned Wu Sangui, just reminding him of this matter.

Without paying attention to Wang Haoda, Kong Youde asked Xu Shiming, "How many troops can you send to attack the city this time?"

"Thirty thousand people!"

"It's almost done, but are you sure that these are all allowed to participate in the siege?"

"Sure!"

"That's good! This time you are responsible for attacking the South Gate and the East Gate. How you fought before, and how you will fight now, and how to arrange your internal discussions! Our Tiance Army in the North Gate will attack. Do you have any questions?"

Xu Shiming was a little puzzled and said, "General Kong, is that simple?"

Kong Youde said without hesitation, "It's that simple! You don't have to do much. Just launch a normal attack. It doesn't matter if you can't fight. Leave the task of breaking the city to us! To put it bluntly, you are responsible for restraining the enemy's troops. Isn't that clear enough?"
Chapter completed!