The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 486: Post-War Remnant (I)

Time flies. It is already mid-March and spring plowing in Zhili has started for more than ten days.

Longfeng Village, southwest of Yongqing County, Shuntian Prefecture.

Although there were fully armed vanguard soldiers standing guard at the entrance of the village and on the streets, and even neatly lined teams of patrol soldiers passing by on the streets from time to time, the villagers were not prohibited from passing in and out.

In front of a large house in the village, Teng Yuzhao and Xu Shichang, who was dressed in military uniform, stood side by side on the steps. They talked and laughed in low voices, looking towards the village entrance from time to time.

Teng Yuzhao has led his troops to Yongqing for more than half a month. Today, he and Xu Shichang were outside the headquarters to welcome Yang Shixiang, who had just accompanied Li Hongzhang to Baoding and then rushed to Yongqing without stopping.

Just standing on the steps, basking in the warm spring sun, Teng Yuzhao and Xu Shichang chatted and talked about the battle that happened a month ago.

Originally, one month ago.

In the Taihang Mountains, the vanguard army defeated the Eight-Nation Alliance. After successively destroying the main forces of the Russian and Japanese coalition forces, it immediately marched eastward without stopping.

Li Xianze led the Second Regiment, Pan Jinshan's Sixth Regiment and the Imperial Guard Association, starting from Tangyin, and recovered 22 prefectures and counties including Baoding where the Zhili Governor-General's Office was located. They wiped out the coalition forces from Tangyin in the south to Zhuozhou in the north, and eliminated a total of more than 56,000 coalition forces from various countries.

It even forced the 20,000-strong German-French coalition force attacking Niangzi Pass to abandon their attack on the pass, hastily withdraw from the mountains, and flee northward overnight.

Wu Peifu led the two relatively intact brigades of the Fifth Regiment to pursue the more than 30,000 Japanese and Russian coalition forces that had escaped from the Qingzhang River Valley. During the pursuit, he annihilated most of the extremely exhausted coalition forces.

In order to escape pursuit, the hungry remnants of the Allied forces not only abandoned all the ammunition and supplies they carried, but most of them dropped their guns and fled with their bare hands. Among the weapons and ammunition picked up along the way by Wu Peifu and his troops, there were more than 10,000 rifles alone, 52 heavy machine guns, and countless ammunition.

Even so, in the end, with the support of a brigade of British troops defending Lin County, only about 10,000 remnants of the Allied Forces were able to escape into Lin County.

It is somewhat regrettable that although this pursuit battle achieved fruitful results, it still did not capture the main officers of the Japanese and Russian armies. It only killed a dozen battalion commanders, regiment commanders and school-level officers of the Japanese and Russian armies.

Afterwards, Teng Yuzao personally commanded Liu Shijiu's Fourth Regiment, Li Jinyu's Eighth Regiment, and the artillery town with unprecedentedly powerful firepower to rush to Lin County.

Although Teng Yuzao had more than 10,000 troops, he did not launch an attack on Lin County immediately. Instead, he used the Fifth Regiment, the Sixth Regiment and the Artillery Regiment to surround Lin County, the headquarters of the Southern Allied Forces, and made a gesture of attacking Lin County, encircling it without attacking.

Liu Shijiu led the Fourth Town, which was equipped with all the mortars less than 100 mm controlled by the artillery town, and marched overnight to attack Hejian.

That night, the Linxiang defenders, who had become frightened birds, and the remnants of the Japanese-Russian Allied Forces who had just fled into Lin County, began to abandon the city and break out from the South City, which Teng Yuzhao deliberately left for the Allied Forces to break out.

Outside the city, more than 20,000 coalition forces were intercepted by the well-prepared Fifth and Sixth Regiments, killing Zhang Oshima Hisanao of the 9th Division of the Japanese Army and more than 15,000 coalition forces of Japan, Russia and Britain, and seizing a large number of weapons, ammunition and military supplies stored by the coalition forces in Lin County.

Among them, the British army used 3,000 Lee-Enfield rifles, the French army used 2,000 Lebel rifles, and 40 Maxim and Hotchkiss heavy machine guns. The amount of ammunition was even greater, especially the number of shells of various calibers.

The old superior who rushed to attack Hejian led his troops to Hejian before three o'clock in the morning of the next day. After the troops rested for only an hour, they launched a fierce attack on a French brigade in Hejian.

Although this brigade was a pure French army that came from France, it was not very adaptable to night combat, close combat and mountain warfare. After just one hour of resistance, it was defeated by the 4th Regiment, which was known for its fierce attacks and charges. In this battle, more than 8,000 French soldiers were killed and only more than 1,000 French soldiers escaped.

After capturing Hejian, Liu Shijiu did not stop. After hurriedly eating breakfast, he led the Fourth Town back into the mountains and took shelter in the mountains from Houyao to Hongling.

After capturing Lin County, Teng Yuzhao did not stay for too long. He arranged for the Eighth Regiment to leave an assistant in Lin County to guard the huge amount of spoils, and then led his troops to Hejian to be on high alert, waiting for the British and French forces in the middle to come out.

After the Japanese-Russian Allied Forces fled to Lin County, the defenders immediately reported the situation to the British-French Allied Forces and the German troops in the south.

Upon learning that the Japanese-Russian coalition forces in the north had suffered a major defeat, and that almost all of their forces were wiped out, both the British and French coalition forces and the German forces in the southernmost part immediately gave up their attempts to capture Lingchuan, and instead turned around and retreated, eager to get out of the mountains.

At this time, Hu Dianjia, who was escorting the prisoners and seized weapons, ammunition and supplies, had not yet returned to Luzhou Prefecture. He had just arrived at Huangniuti, which was still dozens of miles away from entering Luzhou.

Fortunately, Hu Dianjia was worried that the situation would change again, so he sent people back in advance to report the victory in the north to Wei Jinghai and Liu Yuzhi who stayed in Luzhou Prefecture, and to convey Teng Yuzhao's orders.

Seeing the British and French forces retreating, he did not dare to delay and reported the situation to Wei Jinghai.

While Wei Jinghai conveyed orders to Cao Futian's Independent Column, which was responsible for blocking the German attack from the south, he also sent someone to inform Hu Dianjia of the retreat of the British and French forces.

At the same time, Wei Jinghai decisively bypassed Hu Dianjia, the commander-in-chief of the Luzhou Prefecture designated by Teng Yuzhao, and ordered Liu Yuzhi to immediately lead his troops to follow and pursue.

The British and French allied forces retreated out of the mountain in a panic, and the distance between the main force and the rearguard troops who were fighting and retreating unknowingly widened to nearly 20 miles.

This gave Liu Shijiu, who was in the mountains near Houyao, an opportunity. He immediately led his troops to attack, cutting off the connection between the Anglo-French allied forces' rearguard and the main force. Together with Liu Yuzhi's First Town, which was in pursuit, they surrounded and annihilated the 20,000 British East India troops at the rear.

After the main force of the British and French coalition forces failed to rescue, the coalition commander Gasley decisively abandoned the rearguard troops and quickly rushed out of the mountains.

The British and French allied forces who escaped from the mountains were hit head-on by Teng Yuzhao in Hejian. Gasley knew that the situation was extremely unfavorable to them. Even the German troops in the south had withdrawn from the mountains and rushed to Nankang. The total strength of the allied forces had reached more than 180,000. Gasley still commanded the British, French and German allied forces without hesitation, turned directly eastward, dived into the wide Xihe River Valley, ran all the way to Dahejian through Nanzhuang and Dongyao, and stopped.

It’s not that Gasley was not in a hurry to escape, but he learned that Tangyin had been captured by the vanguard army a day ago.

With the enemy blocking them from the front and the enemy chasing them from the back, this critical situation caused the nearly 200,000 coalition troops to panic.
(End of this chapter)