The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 250 The Key Transformation

Generally speaking, peasant uprisings have limitations.

Therefore, from ancient times to the present, the only person who could truly leap from a peasant uprising army to become the ruler of the world was the Ming Taizu, who could at most be considered an Emperor Gaozu of Han.

Others, such as Huang Chao, the Jintong Emperor of the Great Qi Dynasty, Li Zicheng, the Yongchang Emperor of the Great Shun Dynasty, and Hong Tianwang, the second son of the Emperor, have all reached very high ceilings.

The biggest limitation is not in establishing systems and appointing officials, but in choosing and discarding.

To put it simply, gain and loss refer to the coordination and distribution of interests. Since ancient times, the fundamentals of politics and even governance have been here.

Peasant uprisings often come from small groups and are limited by poor material supplies. As the saying goes, they have suffered enough and want to monopolize and share any good things with their own people.

This does not mean that farmers are selfish in character, but that this habit has become an animal instinct deeply hidden in their genes due to the repeated hardships of poverty, which requires great perseverance to restrain.

Therefore, it is difficult for most leaders of peasant uprisings to be open-minded about the word "sacrifice".

Ruan Yue encountered the same problem.

Since the founding of the Xishan Army, he has been obsessed with regaining power, but at the same time he is quite stingy and unwilling to pay a fair price for the power he has regained.

For example, although Li Jiting is violent and difficult to control, it is far from the time to exclude him, let alone harm him.

But Nguyen Van Yue did just that, and his followers followed suit. Since its inception, the entire Tây Sơn Army has revealed a sense of pettiness.

This also directly affected the unity and atmosphere within the Tây Sơn Army, so that at this point, it was clear that Nguyen Van Hue went out of the city for a night attack in order to save everyone from death.

Moreover, after his failure, disaster was about to happen, and a fierce quarrel broke out within the Xishan Army.

This quarrel was not about the battle plan or the future route, but an opportunity for the leaders to cause trouble.

They forced Nguyen Van Yue to give an explanation and pay a price for the defeat, completely ignoring the fact that the military camps outside the city were being continuously eliminated.

. . . .

Cheers came from the hillside of a small hill. The battle to remove the stronghold outside the city was finally over. Anren City, exposed to the Xing Tang Army, had no moat, no city wall or anything.

It was just an ordinary loess rammed-wall city with several trenches dug in all directions outside the city. One was to avoid artillery fire, and the other was to restrict the advance of the Xing Tang Army's artillery carts.

Mo Zibu looked at the scorching sun in the sky and wisely waved his hand, rejecting the suggestion of his generals to attack the city immediately.

He still needs to wait, mainly to wait for the battle reports from Chen Guangyao and Reinstein.

Because Renhai Town and Shita Temple are the two gaps on the left and right of Anren City, in order to encircle and annihilate the Xishan Army in Anren City, at least one of these two sides must be broken through, so that they can move diagonally to encircle them.

Shita Temple is an ancient temple outside Qui Nhon City. Its history can be traced back to the early days of Champa. Although it has long been in decline, it is a witness to the power of Champa.

Therefore, Shita Temple covers a very large area, is surrounded by stone walls, and is located halfway up the mountain, making it easy to defend and difficult to attack.

Pan Wensui, who was stationed here, was also Nguyen Van Yue's confidant. Thousands of people gathered on the mountain to defend it.

Encountering such a hedgehog, Reinstein had no good solution. The mountain roads were rugged and field artillery could not be transported up there, not even mortars with a slightly larger caliber could be used.

So he could only get some small-caliber mortars and some tiger squat cannons, surround them, and nibble upwards little by little.

Pan Wensui was also a ruthless man. He was bombarded every day, and even his face was swollen by the fragments of stone bullets, but he still persevered.

But in Renhai Town on the other side, the situation is different.

Mo Zibu had long considered that Shita Temple was easy to defend but difficult to attack, so he placed his hopes for a major breakthrough on Renhai Town.

Chen Guangyao took away the Longqi and Baima regiments of Jiading Town. The officers and soldiers in these two regiments were either from the Mo family's hometown in western Guangdong, or from the Chen family in Jiading and other Mingxiang people.

Therefore, they are well-equipped and their combat effectiveness is quite good under the training of a large number of French instructors.

Renhai Town is really just a town built at the intersection of mountains and rivers, and there are not many places to defend.

Although Ruan Zhuang was the third in command of the Xishan Army, he was just a local tyrant from a small place and his ability was far inferior to that of the three Xishan brothers, which was why he started the uprising earlier.

He had more than 10,000 men under his command, but only a thousand of them were capable of fighting, and the rest were bandits and civilians who were forced to join forces.

So the battle on Chen Guangyao's side is very simple.

When he first arrived at Renhai Town, Ruan Tuhao saw that Chen Guangyao only had five or six thousand people and he had twice as many as the enemy, so what was he waiting for? He started fighting them while they were still unstable.

Then, the more than 5,000 people mobilized by Ruan Zhuan were directly defeated by the more than 800 vanguards of the Dragon Flag Regiment, with 600 to 700 casualties, and they fled back to Renhai Town in a panic.

Afterwards, they changed from taking the initiative to attacking to defending the city behind closed doors. After Chen Guangyao set up the cannons, Nguyen Tuhao's army was hiding in Renhai Town and suffered heavy casualties in the bombing.

Deserters appeared in the early morning of the next day, so Chen Guangyao quickly seized the opportunity and entered the city with his elite troops.

By noon, the battle had ended and Ruan Tuhao's army had collapsed. The local tyrant was nowhere to be found, and Chen Guangyao was sending people to hunt him down.

"Report to the General that our army has captured Renhai Town. Please dispatch the Longxiang Guards Cavalry Battalion to assist in outflanking the main force of the Xishan bandits."

Chen Guangyao breathed a sigh of relief. There were many Chen family members in the Dragon Flag Regiment. When the general first entered Jiading, the performance of the Chen family's young men was not good, which even lowered the status of the Chen family.

Now it seems that after nearly half a year of training, the combat effectiveness has caught up with the pace of the main force, so the Western Fan officers are still quite experienced.

At least now, the Jiading Town Dragon Flag Regiment and the Bianhe Regiment, which are led by the Chen family, can easily defeat the ordinary Xishan Army, which has more than twice their number.

Mo Zibu was overjoyed when he received the battle report from Chen Guangyao. Now that Renhai Town had broken through, they could start attacking Anren City without having to worry about Ruan Wenyue's army escaping calmly.

"Send an order to Brigadier General Reinstein, telling him not to rush. The most important thing is to trap Phan Van Thuy and his thousands of men. They are Nguyen Van Nhut's trusted troops and must be completely wiped out."

"Have Pierre Ney lead the cavalry towards Renhai Town and block the Tây Sơn army's retreat route by taking a detour."

Mo Zibu made arrangements, and the Xishan Army in the city ended their final quarrel.

Nguyen Van Yue paid a considerable amount of land, treasures and women to appease the leaders who took the opportunity to cause trouble.

Then the leaders, both big and small, thought that since the elite troops could not win, they should send the entire army to test the quality of the large army in a joint battle.

On the first day of August, after the Xingtang Army and the Xishan Army had been confronting each other for more than 20 days, all the strongholds outside Anren City had been eliminated, and the Xishan Army's military supplies began to become a problem, the decisive battle finally arrived.

The Tây Sơn army was fully mobilized, 23,000 men forming a battle array with their backs to An Nhon City, divided into four groups: left, center, right, and rear. Before the battle, Nguyen Van Nghơn had even gone so far as to send a declaration of war to Mo Tz Bắc, perhaps fearing that Mo Tz Bắc would not come out to fight him.

Are you kidding? How could Mo Zibu miss such a good opportunity? He also wanted to test the army's ability to participate in a battle involving tens of thousands of people.

Yes, in Mo Zibu's mind, the battle was over when Nguyen Hue's 2,500 men were unable to defeat the 27th Company, which had only three field guns, in just over an hour.

The gap between the two sides is too great.

Sure enough, at the beginning of the battle, the Xishan Army attacked from three sides. They pushed shield carts made of door panels, sacks of sand and gravel, and slowly advanced. Behind the carts followed musketeers and hand-to-hand combatants who were ready in sequence.

The main strategy is to charge forward with one shot fired, which is the only strategy that the Xishan Army, which is at a disadvantage in firearms equipment, can use.

However, the Xing Tang Army was no longer the traditional oriental firearms force of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The new field artillery it was equipped with was flexible in movement and easy to adjust the angle.

Colonel Louis Coulon, who was commanding the front, saw that the enemy was so resilient, and immediately ordered the two assembled artillery battalions to disperse, return to their original regiments, move quickly to the flank of the Xishan Army, and bombard the rear of the Xishan Army from the side and rear.

The shield carts in front were dealt with by light infantry who went forward to cover the grenadiers.

The light infantry of the Xingtang Army were generally dispersed among various companies. When they needed to gather, they would be united into a light infantry battalion led by Li Quan, the adjutant of the Hakka Second Regiment and the general flag, to fight.

The so-called light infantry refers to the general situation in which they are equipped with smoothbore rifles and can only rely on quantity to make up for accuracy and firepower.

Some sharpshooters are equipped with rifles to carry out precise sniping.

The Baker rifles currently equipped by the Xingtang Army have very high accuracy. Although they are limited by the industrial level and cannot develop metal fixed ammunition, the loading speed is relatively slow, but they are still very useful for hitting high-value targets.

As the shield carts of the Xishan Army continued to advance, more than 300 light infantrymen of Li Quan's light infantry battalion were scattered in the area between the two armies.

At a distance of two hundred meters, they continued to accurately snipe any Xishan soldiers who dared to show their heads from behind the shield vehicles.

At the same time, the Xingtang Army's artillery, which had a high maneuverability, dispersed and immediately bombarded the Xishan Army's rear from all angles.

These people were restricted in speed by the shield carts and could not move very fast, making them the best targets for artillery.

Most of the artillery of the Xishan Army was a product of more than a hundred years ago. It was difficult to move and had a slow rate of fire, so it rarely caused heavy casualties to the Xingtang Army.

This four or five hundred meter journey has become a road to death.

When they had marched about 150 meters, the Xishan Army infantrymen who had been waiting behind the shield carts according to the rules could no longer withstand the bombardment and all rushed to the front.

But in this case, the shield car's function is completely lost.

Upon seeing this, the commander of the center, Louis Coulon, immediately ordered the light infantry to retreat, and the grenadiers also retreated. Rapid drumbeats sounded, and the line infantry of the Xing Tang Army advanced in formation.

The uniform pace and relatively neat uniforms created enormous pressure, which would scare away the cowards, but the Xishan Army was brave.

"Kill the southern bandits and get gold and silver!" An officer of the Xishan Army wearing a conical hat and a green short coat roared, as if he had released the seal of the army.

In an instant, countless Xishan soldiers roared and started running wildly, and the musketeers in the front raised their muskets one after another.

The drumbeats of the Xing Tang Army became more frequent. Each company was flanked by officers, followed by non-commissioned officers - veterans, and the recruits were tightly squeezed in the middle.

In the middle of each horizontal row of companies, there were two or three military judges wearing large black hats with white painted brims. Not only would someone desert the battlefield, but even if they delayed moving forward, they could be punished by military law.

And between every two infantry companies, there is a grenadier company.

They are the elite of the army, so they do not need to be watched by officers, and their formation is also dispersed. They can choose at any time to drop bombs collectively or disperse to both wings to drop bombs according to their needs.

About a hundred meters away, with a bang, the Xishan Army's musketeers opened fire, and the smoke of black gunpowder instantly filled the entire battlefield.

After they could no longer see the enemy, the pressure caused by the Xing Tang Army's orderly pace and uniforms seemed to disappear in an instant.

The shouts and roars of the Xishan Army became more passionate, their formation began to become chaotic, and everyone was charging forward.

Bullets are useless at this time. Only a real man can go up and fight with real swords and guns.

Chen Guangdong's company was suddenly left with a gap. They were at the front and bore the volleys of fire from the Xishan Army.

But he had no time to count the dead and wounded, nor time to grieve. He pricked up his ears and listened attentively to the orders from the messenger.

A gust of cold wind blew, and with a snap, something fell on his right shoulder and bounced to the ground. Then, it felt like hot water was gushing out of his right ear, and severe pain began to attack him.

The military uniform on his shoulders was soaked with blood.

"Boss Bai, your ears!"

A young guard from the family tilted his head slightly and shouted in horror.

Only a small part of Chen Guangdong's right ear was still attached to his head, but Chen Guangdong didn't even turn his head.

"Forty steps!"

When they reached a distance of sixty meters, Chen Guangdong swung forward with a spear painted red and with a red tassel.

"Fire!"

"Fire!"

"Fire!"

All the officers and non-commissioned officers shouted along, and almost at the same time, the deafening sound of volleys of gunfire rang out.

The charging Xishan Army seemed to have hit a wall of air, and countless people fell down suddenly. Then their figures were almost completely obscured by the smoke.

But the Xing Tang army had not yet finished its three-pronged attack: two rounds of volleys, one round of bombs, two rounds of volleys, and one round of bombs.

After repeating it twice, the sound of war drums was heard, which was the horn of charge.

"Tiger!" The entire army shouted and launched a charge.

Before they charged, the Xishan Army had already been defeated.

(End of this chapter)