Chaozhou Prefecture Chao'an County, Chaoyang County, Jieyang County, Huilai County, Puning County, Chenghai County, Raoping County, Fengshun County, is known in history as the "Eight Cities of Chaozhou". After the Taiping Army conquered Meizhou, it quickly joined Chaozhou Prefecture. In half a month, Huilai, Puning, Jieyang, Chao'an, Chaoyang, Fengshun, Raoping and other counties were successively conquered by the Taiping Army, and Li Tingyu had to defend Chaozhou and Chenghai two cities.

Chaozhou is the birthplace of the She ethnic group. Most of the She ethnic group in Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong and other places moved out from here. Among the Taiping Army's Fujian Southward Corps, there were many She soldiers. They were very enthusiastic about fighting back to their hometowns to rescue the She compatriots who were bullied by the Qing Dynasty. However, the actual situation was indeed that there were many She soldiers in the local gentry training and the Qing army.

She soldiers have been brave and good at fighting since ancient times. When the Taiping Army recruited soldiers in Fujian, many She soldiers joined, while the She soldiers in the Qing army recruited men or applied for money and food, so the motivations for joining the war were very different.

When Li Tingyu was stationed in Chaozhou, Guangdong Ye Mingchen provided him with a large amount of money and grain support, he made the eight counties of Chaozhou Prefecture like iron buckets. Each county, each township, and each village implemented a joint defense system for Baojia, each village built a village, and then each township and county stationed troops to defend each village. The entire Chaozhou Prefecture built more than 300 village fortresses. Each county and township prefecture also rectified the city defense and guarded the battlements. Li Tingyu thought that he had been in Chaozhou Prefecture for a long time and had strict defenses. He also had Chaozhou She people who were good at fighting to help defend. At the same time, he formed a horn between him and the King of Meizhou, and should be foolproof. But he did not expect that the Taiping Army's offensive was so fierce.

The first division of the newly formed First Army is responsible for the eastern part of Guangdong. As two first-class elite troops, the First Division may not be as fast and fierce as the third division known as the Zhao Zilong Division. It is not as good as the second division as civil engineering attacks, but the First Division is the absolute mainstay of the New First Army because they have an incomparable domineering aura.

From the beginning of the Battle of Wen-Taiwan until now, the First Army of Fujian and the Qing army of Li Tingyu fought dozens of battles, and the result was that Li Tingyu was driven from the Wen-Taiwan defense line by the Taiping Army to Guangdong, and Fujian fell across the province, and 80% of the battles were the main offensive tasks of the First Division. Both sides were well-known. The Qing army of Li Tingyu was very afraid of the First Division, and Li Xiucheng sent the First Division to the east to deal with Li Tingyu and Wang Yide.

When the First Division began to sweep east of Guangdong, the first target Chen Alin, the commander of the First Division, was Wang Yide. Because he was weaker than Li Tingyu, and Chen Alin prepared the tactic of besieging the city to attack the aid. He knew that Wang Yide was attacked, and Li Tingyu would definitely send troops to aid. Only then could the Qing army who left those villages and fortresses be eliminated.

As expected, everything was as Chen Alin expected. Wang Yide was attacked, and Li Tingyu sent a Qing army of 8,000 troops to train troops to rescue him. Chen Alin naturally would not be polite. He defeated the Qing army in one fell swoop in the field, which greatly damaged Li Tingyu's vitality. Then Wang Yide had no foreign aid, and Meizhou Prefecture could not withstand the fierce attack of Chen Alin's First Division and was captured within three days.

During the Battle of Meizhou, the First Division organized powerful artillery preparations and practiced Xu Jin's barrage tactics. Two groups of artillery soldiers in the First Division alternately smashed through Meizhou's city defense under the cover of infantry. You should know that Wang Yide strengthened the Meizhou city walls and the houses outside the city into an offensive, with countless snares, artillery positions, and trenches, but he could not withstand the fierce bombardment of the First Division's artillery regiment, so Meizhou was lost for three days.

When Meizhou was trapped, Wang Yide committed suicide. All the officials of the Qing court below the Fujian governor were captured. In this battle, more than 30,000 Qing troops were wiped out, including more than 10,000 prisoners.

Chen Alin was a natural general who led troops to fight. In history, he once led the weak Xiaodaohui to defeat the Qing Dynasty and the great powers in Shanghai. After he joined the West Palace with Liu Lichuan, he entered the military academy to study, and then took over the First Division as the division commander. In his hands, the First Division became more domineering.

After solving Meizhou, Chen Kai's Fujian Township Corps also came to pick her up. After Meizhou was handed over to Chen Kai's guard, Chen Alin supplemented the ammunition and medicine and went south unstoppable to attack Li Tingyu, because he received an order from the General Staff of the Legion to deal with Li Tingyu in Chaozhou as soon as possible and then marched westward.

Although Li Tingyu worked hard to manage the defense of the eight counties of Chaozhou, this seemingly connected villages into villages has fatal weaknesses. This defense was not effectively connected, and there was no better joint battle between each village, so the village fortresses became isolated artillery tower-style defense, much like the Japanese artillery tower blockade tactics in the War of Resistance Against Japan. This tactic may be somewhat effective for the Eighth Route Army without cannons, but the Taiping Army's cannons were the most advanced in the country at this time, so Li Tingyu's tactics failed.

Before he started to go south to Chaozhou, Chen Alin adopted the tactic of division and attack. The troops of a division were divided into several routes to attack several outer counties in Chaozhou. In the early stage of attacking a regiment in Fengshun County, he divided the troops into several tactical units, and then swept the villages along the way. The basic model was to first call for the villages to surrender. If the villages surrendered, they would be handed over to the follow-up township corps. If they did not surrender, they would be bombarded by cannons and infantry charge. After the completion, they would be quickly moved to the next target. Such tactical units were cleared, and finally they would meet under Fengshun County and then attack the county.

So the villages and fortresses were like cans, and they were knocked open by Taiping military shells and bayonets. Of course, many villages still knew that the situation was hopeless. In addition, many She soldiers came forward to persuade them to surrender. The She villages that originally did not like the Qing Dynasty surrendered the fastest, but some Han villages resisted more, but after the attacks, everyone understood the power of the Taiping Army. So after conquering Fengshun and Raoping counties, the other villages and fortresses almost all surrendered in sight.

At this time, Li Tingyu wanted to cry out loudly, and Wang Yide was insatiable. He lost the last mobile force of more than 8,000 people in Meizhou. When various counties and villages were attacked, this army could mobile support the battles everywhere, but now his mobile force was gone, so he could only watch the Taiping Army open cans one by one.

Fifteen days later, only Chaozhou Prefecture was left alone in the eight counties of Chaozhou, and the troops of the First Division completed the cleaning of the peripheral counties and arrived at Chaozhou Prefecture to gather one after another. Chen Alin also used Xu Jin's barrage tactics to teach Li Tingyu a modern artillery tactics class.

When he saw the sams, trenches, fences, and forts outside the city were destroyed by artillery shells, and the artillery of the Taiping Army carefully covered the artillery fire according to the area and covered the infantry's advance, Li Tingyu spurted out an old blood. After waking up from left to right, Li Tingyu sighed to the sky: "More than 20 years ago, I fought fiercely with the British and Japanese, and I had never seen such a fierce artillery battle. The long hair and wings were abundant, the general situation was gone, and the general situation was gone..."

Li Tingyu was old and suffered a setback from losing streaks, and actually died of illness at the head of Chaozhou City. After the Qing army lost its commander, it did not resist for long. Three days later, Chaozhou City was broken, and the last nail that straddled between Guangdong and Fujian was pulled out.

After Chen Alin entered the city, he checked Li Tingyu's body and respected him quite respected the Qing general. During the Opium War, Li Tingyu led his troops to fight against the British and showed dignity and momentum. Then he wore armor and fought with the Taiping Army for two years. Although he had lost more than he won, he still blocked the Taiping Army for two years. If the Taiping Army had not played a landing in Guangzhou and cut off Meizhou and Chaozhou's supply route from behind, Li Tingyu would have relied on the continuous supply line from Guangdong to replenish money and grain, and would have continued to block the Taiping Army in Fujian.

Chen Alin ordered the release of several Li Tingyu's followers and asked them to take Li Tingyu's body back for a grand funeral. Although Li Tingyu was foolish and loyal to the Qing Dynasty, his courage to resist the British was still worthy of admiration. Chen Alin did not use his head to show anything to the public. Respecting the old man who had fought with him for more than a year was to respect his martial ethics.

After capturing Chaozhou, Chen Alin rested for three days and rushed westward without stopping. The recent war reports were delivered. The Second Division also ended the clearance of Shaozhou and other places in northern Guangdong and began to rush to Zhaoqing to reinforce the Third Division. At this time, the eastern and northern parts of Guangdong had completely fallen into the hands of the Taiping Army, and the only provinces and counties west of Zhaoqing were left in the hands of the Qing army in Guangdong Province.

Chen Alin knew that in Zhaoqing they were facing another ulterior motive of Xiaoqiang. This person's tenacity and tenacity were even higher than that of Li Tingyu. This person had no understanding of the Taiping Army. This person was Jiang Zhongyuan.

Chen Alin saw the Qing Dynasty's grand strategy proposed by Jiang Zhongyuan in some newspapers. The war between the Qing Dynasty and Taiping lasted for eight years. Jiang Zhongyuan proposed that the Taiping Army was very strong at the beginning, but the Qing Dynasty had not experienced a major war for many years, so it must have been the Qing Dynasty's defense at the beginning, but Taiping was always insufficient. As long as the Qing Dynasty could limit its development to a certain range, successfully dragged the war into a stalemate stage, relying on national strength to slowly consume the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and finally the Qing Dynasty would be able to counterattack and quell the Taiping Rebellion.

Chen Alin admired Jiang Zhongyuan's strategic vision. Although he did not know that the Qing Dynasty in history destroyed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom like this, Chen Alin found from the perspective of a military commander that Jiang Zhongyuan's strategy was indeed the best strategy for the Qing Dynasty. Since Taiping occupied Nanjing, the Qing army has been taking defense as the main and local counterattack as the auxiliary, but the Western King's Eastern Expedition broke the Qing Dynasty's wishful thinking. The loss of Shanghai, Ningbo and other places allowed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to obtain more money and food resources through trade. The Western King's modification of the teachings and policy enforcement strategies of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

The Pingtian Kingdom was not fighting alone. On the contrary, the Western King strengthened the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom by supporting anti-Qing uprisings in various places. When there was an internal strife in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Western King was able to quickly stabilize the overall situation without causing any damage. Therefore, the strategic stalemate that the Qing Dynasty hoped did not come, and the Taiping Army still maintained its offensive. Moreover, the Taiping Army became stronger and stronger as the Taiping Army fought, and the weapons, tactics, and equipment became stronger and stronger. However, Jiang Zhongyuan still insisted on his strategy. He kept defending, retreating, and defending again, and always blocked the Taiping Army's advance like a rambler on the bones.

Chen Alin knew it was important to open the gates of Guangdong and East China. If they wanted to sweep across the nine southern provinces, they had to deal with Jiang Zhongyuan. And after being harassed by this man for a long time, the Taiping Army hoped to annihilate this beast in this battle! (To be continued...)
Chapter completed!