1848 Great Qing Charcoal Burners

Chapter 146 Reserve Force, Activated
"The Qing army deployment map made by Battalion Commander Li has more detailed information than mine. I am ashamed to admit that it is inferior to his map."

After carefully examining Li Qi's map of the Qing army's defenses, Qiu Zhongliang admitted that his own map was inferior to Li Qi's.

Li Qi was Peng Gang's old student during the Honglianping period. He followed Peng Gang for more than two and a half years and learned cartography and military tactics from Peng Gang at a very early age.

However, Qiu Zhongliang did not use this as an excuse to numb or comfort himself.

He can accept that he's not as good as others, and he still has that much magnanimity.

If you really look into it, Li Qi only attended a private school for two years before coming to Honglianping.

Qiu Zhongliang, on the other hand, began receiving systematic private school education from a young age, and even qualified to take the imperial examination for the title of Tongsheng before enlisting in the army.

At present, no one with official rank has joined the Taiping rebels.

The title of "Tongsheng" (童生) represented the highest level of education in the Taiping Army. Even the most highly educated members of the Taiping Army who were part of the puppet Qing regime—Peng Gang, Hong Xiuquan, and Feng Yunshan—were only Tongsheng.

Qiu Zhongliang's cultural background is much better than Li Qi's.

Although Qiu Zhongliang's time with Peng Gang was relatively short, he was better at using tools such as compasses, rulers, protractors, and measuring ropes than the other battalion and company commanders.

His ability to sketch terrain was also better than that of other battalion and company commanders, including Li Qi.

This may be related to the fact that Qiu Zhongliang's family owned a lot of farmland and mountain land, and that he had seen and participated in the production of the Qiu family's land register and mountain register.

After all, his father, Qiu Gusan, only had this one hobby: he liked to check and calculate the Qiu family's assets to pass the time.

In terms of cartographic skills, Qiu Zhongliang was no less capable than any of Peng Gang's students, even those from the first cohort during the Honglianping period.

What Qiu Zhongliang lacked was a dull sense of the battlefield and a low level of military sensitivity.

It's true that Li Qi was half a peasant, but he had fought many battles with Peng Gang and had rich combat experience. His sense of military information was much stronger than Qiu Zhongliang's.

"In terms of cartography alone, Battalion Commander Qiu is more than ten times better than me. There are many things I need to learn from Battalion Commander Qiu," Li Qi said modestly.

Compared to when he first came up the mountain, Li Qi's arrogance and sense of superiority are now almost completely gone.

Because standing before him was a person of utmost respect and admiration.

Sometimes Li Qi felt that this gentleman, who was only a few years older than him, might truly be a star descended from heaven.

He knew so much, knew so much, and taught them so much.

There was so much that Li Qi, who once considered himself very clever, couldn't process it all.

"Li Qi, you did a great job." Peng Gang praised Li Qi generously and said to him earnestly, "Later I will organize a cartography experience exchange meeting for all battalion and company commanders. You can share your cartography experience with them as well."

"Yes, General!" Li Qi proudly puffed out his chest.

Li Qi has always been good at maintaining proper boundaries in his interpersonal relationships.

Therefore, although he was a Tujia, he got along quite well with the Hakka officers.

"I heard that the Second and Fourth Battalions have suffered considerable casualties in the past two weeks?" Peng Gang inquired about the casualty situation of the two battalions.

Although the artillery skills of the Qing army's gunners were crude.

However, they couldn't withstand the intense harassment and reconnaissance by the Second and Fourth Battalions over the past two weeks, and the Qing army artillerymen fired a lot of artillery.

With the increased numbers, even the Qing army's artillerymen, no matter how bad their skills were, could still get lucky and land a few shots. The second and fourth battalions still inevitably suffered casualties.

Moreover, after suffering losses due to the Taiping Army's traps and pitfalls, the Qing army has now learned to dig traps and set up trap devices in their camps and on the roads frequently used by the Taiping Army.

The Qing army's traps and pitfalls also caused great trouble for the Taiping army.

"The casualties of my battalion mainly came from the Qing army's artillery fire and traps, especially the Qing army's traps, which were impossible to defend against."

"In the Second Battalion, three were killed, three were seriously wounded, and six were slightly wounded in the artillery barrage. Six more died from falling into craters, and eighteen were wounded," Li Qi replied with a heavy heart.

"The casualties of the Fourth Battalion were less than those of the Second Battalion. One soldier was killed in the artillery barrage, one was seriously wounded, and two were slightly wounded. Four soldiers died from falling into Qing army traps, and thirteen were wounded." Qiu Zhongliang also reported the casualties of the Fourth Battalion to Peng Gang.

"I will make the Qing army pay back a hundredfold, a thousandfold, for the casualties of the Second and Fourth Battalions!" Peng Gang said, clenching his fist.

Xiang Rong's cowardly tactics are not a significant threat to the Left Army at present, but they are certainly disgusting.

Peng Gang wasn't boasting; he was indeed preparing to launch a major attack on the Chu army.

Since the Qing army wanted to trap the Taiping army in Zijing Mountain and Pingzai Mountain, he tore a hole in the Qing army's trap, thus thwarting the Qing army's plot.

There were better options available; he had no desire to head north through the dead end of the Dayao Mountains.

Xiang Rong's Qing troops remained holed up in their earthen fortified camp. For half a month, the second and fourth battalions failed to capture any Qing soldiers.

Without even prisoners, there was no way to interrogate them and obtain information about the Qing army's defensive positions from them.

Peng Gang instructed Li Qi and Qiu Zhongliang to submit their Qing army's battle deployment maps to the General Staff, so that the five staff officers in the General Staff could compile and refine their maps.

The five staff officers in the General Staff became increasingly proficient in mapmaking, collecting, analyzing, and summarizing intelligence on both sides.

After a long day of work, they drew a more detailed map of the Qing army's deployment based on the map provided by Li Qi and Qiu Zhongliang, and submitted it to Peng Gang.

“The Qing army’s defense line stretches for a full fifteen miles from north to south, and some of the Qing army’s earthen forts and artillery positions are located on relatively high ground. Even if we dig the dam now and release the water from Lake Lemei, which has been stored for half a month, I’m afraid it won’t flood all the Qing army’s camps and earthen forts,” Huang Bingxian said with some concern.

"Our troops are already at a disadvantage in terms of manpower and artillery firepower. If we launch a strong attack on the heavily fortified and well-prepared Qing army positions, our casualties will be very high."

"Advantages are earned through fighting, not waited for. We can't always fight only when our army has the advantage. The pressure on the eastern front is immense. If we can break through the Qing army's defenses on the western front, our allies on the eastern front will have an easier time." Peng Gang stared at the map for a long time, then pointed to Sanlixu on the south bank of the Yinjiang River, a tributary of the Qianjiang River.

“We don’t need to flood all the Qing army positions, just the Chu army positions at Sanlixu. There is indeed a problem with insufficient troops, but don’t we still have reserves?” Among the Qing army on the western front, the more than 3,800 Chu soldiers and Zhengan soldiers stationed near Sanlixu by Xiang Rong are what Peng Gang is most wary of.

The Chu army and Zhengan soldiers under Xiang Rong's command were the mainstay of the western front.

Once Xiang Rong's Chu army and Zhengan troops collapsed, the Qing army's plan to block the western exit of the Taiping army's base by controlling and managing the Sanlixu position would completely fail.

If the Qing army wanted to rebuild the Sanlixu defense line on the western front, it had to deploy troops from other directions to block the Taiping army.

In addition to the more than 3,800 Chu soldiers and Zhengan troops.

As the chief military officer of the Qing army's western defense line, Li Nengchen's 4,000 Yunnan troops (actually 3,000) and the 3,000 ethnic minority militia near the Sanlixu defense line were also under Xiang Rong's command.

Xiang Rong nominally had nearly 10,000 troops at his disposal.

However, this was only in name. The coordination and cooperation between different units of the Qing army was extremely poor. Even Qing soldiers in the same battalion would treat their allies as enemies and fight their own battles.

Not to mention that the Qing troops from different provinces could work together with one heart and one mind against the enemy.

The Qing army's dispersed deployment and extremely poor coordination capabilities greatly weakened its numerical advantage.

In fact, there was another army on the western front that Peng Gang was quite wary of.

Those were the 1,500 soldiers from Liuzhou that Xiang Rong had obtained from Liuzhou.

However, Zhou Tianjue assigned all 1,500 Liuzhou soldiers to guard Wuxuan County and Xiangzhou City.

The grain and provisions transferred from Liuzhou were provided by Xiang Rong, but when the Liuzhou soldiers arrived in Wuxuan, they were all brought under Zhou Tianjue's command.

Even though Peng Gang had no informants in the Qing army's high command and couldn't find out what the current relationship was between Xiang Rong and Zhou Tianjue.

Even a fool could guess that Xiang Rong and Zhou Tianjue would definitely have a very unpleasant argument over this matter, and their relationship would certainly not be harmonious.

Peng Gang was only able to deploy four battalions and one artillery company of regular troops for this operation, totaling less than 3,300 men.

The Fifth and Sixth Battalions were responsible for guarding the Bitan Floodplain and supporting Qin Richang's Taiping Army on the south bank of the Qian River. These two battalions could not be moved.

However, these 3,200-plus regular troops were all elites who had participated in actual combat, and the officers were all students personally trained by Peng Gang.

Peng Gang was able to command his left wing troops with ease, a skill that the Qing army lacked.

The number of Zuo Jun regular troops, more than 3,200, is still too small.

These troops are more than capable of defending, but lack the strength to launch an attack.

Peng Gang decided to make extensive use of the male reserve personnel who served as a reserve force in the battle to crush the western Qing army defense line led by the Chu army at Sanlixu.

“Most of the Qing army’s troops are not as well-trained as our reserves. In the Battle of Mocun, our army captured a lot of Qing army weapons. In addition, with the weapons we have made ourselves in the past few months, our reserves are more than enough to arm most of the male reserve troops,” Zhang Ze said.

"If they can gain experience in a major battle, it will be of great help to the male reserve personnel. But how many male reserve personnel does the general plan to send to the war this time?"

Like other Taiping armies, Peng Gang's left wing also had its own front and back banners.

However, the terminology differs. Influenced by Peng Gang, the Left Army side habitually refers to the main army as "Standing Army" and the side army as "Reserve Army".

Excluding the regular troops of the 1st Company of the 6th Battalion, Peng Gang's troops totaled 15,800 men, twice the number of the other battalions at the beginning.

Peng Gang's work in his separate battalion was more meticulous than that of other armies.

Children and the elderly are managed in separate camps.

Therefore, the men's battalion of the Left Army consisted entirely of young men aged fifteen to forty-five.

In other military units, these people would be considered worthy of being prominent figures.

The Left Army's male battalion has 6,830 men.

Half of the male reserve soldiers have received at least seven months of moderate-intensity military training since they left other battalions.

They might not be ready to fight Qing front-line troops like the Chu army and Zhengan soldiers head-on.

However, when facing the second and third-tier troops of the Qing army, such as the Guizhou Army, Yunnan Army, and local militia, the Qing army's combat strength in the Battle of Mocun can be used as a reference.

Peng Gang believed that the male reserve battalion of the Left Army was far superior to them.

More importantly, the morale of the Left Army's male reserve troops was completely different from that of the Qing army's second and third-line troops, and even the first-line troops.

The vast majority of Qing soldiers were basically just loafing around, waiting to die, and only became energetic when they were looting.

The male reserve soldiers in the Left Army were all eager to prove themselves and join the regular army, which offered better benefits.

To be honest, Peng Gang's treatment as a reserve soldier was also very good, with each person receiving a daily ration of 1.3 jin (approximately 0.5 kg) of grain.

This standard was not only higher than that of the vast majority of Qing troops, but also higher than that of most of the Taiping Army's allies.

There's no harm without comparison.

Each soldier in the Left Army's regular ration was two and a half catties of rice per day, and two catties of that was refined rice. They could also eat meat two or three times a month.

The treatment is far better than that of the reserves. Joining the regular battalion, becoming a regular soldier, eating meat, and wearing new clothes is the dream of every male reserve soldier.

"Form five battalions for now, and notify the deputy battalion commanders and deputy company commanders of each battalion to assemble in my yard." Peng Gang ordered the adjutants of each battalion and company to assemble in the yard.

(End of this chapter)