In the night, a fire dragon still curved on the mountain road of the Donghui Kingdom, rolling forward. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

The Donghui Kingdom is, of course, the "Greater Assam Region" in later generations, a region sandwiched between the Himalayas and the Naga hills, and the main topography is the mountainous area, and the Brahmaputra Valley region in the north has more flat land, which is the richest territory in the entire kingdom. It is rich in rice, corn, cotton, jute, sugar cane and tobacco. And on the southern slopes of the Himalayas in the northern part of the Brahmaputra Valley region, the very famous Assam black tea is produced. In addition, the territory of the Donghui Kingdom is also rich in wood, marble, diamonds, oil and natural gas.

In short, this is an area with a lot of natural resources, but the transportation is not very convenient. To the north is the east-west Himalayan remnants, and to the south is the north-south Naga Hills. Especially in the rainy season, the road from Yingfu City to the west is quite difficult, and there are heavy rains and mudslides, and there is no time to break off. Therefore, after the follow-up troops of the 18th Mountain Army and the Dali Army were basically assembled, Zhu Guowei and Wu Changqing did not hesitate to march westward day and night, just to drive their troops to the plains of Bengal before the rainy season was completely reached.

Of course, such a deployment also has a surprise idea to fight the British and Indian troops - now the Assam region is not completely pacified, only the Manipur Mountains are controlled by the Donghui Kingdom, and the Brahmaputra Valley region in the north is still under the control of pro-British local forces.

Therefore, the army that followed Zhu Guowei to India this time did not have 170,000, only 50,000 of the 18th Mountain Army, 50,000 of the Dali Army, and about 20,000 Donghui nationals who drove mules and horses to transport heavy loads. That's 120,000 when it's full.

Zhu Guowei is also in the queue. He carried his saber. He also wore the same leggings as the soldiers. Marching step by step on the rugged mountain road - the number of mules and horses here in Assam is scarce, and it is difficult to collect enough horses, so from Zhu Guowei onwards, all the officers contributed their war horses to carry the baggage.

There were soldiers all around, and under the torches, these soldiers from the Miaoxiang Plateau and the Sichuan-Yunnan region (the 18th Mountain Army were all Yunnan and Sichuan soldiers) saw that His Majesty the Dali Kingdom was also following them, measuring the road with their feet foot by foot, and everyone's footsteps couldn't help but speed up a little. Everyone walked in a sweat, but there was no intention of slowing down.

Speaking of this King of Dali. In fact, it is quite hard. Before he was elected king of Dali, he was only one of the more than eighty sons of Emperor Zhu, and he did not have a powerful mother or a mother with hundreds of millions of dollars to support him. His mother Zheng Shi has always been neither popular nor purple, although she is from the Siamese royal family, she is only one of hundreds of princesses, and she is not worth anything at all - these generations of Siamese kings are very capable of giving birth to children, and there are many princesses!

And Zhu Jishi's treatment for most of his sons is not high, but he is a marquis who does not have much annuity and property. In the current Ming Dynasty, although Hou Ye is not rotten on the street, there are thousands of them. Not a lord at all. Therefore, Emperor Zhu's sons, who do not have a crown to inherit, have to work hard if they want to come out. Zhu Guowei is naturally one of them. Because his reading performance when he was a teenager was not very good, but at the age of eleven, at the request of Zheng Shi, the mother of Wangzi Jackie Chan, he transferred from Huangcheng Public School to the junior class of the Royal Army Military Academy.

For the next nine years, he was like the most ordinary cadet in the military academy, receiving the most rigorous training and living a simple life, without the slightest preferential treatment. I don't know how many noble children there are in the Junior Military Academy, the Royal Army Military Academy and the Royal Navy Military Academy, even Zhu Jishi's sons have more than 20, and a few of them are still the kings of a country! The instructors just wanted to stammer, and it was not the turn of Zhu Guowei, who was still a little marquis at the time. In the end, Zhu Guowei relied on his own efforts to pass the graduation examination of the Royal Army Military Academy with excellent results, and his score in the graduation examination ranked 95th among the 2,100 non-commissioned officers and students in this period. It's not top-notch, but it's not easy to get either. A long-distance march like this one is really pediatric for the 21-year-old Dali King - there are calluses on the soles of his feet that have been sharpened in military school training!

In contrast, Wu Changqing, who had served as a senior officer for many years, had already been bitter in his heart, but in front of Zhu Guowei, he still had to make an excited appearance, follow closely step by step with a crutch, and from time to time he had to spare his energy to answer the questions raised by Zhu Guowei.

"Seeing the way the British abandoned us, they wanted to put us into the Bengal plains, right?"

"That's how it should be, right? I don't know Will. What is Heming's idea! ”

"Could it be a retreat and decisive battle, and he is going to concentrate his forces on the Bengal plains to fight me in a decisive battle?"

"It's very likely, Will. It is likely that Hemming will hold Chittagong with one piece, blocking the Siamese Army and the 17th Mountain Army, and then concentrate on the Battle of I and the Bengal Plain. However, our army has 100,000 elites, and the ammunition is enough to support half a month, and it is impossible for Hemming to defeat me unless he gathers 300,000 troops. ”

Wu Changqing and Zhu Guowei are not fools, and naturally they have already seen that Will. Hemming lured the enemy deeper. But there was not much worry in the words of the two, on the one hand, they were extremely confident in their 100,000 army. And it is not very good to see the combat effectiveness of the British and Indian troops. In addition, the promise of the "Great Uprising of the Indian Princes" also reassured Wu Changqing and Zhu Guowei, and with the support of the Indian landlords, they were not afraid to maneuver with the British in India.

"What if there are 300,000 troops? If you don't fight with them, you can use sports warfare to fight with them, there is no shortage of food in the Bengal plain, this is the territory of the Indians, Will. Is it possible for Hemming to dare to fight a scorched earth battle here? ”

"Surely he would not dare, if he was going to do that, he would be pushing the originally neutral Indians to our side. Besides, the Bengal plain west of the Jamuna River has a population of at least twenty or thirty million. How much can Hemming kill? ”

"That's it, how much can he kill!" Zhu Guowei smiled coldly, "If he can slaughter all the twenty or thirty million people here in Bangladesh, it will be worth it if I lose!" ”

Wu Changqing was stunned, he didn't know that Zhu Jishi had always been very jealous of India's population, although 350 million Indians were less than half of the 750 million Chinese, but this also made Zhu Jishi stay away from this land - although Emperor Zhu did not mind serving as the emperor of the Maratha Empire, he would definitely not regard the Maratha Empire as one of the summers! His ambitions for British India ended with the Donghui Kingdom.

Regarding Zhu Guowei's words, Wu Changqing didn't think about it, but just waved his hand and said: "Even if you are defeated, you are not afraid, it is a big deal to retreat to the Brahmaputra Valley and join the Marquis Zheng, how can the 120,000 army rely on the southern slopes of the Himalayas and Bhutan, how can it not be defeated." ”

"Yes, it's a big deal to retreat to the Himalayas!"

……

Dhaka, Bala? Katla Palace.

"We're right here, the Mekna River is holding them back!"

Will, who had just returned from an inspection of his positions along the Mekna River. Hemming was explaining the task to several group armies and army-level commanders of the Indian Army.

"Admiral, there's no problem holding them back." A very thin-looking British general in his fifties furrowed his brows and said, "We have concentrated 400,000 men, and the enemy will certainly not exceed 150,000, so I doubt that they will be desperate to crash into our defensive line!" ”

"Actually, they won't!" Will. Heming shook his head, "Holding on to the Mekna River defense line is just the beginning, after blocking the Chinese army, we still have a series of tactical maneuvers to do, the difficulty of this battle is not to repel the Chinese army and drive them back to Imphal, but to surround them between the Mekna River, the Sutang River, the Danu River and the Garni River." It's not easy...... And we had to take a certain risk that we would have to break up the army into four or five clusters, engage in movement and positional warfare on the plains west of the Mekna River, and finally use several rivers to contain the enemy. (To be continued......)