War was both simple and difficult.
However, the essence of it could not be ignored.
That was to think of all ways to eliminate the enemy's effective strength and continuously consume the enemy's personnel and resources.
In the end, they would weaken the enemy and gain the absolute advantage, completely annihilating them in one fell swoop.
The Manchu Tartars were fierce, but they lacked population and the number of soldiers was limited. This was their fatal weakness and their absolute lifeline.
Even after Huang Taiji ascended the throne, he created the Han and Mongol flags to try to increase the number and scale of the Manchu army, expand his war potential, and make up for his shortcomings.
At the same time, he was also increasing his own power. He was thinking of ways to suppress the other Banner Lords and increase the power he controlled.
Later, the so-called Han Eight Banners and Meng Eight Banners appeared.
All of this started with Huang Taiji.
However, even if he did that, it would not change the fact that the Manchu race had a small population, which was their fatal weakness.
For Li Sheng, no matter how he fought, he had to destroy the Tartars first!
They continued to suppress the already small population.
In that case, he would definitely be able to achieve his goal of continuously weakening the strength of the Manchu Tartars.
At present, he did not have the strength to crush the Manchu Empire.
The best way was to weaken it.
And this was only the long-term benefits. From the short-term benefits, the army did not aim to attack the city and seize territory, but to cause irreparable damage to the entire Fuzhou Guard.
Then, in the near future, when the Manchurian Qing attacked, at least the eight banners of the Fuzhou Guards wouldn't be needed anymore.
Moreover, they had not distributed any rations to the army.
They even needed the Qing Dynasty to provide food and resources to restore the state guards.
On top of that, the Golden State Guard had already become a piece of white land.
In other words, the Qing Dynasty would lose the power of two prefectures.
How many prefectures were there in the entire Qing Dynasty?
The Manchurian Tartars seemed to stretch from the Korean Peninsula in the east to Mongolia in the west. They occupied the entire north of the Great Wall, a vast territory spanning tens of thousands of miles.
In reality, the only territory that the Manchu Dynasty could control and use their power was Liaodong.
Moreover, it was only Liaodong, where the power of the Ming Dynasty had gathered.
Hundreds of thousands of Manchu Tartars and millions of Han serfs in Liaodong.
This was the power that the Manchu Dynasty could truly control.
Losing two state capitals at once was a huge blow to the Manchu Empire, which was still unable to be self-sufficient and still needed to plunder from the south to survive.
Not to mention, he had also wiped out most of the Manchu Tartars from the two provincial guards. To the Manchu Dynasty, that was simply heart-wrenching!
Thinking of this, Li Sheng immediately made a decision. He sent an order to Zhao Dahai, who was guarding Jinzhou City, to immediately lead the army into Fuzhou Guards and think of a way to destroy the Manchu Tartar Manor.
The Manchu Tartars who slaughtered Fuzhou Guards!
Destroy their roads, wells, mines, farmland, and all other production and living facilities.
Considering that Zhao Dahai only had one official army, Li Sheng had given a death order to the frontline troops. They were not to cross the Fuzhou Guard and attack the Gaizhou Guard further north.
After all, it was the army, so their speed was limited.
Once the lone army went deep and was caught up by the Manchu Tartars, it would be very difficult to retreat.
Thus, it was enough for the army to destroy Jinzhou and Fuzhou.
The following sabotage operation would require the navy to move out.
However, the navy's main battlefield was on the sea. Land battles were not their forte.
Thus, Li Sheng needed another army to cooperate with the navy fleet to land on the coast of Manqing. They would rely on the river to go upstream and cause greater damage to the core of Manqing.
Because they had the support of the naval fleet's artillery, they did not have to fear the Qing army's siege and pursuit.
Safety was greatly guaranteed!
Now, the navy had a fleet, but the land forces did not.
Thinking of this, Li Sheng decided to start expanding the army.
As the battlefield grew more and more, more and more battlefields were opened up, and the army's elites were becoming more and more insufficient.
He had to expand the army!
To Li Sheng, the more troops he had, the better. However, considering the military production and logistics supply of the territory, he had to be careful.
He could only retract his bold idea and honestly consider the limits of the military force that the territory could withstand.
After some calculations, he decided to expand the army of the Thousand Households Institute into a guard.
A single guard, three to four thousand elites, with the militia, could easily form an army of ten thousand soldiers.
On the Liaodong Peninsula, it was enough.
No matter how much, it was useless.
Because the Liaodong Peninsula was only so big, the battlefield was limited, and the military formation could not be spread out.
The number of troops they could withstand was only so much.
No matter how many soldiers there were, there would be no qualitative increase in their combat strength. At most, they would be able to consume more and bear more casualties.
However, one had to take into account that the consumption of logistics resources would also increase greatly.
In this way, the price-performance ratio was extremely low.
It was not worth it at all!
Thus, he expanded the army of the Thousand Households Institute into a guard. With the support of the militia and civilian workers, it was enough to fight against the Manchu army that was about to arrive at the South Pass.
Even against 50,000 to 60,000 Manchu soldiers, Li Sheng was not afraid.
At the same time, if the battle situation became difficult, he could take out one or two elites from the front line and follow the navy to attack the core of the Qing Tartars.
Of course, it wasn't impossible for them to kill their way over now.
However, doing so would result in a much smaller outcome.
Although the main force of the Qing army had gone south, the Manchu army could still gather a large army in their old nest.
At this moment, Li Sheng needed to lure it out and into the Southern Pass.
He completely stalled him.
At that time, the Manchu Tartars 'nest would be completely empty.
At that time, it would be the time for him, Li Sheng, to ruthlessly attack the Manchu Empire.
At that time, what would happen to Manchu?
They could either withdraw the army from the South Pass or move their forces further north.
This was because the Eight Banners under the Manchu Dynasty were not a standing military system. They were more like the government military system of the Tang Dynasty.
Thus, it was extremely troublesome to mobilize troops, and the consumption was also extremely high.
Once the entire Manchu Empire mobilized their forces, it would cause great damage to the Manchu Empire.
Just this alone was enough to make the Manchu Dynasty suffer!
Thinking of this, Li Sheng did not hesitate and immediately issued the order to expand the army.
Because the territory's strength was still limited, although the order to expand the army was given, it couldn't immediately expand the troops of a thousand households to a guard.
They needed to draw out the elites from the militia and commoners, train them, and equip them fully.
It would take a lot of time just to mobilize the elite militia and civilian workers.
Training also required a lot of time.
It would take time to fully equip them with all kinds of weapons.
At the same time, they also needed the territory to work together with the various departments and industries.
Thus, it would take at least ten days to half a month for a whole troop of guards to be fully formed into combat power and be able to be pulled onto the battlefield at any time.
Li Sheng was already very satisfied to be able to complete the expansion before the Manchu army arrived.
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