Chapter 85: Follow-up situation

I talked with the Bolivian army and the Chinese Independent Army could only choose to fight with the Indian and Bolivian army.
It was difficult to turn into the road on a long distance. The heavy artillery required for the siege was attached to the artillery brigade at the back.
明 Li Mingyuan led the striker stationed near the Aymara village, waiting for the artillery brigade to arrive.
In the days waiting for the follow-up forces to converge, Li Mingyuan and the Aymara people talked about uniting against the Bolivian army, and the Aymara people also sent a large number of people to contact Indians of other tribes to persuade them to join together to fight against Mel. Garrejo's army.
不过 Only two years have passed since the Indian Uprising in 1866. Indians in Bolivia have a deep memory of the painful experience. Now some people have offered their hands to provide weapons and promised to fight against the Melgarejo regime. They are certainly willing to agree.
There is no conflict of interest between the Chinese Independent Army and the Indians. The Indians want to reclaim the land that belongs to them. The Chinese Independent Army just wants to pass through Bolivia safely.
The Indians don't have to worry about the Chinese Independence Army and them robbing the land after the uprising was successful. Therefore, the two sides hit it off immediately, and they reached an agreement without a long time.
In the meantime, the Indians in La Paz first arrived at the Chinese Independent Army station and accepted the weapons assigned by the Chinese Independent Army.
破解 After four days of negotiation, a total of 15 Indians gathered at the Chinese Independent Army station, and the number reached 5,000.
There were seven hundred muskets originally seized from Bolivian soldiers. Except for the two hundred guns handed over to the Aymaras, there were still five hundred guns. It was not enough to distribute the five hundred guns to the five thousand Indians.
Therefore, Li Mingyuan ordered the cavalry brigade to use regiments as a unit to attack three small cities in La Paz. The large city of La Paz was difficult to break without heavy artillery, but other small cities were not so complicated. Often, the Chinese cavalry charged quickly. Bolivian soldiers who defended the town took the initiative to surrender when they broke into the city or shot a gun around the city.
South America has very few people. Except for some strategic locations, other small cities have low walls and some do n’t even have wall protection. Therefore, the Chinese cavalry had rich results and broke through nine small cities within a few days and seized 1,500 muskets.
1,500 plus the remaining 500 have a total of 2,000 muskets, which can arm 2,000 Indian soldiers.
The number of 2,000 Indian musketeers is quite large. Li Mingyuan does not plan to continue to expand the size of Indian musketeers, because the main force fighting Bolivia is the Chinese Independent Army, and the role of attracting Indians is to appease the locals and make them independent Chinese soldiers. Provide stable logistical support.
In the army's tent, Li Mingyuan stood in front of the map to look closely at the terrain near La Paz.
La Paz is located in the La Paz Valley in the eastern part of the Bolivian Plateau. The plateau is in the southwest and the mountains are in the southeast. The tropical valley is in the east and the rain forest belt on the edge of the Amazon basin in the north. La Paz is a typical mountain city, surrounded by mountains, easy to defend and difficult to attack.
Moreover, La Paz is located at the intersection of the Peruvian plains and the Bolivian Plateau, and its elevation will have a certain impact on the operations of the Chinese Independent Army who have just entered the plateau.
明 Li Mingyuan stared at the city of La Paz for a long time, thinking about siege methods.
Because of the high terrain of La Paz, the road is difficult to walk, and it is very difficult to attack the city with artillery.
In the past few days when the Chinese Independence Army was stationed, garrison troops from various cities in La Paz province and Melgarejo's reinforcements have arrived in La Paz. According to reports from Indians listening to the news, the total number of garrisons in La Paz exceeds 10,000. And in two days, Melgarejo will personally lead the reinforcement of 10,000 Bolivian troops.
By then, it will be more difficult for the Chinese Independent Army to break through La Paz.
Without attacking the city of La Paz, it is theoretically feasible for the Chinese Independent Army field forces to directly advance to the hinterland of Bolivia, but in this way, the subsequent 90,000 large troops carrying large quantities of materials will encounter resistance.
The Chinese troops with a population of 90,000 are not as good as the main force of the field army, and have a lot of material drag. Once they are stuck by the army in La Paz, it will bring very bad results.
明 Li Mingyuan has no intention to leave the problem to the follow-up forces. In his plan, La Paz must be attacked, otherwise the operation of the Chinese Independent Army across Bolivia will be difficult.
The fortress is the easiest to break from the inside. In order to break through La Paz, Li Mingyuan selected a hundred people from the Indian soldiers and mixed it into La Paz. He is ready to assist the Chinese independent army to break the city at the critical time of the siege.
The follow-up troops set off a day earlier than the main force of the Chinese field army, but because of the disabled soldiers and a lot of supplies in the team, they have been following the field army.
The field force stayed near La Paz for four days, and the distance between the follow-up force and the field force gradually narrowed. According to the letter from Liu Pu, who is in charge of the follow-up force, the front of the follow-up force was less than thirty miles away from Li Mingyuan's location, and two were left a day. The troops will be able to meet.
In the letter, Liu Pu reported to Li Mingyuan some problems encountered during the transfer.
After the subsequent Chinese troops set off from Arequipa, they first arrived in Puno and then proceeded towards Bolivia along Lake Titicaca.
Because the field army opened the way in the early stage, the follow-up troops were safe and secure along the way, without encountering difficult problems.
After entering the end of Lake Titicaca, when the Bolivian border was seven or eighty miles away, the follow-up troops entered the forested area.
The roads in the mountains of Laoshan Forest are difficult to walk. Even with the marks left by the field army, the advance rate of the follow-up troops has slowed down significantly, from 60 miles per day to less than 30 miles per day.
Affected by the terrain, although there are no strange venomous snakes and beasts in the tropical forests in the mountains on the border between Peru and Bolivia, the high altitude forests have caused great difficulties for the follow-up troops.
Grain, gunpowder, and artillery require horse-drawn carriages and a large number of manpower to move forward. In order to transport these important weapons and materials out of the mountains, Liu Pu sent 5,000 Chinese soldiers to level the road and build a simple bridge across the river.
Then divided the healthy Chinese into three groups, taking turns to take over the transportation supplies.
From Arequipa, a few hundred miles away, the follow-up Chinese troops walked for a full 18 days. In the 18 days, one hundred people fell to the mountain and died because of transportation of materials and weapons. Twenty-four died and fell into the water. Ninety-one people were attacked by Indians living by Lake Titicaca, and 45 of them died.
The Indians around Lake Titicaca were tribes who fled from the rule of the Inca Empire. UU read the book www.uukanshu.com They closed the island in the lake and did not contact the outside world. Therefore, in the face of the Chinese troops transferred in, they behaved A lot of hostility.
The Indian attack on Lake Titicaca greatly delayed the transfer of Chinese troops. Later, Liu Pu sent a regiment of Chinese soldiers to capture five Indian villages and executed more than 120 attacks on the Chinese. The Indians deterred them and did not dare to attack the Chinese troops.
When Liu Pu wrote a letter, the follow-up troops lost 400 people for various reasons during the transfer to Bolivia. Among them, except for 169 Chinese who died as a result of accidents and Indian attacks, the others died of injuries. Old and weak Chinese.
The loss of twenty-four Chinese was not a small amount. In her letter, Liu Pu confessed his mistake to Li Mingyuan and blamed the Chinese's losses on his own handling mistakes.
After reading the letter, Li Mingyuan sighed, and it was his decision to move to Brazil. Among them, the Chinese suffered the losses he had expected. However, seeing the loss of the Chinese Independent Army, he still couldn't help feeling sad.
The Takino Army entered the battle lightly. It did not take much time to cross the shore of Lake Titicaca, and because the field march was a distance away from Lake Titicaca, it was not attacked by Indians living on small islands on the lake.
However, the follow-up forces were attacked by the Indians, which Li Mingyuan did not expect.
He wrote to Liu Pu and Li Mingyuan persuaded him to move in. The loss of the Chinese was inevitable. Only when the Chinese Independent Army succeeded in establishing a nation in southern Brazil can it stand up to the dead Chinese. What we need to do now is to improve the security and protection system during the transition process and minimize the casualties of Chinese soldiers.
After writing the letter, Li Mingyuan exhaled and ordered the order to send the letter out.