After the Yenisei Dispatch Army under the Second Army of the Chu Army successfully captured the city of Bratsk, they used the place as a base to rest and reorganize to relieve the fatigue of the soldiers caused by the arduous march over the past month.
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At the same time, logistics agencies also began to use the city as a material transfer base, gathering a large amount of logistics materials here and creating a relatively stable logistics transportation system.

After the Yenisei dispatched troops rested here for five days, they once again embarked on the westward march.

It is already early August. If you are in the Jiangnan area at this time, it is still the time when autumn is in full swing and the heat is unbearable.

However, in the area north of Xiaobeihai, the early autumn here is already relatively cold, and it is foreseeable that the area will be covered with snow in two or three months and enter the real cold winter season.

In the cold winter in a place like this, normal activities in the wild will become very troublesome, let alone fighting.

Therefore, the Chu army needs to capture the city of Yeniseisk before the real winter arrives.

Even if you are unable to capture the city of Yeniseisk before winter arrives, you must arrive early, build a camp before winter arrives, and stock up on enough supplies to survive the winter.

This time, the Chu army's Yenisei dispatched troops had no intention of retreating.

Even though they could not capture Yeniseisk before winter came, the Chu army continued to blockade and surround the place, waiting for the weather to get warmer to continue launching attacks.

Taking over the city of Yeniseisk in one go is the established plan of the Chu Army’s Second Army.

Therefore, after resting for five days, the Yenisey dispatched troops once again marched westward along the Angara River. This time they headed straight for the city of Yeniseysk.

The city of Yeniseysk is located on the west bank of the middle reaches of the Yenisey River, not far from the intersection where the Angara River joins the Yenisey River.

Not only that, the city of Yeniseysk is also an important transportation node connecting the Ob River, Yenisey River Basin, and Lena River Basin, a series of Siberian water networks.

There are two main passages from the Ob River to the Yenisey River Basin, and the point where their downstream passages connect to the Yenisey River is located one or two hundred kilometers downstream of the city of Yeniseisk.

The upstream channel is near the city of Yeniseisk. Of course, this channel is not directly connected by water, but requires a section of land-water channel (a land channel between two rivers), and this channel

, it is also the channel most used by Russians and has the best traffic conditions.

The eastern end of its land and water channel is the city of Yeniseisk!

Mainly able to control this area, then the Chu army can not only directly cut off the upstream channel, but also go one or two hundred kilometers north to cut off the downstream channel as well.

If the Russians want to continue heading east in the future, they can only take the northern passage around the Arctic Circle. That road is not easy to walk, and the freezing period is very long.

Of course, other new routes can also be taken, but waterways can no longer be used on a large scale and long land passages need to be taken. This is basically impossible to maintain large-scale personnel exchanges and material transportation.

Based on this series of circumstances, it can be seen that the city of Yeniseysk is the undisputed first strategic location in Siberia, at least for the contemporary seventeenth century.

Going east from here, you can go all the way to the Lena River, and you can even continue east to the Pacific Ocean.

To the west, you can go to the Ob River Basin.

Yeniseisk is the center point of a series of Siberian water networks!

It is precisely because the geographical location of this place is so important that the Russians built a fortress city here in 1619, and continued to expand and increase defense capabilities and develop surrounding areas over the next thirty years.

In the past seven or eight years, the continued threat posed by the Chu army has forced the Russians to increase the construction of various fortifications in Yeniseisk City.

Today, in the 21st year of Chengshun (1655 AD), the city of Yeniseisk is no longer small, with more than a thousand Russian regular troops and mercenaries garrisoned all year round.

At the same time, there are many business contacts, newly arrived Russian immigrants, etc.

The entire city has officials, various troops, goods, and civilians. The population can reach five to six thousand people. At the same time, there are many villages and towns developed by Russian immigrants around the city. There are also many Russian immigrants living in this area.

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As for the indigenous people, there are even more. There are at least 10,000 or 20,000 people around. However, even if these indigenous people were conquered by the Russians, they still live a life of fishing, hunting and herding deer. At the same time, these indigenous people have all kinds of things in their hands.

Fur is also the biggest motivation for Russians in the Far East.

The direct motive why the Russians came to Siberia was for the large amount of precious furs.

This is different from the fact that the Great Chu Empire, in order to expand its territory, pushed the national border from the north and west to the western region to ensure the overall security of the north.

If economic interests are simply taken into consideration, then the Chu Empire's northern strategy will suffer a huge loss... Thousands of millions of dollars have been thrown into it, and you can't make it back just by doing some fur business.

This is also an important feature of the Chu Empire's external expansion, that is, it does not pay much attention to economic interests, at least not short-term economic interests.

The idea of ​​​​the senior officials of the Dachu Empire is that regardless of how to make money in the future, they should occupy the land first, and then slowly figure out how to develop and make money.

As for land, the more the better.

This is most obvious in the northern strategy. This poor place is a pure loss for the current Chu Empire!

But the high-ranking officials of the empire don’t care about this loss in military expenditures. Military expenditures have to be paid every year anyway...

If we let the big men in the army and navy use their military expenditures to eat, drink, and gamble, we should not let them use their military expenditures to go to the battlefield to fight for the interests of the empire.

This involves the military expenditure distribution model of the Da Chu Empire. The empire's military expenditures are composed of two parts. One is the annual regular military expenditure. This is given according to a certain proportion of the expenditure budget. In the early years, the proportion was 2%.

Ten, now it is about 18%, which works out to more than 46 million in conventional army and navy military expenditures a year.

This cost does not include the Guards, whose military expenses are paid separately from royal funds.

There is also a temporary war expenditure, which has no quota. The original intention is to provide an additional amount of military expenditure when the war breaks out.

But the Great Chu Empire has never given any temporary war expenses since it destroyed the Dongji people... Even if it was accurate before, the Great Chu Empire has never given any temporary war expenses again. After a series of battles,

All necessary expenses are paid from regular military expenditures.

Because regular military expenditures have to be paid every year, the amount given has already made a lot of civilian officials heartbroken... This year, it has exceeded 40 million.

The civil servants could not wait to oust all the generals and put all the 40 to 50 million in their pockets.

However, these civil servants can only imagine in their dreams that if anyone dares to propose reducing conventional military expenditures, their military generals will really come to the door of the civilian officials' homes with guns and cannons...

This has also formed the pattern of the military and political parties in the empire in the past ten years. They usually play their own roles. When it comes to money, the regular military expenditures and civilian groups have no courage to reduce them, but the military cannot expect to be able to obtain temporary war funds in this life.

It’s a waste!

Guo Quanshu, the Minister of Counselor and Minister of Civil Affairs, publicly stated: Unless there is a danger of destroying the country, no provision for temporary war expenses should be made.

Because regular military expenditures are so high every year, so much when there is a war, and so much when there is no war, so whenever there is no large-scale external war, a large number of civilian officials in the upper echelons of the empire look at the army and navy.

Very unhappy... We, a group of decent civil servants, worked very hard to make a few bucks... But those bastards got tens of millions for not doing anything...

Therefore, the empire's civil servants have always supported the military's foreign expansion.

After all, you have to do things after you get the money. There are tens of millions of military expenditures every year. Looking at the past dynasties, which dynasty and which army has such treatment!

After taking so much money, if your military doesn’t bring down the whole world, I’ll be ashamed of you!

Of course, the scale of this war must be controlled well, and it must be just within the range that conventional military expenditures can support. If it accidentally exceeds the limit and wants any temporary war expenditures, the civil servants will laugh, then turn around and leave.

If you want temporary war funds, let alone doors, there are no windows...

So you can see that the external expansion of the Chu Empire over the years is actually very regular... that is, there will be a relatively large-scale wave every two or three years. Why is there such an interval? Because the military needs to save money for war.

Ah...

After saving up for two or three years, there will be a big wave. This has been the norm for the Chu Empire’s external expansion in the past ten years!

The Northern Strategy cannot escape this practice. From preparation to actual implementation, the military has been preparing for more than two years.

Such long-term preparations also paid off. From the first day of the launch of the northern strategy, the Chu army's actions were overwhelming from the first day with sufficient troops and strong logistical support.

Well, of course, you can also describe it this way: massive amounts of money are burning!

Throw in millions and tens of millions, and even the Chu army in the Arctic Circle can kill them... If it doesn't work, then add more money!

With the support of massive funds, the Chu army's Yenisei dispatched troops marched westward from the city of Bratsk, along the Angara River, and continued to advance by alternating land and water.

Along the way, we also accepted several small Russian strongholds. The people in these small Russian strongholds on the Angara River had already fled before the Chu army arrived.

After all, news of the fall of Brazik City has been arriving one after another, which already made them panic.

With the arrival of the defeated troops in Bratsk, their luck was completely crushed, and they immediately followed the retreating army and retreated all the way to the west.

So much so that the Chu army directly accepted a number of small Russian strongholds on the Angara River without any fighting. These small strongholds also became supply transfer stations for the Chu army along the way.

After all, these small strongholds are often built in strategically located places. They are important nodes along the river and are very suitable for use as supply transfer stations to provide supplies and rest for passing ships.

As the Chu army arrived one after another, especially after the defeated soldiers and civilians from the Angara Valley arrived in Yeniseisk, they instantly caused panic among the soldiers and civilians in the city.

The Russians in Yeniseisk had gradually learned about the war launched by the Chu Empire against them, but due to the distance, they had never been able to learn about the news from the front line.

It was not until many days after the fall of Bratsk that the communication personnel took the risk of taking a boat down the river and finally reported the news to the Russian army in Yeniseisk.

This time point is probably early August.

After learning of the fall of Bratsk, the Russian army in Yeniseysk immediately stopped its original plan to reinforce Bratsk and began to shrink its troops, strengthen city defenses, hoard food and ammunition, and other active preparations for war.

But at that time, they still had certain illusions in their minds, that is, they believed that the Chu army would not be able to reach Yeniseisk this year, but would come next year.

They still have time to continue preparing for war!

They believed that after the Chu army captured the city of Bratsk, its personnel needed to rest, supplies needed to be replenished, and logistics lines needed to be established, all of which would take a lot of time.

At the same time, although it is very fast to take the water route from Bratsk to Yeniseisk, the waterway of the Angara River is not considered safe. Without multiple round trips and a large number of experienced captains, a large-scale rash

The risk of transporting troops and materials will be very high, and the generals of the Chu army will most likely not choose to take the water route directly.

Instead, they will alternately take the water route or simply take the land route along the river. In this case, the whole journey will take at least two months of marching time.

Including the rest time and the time required for marching, by the time the Chu army reaches Yeniseisk, it will be the cold winter.

Under such circumstances, the Chu army is very likely to choose to slow down the all-out attack, and instead take rest and recuperation, strengthen control of the captured areas, and gradually explore the route from Bratsk to Yeniseisk to prepare for next year's attack.
To be continued...