Liu Chengzong watched his artillery bombs hit the top of Jiayuguan City and sighed silently in his heart.
His surrender of the garrison at the pass was just a routine matter, and the slaughter of sheep and cattle in front of the pass was just to weaken the morale of the garrison. In fact, he knew better than anyone in his heart that the garrison at Jiayuguan would not surrender.
The Nine Borders of the Ming Dynasty have indeed lost many major battles, but there has never been a civil servant who surrendered without a fight, and the only border general who surrendered without a fight was Fushun guerrilla Li Yongfang.
Jiayuguan has an aura that has never been breached since it was built. The defenders here cannot easily surrender to it. Liu Chengzong, who was born in the border army, believes in the professional ethics of these old colleagues.
But he really didn't expect that the guard at Jiayuguan Pass was also very strong. The marshal's army was stewing meat outside the pass, wanting to show off their wealth and treatment. As a result, the guard at Jiayuguan Pass also set up a big pot at the gate and hung the sheep on the gate tower.
Kill now.
Both sides had a good meal, one mobilized troops and the other had high morale. A fierce battle was inevitable, and they could only rely on artillery to communicate.
The two sides fired several rounds of heavy artillery at each other. Liu Chengzong, who was on Tushan Mountain, looked at the binoculars for a moment, then turned to Cao Yao and said: "It seems that there is indeed no shortage of gunpowder in Suzhou. The artillery in Jiayuguan can fire very accurately and quickly. They have sufficient training, so they have it."
Good craftsmanship."
Cao Yao, who was also holding a telescope, responded, then nodded and said: "Their artillery is a bit weak. The imperial court does not pay attention to the northwest offensive and defensive guns. There are only four invincible generals and twelve generals who can fire against us.
If you capture them, you can use light artillery to demolish the sheep and horse wall."
Artillery in the Ming Dynasty has always had various names, but during the Chongzhen period, various types of cannon were divided into three categories in terms of use, namely war guns, attack guns and defensive guns.
War muskets are field artillery, most of which are relatively light; attack muskets have smaller diameters and can be fired in direct and indirect directions, making them siege guns; defensive muskets are heavier, and the distance from the fire gate to the lug is only
Half of the muzzle, the barrel of the gun tilts downward, used for swooping down on the city.
However, most of the artillery with this clear classification are used in the Liaodong battlefield where military pressure is high. The artillery at Xuanda Line of Defense and Jiayuguan are all old items from the Qi Jiguang era.
The Ming army at that time had no need to siege cities. The largest field artillery was Qi Jiguang's Invincible General and Ye Mengxiong's General Cannon. The former's normal specification was a Fran machine gun of 1,050 kilograms, and the latter's 1,000 kilograms.
Forged cannon.
These two kinds of old artillery are the main force of heavy artillery in Jiayuguan, and Liu Chengzong is no stranger to them. Li Bei used the smaller ones to fight him in Yan'an Mansion.
However, there was no joy on Liu Chengzong's face. He had expected that he would have the upper hand in the artillery battle outside the pass at a distance of one mile.
The Marshal's Mansion has complete production capabilities in artillery. When attacking the Bajiao City occupied by Chuoktu Taiji, it even cast cannons on site outside the city. It also has experienced artillerymen from the Ming army, and it also has a self-sufficient gunpowder production area.
With advanced equipment, sufficient gunpowder, complete training, and professional personnel, there is no reason why the Marshal's Mansion should lose in the artillery bombardment stage.
What really worries him is the siege, because for him Jiayuguan is a great pass that needs to be broken quickly, and he can't be here for several months.
Attacking Jiayuguan was not only a shock to Gansu, but also a way to show off their power to Batur Hutaiji and other Wala nobles. Liu Chengzu led four battalions, two battalions of Tianshan Guards and two battalions of Mongolians.
Stay in Jiayuguan for one month.
They must leave for Tianshan in a month. Otherwise, the Tianshan Fourth Battalion will not have enough food and grass, and they will have to start eating the food and grass of Liu Chengzong's main Fifth Battalion.
These people began to eat the food of the main camp, which declared Liu Shishi's Gansu strategy plan to be a complete failure, and they had no choice but to return to Qinghai.
Therefore, Liu Chengzong's worries mainly came from the scale of reinforcements in Jiayuguan.
The Marshal's Mansion has an advantage in the artillery battle. A long-term artillery battle can weaken the city defenses to the greatest extent and gain an advantage for the next stage of the storm.
But at the same time, this is also a double-edged sword. It will take a long time to weaken the city defense through shelling. Reinforcements from the east of Jiayuguan will arrive one after another, which will cause trouble for the siege.
But at least for now, the situation is not bad.
Liu Chengzong greeted Cao Yao and said: "Go down, the defenders' cannons can't reach us. It's time to get anxious soon. The cannons can be hit by strong charges."
After fighting with the Ming Army too many times, Liu Shizi also got to know the habits of the Ming Army's artillerymen. These people came with double charges at every turn, which was quite scary sometimes.
Cao Yao followed his good deeds and asked as he followed Liu Shizi down to the city: "How do you plan to break through the barrier?"
"It's the same old thing, first tear down the sheep and horse wall, then use cannonballs to knock off the battlements of Guancheng and the hanging wall. It's best to capture Guancheng by force. If you can't take it... If you can't take it, you can only attack the hanging wall.
There's a wall, let's go in first and then talk."
The hanging wall mentioned by Liu Chengzong is the Great Wall that connects the cliffs and high mountain deserts on the north and south sides of Jiayuguan Pass. It is relatively easy to cross the pass from the Great Wall, but it still cannot avoid the siege of Jiayuguan Pass.
Therefore, Liu Chengzong planned to use artillery for a day, then send people to break through the hanging wall tomorrow, and use horse soldiers to rush into Suzhou to block the reinforcements from the east.
After that, Liu Chengzong walked down the mountain and ordered the soldiers beside him: "Send an order to the Tianshan Guards and Junggar Camp, and order them to move to the front of the formation and build ten buildings six hundred steps away from the city, one mile apart from south to north.
A four-foot-long earth mountain."
The city wall of Jiayuguan is three feet high. Liu Chengzong needed to build a four-foot-high earth hill outside the city in order to see the horse path on the other side of the city wall. The battlements on the outside of the horse path were where artillery fire needed to be destroyed.
As for letting my brother and the four battalions of Warana do earthwork, it was because they did not need to participate in the war. Their appearance on the battlefield was just to show off, and it was of no use to save their energy. Building earthwork and digging trenches was not a waste of food. The greatest virtue of the Marshal's Mansion is that as long as a person is alive, he must not waste food, because every morsel of food that person eats was saved by someone in the world starving to death for him.
But in fact, Ding Guodong on the other side of Jiayuguan feels this truth more deeply at this moment.
The Marshal's army slaughtered seventy-two sheep outside the pass before the artillery fire. It was not painful or itchy, because this was the food prepared by Liu Chengzong for the Marshal's Mansion army. They ate like this all the way from several Tuen Mu camps.<
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In fact, because they left the pastures of the Tunmu camp, their livestock supply has dwindled. Anyone can eat live livestock during the march, but outside Jiayuguan, only troops preparing for battle can eat fresh meat.
To ensure morale for this long march, Liu Shishi invested a lot of money, and the eight herding camps in Qinghai were in need of grazing for the next two years.
But for Ding Guodong, the guerrilla general of Jiayuguan, this was not the case. The enemy was killing sheep and cattle outside the pass, which was such an obvious provocation and insult. He could not show weakness. He sent people to bring more than 30 sheep to the nearby herdsmen and slaughtered them on the spot.
.
It cost money to buy it, but he wanted to buy it, but the herdsmen didn't want to sell it, and they still expected these animals to produce lambs, so they bought it by force.
Ding Guodong had no other choice. Jiayuguan's defense equipment was very sufficient. The biggest loophole was the people. Once the soldiers lost their morale, there would be nothing left.
He can transfer livestock from Suzhou Wei, but it takes half a day to get there, and the most critical issue is that he can afford to buy thirty animals in Jiayuguan, but he cannot transfer livestock from Suzhou Wei.
The price is affordable.
The market price of these lambs is only thirty or forty taels of silver, but when reinforcements from all walks of life arrive and he adjusts the livestock, he will not need this amount.
Seeing that the artillery of the Marshal's Mansion suppressed the defenders on the city so much that they could not even lift their heads, even the artillerymen were half a beat too slow to fight back, which almost made Ding Guodong anxious to death.
The guard Qianhu Hei Chengyin was also extremely anxious. He ran over from behind the battlements with his waist hunched over and said: "General, Hanhan's cannon is very powerful. If you keep putting it down like this, the closed cannon will be smashed sooner or later. I
Rid out of the city and destroy a few of his cannons!"
"Don't dare to show off your courage!"
Ding Guodong became anxious when he heard this. He pointed at Hei Chengyin and said: "You stay in the gate and don't dare to leave the city. Their cavalry is waiting for you to leave the city!"
He could recognize that the artillery position outside the city was a conspiracy. The brass cannons were obviously better in performance than the antique cannons in the city, and they were meant to lure them out of the city to destroy the cannons.
This is the consistent style of Ming army warriors. Grandpa’s head is here. If you have the ability, come and get it.
"Then, general, just watch them blow up all our cannons?" Hei Chengyin said anxiously: "We have to find a way!"
The cannons that are closed are all good cannons that can hit one mile or even two miles, but if you want to shoot accurately, you only need one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred steps. Beyond this distance, you will not be able to shoot accurately.
What's more, the enemy has piled soil in front of the gun position, and Hei Chengyin doesn't know what the soil is made of. Even if a blind cat encounters a dead mouse, the artillery shells will not be able to penetrate it.
The opposite is different. Those huge cannons outside the city, fired at once at a distance of 500 paces, can knock down at least two of their battlements. Once the battlements are broken, the artillery emplacements will have to be moved. If they continue to move like this, sooner or later the artillery will be destroyed.
Cannonball damaged.
Not to mention that these cannons are really old. This kind of artillery battle with a small enemy and a large number is too much pressure on the sixteen old generals.
"Think of a way. Is there any way? Reinforcements are still delayed."
Ding Guodong cursed secretly, several reinforcements were stationed just thirty or forty miles away from Jiayuguan, and the two armies faced off and fired artillery for a long time. If his grandfather were still alive, he would have run away on crutches.
"Hold on, hold on until they attack the city, and rely on their strength to kill them in close combat." Ding Guodong said to Hei Chengyin: "Don't let the Marshal's Office underestimate our border defenders."
They did not have an advantage in the artillery battle, but in the hand-to-hand encounter at the top of the city, Ding Guodong was confident that he could defeat the Marshal's Mansion within at least three days.
Hei Chengyin also thought that this was feasible, and called Ha Zhi, a fireman from hundreds of households, and said: "Let your people go get the fire oil, and the city gate will not close the Qianjin gate. When hundreds of them attack Wengcheng, set fire to them."
!"
This is a way.
Ding Guodong thought that the enemy had just arrived, and his morale was very high at the moment. If he could win a victory in Wengcheng and kill the enemy's spirit, the most suitable method would be a fire attack.
Because the specialty product with the largest reserves in Jiuquan is petroleum, which is called naphtha in this era.
Jiuquan was the first city in ancient China to use petroleum in defensive warfare. In the first year of Emperor Wu's reign in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, Jiuquan soldiers and civilians used petroleum to burn the Turkic army's siege equipment, thereby averting danger.
In the Ming Dynasty, due to the existence of deep wells, better oil extraction capabilities were available in Jiuquan. Jiuquan had a series of special products produced from oil, such as ink after burning oil, oil for lighting, waterproof and anti-corrosion paint, asphalt, and vehicle wheel axles.
Lubricating oil, and fire oil used on the battlefield.
Fire attack is the advantage of the Jiayuguan defenders.
Ding Guodong did not reject the proposal to burn the siege troops in Wengcheng, but he gave Hei Chengyin a very clear and confusing order: "If reinforcements don't arrive, you can't set fire."
But Hei Chengyin understood, and said with a very serious military salute: "General, don't worry, I understand, I don't need to use it, but we need to let them know that we have kerosene."
In fact, the Jiayuguan garrison did not want to fight with the Marshal's Mansion at all. They were indeed well-trained, but apart from the officers, few of the city garrison had experienced war personally. To the garrison, war was just a romanticized frontier fortress poem. p>
The border troops in Gansu did endure hardships. The supply of food and grass here was not timely and they often went hungry. However, Hexi only experienced desertification and no severe drought. What they experienced was nothing more than Yansui. The treatment of the Xuanda border troops during the Tianqi period was not a big problem.
There is no such thing as the hard-hearted attitude of soldiers and thieves who had to kill people to survive during the drought in northern Shaanxi.
In their view, the frontier army and the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion had no grudges in the past and have no grudges in recent times. The soldiers attacking and defending the city had no choice but to do it according to their own masters. But in the final analysis, the soldiers on both sides were from Shaanxi. Pushing forward to the year of Tianqi,
Maybe Qiufang once stood in a military formation in Huamachi.
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The general gave an order, and the soldiers attacked the city. They were lucky if they made a contribution, and bad luck if they died. People will die in war, and when soldiers eat food, they are mentally prepared for this, but at least they can choose how to let the enemy die.<
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Hei Chengyin could understand that he proposed to use fierce fire oil because at the critical moment, he could not let his soldiers die, but it didn't matter whether he was stabbing with swords, stabbing with spears, or bombarded with guns and shells. He just didn't want to be poisoned or burned to death.
Death... is all death, and it is not a pleasant death.
Therefore, he could use fierce fire oil as the last defensive measure before the city was broken. For him, this war was originally a tragedy of warring against each other.
But Ding Guodong is a general with a veteran background, and his thoughts are not so sympathetic. He is very rational. This is just an account that requires an abacus.
If the reinforcements arrive at Jiayuguan and can hold it, they can set fire to it, explode it with poison and smoke, and it doesn't matter how they fight. If they have achieved military exploits, they can be promoted and make a fortune, and their brothers can also eat well.
It is only natural for the government and the army to fight against the rebels.
There was only one reason why he refused to use fierce fire oil. The reinforcements did not arrive. They used all their weapons to fight hard, and the friendship that was born from the same roots was burned away. In the end, Jiayuguan was still not defended. The rebels were full of anger. Where did they go?
Leak?
They want to massacre the city.
Now the question is here, where are the reinforcements?
The cannons on the city were still roaring, and several fast horses carrying flags galloped from the direction of Suzhou. They rushed to Guancheng to find Ding Guodong and worshiped him. They reported: "General Ding, reinforcements...the reinforcements can't come."
"Them?"
Ding Guodong was so choked that he couldn't speak, so he heard the order from the cavalry: "Thousands of enemy troops rushed into Ganzhou, crossed the high platform and plundered Ma Yingbao. The frontline of the troops was directed at Suzhou. General Zhao gathered troops this morning to rush to the east to support Jin Dynasty.
The Buddhist temple and the Jinta Temple Fort outside the northern pass were also besieged by the Tatar army. There were only 700 soldiers in Suzhou. They said that there would be no reinforcements in three to five days."