Chapter 535: The front is tight, the rear is tight
The war that broke out on the Xuanda defense line in the seventh year of Chongzhen exceeded everyone's expectations.
It was different from what Huang Taiji thought. The reason why it didn't bring artillery was that he had pulled over 30,000 Manchurian Eight Banners and Han troops from Shenyang. Such troops were obviously not enough to attack a Ming army town.
Artillery poses no threat to fortresses and cities with rammed earth structures. Its role in offensive and defensive wars is to suppress. Attacking artillery can suppress defenders' artillery, which can effectively reduce the casualties of the siege army, and even knock down the entire battlement to allow the defenders to escape.
They didn't dare to go to the city and pushed the fight directly into street fighting.
On the other hand, Huang Taiji did not have the transport capacity. The war environment faced by Hou Jin was different from that of Liu Chengzong, and the artillery casting technology used was also different. The Hongyi cannons he cast independently were all genuine cannons made by the lost wax method. Six
One thing weighs a lot.
When transporting materials, there is a critical point in terms of weight. If the weight exceeds a certain weight, multiple livestock must be invested to achieve the effect of one. Two oxen pulling a cart can easily pull 1,200 kilograms, but if you want to pull a six thousand kilograms
If you want something, you have to put in twenty cows.
The two cannons he used to intimidate the Mongols required forty oxen to transport them. Just to transport the fifty cannons, he had to collect a thousand oxen. These one thousand oxen for heavy duty ate 25,000 oxen a day.
Thousand catties. In the five months since the dispatch of troops, 3.75 million catties have been eaten.
If he had the ability to organize such a transport capacity, would he still need to leave his hometown and go to Monan to fight?
He did not expect the situation on the Mongolian grasslands, nor did he expect the battle situation after entering the Xuanda defense line-the battle went smoothly and the battle was well fought, but the Jin Dynasty could not afford to fight such a battle, especially against the Ming Dynasty.<
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The Ming army could not be annihilated in small-scale encounters, and the Ming city could not be conquered in siege battles. The battle losses were close to one for one, and the Xuan army was engaged in meaningless and endless wild battles within the second border wall.
The exchange of lives made Huang Taiji panic.
If the exchange continues like this, and various reinforcements from the Ming army arrive, won't the gold be lost in exchange?
Chongzhen also thought so. Although the Ming army did not fight very well at the beginning of this battle, and they did not win a hearty victory from beginning to end. Just like Huang Taiji was dissatisfied with the war, the brave and capable Hou Jin army failed
Even though they ate up any Ming army troops, the brave and capable Xuanda frontier army also failed to devour any Hou Jin troops.
This is because the Xuanda defense line has fewer troops. When reinforcements from all walks of life arrive, there will definitely be a big fight for the Hou Jin army.
But in fact, at this point in the battle of Hulihutu, both sides have already given their best performance.
The rulers of both the Ming and Jin Dynasties were very dissatisfied with the battle that had progressed to this point. The only difference was that Huang Taiji was anxious about the upcoming crisis and was doing his best to find opportunities for his side to retreat; while Emperor Chongzhen was full of worries about the upcoming war.
Looking forward to it.
Then...the reinforcements didn't come.
Fu Zonglong was responsible for organizing the deployment of 30,000 reinforcements from Jizhen, Miyun, Shanhaiguan, and Ningyuan, but there was simply not enough troops to gather together.
He himself had three thousand pacesetters, and Shanhaiguan sent five thousand men first, led by deputy general Wang Yinghui. In the first year of Chongzhen, this man was thrown into imperial prison for embezzling and deducting military pay. He was just released not long ago; Ningyuan's over there
Wu Xiang said that he wanted to gather 6,000 men to send troops, but he only had 5,000 in hand. When the court official scolded him, he had to show his temper and leave first, but Fu Zonglong persuaded him to come back.
We only have half of the troops, but something happened.
Huang Taiji deeply felt that it was not a problem for soldiers and horses to surround Yingzhou City. After entering the fortress, the tens of thousands of Houjin troops concentrated on attacking but achieved nothing. Zhang Zongheng, the governor of Xuanda in Datong City, was not afraid of him. The Manchu soldiers were also human beings and suffered setbacks everywhere.
What morale is there to speak of? If he continues to waste like this, he will be finished.
After all the calculations, it is in our interests to capture a city at all costs.
Firstly, it can replenish military supplies, secondly, it can boost military morale, and thirdly, it can also frighten the Ming army.
More importantly, the Hou Jin army surrounded the forts and invited attacks, which worked. The surrender guide reported that there was Lingqiu County to the east. A few years ago, there was a leader named Yijianbai who rebelled. In Lingqiu and Guangzhou,
He had a great influence on the Ling area. He demolished the West City Wall. Later, although Yijianbai was suppressed by the army, the court had no money to allocate, and the West City Wall has not been repaired until now.
Huang Taiji first had scarecrows put up in the camp to pretend that the army was still stationed outside Yingzhou City. Then he wrote to Datong to ridicule Zhang Zongheng, the governor of Xuanda, for not coming out to fight with him. Finally, he ordered Abatai, Azige and Yang Guli to lead the army.
The two yellow flags and the two white flags, the most direct lineage and the most elite, raised their troops eastward at night and rushed to Lingqiu.
And for all this, Zhang Zongheng, the governor of Xuanda, basically got the information.
On the one hand, there were some Han people in Huang Taiji's army who couldn't control their wives even if they got married. When the Jin army was unstable, they found an opportunity to run to the Ming army camp. Those who ran to Datong all survived. Naturally,
I will tell Zhang Zongheng this information.
On the other hand, although Zhang Zongheng did not send a large army out of the city, a small group of Tang soldiers approached the Houjin camp in Yingzhou and directly probed for information.
But intelligence needs to be analyzed, and most importantly, it needs to be analyzed in conjunction with the situation between ourselves and the enemy.
Zhang Zongheng was a very capable and courageous governor, which was recognized in the Ming Dynasty. He served two terms as magistrate, once as Deputy Inspector, and once as Military Preparatory Officer. He violently beat Lin Dan Khan in Shanxi and wiped out the peasant army, all of which were very good.
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He had even personally led troops to fight Huang Taiji in Yanghe earlier.
But the army commanded by Huang Taiji exceeded the army that Zhang Zongheng could control - this was a very interesting thing in the Chongzhen Dynasty of the Ming Dynasty.
If a leader of fifty troops fights against Hou Jin's fifty men, he will most likely be able to fight one to one; a general with the same strength can also fight against Hou Jin without falling behind; in a battle,
A very poor general could overwhelm Houjin's entire army.
But if several generals join forces, or several general military officers join forces, as long as Hou Jin's army exceeds the number of troops that the supreme commander of the Ming army can control, the battle will be lost.
Zhang Zongheng actually didn't have much hope for reinforcements from the east route. Even if the east route could bring 30,000 reinforcements according to the emperor's words, Ji Liao's army would have to listen to Fu Zonglong, and he couldn't control You Shiwei in Shanhaiguan, let alone Ning Bing.
Well, the supervisor of the Liao army is Gao Qiqian - who among them is superior and who is inferior. They can't even tell the difference between the big and small kings who have the final say, so why are they still fighting with the coalition?
To command a large corps, one must not only have the airs of command and the soldiers to be commanded, but also have the authority to command.
The army has supervisors at the top, decentralized power at the bottom, and constraints everywhere. Regardless of whether they are You Shiwei and Wu Xiang who are in the army, Zhang Zongheng, Fu Zonglong, or Gao Qiqian, who are eunuchs, they are all in the army.
They are figures with the highest official positions in their respective careers.
The fall of Xuanda was the responsibility of Zhang Zongheng, the governor of Xuanda, and the defeat of the reinforcements in the field was the responsibility of the reinforcements. Then even a fool could write this script. It is nothing more than Zhang Zongheng taking the lead and the reinforcements from all walks of life supporting each other.
He can only consider the problem from his own point of view, and from his own point of view, the consequences are dismissal from office, imprisonment, exile, and being sent to the nine sides, which respectively correspond to Huang Taiji's withdrawal, victory in the field, destruction of the city, and capture of Datong.
The answer is obvious. The most important thing is not to let Huang Taiji capture Datong.
First of all, the town of Datong is a huge city with a circumference of 12 miles and 216 steps. It is laid out like a phoenix spreading its wings. There are three other small towns connected to the Wengcheng on the north, south and east sides.
For such a huge city, his Xuanda Governor's standard camp and Datong's garrison were insufficient to defend the city. They relied on mobilizing all the men in Datong and dividing the territory to be impregnable. But the people were not strong enough to go out of the city to fight Huang Taiji's generals. His army was divided into small groups and went out to fight with Hou Jin's sentinels and reconnaissance cavalry. It was okay to fight some encounters, but in a big battle, they would lose their butts. On this basis, Zhang Zongheng can also figure out that Huang Taiji has become anxious because he has accomplished nothing since entering the fortress. He must be eager to break through the city before the Ming army's reinforcements arrive. So with so many cities, which one will Huang Taiji break? Datong. p>
Only if Datong is captured will Huang Taiji not lose money by entering the fortress.
Then the answer is ready to come out. What Huang Taiji is doing now outside Yingzhou City is to make straw men, negotiate peace, and divide the troops. They are all strategies to lure the enemy.
Zhang Zongheng: Don’t listen, don’t listen, that bastard is chanting sutras!
Then Lingqiu disappeared.
The west wall of the city collapsed, and the county soldiers resisted desperately, but the buildings, oars, cannons, and armaments were all in ruins, and they could not stop the attack of the Jin army. They killed the retreating defenders and stepped on the city wall to enter the city. The county magistrate Jiang Bingcai Yu Bingcai
When he was defeated, he threw his official seal into a well in the city, and then hanged himself. The whole family was martyred.
The fall of Lingqiu shocked the entire Xuanda defense line. Zhang Zongheng urgently ordered Zhang Quanchang, the commander-in-chief of Shanxi Province, to cross the Great Wall and rush to Hunyuan Prefecture, trying to cooperate with the reinforcements on the east route and the Xuanyun border army on the north route to form an encirclement, in order to attack the Houjin Army in Lingqiu.
Launch a war of annihilation.
The large-scale mobilization of various armies could not be concealed by Hou Jin. Abatai and Azig had just plundered more than 10,000 people and hundreds of carts of goods and grain. Their soldiers and horses turned towards Zijingguan and launched a sheep attack at Maguan.
In fact, it didn't matter much to the Ming army whether it was a sheep attack or not, because to the east of these two passes was Baoding Prefecture, which was undefendable. Fu Zonglong could only send Wang Yinghui, who was a reinforcement, all the way to reinforce Zijingguan.
At the same time, Chen Bingshuozhou's Houjin Daishan Division also dug a side wall after Zhang Quanchang led his army eastward, bypassed Ningwuguan, and advanced into Daizhou. The troops passed through Guoxian County, and Daizhi County Li Zhuangtu
As soon as the pigeons surrendered, Guoxian County was declared to have fallen.
The two counties fell one after another, and the reinforcements from the East Route also entered Xuanyun territory. Zhang Quanchang immediately sent Fu Renxi to Nao County. If he took the lead here, the reinforcements from the East Route stopped advancing, and Wu Xiang's troops mutinied.
The scale of the mutiny was very small, just a few hundred barbarians. Later it was found that Houjin spies were mixed into the army. They spread rumors that after they entered the customs, their wives and children at home were imprisoned by the government, and they shouted that they could not die in the customs and wanted to return.
Ning Jin died together with his wife and children.
The mutiny had just been persuaded, but the Ming army's encirclement formed by the two white flags and the two yellow flags that had fallen into Lingqiu County was useless. At the same time, in the northwest of Shanxi in the southwest, Fu Renxi's army also fought against Daishan's two red flags.
Hands over.
Fu Renxi's troops are no different from other frontier troops of the Ming Army, except that the firearms veteran's shooting is very accurate.
After training, this guy was a thief. He made a fortune selling gunpowder to Liu Shishi, and later he was promoted to a general in Pingyang Mansion, which was close to the saltpeter production area in Shanxi. Although Liu Chengzong had already gone west by that time,
A Box of Gold has not forgotten this method of getting rich. What if Liu Shizi cannot stand in the northwest and comes back?
Later, this investment was naturally a failure. Liu Chengzong did not come back, and his gunpowder had nowhere to sell. After all, he had no basis for mutual trust with other leaders. Today I will sell the gunpowder to you Li Zicheng. Tomorrow you set up a cannon and give me two bang bangs.
Who can I talk to for explanation?
He used all the gunpowder himself and became Shanxi's leading firearms soldier.
Daishan knew about the news of his return for reinforcements, but he didn't take the Pingyang camp seriously. Pingyang Mansion belonged to the mainland. Except for the border troops, they could fight back and forth with the Eight Banners. The soldiers from the mainland couldn't do that, so he didn't care at all.
Lead the troops to meet Fu Renxi and head northeast, trying to cross Daizhou and join the yellow and white flags of Lingqiu.
Fu Renxi gave Daishan a little shock.
From the Tangshao test to many small-scale encounters, Fu Renxi defeated and annihilated the four Jin Army baggage brigades at the cost of 177 cavalry deaths, and recaptured the baggage trains with a population of more than 2,700 and full of goods.
One hundred and eighty-three cars.
When Daishan came to his senses and organized troops to fight with him, he couldn't even find Fu Renxi. He only saw more than a hundred burned and abandoned vehicles on the mountain roads of Mount Wutai.
At this time, Fu Renxi had already settled the people into Daizhou City, and then fled with 660 heads. He jumped quickly on the Wutai Mountain Road and entered Taiyuan City.
In the battle report submitted to the court, Fu Renxi said that he was defeated on Wutai Mountain Road. After a bloody battle, most of the recovered vehicles were recaptured by the Hou Jin Army. He only had the credit for rescuing more than 2,700 people and 660
Ten Donglu heads.
In fact, he didn't want to fight. On the one hand, he tried, but he really couldn't.
He got a lot of heads, mainly because he relied on his superior strength to attack the baggage trains and quickly defeated them to clean up the battlefield. Otherwise, the battlefield would be controlled by Hou Jin and the corpses would be burned.
Although there is no gunpowder trade under Liu Chengzong, because the invisible giant bandit has a box of gold and has done two big things in Shanxi, Pingyang Camp is very wealthy, and its three thousand soldiers are fully armed.
This was not the case with the two red flags he fought with. In the Houjin Army's battle, Bagala was the general's guard and would not appear on the small battlefield of this kind of encounter. The main soldiers were vests or infantry, also called black soldiers.
Kesen or armored men, as well as cotton-armored soldiers, they only accounted for one-third, or at most less than half, of the battle.
There are more flag slaves, also called Yaluhai. These people have no armor.
As soon as the fight started, the front of the Houjin army was the flag slaves who dared to die, that is, the dead soldiers, followed by the cotton-armored archers, in the middle were the generals and Ba Ya La supervising the armored infantry and cavalry, and behind them were large areas of flags.
slave.
This is actually the same as the Ming army. In the front are the vanguards, in the middle are the generals' servants and camp soldiers, and behind are the guard flag troops. They are exactly the same.
Therefore, after several battles, there were not many Houjin armored soldiers who died in Fu Renxi's hands. Basically, they were replaced one by one. But Daishan had more than 10,000 soldiers and horses, and he only had 3,000 battalion soldiers.
, Fu Renxi is unwilling and does not dare to fight this kind of substitution.
On the other hand, it was because on the battlefield, Fu Renxi did not expect the Ming army's chaotic coalition forces to fight a large-scale annihilation battle on the Xuanda defense line.
So he decided: it’s time to divide the spoils!
The reinforcements also thought what he thought. They were fighting life and death on the front line. The reinforcements coming from Liaodong stopped moving forward. Many barbarians sneaked out of the camp where they were stationed, stealing horses and cattle, insulting women, and hurting people.
Husband, he also killed a group of people - those who escaped from Huang Taiji's army after overcoming difficulties and dangers.
Those who came to Datong were properly accommodated by Zhang Zongheng, and a lot of information about Houjin was also reported.
Those who ran to the east were all killed by the reinforcements from the East as Eastern prisoners.
Of course, the killing was not clean enough. There was a scholar who was a master of escape. He first escaped from Huang Taiji's army, and then escaped from Wu Xiang's soldiers. All seven of his companions died, and he was the only survivor. So he sued
A petition was issued to let the court know that the reinforcements from the East Route not only refused to march, but also did bad things all over the place.
This is too demoralizing.
At the same time, the morale of the Hou Jin Army was not high.
Huang Taiji received intelligence from the rear. He was leading the battle from the front. The Mongolian tribes outside his mouth were so hungry that they started fighting with him. For some unknown reason, the three Khalkha tribes who had been raising horses in Ordos suddenly suddenly
Crossed the Yellow River and launched an attack on Fengzhoutan where the Tumut tribe was entrenched.
This kind of intelligence itself is nothing. Internal strife is a normal form of Mongolia in this era. However, in this piece of intelligence, Huang Taiji saw a Han name, which is very problematic.