Shenyang City was built in the Hongwu Period of the Ming Dynasty, under the supervision of Min Zhong, the commander of the Liaodong Capital Envoy Department. During several years of battles between Nurhaci and the Ming army, almost all of the Shenyang Ming City Wall was destroyed except for the north gate. Therefore, what Dayong is looking at now The Shenyang City we visited was built by Nurhaci and Hongtai. The layout of the entire city is also very different from that of the Ming Dynasty. Only four more gates were built. They are the East Neizhi Gate, the Fujin Gate, and the Nantian You Gate. , Desheng Gate; Xiwai Hui Gate, Huaiyuan Gate; Beidi Zai Gate, Fusheng Gate.
The names of these eight city gates that sounded a little awkward to Dayong were given by Han officials who had paid money in recent years. The original names made people feel familiar, such as the small east gate, the big east gate, and the small south gate, which are easy to remember. ah.
Mang Gurtai told Dayong that Shenyang City is divided into an inner city and an inner city. The inner city contains the Khan Palace built during the Nurhachi period, as well as various large and small Beile Mansion. In addition, the six yamen of the Jin Dynasty that were just established last year are also outside the inner city. The city is where Shenyang bannermen and Mongolian and Han people live. It is very chaotic, but the population is large, with nearly 100,000 people, but most of them are Han people who are slaves.
Although there are a large number of Han Aha, Mang Gurtai believes that Daishan will not recruit these Han people to go to the city to help in the battle even if he is confused. His most likely possibility is to recruit the left-behind bannermen from the Big and Small Beile Mansion, as well as the Khan Palace. More than a hundred soldiers were deployed. If Daishan recruited Han people to go to the city to help in the war, then he would have to worry about whether there would be civil unrest like when Jin Dynasty attacked the Ming Dynasty city.
The trick of bribing Han spies to set fire to the city and seize the city gates was played by Nurhaci with great enthusiasm, and it worked many times. After many years of fighting with Nurhaci, Mang Gurtai had heard about it and had done it himself several times, so he firmly believed in it. Daishan would not do such a stupid thing. Although the Ming army did not bribe the Han people in the city, I am afraid Daishan must consider how these Han people came to Shenyang City. How many of these people have no blood feud with Dajin? Yes, there are still a few who are willing to continue to be ruled by the Jin people when they see the Ming army coming to attack!
As for how many defenders Daishan could assemble, Mang Gurtai gave a figure of three thousand, which was quite different from Wu Heyin's previous estimate.
Wu Heyin also told Dayong on the side that after the Jin people established their capital in Shenyang, in order to prevent the Ming army from coming back one day, they not only built Shenyang City extremely solidly, but also placed most of the artillery captured from the Ming army over the years in Shenyang City. There are no less than a hundred artillery pieces, big or small. Mang Gurtai also expressed his agreement.
Hearing the hundreds of cannons, large and small, really surprised Dayong, but he immediately stopped paying attention.
Nurhaci and Hong Tai accidentally did Dayong a big favor. In order to make the capital of the so-called Jin Kingdom look particularly grand, under the guidance of a Feng Shui master, they built four more gates on the basis of the original Shenyang City in the Ming Dynasty, and built more buildings in the city. Eight streets, the so-called "eight gates to eight streets". This pattern naturally makes Shenyang city become spacious and tidy. It can accommodate a population of more than 100,000 people at once. It is very suitable for a small country to establish its capital in the beginning. But the problem is that these eight The city gate inadvertently shared the strength of the Shenyang defenders.[
In the past, the Jin army won consecutive battles and launched an offensive against the Ming Dynasty. The Ming army outside the pass was so overwhelmed that they could hardly breathe. It was too late to burn incense and pray to the Buddha and beg the Jin army not to attack them. How could anyone have the courage to attack the Jin army, let alone the city of Shenyang? Already.
Even if the Ming army had the guts to attack Shenyang, it would have to cross the hurdles of Guangning and Yizhou first. Without taking these two cities, it would be impossible for the Ming army to march straight into Shenyang. It's a pity that after so many years, Guangning is still there. With Yizhou, even the large and small Linghe Ming army, which was only a few dozen miles away from Jinzhou, could not cross it. They spent countless money, food and manpower playing the game of "I build it and you tear it down" with the Jin army.
Therefore, although Hong Tai and the senior officials of the Eight Banners were aware of the shortcomings of the Shenyang City Guards, they never took it to heart. In their view, worrying about the Ming army attacking Shenyang was worse than worrying about how many Han Aha would freeze to death this year.
Well now, something that Hong Tai never dreamed of happened happened. During the break when he led the army to conquer Mongolia, Shi Dayong, who had caused him a bloody blow under Jinzhou Jiancheng, unexpectedly killed Shi Dayong from Liaonan. Come here. A butcher's knife slashed hard and quickly on his soft side, the fatal soft side. However, the owner of the butcher's knife did it completely by mistake. The reason he decided to cross the sea was just to borrow money. In the name of Kong Youde, he fished in troubled waters and took advantage. God knows how big Shi Dayong fished. He did things that no one had done until the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and did things that Mao Wenlong wanted to do but had no time to do.
Whether it is the three thousand defenders estimated by Mang Gurtai or the five thousand proposed by Wu Heyin, it is not enough for Shenyang City, which has eight city gates. The Ming army can launch an attack at any gate. , but the Jin army could not concentrate its main force in one place, and could only share the guards. Otherwise, it would have to improvise and deploy troops everywhere to put out the fire. The final outcome was that before the Ming army could capture it, they themselves collapsed from exhaustion.
In the same way, more than a hundred artillery pieces sounds like a lot. Putting them all in one place is really too much for the Ming army, but how much lethality can be left if spread across eight city gates? These artillery pieces captured from the Ming army over the years can be It is not a Portuguese-made Hongyi cannon, but a cannon with serious quality problems supervised by the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty. I am afraid that when the Jin army fired the cannon, they paid more attention to when the cannon would explode, rather than how many people were killed. Ming Army. Moreover, Mang Gurtai also gave Dayong a reassurance. He told Dayong that in fact, the Jin Army did not have much gunpowder, and they did not have the ability to make their own gunpowder. The gunpowder used in the attack on Dalinghe last year was actually made by Hong Tairang Tong Yangxing. I spent a lot of money to buy it from Shanxi merchants in the Ming Dynasty, and this little gunpowder was almost used.
Mang Gurtai said with certainty that if the artillery at the top of Shenyang City could fire three rounds, he would be killed by a headlong collision.
Mang Gurtai's guarantee made Dayong very happy. Since those artillery pieces were good, they could attack the city immediately just waiting for the artillery troops to arrive. There was no need to rush to make any siege equipment, just attack the city gate.
In fact, Dai Shan had already made a move like a strong man's arm when deploying Shenyang's defense forces. The garrison force he deployed in the outer city was only a thousand unarmored bannermen and three thousand trusted Han people called Aha. But what he really did The more than 1,000 armored soldiers who can be relied on, together with the yaras from the Khan's palace, and the remaining 2,000 bannermen are all deployed in the inner city.
Daishan had no intention of defending the outer city, nor did he have the confidence to defend it. If it were the Ming army alone, Daishan might be able to mobilize the entire city's soldiers and civilians to fight to the death with the Ming army, but the presence of Mang Gurtai made it difficult for him to do so. He gave up this idea, because it was impossible for Mang Gurtai not to know the true situation of Shenyang City. As long as he told the Ming general that Shenyang was actually not strong enough to defend the city, it would be a matter of time before Shenyang City was defeated.
More importantly, Mang Gurtai is the leader of the Zhenglan Banner. Although he has been deprived of the title of Great Baylor and his Niulu banner has been taken away from him, there are still many bannermen and Aha who belong to him in Shenyang City, and they sympathize and support him. There are a lot of people, and most of them live in outer cities. Once these people respond to Mang Gurtai in a chaotic manner, it is suspected to be a catastrophe in Shenyang.
Mang Gurtai has been the political leader for so many years. Who knows how many people secretly colluded with him. A skinny camel is bigger than a horse. After Mang Gurtai fled, Daishan ordered the arrest of Mang Gurtai and Mang Gurtai. But it is impossible to kill all the relevant officials and generals. Doing so will only intensify the unrest caused by Mang Gurtai's defection. Just like Dayong did not sacrifice his butcher's knife for the sake of a stable Liaoyang city as his rear. Similarly, Daishan also needs to temporarily let go of some people he wants to kill but cannot for the sake of a stable Shenyang.
The decision to virtualize the external and focus on the internal was the result of joint discussions between Daishan and Adun, Yanguli, Du Du, Yilintai, Sony and other civil and military personnel who stayed in Shenyang. Losing pawns and protecting the car can still survive, and you can even make a comeback in a battle. You need both pawns and In the end, both ends of the chariot could not be taken care of, and only the chariot and the pawn were lost.
The inner city is where the military and political center of Dajin is located. The city wall is stronger than the outer city, and there is only one gate. It is easy to defend and difficult to attack. If you concentrate your elite troops on the city to defend it, as long as you defend it for seven or eight days, Daishan believes that he can see it. To the main flag of the Eight Banners.
In order to appease the people who were disturbed by the Mang Gurtai rebellion and the arrival of the Ming army, Daishan ordered the Ministry of Household Affairs to allocate money and food to reward the bannermen who participated in the defense of the city, and selected the best weapons from the arsenal of the Ministry of War to be sent to the city. In addition, he also continued to send fast horses to mobilize reinforcements outside the city. After arriving at the south bank of the Hun River, the Ming army renovated the pontoon bridge that had been more than ten years old, and then began to arrive at Shenyang City. When they got close, they fired arrows into the city. The arrows they fired were tied with a message. The owner of the message was not Ming army commander Shi Dayong, but Mang Gurtai.[