The letter of war stipulates that at noon on May 16th, Daliang gunboats will cross the center of the river and bombard Jinghaimen on time to declare the continuation of the war between Liang and Chu. However, it does not mean that nothing will be done or anything will be done before noon on May 16th.
will not happen.
It's already midsummer in May, and the weather is getting hotter and hotter in the middle of the month. If you put on heavy armor, your whole body will be soaked with sweat in a short time. Even a well-trained and strong soldier will not be able to hold up under the scorching sun.
After a while, your physical strength will be exhausted.
This is by no means a suitable time for war.
The Yangtze River has entered the flood season, but it has not yet reached its peak. The blue-yellow water in the Yangtze River has not yet become completely turbid. It flows from west to east in a mighty way, as if it has been like this for hundreds of millions of years.
"...Hey, Liang Jun has warships leaving the river mouth!" The soldiers on duty at the Qiao Tower on the west wing of Jinghai Gate were the first to spot a large number of warships sailing into the Yangtze River from the Fuxian River mouth on the east wing of Tangyi City on the north bank at three o'clock in the morning on the 15th.
, seeing that Liang Jun's warships did not cross the center of the river and go south, the military attache on duty resisted the urge to beat the war drums, ran down the tower, and rushed to the Northern Army Command Yazhangtong located in the Jinghaimen Gate Tower of the Imperial Guards' Mansion.
Report Liang Jun’s unusual movements today.
The Jinghaimen Gate Tower was destroyed in the fire that caused the Yanyou Palace Incident, but it was rebuilt soon after the palace incident.
On the top of the mountain with three-story double eaves, the brick and wood tower is more than four feet high. It is located on the Jinghai Gate, which is more than six feet high. In front of it is a solid urn city, which is integrated with the open city gate of Jinghai Gate and can be used inside.
There are three thousand strong soldiers hidden in the city to counterattack the enemy; Wengcheng is strong enough that there is no need to use a moat to isolate it from the outside world. Even if the outer wall of the imperial city passes through the outside of Wengcheng, the river suddenly narrows to more than ten feet, and then it is used
Solid stone bridges connect the internal and external passages.
In addition to the outer gate of the imperial city, there is also an inner gate on the inside of the city wall.
Since the Neihao is also used as a sewer for discharging domestic wastewater, every time the weather is hot, it is difficult to avoid that a sour smell will permeate the imperial city from time to time. In the early years, someone wrote a letter suggesting that the Neihao should be converted into a sewer.
However, after the Jinling Rebellion, most people in the court still felt it was necessary to ensure that the military value of Neihao was not weakened.
However, in terms of military value, apart from being majestic and majestic, the brick and wood structure of the city tower is extremely easy to be destroyed by the cyclone cannon. The governor's office of the imperial guard also knew this very well. After learning that Liang Jun had won a great victory in southern Shanxi, he
Start building wooden sheds on the city wall so that the defenders can avoid arrows and stones.
Although the interior of the city tower has been reinforced, the military attache in Xiqiao Tower still felt trembling when he walked in. Although no one has seen the power of Liang Jun's new weapons, it is expected that as long as they are not weaker than the cyclone cannon, the tower can
It could be knocked down at any time.
However, from a traditional military perspective, from Jinghaimen, there are only 1,200 to 300 steps to the Yangtze River beach. Such a narrow space is generally far from enough to land troops and horses in formation, let alone the opportunity to move troops ashore.
Heavy cyclone cannons were set up one after another.
However, could Liang Jun's smoothbore cannon really reach the warships on the river a thousand or two thousand steps away and attack Jinghai Gate directly, as the war letter said?
The military attaché of Xiqiao Tower walked into the city tower and saw that all the generals were on the second-floor viewing platform. He did not need to report. The generals were staring at the Liang Army's warships that were slowly pressing toward the center of the river.
Liang Jun's warships are only seven or eight miles away from Jinghaimen, and the style of the new gunboats in their formation can be vaguely seen.
The main structure of the new gunboat has no major changes from the row-driven galleys built in Xuzhou in the past. Above the cabin or deck, there are three masts of different lengths supporting the sails raised high.
The biggest difference is that the previous galleys had sixteen to thirty-two large oars extending into the river in the two bottom compartments, allowing this kind of galleys to engage in close combat and form a more powerful force. The impact speed is fast, but although the bottom cabin of the new gunboat still retains the dark holes, there is no big oar sticking out.
As for the new gunboats, in addition to the larger area of iron armor covering the sides and decks, the bed crossbows, scorpion crossbows and other war weapons that should have been squeezed out of space to be deployed on the top of the cabin are all missing. Only one bottle is placed on the bow and stern decks. The unknown war weapon wrapped in linoleum cloth looked very huge.
"Liang Jun won't break his word, will he bombard Jinghai Gate today?" Gu Xiongchang asked his father Gu Zhilong, who was accompanying Shen Yang, Du Chongtao, Zhou Bingwu, Yang En and others to Jinghai Gate to inspect the defense, with some guilt.
Gu Zhilong glanced at his son displeased. They just came here for inspection and would retreat to Jingjiang Gate later. If they didn't even have the courage, how could they expect the generals of Jinghai Gate to hold on.
"If Liang Jun really wants to break his promise and use any kind of deception, he will not resort to such a simple trick." Fu Gengwen turned around and said to Gu Xiongchang.
Shen Yang, Du Chongtao, Zhou Bingwu, Yang En and others did not speak. It seemed that they did not hear what Fu Gengwen and Gu Xiongchang said at all. They just frowned and stared at the river with a telescope.
At this time, Gu Zhilong noticed that two warehouse ships separated from Liang Jun's navy fleet.
Warehouse ships are ships built in Xuzhou for transporting bulk materials on the Yangtze River. The structure is relatively simple, but a warehouse ship can carry six to seven thousand stones of grain, cotton yarn, cotton cloth or packed cotton.
Although the warehouse ship has a huge hull and simple interior compartment divisions, it is not suitable to be converted into a warship equipped with soldiers.
Gu Zhilong looked at Shen Yang, Du Chongtao and the others with confusion. Judging from their appearance, he seemed to be unable to guess why two separate warehouse ships separated from Liang Jun's ship formation.
"It seems that Liang Jun was worried that we didn't know enough about the power of artillery, so he deliberately pulled two target ships to the center of the river for bombardment, so that we could see the power of artillery first?" Fu Gengwen lowered his voice and pretended to guess. said to Gu Zhilong.
There was an oppressive silence in the atmosphere above the tower. Although Fu Gengwen's voice was very low, Shen Yang, Yang En, Du Chongtao, and Zhou Bingwu could still hear clearly. They couldn't help but look back at Fu Gengwen; Fu Gengwen bowed his hands and saluted. To show that he has talked nonsense.
The development of things soon proved that Fu Gengwen's "guess" was accurate.
Four to five hundred paces away from the two warehouse ships following the river current, four gunboats in Liang's naval array came sideways, with their gun barrels protruding from the hole. From a distance, they could see that each of the four gunboats had only one gun. At this time, the fire was ejected along with thick smoke.
In the blink of an eye, four chain bombs were like giant meteor hammers, rolling horizontally towards the masts of the two warehouse ships. The people standing on the tower of Jinghaimen, seven or eight miles away, seemed to be able to hear clearly The sound of huge wooden masts being torn off was heard from a distance, and the two warehouse ships were seen from a distance. The masts and half of the sails were directly broken by the fired chain bombs.
Once the masts and sails were broken, the warehouses could only drift with the river current, and the speed dropped. Then four gunboats fired solid projectiles from different angles and distances, destroying the two warehouse ships.
It wasn't until the two warehouse ships sank completely to the bottom of the river that Liang Jun's fleet withdrew its troops from the mouth of the Fuxian River and returned to Tangyi Shuiying Dazhai, as if everything before noon was just an exercise.
There was silence above the tower.
Although Jinghai City is covered with city walls and the rammed loess is much thicker than Cangchuan City, what Liang Jun's gunboats demonstrated today is the ability to shoot accurately at a distance of two thousand to three thousand steps and four to five
Ability to inflict area damage at a distance of a hundred steps.
None of the people on the city tower are young and energetic, and they don’t know how to be powerful. Even if they misunderstood the actual power of the solid bullets fired by the artillery, after all, after the solid bullets directly penetrated the wall of the warehouse ship, it seemed that the damage to the warehouse ship was still.
It was not as good as the wind cannon firing large stone bullets at close range, but they still realized that the smoothbore cannon equipped on Liang Jun's warships was an epoch-making new type of war weapon.
The destructive shooting capability from a distance of two to three thousand steps makes it impossible for traditional warships to approach from the front. It is no wonder that Liang Jun's new warships have removed all their rows of oars.
With such a huge range advantage, Liang Jun's new warships no longer need to consider rapid assault operations at a distance of two to three thousand steps. Subsequent water battles mainly consider roundabout bombardment of enemy ships, and there are no rows or rows of oars.
The place of martial arts?
And this kind of war equipment is used in land warfare. If there is no counterbalancing war equipment, it will be under the attack of Liang Jun's artillery from two to three thousand steps away. Whether it is field battle or city defense, it will be at a huge disadvantage.
middle.
Without waiting for a signal from here, dozens of large and small warships that had previously entered the Yangtze River from Shuiying Dazhai on the left and right wings to guard, now all returned to Shuiying in despair.
Everything in front of him seemed to indicate that Liang Jun would launch an artillery bombardment on Jinghai Gate at noon tomorrow. Shen Yang, Yang En, Du Chongtao, Zhou Bingwu and others all left Jinghai Gate. It seemed that no one was interested in going to the Privy Council or Shangshu Province to discuss defense matters.
, and it seems that the defensive strategy has been perfected, and there is no need to discuss it anymore, it only needs to be implemented according to the plan agreed yesterday.
When Gu Zhilong returned to the mansion, he was also a little lost. Fu Gengwen called him softly twice before coming back to his senses and asked: "What did Geng Wen just say?"
"Oh, I didn't say anything," Fu Gengwen said, "Liang Jun shelled the target ship to demonstrate the power of artillery. I saw that the generals at Jinghaimen were quite frustrated. They might want to avoid Liang Jun's shelling, but they were afraid.
The Privy Council punished me, which was quite a dilemma. I also thought, if the generals at Jinghaimen could not avoid the bombardment, when Liang Jun stormed the beach and landed at Caishiji, I don’t know how many Xuanzhou people would have fought before Liang Jun fought.
He died under the shelling..."
After all, Gu Zhilong did not succeed Zhou Bingwu as the Privy Councilor at this juncture, but became the Minister of the Ministry of War. However, some of Yongjia's troops and horses were deployed in Caishiji on the west wing of Jinling City. The generals and military attachés were mainly former Xuanzhou who had followed Gu Zhilong for many years.
Born as a state soldier.
Even if Gu Zhilong has no intention of fighting for power at this time, he still has to think about the old tradition of following him for many years.
After hearing what Fu Gengwen said, Gu Zhilong said: "If Liang Jun does not land tomorrow, but simply fires cannons from warships to bombard Jinghai Gate, of course the generals will not defend Jinghai Gate without knowing how to evade - I will meet with Shen Xiang tomorrow."