When Li Xuan led a main force of nearly 30,000 people to Wuzhou City, Wang Yue immediately led a group of senior civil and military officials of the Ming Army to the gate tower of the West Gate.
The city wall of Wuzhou City is originally more than seven meters high, and the city gate tower is higher than the city wall. When standing on the top of the city gate tower, which is more than ten meters high from the ground and looking down, they can clearly see the outside of the city.
The dense army of pseudo-Tang thieves.
In order to prevent being attacked by the Ming navy, Li Xuan led his troops to disembark early and then walked overland to Wuzhou. At this time, the fleet had already returned and began to perform logistics transportation tasks.
Wang Yue watched the pseudo-Tang thieves under the city begin to build their camp in a hurry. He frowned and asked others, "Are those people wearing weird clothes the real thieves of the pseudo-Tang Dynasty?"
As he spoke, he pointed at a pseudo-Tang bandit army outside the city, and the army he pointed at was the First Infantry Brigade!
Wei Yan next to him immediately said: "Yes, those wearing blue clothes and red trousers are the real thieves of the fake Tang Dynasty, and those wearing the same clothes as our soldiers are the rebels who surrendered to the thieves!"
When Wang Yue saw this, his brows furrowed even more tightly!
Why, because he saw at most half of the real thieves wearing blue clothes and red trousers outside the city, but there were as many as half of the rebels wearing Ming army uniforms.
What does this mean? It means that many officers and soldiers have surrendered to thieves!
"After the puppet Tang thief army is wiped out, these traitors who surrendered to the thief must be dealt with seriously. Whether they are generals or soldiers who surrendered to the thief, they must all be dealt with seriously. If they don't confiscate their homes and exterminate their clans, how can they deter those who come after them!" Wang Yue said.
The rebels outside the city hated them even more than they hated the rebels.
Based on traditional Eastern thinking, traitors, especially those who surrender to the enemy, are looked down upon.
Sometimes, traitors are even more hated than enemies!
Hearing what Wang Yue said, many people next to him looked a little embarrassed!
Most of them are generals from Guangxi, and many of the rebels outside the city were their subordinates earlier. Even many generals who surrendered to the thieves are inextricably related to them. This is to confiscate families and exterminate clans. You
Does Wang Yue want to destroy us too?
There was no way. As the scale of the puppet Tang rebel army grew larger and larger, and they occupied more and more places, more and more Ming troops were defeated. In this process, Ming troops and even officials would inevitably surrender.
In the past, when the puppet Tang rebels were hiding in the ravines, the Ming army and officials were quite repulsive to surrender. Even low-level officials were unwilling to surrender.
However, as the puppet Tang rebel army took hold in the two provinces and had an army of 100,000, many people had actually changed their minds. Although there were still no high-ranking generals and civil servants who would surrender, there were many mid-level generals of about a thousand households who were in the situation.
When things go wrong, surrender is already the first option.
Even senior generals such as the Guard Commander and the Guard Commander Qianshi will not take the initiative to surrender to the thieves after being captured, but most of them will not continue to resist, but will obediently become prisoners of war.
Even among the more hard-boned civil servants, officials at the level of county magistrates and even prefects have begun to surrender!
When the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty swept through Guizhou and central and western Guangxi, and conquered so many state capitals, there would always be one or two civil servants who surrendered. After all, not everyone dared to commit suicide. Even if they could not escape, even if they escaped
Even if he would be beheaded by the court, it would not be unacceptable to surrender to a thief.
Therefore, during this period of time, the Tang Dynasty has accepted the surrender of two Ming Dynasty magistrates and several county magistrates.
The Tang Dynasty naturally gave very preferential treatment to these mid-level and senior officials of the Ming Dynasty who surrendered. After all, their surrender was of great political significance. Even if they were all a bunch of wimps, Li Xuan would have to pretend to buy horse bones for a thousand dollars.
They held it high.
For example, Zhang Chengyue, the prefect of Si'en Prefecture, who took the initiative to lead the army and people in the city to surrender some time ago, Li Xuan graciously allowed him to remain as the prefect of Si'en Prefecture, and soon promoted him to the post of Governor of Guixi.
Most of the other civil servants who surrendered were given preferential treatment, with the lowest being those who were retained in their posts. Those with good attitudes and barely passable abilities were immediately promoted to magistrates, county magistrates, or fellow magistrates.
Especially for a high-ranking official like Zhang Chengyue in red robes, he is held in high esteem. He wishes that the whole world would know that if he surrenders to me, Li Xuan, he will be promoted and make a fortune. It will be easy for him to become rich and powerful.
Li Xuan's attitude of giving preferential treatment to demoted officials, and even giving priority to demoted officials, aggravated the trend of surrender among civil and military officials in the Ming Dynasty, especially many middle and low-level officials surrendered.
So many mid-level and low-level officials who surrendered were more or less connected with the senior civil and military officials in Wuzhou City, such as their masters, the same year, fellow townsmen, and even the same clan.
If all the demoted officials were to have their families confiscated and their families exterminated, at least half of the senior officials in Wuzhou City would be implicated.
And Wang Yue quickly realized that it was not appropriate for him to speak at this time, even though he really thought so and wanted to do so.
So he quickly changed the topic and started discussing city defense with his subordinates.
While Wang Yue led a group of civil and military officials to observe the puppet Tang rebel army outside the city, Li Xuan also led a group of senior generals to climb a small mountain outside the city and continued to observe the Wuzhou city defense with binoculars.
Now the group of senior officials led by Li Xuan have changed their guns. Many of them are holding telescopes. Li Xuan himself, Director of the Operations Department Zeng Ziwen, Commander of the First Infantry Brigade Hao Bainian, Commander of the Third Infantry Brigade
Chen Keqiao and others were all holding telescopes.
After the Royal Academy of Sciences built the first monocular telescope, the craftsmen also found the trick, and then continued to hand-grind a batch of crystal lenses. So far, only seven or eight have been built for senior generals.
Allotment.
However, it is only distributed to senior generals. Even though the success rate of polishing lenses has increased now, the raw material of these lenses is crystal. And since there is such a success rate, some of them must be scrapped. This is calculated.
If so, each telescope is expensive to build.
Therefore, it can only be distributed to senior generals!
They used telescopes to observe the Wuzhou city defense in the distance, and at the same time discussed in low voices from time to time.
The staff of the Operations Department began to draw up Wuzhou's city defense system in detail to provide a basis for subsequent offensive operations.
In fact, the staff of the Operations Department were not only observing on the west city wall, but had actually begun to circle around the entire Wuzhou City. At the same time, the presence of combat staff was indispensable in the surrounding areas.
They need to draw detailed topographic maps of Wuzhou City and surrounding areas!
After Li Xuan discussed with everyone for a long time, he still couldn't come up with a better solution.
There is no way, who makes Wuzhou City look like a hedgehog, making it difficult for people to eat, even if it is a strong attack, it is difficult to attack by force.
In the end, the only option was to build a camp first and then block the east and west passages of Wuzhou City. Since we didn't know how to break in for a while, we had no choice but to besiege the city first.
There are more than 100,000 soldiers and civilians in this city, and they consume an astronomical amount of food every day. When they run out of food, they can't get supplies, and they will starve to death, not to mention fighting!
Therefore, although Wuzhou City is like a hedgehog, the senior officials of the Tang Dynasty King Division, including Li Xuan, believe that Wuzhou City will be taken down sooner or later. The only question is, how long will it take?
How long this takes is very important. If it drags on for too long, it will have a huge negative impact on the subsequent strategic development of the Tang Dynasty King Division.
The Ming army inside Wuzhou City did not take the initiative to attack, and the Tang Dynasty King's Division outside the city also did not attack. Therefore, the first day when the Tang Dynasty King's Division arrived at Wuzhou City passed peacefully.
But starting from the next day, some changes occurred in Wuzhou City, because the heavy artillery of the two artillery battalions of the Tang Dynasty King Division had already set up artillery positions and started bombarding Wuzhou City. These more than ten artillery pieces
The bombardment together was huge.
And because the initial target was towards the city gate tower, it didn't take long for the west city gate tower to be destroyed, resulting in a small number of casualties among Ming soldiers.
But this bombardment is pretty much limited to this!
The city wall of Wuzhou City is more than seven meters high, and its thickness is not comparable to that of smaller cities such as Liuzhou City and Liping City. The artillery shells hitting the city wall will only leave a crater in the city wall.
It cannot cause any effective damage to the city wall.
So after a day of fighting, the heavy artillery unit of the King's Division of the Tang Dynasty decisively stopped the bombardment. The city wall couldn't be broken!
So much so that Butcher Chen ran to Li Xuan and said: "Your Majesty, we need more powerful cannons, preferably heavy cannons of more than ten kilograms, otherwise we will not be able to attack these fortified cities!"
Facing Butcher Chen's words, what can Li Xuan do? There is Mao's method!
A ten-pound cannon, this refers to a twelve-pound cannon. With the level of craftsmen in the Ministry of Industry of the Tang Dynasty, it is not easy to make a nine-pound cannon. I also want a twelve-pound cannon.
, don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.
When the artillery bombardment failed, the infantry rushed up. Facing the seven-meter-high city wall, they were probably going to suffer heavy casualties. In the end, they had no choice but to use stupid methods to dig trenches and tunnels!
Of course, the Ming army is not stupid. If you dig a tunnel, they will take corresponding measures to block and destroy it. Therefore, this tunnel is not easy to dig, so you can only take your time.
When Li Xuan was stopped at the foot of Wuzhou City, he went all the way along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and then west along the Yangtze River all the way to Changsha.
The first thing Zhang Yue did when he arrived in Huguang was to ignore several senior officials in Huguang.
If he didn't have enough power, he would definitely arrest the senior officials in Huguang one by one as soon as possible.
How long have the puppet Tang rebels been waging war? The rebels have captured Guizhou and most of Guangxi. However, neighboring Huguang still has not sent troops to Guizhou. This is simply intolerable.
Of course, he definitely does not have the power to directly remove these prefects or even high-ranking officials such as governors, but he, the governor, came with the capital camp and even the imperial edict of Zhengde. There is a line in this edict about doing things cheaply, so
He did not mean to directly remove these officials from their posts, but to vacate them and directly take charge of the military power in Huguang.
After initially assuming power, Zhang Yue immediately dispatched a 30,000-strong army gathered from various places in Huguang to march into Guizhou. Their frontline was directed at the Longxing place of the puppet Tang rebels: Xingquan Mansion!
Many months after the Tang Dynasty captured Guizhou, the Ming army from Huguang finally came and killed it!