Shen Shuren's approach is almost to use the unmanned ship to go directly to the "mines", and face the reefs and broken cones that the enemy may have planted underwater, and forcefully carve a way out.
Unfortunately, this was something that no one else could say, but it was perfectly reasonable for him to say it.
Because the Shen family has nothing but money and a boat.
With his abilities in this field activated, there is no one on earth who can find anyone more confident than him, except for Zheng Zhilong, the King of Spain, or the Duke of Orange of the Netherlands.
Even the then King of England, Charles I, was not good enough. In 1642, Britain was not worthy of being considered the world's top naval power. It would have to take several decades before it could compete with the West and the Netherlands for the top spot in the world.
The generals under Shen Shuren, starting from Zuo Zixiong, all knew that Master Futai was right, and these words naturally brought tears to their eyes:
Mr. Futai is truly worthy of his benevolent saying: "Anyone who helps with important matters must put people first"!
There were so many officials in the Ming Dynasty, none of them were trying to make money and harm the country for personal gain! Only Shen Futai not only gave money to be an official, but also loved the soldiers so much!
The army belongs to the country, and the soldiers belong to the court, not to the Shen family.
The ships and the money are actually Mr. Shen’s personal property!
Now, Mr. Shen would rather sacrifice more of his family's things in exchange for less loss of the court's things and less casualties of soldiers' lives.
What kind of spirit is this?
This is nothing but a family-destroying bailout!
With tears in their eyes, they couldn't go against Master Futai's good wishes for the time being, so they could only push the boat along and let Master Futai try out the effect of this move.
…
And Shen Shuren is obviously not the kind of person who can tolerate "spending money without even hearing a sound".
Even if he does charity, he still wants a good reputation.
Who the hell does charity if you don’t have a name?
Therefore, in the next few days, before the next round trip of the grain transport fleet, although there was no fighting, the propaganda work in Chen County did not stop for a moment.
Chen Shuren did not do any official propaganda, as that would be too fake and would not be easy for the soldiers to believe. He just sent some close servants to spread the inside story of preparations for the war among the soldiers through various private channels.
"Have you heard? Originally, when Zuo Zongzhen and other brave generals saw that the grain fleet was blocked by the enemy, they planned to leave the city and advance by land and water to open up the road. It was Shen Futai who stopped them. He also had
Another clever trick.”
"...So it turns out that this is the case. I have been in the army for seven or eight years and have never heard of such a civil servant who loves his soldiers as much as his children."
"Have you never heard of this? Although we have only been in the military for three years, we have always known that Mr. Shen always loves soldiers as much as his son. However, his military laws are also very strict.
When I started my business in Huangzhou three years ago, I recruited dock warriors and hunters as my soldiers. I was provided with plenty of food and drink, and there was never a shortage of weapons, armor, and stomachs. But when it came time to fight, I also formed an array along the river, with someone taking the lead.
They jumped into the river to escape, but when they turned around they were all beheaded in public!"
"Well, brother, you are really lucky! You have been a Huangzhou soldier since you first joined the army. It is so enviable now that I think about it. We are all Henan soldiers. We have fought for five more years than you. It is not easy to survive to this day. All the brothers around you are dead.
How many times have they changed?
If we could have worked with a good officer like Mr. Shen as soon as we joined the army, maybe my second brother and cousin could have lived like me until now. For an officer who takes our lives as soldiers seriously, I was originally
I can’t find any in Henan.”
The servants of the Shen family first led the Huangzhou soldiers to spread, and then spread from Huangzhou soldiers to Wuchang soldiers, and then to Henan soldiers and Anlu soldiers. Within a few days, the whole army took the opportunity to compare the past and the past, recalling the hardships and thinking about the sweetness.
It's just a matter of holding a grievance meeting like the modern army did to dig out the root of the ideology.
In this way, the military morale becomes more and more usable.
…
The four or five days of waiting time passed quickly. Finally, it was time for Zhang Mingzhen's navy to once again transport grain to Chen County.
This time, it was still Shen Lian and Li Yu who led the food transport sailors, but Zhang Mingzhen himself still didn't come. This was not because Zhang Mingzhen was timid, but because of Shen Shuren's care. He needed to wait until the final decisive battle took place.
If you expose all your strength too far in advance, it will be difficult to seduce Li Zicheng to bite the bait again and again, and it will also easily cause morale to become exhausted, which will lead to exhaustion.
There were no surprises worth mentioning in the process of transporting food. Basically everything was proceeding according to Shen Shuren's script - the Chuang Army still organized an interception and dispatched more troops than last time.
Moreover, after the rest of the past few days, the Yingchuan River section in the southeast of Chen County has been undergoing more construction and transformation by the army. The hidden piles and artificial reefs have become denser, and the waterway has been changed by weirs.
If it is narrower, it will be more difficult for the fleet to pass.
In fact, Li Zicheng obviously thought about "completely digging out and blocking Yingchuan", but this crazy idea passed by in a flash and could not be implemented.
Yingchuan in this era can be regarded as one of the tributaries of the Yellow River. How can such a volume of water be cut off? And since ancient times, water control has been worse than dredging. Such a large amount of water will be directly blocked. When the dam breaks, the first one will definitely be drowned.
Li Zicheng himself.
Therefore, with Chuangjun's working method of wielding a shovel with both hands, he could only deploy a few reefs and cofferdams.
When they saw the official grain fleet approaching again, the invaders immediately dispatched many land troops to help defend against the encirclement. As before, they frantically fired at the fleet with firearms and crossbows as they did last time.
As for the small boats and rafts of the intruders, they hid behind the hidden piles and waited for their work. They wanted to wait for the official and military ships to run aground or hit a hole and lose their maneuverability, then rush up to pick up the ship and jump off the ship to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
It is a pity that this time the officers and soldiers did not use small boats to escort and clear the way to explore the waterway, but the big ship directly rammed into it. Amidst the heartbreaking sound of cracking wooden boards, pieces of hidden piles and dark cones were broken.
, swept away, plunged into the bottom of the boat and was towed away directly.
There were even some intruder boats that were hiding behind hidden piles in ambush. They were knocked over by large government ships that had broken the hidden piles and only slowed down a bit. A group of northern amateur sailors fell into the water in November in winter.
The river suddenly made me shivering with cold, and my hands and feet became stiff. The water in it was not very good, so I drowned directly.
At the same time, because the officers and soldiers did not use small boats, the long-range firepower of the intruders on the shore did not benefit at all. Everyone in the officers and soldiers had bunkers, and they fired arrows from the shooting holes on the side of the cabin.
But the Chuang army was standing on the shore. In this exchange ratio, the officers and soldiers definitely made a lot of money. They shot ten enemies to death without necessarily injuring one.
After a bloody battle, the officers and soldiers only lost a dozen large ships and broke out a bloody path.
The general in charge of the first-line interception today was Liu Fangliang. He was furious after seeing this situation, and ordered all the sailors of the small boats to cover up and seize the stranded ships.
At least grab the food from the doomed ship, and then kill all the officers and sailors who dare to serve as a death squad for Officer Shen Gou to vent their anger.
However, even this small goal could not be achieved in the end.
After the government ship took on more and more water and lost its forward momentum, the sailors on board abandoned the ship and jumped onto the lifeboat sampan and transferred to the friendly warships behind.
Only a few who could not retreat were entangled by the intruders, fell into hand-to-hand combat, and were brutally killed. However, even if the intruders robbed the broken boats, they could not get any food, because they soon discovered that these boats that had been used to break barriers before
, there is no food in it at all.
The draft of these ships seems to be deeper than that of grain ships, so that they can clear more water drop obstacles by force. After all, if even a large ship with a draft of one foot deep can easily pass, then an ordinary grain ship with a draft of only seven or eight feet
The boat will definitely be able to follow safely.
Unfortunately, the ballast used to maintain the draft of these wrecked ships turned out to be just piles of rocks, which were not worth being robbed at all.
The rocks were covered only with dry grass and dry firewood. The officers and soldiers threw a few torches before abandoning the ship, which made it difficult for the invading sailors who jumped in to help rob the ship.
Some who were not familiar with the structure of the ship's hull and had already penetrated deep into the lower cabins were temporarily cut off from their exits, wailing and bumping around like headless flies in the sea of fire. Some finally rushed out of the deck covered with fire, but some could not tell their direction in the thick smoke.
, in the end he died alive and sank with the ship.
Although the number of soldiers who were burned to death was definitely not large, the continuous screams could be vaguely heard at least within a few miles, which had a greater impact on the morale of the intruders. At least they knew that they were hit again.
Counted.
…
Although the officers and soldiers won the victory and transported food again, the morale and hatred of the defenders in the city did not fade at all.
Although the location where the water battle occurred was still dozens of miles away from the Chenxian city, the flames from the burning of our own ships could not be seen with a telescope from the highest point of the Chenxian city building.
However, the billowing smoke caused by a pile of burning ships can be faintly noticed by telescopes in the distance.
Zuo Zixiong also went to the city in person that day, observed the smoke column, and gave the telescope to other guards, officers above Qian, so that everyone present could take a look. After these people returned, they naturally couldn't help but express their feelings and gossip with each other, so that more people could see it.
The officers at the grassroots level also know the price Mr. Shen paid today.
On the other side of the army, after Li Zicheng returned without success again, he inevitably got angry again. Fortunately, he also knew that he could not blame his generals, so he just took things to vent his anger and did not punish any generals.
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After all, Li Zicheng is also a being who can win over people's hearts, so he still needs to be responsible. Qi returns to Qi, and he cannot randomly find scapegoats like Chongzhen.
After venting and calming down, he naturally went to Song Xiance and Tian Jianxiu and Liu Fangliang to continue discussing countermeasures.
There is no qualitative change in the countermeasures this time. It is nothing more than continuing to pile up manpower at all costs to build and expand the reefs, hidden piles, iron cones, and cofferdams at the bottom of the Yingchuan River to a large sand ship with 400 materials.
Can't be knocked open!
This is also the easiest thing to think of and the simplest response. Just pile up the volume without changing the operation method at all. Just rely on one force to reduce it by ten times.
The leader's words caused his subordinates to run away and break their legs. King Chuang personally said that such large-scale construction was to be carried out at the bottom of the Yingchuan River. Of course, the officers and soldiers of the Chuang army were miserable.
In the winter, you need to dig sand and pile soil, cut down trees and build hidden piles. Especially the new hidden piles must be buried at least one foot deep in the mud under the river bed. If not, you will have to pile up soil after the hidden piles are completed.
Tamp it down.
And all these operations have to be completed in the water. People are on the water, and a group of people are carrying a thick piece of wood several feet high as a ramming pillar to pound down. The intensity of labor is really miserable.
Even if the canal was built in peacetime, with the technical level of the Ming Dynasty, hundreds of river workers would have to die or be injured to build a river channel of several miles. Not to mention that it is now wartime, it is still winter, and the construction deadline has to be met.
Of course, the Shaanxi old camp of the Breaking Army would not be sent to do this kind of hard work, so they would have to use the newly captured old and weak cannon fodder in Henan, the kind of weak people who could not be used as soldiers in ordinary times.
As a result, the factional divisions within the Chuang Army are also vaguely strengthening. Although it cannot be seen from the outside, a considerable number of people are becoming more and more alienated. If it really reaches the critical point, another local Henan thieves like Yuan Shizhong will come to the rescue.
Phew, anything can happen.
However, Li Zicheng's perseverance and determination soon paid off. Because just a few days later, the Shen family's fleet left Chen County again and went down the river. When they wanted to return to Shouxian County to haul another batch of grain,
The Chuang Army's fortifications finally came into play.
In fact, if Li Zicheng could calm down, he would have thought about why this time, after the Shen Jiajun's grain fleet entered Chen County, it took three or four days to unload the cargo before leaving the city again?
In the usual two times of transporting grain, wouldn't the cargo be unloaded in a day or two at most? The sailors have had enough rest and can they return?
Obviously, Shen Shuren deliberately delayed the unloading so slowly this time, just to give Li Zicheng time to construct and push the Shen family army into despair.
Of course, the reason Shen Shuren claimed to the outside world was definitely not this. He would definitely find a reasonable excuse to explain "why the unloading was so slow this time." And it was even less likely that Li Zicheng knew the details.
All in all, the return fleet of Shen Jiajun was slow this time, and the price was that when they came to the river section for construction again, even if they wanted to use a few boats to ram them as a death squad, they were unable to dislodge them.
So Shen Lian and Li Yu had no choice but to return to Chen County and report the bad news to Shen Shuren.
Of course, the Chuang army couldn't just let them run away easily, they had to pursue them no matter what.
As for the sailing skills of Shen Lian and others, if they wanted to distance themselves, they could obviously distance themselves, but for some reason, Shen Lian was "abnormal" in his command, and the rear troops were out of touch.
The large ship filled with firewood was finally overtaken and ran aground. The crew had to escape in a rescue boat and set a fire before leaving.
The location where the fire was set was closer to Chen County, less than ten miles away - after all, Shen Lian had full confidence that he would choose when and where he would be overtaken by the navy of the Chuang Army. He wanted to be there
Wherever you are overtaken, you can be overtaken. The acting is very realistic.
This raging fire does not need to be led by senior officers such as Zuo Bing. Ordinary soldiers on the south gate tower and wall can see clearly without the need for binoculars.
They spread rumors one after another, asked each other, and soon figured out that it turned out that the ships that wanted to leave the city to transport the next batch of grain reserves were blocked by Li Zicheng, and some of the ships ran slowly and were burned after a fierce battle.
At this point, Shen Shuren no longer hid it. He announced that he would summon the entire army for training and tell the truth about the bad news:
In the city, after the first two food transportations, there is still nearly two months of food storage, so even if there is no war for the time being, hunger will not die.
However, Li Zicheng has spared no expense to cut off the water and food routes of Chen County's army! If we don't fight now, in two months, we will run out of food and lose our strength, and we will still be unable to fight decisively!
Should we wait here to be finished, wait until the food is gone and we have no strength, and we can't fight even if we want to, or should we still be full of energy and energy and fight to the death to open up the food channel again!
Moreover, the invading army has blocked the Yingchuan River, so much so that at least two or three hundred large sand boats cannot pass, and only small sampans can pass!
We must seize both sides of the river and slowly demolish the obstacles before we can dredge the channel again!
Therefore, those who discount the idea of "others are fighting to the death on the shore, and I am hiding on the boat waiting to escape" can give up this idea sooner or later! If you don't fight to the death on the shore to repel the intruders, you can't escape in the boat!
If you want to survive, you have to fight to the death! There is no second way out!
——
PS: I can finish writing the decisive battle with the Chuang Army tomorrow. Today I will combine about 5,000 words into one big chapter. After finishing the game tomorrow, I will change the map, and I will take some time to reorganize and adjust the outline and improve the subsequent details.
Don't worry, everyone, we won't kill Li Zicheng. This is just to give an explanation to Chongzhen. At the same time, we must hurt Li Zicheng and get rid of his idea that the south is a fat man who can make a profit.