Wan County, which belonged to Kuizhou Prefecture in the late Ming Dynasty, was still four hundred miles away from Chongqing Prefecture's Ba County.
The distance seems quite far, but even if future generations of officials don’t understand geography at all, most of them will know that Wanxian County is under the jurisdiction of Chongqing - because the famous Chongqing Grilled Fish in the 21st century originated from there. Later, people from other places in Chongqing saw
This business was promising, and everyone came to do it, so the locals made another sign called "Wanzhou Grilled Fish".
And for a place famous for its grilled fish, the terrain is of course close to a river and full of water.
The Wanxian City in the late Ming Dynasty was located at a corner of the Yangtze River and was built on a wharf. The Yangtze River was on the north, south and east sides, and only the west was land.
This has been an important port city before the Yangtze River left Sichuan since ancient times. If the ships coming from the upper reaches are too big or the bottom of the ship is not seaworthy enough to pass through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, they will change ships here and replace them with ones that can easily pass through the Qutang Gorge, and then continue.
's voyage.
Therefore, the city's defense facilities are the strongest in the west, followed by those in the south and north, and the weakest in the east.
Outside the east gate of the county, there is a port area one or two miles deep. The terrain is flat, but the city walls are not high. Because the north and south sides are sandwiched by the Yangtze River, the city walls in the south and north of the city are built all the way to the Yangtze River, so there is no fear of enemies attacking from the land.
Detour back to the flat area east of the city and attack the city.
Anyone who dared to attack the city from the west, bypass the south or north of the city, and then go back to the east to attack the city would have been shot and killed by the defenders on the north and south walls halfway, making them unable to do anything.
Qin Liangyu was well versed in the geography of various prefectures in Sichuan, and of course he knew these things well. Therefore, as soon as he arrived in Wanxian County, he suggested that Zhu Shuren arrange for the men and horses of brothers Wang Guangchang and Wang Guangxing, who would be responsible for the first wave of the main attack, to the west of the city to assemble the attack force.
The city's equipment and preparations for a strong attack.
But Zhu Shuren also sat on a boat and circled Wanxian for a long time to observe carefully, and finally made a decision that was completely opposite to the locals.
Zhu Shuren pointed at the city wall with a broken jade fan and said proudly:
"Deploy the two kings' guerrilla troops to the fleet on the river east of the city. Don't rush up. Chief Qin, I'd like you to lead 10,000 white-armed soldiers first, set up a formation in the west of the city, and prepare siege equipment.
, first make noise to dampen the morale of the bandits and defenders. If possible, persuade them to surrender. If they cannot be persuaded to surrender, then attack by force.
After you take action over there, here in the east, I will let the two kings guerrilla land at the dock outside the water gate in the east of the city, and then attack from this side. I see that the wall in the east of the city is low and seems to be in disrepair, so it should be easier to break
.”
Qin Liangyu was stunned: "Attacking from the east of the city? Mr. Guo, I know that you have fought many victorious battles, but you may not understand the geography of central Sichuan!
Outside the east wall of the city, there seems to be a dock and neighborhood that are more than a mile deep, where soldiers and horses can be arranged calmly after landing, so that the defenders will not rush out and attack them halfway across the Yangtze River, driving them down the Yangtze River.
But have you ever thought about what to do with the siege weapons if you rush to land in formation and then directly attack the city? Ladders, rush cars, and trench cars cannot be unloaded directly to the dock by ship, and it is impossible for the infantry to appear after landing.
Build siege engines.
This means that the infantry who came ashore from the pier can only attack the city with the simplest equipment such as flying ladders and wooden blocks at most. Such simple equipment is enough to offset the disadvantage brought to the defenders by the low and worn-out east wall of the city!
"
But Zhu Shuren didn't care at all, and just smiled coldly: "The city wall in the east is so short and shabby. If you cut a few moso bamboos and make flying ladders temporarily, it will be enough to break the city. There is no need for ladders to rush the car! I will have other heavy attacks.
Weapons for the city and directly reinforce the siege troops from the river!"
Qin Liangyu saw that he was so confident and explained his plan clearly, so he did not refute again, but shook his head sadly in his heart, but still carried out the order.
Qin Liangyu also knew that despite her age, she was just a military commander and had no power to resist the governor's arbitrary orders.
At the beginning, Shao Jiechun made a blind decision and asked her to concentrate her troops to defend Fengjie and the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River. As a result, the other dangerous trails into the Sichuan mountains were full of loopholes. Qin Liangyu still had no way to disobey her orders and could only carry out the orders even though she knew there were risks.
The situation of military generals in the late Ming Dynasty was so embarrassing.
"Sun Tzu's Art of War" says: "He who can general but does not control the king wins", but this sentence was never fulfilled in the late Ming Dynasty.
…
Qin Liangyu first personally supervised about 10,000 white-armed soldiers and landed more than ten miles downstream from Wanxian City. Then he detoured back to the open area to the west of the city, set up a posture, and assembled siege equipment.
When Zhang Mingzhi, the thief general at the top of the city, saw Qin Liangyu's flag, he also felt as if he was facing a formidable enemy. He transferred at least two-thirds of the thousands of veteran thief veterans in the city and distributed them to the west city wall and towers.
This bandit army lacked muskets and rifles, so they had to rely on bows and crossbows. Most of the bows and crossbows were also gathered to the west, while a small number were distributed to the north and south sides to prevent the white-armed soldiers from outflanking. The remaining main ones were
We relied on rolling logs, rocks and strong recruits to be on guard.
Although Qin Liangyu's white-armed soldiers suffered heavy losses in Hebei as early as the seventh year of Chongzhen, and were damaged twice later, it would be good if only half of the veterans survived each time and returned to the army.
Therefore, the combat effectiveness is completely incomparable with the white-pole soldiers in their heyday seven years before Chongzhen.
But in any case, with the reputation of being a white-pole soldier, Qin Liangyu's army can be regarded as a strong second-tier army in the world.
Nowadays, among the various departments of the Ming Army, its combat strength is second only to the Guan Ning Army and the Shanxi Army. Compared with Sun Chuanting's Shaanxi Army, it should be in the middle.
Qin Liangyu himself is already sixty-eight years old. Of course, he cannot be on the front line in person. He is just supervising the formation from behind.
White-poled soldiers usually use white-waxed spears with hooks and sickles in field battles, but they are obviously not suitable for sieges, so they all replaced them with spare shields and sabers, as well as a certain amount of crossbows and muskets. In this battle, Zhu Shuren even provided extra supplies.
Qin Liangyu was assigned to the Musketeers.
The troops advanced one by one under the cover of the Tengpai. Zhu Shuren's additional musketeers also took the opportunity to follow the Tengpai players and fire at the city head.
Zhang Mingzhi lacked muskets, and the soldiers under his command were immediately hit by shotguns and could not hold their heads up.
The strong men in Xinla were so frightened by the gunshots and flying gravel that they did not dare to show their heads and throw logs and rocks outside. They only dared to hide behind the crenels and use a posture similar to Sakuragi Hanamichi's shot of throwing down the toilet, throwing logs and rocks blindly over the top.
.
A few recruits with weak strength even leaned against the battlements in panic and threw stones behind them. However, they did not have enough strength to successfully climb over the battlements. The rocks fell again and killed themselves.
There are all kinds of chaos.
Zhang Mingzhi also didn't expect that the young man under his command would be so miserable, so he had to temporarily mobilize veteran bandits from other directions to stop him.
As several ladders and trench vehicles approached the city wall one by one, Qin Liangyu's troops soon launched a fierce and bloody battle with Zhang Mingzhi's army.
Although the white-armed soldiers were brave, they could not withstand the obvious terrain disadvantage of the attacking side. Bloody casualties soon occurred, and the rogue army on the opposite side also felt uncomfortable. Every time the soldiers and the white-armed soldiers twisted into a group, they both followed.
He fell off the city wall, not knowing whether he would live or die.
The number of people killed in battle could increase by dozens every time a cup of tea was served. The blood gradually spattered and smeared on the city walls, constantly flowing downwards.
…
After the containment and siege in the west of the city lasted for about half a stick of incense, Zhu Shuren observed repeatedly with a telescope on the Yangtze River.
After confirming that there seemed to be troops from several other directions going to reinforce Qin Liangyu's attack, he finally gave the order for the Wang brothers to attack immediately.
Qin Liangyu over there resolutely carried out the order regardless of casualties, but brothers Wang Guangchang and Wang Guangxing had no choice but to bite the bullet and prepare for it again.
Fortunately, before they attacked, Zhu Shuren also gave them sufficient encouragement and completely revealed the answer to the mystery, so that they did not have to worry about the problem of "what to do if they lack heavy siege weapons and go directly to siege the city after a temporary landing."
"Don't worry, you two kings of guerrillas. Your troops only need to bring wooden flying ladders. They will line up as soon as they land, and then charge to attack the city. As for the city gates and walls, I will use the Hongyi cannon to bombard them for a round, even if they can't.
If you open it, you can at least collapse a few places, so you can select the dead soldiers and climb up on the gaps to kill them."
Wang Guangchang and Wang Guangxing were stunned: "Can the Hongyi cannon hit so far? The river is at least one mile away from the east gate and east wall!"
These troops who were born as bandits and were recruited by the imperial court had indeed not seen much of the world. They had only fought in the Yunyang and Xiangyang areas of Sichuan and Huguang.
Unlike Qin Liangyu who at least went to Beijing to visit the king and saw the Hongyi cannons defending the capital.
It can be said that most of the current Sichuan officers and soldiers, except for Qin Liangyu's troops, have never operated Hongyi cannons. They have only used relatively old-fashioned artillery such as Folangji, and even still use the outdated and lighter Tiger Crouching Cannon.
.
They really couldn't imagine that "cannons could hit two miles away", and even Zhang Xianzhong, the general on the opposite side, couldn't imagine it either.
Who makes Zhu Shuren's Hongyi cannon the best quality and strongest performance parameter in Asia? As early as more than a year ago, Zhu Shuren owned a three to four thousand kilogram original Dutch Hongyi cannon, which is equivalent to the Dutch cannon.
The 18- and 24-pound naval guns were obtained by Zheng Chenggong out of his filial piety to this elder brother.
[To be honest, I have been using Yeguo Reading recently to catch up on books, change sources, and read aloud with many sounds, and it can be used on both Android and Apple.]
In the past year, Zhu Shuren opened an iron ore in Daye and built a new type of blast furnace and preheating furnace for making iron and steel. The metallurgical level is already close to that of the late 18th century, at least higher than the state-of-the-art level of the same period in history.
Progress has been made for more than a hundred years.
With better steel materials, the quality of the Hongyi cannon forged by Zhu Shuren's military heart has of course been gradually and steadily improving.
Now, Song Yingxing's heaviest Hongyi cannon that can be cast has reached the two levels of five thousand kilograms and six thousand kilograms, which is more than half the weight of the original heaviest.
Of course, the heavier the cannon, the better. After all, versatility and maneuverability must be considered. Zhu Shuren's development of the new Hongyi cannon is divided into two directions. It is necessary to develop a light cannon that can be easily pulled by a horse-drawn carriage.
Also used for heavy artillery on warships.
These heaviest six-thousand-pound cannons are more than a hundred years ahead of the Dutch in terms of steel quality at the same time. The actual combat effectiveness is already close to that of the Dutch Navy's 3.7-ton "42-pound cannon" at the end of the 17th century, which can fire
A large iron ball weighing 42 pounds is equivalent to about 33 kilograms in the Ming Dynasty.
This heaviest artillery was still too heavy to be used as a broadside gun on the Dutch heavy Galenic warships, because the recoil would easily cause the hull to become unstable.
Therefore, in the era of sailing battleships, the heaviest broadside artillery of the Dutch only had 32-pound shells, and they had to be deployed on the lowest gun deck of the sailing battleship to prevent the center of gravity of the ship from being too high and unstable. The 42-pound guns were only used as
Bow and stern guns.
Of course, Zhu Shuren would not violate these physical laws.
Therefore, the 42-pound cannon he built was also only used as a bow cannon on top-level Ming warships with a material level of over 800.
Each large ship can be equipped with at most one door on the bow, which can only be fired forward to prevent the recoil from causing the ship to roll over.
If this kind of gun is to be used in land warfare, it will be very troublesome because it cannot be moved at all.
In any era, except for fortress guns, the heaviest army artillery must have a caliber and shell weight that is not as good as the naval main guns of the same period. After all, the transportation capacity of land vehicles is definitely far lower than that of warships of the same period.
Therefore, Zhu Shuren's move can only be used when attacking a city along the Yangtze River that can directly reach the city gate from the Yangtze River. In fact, it is very limited.
The Wang brothers each brought a battalion of 2,000 men, which in total amounted to 4,000 men. They soon landed in formation in a grand manner at the dock area in the east of Wanxian City.
After seeing this, the defenders at the top of the city did not dare to try "taking advantage of the landing troops' unstable foothold to leave the city and counterattack halfway across the border."
Who let Zhang Mingzhi himself be restrained by Qin Liangyu in the west of the city? The troops here are almost all young men and new recruits. Who has the courage to open the city gate and rush out to fight in the field?
The four thousand men of the Wang brothers were successfully arranged in line and carried the flying ladder.
At the same time, several of the largest warships on the Yangtze River had already lowered the anchors and adjusted the direction of their bows. They were anchored and firing, which was very stable.
"Boom, boom, boom -" Following several loud noises that even the vast majority of the Ming army had never physically examined themselves, three or five large iron balls, each weighing thirty-three kilograms, shot straight towards the east wall and wall of Wanxian County.
The towers and gates flew away.
"Is this the Hongyi cannon? None of the ten Folang machines makes as much noise as this one, right?" The Wang brothers were stunned. After the first round of firing, they were so sluggish that they temporarily became unresponsive.
Fortunately, they are still far away from the city wall, so they won't suffer losses if they don't charge for a while.
The accuracy of the first round of artillery shells was indeed not very good. It needed to be calibrated and adjusted to solve the error caused by the shaking of the ship's hull. Only one shell hit the city wall, and hundreds of stones of rammed earth collapsed and piled up inside and outside the wall.
A messy earth slope was raised, and at least one-third of the height of the city wall at that location was collapsed.
After fine-tuning, it took about five minutes for these heavy artillery to start the second round of shooting - there was no way, the heavy artillery of this era had such a slow shooting speed, and Zhu Shuren had just built such a big thing.
For months, the soldiers did not have many opportunities for live-fire training and could only fire one round every five minutes.
"Boom boom boom——"
Following several more loud noises, the muzzle of the gun was generally lowered this time. Although it did not hit the place where it was directly aimed, at least it was not empty.
Two of the bullets were shot low, and they hit the ground anyway, plowing out a trench several feet long. Then they bounced off the bullets and hit the base of the city wall again. At least dozens of rocks of rammed earth collapsed.
It was the base of the wall. After a while, the rammed earth above also collapsed a lot due to its own weight.
The remaining three rounds directly hit the wall, the city tower, and the city tower at the east gate of Wanxian County. It also directly punched a big hole, and a small half of it collapsed.
"Kill! Guo Xingye's heavy artillery can directly knock down the city wall! Each person who rushes into the city will be rewarded fifty taels!" The Wang brothers were also completely inspired to fight. With such an advantage, if they don't take the opportunity to gain military exploits, they will be killed.
I feel so sorry for myself.
What they didn't expect was that just when they rushed hundreds of steps and were about to approach the city wall's crossbow range, Wanxian's east city gate actually opened, and there were many rogue guards inside who rushed to kill them.
Coming out, it seems that they are preparing to counterattack the landing point of the siege army!
Wang Guangxing and Wang Guangchang were stunned. They could not imagine why there were such stupid enemies.
But you’d be a fool not to take advantage of it! Who wouldn’t want to fight in the field with these new recruits?
The two sides soon started a bloody melee below the city, with swords and guns piercing the flesh. The officers and soldiers were better equipped, and cannons fired in parabolas in the distance, hitting the rear of the bandits and the city. The bandits were even more confused for a while.
In less than a cup of tea, this counterattack attempt was completely defeated.
The Wang brothers, with two to three thousand brothers who were still capable of fighting, chased the fleeing troops into the city, and after a bloody strangulation, they finally broke through Wanxian County.
Zhang Mingzhi couldn't resist at all. As the fire broke out in the city, Qin Liangyu broke through the battlefield in the west of the city in one go.
As the bloody battle gradually subsided, Wang Guangxing's formation beheaded several bandit chiefs and captured a bandit alive. Only then did he have the opportunity to interrogate: "Thieves, you are so brave. You actually dare to open the door to counterattack. What do you think?
"
The captain was trembling and kowtowing as if he were talking: "We have never seen such heavy artillery. We cannot let our brothers be bombarded in vain. Seeing that there are not many of you ashore, I want to rush over and destroy the cannon, otherwise I will die."
The Wang brothers couldn't help laughing after hearing this. These ignorant guys actually thought that the army had unloaded the heavy artillery and deployed it on the dock to fire, and they wanted to come over to seize the cannon and destroy it!
These heavy artillery were obviously fired directly from the warship docked at the berth, but it was just a mile or two away that the thieves had poor eyesight and could not see clearly.
It seems that this kind of weapon, which allows the enemy to be beaten without fighting back, and which can ensure heavy damage to the city walls, towers and gates with every shot, is still very effective in forcing the enemies inside the city to come out to fight in the field.
It only took the army half a day to capture Wanxian County.