Chapter 210 It took 800 more tricks to win Chongqing (6,000-character chapter)
It was already the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month when Zhu Shuren came back through the messenger sent by Tan Wen.
So far, none of Zhu Shuren's schemes of suffering meat and false surrender have been fully implemented as planned.
In the process of testing, there will always be various new surprises or small flaws. Either the conditions here are not met, or the enemy is more alert than expected, which requires more testing and contact to win people's trust.
The reason why Bai Wenxuan received the envoy sent by Tan Wen so easily was because Bai Wenxuan had no intention of listening to the other party's words from the beginning. He just tried to get in touch and test each other out with the mentality of playing with each other.
Set of information.
This is just like modern people receiving telecom scams. Even if they think that the other person is probably a liar, some talkative people will still chat with the liar for a few more words, or even tease the other person. With the attitude of "It's okay to chat anyway, as long as you don't reveal anything."
Password, if you don’t pay, it doesn’t matter” mentality.
Zhu Shuren should even thank Bai Wenxuan for this kind of mentality. If the other party is a person who "hangs up without saying a word when receiving a scam call", then he will not even get this little gain.
As long as it was delayed like this, Zhu Shuren was destined to be unable to enter Chongqing to spend the New Year's Eve of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen and the New Year of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen.
But this is a normal situation. If the strategy is as perfect as expected at the beginning and the enemy falls directly into the trap, then the aura of mental retardation must be activated.
In the real world, when you start a business and start a project, there will be all kinds of unexpected surprises. Project managers will be overwhelmed every day. If fighting is more convenient than working on the project, then it is just a dream.
If the plan can't keep up with the changes, then readjust the plan. It's no big deal.
…
"Although it is impossible to directly pretend to surrender and open the city gate, it is not all without gain. At least I found out the important information that Zhang Xianzhong left Bai Wenxuan to supervise the army. It is an unexpected surprise. This shows that Zhang Xianzhong no longer completely trusts Bai Wenxuan.
Selected articles.
It can also be deduced that Zhang Xianzhong's trust in Li Dingguo must have further deteriorated, because Bai Wenxuan once cooperated more with Li Dingguo. Among the remaining governors under Zhang Xianzhong, Bai Wenxuan favored Li Dingguo, and Feng Shuangli favored Sun Kewang.
We all know this.
In addition, based on the few words Bai Wenxuan and Pan Duao said in front of the Tan Wen envoy, we can also draw other clues, that is, Bai Wenxuan tended to feel that there was no need to be too careful along the Jialing River in the north of the city from the beginning.
He felt that the rocky beach terrain after the river water dropped was too poor to carry siege weapons. The ships we ran aground a while ago further increased his confidence in this idea.
However, because Pan Duao didn't know much about soldiers and didn't understand the details of tactics, he just happened to be unable to understand the deception we had painstakingly deployed. He still insisted on deploying troops evenly in the west and north of the city, and defended like pepper noodles——
It’s not that Pan Duao is smart enough to see through my deception, it’s just that Pan Duao doesn’t know the details of the art of war, so my features are exposed to a blind man. This reminds me of an ancient comment on "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms": The empty city stratagem is just a lie.
If you deceive Sima Yi, if you encounter a bandit today, you may go straight to the city gate and capture Kong Ming.
With Pan Duao being such a fool, it's no wonder that my initial misleading strategy didn't work - but it doesn't matter, now that we have found out the information, we will make adjustments.
General Fang Shen can rest over there, allowing Wang Guangchang and Wang Guangxing's troops to rest. All offensives in the direction of the Jialing River in the north of the city have stopped.
On the west side of the city, let's follow the agreement between Tan Wen and Bai Wenxuan and pretend to slow down work for a few days. We will only shoot and fire off cannons every day. We can use rams and wooden donkey carts to crash doors and dig walls. We can also pretend to dig tunnels and discover them in a few days.
If it's not possible, give up.
In this way, it can be regarded as a sufficient effort to let Bai Wenxuan taste some benefits first. I believe that the local Sichuan army does not want to fight with him. After a few days, they will use the excuse of my personal intervention and dissatisfaction with the progress of the battle to punish and replace the Tan brothers.
He mobilized his direct troops to attack the city.
At that time, we have to put in all our efforts, and then while attacking the city, we secretly send Tan Wen to send envoys to explain. One day we find that Bai Wenxuan has finally been completely paralyzed, and we have relaxed the defense in the north of the city. We will then sneak across the Jialing River to Chongqing in the north of the city.
A fatal blow to the city!
"
Zhu Shuren worked on the battle plan for a long time before he revealed the entire adjusted plan to Qin Liangyu, Zhang Huangyan and Fang Guoan.
Everyone was originally worried that Mr. Guo Xing was a face-saving man and would get angry and insist on implementing his original plan after discovering that it could not be implemented. Now they found that Mr. Guo Xing had a flexible face limit and would immediately change it if it was not feasible. Everyone was relieved.
, and since I didn’t find anything wrong with this plan, I just went ahead and implemented it.
…
In the next three or four days, everything was implemented according to Zhu Shuren's new adjusted plan. Everything in the north of the city was quiet. The troops on the other side of the Jialing River were completely silent, and they didn't even bother to harass and contain them.
In the west of the city, the fighting seemed to be in full swing, but in fact, the casualties on both sides were not large.
Tan Wen pretended to play tacit understanding with Bai Wenxuan, so he wrote back to him and told him their follow-up battle plan. He said that it was they, the local generals in Sichuan, who suggested that the Zhushu people dig city walls and dig tunnels as the main attack method, and said that to deal with the mountain city,
It was time to fight like this, but Zhu Shuren didn't understand the geography of Sichuan, especially the geography around Chongqing, so he was deceived by them, allowing them to be passive and slow down the work and save lives.
Bai Wenxuan received Tan Wen's "secret report" in advance, so he naturally had more faith in Tan Wen's sincerity in preserving his strength, and decided to see the effects.
Of course he is not afraid of digging tunnels and city walls.
Why don't you try digging a tunnel in this mountain city? I thought it was the Hebei plain with loose and dry land!
Even if we had to dig tunnels to attack the city in Sichuan, at least we would be digging for a fertile plain city like Chengdu, which is known as Tianfu, not a mountain city!
At the same time, from Tan Wen's point of view, it is very reasonable for him to suggest this to his superiors - if he keeps using flying ladders and ladders to climb the city for hand-to-hand combat, the casualty rate of those who die first will definitely be very high, and the defenders will not risk giving way.
If they go up, even if they go up, fighting with swords and guns, each sword is fatal, how can they still play tacit football?
In contrast, by digging tunnels and walls, the two armies will not come into direct contact, so fewer people will die.
After Bai Wenxuan received the report, starting from the next day, he saw that the army had indeed switched to the digging method to siege the city. With muskets and cannons covering groups of wooden donkey carts, they approached the base of the city wall and then started digging.
The defenders could save some expensive arrows and ammunition and only use cheap and almost costless rolling wood and rocks to throw down.
But the wooden donkey cart is relatively strong, and has a sloped roof, which is covered with wet mud, which can bounce wood and rocks away, just like tilting armor to form a ricochet.
So after a day of fighting, not many people were killed on both sides. When the sky turned completely dark, Bai Wenxuan sent people to drop down into the city in hanging baskets to secretly inspect the damage caused to the city wall by the army that attacked the city during the day, and confirmed that the army was indeed out.
The work was hard and did not dig much depth, so Bai Wenxuan began to trust Tan Wen and other Sichuan local armed forces a little more in their sincerity in cooperation.
"I didn't expect that the Eight Great Kings massacred Chongqing and killed more than 200,000 people. There were still local Sichuan people who were willing to cooperate with the Eight Great Kings. It seems that the reasons why General Sun and the Second General dissuaded the Great Kings from massacre in the city may not be all right... Sigh...
, I really can’t understand it.”
After the truce, Bai Wenxuan couldn't help but think so.
After three days of this, the time has come to the third day of the first lunar month of the 16th year of Chongzhen.
During the Chinese New Year, we have to fight here, and I have to say that the soldiers of both armies are really struggling.
But this is the case in this era, long-term pain is worse than short-term pain, so what can be done.
On the third day of the first lunar month, as usual, Bai Wenxuan numbly asked people to throw rolling logs and stones on the wall, pretending that he was running out of arrows and ammunition.
But on this day, the officers and soldiers suddenly stepped up their offensive, and additionally used Hongyi artillery, which had been rarely used in the past few days, and used shrapnel with bullets to bombard the city head.
The troops digging the wall also changed from the slackness of the previous few days and dug very hard. Before the work was completed in the evening, several wooden donkey carts were covered and moved forward. The defenders thought at first that they were still ordinary diggers.
The city wood donkey, but the officers and soldiers hid a lot of gunpowder in the car.
After pushing it to the bottom of the city, the gunpowder barrel was moved to the gap dug in the wall, and then the outside was filled in, leaving only a small hole for a lead wire. Finally, it was ignited and retreated to blast.
The west city wall was seriously damaged
Two places were destroyed, and a gap of at least half the height of the city wall was blown. The wall that was originally more than three feet tall was only left with ruins one foot high. If Chongqing's terrain was not complex and the mountains were already steep, this gap would have been a big problem for the officers and soldiers.
Under the heavy attack, the outer wall might be lost directly.
In the end, Bai Wenxuan desperately threw his fresh troops into hand-to-hand combat and suffered heavy casualties before repelling the officers and soldiers.
At this time, his disadvantage of spreading the main force of the old battalion brothers all over the defense line like pepper noodles became apparent. When the city wall was damaged and a large number of hand-to-hand combat troops were needed, he could only fill it with new strong men. These soldiers fought
Their intentions were not good at all, and they suffered heavy casualties in the hand-to-hand combat, and almost trampled on each other.
The fighting lasted until nightfall before the officers and soldiers withdrew their troops. However, the officers and soldiers definitely made a huge profit from the exchange ratio on this day. The defenders suffered heavy losses due to several surprises.
Late at night, Tan Wencai once again sent a messenger to contact Bai Wenxuan, saying that Zhu Shuren was dissatisfied with their progress in the past few days. If it weren't for the Chinese New Year, he didn't want to change people, so he endured until today and changed his direct troops to attack the city.
That's why you put in so much effort.
Tan Wen's envoy said that the head of their family was also temporarily replaced, so they could not notify them in advance. They hoped to continue to keep in touch with Governor Bai and leave an extra escape route. If there is another opportunity in the future, they would be the main attack, and they hoped that Governor Bai would continue to work without any effort. Both sides
Fewer people will die.
Bai Wenxuan was a little frightened, and he couldn't believe it more and more: "You all almost made a sneak attack and took advantage of it. How could you step on both sides at this time? Aren't you afraid that Zhu Shuren will find clues after breaking the city?"
However, the envoy told Bai Wenxuan a piece of news that shocked Bai Wenxuan: "Captain Bai, our family master is very sincere in maintaining peace with your army. To be honest, the reason why he is optimistic about your army is because today our army has just
I got an urgent report, it was sent from Chengdu——
The Eight Kings actually captured Chengdu on New Year's Eve, and the news was rushed to Zhu Shu's army for two days. It is still unclear who will win in Sichuan in the future. We just want to follow the winning side and keep our own wealth. If the Eight Kings take charge
If Sichuan can leave the entire Kuizhou Prefecture to our Tan family, who should we follow?"
"The Eight Great Kings really captured Chengdu? You all dare to tell me this, so you are not afraid of boosting the morale of our army? How was Chengdu captured?" Bai Wenxuan was shocked and did not dare to confirm the truth. At the same time, he felt that the other party
If you use this to deceive people, it would be too costly.
If this is true, it is entirely possible that the morale of the Chongqing defenders will be greatly boosted!
However, the person who came to this question did not answer this question. He just said in a bachelor's manner: "Our family master doesn't know either. I only heard that Chengdu may be too dilapidated. The defenders are not wary of being attacked during the Chinese New Year. They are all in the army."
Rumor has it that our family master is not qualified to read the urgent report from the government."
This half-covered statement made Bai Wenxuan believe it a little more.
He also knows that Sichuan seems to be easy to defend but difficult to attack, and the terrain is dangerous, but the danger is mainly in the surrounding prefectures and counties. For example, Chongqing, Hezhou, and Fengjie are all strategic places, so they are difficult to attack.
Chengdu... In fact, not long after Bai Wenxuan followed Zhang Xianzhong into Sichuan, he heard that the defense was actually not strong.
I heard that the city wall of Chengdu is just a big rag that has been in disrepair for hundreds of years - and the reason for this is because since ancient times, the separatist regime in Sichuan has never thought of relying on clinging to Chengdu to maintain its separatist regime.
To defend Sichuan, we have to defend the surrounding mountainous and dangerous areas. If we really invade the Chengdu Plain, the fertile fields are thousands of miles away, and the separatist warlords would have surrendered long ago.
Liu Chan did not stick to Chengdu, nor did the Shu monarchs who used "Shixiu surrender to the Li family" during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, nor did Ming Sheng, the young leader of the Ming Xia regime at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, stick to Chengdu.
(Note: At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, it was Dai Shou, the prime minister of the Ming Xia regime, who stayed in Chongqing to resist the Tang River Army sent by Zhu Yuanzhang, and did not let Tang River cross the Qutang Gorge. In the end, the young master Ming Sheng was stolen by Fu Youde, the Ming Army of the North Road.
After Du Yinping succeeded, he immediately surrendered. Only then did Dai Shou realize, "I am about to fight to the death, why did your majesty surrender first?")
It is precisely because of Sichuan's military characteristics that have existed for thousands of years that no one will seriously repair Chengdu's city defense. There is no hope of defending Chengdu. It has been dilapidated for hundreds of years and can easily be destroyed by gunpowder blasts or sneak attacks.
is normal.
Regardless of whether this news is true or not, Bai Wenxuan is now
Yu Tan's family, Wang Guangxing and other original bandit troops were believed to be 70-80% trustworthy. At least the information they provided about the deployment of the current battle situation was absolutely true.
Both sides wanted to do less work, so that their direct troops would die less and let Zhu Shuren, an outsider, take the damage. On this point, Bai Wenxuan and the local Sichuan troops had a common interest.
When Bai Wenxuan began to suspect a larger conspiracy, the previous small settings were already regarded by him as common sense and he believed it by default.
He couldn't help but raised objections to the deployment with the supervising military advisor Pan Duao again in front of the envoy: "Commander Pan, look! I have long said that the army has completely abandoned the north of the city and crossed the Jialing River to attack! There is no way to pass there.
Heavy siege equipment!
Although the battle in the west of the city was uneventful in the past few days, the Zhu Shu people changed their generals on the spot and the offensive was so fierce. If they had listened to me earlier and deployed all the brothers from the old camp to the west of the city, they would not have suffered such heavy losses when they were almost breached today!
If Chongqing's terrain wasn't complex and there were several lines of defense in the west of the city, once they were breached today, the situation would have been over! Do you still want to interfere with my command and miss the important event of the Eight Kings?"
Pan Duao was criticized and robbed by him, and he could not refute it for a while, so he had to agree to Bai Wenxuan and withdraw the old camp in the north of the city to the west of the city as much as possible.
At this point, Bai Wenxuan and Pan Duao were no longer wary of the possibility that the army might spy on their defense arrangements. Even if they had any suspicions, they were all focused on "If the Tan brothers and Wang Guangchang offer to surrender again,
"Would it be a fake surrender?"
People are like this. When hearing multiple lies at the same time, the lie that is less like a lie will not be noticeable.
As for the news that Bai Wenxuan heard from the Tan family's envoy that "the Eight Kings had conquered Chengdu", he did not dare to immediately spread it among the troops to boost morale.
He was afraid that there was some fraud involved, and the current situation in defending the city was not very tense, so there was no need to rush to announce the news. He could wait until it was confirmed, or when the war situation was critical and there was an urgent need to boost morale, then it would not be too late to reveal it.
.
The boosting effect of any good news on morale is time-sensitive. After two or three days of being happy and uplifted, people will become accustomed to it and must be used wisely.
After "Tan Wen's envoy" left, the Chongqing garrison was redeployed in accordance with Bai Wenxuan's request. The struggle and gesticulation between Bai Wenxuan and Pan Du'ao for command further intensified the conflict.
…
Two more days passed like this, and the attacks in the west of the city became more and more fierce. Fortunately, Bai Wenxuan had gathered all the old camp, and it was not breached for a while.
However, the final turning point happened in the middle of the night on the fifth day of the first lunar month, or in the early morning of the sixth day of the first lunar month.
Tens of thousands of elite officers and soldiers were suddenly mobilized to the long north of Chongqing City. They smuggled across the Jialing River by boat in the middle of the night, prepared in formation, and unloaded simple siege equipment.
As for the dozen or so warships with the equivalent of a 42-pound naval gun-class heavy Hongyi cannon installed on their bows, a few of them had shallow drafts and sailed directly into the Jialing River. Those with deep drafts stayed at the Jialing River estuary of the Yangtze River and anchored directly.
Dingshi.
At the end of Yinshi, the army began to prepare firepower. More than a dozen super heavy artillery launched intensive fire at the relatively weak northern city wall and city gate tower. The firepower was only prepared for half a stick of incense, so as not to give the Chongqing defenders time in the west of the city.
Scheduling back to defense.
Moreover, at the same time as the fire was fired here, the Hongyi artillery in the west of the city also opened fire. At the same time, they also launched a night attack to disrupt the line of sight, confuse the enemy with the enemy, and slow down the defenders' response.
After a bombardment, gaps appeared in several defense lines in the north of the city. Then the officers and soldiers rushed forward and fought bravely, finally tearing open the gaps.
At the same time, because the north of the city has not been an easy direction for Chongqing to attack since ancient times, the defense line here does not have layers of fortifications. After breaking through the outer city wall along the river, you can directly enter the street fighting.
Unlike the west side of the city, after breaking through the outer wall, there are still mountain ridges and temporary rammed earth walls, and trenches can be used for defense.
As the Ming army successfully entered the city in a sneak attack, and the north of the city was full of strong men who had just been recruited, the elite of the old battalion had long been paralyzed and carelessly drained out, and the city of Chongqing soon fell into complete chaos.
Bai Wenxuan was in the city in person at that time
Supervising the battle in the west, he learned that the north of the city had been breached, and when he saw the fire in the city, blood rushed to his head and he knew that he could not explain to Zhang Xianzhong.
Pan Duao was furious. While rebuking Bai Wenxuan for his incompetence, he forced Bai Wenxuan to quickly organize troops to protect him from breaking out: "Bai Wenxuan, you are a paper-talking waste! I am the reincarnation of Zhuge. If you had listened to me earlier,
The west and north of the city were guarded to the death, how could we be like today!
Why don’t you hurry up and escort me to break out of the encirclement! Otherwise, when we get to Chengdu, I will definitely let the eight kings kill your whole family!”
Bai Wenxuan was stimulated by these words, and the nerves in his cheeks jumped and twitched. All kinds of hidden worries came to his heart. He suddenly drew his sword and chopped Pan Duao into pieces, and then shouted: "Pan Duao is dead! After Zhang Xianzhong entered Sichuan without justice,
He’s massacring the city everywhere, we won’t sacrifice our lives for him anymore!”
Bai Wenxuan actually didn't know if he could survive if he surrendered under such circumstances.
But if the fight continues, he will definitely die. If he escorts Pan Duao to break out of the encirclement, if he stirs up trouble in front of Zhang Xianzhong, he may also be liquidated.
In this case, it is better to take a gamble. Even if Zhang Xianzhong is killed by the rebels, Zhang Xianzhong does not know how he died, and his family may not be liquidated.
After some confusion, with Bai Wenxuan leading the surrender, at least 70% to 80% of the soldiers in Chongqing City could be regarded as surrendering directly. The 20% to 30% who had no eyesight or were not lucky were killed in the rebellion.
A matter of method.
Tens of thousands of people were fighting in the dark. No one knows whether the other side's surrender was a real surrender. It would be normal for them to kill a hundred or ten more people before stopping after they surrender.
The bloody friction in Chongqing didn't stop until daybreak, and Bai Wenxuan was kidnapped by Fang Guoan and Wang Guangxing and brought to Zhu Shuren.
When he saw Zhu Shuren, Bai Wenxuan had already knelt down and surrendered lifelessly. Without waiting for cross-examination, he took the initiative to beg for a condition: "Only when the criminals are about to break through the wall do they give an order to surrender. I don't dare to ask for immunity from death. If the surnamed master of the country wants to surrender,
I will be beheaded for the crime. I just ask that no one tell me that I surrendered. In this way, Zhang Xianzhong will not offend my family.
If Mr. Guo is willing to spare his life a crime, please announce that I am dead for the time being and announce that I am alive in the future. In this way, Zhang Xianzhong thinks that I died in the war and will not offend my family.
There is also the head of Pan Duao, one of Zhang Xianzhong's supervisory military advisors, here, begging for some immunity."
Zhu Shuren looked at him quietly and did not express his position. After Bai Wenxuan finished speaking, he stood up and walked back and forth in a leisurely manner. He also played with the jade fracture fan a few times. Then he turned his back to him and said proudly:
"Ordinarily, we surrender only after the wall is broken, and we deserve to be killed. But it doesn't matter if I spare you for the time being. It all depends on whether you are valuable, how you behave in the future, and whether you are willing to accept your guilt and make meritorious deeds."
Well, you requested that the news of your death be kept secret. I cannot fully promise you this, but can only promise you part of it - I remember that before Li Dingguo broke his trust with Zhang Xianzhong, you were the one who followed Li Dingguo the longest among Zhang Xianzhong's adopted sons.
Bar?"
Bai Wenxuan did not dare to hide anything and confessed truthfully: "I have indeed followed the second general for the longest time, and also followed the third general for a while."
Zhu Shuren clapped his folding fan and said, "Okay, I will hide the news of your death from the outside world, but you have to choose a confidant who knows Li Dingguo and whom Li Dingguo trusts to send a letter to Li Dingguo. The letter must be read by me first, so I asked him to persuade Zhang Xianzhong. Bai Wenxuan
He died in the war, so you should provide compensation to his family, and then take the opportunity to rescue your family, how about that?
Regardless of whether you think Li Dingguo betrayed you, you have to do this, otherwise, I will behead you and claim to the outside world that it was you who offered the city, or at least you did not listen to Pan Duao's instructions and used the troops improperly.
Chongqing! You know very well how Zhang Xianzhong will deal with your family!"