Text Volume Chapter 298 The Siege of Jiangyin The Qing army under Duduo, after struggling with the Ming army for several days, finally succeeded in moving the main force to Wujin County, and using Wujin County as an attack base, they began to prepare for a full-scale general attack on Jiangyin County.
All the tactics used to lure the enemy during the move failed. Zhu Shuren did not fall for the trick at all, and strictly restrained his generals, not allowing even a violent general like Cao Bianjiao to attack the enemy.
In the process of retreating, the Qing army also made some brutal actions that were beyond the Ming army's expectations.
For example, when their main force moved to Wujin County, Duduo felt that the defenders in Dantu County in Zhenjiang would be easily divided and surrounded by the Ming army in the future, so he made the decision to abandon Dantu County and concentrate his troops only in Wujin.
, Danyang and Jintan counties, these three places are laid out in a pin shape and serve as horns for each other and can support and protect each other.
This is not difficult to understand just by looking at the map near Zhenjiang, because the Yangtze River in the Zhenjiang area turns north, and Dantu is right on the tip of this northernmost extension, forming a far-reaching boundary with the other three counties.
protrusion.
When the Qing army needed to recapture Jinshan Temple from Dantu and then communicate with Guazhoudu on the other side of Yangzhou, this place was of course important.
However, if the Qing army completely gave up on opening up the Yangtze River waterway here and clung to this protruding peninsula, it would be easy for the Ming army to cut it off and then close the door and beat the dogs.
Duduo didn't want to give up some of his men in vain, so he naturally wanted to shrink his troops.
And with the brutality of the Qing army, when Duduo was so angry that he had to give up, how could he leave any population or material for the Han people?
Almost all the old, weak, sick and disabled people who were unable to leave were slaughtered by Duduo. The rest either had their heads shaved and surrendered, becoming thieves for the time being. Or they had rebelled privately and broke through to the Ming-occupied areas. However, the food supply
Of course, everything that could be found was taken away and used as rations for the Qing army.
Finally, Duduo's troops set a fire before abandoning the city, burning as much as they could in Dantu County. After the Ming army discovered the situation, they were afraid of fraud and confirmed that the Qing army had indeed withdrawn before rushing to put out the fire.
, take back this county.
But there were no more living people in the city, and only an empty city that had been wiped out was returned.
The generals of the Ming army shared the same hatred of the enemy, and their anger reached the peak, and they could hardly control it. The news here spread back to the Ming ruling area, and for the first time other people in the south of the Yangtze River had complete national cohesion, and the common hatred brought about by the hair-cutting order became more and more intense.
We are united.
When things got to this point, Zhu Shuren had to leave Nanjing City, lead his troops on the expedition, and personally go to the front line to supervise the divisions to ensure that all the generals would not act impulsively and go alone, so that the situation slowly returned to control.
This is likely to be the last battle against Duduo. Of course, Zhu Shuren must personally harvest this great achievement and establish his absolute prestige in the Nanjing court.
As for the official Minister of War, Shi Kefa, Zhu Shuren persuaded him to stay in Nanjing and coordinate the overall military preparations, instead of focusing on fighting in one city and one place. This was also for Shi Kefa's good, so that his power would be more stable in the future.
transition.
In Zhu Shuren's power structure design, Shi Kefa is still a loyal minister, and of course he must be reused, but Shi Kefa will always be positioned as a rear military coordinator, and Zhu Shuren will be the future front-line commander-in-chief of the three armies.
This division of labor is similar to the division of labor between the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and the Minister of Defense, or the division of labor between the Grand Marshal and the Privy Councilor in ancient times. It is indeed in line with the original functions and powers of the "Ministry of War".
When the Six Ministries were established in the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Ministry of War was originally responsible for military construction, equipment logistics, and supply raising. Those dynasties still retained the general marshal of the world's soldiers and horses. Later in the Song and Ming Dynasties, checks and balances on generals became more and more stringent, and the Privy Council and the Ministry of War
The authority gradually became more and more detailed, and finally he was not only directly in charge of the promotion and appointment of generals, but also "micro-managed the front line". This was one of the important reasons for the decline of military equipment in the Song and Ming Dynasties.
Of course, when the world becomes peaceful again in the future, Zhu Shuren will still have to be wary of separatist feudal lords and domineering military commanders, but there is no need for the generation he himself is alive in. He can play the role of monopolizing military power for the rest of his life. As for the future, he will think of other ways.
These are all things for later. The most important thing at the moment is the victory or defeat on the battlefield. As long as we win, everything will be easy to say in the future.
…
After the Ming army gradually compressed the Qing army's occupied area to three counties, Duduo finally launched the first round of offensive under Jiangyin City.
The main force of the Qing army arrived in Wujin County on the sixth day of the twelfth lunar month, and then advanced to the west of Jiangyin City on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month.
When Duduo first arrived in Jiangnan, he had a total of forty-six Hongyi cannons. After the Battle of Nanjing, the number of cannons was reduced to just over thirty. After half a month of consumption at Jinshan Temple, several more cannons were destroyed, and some were overused.
Damage failure.
In short, the total number of heavy artillery that Duduo was able to bring to Jiangyin has further dropped to twenty. The decline in the number of artillery also forced the Qing army to give up the plan of quickly breaking through the wall, and instead considered preparing more other siege weapons and multiple tubes.
All down.
And when Duduo personally observed the city defense of Jiangyin County opposite for the first time, he couldn't help but let out a slight gasp.
The terrain of the battlefield was not conducive to the deployment of large corps. Huanggong Mountain in the north of the city, Huishan in the south, and the muddy land brought by the discharge of canal water flooded all low-lying plains suitable for marching.
If it were in the north, Duduo would not be too afraid of water during the cold winter months, because the Qing army was used to fighting in bitterly cold places. The rivers in the north would have frozen long ago, and even the surface of the Yellow River could freeze.
This is the allusion of the heroes of Hebei in the past dynasties taking advantage of the severe cold to cross the Yellow River on cavalry.
But in the south of the Yangtze River, the situation is completely different. Even in the Little Ice Age, the Yangtze River or Taihu Lake cannot be frozen in winter. After the canal water is released, only mud will be left.
Duduo had never been to Jiangnan before. Even his main advisers and civil servants, Zhang Cunren and Sun Zhixian, had never been to Jiangnan. Although Sun Zhixian was Han, he was from Shandong and had been serving as an official in the north.
.This resulted in them not thinking much about this issue at first, and they did not expect that they would eventually have to fight against the mud in the middle of winter.
As for the city wall in Jiangyin County, after a period of emergency repairs, the outer wall has been reinforced with an additional layer of gently sloping rammed earth. The texture does not look very strong, but it can definitely absorb the impact kinetic energy of cannonballs. It is close to a Western-style bastion or Nanyang.
The county wall was set up.
Of course, in terms of details, the city built by Yan Yingyuan is still a little different from the Nanyang County built by Zhang Huangyan.
Jiangyin County is smaller, and the original scale of the city is also more cramped. There are no turrets and forts at the four corners of the city wall, and the number of horses is also very small. It is impossible to deploy enough side-firing crossfire rifles to bombard the enemies at the base of the city wall.
.It is necessary to build a large fort out of thin air temporarily. The amount of work is too large and the civilians have no time to construct it.
Therefore, Yan Yingyuan gave up the idea of building large forts in accordance with local conditions, and instead set up several small independent fortresses in the west of the city that protruded a hundred steps away from the city wall and were only connected to the main city by earthen corridors and embankments——
If you don’t have any idea about this design, it can be understood as the protruding triangular fort outside the Western-style bastion, which is also called “rivelino” in Italian. It was invented by the Italians in 1497.
It can also be understood as the "Demaru" built by Sanada Yukimura in the south of Osaka during the Battle of Osaka thirty years ago. However, Sanada Maru only served to hide the musketeers. Those front-departure triangular forts built by Yan Yinggen can each be equipped with four gates.
There were Hongyi cannons, and there were also many musketeers.
When the Qing army first arrived, they did not understand the effect of this protruding triangular fort, so they thought of attacking quickly and seizing several peripheral fortifications to increase their military power.
They brought the only Hongyi cannons to blast these triangular forts, and then organized a large number of armored soldiers to fly directly to the city. They felt that these triangular forts could not hide many people, so they only needed to surround them with dozens of times or even more soldiers.
Beat it, you can definitely win it.
However, once the fight started, Duduo realized that he was completely wrong.
The reason why these triangular forts are triangular is due to rigorous mathematical calculations. The angles of the two triangular hypotenuses on the outside coincide with the few horse-faced forts on the main city wall behind.
If the Qing army moves along the two outer hypotenuses, they will be fired accurately from the side by the Hongyi artillery on the main city wall at the rear.
On a line of sight.
If the Qing army bypassed the two outward-facing hypotenuses of the triangular fort and had to climb from the inward side, it would prevent them from being in the crossfire line, but that position was also the closest to the main city wall, only a few meters away.
In ten steps, you will be attacked from both sides.
The most vicious thing is that of the three protruding triangular forts built by Yan Yingyuan, the crenellations on the top of the walls are only found on the two hypotenuses facing outwards, and on the side facing the main city wall facing inward.
, there are no crenellations, it is bare and there is nowhere to hide.
The height of the triangular fort is also slightly shorter than the main city wall, ensuring that once these peripheral fortifications are captured by the Qing army, the Qing army will not be able to gain a foothold on the top of the wall, because they have no cover and their position is lower than the Ming army on the main city wall behind.
, they will only be massacred and killed one by one, and named one by one.
Obviously, the mathematical principles and design applications behind all this were instigated by Zhu Shuren, and were demonstrated by Zhu Shuren's academic theory team in Wuchang, and were specifically tested by engineering and technical personnel. Fang Yizhi, Song Yingxing, everyone worked on it
Although he has made contributions, in the end Yan Yingyuan is just a master who learns and applies it.
Change source app]
The direct result of the first rash attack by the Qing army was that they left over a thousand corpses but got nothing. They had to go back to the old path of slowly besieging the city and slowly manufacturing heavy equipment.
The morale that the Qing army had finally boosted after moving its target fell again. The soldiers moved circuitously in the mud, pushing the ox carts whose wheels often got stuck, and transported the siege materials to the east and north of the city behind the enemy lines, and moved Jiangyin
The city was divided and surrounded on all sides.
Yan Yingyuan on the opposite side did not insist on defending. He even dared to take the initiative to open the city gates of Jiangyin County when the Qing army's few besieging troops were in the vanguard and the baggage trains were too deep or out of touch.
Intercept and kill.
Although this kind of interception and killing was only successful once or twice, it also greatly boosted the morale of the defenders in Jiangyin City, making them respect Yan Yingyuan more and more, and obeyed all his orders without reservation, like an arm and a finger.
Duduo did not expect the Ming army to have such courage at first. After losing two batches of carriages that got stuck in the mud, he had to keep his siege troops too far apart from each other to avoid being left alone, but this led to a slowdown in progress.
further delay.
It took the Qing army four days to initially establish a siege position, and another five or six days to build the necessary defenses to prevent the Ming army from being caught off guard when they suddenly came out of the city to harass.