Chapter 358 - The Battle to Destroy the Nation - Part 1
Faced with the Qing army's desperate charge and all-out attack, the Ming army's garrison forces in the Neihuang County theater naturally responded tit-for-tat, deploying all reserves at all levels to resist to the death and neutralize the Qing army's rapid offensive.
Neihuang County, as an important winter grain storage area for the Ming army, was roughly as important as Wuchao was to Yuan Shao back then. Therefore, no matter whether there was an attack by the Qing army or not, the defense was very tight on weekdays, and it could be said that there was a heavy concentration of troops.
The Zhangshui Wharf Water Village in Huilong Town is a camp that stretches for several miles. There are usually 40,000 troops stationed there. There are hundreds of cellars and silos in the camp, which can store 300,000 troops for a whole winter.
Military rations.
Deep in the camp where the Qing army's scouts could not see, during the previous stalemate between the two armies, the Ming army dug trenches and built earthen walls when they had nothing to do, so that even if the outer fortifications were breached one day, they would still have strategic and deep defenses.
This kind of combat idea was something that the Qing army had never dared to imagine before, because in the traditional ancient war idea, whether it was a city, a solid fortress, or a few city walls, a sheep and horse wall, or a rammed earth fence,
Walls are good, but no matter how many there are, they will only scatter the defensive forces. It is better to concentrate the defense.
In addition to the 40,000 people who returned to Dazhai in Long Town, the Ming army also had 30,000 troops stationed in Neihuang County on weekdays. They could be used as a reserve force to support them at any time. They were at odds with the dock water village. In the event of an attack,
The additional staff will be in place within a few minutes.
Therefore, these pieces of information are all open to the public. Before Hauge came to fight, the scouts he sent already knew clearly that the war zone around Neihuang County would have to face at least 60,000 to 70,000 Ming troops, occupying about half of the center.
A quarter of the Ming army's main force of 300,000 people. There are also troops from other directions, about 200,000 people, who can arrive in a day or two after the attack.
Hauge knew this situation and still dared to fight, naturally because he felt that he had assembled the nation's 110,000 cavalry and 50,000 infantry, and he was sure to break at least Huilong Town Water Village and burn all the food reserves in a day or two.
But unfortunately, he obviously miscalculated.
As the Qing army launches a full-scale charge, they will soon discover that the Ming army on the battlefield around Neihuang County is far more than the 70,000 people they knew from the initial investigation!
…
"Very good. It seems that the old traitor Hong Chengchou found out because of his conscience. He just wants to be covered up in history books after his death. The information he provided is quite accurate. Hauge really made a desperate move."
Seven or eight miles away from the battlefield, on the Ximen Gate Tower of Neihuang County, at the same moment, Zhang Huangyan, the Northern Governor of the Ming Dynasty and Governor of Henan, was personally holding a new and well-polished binoculars, overlooking the battlefield in the distance.
At this distance, with the help of a telescope, I can still barely see the movements of the army. It is like standing on the top of the Horseshoe Mountain and looking towards the Airport Island when playing chicken.
It turns out that the reason why Zhang Huangyan, who is usually stationed in Daimyo, came to Naihuang personally to take charge was to thank God for blessing the Ming Dynasty, so that some old traitors who knew they were not going to die a good death wanted to die to clear their reputation——
In the evening of the previous day, when there was only one night left before Hauge's attack, several craftsmen suddenly crossed the Zhang River and surrendered to the Ming army, saying that they had important military information to betray.
After the Ming army patrol thoroughly searched Xi Zuo and confirmed that there was no threat, and after a general interrogation by Cao Bianjiao, they learned that the other party was from Zu Dashou and Hong Chengchou, so they reluctantly took him to Zhang Huangyan and revealed that the Qing army was going to make a desperate attack on Shao Liang.
information.
The Ming army spent half the night investigating, interrogating, and confirming. It was already very enjoyable. Finally, at the end of Haishi, they made a decision and immediately quietly mobilized the troops in the central and eastern parts of the theater to the west one by one to deal with the Qing army's attack.
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In fact, Zhang Huangyan could not guarantee that what the people sent by Hong Chengchou were telling the truth until the moment the decision was made, but anyway, the Ming army had an advantage in military strength, and some of the reinforcements would not be caught, so they should be prepared.
Moreover, the Ming army only had a total of midnight reaction time. Even if they wanted to mobilize too many troops that were too far away, they would not be able to do so in time.
In a hurry, they could only use part of the quick-response cavalry troops to rush towards Neihuang County immediately, and some of the infantry that had been deployed between Neihuang County and Puyang County to patrol along the defense line on the south bank of Zhangshui River.
, you can settle in the nearby camps around Neihuang County.
The final result was that the Ming army relied on the time difference to detect the enemy's attack in advance in the middle of the night and reinforced about 40,000 troops to the vicinity of Neihuang.
More than 20,000 of them are the elite cavalry under Cao Bianjiao, and the other 20,000 are Li Dingguo's infantry who are usually responsible for patrolling Zhangnan.
The remaining Ming troops were notified as soon as possible, made preparations as quickly as possible, and made arrangements to move westward one by one. Although these troops could not move in place before the war started, they could guarantee that they would be notified more quickly than after the normal war. As early as four in the morning
We arrived at the battlefield in five hours.
In a nutshell, all reinforcements of the Ming army can get an additional five hours of response, which is extremely precious in the decisive battle.
The condition that Hong Chengchou requested from Zhang Huangyan was that if he died or disappeared, he hoped that Zhang Huangyan could intercede with Zhu Shuren. When compiling the Chongzhen records, he wrote about him, Hong Chengchou, and wrote that in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the emperor came to mourn in person.
It is enough to say that Hong Chengchou died in Songshan, and there is no need to write the rest.
Although it is difficult to hide this kind of thing, because after Hong Chengchou surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, after all, there were still so many high-level officials in the Qing court who knew that Hong Chengchou had become an official in the Qing Dynasty——
But Hong Chengchou felt that when the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, with Zhu Shuren's temper, he would be able to eliminate even the two hundred vassals of the Ming Dynasty until less than ten families survived. So, would Zhu Shuren still stay in the puppet dynasty in Beijing?
Will the civil servants survive?
The local officials might be able to survive, and the military generals could also survive if they counterattacked and helped kill the Tatars, although they might not be able to keep their military power and official positions.
Only the civil servants, to put it harshly, Hong Chengchou had already seen through. In the 270th year of the imperial examination in the Ming Dynasty, there were already too many scholars studying literature. Zhu Shuren's style was obviously to kill half of the remaining ones and still have more than enough to be an official. He simply didn't
There is no need to keep two ministers.
If all the civil servants in Beijing were killed, or at least imprisoned, it would be possible to hide some things, and still give them a sense of dignity.
Zhang Huangyan thinks this deal can be negotiated.
…
I won’t go into details about the inside story behind the decisive battle. No matter how good the preparations are before the battle, victory can only be determined by a strong last-minute kick.
Li Dingguo, who had just marched to the Neihuang camp last night, now took his 20,000 former "Western Thieves" veterans and was once again responsible for holding the line and withstanding the initial charge from Mandahai and Bolo.
However, because he has proved his reformation in previous battles, Li Dingguo's current equipment can be regarded as replacing shotguns with cannons. It is no longer like the battles of Nanyang and Xinyang a few years ago, when they could only carry spears to deal with melee damage.
Today, half of the soldiers in Li Dingguo's old department are equipped with "Wuchang-made" rifles. The upgrade of equipment also gives the soldiers hope. They know that as long as they work hard, sooner or later they will be able to completely wash away the shame of bandits and be treated equally by the court.
Previously, because the Qing army's firepower preparations were too fierce, Li Dingguo did not want the soldiers to suffer casualties in vain, so he gave up the first wall that had been bombed and retreated two to three hundred steps deeper into the camp, and gradually formed multiple formations.
Defense line deployment.
The rammed earth walls and wooden fences could not be maintained at all under the bombardment of Hongyi artillery. The soldiers hiding behind the rammed earth wooden fences might also be killed by the big iron balls along with the walls, or even cause further shrapnel damage due to the flying pieces of wood.
The killing effect.
After Li Dingguo's men suffered unnecessary casualties of more than a hundred people, Li Dingguo also realized this problem. Then he suddenly gritted his teeth and made a difficult and risky decision.
"Stop guarding any wooden fences. Just pull out the antlers in the trench. Everyone hides in the trench to defend. With the lower body below the ground level, you won't be afraid of direct fire from the Hongyi cannon!"
Li Dingguo also adapted to local conditions and was self-taught, so he chose trench warfare. After hearing this, the soldiers also carried out the tactics one after another out of trust in him, but they were still very scared in their hearts.
After all, ancient warfare was a combination of long-range shooting and hand-to-hand combat. Hiding in trenches certainly had a huge advantage in avoiding artillery fire. However, once the cavalry rushed in front of them and trampled and killed them from a high position, the soldiers hiding in the ditch would not even have a chance to fight back.
,
Even if the bayonet is wielded to resist the enemy, the most it can do is stab the horse's legs and belly. The length of the weapon is not long enough to cause fatal injuries to the cavalry on horseback. It would be very good if it can stab the cavalry's ankles or calves.
However, Li Dingguo was very strict in running the army, and his old subordinates had followed him for many years and enforced orders and prohibitions, but they actually carried out this order even to the point of death.
As Bolo and Mandahai, with Ye Bilong and Ao Bai as the vanguards respectively, rushed in frantically, the Ming army hid in the trench originally used as a horse trap, sticking their heads close to the ground and firing.
"Bang, bang, bang -" The continuous shooting caused hundreds of thousands of Manchu cavalry to fall down with miserable screams. Hot blood splashed on the snow, causing the soft snow to melt immediately, but soon it was over again.
Because of the severe cold, it condenses again and becomes more solid and slippery, melting snow and turning it into ice.
Pieces of dark red blood ice spread on the ground, chilling and strange.
"Aren't these southern barbarians afraid of being trampled by horse hooves? Are they hiding in pits and firing?"
Ye Bilong, who was in the first line, was a little shocked when he saw the fighting scene in front of him. He had been fighting with Hauge for several years and had never seen such a battle.
But the arrow was on the string and had to be fired. The Qing army came in anger. So many people had been killed by guns and cannons in the process of approaching. How could they retreat in the face of the battle? Seeing this, they ignored them and trampled them with their horses.
Countless Manchu cavalry bent down and waved their lances and sabers, but they were also unable to slash and stab the soldiers hiding in the trenches. They could only rely on the horses' hooves as their main means of output.
"Crack——"
"Pfft——"
The sounds of broken tendons and bones, and the sound of the horses' hooves being stabbed and slashed, with their teeth cutting into the flesh, could be heard for a while.
Hundreds of former Zhao'an soldiers of the Western Army were trampled by horse hoofs and died miserably on the spot. However, the Manchu cavalry's horse legs were also cut off by spears and bayonets from time to time, and the cavalry was thrown to the ground by their missing hoofs.
More front-line riflemen finally could not bear the pressure and crouched in the trenches with their heads held in their hands, fearing that they would be directly stepped on by horse hooves. Some of the antlers in the trenches that had not been removed in time became their talismans at this moment - if the Manchu cavalry
If you have to let the war horse jump into the ditch and trample it, it is very likely that the deer's antlers will be directly pierced and the war horse will be killed as well.
The battlefield on the front line was once very chaotic and bloody, with both sides tearing apart like meat, leaving both Ye Bilong and Obai unable to resolve the situation quickly.
However, fortunately, the outcome of the battlefield is not determined solely by the fighting of the front-line soldiers. Under the command of Li Dingguo, the Ming army's garrison troops have already formed multiple lines of defense, each of which guards several trenches within the camp.
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There was a chaotic battle between Paoze and the Qing army in the first trench. The soldiers in the trench behind were still firing towards the front in an orderly manner, constantly harvesting the lives of the Qing cavalry.
Under the loud gunfire, occasionally Ming infantrymen who were fighting to the death in the trenches in the front row were accidentally hit by stray bullets from friendly forces behind them, but the proportion was definitely very low. Maybe only one or two of the twenty casualties were Ming soldiers.
The soldiers were accidentally injured, and the remaining 17 or 18 people were killed or injured.
Moreover, this kind of fighting situation lasted for just one or two cups of tea, and the Ming army in the front row of trenches also came to their senses, and became more and more determined to hide in the trenches, not to show up, and not to give the friendly forces behind the chance to be hit by stray bullets.
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As a result, this kind of concentrated shooting will only kill Qing troops, causing the Qing army to fall into chaos quickly.
In order to avoid the endless in-depth musket fire from the rear, some Qing troops had to jump directly into the trench. Regardless of whether the horses would break their legs or be pierced by antlers, they dismounted regardless of whether the horses would break their legs or be pierced by antlers.
Soldiers engage in melee combat.
Another part of the Qing army was unwilling to abandon their horses, or in other words, they were reluctant to let their horses jump into the ditch and be maimed, so they gritted their teeth and chose to continue charging in depth, trying to break through the Ming army's second and third inner camp trench network.
In this way, regardless of the sudden advance of the pigs, the killing effect is not bad, but the cost is that the Qing army's formation becomes more and more scattered, and the strength of the troops is gradually dispersed, turning into individual battles without unified command.
Moreover, the Ming army did not completely adopt trench rifle tactics. After killing more than a mile outside the camp, they soon saw that the Ming army behind them relied on rammed earth walls and prepared a dense musket formation.
With a tight defense that is not afraid of melee attacks, the bayonet is always facing the outside, and it is easy to stab at long range and close range——
Li Dingguo's arrangement was obviously because he had figured out the range limit of the Qing army's Hongyi artillery in previous battles, and knew that as long as he abandoned the Phalanx formation and defended the outermost mile of the camp, he placed the enemy deep in the camp and then attacked.
, the Qing army's artillery could not blast that far, and could not provide fire cover for its cavalry.
Therefore, what the Qing cavalry could defeat was only the Ming defense line within the range of the first few rows of Qing cannons.
There is no truth outside the range of cannon!
"Why are these Southern Barbarians so stubborn! Even though the first few lines of defense have been broken through, why don't those Southern Barbarians hiding in the trenches escape or surrender? Our Qing cavalry is on all sides, but they still have to resist! What are the Southern Barbarians?
It’s time to have such courage!”
Yi Bilong was furious and fought to the death. In the end, he ran into the main force of Li Dingguo's Chinese army. They clashed repeatedly. The elite cavalry guards around him also fell to death one after another under the fire of Ming army riflemen.
Perhaps because he was more conspicuous, after Li Dingguo noticed him, he ordered the small number of rifle snipers in the army who had been on standby to focus on firing at him. Finally, under the intensive care of hundreds of rifle gunners, Ye Bilong was shot several times.
bullet, killing him on the spot.
On the other side, Obai's situation was almost as difficult, but after all, Obai was the number one warrior of the Qing Dynasty. He was strong and wore multiple layers of heavy armor. After realizing that he was being taken care of by the musketeers, he reacted quickly.
After the first batch of confidant guards around him blocked the shots and killed them, he quickly retreated. In the end, he was shot twice in the shoulder and left the battle in embarrassment, dragging a crippled arm.
Obai could retreat, but the Manchu Eight Banners cavalry, which had been tightly clinging to each other, could not retreat so easily. They had already suffered countless casualties in order to rush forward, and now there were thousands of Pao Ze entering the camp.
In the first mile of the journey, they were divided into countless small groups, trapped in a network of trenches, and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Ming army.
If the Qing army completely retreats, then all the soldiers in the Trench King will have only one fate - to be killed by the Ming army one after another!
Hauge, who was far away from the battlefield, couldn't see the specific front-line battle situation at all. He only saw a steady stream of Manchu and Mongolian cavalry rushing in. The Ming army camp was filled with loud killing sounds and fires soaring into the sky. The battle was extremely stalemate. Of course, the Qing army could only see such a scene.
Can continue to invest and carry the chaos to the end.
The fighting was bloody and fierce, because the two armies fought from dawn to full light, and the torches originally used for lighting at night on many Ming army positions were not extinguished. It was inevitable that the Qing army would set fires during the chaotic battle.
Moreover, there were originally cellars and temporary silos for storing grain in various places in the camp, and naturally there were also some in the positions that were temporarily taken away by the Qing army. Because the Qing army fought independently and lacked unified orders, they set fire to and burned down several places.
The Ming army spent tens of thousands of stones to store food for the winter.
Seeing that some grain warehouses in the shallow camp were on fire, Hauge's confidence was further stimulated. Although he did not know what proportion of the burning grain warehouses accounted for the total grain warehouses of the Ming army, as long as there was a fire in the grain warehouses, it meant that there was
Hopefully, the morale of the Ming army might collapse as a result.
"The whole army must fight with their lives! Yue Le, you guys are also bringing the infantry forward to step up support to Boluomandahai! Today I swear to defeat those treacherous barbarians!"
Hauge's eyes were blood red, and he piled the last reserve team into the meat grinder regardless.
The number of Manchu cavalry casualties on the front line is probably over 10,000, and the Ming army has definitely suffered a lot of battle losses. However, the two sides are no longer fighting in formations, but are fighting each other in trenches.
In the fight, even if you want to flee, you don't know where to flee. You can only defend where you are, and fight back any enemy who dares to get close.
On Li Dingguo's side, batches of reserve teams continued to push up with the casualties of frontline soldiers, and the snow in the entire camp gradually turned into slippery blood ice.
The fighting lasted for more than an hour, and Li Dingguo resisted until his energy gradually became exhausted. However, he firmly believed that the Ming Dynasty would definitely win. Governor Zhang told him before the war that he would be responsible for putting the enemy into the camp to withstand it. As long as Hao Hao
Ge's reserve team has also been put in, and Governor Zhang will definitely ask General Cao to lead the Ming Dynasty's elite cavalry to counterattack and outflank.
Sure enough, when the bloody battle continued until the end of the morning, Zhang Huangyan finally ordered Cao Bianjiao to attack.
"We have just received an urgent report from Tanma. The main force of our infantry that set off from Daming County last night, as well as the cavalry under Huang Degong's command that was urgently transferred from Qingfeng County, will arrive on the battlefield in two hours.
Li Dingguo can't hold on anymore. After all, Hauge's number is several times greater than his. You first outflank the Qing army from the left, threaten Hauge's main formation, so that the Tatars can't look at each other, and reduce the pressure on Li Dingguo."
Cao Bianjiao, who had just arrived in Neihuang last night, did not dare to slack off at all and immediately accepted the order.
Zhang Huangyan didn't let him attack as soon as he came up just now, not only because he was afraid of scaring Hauge away, or because he deliberately let Li Dingguo take the lead, but because he considered that Cao Bianjiao's tribe had traveled eighty miles to Neihuang last night, and before the war started
They had just rested for less than half an hour. They had not slept at night and had no physical strength.
Therefore, Li Dingguo was asked to resist for more than an hour, to gain some time for the cavalry troops to recover their physical strength, eat, drink and rest, and then attack after regaining some of their strength.
As Cao Bianjiao gathered his strength and then attacked, Hauge's situation finally became critical. The Boluo tribe on the left wing of the Qing army had already lost its vanguard, Enbilong. Now, with Cao Bianjiao's lightning-fast penetration,
He was beaten to the point of collapse in an instant, and was cut off from the rest of the Qing army.
Thousands of double-barreled breech-loaded smoothbore spray guns and revolvers displayed their power on the jagged battlefield, mowing down groups of Qing cavalry who had lost their speed.
Boluo fought on both sides and resisted for another quarter of an hour. Finally, he was beaten to pieces by the Ming army and completely collapsed.