Chapter 359: The Battle to Destroy the Nation - Part 2
"We can't retreat! We can't retreat! The Nanmanzi's granaries are already on fire! Try harder! Completely burn their winter grain stores, and the Nanmanzi will be defeated!"
Seeing that among the left and right armies he had sent, Bolo and Ebilong had collapsed, and the Mandahai side might not be able to hold on at any time. Hauge's eyes turned red and he couldn't help screaming orders to stop his own troops.
of retreat.
In the final analysis, it was the fire in some of the granaries in the Huang camp of the Ming army that gave Hauge confidence and made him extremely reluctant to give up. As a result, he was clinging to the Ming army and brought the war of attrition to its most brutal state.
After all, the illusion of being extremely close to victory is the easiest thing to make a gambler who is jealous of losing make a desperate move. At this time, whoever holds on for a longer breath will win, and whoever gives up will lose all his money.
The profit was completely lost.
Otherwise, if the Qing army had despaired earlier and realized clearly that "our army has fallen into a trap, the enemy has been prepared for a long time, and we definitely have no chance of winning", then he would have left.
As for Obai, who had just recovered from his injuries and had just bandaged his wounds, before the blood on his head and face could be completely washed away, he knelt in front of Hauge and begged with all his strength:
"Your Majesty! We can't fight anymore! Cao Bianjiao's counterattack is too fierce, and Prince Li's troops may not be able to hold on at any time. Just look at the smoke and dust rising in the distance to the east. It must be the Nanmanzi who have sent new reinforcements from the daimyo.
, If you want to withdraw, withdraw now!"
Obai obviously knew what was happening ahead better than Hauge. He had personally experienced that after the Manchu Eight Banners elites rushed into the Ming army's camp, the Ming army still refused to retreat, and the layers of fortification were cruel and exhausting. He knew that victory would never be
Hauge thought it was so within reach.
Zhang Huangyan, this dog thief, must have set up a poisonous plan to lure the Qing army into action step by step. Finally, he slowly tightened the noose around his neck like a frog boiled in warm water. When the Qing army found that they could not breathe, they had already
Unable to break free.
After being reminded by Obai, Hauge couldn't help but look in the direction pointed by the other party. As expected, more Ming army reinforcements appeared on the skyline in the distance. It was not clear how many they were for the moment.
Only then did he realize that today's fighting had been bloody for at least two or three hours. Both sides were working hard to the death, delaying the enemy's arrival of another batch of reinforcements.
"I can't bear to be alone, I can't bear to be alone!" Haug screamed in despair.
Ao Bai continued to persuade: "Your Majesty, think about it, even if we burn the Ming army's grain reserves today, we still have to have enough power to continue to contain the Ming army until the Ming army collapses. If the main force suffers heavy losses, even if we burn the grain
Can't win!
The Ming army can completely rely on horses and chariots to transport grain to the daimyo in the future. If we don't have enough cavalry to intercept and kill the Ming army's land grain team in the future, then they will only lose more food. The Ming army will compete with us to consume national power.
It’s definitely impossible to fight!”
This last sentence finally awakened Hauge completely, and it was probably the last straw that broke the camel's determination.
The red bloodshot eyes of Hauge gradually faded away.
Indeed, the step of burning food is not enough to directly lead to victory in the decisive battle. Even if the burning of food is successful, the follow-up strategy of "intercepting and killing the Ming army's temporary land transport team" must be followed.
If the elite cavalry of the Eight Banners are all finished here, it will be useless to burn the grain reserves of the Guangming Army in Naihuang.
"Let's go! Let Mandahai withdraw quickly! Let the infantry troops cut off Mandahai's rear! If those infantry troops who are stuck too deep cannot withdraw, let them delay!"
Haug finally made up his mind to cut off the strong man's arm, and then asked Bolo and Mandahai to push back the Manchu and Mongolian cavalry. In order to increase the distance, Haug also played a little trick, giving priority to the Manchu cavalry to withdraw first, and the Mongolian cavalry to withdraw first.
The priority of the cavalry is lower, and finally it is the turn of Han Banner and Green Camp.
Unfortunately, tens of thousands of elite Qing troops have already formed a bloody massacre with Li Dingguo, Liu Guoneng and others in the Neihuang Camp. There is me among you and you among me. Those troops that have charged the deepest are destined to be unable to withdraw.
Once they return to fight, the remnant soldiers in the Ming army's trench network behind them will fire cross-fire wildly, use bayonets to delay them, drag them to the friendly forces to separate and surround them, and bite fiercely, completely destroying the isolated Qing troops.
Kill them all.
Seeing that there was no hope of seizing the road, those Qing soldiers who jumped over the wall were naturally still fighting. While fighting, they used the fire sources at hand to set as many fires as possible. The flames in the entire Neihuang camp became more and more blazing, and both sides were in chaos to the extreme.
However, as the first batch of Eight Banners cavalry of the Qing army successfully withdrew from the battlefield, the situation soon collapsed. Some Mongolian soldiers and Han army flags, and the Green Camp gradually found themselves abandoned.
The Mongolian soldiers were unable to do anything, but the Green Camp and the Han Army Banner were completely in an uproar. There were people surrendering in large numbers, or being driven away by the Ming army, and they turned against each other and civil strife broke out.
In this single battle, Hauge might be able to retreat with part of the Manchu Eight Banners, but the Han and Mongolian forces under his command would definitely suffer a devastating blow.
The retreat battle lasted for more than a quarter of an hour. The Manchu cavalry who were still alive and able to escape finally broke away from the contact one after another, and then began to flee wildly.
But the feast of killing was far from over. Although the Ming cavalry was unable to pursue Haug's core force due to the delay of the Qing army's abandonment, the artillery troops brought by Haug for today's battle had no time to escape.
The Qing army had previously learned from the Ming army and used heavy artillery carts pulled by many horses to assist the Hongyi artillery, which weighed thousands of kilograms, to maneuver quickly over long distances. However, the Qing army could not learn what they learned. They only learned about rapid transportation but not rapid deployment.
, they never learned the Ming army’s artillery mount structure.
Now that the army had to withdraw quickly, the artillery would of course not have time to reload. Hauge also simplified the problem and only left a banner of Manchu cavalry to cover the artillery unit's loading and transportation.
However, the Ming army came much faster than the Qing army expected and prepared. Seeing that the Ming army, with at least tens of thousands of cavalry on each side, was about to attack them, the full-flag cavalry left behind by Hauge had no choice but to make a brief retreat.
After resisting and finding that they were outmatched, they abandoned their artillery and ran away.
There were a total of one hundred and thirty Hongyi cannons. In the bloody battle for most of the day, about twenty or thirty of them were blown up by the Ming army. There were barely more than a hundred cannons left. At this moment, they were destroyed by the Ming army.
During the cavalry pursuit, these cannons were completely useless.
"Don't panic! Fire at those barbarian cavalry! Fire! How can I, a warrior of the Qing Dynasty, be stabbed in the back and be killed! Quickly load the shotgun!"
Tong Tulai, the commander of the Qing Army's Han Army Flag Command, as the commander-in-chief of the Qing Army's artillery unit, ordered his subordinates at the top of his lungs to carry out a final artillery bombardment in the face, knowing that they could not run away, in an attempt to exchange one for another before death.
It has to be said that Tong Tu Lai comes from a family of hard-core traitors for several generations, and the people raised in his family are also very loyal to their Manchu masters. Under Tong Tu Lai's command at the top of his lungs, the Qing army's artillery actually did it before it was destroyed.
He successfully got close and fired two rounds, and then he was stabbed to death in the face——
The first round was loaded before the Ming cavalry rushed up, and the ammunition was fired early. Only the second round was hastily loaded after the Ming cavalry entered the shooting range.
At that time, the loading speed of the Qing army's artillery was very slow. It was not surprising that it would take five to six minutes or even ten minutes to fire a round. That is to say, it was a little faster to load the shotshells. There was no need to consider whether it was compacted or whether the remaining sparks and previous shots in the barrel were cleaned.
For the incompletely burned residue of the wheel, iron slag, lead beads, nails, and gravel were randomly stuffed into it and fired.
Because the cannon fire was too hasty and was forced to speed up due to irregular operations on the line between life and death, at least more than 20 Hongyi cannons exploded when they were fired close to the face! Even some of the gunpowder piled nearby was detonated. But at least
Seventy or eighty cannons successfully fired their second round of cannonballs.
Two rounds of shotgun fire, coupled with the explosion of the barrel and the explosive power of the ammunition, each shot was able to kill and injure at least several Ming army cavalry.
In order to completely wipe out the Qing artillery, Cao Bianjiao rushed forward with these two rounds of shotgun shells. In just two minutes, he suffered thousands of casualties from the Ming cavalry! The battle was not without its cruelty.
Countless Ming army cavalry wearing water-forged steel breastplates were hit by heavy artillery shells and were directly penetrated. Just like those exhibits in the Museum of Invalides in Paris in later generations, "the cavalry's breastplates were directly blasted with a big hole in the chest."
, coming out through the back.”
Even Cao Bianjiao, one of the most powerful generals in the world, personally led his troops to attack, but one of his legs was directly damaged by shrapnel. However, Cao Bianjiao was astonishingly determined and still ordered his subordinates to rush and attack, never to fail:
"Leave me alone! The artillery fire will last only this round! The dog Tatar artillery has been massacred by us! Kill them all without leaving any one behind!"
The subordinates also knew that the most dangerous moment had been overcome. If they did not hurry up and kill the thieves, the casualties they had incurred along the way would have been wasted. Naturally, they all aroused the ferocity of fighting to the death, stabbing and slashing wildly.
Groups of Qing artillerymen with only sabers and bayonets chopped them down on the spot.
"Hold it! Hold it! Uh-huh--" Tong Tulai, the commander of the banner of the Han army and later Kang Mazi's grandfather, led hundreds of close guards back to back and tried to resist in hand-to-hand combat, but in the end they were all hacked to death on the spot.
Tong Tu Lai himself was stabbed hundreds of times and chopped into pieces by the angry Ming cavalry. All the field artillery force that the Qing Dynasty could dispatch was completely wiped out in this battle, with a total loss of 130 red barbarians.
Thousands of artillery, artillerymen, loaders, and logistical auxiliaries were killed.
The Ming army sacrificed more than a thousand cavalry casualties in exchange for annihilating a country's artillery force. This loss was worth it.
It's a pity that Tong Tulai's daughter Tong Jiashi is ten years old this year and has already been born. His son Tong Guowei is also seven years old. Of course, these children are still living in Beijing and cannot destroy the family together.
Otherwise, as Tong Jia's biological mother, Kang Mazi would have to be reincarnated in a different position if she could kill him before he was born.
However, as of now, I still don’t know whether Shunzhi can live for a long time, and I don’t care about those Tong Jiashi, Tong Guowei and others. If you can’t kill the eggs and kill the sperm, the effect will be the same.
…
The bloody battle on the battlefield in Neihuang County lasted for a whole day.
After Hauge retreated with the remnants of the Manchu cavalry, the trapped Qing troops could not be killed for a while, nor did they all surrender. They still contained the Ming army's combat power, and small-scale sporadic fighting continued until that day.
late at night.
The losses of the Ming army were not small. The troops used by Li Dingguo to carry the line lasted seven hours from beginning to end, and more than half of the more than 20,000 people were killed or injured.
The remaining troops who were gradually reinforced and rotated to resist the pressure were in slightly better condition, with casualties ranging from thousands to more than a thousand.
Cao Bianjiao's cavalry unit suffered a total of more than 2,000 casualties in the final group's destruction of the Qing artillery and subsequent pursuit of the remnants of the enemy. The previous defeat of Bolo and the bloody battle with the three Manchu banners of the Bolo tribe also resulted in casualties.
Thousands of people. Huang Degong's cavalry, which arrived at the battlefield in the afternoon, also suffered slight losses in the pursuit.
In the end, when all the casualties were added up, as well as all the Ming cavalry units, the total casualties were more than 8,000. The total casualties of the infantry troops reached 20,000 to 30,000.
Final statistics showed that more than 7,600 people were killed directly in the battle, more than 4,000 people died of serious injuries on the same day, and the remaining 19,000 were lightly or seriously injured.
As for the Qing army, more than half of the 40,000 cavalrymen and the five banners of the Mongolian army were annihilated. Because the Ming army cleaned the battlefield and executed the wounded, the casualty ratio was extremely high. In the end, the number of heads killed reached 19,000, which was absolutely
Most of them were killed in the Ming army camp and on the frontline battlefields on both sides of the Zhang River.
Counting the wounded, the Five Mongolian Banners participating in the war lost at least two-thirds of their active strength. This was also the result of Haug's priority in selling off the Mongols and retaining the full force when retreating.
Considering that Hauge is now at loggerheads with the Queen Mother of Mongolian origin, and Hauge’s own biological mother was from the Hercynian Jurchen Uranala family. After this battle, if Hauge betrays his Mongolian teammates like this, the Mongolians are afraid
He was about to jump ship and break with the Qing Dynasty.
Therefore, the significance of annihilating so many Mongolian cavalry in this battle is not only the killing of more than 20,000, but also the complete intensification of the internal conflicts between Manchu and Mongolia. Even if the remaining Mongolian soldiers escape, they may not fight for Haug again.
Work hard.
In the future, when the Ming Dynasty pursues the remnant forces of the Qing Dynasty, the Mongols are likely to be wise and protect themselves for the time being. This will give the Ming Dynasty a window of time to defeat each one, which is very beneficial to the Ming Dynasty.
In addition to Mongolia, the Han Banner and Green Camp in the Qing army naturally suffered more severe losses. Although they were the last ones sent up during the attack, they were also left behind when they retreated.
In the end, both sides engaged in bloody purges by the Discipline Inspection Commission. More than half of the Han army flag-clad slaves died in the battle, but many in the Green Camp collapsed and surrendered.
But regardless of whether they died in battle or surrendered, at least 40,000 of the 50,000 Qing Han armed forces who participated in the war were killed, and nearly 20,000 surrendered and captured. The rest were all dead.
The last Manchu cavalry, a total of six flags participated in today's battle. The two white flags were naturally the least popular because they followed Dorgon and Duduo, and were assigned the most dangerous vanguard mission at the beginning. In the end, they were also
The bloody minced meat suffered the worst casualties, with both flags suffering more than half of their casualties.
The other four flags, which suffered slight losses to varying degrees, managed to retain their formation and retreated when Hauge withdrew his troops.
Coupled with the complete annihilation of the field artillery unit, in this whole day's decisive battle, the Qing army was annihilated in total by nearly 100,000 people, of which 20,000 to 30,000 were captured and 70,000 to 80,000 were killed or wounded, but only in exchange for
The Ming army suffered 30,000 casualties.
The exchange ratio between the two sides was about 1 to 2.5. It has to be said that the army fought very well. Although it had an advantage in intelligence and weapons, it also designed to induce the enemy to attack the enemy.
However, the Ming army also suffered relatively heavy losses, that is, the battlefield was dragged to the Neihuang Camp after all. In addition, the preparation time before the battle started was very hasty and there was no time to transfer food, so the camp and the food storage were greatly damaged.
Most of the fortress buildings were destroyed by shelling and arson, and the infrastructure was severely damaged and needed to be completely rebuilt.
After the war, Zhang Huangyan asked various ministries to calculate the loss of stored grain. According to reports, it was estimated that 40% of the army's winter stored grain was burned during the war, which was also a huge property loss.
This is like Yuan Shaojun's decisive battle with Cao Cao in Wuchao. Even if history is changed and Cao Cao is defeated, the loss of food stored in Wuchao camp will definitely not be small.
Of course, Zhang Huangyan also knows that the amount of burnt food counted below may contain moisture. Maybe the soldiers on the front line cleaning the battlefield will burn the food that was slightly overcooked but not completely burned, or the food that was spilled from the collapse of the granary.
Statistical as "complete loss".
But Zhang Huangyan did not intend to pursue these issues. There had just been a shocking bloody battle, with 30,000 casualties. In such a bloody battle that destroyed the country, how many more mouthfuls of military rations were not allowed for the soldiers?
As long as the war is won, more food, wine, money and food will be given to the army as labor. At this time, we can only turn a blind eye. If we are as serious as Chongzhen, maybe something will happen.
Zhang Huangyan issued instructions that night: "Just deal with the losses as reported above, but don't waste the food that has not been completely burned! It just doesn't exist on the books. If you can eat it, give the soldiers extra food!"
Especially those that are slightly burnt, as long as they are not black, they are all edible!"
The people below also knew that the governor was knowledgeable and immediately said that he would not go too far. So that night, most of the Ming army soldiers who had been hungry for a day of bloody battles could only eat fried rice and fried noodles with rice and rice.
Food, no limit.
…
Due to the loss of the camp and the food garrison, as well as so many wounded people who needed to be dealt with, Zhang Huangyan naturally did not have the ability to launch an immediate counterattack and pursuit. Both sides needed to lick their wounds.
Zhang Huangyan ordered Huang Degong to temporarily replace Cao Bianjiao, who was injured and needed to be taken back to recuperate, and asked Huang Degong and Zhu Wenzhen to command all the cavalry troops and keep an eye on Hauge.
On the other side, they quickly reported the victory to the Nanjing court and Zhu Shuren who were still in Kaifeng. In the report to Zhu Shuren, they also emphasized the losses of the war and implored them to urgently allocate some additional supplies, especially to replenish 300,000 yuan.
The army had to eat rations for a month and a half to make up for the losses caused by this decisive battle.
After Zhu Shuren saw it, he also didn't want to check the accounts, and he directly paid the order in full. Even if the Zhangshui River was frozen and it had to be transported directly from Kaifeng to Puyang by land, it still had to meet the needs of the army.
Zhu Shuren knew very well that such a great victory could solve the fundamental problem of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. In comparison, spending more money on food was nothing.
While delivering food, Zhu Shuren also further ordered Zhang Huangyan to hold on to the Qing army and strive to eliminate as many Manchus as possible within the pass.
At the same time, he also stated that he would soon go north to Puyang so that Zhang Huangyan could lead the army to further march north to Beijing.
In addition, he also gave orders to Wu Sangui and Jiang Yu, asking them to speed up the outflanking. They no longer had to insist on "building a stronghold and fighting a dull battle" as before.
Hauge has been severely damaged. Even if he catches the opportunity and encounters Wu Sangui or Jiang Yu alone in a field battle, Hauge will not have the strength to annihilate Wu Sangui in a short time. He will definitely wait until Zhang Huangyan's main force arrives.
Wu Sangui and Jiang Quan naturally did not dare to neglect their orders. On the third day after the decisive battle, Wu Sangui launched an all-out attack on Xingtai and finally broke through the city with the help of artillery. He had started attacking Xingtai a few days before the decisive battle.
In the end, it took five days to break the city.
Jiang Gu, who was further behind, after breaking through Zhending, also successively captured less important areas such as Luan City and Zhaozhou, further threatening Hauge's depth.
On the third day after the decisive battle, Hauge finally made up his mind to personally lead the surviving main force of the Eight Banners and quickly retreat to Beijing. Considering that the Ming army was too tightly stuck, he had to move the remaining Green Camp, Han Banners and
Some other troops acted as a rear-blocking force to ensure escape.