stubborn thief

The cannon roared.

Liu Chengzong sighed silently in his heart as he watched his artillery shells hit the head of Jiayuguan City.

His recruitment and surrender of the Guanshang garrison was only a routine matter, and the killing of sheep and cattle before the gate was only to weaken the morale of the garrison. In fact, he knew better than anyone else that the garrison at Jiayuguan would not surrender.

The Nine Sides of the Ming Dynasty have indeed lost many major battles, but there has never been a civilian who surrendered without a fight, and the only side general who surrendered without a fight was the Fushun guerrilla Li Yongfang.

Jiayuguan has a halo that has never been breached since its establishment. The defenders here cannot easily surrender to him. Liu Chengzong, who was born in the frontier army, believes in the professional ethics of these old colleagues.

But he really did not expect that the guards at Jiayuguan were also iron-clad. The marshals were stewing meat outside the pass, and they wanted to show off their wealth and treatment. As a result, the guards at Jiayuguan also closed and set up a cauldron and hung the sheep on the gate tower. Kill now, kill now.

Both sides had a full meal, one was mobilizing the army, the other was morale, and fierce battles were inevitable, and they could only rely on artillery to communicate.

The two sides fired several rounds of heavy artillery at each other. Liu Chengzong on the mountain looked at the binoculars for a moment, then turned to Cao Yao and said, "It seems that there is no shortage of gunpowder in Suzhou. The artillery in Jiayuguan is very accurate and fast. Good workmanship."

Cao Yao, who was also holding a binoculars, responded, then nodded and said, "Their artillery is a little short, the court does not pay much attention to the northwest offensive and defensive guns, and only four invincible generals and twelve generals can be sent to us. If you live with them, you can send light cannons to demolish the sheep and horse walls."

The artillery of the Ming Dynasty has always had various names, but in the Chongzhen period, all kinds of cannons were divided into three categories in terms of use, namely, battle guns, attack guns and defend guns.

Battle guns are field guns, and most of them are relatively light; attack guns have a smaller diameter and are divided into direct and curved shots, so they are siege guns; defender guns are heavy, and the distance from the fire door to the gun lug is only the gun lug to the gun lug. Half of the muzzle, the body of the gun is tilted downward, used for diving on the city.

However, most of the artillery with this clear classification are used in the Liaodong battlefield and the Xuanda line of defense where the military pressure is relatively high. The artillery of Jiayuguan is an old object of the Qi Jiguang era.

The Ming army of that era had no need for siege, and the biggest field artillery was Qi Jiguang's Invincible General and Ye Mengxiong's General Cannon. forged gun.

These two kinds of old cannons are the main force of heavy artillery in Jiayuguan, and Liu Chengzong is no stranger to them. Li Bei used the smaller one to fight him in Yan'an Mansion.

However, there was no joy on Liu Chengzong's face. The artillery battle at a distance of one mile had the advantage, which was what he expected.

The Marshal's Mansion has a complete production capacity in terms of artillery. When attacking the Bajiao City occupied by Chuoke Tutaiji, it even cast artillery on the spot outside the city. There are also experienced gunners from the Ming Army, and there is a self-sufficient gunpowder production area.

With advanced equipment, sufficient gunpowder, perfect training, and professional staff, there is no reason for the Marshal's House to lose in the artillery bombardment stage.

What really worries him is the siege, because Jiayuguan is a great pass that needs to be broken quickly for him, and he can't be surrounded by it for a few months.

The attack on Jiayuguan was not only a deterrent to Gansu, but also a means of showing off the nobles of Oara, such as Batulhutaiji. Liu Chengzu led four battalions, two battalions of Tianshanwei and two battalions of Mongols, which could only be Jiayuguan to stay for one month.

A month later, they must go to Tianshan, otherwise the fourth battalion of Tianshan will not have enough food and grass, and they must start to eat the food and grass of Liu Chengzong's main five battalion.

These people began to eat the food of the main camp, which also declared that Liu Shishi's Gansu strategy plan was a complete failure, and they had to return to Qinghai the same way.

Therefore, Liu Chengzong's worries mainly stem from the scale of reinforcements at Jiayuguan.

The Marshal's Mansion has an advantage in the artillery battle, and a long artillery battle can weaken the city defenses to the greatest extent and gain an advantage for the next stage of the storm.

But at the same time, this is also a double-edged sword. It will take a long time to weaken the city defense by shelling, and reinforcements from the east of Jiayuguan will arrive one after another, which will bring trouble to the siege.

But at least for now, things aren't so bad.

Liu Chengzong said hello to Cao Yao and said, "Come on, the cannons of the defenders can't reach us. It's time to be anxious. The strong charge can hit the cannons over."

After fighting too much with the Ming army, Liu Shishi also learned about the habits of the Ming army's gunners. This group of people would come with double-charged medicine at every turn, and sometimes it was quite scary.

Cao Yao followed Liu Shishi down the city and asked, "How do you plan to break through?"

"It's the same old way, first rip off the wall of sheep and horses, and then use cannonballs to knock off the battlements of Guancheng and the hanging wall. It is best to take Guancheng by force, but if you can't take it down...if you can't take it down, you can only force Suspended. The wall is down, go ahead and talk about it."

The hanging wall in Liu Chengzong's mouth is the Great Wall connecting the cliffs and alpine deserts on both sides of Jiayuguan.

Therefore, Liu Chengzong planned to use artillery to bombard him for one day, and tomorrow he sent people to break through the curtain wall, and rushed into Suzhou with horses to block the reinforcements from the east.

After speaking, Liu Chengzong walked down the mountain and ordered the soldiers beside him: "Send orders to the Tianshan Guards and the Junggar Battalion, and order them to drive to the front of the formation, six hundred paces from the city, at a distance of one mile from south to north, to build ten It is a four-zhang earth mountain."

The city wall of Jiayuguan is three feet high, and Liu Chengzong needed to build a four-zhang-high earth mountain outside the city to see the horse road on the other side of the city wall.

As for letting the elder brother and the four battalions of Oara do the earthwork, it was because they did not need to participate in the war, and they appeared on the battlefield just to support themselves, and it was useless to save their physical strength.

The first virtue of the Marshal's Mansion is that as long as a person is alive, they must not waste food, because every ration this person eats is saved by someone in this world who starved to death for him.

But in fact, at this moment, Ding Guodong on the other side of Jiayuguan felt the truth more deeply.

The marshal's army slaughtered 72 sheep outside the pass before firing the cannon. It was painless, because this was the food that Liu Chengzong prepared for the marshal's army.

In fact, because they left the pastures of the camps, their livestock supply has been reduced. Anyone can eat live livestock when they are on the march, but outside Jiayuguan, only the troops who are ready to fight can eat fresh meat.

To protect the morale of this long-distance march, Liu Shishi put down his blood, and the eight grazing camps in Qinghai would not be available for grazing for the next two years.

But for Jiayuguan guerrilla general Ding Guodong, this was not the case. He could not show weakness when the enemy army killed sheep and cattle outside the pass.

He bought it and spent money, but he wanted to buy it, but the herdsmen didn't want to sell it, and they were counting on these animals to lay lambs, so they bought it by force.

Ding Guodong had no other choice. Jiayuguan had plenty of defense equipment. The biggest loophole was people. Once the soldiers lost their morale, there would be nothing left.

He was able to transfer livestock from Suzhou Wei, but it took him a long time to come over there, and the most crucial issue was that he could afford to buy [-] animals in Jiayuguan, but it would not be possible for him to transfer livestock from Suzhou Wei. Affordable price.

The market price of these lambs is only three or forty taels of silver, but when the reinforcements from all walks of life come, he will transfer the animals, then what is needed is not this amount.

Seeing that the artillery of the Marshal's Mansion suppressed the defenders in the city so much that they couldn't lift their heads, even the artillerymen were slow to fight back, almost killing Ding Guodong.

Qianhu Hei Chengyin, who was guarding the gate, was also in a hurry. He hunched over from behind the battlements, and said, "General, Hanhan's cannons are very powerful. Quickly ride out of the city and destroy a few of his guns!"

"Don't dare to be brave!"

Ding Guodong became anxious when he heard it, pointed at Hei Chengyin and said, "You stay in the gate, but don't dare to leave the city, their horse team is waiting for you to leave the city!"

He could recognize that the artillery positions outside the city were a complete set of conspiracy, and the brass cannons in the water were clearly better than the old antique cannons in the city, and they wanted to lure them out of the city to destroy the cannons.

This is the consistent style of the Ming army warriors. Grandpa's head is here, you can take it if you have the ability.

"Then, General, just watch them smash our cannons to pieces?" Hei Chengyin said anxiously, "We have to think of a way!"

The closed cannons are all good cannons that can hit a mile or even two miles, but if you want to shoot accurately, you can only shoot [-], [-], or [-] steps.

What's more, the enemy had piled up soil in front of the gun emplacements, and Hei Chengyin didn't know what the soil was.

The other way around is different. Those heavy guns outside the city can knock out at least two of their battlements if they are fired at a distance of [-] paces. If the battlements are broken, the cannons have to be moved. The shell was broken.

Not to mention that these guns are indeed getting old. This kind of artillery battle with fewer enemies and more enemies puts too much pressure on the overheating of the sixteen old generals.

"Think of a way, is there any way, the reinforcements are too late."

Ding Guodong scolded secretly, several reinforcements were stationed only [-] to [-] miles away from Jiayuguan, and the two armies confronted each other for a long time.

"Hold on, hold on until they attack the city, and kill their spirits by hand-to-hand combat." Ding Guodong said to Hei Chengyin, "Don't tell the Marshal's House to underestimate our border guards."

They didn't have the advantage in the artillery battle, but in the close quarters of the city, at least within three days, Ding Guodong had enough confidence that he could make the Marshal's Mansion go back.

Hei Chengyin also thought that this was feasible, and beckoned to call a hundred firemen Ha Zhi, saying: "Let your people go to fetch the oil, and the city gate will not drop a thousand jins, and wait for hundreds of them to attack the Weng City and set fire to them. !"

This is a way.

Ding Guodong thought about the new arrival of the enemy army, and the morale was like a rainbow right now. If he could win a victory in Wengcheng and kill the enemy's spirit, the most suitable way was a fire attack.

Because the specialty product with the largest reserves in Jiuquan is petroleum, which is called naphtha in this era.

Jiuquan was the first city in ancient China to use oil in the defense of the city. In the first year of Emperor Wu's proclamation of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, Jiuquan soldiers and civilians used oil to burn down the siege equipment of the Turkic army, thus saving the country from danger.

In the Ming Dynasty, because of the existence of deep wells and better oil extraction capacity, Jiuquan had a series of special products produced from oil, such as paste ink after oil combustion, oil used for lighting, waterproof and anti-corrosion paint, asphalt, and vehicle axles. Lubricating oil, and flaming oil for the battlefield.

Fire attack is the advantage of Jiayuguan defenders.

Ding Guodong didn't reject the proposal to burn the siege army to Wengcheng, but he gave Hei Chengyin a very clear and confusing order: "If the reinforcements don't arrive, don't set fire to it."

But Hei Chengyin understood, and said with a very serious military salute: "General, don't worry, I understand that it is okay to not use it, but let them know that we have kerosene."

In fact, the Jiayuguan garrison did not want to fight with the Marshal's Mansion at all. They were indeed well-trained, but apart from the officers, few people in the Chengtou garrison had personally experienced the war. For the garrison, the war was just a romanticized frontier poem.

The frontier troops in Gansu really endured hardship. The supply of food and grass here is not timely, and they often starve. However, in Hexi, there is only desertification and no severe drought. What they experienced was only the treatment of the frontier troops in Yansui and Xuanda during the Tianqi period, and it was not a big problem.

There is also no hard-hearted heart that must kill people to survive in the drought in northern Shaanxi in the past few years, whether it is an army or a thief.

In their opinion, the frontier army and the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion had no grudges in the past and no grudges in the past. The soldiers attacked the city and defended the city for their own masters. But in the final analysis, the soldiers on both sides were from Shaanxi. Maybe Qiu Fang was still standing in an army formation in Huamachi.

The general gave an order, and the soldiers attacked the city and pulled out the stronghold. If they made merit, they were lucky. If they died, they were bad luck. In wars, people would always die. When they were soldiers, they had this mental preparation, but they could at least choose how to let the enemy die.

Hei Chengyin can understand that he proposed to use fierce kerosene because at a critical juncture, he could not let his soldiers die. Death... is death, and death is not happy.

Therefore, he can use the fierce kerosene as the last defensive measure before the city is broken. This war was originally a tragedy for him.

But Ding Guodong was a veteran general, and he didn't have much sympathy for his thoughts. He was very rational. This was just an account that needed to be planned.

When the reinforcements arrive at Jiayuguan, they can hold on to it, set fire to fire, and explode with poisonous smoke. It doesn’t matter how they fight, if they have made military exploits, they can be promoted to rank and rich, and their brothers can eat well.

It is only right and proper for the official army to fight the rebel army.

There was only one reason for his refusal to use fierce kerosene. The reinforcements did not arrive. They greeted them with all their weapons, and burned the love that was originally from the same root. In the end, Jiayuguan was still not held, and the rebels were full of anger. Where did they go? vent?
To massacre the city.

Now the question is, what about the reinforcements?
The cannons on the city were still roaring, and several horses with their flags galloped from the direction of Suzhou, rushed to Guancheng to find Ding Guodong and bowed, and reported, "General Ding, reinforcements... The reinforcements can't come."

"them?"

Ding Guodong was so choked that he could not speak, so he heard the cavalry command: "Thousands of enemy troops rushed into Ganzhou, swept the Mayingbao from the high platform, and the soldiers pointed directly at Suzhou. General Zhao Shen gathered troops this morning to help Jinbei in the east. The Buddhist Temple and the Jinta Temple Fort outside the North Border Pass were also besieged by the Tatar army, and there were only [-] soldiers in Suzhou, and they said that in three to five days, there would be no reinforcements."