stubborn thief

When Liu Chengzong arrived at the siege position outside Qianzhou City, it was already the evening of the second day of May.

The Chinese army and three major camps were stationed ten miles south of the city. Three small battalions from Gansu were deployed to the east of the city. The Mongolian brigade was deployed on the outside. There was also the main attacking Lintao brigade in the south of the city closest to the city wall. Forty thousand troops surrounded Qianzhou City. It was all over the place.

However, Qianzhou City has not yet fallen.

On the contrary, Shi Xiang's Lintao Brigade left more than 200 corpses in two days of fierce attacks, without even touching the base of the city wall.

At the Chinese army camp, Shi Xiang and Yang Guodong bowed outside the tent and explained to Liu Chengzong: "Commander, outside the Nanguan Pass, there was originally a flower market to the west and Goulan to the east, which are densely populated areas. However, before the war, Duan Fuxing was ordered to build a strong wall and clear the country. Destroyed into ruins.”

"He has been asked to transport all the masonry, stone and wood into the city. There are two deep trenches outside the city, and the 32-foot-wide city wall is equipped with [-] magic guns and cannons, including two newly cast red barbarian cannons. Our soldiers attack the cannons." Unfortunately, yesterday we were suppressed two miles away by the defenders’ cannons during several sudden advances, unable to advance even an inch.”

After saying this, Shi Xiang apologized and said, "Please, Commander-in-Chief, punish me."

This was the first time Yang Guodong met Liu Chengzong. After hearing what Shi Xiang said, he quickly clasped his fists and lowered his head to apologize.

Liu Chengzong did not comment on this, but watched as Shi Xiang handed over the city defense map drawn by a painter in the army overlooking the city on the mountain.

After a long while, he turned his attention to the two of them and spoke. There was no hint of joy or anger in his tone, and asked: "Since the defensive gun is better than the offensive gun, do you have any ideas?"

Funny to say, it has been seven years since Liu Chengzong raised his army. During these seven years, Zonghengguanlong swept across Yongliang. This Qianzhou city was the first time he saw a fully defended city.

The strategies for defending the city are ever-changing, but at least the city has just been repaired two years ago and has the hearts, soldiers, cannons, ammunition, food, grass, and equipment.

As for the two newly cast red barbarian cannons, it goes without saying that they were mostly cast by scholars or Westerners who converted to Western religions... There were quite a few Westerners in Guanzhong. On the way Liu Shishi marched from Baoji to Qianzhou, Several people have already died.

Originally, Liu Shizi wanted to keep one or two missionaries by his side. Although he knew that the missionaries had ulterior motives, he did know a lot, and he didn't want to eat too much. Keeping them around as a backup was not a bad thing.

But anyway, let alone missionaries, even scholars who believed in Western religion would die if they encountered his army.

Because the scholars in Guanzhong who believed in Western religion and learned some real things were basically gentry with a certain social status and wealth, and were interested in military affairs and technology, these people trained with the local regiments of the Ming Dynasty who launched an army to attack the Marshal's Mansion. The bosses basically overlap.

Not all the leaders of the landowner regiments who raised armies believed in Western religion, but those who believed in Western religion would definitely raise armies.

This counts as learned.

An interesting thing even happened in Baoji.

There was a missionary there who was reported to Luo Rucai by the people with the Ming Law, and was accused of practicing witchcraft.

The laws of the Ming Dynasty have clear provisions on the crime of practicing witchcraft and sorcery:

All witches and wizards pretend to summon evil spirits, write talismans, curse water, support Luan, pray to saints, call themselves Duangong, Taibao, Shipo, and falsely call Maitreya Buddha, White Lotus Society, Mingzun Sect, Baiyun Sect, etc. The art of disrupting the Tao may include concealing images, burning incense and gathering people, gathering at night and dispersing at dawn, pretending to do good deeds, and inciting the people.

The leader will be hanged, and the followers will each have a hundred sticks and travel three thousand miles.

This reported missionary used the pretext of a locust plague last year to go to the fields to intimidate people, saying that this was a sin from God, telling people whose food had been eaten up that as long as they believed in his sect, God would send blessings and eliminate disasters, inciting the people. To join the religion, sprinkle talisman water, kneel down and chant sutras until the locusts fly away.

This year the locusts came again, and the people came to him for an explanation. He said that people had forgotten his teachings, were dishonest, and were punished by God, so the locust plague came back again.

The most outrageous thing is that he even made a show of it. The converted people begged him to cast spells again, but he refused to go. He forced people to beg him and delayed it for two days. When the locusts subsided, the people agreed to build a church. Then he went over to sprinkle the talisman water again, and then he was greedy for heaven's merits and attributed the merits of destroying locusts to his God.

Luo Rucai sent troops to arrest the man without saying a word, and sent him directly to the office of Li Jiayan, the prefect of Fengxiang, with the words: Find a crime and kill this man.

Li Jiayan was newly transferred to the Marshal's Mansion and could not afford to offend Luo Rucai, so he could only report the matter exactly to Liu Chengzong on the march.

Liu Shizi was happy when he saw it. He knew why Luo Rucai wanted to kill someone.

Baoji and Dashanguan are the trust areas of Luo Rucai's tribe.

At present, the Ningxia border troops are indeed moving southward, but Li Zicheng's [-]th Battalion of the Chuang Army and Zhang Yichuan's [-]th Henan Battalion can still block them on the north bank of the Weihe River. Therefore, before the Ming army enters Guanzhong, the main forces of the three generals of Wang Wenxiu's department are The mission is to kill the regiments in Fengxiang Prefecture, collect food and grass, gather troops and armor, mobilize the people, and eliminate locusts.

The eggs laid in the ground during last year's locust plague have completed overwintering and are flying out of the ground in large swaths to harm crops. However, Guanzhong has a dense population and the locust eradication was relatively complete last year, so there is less pressure. As Liu Chengzong heard during his march, they were basically untouched. Locusts covering the sky.

What's even more difficult is the current scope of activities of the Ningxia Ming Army.

But even so, large swarms of locusts frequently appeared in various parts of Fengxiang Prefecture. Therefore, Luo Rucai, Yang Chengzu, and Li Wanqing were under great pressure. The people were summoned to cull the locusts.

Tired enough.

After Luo Rucai cleared the team training for Xindi activities, he led the soldiers and civilians to exterminate locusts throughout Baoji every day.

The ground must be dug up and crushed over and over again with the hooves of mules, horses, cattle and sheep. The locusts that fly out must be burned with fire and buried with soil. The locust swarms flying from outside must be driven away with large nets. The eggs in the nook and cranny must be poured with medicinal water. Only then did all the locusts around him be killed.

To others, this missionary's deceptive behavior was a result of greed, but to Luo Rucai, it was a real ignorance of his hard work!

How can Luo Ru not be angry?He was not a philanthropic man. Before he joined forces with Liu Chengzong, even in Yan'an Prefecture where ruthless people abounded, he was still ranked as a bandit leader. The efficiency of breaking into strongholds and killing big families was completely in a race against time.

It was only later that he suffered a big loss at the hands of the army and was almost killed by Ai Mu. Faced with the threat of life and death, he joined forces with Liu Chengzong, was restrained by military law, and embarked on the path of regular militarization.

But military law is not magic after all. It is impossible to make the murderous Luo Rucai become a Buddha immediately. At most, he can only put on a layer of shackles.

Whenever Luo Rucai felt that he could make the decision to kill someone, he would just do it himself.

Because all the generals in the Marshal's Mansion now have no favorable opinion of the so-called Western Confucianism, these people are helping the local regiments and the Ming Dynasty defenders to make guns and cannons.

The reason why Luo Rucai didn't do it himself was entirely because there was a problem with the people's reports: he was taking the Ming Law.

When the Marshal's Mansion first arrived in Qinghai, it implemented the Ming Law for a period of time, but now it uses the Grand Marshal's Law, and the crime of practicing witchcraft and sorcery... is clearly deleted in the Grand Marshal's Law.It's not that Luo Rucai memorized the Generalissimo's Law by heart, but that when Liu Chengzong wanted to expunge the crime of practicing witchcraft, he specially summoned the generals to discuss the matter.

There are few serious people in our Marshal's Mansion!
Whether ordinary people or soldiers, believe in Maitreya Buddha, teach the White Lotus Sect, set up a mandala and perform rituals, burn incense for meals, and drink talisman water, these strange behaviors are not surprising even if they are not routine operations. .

If a master is convicted of sorcery, Wang Ziyong will definitely have to kill every one of the Three Tribulation Battalions. He can also kill half of the senior officers of the Western and Mongolian Second Brigades. The troops of the two brigades will be sent directly to the The Tianshan Guards were exiled for exactly three thousand miles, and no one was unjustly accused.

Liu Chengzu may be the biggest winner.

Liu Shizi had no choice. Keeping this article would affect the credibility of the entire Grand Marshal's Law. Deleting this article would only worry about the Taoist sects of private associations.

Anyway, he is not afraid of civil society.

When Liu Shizi started his rebellion, the scholars turned into bandits, the refugees turned into militarized people, the thieves turned into bandits from the north, the gentry turned into bandits, the officers and soldiers turned into thieves, and there was even Wang Ziyong, a man who knew all three religions and wanted to eat right and wrong. What kind of bullshit and snake god have we not seen before? ?

Where are the civil associations?
To him, civil associations are just a very low-level form of organization, and the underlying logic is easy to decipher. His marshal's office is a national association. As long as the people can eat, the defense against feudal guilds is invincible.

If the people under his rule don't have enough food to eat... If they don't have enough food to eat, why should they worry about Taoism?The top priority must be to find food. If he could find food, Liu Chengzong would even reluctantly serve as the leader.

Luo Rucai reported this matter to Fengxiang Mansion, but he was just being petty. It did not violate military law, and he did not need to take responsibility.

But Liu Chengzong didn't dislike this kind of cleverness.

In fact, he was very convinced that Li Jiayan knew something about this missionary. After all, Li Jiayan was the magistrate of Baoji County before. During the locust plague last autumn, there was such a miraculous character under his rule. It was impossible for the magistrate to do anything. have no idea.

That's why he reported the matter to himself, otherwise he would definitely kill the missionary directly in Fengxiang Mansion.

Liu Chengzong didn't want to pay attention to this matter.

However, after all, Li Jiayan had just resigned, and this was the first question asked to him. So he immediately wrote a reply and asked someone to bring it to Li Jiayan, asking him to ask the missionary two questions.

The first one is whether you can cast cannons.

If not, he will be punished by hanging according to the crime of practicing witchcraft in the Ming Dynasty Law.

The second question is whether he is willing to join the Marshal's army and forge cannons.

If you are willing, you can join Wang Wenxiu's army as a cannon maker and let the military craftsmen keep strict supervision.

If you don't want to, you will be sentenced to beheading according to the Grand Marshal's law for creating monsters, writing monsters, and talking about monsters.

As for other rights and wrongs and principles, Liu Chengzong felt that there was no need to communicate too much with people who had too many deviations in their views. It was as if he only discussed the methods of rebellion with Wang Ziyong and never talked about other things.

People in the material world and gods in the superstitious world are talking to each other in words and playing the piano to each other in behavior. It is a waste of life to devote time and energy to this matter.

In the current war, compared with the siege of Qianzhou City, where hundreds or even thousands of lives may have been lost, the life of a missionary was as trivial as sesame seeds and mung beans.

However, in the camp outside the city, neither Shi Xiang nor Yang Guodong understood the intention of Liu Chengzong's question.

Liu Shizi's question was that defensive guns were stronger than attacking guns, so what should they do, but Shi Xiang replied: "Please also ask the commander to borrow thirty Chinese war guns to suppress the artillery at the city head. I, the officers and men of the Lintao brigade, We must attack with all our lives and seize the city!"

Liu Chengzong turned his head and glanced outside the tent with some disappointment, then turned around and said, "I'm asking, if I hadn't led the army here, what could you, eight thousand troops, do to this city?"

Shi Xiang and Yang Guodong looked at each other. Neither of them had any experience in siegeing cities. This was not a problem for them. After all, the Ming army had only conducted sieges on the battlefield a handful of times in the past 200 years since the time of Zhu Yuanzhang.

And among these few battles, it is even rarer that the defenders' artillery is stronger than the siege army.

Generally speaking, the Ming army's artillery is stronger than the enemy's, forming a completely suppressed situation on the battlefield. For example, when Wanli came to aid Korea, he fought against the Japanese in the Pyongyang battle, besieged the city on the sixth day of the lunar month, and attacked on the eighth day of the lunar month. He captured Pyongyang City on the same day, and went to Xiaoxi. The department lost [-] people a day.

In the battles to attack and defend the city these days, there were artillery but no artillery, and the exchange ratio was exaggerated. Huang Taiji of the Later Jin Dynasty led the Eight Banners to face the well-defended city, and could only repeat the process of burning corpses and retreating in Liaodong.

As of five years ago, the Houjin Eight Banners were the most experienced troops in sieges in the 200 provinces of the two capitals in the past 13 years.

Yang Guodong originally wanted to show off his skills in front of the generalissimo and talk about the siege methods he had heard and learned in the past, but he was stopped by Shi Xiang.

Shi Xiang, a hereditary military officer, knew much more about sieges than veterans like Yang Guodong. If he was asked to talk, he could talk about it from day to night, but he felt that he couldn't talk about it.

As the saying goes, know yourself and know the enemy. Shi Xiang believed that he had no more knowledge about sieges than other generals. However, Liu Chengzong in front of him was the leading siege commander of this era. There was no fortified city in front of him in the entire northwest.

At this moment, anything Shi Xiang said about attacking the city was just trying to do what he wanted.

Therefore, Shi Xiang lowered his head and clasped his fists very smoothly, and said in a sincere tone: "Please forgive me for being stupid, but I also hope that the commander will teach me how to attack the city!"

How should I put it, Liu Shizi felt that this Shi Xiang looked like a larger and enhanced version of Ren Quan'er.

Before Liu Chengzong could speak, Zhang Xianzhong who was standing next to him couldn't help it. He lifted up his official robe and bowed down and said: "You can't kill a chicken with a bull's knife. The dog officers in the city are good at killing the envoys of my handsome manor. Since the division commander has experience in attacking the city, Shang Qian, why not let our Ministry of Rites seek justice for this matter!"

In Liu Chengzong's view, Zhang Xianzhong's expression was reaffirming his earlier judgment: the division commander had little ability.

However, it is one thing that Zhang Xianzhong speaks unpopularly. It is also true that before he surrendered to the Marshal's Mansion, he was the general who conquered the largest number of cities in the northwest.

In terms of siege, the generals of the Western Brigade are indeed more experienced than the direct generals of the Marshal's Mansion.

"If Zhang Shangshu is asked to besiege this city, what will it take? How long will it take to break it?"

"Come back to Commander, I don't need anything else. Just the two thousand-man brigades of the Mongolian Brigade and the 6000 people of the Lintao Brigade are enough." After saying that, Zhang Xianzhong raised his hand and spread his five fingers and said: "In five days, I will be the Commander-in-Chief." Capture this city!" (End of chapter)