Chongzhen Daming: Starting from Coal Mountain

Chapter 56

As soon as Huang Degong arrived, Chongzhen's waist finally hardened.

Because this is a true loyal minister, and he listens to greetings.

More importantly, Huang Degong still has a relatively capable army under his command.

This army will definitely not be able to defeat the Dashun Army and the Jiannu Army, but it can fight against the rebels. In history, Zuo Liangyu's [-] rebels were defeated by Huang Degong's army.

So there is no need to worry about Li Chengdong and the others making a fuss.

Before Huang Degong came, Chongzhen didn't even dare to let the border troops of the eighteen towns build barracks, because they were afraid that they would not be able to bear the hardship, and if they were instigated by the general soldiers with ulterior motives, there would be mass incidents again.

The payment incident has not been completely resolved, so I dare not have another accident.

So these days, Chongzhen just let the eighteen towns frontier troops conduct queue training, and implemented a plan to draw salaries from the bottom of the pot, fundamentally cutting off the foundation of the eighteen towns' commander-in-chief.

Only the [-] Xiangyong and the Weisuo Army have been strengthening Xuzhou's city defense.

But now, it's time for the frontier troops of the eighteen towns to participate in the construction of the fortifications. No, the frontier troops of the twenty-eight towns must participate in the construction of the fortifications.

After lunch, Chongzhen asked Ma Huabao to beat drums to gather the generals.

The drum sounded three links, and the other seventeen town commanders rushed to Ma Huabao's camp one after another.

After seeing the ceremony, Chongzhen said to the commander-in-chief of the twenty-eight towns: "You must be very curious, why did I transfer all the frontier troops of your twenty-eight towns to Xuzhou? What will I do?"

As soon as the words fell, Han Zan, who came with Huang Degong, said eagerly on Zhou Zhou: "Long Live Lord, this old slave knows, this old slave knows why Long Live Lord transferred the Twenty-eighth Town to Xuzhou."

"Oh really?" Chongzhen said in disdain, "Then tell me."

Han Zanzhou said: "Long live Lord's move is of course for the Northern Expedition and the recovery of the capital."

Hearing this, the general soldiers of the ten towns who had just followed Huang Degong to Xuzhou were fine, but Li Chengdong and the other general soldiers of the eighteen towns suddenly changed their expressions.

Northern Expedition?Restoring the capital?
play?You want to court death, we still want to live a few more days.

These days in Xuzhou, bad news has been passed down from Daming Mansion.

Wu Sangui, a traitor, has completely surrendered to Jiannu, and Guan Ningjun has also become Jiannu's lackeys.

Those dignitaries in Beijing first surrendered to the bandits, and after the bandits were beaten away, they surrendered to build slaves.

But now, the life of these traitors is not easy, because Jiannu is forcing them to shave their hair, and now the officials, gentry and common people in many counties and counties in the north are making trouble.

What's more, after the defeat of Pianshi, the bandits suffered another unprecedented defeat in Qingdu. The general Gu Kecheng and the [-] bandits behind were wiped out.

From this, it can be concluded that Jiannu is more fierce than the thief.

The Daming frontier army couldn't even beat the rogues, so they still wanted to fight Jiannu?
Wu Sangui was able to clean them up without Jiannu at all.

Therefore, the Northern Expedition is impossible, that is, it is only by nesting in Xuzhou that you can survive.

But fortunately, Chongzhen shook his head and said: "The Northern Expedition is definitely going to happen, but not now. I don't want to deceive myself, and I won't force everyone to do things that can't be done."

"At this stage, I, Ming Dynasty, am not capable of the Northern Expedition."

"Li Zicheng's hundreds of thousands of rogues were defeated by Jiannu,"

"Our [-] frontier army is even less likely to be Jiannu's opponent."

"The only thing we can do now is defend, stick to the Huanghuai defense line."

"I don't want to say these words to make others' ambitions destroy my own prestige, but the facts speak louder than words. If you refuse to face the reality, you will have to pay the price in blood. The Ming Dynasty can no longer withstand too much storm."

Hearing this, Huang Degong nodded lightly, thinking that the Holy Majesty really knew the soldiers.

Li Chengdong and the other twenty-eight town commanders breathed a sigh of relief, as long as it wasn't the Northern Expedition.

Chongzhen said again: "I just talked about the Huanghuai defense line, and I will show you something."

Having said this, Chongzhen signaled Wu to bring Tan to bring the war horse over, and then got on the horse. Huang Degong, Li Chengdong and other twenty-eight town commanders also mounted the horse one after another.

A group of people went straight into Xuzhou City and came to the state government.

Just entering the front yard, I saw Gao Qiqian and Lu Jiude leading a dozen eunuchs in and out, cleaning.

Seeing Chongzhen, Lu Jiude immediately stepped forward and said flatteringly, "Long Live Lord, the map you ordered has been built."

"Understood." Chongzhen went straight in.

Huang Degong and the commander-in-chief of the twenty-eighth town also followed into the lobby.

I saw that the long table in the lobby and the chairs of the second class had been removed and replaced by a long table.

Huang Degong and the commander-in-chief of the twenty-eighth town Dingqing looked at it, and saw that the map on the long case turned out to be a map of the Yellow River, which stretched for more than [-] miles from Kaifeng Mansion to Huai'an Mansion.

The center of the map is Xuzhou, where they are now.

There are also Guide Mansion and Fengyang Mansion in the south, and Daming Mansion and Yanzhou Mansion in the north.

What made Huang Degong and Li Chengdong even more amazed was that this map turned out to be three-dimensional, and the mountains, rivers, and even the city were all done so lifelike that it was extremely realistic.

Lu Jiude and Gao Qiqian are really serious this time.

Lu Jiude said flatteringly: "Long live, and all the general townsmen, our family and Eunuch Gao spent seven days and seven nights to rush out this map of the Yellow River, especially for these cities and camps. Carved by the carpenters in Zhoucheng, by the way, there is also a model of the camp, which was specially ordered by the Lord Long Live to build it."

After Lu Jiude finished speaking, two young eunuchs carried out a wooden fortress model from the side.

This model is about three feet square, about a foot in height, and is a concave polygon.

"Western blunderbuss?" Huang Degong, Hu Guozhu and several other general soldiers from Liaodong said in a voice.

"Yes, Western blunderbuss." Chongzhen was familiar with the history of the late Ming Dynasty, and knew that Western bastions had been introduced to Daming long ago, and Sun Chengzongxiu's Ningyuan City was a large bastion.

Bastions evolved to the extreme in Europe.

But it has already been eliminated in China.

The reason is that it does not match the scale of China's war.

Due to its architectural characteristics, the bastion is not large in scale and can only be used to garrison troops but not provide protection for the people. This is very suitable for wars involving thousands or even hundreds of people in the ancient West.

But wars involving tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people in ancient China are useless.

Because the attacker only needs to leave a small amount of troops to contain the defenders in the bastion, they can send a large number of mobile troops deep into the defender's hinterland to carry out large-scale destruction and weaken the war potential.

Therefore, in ancient China, most of the cities were built very large.

Not only provide protection for the army, but also provide protection for the people.

Because the people mean the population, and the population means the potential for war.

It is precisely because of this that the bastion has never been valued in China.

But Chongzhen, as a traverser, knows that the Bastion is actually useful, it has great uses, the key depends on how you use it.

One bastion isn't much use, but ten?What about a hundred?What would it be like if thousands of bastions were scattered along the Yellow River?
Moreover, these bastions are not distributed in a linear shape.

The Huanghuai line of defense envisioned by Chongzhen is a large-scale composite fortification consisting of thousands of bastions and spanning the north and south sides of the Yellow River with a depth of more than [-] kilometers.

Jianu can easily break through one bastion, or even ten bastions.

But what about twenty?Fifty or even hundreds?
Even if Jian Nu could bear it physically, he would be exhausted mentally.

Because they will be desperate to find that the bastions on this line of defense seem to be endless.

And what the Daming Frontier Army in the twenty-eight towns has to do is to guard these thousands of bastions.

This is the Huanghuai line of defense envisioned by Chongzhen. Strategically, it draws on Zeng Shaved's "strengthen the stronghold and fight a dull battle", while tactically draws on Western bastion technology.

The combination of the two is terrifying to think about.

I don't say what the character of the person who has shaved his head is, and he doesn't comment on whether he is half holy or not.

However, the strategy of "strengthening the stronghold and fighting the war" that he summed up on the basis of his predecessors is the only great strategy that can help the weak to defeat the strong.

At that time, the Hunan Army was newly recruited, had no battle formation, and did not have an advantage in weapons and equipment. Compared with the Taiping Army, the number of troops was at an absolute disadvantage.

However, the Taiping Army were all veterans of hundreds of battles who had been killed all the way from Guangxi. They were numerous and powerful, and there was also a large group of senior generals with rich experience in commanding battle formations. No matter how you looked at it at the time, the Taiping Army could crush Hunan military.

However, the final result slapped everyone in the face. Relying on Zeng Guofan's strategy of "strengthening the stronghold and fighting dumbly", the Hunan Army fought back and forth with the Taiping Army. Later, the Hunan Army's combat experience came up with weapons The equipment has also been updated, and thousands of people often suppress the tens of thousands of Taiping troops in pursuit.

In the Battle of Tianjing, [-] Hunan troops actually surrounded Tianjing where [-] Taiping troops were stationed.

During the Agrarian Revolution, the Kuomintang army also relied on this tactic to severely injure the Red Army of Workers and Peasants. As a result, it forced a [-]-mile long march and forged a strongest army that had never been seen in human history.

There is no doubt that Zeng Guofan's strategy is the most suitable strategy for the current Ming army.

Because the Ming army is not only far inferior to Jiannu in terms of combat effectiveness, but also does not have an advantage in terms of number of troops, and is already at a disadvantage in terms of weapons and equipment. Without Zeng Guofan's strategy, the Ming army would not be able to survive Jiannu's charge at all. The strategy of "strengthening the fortress and fighting the war silently" can barely keep Daming alive.

The bastion and Zeng Guofan's strategy of "strengthening the stronghold and fighting indifferently" are simply a perfect match.

In short, this is not the Great Wall. The engineering volume and difficulty of the project are far less than the Great Wall, but the defense function is a hundred times better than the Great Wall. It is not easy for Jiannu to break through this Huanghuai defense line!

And the longer it drags on, the stronger this line of defense will be!

"Please look at the map of the Yellow River again." Chongzhen clapped his hands lightly, turning everyone's attention back to the sand table, and said, "The so-called army marches first before moving food and grass. If the slaves go south, they will inevitably march along the canal. It can greatly save material loss and improve Jiannu's continuous combat capability."

Huang Degong and the commander-in-chief of the twenty-eighth town nodded in unison.

Chongzhen said again: "So our first defense is the canal."

(End of this chapter)