national surname chiming

Chapter 265
Shen Shuren's behavior is almost as if he will directly take the unmanned boat to the "mine", face the hidden reefs and broken cones that the enemy may lay underwater, and forcibly open a way.

It just so happens that others can't say this, but he said it is very reasonable.

Because the Shen family has nothing but money and a boat.

The banknote ability in this field is activated. On the earth, apart from Zheng Zhilong and the King of Spain, or the Duke of Orange in the Netherlands, there is no fourth party who can be more confident than him.

Even the British King Charles I at that time was not good enough. In 1642, Britain was not worthy of being considered the top naval power in the world.

The generals under Shen Shuren's command, since Zuo Zixiong, all knew that Mr. Futai said the same thing, and these words naturally brought tears to their eyes:

Mr. Futai really deserves the benevolent theory of "the husband who does great things must put people first"!
There are so many officials in the Ming Dynasty, which ones are not making money in various ways, and harming the country for personal gain!Only Shen Futai not only pays money to be an official, but also cares for the soldiers so much!
The army belongs to the state, and the soldiers belong to the court, not to the Shen family.

The sea boat and the silver are firmly owned by Mr. Shen's family!
Now, Mr. Shen would rather sacrifice more of his family's things in exchange for less loss of court things and fewer soldiers' lives.
What kind of spirit is this?
This is not what destroying the family and relieving hardship is!
With tears in their eyes, they are still not ready to disobey Master Futai's good intentions, so they can only push the boat along the way and let Master Futai try this trick to see how effective it is.

……

And Shen Shuren is obviously not the kind of person who can endure "spending money and not even being able to hear a sound" being taken advantage of,
Even if he does charity, he still needs a good reputation.

Without a name, who the hell does charity!

Therefore, in the next few days, before the next round trip of the grain transport fleet, although there was no war, the propaganda work in Chen County did not stop for a moment.

Shen Shuren didn't make any official propaganda either, it was too fake and the soldiers were not easy to believe.He just sent some confidants to spread the inside story of the preparations for this battle among the soldiers gossip through various private channels.

"Have you heard that Zuo Zongzhen and other brave generals originally planned to go out of the city by water and land to clear the way when they saw that the grain fleet was intercepted by the enemy. It was Shen Futai who stopped him, and he and others coup."

"...Is that so? We have been in the army for seven or eight years, and we have never heard of such a civil servant who loves soldiers like a child."

"Haven't heard of this? Although we have only been in the army for three years, we have always known that Mr. Shen has always loved soldiers like his son. However, his military law is also very strict.

When starting a business in Huangzhou three years ago, they recruited Dock Lifu and Orion as soldiers. They were well paid for food and drinks, and they never lacked in equipment and armor. Run away, and turn around and beheaded all of them for public display! "

"Then my brother, you are really lucky! When you were a soldier, you were a Huangzhou soldier. Now that you think about it, it is too enviable. We are all Henan soldiers. We have fought five years more than you. It is not easy to survive today. The brothers around us are all dead. How many stubbles have been changed?

If we could work hard for a good official like Mr. Shen as soon as we joined the army, maybe my second brother and my cousin would be able to live like me to this day.I couldn't find any officials in Henan who took our lives as soldiers so seriously. "

The servants of the Shen family first picked up the Huangzhou soldiers to spread, and then spread from the Huangzhou soldiers to the Wuchang soldiers, and then to the Henan soldiers and the Anlu soldiers.It's almost like holding a complaint conference like the modern army to dig out the root of thought.

In this way, the military spirit becomes more and more available.

……

The waiting time of four or five days passed quickly.Finally, it was the day when Zhang Mingzhen's water army once again transported food to Chen County.

This time, only Shen Lian and Li Yu were leading the food transport sailors, and Zhang Mingzhen himself still didn't come - this wasn't Zhang Mingzhen's cowardice, but Shen Shuren's care, he needed to come back when the final decisive battle took place.

If you expose your full strength too much in advance, it will not be easy to lure Li Zicheng to bite the bait again and again, and it will also easily exhaust morale, and then fail again and again.

There were no accidents worth mentioning in the process of transporting food, and it was basically proceeding according to Shen Shuren's script - the Chuang army still organized interception, and dispatched more troops than last time.

Moreover, after a few days of rest and recuperation, the Yingchuan River section in the southeast of Chen County has undergone more construction and reconstruction by the Chuangjun. The narrower it is, the more difficult it is for the fleet to pass.

In fact, Li Zicheng obviously wanted to "completely dig out and block Yingchuan", but this crazy idea just passed by in a flash, and it was actually impossible to implement.

Yingchuan in this era can be regarded as one of the tributaries of the Yellow River, how can this amount of water be cut off.Moreover, since ancient times, it is better to control water blockage than dredging. Such a large amount of incoming water is directly blocked. When the dam breaks, Li Zicheng himself will definitely be the first to drown.

Therefore, relying on Chuangjun's operation method of wielding a shovel with both hands, he can only deploy a few hidden reefs and cofferdams.

Seeing the army's grain fleet approaching again, Chuangjun immediately dispatched a lot of land troops to help defend the encirclement. As usual, they frantically fired at the fleet with firearms and crossbows to suppress it.

The boats and rafts of the invading army hid behind the hidden pile area to wait for work, hoping to wait for the official and army ships to run aground or hit a hole and lose their mobility before rushing up to meet the board and jumping off the ship for hand-to-hand combat.

It's a pity that this time the officers and soldiers didn't use small boats to escort them to clear the way and find out the channel, and they directly rammed the big boat.Amidst bursts of cracking sound of planks, pieces of hidden piles and cones were broken, swept away, pierced into the bottom of the ship, and then dragged away directly.

There were even some small military boats hiding behind the hidden stake area, and they were directly overturned by the large official army ship that was only slightly slowed down after the hidden stake was broken.A group of northern amateur sailors fell into the river in November in winter. They were shivering with cold and their hands and feet were stiff. Among them, the water quality was relatively poor, and they drowned directly.

At the same time, because the officers and soldiers didn't use small boats, the long-range firepower of the invading troops on the shore did not benefit at all-everyone of the officers, soldiers and sailors had a bunker, and they fired arrows from the firing holes on the ship's side of the cabin. But Chuangjun stood on the shore.In this exchange ratio, the officers and soldiers are definitely making a fortune. Shooting ten enemies to death may not necessarily injure one of them.

After a bloody battle, the officers and soldiers only lost a dozen large ships before rushing out a bloody road.

Liu Fangliang, the general in charge of intercepting the first-line interception today, was furious when he saw the situation, so he ordered all the sailors of the small boats to cover up and seize the large ships that ran aground.
At least grab the food from the doomed ship, and then kill all the officers, soldiers and sailors who dared to serve as death squads for the sinking officer to vent their anger.

However, even this small goal cannot be achieved in the end.

After the large official and army ship flooded more and more and lost its forward momentum, the sailors on the ship abandoned the ship and jumped onto the small sampan of the lifeboat, and transferred to the friendly warship behind.

Only a very few who were unable to retreat in time were entangled by the invading army, fell into hand-to-hand combat, and were brutally killed.However, even if the Chuangjun robbed the broken ships, they would not get any food, because they soon discovered that the ships used to break the barriers did not contain any food at all.

The draft of these ships seems to be deeper than that of grain ships, so that more water droplets can be cleared.After all, if even a large ship with a draft of one foot deep can pass easily, then an ordinary grain ship with a draft of only seven or eight feet will definitely be able to keep up with it safely.

It's a pity that the ballast that maintains the draft of these barrier-breaking ships is just piles of stones, which are not worth being robbed at all.

The stones were covered with dry grass and firewood. Before the officers and soldiers abandoned the ship, they casually threw a few torches, and it was hard for them to jump to help the invading sailors who robbed the ship.

Some who were not familiar with the structure of the hull and had already penetrated into the lower cabin were temporarily burned out and slammed about like headless flies in the sea of ​​fire. Some finally rushed out of the deck covered in fire, but some were disoriented in the thick smoke , In the end, he survived and died, and sank to the bottom with the boat.

Although the number of soldiers burned to death was definitely not many, the continuous screams could be faintly heard for at least several miles around, and the blow to the morale of the Chuang army was even greater. At least they knew that they were shot again. counted.

……

Although the officers and soldiers were victorious and the food was transported again, the morale and hatred of the defenders in the city did not subside at all.

Although the place where the water battle took place was dozens of miles away from the city of Chen County, so that the flames when one's own ships burned were invisible even with binoculars at the highest point of the city tower in Chen County.

However, the billowing smoke brought by the burning of a bunch of ships can be vaguely noticed by the telescope in the distance.

Zuo Zixiong also went to the city in person that day, watched the smoke column, and handed over the binoculars to other guards, officers above Qian Zong, so that everyone present could have a look.After these people went back, it was inevitable that they would sigh again and gossip with each other, so that the lower-level military officers would also know the price Mr. Shen paid today.

On the Chuangjun side, after Li Zicheng returned without success again, he inevitably lost his temper again.Fortunately, he also knew that his generals could not be blamed for this, so he just took things to vent his anger and did not punish any of the generals.

After all, Li Zicheng is also an existence who can win people's hearts, so he still has to take responsibility for this.Qi returns to Qi, and we can't randomly find scapegoats like Chongzhen.

After venting and calming down, he would naturally go to Song Xiance, Tian Jianxiu and Liu Fangliang to continue discussing countermeasures.

And this time, the countermeasure has not changed in any qualitative way. It is nothing more than continuing to spare no expense to pile up manpower to build and expand the hidden reefs, hidden piles, iron cones, and cofferdams at the bottom of the Yingchuan River to the size of a large sand ship with [-] materials. Can't break it!

This is also the easiest to think of, and the easiest way to deal with it is to pile up the volume directly, without changing the operation method at all, and just rely on one force to reduce ten sessions.

If the leader says a word, the subordinates will break their legs.King Chuang personally said that to carry out such a large-scale construction at the bottom of the Yingchuan River, the officers and soldiers of the Chuang army would certainly be miserable.

In the winter, it is necessary to dig sand and pile soil, log and build hidden piles, especially the new hidden piles must be buried in the mud under the river bed at least one foot deep. Tamping.

And all these operations have to be done in the water. When people are on the water surface, a group of people carry a thick log several feet high as a ramming pole to pound it down. The labor intensity is really miserable.

Even if the canal was built in peaceful times, with the technical level of the Ming Dynasty, hundreds of river workers would be killed or injured for the construction of a few miles of river.What's more, it's wartime, it's still winter, and we have to meet the construction deadline.

Of course, the old Shaanxi battalion who broke into the army would not be sent to do this kind of coolie, so they could only go to the old and weak cannon fodder newly caught in Henan, and the kind of weak people who could not be soldiers at ordinary times.

As a result, the split in the camp within the army is also faintly strengthening. Although it is not obvious from the outside, a considerable number of people are becoming more and more alienated.If the critical point is reached, and another Henan local thief like Yuan Shizhong raises his arms, anything can happen.

However, Li Zicheng's perseverance and determination paid off quickly.Because just a few days later, when Shen's army's fleet left Chen County again and went down the river, and wanted to return to Shou County to pull another batch of grain, the fortifications of the Chuangjun finally played a role.

In fact, if Li Zicheng could calm down a bit, he would be able to think why this time, after the grain fleet of the Shen family army entered Chen County, it took three or four days to unload the cargo before leaving the city again?
In the usual two food shipments, wouldn't the cargo be unloaded in a day or two at most, and the sailors rested enough, so they can return?
Obviously, this time unloading was so slow, Shen Shuren was deliberately delaying, just to give Li Zicheng time for construction, and drive the Shen family army into a desperate situation.

Of course, the reason Shen Shuren announced to the outside world is definitely not the case. He will definitely find a very plausible excuse to explain "why the unloading is so slow this time".And it is even more impossible for Li Zicheng to know the details.

All in all, the Shen family army's returning fleet was slow this time, and the price was that when they came to the construction to block the river again, even if they wanted to use a few boats to hit the death squads, they couldn't break away.

So Shen Lian and Li Yu had no choice but to return to Chen County and report the bad news to Shen Shuren.

Of course, Chuangjun couldn't let them run away easily, he had to chase after them no matter what.

As for the sailing skills of Shen Lian and others, if you want to increase the distance, you can obviously increase the distance, but for some reason, Shen Lian is "performing abnormally". The big boat full of firewood was finally overtaken and ran aground, and the crew had to change to a lifesaving boat to escape, and set another fire before leaving.

The location where the fire was set was closer to Chen county, less than ten miles away - after all, Shen Lian was fully sure that he would be overtaken by the Chuangjun navy at the time and place he chose.He can be caught up wherever he wants to be caught up, and his acting skills are very realistic.

There is no need for senior officers such as Zuo Zongbing to lead a tour of this raging fire. The ordinary soldiers on the south gate tower wall can see it clearly without binoculars.

They spread rumors one after another, asked each other, and soon realized that the ships that wanted to leave the city to transport the next batch of grain reserves were blocked by Li Zicheng, and some ships ran slowly and were burned after the battle.

And at this point, Shen Shuren no longer hid it, he announced to convene the whole army for a speech, and announced the bad news honestly:

In the city, after the previous two food shipments, there are still nearly two months of food in stock, so even if you don't fight for a while, you won't die of hunger.

However, Li Zicheng has spared no expense to cut off the water and food roads of Chen County's official army!If we don't fight now, after two months, we will run out of food and have no strength, and we will still be unable to fight decisively at that time!

Should we wait here to be finished, until the food is exhausted and we have no strength to fight, or we should fight to the death while we are still full of energy and strength, and reopen the food channel!
Moreover, the Chuangjun had already blocked the Yingchuan River, so that at least two or three hundred large sand ships could not pass through, and only small sampans could pass!

It is necessary to take down both sides of the river, slowly construct and break down those obstacles, and then the waterway can be dredged again!
Therefore, those who discount the idea of ​​"others are fighting desperately on the shore, and I hide on the boat and wait for my life" can also give up this thought sooner or later!If you don't fight to the death on the shore to repel the invaders, you can't escape by boat!
If you want to survive, you have to fight to the death!There is no second way out!
-

PS: I can finish writing the decisive battle with Chuangjun tomorrow.Let's start with about [-] words and a big chapter today.After playing tomorrow, I will change the map, and I will spend some time reorganizing and adjusting the outline, and perfecting the follow-up details.

Don't worry everyone, Li Zicheng will not be killed, this is just an explanation to Chongzhen, and at the same time, he wants to hurt Li Zicheng, and get rid of his idea that the south is fat and can get a vote.

(End of this chapter)