national surname chiming

Chapter 361

After deciding on the strategy of only leaving heavy troops to guard the dangerous place of Nanyang County, and abandoning other vast areas that are not dangerous to defend, such as the Nanyang Prefecture Basin and Plains,

Zhu Shuren's army was quickly dispatched and deployed, and everything revolved around the deployment of this general phalanx, making preparations intensively.

The first thing Zhu Shuren ordered his troops to do, which was also the thing with the highest priority, was to directly order to throw countless hidden piles, sharp stones, dredged beaches, and various artificial settings in the Baihe River channel outside the northwest corner of Nanyang City. The hidden reef completely ruined the not-so-wide and deep Baihe waterway——

For a long time in the future, before the southern army can recover Kaifeng and Luoyang from Nanyang County, this waterway will not be used by the Ming court, and will only be used by the Tartars who invaded from the north. This situation will last at least one or two years, or even longer.

Therefore, it is a last resort to temporarily abandon the waterway.At least get through the "strategic stalemate stage" of the past few years, and wait for the Central Route Army to usher in the "strategic counter-offensive stage". As Zhuge Lianglong said to Li, "When the world changes, use Jingzhou's soldiers to Xiang Wanluo "It will not be too late to rebuild the transportation facilities here.

Of course, the direct purpose of the abandoned channel is to prevent enemy ships from the area north of Nanyang County from entering the Han River.

Now that this step has been achieved, the remaining supporting basic steps are naturally indispensable.

For example, Zhu Shuren would send people to take away all the civilian boats in the south of Nanyang County, on both sides of the Baihe River, and all the civilian boats further south to the north bank of the Han River, without leaving a single one.

If it is old and dilapidated and cannot be driven, it will be regarded as forced to scrap in advance if it is set on fire.Even local houses with entirely wooden structures, such as wooden houses built by woodcutters in the forest, were all burned down if a large number of wooden boards were easily removed and used directly for shipbuilding.

Of course, those mud-walled adobe houses only have a few wooden beams and columns, so they don’t need to be burned. Anyway, after Azig’s army arrived, it would take no more labor than going straight into the forest to tear down the houses and remove the wooden beams and columns. Cutting down trees saves labor and time, and Zhu Shuren doesn't have to be a villain in vain.

When encountering local fishermen who resist, they must either offer them a condition to escort them southward with the retreating army, and then promise them to share fields in the south, or directly give them some wages and rations, and let them take the boat to serve the army and accept military service. strict management.

If he insisted on the top iron, refused to hand over his fishing boat to serve with wages, and insisted on refusing to go south, Zhu Shuren had no choice but to confiscate them forcibly on the charge of "conspiring to collaborate with the enemy", and then arrested them and threw them into a hard labor camp.

This is not Zhu Shuren's brutal rule, but that he did extraordinary things at an extraordinary time. The governors and generals who have always guarded the defense line of Jianghan and Huaihe have to be so firm and clear.These fishermen kept their boats and stayed where they were, and Zhu Shuren would not conscript them unless they were caught. When Azig arrived, they would definitely be forced to requisition them with a hundred times more brutality than Zhu Shuren, and they would be enemies.

Only in this way can it be ensured that even if Azig bypasses Nanyang County, it is impossible to find even a ready-made ship in the area south of Nanyang County and north of Han River.

If he wanted to cross the Han River again, he would have to temporarily cut wood and build a ship on the north bank of the Han River. The movement would be too loud, and the target would be obvious.

……

After the work of fortifying the wall and clearing the wilderness is completed, the repair of the city defense facilities must not be slack at all. Zhu Shuren is almost two-pronged, and both hands must be tough.

While assigning people to manage and destroy traffic facilities, he asked Zhang Huangyan to further improve the protruding slope horse faces, corner forts, and forts outside the city walls based on the experience accumulated in previous city defense battles such as the Chen County War.

On the basis of the original design of the offensive and defensive fortifications of Chen County with Li Zicheng, some key defensive points on the outside of the main city wall of Nanyang County were added with inclined and reinforced steep slopes.

This kind of steep slope does not require strong rammed earth, let alone stone materials, and even does not need to be rammed too strongly, so the construction volume is not too large, as long as the folks dig the soil and pile it up.It is more like in traditional siege warfare, the siege side built it to rush up the slope.

Zhu Shuren asked people to repair it in this way, purely to thicken the outer side of the city wall and absorb the impact of being bombarded by Hongyi cannons.And the disadvantage of such a repair is also obvious. As I said before, it is easy for the enemy to save even the ladder, and then just rush up along these steep slopes.

In the era when gunpowder and weapons were underdeveloped, building a city wall like this would be no different from self-destructing the Great Wall.But after the guns and artillery are strengthened, as long as the angle is designed to ensure that the angle of the steep slope matches the shooting line of the guns at the top of the city, so that the guns and artillery can directly cover the entire slope without adjusting the pitch angle, it will definitely have a miraculous effect——

In fact, in the era of bastions and star forts, later generations of the West built fortresses shorter and thicker, but the outer slopes became slower and easier to climb. This is the reason, and it has been verified by history.

Zhu Shuren quickly built a fortress that was more complete than Chen County two years ago, moved closer to the bastions, and maximized the cross-fire power of the city. I believe that this Nanyang County will leave an indelible mark on Azig. impressive.

While destroying the waterway and piling up soil, the Huguang Army is still desperately transporting more grain to Nanyang County to ensure that even if the city is besieged for half a year or even longer, it will not run out of food.

Among the other counties around Nanyang Prefecture, Ye County and Luyang had already been captured by Azig, and they were also where Azig controlled the pass to cross Funiu Mountain and Tongbai Mountain into the Nanyang Basin, and Zhu Shuren could not operate it.

And the remaining six counties of Yu County, Tang County, Neixiang, Xichuan, Zhenping, and Biyang were to be abandoned according to the plan.Zhu Shuren would naturally ask these six counties to evacuate the people as much as possible, and then gather all the people's food reserves in Nanyang County to provide military supplies.

After the people paid the food, the government would give them vouchers, and when they evacuated to Xiangyang or even Jiangling and Wuchang, the government would naturally re-issue them rations according to the vouchers to ensure that they immigrated to the south for production.

In the end, Xinye and Deng counties, which border Xiangyang Prefecture, will also be abandoned, but those two counties are further behind Nanyang County and in the lower reaches of the Baihe River, so the time to give up will be a little later. After Nanyang County is completely besieged and the roads are cut off , will officially give up. Before that, the two counties will be used to delay the enemy's interspersed and divided time.

In fact, it is impossible to complete all these tasks completely, because Azig will attack at any time, and will not watch Zhu Shuren finish all the work slowly, so he can only do his best while being vigilant.

If it was too late, he had to give up, just like when Liu Bei wanted to take the people across the river, if he was chased by Cao Cao, it would be impossible to completely carry the people across the river.

Considering the haste of the incident, even if such preparations are made, it may not be possible to completely withdraw the civilian grain storage in the six counties. Therefore, the number of troops left in Nanyang County this winter and next spring should not be too large—if it exceeds the carrying range of grain, it will lead to long-lasting If the strength drops, and people will starve to death in the end, then the gain outweighs the loss.

After precise and tense calculations, Zhu Shuren came to the conclusion: Zuo Liangyu's original basic plate was only enough for the [-] elite soldiers stationed in the city to survive the spring famine in the coming year.

This is also in line with Zuo Liangyu's previous expansion of the army, because although Zuo Liangyu claimed to have 2 mercenaries at the time, in fact many of them were non-professional troops who were half-farmed and half-strong, otherwise he would not be able to support them.His real lineage of elite soldiers and veterans, that is, more than [-] people, are permanently stationed in Nanyang County. With his hard-to-stretch supplies, this is the level.

Zhu Shuren gathered the private grain from the six surrounding counties as much as possible in the short term, and doubled the number at most. Therefore, in Nanyang County, the number of troops stationed should not exceed [-], and the elderly and weak people should be removed as much as possible, leaving only a few Help the strong men who carry the soil and stone repairs, otherwise Azig will starve to death if he doesn't fight for half a year.

And Zhu Shuren knew that Azig's army on the opposite side had two Manchu flags, three Mongolian army flags, three Han army flags, and a bunch of servants. They were basically about [-]% of the elite troops of the Qing regime. up.

Today, Dorgon has a part of the military strength of the Qing Dynasty, and his part is also the smallest. He is responsible for the pacification and defense of the entire rear.

The soldiers brought out by Azig are already more than the sum of all the troops left behind by Dorgon.And the largest force of the Qing army today is the Duoduo troops in the Jianghuai direction, which exceeds [-]% of all the elites of the Qing Dynasty, which is considered a desperate gamble.

Therefore, Azig has 15 elite Manchu iron cavalry from the Qing army, [-] Mongolian cavalry, tens of thousands of Han army flags, and a large number of surrendered Ming troops and Chuang troops from the north.The total number of people is estimated to be no less than [-].

There are also more than 15 people on Duoduo's side. The total number of people is not much larger than that of Azig, but the composition of troops is more elite. There were also a little more cavalry and Han army flags, but Duoduo didn't coerce any of Li Zicheng's surrendered troops along the way, and the total number of people offset by the two was not obvious.

After Zhu Shuren had a clear understanding of the enemy's situation, he knew that he would use up to 4 people to withstand the onslaught of Azig's 15 people for three to six months. This required the best possible combat effectiveness and fighting will of the troops.

In the end, he left his cousin Zhang Huangyan as the civilian officer in charge of the temporary war. Although the Fang Guoan Ministry and the Kuidong thirteen family members brought by Zhang Huangyan were not elite, it was not good to deliberately dismantle them and send them away, as this would damage morale. , it seemed that Zhang Huangyan didn't trust them.

Moreover, these soldiers and horses have been brought by Zhang Huangyan for more than a year after all, and they are more familiar with them. Zhang Huangyan is also the most commanding. Like an arm and a finger.

After Fang Guoan and the Kuidong Shisan Family occupied more than 1 places, considering that the cavalry could not play much role in the defense of the city, Zhu Shuren naturally would not keep Cao Bianjiao, the most capable fighter under his command.

But the cavalry can't be completely absent, so he took out Zhu Wenzhen's army alone, and left [-] cavalry to defend the city to help out. To prevent Azig from bypassing Nanyang County with peace of mind in the future, and not worrying about the food road behind.

For the last 2 people, Zhu Shuren intends to give Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu a chance. Li Dingguo has withstood the test in the final battle against Li Zicheng and captured Liu Zongmin. Zhu Shuren promised to give him the rank of general soldier by leapfrogging—

Of course, in order to be able to restrain Li Dingguo, Zhu Shuren may have promised to give Zhu Wenzhen the rank of general from deputy general to general, so that in Nanyang County, there will be Fang Guoan, Zhu Wenzhen, and Li Dingguo in the future. .

Zhu Shuren handed over the reformed elite of the former Western Army to Li Dingguo's command, and added thousands of elite musketeers from the old lineage of the Huguang Army, making a total of 2 people, together with Fang Guoan and Zhu Wenzhen's 2 people. A total of [-] people are responsible for blocking Azig for half a year.

Of course, there will be tens of thousands more in the Xiangyang and Hanshui defense lines behind them, but the total force will not be much larger than the Nanyang County defenders.

In this way, a total of less than 15 troops were occupied by the Huguang Army, of which [-] to [-] were from the Sichuan Army brought by Zhang Huangyan.Zhu Shuren can draw at least [-] to [-] out of the [-] people in Huguang, and go east along the river to reinforce Nanjing.

In addition, in the past month or so, the situation in Lingnan and Shonan is also gradually improving, and the garrison force can be gradually reduced. Zhu Shuren searched around and squeezed out 1 people from each of Shonan and Lingnan. A total of nearly 10 people can be pulled out Go to reinforce Nanjing, and deal with Duoduo with the original Ming army around Nanjing.

(End of this chapter)