A certain person is the Heavenly Killer Li Gui.

Chapter 244 A disastrous defeat (300 monthly tickets plus more updates)

At the beginning of the winter of the first year of Xuanhe, he served as an official, the governor of Hebei Province, and the general manager of Songjiang in the east capital. He was ordered by the emperor to conquer Liangshanbo.

The reason why we choose to start the war in winter is not to delay spring planting and autumn harvest. On the other hand, it is rainy in summer and the roads are muddy, making it inconvenient to walk. In winter, the land is frozen, making driving easy and fast.

As for the cold in winter, we set out in early winter and the cold is not too severe. As long as the supply of cotton-padded clothes is good, there is no need to worry about frostbite and loss of personnel.

But he said that Song Jiang received Jun's decree, took care of all the officials, big and small, took people to the Jiazhanku Pass, selected a thousand cannons of various sizes, 3,000 stones of finished gunpowder, and countless stone and iron bullets, all of which were loaded on the car.

He also selected 3,000 war horses, 5,000 pairs of leather and paper armors of various colors, 3,000 bronze and iron helmets, countless spears, gong knives, bows and arrows, and armed all his soldiers and horses to the teeth.

He also rewarded each of his Hundreds of War Forbidden Forces with gold, silver, and satin horses. After all the three armies had collected their food rewards, he took tens of thousands of horse and infantry soldiers, falsely claiming to be one hundred thousand, and sent troops to Tianfu to suppress Shanzhou, hoping to defeat the Liangshan grass bandits in one fell swoop. Yiping, Jingdong Road was completely recovered.

Liangshan was well prepared for this, and Lin Chong led the army to gather in Shanzhou, hoping to avenge his previous humiliation.

This time the army led by Lin Chong was no longer the same ragtag group as last time, but was carefully trained by the good men who had been recruited again in the past year.

As for the old soldiers in Liangshan, they have now become independent and are responsible for internal supervision. Pei Xuan is responsible for it and is only responsible to Li Gui.

After such a long period of internal purges, the prefectures and counties occupied by Liangshan have now been completely brought under control. All the gentry have been cleaned up, and the land has been distributed relatively fairly and evenly, and is gradually being transferred to those who nominally control it. of state extensions.

Now Weizhou and Mizhou have begun internal purges and land distribution by county, but Dengzhou and Laizhou have fallen into the hands of the Song army again.

Zongze of Dengzhou had long been in contact with the court again and became the legitimate magistrate of Dengzhou. He was also given the power to do things expediently, recruit troops and horses from all over, and counterattack Liangshan from the other side.

Nowadays, Liangshan adopts a tightening policy and no longer pays attention to the affairs there. Seeing the bad situation there, he simply withdrew all the people in Dengzhou and simply gave that Dengzhou to Zongze.

As for those gentry who had not been cleaned up, when they saw that the army had retaken Dengzhou, they immediately came out and gave their full support to Zongze, asking for people and giving money.

And Na Zongze was also a capable man. He reorganized the soldiers provided by the gentry and trained them strictly for a period of time. They were provided with adequate food and pay, and it was strictly forbidden to eat empty pay or use the soldiers as domestic slaves.

After all the gentry experienced this disaster, they all knew that the Forbidden Army was unreliable, so they simply withheld the pay and silver from the Forbidden Army and gave it to Zongze's new army.

After practicing for a period of time, Zongze asked Sun Li to lead the new army into battle. After many twists and turns, and after paying a great price, he finally drove out the local forces of the Liangshan Army and captured Laizhou.

All we can say is that the Han army is invincible!

If Liangshan hadn't been afraid of the artillery in his hands, he would have continued to expand outwards.

Today, in Liangshan, with the sulfur provided by Japan, the iron mines in Yanzhou, and the guidance of Ling Zhen, the craftsmen have already been able to cast cannons by themselves.

What currently limits the speed of cannon casting in Liangshan is actually skilled craftsmen and qualified management talents.

But these things were available in the Song Dynasty!

How could the Liangshan District compete with a country as large as the Song Dynasty?

It's okay if they don't know the power of the artillery. Now that the Song Dynasty already knew that the artillery was a powerful military weapon, how could it be left unused?

Nowadays, the firearms workshop in Tokyo is continuously casting cannons every day, and thousands of them have been cast.

Song Jiang only brought a thousand gates this time, but it was not because the Song Dynasty only had a thousand gates, but because he could not bring too many.

So when Lin Chong confidently lined up more than a hundred artillery pieces in a row, preparing to fight the Song army, he found that a thousand cannons were lined up on the opposite side. What else is there to say?

Then Song Jiang stopped engaging in old-fashioned tricks like fighting generals and directly ordered artillery to attack the city.

Under the sound of thousands of cannons, even the strongest city wall will be reduced to powder.

Shanzhou City fell within half a day, and Lin Chong was killed on the spot. Shi Jin and his defeated army were chased for hundreds of miles by Tian Hu and others. In the end, only a few hundred people escaped. When counting the number of people, they found that they were broken. Lu Zhishen, Chen Da and Yang Chun.

The Song army achieved an overwhelming victory!

Song Jiang and others successfully took over Shanzhou City, and sent various detachments to other counties in the state to begin to recapture the county seat and clear away the remaining criminals in Liangshan.

Because of the war, all the powerful generals in Shanzhou gathered in Shanzhou City, and those who stayed in the counties were ordinary generals who later joined the army.

Those surrendered generals were not weak in the first place, and with artillery suppressing the formation, they could easily wipe out the entire Shanzhou.

In the past, these surrendered generals were beaten by artillery. Now, if you fire a few rounds of artillery before attacking the city, and then launch the attack, you can easily break the city.

This was the second time in their lives that they fought such a successful battle. The last time was when they started to rebel. The imperial guards in the city didn't need to fight at all. They could just scare them and run away immediately.

They had fought head-on with Liangshan's army, and it was clear that Liangshan's army was a strong army, but in the face of artillery, all individual bravery was vulnerable.

This made the surrendered generals extremely happy. They had surrendered so happily that they not only saved their wealth and lives, but also had official positions.

Liangshan most likely cannot stop the artillery army. When the time comes, they will only need to take the opportunity to cover up and kill, and they will get meritorious service.

Song Jiang has also sent the military report of the victory to Bianliang in Tokyo to report the good news to the officials.

What Zhao Ji loves to see most now is the good news that Song Jiang keeps sending. Every time he sees it, he can feel happy for a long time.

He also had Qing Huanzi, the national master, who turned a deaf ear to him. Of course, he had more and more trust in Song Jiang, the "Tian Kuixing".

The civil servants in that court were increasingly wary of General Song Jiang.

However, they have already noticed the power of this artillery. In their opinion, Song Jiang's repeated victories were only based on artillery, and artillery is just a weapon, and weapons can be used by anyone. .

In other words, even if Song Jiang is not there, replacing other generals Song Hai and Song He will not affect the final result of the battle.

Just looking at the description in the military newspaper, we can see that those ordinary surrendered generals now fight with random artillery bombardment first, and then the enemy army collapses.

So some civil servants suggested to Song Huizong that the artillery be transported to the Liao-Xia border for defense.

Of course Song Huizong agreed, so a large number of artillery in the warehouses were transported to various cities on the Liao-Xia border.

Song Jun, start upgrading equipment!

(End of this chapter)