Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 375 Shelling
Yang Chao arrived in Yangzhou on the 22th. According to the agreement, Wang Pu should also come to Yangzhou on the [-]nd, but there was no sign of reinforcements.

22 days and nights.

Suddenly a few soldiers appeared under the city wall and asked to open the city gates to let them in. Yang Chao had sealed the four gates and strictly prohibited the soldiers and civilians from entering and leaving. Same.

Yang Chao had someone hang them up.

"Who are you? Whose soldiers are you?"

There were three soldiers in total, all wearing Ming army uniforms. As soon as they climbed the city wall, Yang Chao restrained them and began to interrogate them.

"The young one is Huama Liu's soldier."

The soldiers cooperated very well, knowing everything, and quickly explained clearly.

These people are all Huama Liu's soldiers. Huama Liu is Liu Liangzuo's nickname. Yang Chao didn't expect Huama Liu to surrender.

Yang Chao had no doubts at all before, because Huama Liu was stationed in Fengyang and Shouzhou, which were not on the route of the Qing army at all.

Several soldiers confessed that Hua Ma Liu had secretly communicated with Man Qing long ago. His younger brother Liu Liangchen had surrendered to Man Qing during the Jinzhou War. All the troops went to Yangzhou to join Duoduo.

The reason why these soldiers surrendered was because they didn't want to shave their hair. The Qing army's request for surrendering troops was only the first step. The second step was to raise the flag of the general's family and send the family members to Beijing for resettlement.

After Huama Liu Liu Liangzuo led his troops to Yangzhou, he ordered his soldiers to shave their hair according to Duduo's order. These soldiers came secretly because they didn't want to shave their hair, but they were not the only ones who didn't want to shave their hair. Yes, according to them, their commander-in-chief didn't want to shave their hair, and hoped that the Ming army could accept them.

I hope to make an appointment to open the city gate for them so that they can enter the city.

This statement is very reasonable. Yang Chao knew that the Manchu hair-shaving order almost forced the entire Jiangnan, and it was very reasonable that some officers were unwilling to shave their hair, but Yang Chao could not agree.

At this time, the battle is imminent, and opening the city gate to let a strange army enter the city is not something a mature general can do.

Yang Chao not only refused to agree, but also did the opposite, telling these soldiers that they should continue to go back to the Qing army camp.

Tell them to go back and tell their commander in chief that as long as their hearts are towards Daming, even if their hair is shaved, the court will not hold them accountable, and it will be fine to return their hair afterward, but they need to cooperate with the Ming army. There will be a time to return to Ming Dynasty.

The three soldiers were sent down in frustration.

At this time, the Qing army stationed troops in the north, west and south of Yangzhou, leaving only the east without troops. This was not purely due to the principle of encircling three and missing one, but because the east of Yangzhou was close to the Grand Canal, and Yangzhou was only four miles away from the Yangtze River. Ten miles, so the water surface of the Yangzhou section of the canal is very wide, and due to the addition of a new city, the east wall is very close to the river bank. Although it is not close to the river, the Manchu and Qing troops are not allowed to garrison. If the army is stationed on the other side of the wide river , but could not block the river at all, and lost the meaning of besieging the city, so Manqing simply left the east of the city.

Since the 20th, the Manchus began to appear in the city of Yangzhou, and there were backups arriving almost every day. At present, according to the scale of the camp, there are almost [-] to [-] people. At the beginning, Yang Chao was very strange. The soldiers are coming, otherwise how could there be such a large army.

The arrival of those soldiers made Yang Chao understand the truth. It turned out that the troops stationed in the outskirts of the city were not only the Manchu army, but also the surrendered Ming army. People up and down are the main force of Duoduo.

There are 1000 troops in Yangzhou city, but the real fighting force is only more than 3 under Yang Chao's subordinates, barely counting Gao Jie's remaining [-] troops, the number is also absolutely inferior.

As for the [-] to [-] miscellaneous troops, Yang Chao only asked them not to flee or collapse.

The good news is that the Manchu Qing Dynasty was not monolithic, and a large number of surrendered troops might not be useful. After all, the army that had just betrayed its own motherland had no fighting power at all.

It is probably because of this that the Manchus stayed outside the city for so many days without attacking the city. It was probably because they were cleaning up military discipline. Before the reorganization of these troops, the Qing army probably would not move.

But Yang Chao miscalculated. On the 23rd, there was a day of calm. On the early morning of the 24th, the Qing army suddenly began to attack.

What surprised Yang Chao was that the shotguns had been changed early in the morning. They did not use crowd tactics to attack the city, nor did they waste time cutting down trees to make siege equipment. Instead, they directly brought in cannons to bombard the city. Red Cannon!

Only then did Yang Chao suddenly realize that Man Qing had stopped for so many days, so it turned out that he was not waiting for reinforcements, but probably waiting for cannons.

As soon as the cannon fired, the soldiers in the city that Yang Chao had just deterred were a little confused, especially in the southwest of the city where the Manchu cannons concentratedly bombed. The defending soldiers panicked and jumped down the city one by one. They jumped onto the roofs of the common people, and then hid in the homes of the common people.

Seeing that the defenders' morale is so fragile, Yang Chao couldn't help but sigh with emotion. Most of these soldiers are actually local guards. I'm afraid they haven't touched weapons before. They are no different from ordinary people in the city.

But at this time, he could only rely on these people. Yang Chao immediately asked Zhao Kang to take [-] soldiers, together with [-] soldiers from Li Benshen's headquarters, to step up the northern city wall for patrol. To defend the west city, Yang Chao brought [-] elite soldiers with him, and Gao Jie's [-] soldiers stepped on the south wall to guard.

In fact, the main purpose of letting these soldiers who can fight against the city is not to fight directly, but to supervise the battle. Let the soldiers of the guards fight, at least supervise them not to flee.

So as soon as he went to the city, Yang Chao ordered people to gallop on horseback on the city wall, and issued a loud order: All troops are not allowed to flee in battle, and those who disobey the order will be killed!

And he really killed a group of soldiers who were fleeing indiscriminately, which stabilized the situation.

They were only frightened by the cannon for a while. After a long time, they found that the shell hit the city wall, except for a little shaking, and there was no danger. However, when it was hit high, it flew over the city wall and hit the city, smashing it down a couple of times. It's just a residence.

So it slowly recovered.

The captive soldiers attacked the city very well. There were about [-] or [-] cannons, all of which concentrated on bombarding the southwest corner of the city wall.

There is a double-layer canal in the west of Yangzhou City. There is only a single-layer moat between Yijiangmen and Anjiangmen, two water gates in the south of the city. However, Yijiangmen leads directly to the Grand Canal. Then go straight south.

Therefore, Yang Chao guessed that the captive soldiers must have concentrated their efforts to bombard the section from Anjiangmen to Yijiangmen, and the main target might be Anjiangmen.

So Yang Chao spread the army on this section of the city wall, and deployed heavy troops in the Anjiangmen tower.

The captive soldiers did not send troops to attack, but just kept bombarding the city wall, and the sound of cannons could be heard all day long.

In the evening, about [-] battles west of Anjiangmen, a crack suddenly appeared. The captive soldiers continued to bombard it, and it didn’t stop at night. Suddenly there was a loud noise at midnight, and the city wall at the southwest corner completely collapsed. The collapsed city wall happened to fill up a section of the canal.

Yang Chao felt his ears buzzing, and immediately asked the soldiers beside him, "Is there still sound of cannon?"

The soldier shook his head and said, "I can't hear you anymore!"

Yang Chao couldn't hear it himself, so he asked several people, and they all said they couldn't hear it, so the shelling must have stopped.

Yang Chao shouted immediately: "The Tartars are about to attack the city! Order the gunners on the city to immediately turn the muzzles of the cannons around and aim at the gap, and wait for the Tartar soldiers to kill them, and the big and small artillery fire immediately!"

At the same time, Yang Chao sent someone to the west wall to deliver an order: "Let Li Benshen go down to the city with 1 men and stand outside the gap. If the captive soldiers enter the city, beat them out immediately. If you can beat the captive soldiers three times, I will let you go." Replace him! Let Zhao Kang send troops to supervise Li Benshen, dare to take a step back and kill Wushe!"

There are many cannons on the city wall of Yangzhou, more than 300, but the city of Yangzhou is narrow. Shi Kefa had built wooden boards on the battlements to allow these cannons to move, so the cannons were higher than the city walls, and the shooting was very wide.

Sure enough, the enemy army appeared very soon. They shouted the word 'kill' loudly, not caring about exposing themselves at all. Maybe they wanted to use their voices to embolden themselves or scare the Ming army.

At this time, the sound of cannons suddenly rang out, and countless shells fell on the Tazi army, and a group of people retreated more quickly than when they came.

But it only took a quarter of an hour for the second wave of attacking troops to kill them, and they also shouted the word 'kill'. Obviously, this was not the headquarters of the Tartars, but the surrendered Ming army, who were driven to be cannon fodder.

The artillery bombardment continued.

But this time the Tatars were very resolute, braved the bombardment of the artillery, and rushed to the gap. At this time, what they encountered were tens of thousands of soldiers led by Li Benshen, and they were driven back again.

In just two attacks, the Qing army left hundreds of corpses in the gap.

The third wave of attack was launched again, and it was still a quarter of an hour later. The number of Qing soldiers in this attack reached more than 1000. In the end, Li Benshen strangled Li Benshen at the gap for a while, and only a hundred or ten people escaped!

Yang Chao couldn't help feeling puzzled and angry, this group of prostitutes just surrendered, they worked so hard for their new masters.

If they had the will to fight to defend Daming, the Tartars would not have come here at all.

The tenacity of these surrendered soldiers was beyond Li Benshen's expectation. He divided the army into three teams, each with about 3000 soldiers, and attacked them in turn. However, he lost 800 soldiers in two rounds, and he couldn't help but feel heartbroken.

But the third wave of the Qing army came again. He once fought with the captive soldiers at the gap. This time he suffered even more heavy losses, directly losing thousands of people. gap.

"Send an order to Li Chengdong to stand by at the gap. Be sure to guard the gap. Li Liang, you lead people to unload [-] small cannons on the wall and put them behind the gap to support Li Chengdong! Let many men supervise the battle and step back. Anyone who takes one step will be killed without mercy!"

Li Benshen repelled the Tartars three times, and Yang Chao immediately asked Li Chengdong to switch defenses.

At this time, Yang Chao discovered that the opening made by the Qing army's shelling was not entirely a bad thing, at least it limited the scope of the battle.

Both sides fought around this gap, so that the Qing army could not deploy its troops, so it could not show its superiority in military strength.

It is easier for Yang Chao to defend, and it shouldn't be difficult to persist until the daytime. After the daytime, he can organize civilians to block the gap, so that at least one day can be delayed, and his reinforcements should arrive tomorrow.

(End of this chapter)