Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 380 Reverse War
To advance or retreat, to fight or to retreat, that is the question.

After merging Wang Pu's fleet, Yang Chao's men were divided into two groups. Wang Pu hoped to attack directly, while many men lamented that the opportunity to fight had been lost. Even if they turned around now, the Qing army had stabilized in Yangzhou for a day. After spending a day, the Qing Dynasty must have stabilized Yangzhou, strengthened the city defenses, reorganized the soldiers and horses, and fought more with less, I am afraid there is no chance of winning.

But many men also said that he also wanted to fight. He had to avenge the brothers who followed him, and those brothers died in front of him one by one.

Yang Chao remained silent and asked his subordinates to discuss it first.

Yang Chao didn't waste any time. In the cabin, he read letters slowly, and there was a woman in front of him.

How can there be women in the army?
This woman came from Nanjing. She was Ge Nunniang, a girl from the Jinchai Tower, and she was here to deliver a letter.

There are several letters, including Dong Xiaowan's ghostwriting from his parents, sister, and family letters from his new wife.

The siege of Yangzhou by the Manchu Qing began on the 25th, and today is the [-]th, and the news has already spread to Nanjing.

The parents naturally knew that their son had gone to Yangzhou, and the news after the war was extremely unreliable. Like Haizhou, it was rumored that hundreds of thousands of captive soldiers besieged the city. It is no wonder that the parents were not worried.

Especially the mother, she was used to discussing with Dong Xiaowan when she had no idea, so she took Dong Xiaowan into her home regardless of her status as a princess.

The princess didn't even care, instead she asked with the same concern.

Dong Xiaowan was also at a loss at this time, and finally said to write a letter to ask Yang Chao to come back as soon as possible, and to keep himself no matter what.

Dong Xiaowan also asked Chen Yuanyuan to go to Jinchai Building to inquire about the news, so Chen Yuanyuan and the others also knew Dong Xiaowan's thoughts.

In the end, many people wrote letters to Yang Chao and sent them to the water camp in Xinjiangkou. They were very worried and asked Ge Nunniang, who is highly skilled in martial arts, to take them with her. They must hand them over to Yang Chao, and even entrusted Ge Nunniang No matter what, she must bring Yang Chao back safely.

After reading the family letter, the family seemed concerned, and the mother even told Yang Chao to leave Yangzhou alone and find a way to escape. At worst, we would not be an official, but buy some land and be an honest landlord. Fighting all day is too frustrating I'm worried.

After recovering from the great spirit of sacrifice after being made a wife by Chongzhen, the mother is still a mother who only knows how to care about her son.

After reading these letters, Yang Chao was also filled with emotion. There are so many mothers in China who only care about their own children. As for sacrifice and dedication, those can only take a backseat, let others do it.

My father expressed some of his opinions, saying that there is no danger for Jiangbei to defend, and he should retreat to Jiangnan to protect half of the country. With the improvement of his status, the level of people his father came into contact with is different, so he can also hear people who are better than others. It is obvious that he learned the general trend of the country he described, and even the specific scope of Jiangnan and Jiangbei is not clear to this old blacksmith.

The younger sister wanted Yang Chao to come back quickly, saying that Nanjing was too chaotic, and it was too scary to hear that there was a military chaos all day long, and that Yang Chao would be fine when he came back.

As for the princess, she said that Yang Chao has been loyal to the country, and he should put his whole body first, and must not take risks.

Dong Xiaowan didn't say anything, but Yang Chao could see Dong Xiaowan's thoughts from other people's words. Obviously, what those people said probably had Dong Xiaowan's meaning in it. Days are fine.

There are also letters from Chen Yuanyuan, Li Xiangjun and others, as well as letters from Kang Hui.

Kang Hui expressed his concern and hoped that Yang Chao would return safely.

Chen Yuanyuan was also trying to persuade Yang Chao.

On the other hand, Li Xiangjun didn't talk much, he just said: If you make a mistake, the concubine will not live alone!
Gu Mei's letters were also scanned one by one. Gu Mei's letter was still interesting. She didn't mention the matter of asking Yang Chao to retreat, but instead brought up the old matter of Yang Chao owed her something, and asked Yang Chao to swear not to default on her debt. .

The subordinates discussed intensely, Zhan and He had different opinions, and they were all waiting for Yang Chao to make a decision.

After Yang Chao came forward, he only said that everyone should rest overnight and set out at dawn tomorrow.

At dawn the next day, Yang Chao began to check.

This is Wang Pu's vanguard, all of which are elites brought out by Wang Pu, all of them are spearmen, and Li Wuliu's long-range troops are left behind by Wang Pu to set off at the end. own hands.

Because it is the vanguard, the number is only 1.

There are not many boats, only more than 100 boats, all of which are suitable for running on the Yangtze River. These two-masted boats can go all the way to Yangzhou. After Yangzhou, the sails are unreliable and need to be stretched. It is impossible to get through at all, so most of the canals are small tank boats, with at most one sail, and more shallow boats without sails.

Among the more than 100 ships, except for the more than 50 used to pull people, the rest were goods. To Yang Chao's disappointment, there were no cannons. The cannons were on the ships behind, acting together with the artillery.

Among the gunpowder weapons, there are only some ten thousand enemies. This is a flat cast iron tank with gunpowder in it, but it cannot be regarded as a pure gunpowder weapon, because the principle of killing enemies is the powder in it. Anesthetics, even hot peppers, the explosion of gunpowder spreads these powders, which is a kind of torment to the enemy, which can be regarded as a kind of biochemical weapon.

But Yang Chao didn't quite agree with these things, and Qi Jiguang also didn't agree with this kind of poison weapon. Marshal Qi said that although this kind of weapon can poison people to death, the reaction is too slow. Even if the enemy is poisoned, he can still defeat himself on the battlefield.

Yang Chao did not believe that there was poisonous gas that could kill people on the spot in the Ming Dynasty. The most common things in these ten thousand enemies were some iron slag boiled in dung water. The so-called killing of enemies was just relying on the Microorganisms are just like the horse dung foam arrows used by Mongolian and Manchurians, they are not enough to kill people on the spot.

And Yang Chao even suspects that they can't kill people afterwards. Microorganisms cannot exist for a long time, and these weapons of the Ming army are stored for a long time. I am afraid that microbes will die early. At most, things like chili powder may make the enemy feel uncomfortable, but the wind When I change, I am afraid I will suffer on my own.

However, the ten thousand enemies on the ship are different from the ordinary ten thousand enemies of the Ming army, because there is no medicinal powder and chili pepper in them, but pure granule gunpowder, with one-inch long diamond-shaped arrows on both sides mixed in. Turn on, these arrows are scattered and lasing, and the killing effect is good.

To put it bluntly, this is just the black powder version of the grenade.

But compared with cannons, it is still too far behind. Although each grenade is made like a small watermelon and weighs five or six catties, the explosive power is only lethal within three feet. Fragments and diamond-shaped iron arrows could not pierce the Qing army's iron armor and cotton armor.

As for making it bigger, it loses the meaning of the grenade, because people can't throw it at all.

In fact, the West also has similar weapons, so Westerners formed a unit called grenadiers. Grenadiers are often the strongest and the strongest in the arm, and they are often the elite of the army.

The reason why this kind of weapon was produced was that after Haizhou, Yang Chao found that blasting was very effective, so he came up with this idea. At first, he used it as a blasting tool, hoping to use these things to blow open wooden doors and other objects, but found that the city gate It can't be blown open at all, it can only deal with small doors like private houses, and there are several more, so after a little production at the beginning, it stopped production.

But this time through the battle against Zuo Liangyu's army, Wang Pu felt that this thing was very useful. He formed an array to start the battle, and after throwing a row of grenades in front of him, the opponent immediately became chaotic.

So when he went back this time, he took all the remaining [-] grenades in the water camp warehouse.

There are only [-] vanguard troops in the reinforcements, and there are no cannons. As long as you are a rational person to attack a fortified city like Yangzhou, you probably will not feel hopeful.

Yang Chao thought so too, that's why he let the soldiers rest for the whole night. In fact, he planned to return to the army today.

But early in the morning, Wang Pu called for a fight.

"Everyone agrees?"

Wang Pu was asked to discuss with other people yesterday, but no consensus was reached in the end.

Wang Pu shook his head: "Everyone said that he would definitely not be able to beat him."

Yang Chao said: "Then you still want to fight?"

Wang Pu sighed: "I just don't want to be reconciled, I've already arrived here, and I can get there in half a day, but I don't want to beat me, I feel dissatisfied!"

Yang Chao sighed: "Everyone can imagine that even if they fight, there will be no results, and they can only make unnecessary sacrifices."

Sacrifice is enough, I paid more than 300 elites, more soldiers died in Yangzhou City, at least tens of thousands of Gao Jie's remaining troops were killed, and the other defenders are estimated to have more casualties, of course they are nothing compared to civilians, Massacre the city!The whole city is dead!

Thinking that the Qing Dynasty was massacring the city at this time, Yang Chao wished he could have the same idea as Wang Pu, and simply rushed up to fight, because he would not be reconciled if he didn't fight.

However, as the coach, Yang Chao's first consideration is of course the outcome, and the second consideration is of course the lives of the soldiers. When there is no hope of victory, he should naturally avoid making unnecessary sacrifices.

"Everyone thinks that they can't win, but that's not necessarily the case. How do you know if you don't win if you don't fight!"

Wang Pu clearly felt that it was pointless to attack the city, but he still muttered twice in disbelief.

Yang Chao shook his head and smiled, but suddenly his smile froze.

That's right, everyone thought that they couldn't win, and it was meaningless to go up to fight, and Man Qing must have thought the same way.

Then attacking at this time, attacking at a situation that no one expected, wouldn't it be a surprise to catch him off guard!
But another voice came out in my heart: Don't take risks lightly, the reason you think so is because you are blinded by hatred in your heart, and you want to fight the Qing Dynasty in your heart, but now is really not the time, the Lord will not send troops out of anger!
Another voice said: "Try it, how will you know you can't win if you don't try, maybe the enemy is unprepared, and the attack will receive miraculous effects."

"My lord, if I hadn't led the troops to test it out, my lord, you would sit in the rear. If there is an advantage, we will fight. If the enemy's defenses are heavily guarded, at worst, we will retreat. We have an army of [-], afraid that the enemy will not be able to pursue it?"

What Wang Pu said moved Yang Chao's heart, but he was really afraid of the enemy's pursuit. The Qing army had a lot of cavalry and a lot of troops. If they got entangled by their cavalry, he might not be able to get away.

Thinking of this, Yang Chao wanted to give up even more.

"Is this cowardice!"

Suddenly he became vigilant. He seemed to be afraid of the Manchu cavalry all the time. Even though Haizhou had won such a big battle, he tried his best to avoid a decisive battle with the Manchu cavalry from the beginning to the end. At that time, Wang Pu rushed in rashly and charged with infantry As a cavalry soldier, Yang Chao even wanted to punish him.

Naturally, infantry does not have an advantage over cavalry in field battles, but in this way, they will not fight against cavalry. The disadvantage is not a reason to avoid war. As an agricultural civilization, you will never be able to bridge the gap in mobility with nomadic civilization, but you can use this As an excuse, don't fight with the opponent?

If you don't fight in the field today, you won't fight in the field tomorrow, so how to make progress.

Don't even dare to fight in the field, dare to attack the opponent's city.

Thinking of this, Yang Chao knew that he had to fight this battle. There must be many officers and soldiers who thought this way. If they couldn't erase the fear of cavalry in their hearts, they would still not be a mature army.

So Yang Chao nodded lightly, but if he wanted to fight, he couldn't simply hit him like Wang Pu said.

If you want to fight, you have to fight, opportunism is out of the question, the regular army is not a guerrilla, and it is impossible to recover the country with a single shot.

So he said to Wang Pu: "Alright, let's fight! If you want to fight, you must be determined. You should inform the soldiers and tell everyone that you must have the determination to fight to the death. Once you start to attack the city, it will be a hard fight! Let everyone make sacrifices." In this siege, everyone may die!"

Yang Chao couldn't help thinking that although the Qing army ordered the surrendered troops to attack the city last night, the surrendered troops had a strong will to fight. They retreated when they encountered danger at the beginning, and then they collapsed only after more than half of them died in battle.

Later Yang Chao caught the captives and questioned him, only then did he know that Manqing had issued a death-fight order, and those who dared to retreat would be executed. The surrendered soldiers who died in their hands were no less than those who died in Yang Chao's hands. It was cruel. The military order brought discipline to those soldiers who surrendered.

Of course, the casualties are indeed huge. When occupying a vital place like a gap, we really can't care about the casualties. At that time, we must make a plan to exchange human lives for advantages.

So since he wanted to fight, Yang Chao had to be prepared for a large number of casualties under his command, and even prepared to sacrifice two-thirds before attacking the city.

Then the 1 people were not enough, so Wang Pu went down to convey his thoughts, and Yang Chao waited for another day, but not a single ship arrived. The news from Guazhou was that many ships were captured by the river. When the wind blows, they stop temporarily to shelter from the wind, and none of them can't reach Guazhou for two or three days. Only one ship arrived in the wind, but the ship was seriously damaged.

This is really not God's help. This kind of news made many soldiers start to mutter, talking about destiny.

Most of this army are refugees, and the battle they experienced was actually the battle against Zuo Liangyu. The real veterans, that is, many soldiers led by men, and their own soldiers, but this time they lost Three hundred, a heavy loss.

Hearing the mentality of the soldiers, Yang Chao not only did not intend to retreat, but instead became more determined to attack the city.

The soldiers must know that in front of the army, no destiny will work!
Only courage is the key to victory or defeat!
So at night, Yang Chao ordered the camp to be pulled out and marched towards Yangzhou at night.

(End of this chapter)