The war that broke out on the Xuanda defense line in the seventh year of Chongzhen exceeded everyone's expectations.
It was different from what Huang Taiji thought. The reason why it didn't bring artillery was that he had pulled over 30,000 Manchurian Eight Banners and Han troops from Shenyang. Such troops were obviously not enough to attack a Ming army town.
Artillery poses no threat to fortresses and cities with rammed earth structures. Its role in offensive and defensive wars is to suppress. Attacking artillery can suppress defenders' artillery, which can effectively reduce the casualties of the siege army, and even knock down entire battlements to allow the defenders to escape. They did not dare to go to the city and directly pushed the battle into street fighting.
On the other hand, Huang Taiji did not have the transport capacity. The war environment faced by Hou Jin was different from that of Liu Chengzong, and the artillery casting technology used was also different. The Hongyi cannons he cast independently were all genuine cannons made by the lost wax method. Six One door weighs a thousand pounds.
When transporting materials, there is a critical point in terms of weight. If the weight exceeds a certain weight, many times of livestock must be invested to achieve the effect of one. Two oxen pulling a cart can easily pull 1,200 kilograms, but if you want to pull a six thousand kilograms If you want something, you have to put in twenty cows.
The two cannons he used to frighten the Mongols required forty oxen to haul them over. Just to transport the fifty cannons, he had to collect a thousand oxen. These one thousand oxen for heavy duty eat 25,000 oxen a day. Thousand catties. In the five months since the dispatch of troops, 3.75 million catties have been eaten.
If he had the ability to organize such transportation, would he still need to leave his hometown and go to Monan to fight?
He did not expect the situation on the Mongolian grasslands, nor did he expect the battle situation after entering the Xuanda defense line - the battle went smoothly and the battle was well fought, but the Jin Dynasty could not afford to fight such a battle, especially against the Ming Dynasty.
The Ming army could not be annihilated in small-scale encounters, and Ming City could not be conquered in siege battles. The battle losses were close to one-for-one. They engaged in meaningless and endless wild battles with the Xuanda border troops within the second border wall. The change of life made Huang Taiji panic.
If the exchange continues like this, and various reinforcements from the Ming army arrive, won't the gold be lost in the exchange?
Chongzhen also thought so. Although the Ming army did not fight very well at the beginning of this battle, and they did not win a hearty victory from beginning to end. Just like Huang Taiji was dissatisfied with the war, the brave and capable Hou Jin army failed Even though they ate up any of the Ming army's troops, the brave and capable Xuanda frontier army also failed to devour any of the Hou Jin's troops.
This is because the Xuanda defense line has fewer troops. When reinforcements from all walks of life arrive, there will definitely be a big fight for the Hou Jin army.
But in fact, at this point in this confusing battle, both sides have already given their best performance.
The rulers of both the Ming and Jin Dynasties were very dissatisfied with the battle that had progressed to this point. The only difference was that Huang Taiji was anxious about the upcoming crisis and was doing his best to find opportunities for his side to retreat; while Emperor Chongzhen was full of worries about the upcoming war. expect.
Then...the reinforcements didn't come.
Fu Zonglong was responsible for organizing the dispatch of 30,000 reinforcements from Jizhen, Miyun, Shanhaiguan, and Ningyuan, but the troops were simply not available.
He himself had three thousand pacesetters, and Shanhaiguan sent five thousand men first, led by deputy general Wang Yinghui. This man was thrown into imperial prison in the first year of Chongzhen for embezzling and deducting military pay. He was just released not long ago; Ningyuan's over there Wu Xiang said that he wanted to gather 6,000 men to send troops, but he only had 5,000 in hand. When the court official scolded him, he had to show his temper and leave first, but Fu Zonglong persuaded him to come back.
We only had half of the troops together, but something happened.
Huang Taiji deeply felt that it was not a problem for soldiers and horses to surround Yingzhou City. After entering the fortress, the Hou Jin army focused on attacking but achieved nothing. What morale is there to speak of? If he continues to waste it like this, he will be finished.
After all the calculations, it was in our interests to capture a city at all costs.
Firstly, it can replenish military supplies, secondly, it can boost military morale, and thirdly, it can also frighten the Ming army.
More importantly, the Hou Jin army surrounded forts and invited attacks, which worked. The surrender guide reported that there was Lingqiu County to the east. A few years ago, there was a leader named Yijianbai who rebelled. In Lingqiu and Guangzhou, He had a great influence on the Ling area. He demolished the West City Wall. Later, although Yizhibai was suppressed by the army, the court had no money to allocate, and the West City Wall has not been repaired until now.
Huang Taiji first had scarecrows set up in the camp to pretend that the army was still stationed outside Yingzhou City. Then he wrote to Datong to ridicule Zhang Zongheng, the governor of Xuanda, for not coming out to fight with him. Finally, he ordered Abatai, Azige, and Yang Guli to lead the army. The two yellow flags and the two white flags, the most direct lineage and the most elite, raised their troops eastward at night and rushed to Lingqiu.
In all of this, Zhang Zongheng, the governor of Xuanda, basically got the information.
On the one hand, there were some Han people in Huang Taiji's army who couldn't control their wives even if they got married. When the Jin army was unstable, they found an opportunity to run to the Ming army camp. Those who ran to Datong all survived. Naturally, Zhang Zongheng will be informed of this information.
On the other hand, although Zhang Zongheng did not send a large army out of the city, a small group of Tang soldiers approached the Houjin camp in Yingzhou and directly probed for information.
But intelligence needs to be analyzed, and most importantly, it needs to be analyzed in conjunction with the situation between ourselves and the enemy.
Zhang Zongheng was a very capable and courageous governor, which was recognized in the Ming Dynasty. He served as magistrate twice, once as deputy inspector, and once as military commander. He violently beat Lin Dan Khan in Shanxi and wiped out the peasant army. He did a good job in Shanxi. .
He had even personally led troops to fight Huang Taiji in Yanghe earlier.
But the army commanded by Huang Taiji exceeded the army that Zhang Zongheng could control - this was a very interesting thing in the Ming Dynasty of Chongzhen Dynasty.
A team leader of fifty soldiers can fight with Hou Jin's fifty people, and there is a high probability that he can fight one to one; a general with the same strength can also fight against Hou Jin; in a battle, A very poor general could overwhelm Hou Jin's entire army.
But if several generals join forces, or several general military officers join forces, as long as Hou Jin's army exceeds the number of troops that the supreme commander of the Ming army can control, the battle will be lost.
Zhang Zongheng actually didn’t have much hope for the reinforcements from the East Road. Even if the East Road could bring 30,000 reinforcements according to the emperor’s words, Ji Liao’s army would have to listen to Fu Zonglong, and he couldn’t control You Shiwei of Shanhaiguan, let alone Ning Bing. Well, the supervisor of the Liao army is Gao Qiqian - who among them is superior and who is inferior. They can't even tell the difference between the big and small kings who have the final say. How can they still join forces to fight?
To command a large corps, one must not only have the airs to command and the soldiers to be commanded, but also have the power to command.
The army has supervisors at the top and decentralized power at the bottom, and there are constraints everywhere. Regardless of whether they are You Shiwei and Wu Xiang who are in the army, Zhang Zongheng, Fu Zonglong, who are in politics, or Gao Qiqian, who is an eunuch, they are all in the army. They are figures with the highest official positions in their respective careers.
The fall of Xuanda was the responsibility of Zhang Zongheng, the governor of Xuanda, and the defeat of the reinforcements in the field was the responsibility of the reinforcements. Then even a fool could write this script. It is nothing more than Zhang Zongheng taking the lead and the reinforcements from all walks of life supporting each other.
He can only consider the problem from his own point of view, and from his own point of view, the consequences are dismissal from office, imprisonment, exile, and being sent to the nine sides, which respectively correspond to Huang Taiji's withdrawal, field victory, city destruction, and capture of Datong.
The answer is obvious. The most important thing is not to let Huang Taiji capture Datong.
First of all, the town of Datong is a huge city with a circumference of 12 miles and 216 steps. It is laid out like a phoenix spreading its wings. There are three other small towns connected to the Wengcheng on the north, south and east sides.
For such a huge city, his Xuanda Governor Biaoying, Datong's garrison and even the garrison of Datong seemed to be insufficient in strength. He relied on mobilizing all the men in Datong and dividing the territory, so that he could be considered impregnable.
But the people were not strong enough to go out of the city to fight Huang Taiji's generals. His army was divided into small groups and went out to fight with Hou Jin's sentinels and reconnaissance cavalry. Some encounters were okay, but in a big battle, they would lose their butts.
On this basis, Zhang Zongheng could also figure out that Huang Taiji was becoming anxious because he had accomplished nothing since entering the fortress. He must be eager to break through the city before the Ming army's reinforcements arrived. With so many cities, which one would Huang Taiji break? Datong.
Only if Datong is breached can Huang Taiji consider that he has not lost any money by entering the fortress.
Then the answer is already obvious. What Huang Taiji is doing now outside Yingzhou City is setting up straw men, negotiating peace, and dividing troops. They are all strategies to lure the enemy.
Zhang Zongheng: Don’t listen, don’t listen, that bastard is chanting sutras!
Then Lingqiu disappeared.
The west wall of the city collapsed, and the county soldiers resisted desperately, but the buildings, oars, cannons, and armaments were all in ruins, and they could not stop the attack of the Jin army. They killed the retreating defenders and stepped on the city wall to enter the city. The county magistrate Jiang Bingcai Yu Bingcai When he was defeated, he threw his official seal into a well in the city, and then hanged himself. The whole family was martyred.
The fall of Lingqiu shocked the entire Xuanda defense line. Zhang Zongheng urgently ordered Zhang Quanchang, the commander-in-chief of Shanxi Province, to cross the Great Wall and rush to Hunyuan Prefecture. He tried to cooperate with the reinforcements on the east route and the Xuanyun border army on the north route to form an encirclement, hoping to attack the Houjin Army in Lingqiu. Launch a war of annihilation.
The large-scale mobilization of various armies could not be concealed by Hou Jin. Abatai and Azig had just plundered more than 10,000 people and hundreds of carts of goods and grain. The soldiers and horses turned around and launched feint attacks at Zijing Pass and Daoma Pass.
In fact, it didn't matter much to the Ming army whether it was a feint attack or not, because to the east of these two passes was Baoding Prefecture, which was undefendable. Fu Zonglong could only send Wang Yinghui as a reinforcement all the way to reinforce Zijingguan.
At the same time, Chen Bingshuozhou's Houjin Daishan Division also dug a side wall after Zhang Quanchang led his army eastward, bypassed Ningwuguan, and advanced into Daizhou. The troops passed through Guoxian County, and Daizhi County Li Zhuangtu When the troops surrendered, Guoxian County was declared to have fallen.
The two counties fell one after another, and the reinforcements from the east route also entered Xuanyun territory. Zhang Quanchang immediately sent Fu Renxi to Nao County. As soon as he took the lead, the reinforcements from the east route stopped advancing, and Wu Xiang's troops mutinied.
The scale of the mutiny was very small, just a few hundred barbarians. Later it was found that Houjin spies were mixed into the army. They spread rumors that after they entered the pass, their wives and children at home were imprisoned by the government. They shouted that they could not die in the pass and wanted to return. Ning Jin died together with his wife and children.
As soon as the rebels were persuaded, the Ming army's encirclement formed by the two white flags and two yellow flags trapped in Lingqiu County was useless. At the same time, in the northwest of Shanxi to the southwest, Fu Renxi's army also fought against Daishan's two red flags. Hands over.
Fu Renxi's troops are no different from other frontier troops of the Ming Army, except that the firearms veteran's shooting is very accurate.
After training, this guy was a thief. He made a fortune selling gunpowder to Liu Shishi, and later he was promoted to a general in Pingyang Mansion, which was close to the saltpeter production area in Shanxi. Although Liu Chengzong had already gone west by that time, A suitcase of gold has not forgotten this means of getting rich. What if Liu Shizi cannot stand in the northwest and comes back?
Later, this was naturally a failure of the investment. Liu Chengzong did not come back, and his gunpowder had nowhere to sell. After all, he had no basis for mutual trust with other leaders. Today I will sell the gunpowder to you Li Zicheng. Tomorrow you set up a cannon and give me two bang bangs. Who can I talk to to reason with you?
He used all the gunpowder himself and became the leading firearms soldier in Shanxi.
Dai Shan knew about the news of his return for reinforcements, but he didn't take the Pingyang camp troops seriously. Pingyang Mansion belonged to the mainland. Except for the border troops, they could fight back and forth with the Eight Banners. The troops from the mainland couldn't do that, so they didn't care at all. The leading troops headed northeast to meet Fu Renxi, trying to cross Daizhou and join the yellow and white flags of Lingqiu.
Fu Renxi gave Daishan a little shock.
From the Tangshao test to many small-scale encounters, Fu Renxi defeated and annihilated the four Jin Army baggage brigades at the cost of 177 horsemen killed in battle, and recaptured the baggage brigades with a population of more than 2,700 and full of goods. One hundred and eighty-three cars.
When Daishan came to his senses and organized troops to fight him, he couldn't even find Fu Renxi. He only saw more than a hundred burned and abandoned vehicles on the mountain roads of Mount Wutai.
Fu Renxi had already settled the people into Daizhou City, and then fled with 660 heads, taking the Wutai Mountain Road as fast as possible and entering Taiyuan City.
In the battle report submitted to the court, Fu Renxi said that he was defeated on Wutai Mountain Road. After a bloody battle, most of the recovered vehicles were recaptured by the Hou Jin Army. He only had the credit for rescuing more than 2,700 people and 660 Ten heads of Donglu.
In fact, he didn't want to fight. On the one hand, he tried and he really couldn't.
He got a lot of heads, mainly because he relied on his superior strength to attack the baggage trains and quickly defeated them to clean up the battlefield. Otherwise, the battlefield would be controlled by Hou Jin and the corpses would be burned.
Although there was no Liu Chengzong's gunpowder trade, because the invisible giant bandit had also done two big things in Shanxi with a box of gold, Pingyang camp was very wealthy, and its three thousand soldiers were fully armed.
This was not the case with the two red flags he fought with. In the Hou Jin Army's battle, Bagala was the general's guard and would not appear on the small battlefield of this kind of encounter. The main soldiers were vests or infantry, also called black soldiers. The Kesen or armored men, as well as the cotton armored soldiers, accounted for only one-third, or at most less than half, of the campaign.
There are more flag slaves, also called Yalu Hai. These people have no armor.
As soon as the fight started, the front of the Hou Jin army formation was the flag slaves who dared to die, that is, the dead soldiers, followed by the cotton-armored archers, in the middle were the generals and Ba Ya La supervising the armored infantry and cavalry, and behind them were large areas of flags. slave.
This is actually the same as the Ming army. In the front are the vanguards, in the middle are the generals' servants and camp soldiers, and behind are the guard flag troops, exactly the same.
Therefore, after several battles, there were not many Houjin armored soldiers who died in Fu Renxi's hands. Basically, they were replaced one by one. But Daishan had more than 10,000 soldiers and horses, and he only had 3,000 soldiers. , Fu Renxi was unwilling and did not dare to fight this kind of substitution.
On the other hand, it was because on the battlefield, Fu Renxi did not expect the Ming army's chaotic coalition forces to fight a large-scale annihilation battle on the Xuanda defense line.
So he decided: it’s time to divide the spoils!
The reinforcements also thought what he thought. They were fighting life and death on the front line. The reinforcements coming from Liaodong stopped moving forward. Many barbarians sneaked out of the camp where they were stationed, stealing horses and cattle, insulting women, and hurting people. Husband, he also killed a group of people--Jiangren who overcame hardships and dangers and escaped from Huang Taiji's army.
Those who came to Datong were properly accommodated by Zhang Zongheng, and a lot of information about Houjin was also reported.
Those who ran to the east were all killed by the reinforcements from the east as east captives.
Of course, the killing was not clean enough. There was a scholar who was a master of escape. He first escaped from Huang Taiji's army, and then escaped from Wu Xiang's soldiers. All seven of his companions died, and he was the only survivor. So he sued The petition let the court know that the reinforcements from the East Route not only did not march, but also did bad things all over the place.
This is so demoralizing.
At the same time, the morale of the Hou Jin army was not high.
Huang Taiji received intelligence from the rear. He was leading the battle from the front. The Mongolian tribes outside his mouth were so hungry that they started fighting with him. For some unknown reason, the three Khalkha tribes who had been raising horses in Ordos suddenly suddenly Crossed the Yellow River and launched an attack on Fengzhou Beach where the Tumut tribe was entrenched.
This kind of information itself is nothing. Internal strife is a normal form of Mongolia in this era. However, in this piece of information, Huang Taiji saw a Han name, which is very problematic.
"Yang Qi, who are you?"
Good evening!
