Tianjin Wei, March 27, the 17th year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty.
The sudden southeast wind brought a heavy rain to Tianjin Wei, making everything around it disappear. The Wei River, which merges many rivers and leads to the sea, is no longer as calm as before. It is just rolling in the wind and rain with turbulent waves, which seem to want to wipe out the heroes in this year of sudden changes in the world.
This sudden storm was extremely fierce, and it seemed to be trying its best to wash away all the smoke and blood that shrouded the Sanwei area of Tianjin.
Twenty or thirty miles away from Weidong, Tianjin, on the rolling waters of the Wei River, more than a hundred sand ships were sailing in the wind. The leader was a large centipede warship ten feet long and two feet wide, with forty long oars on both sides of the ship. On the bow of the ship stood a middle-aged man dressed as a Confucian scholar. The man was holding an umbrella, but it could not cover the rain blown by the strong wind. The silk Confucian clothes were soaked through, but he himself didn't know it.
This Confucian scholar's name was Shen Tingyang, a civil servant in the Ming Dynasty. He was worshiped as the Imperial College Secretary and was in charge of shipping and Liaodong payroll affairs. But he is not an ordinary civil servant, because besides his official status, he also has a special identity. He is the chief helmsman of the Beiyang Shachuan Gang!
The Shen family of the Shachuan Gang is also a famous presence in the shopping malls and arena of Nanzhili. In the words of later generations, he was a red-top businessman. In the Ming Dynasty, there was no such thing as a "red-topped man", and there was no such thing as a red-topped merchant. However, they are all similar in nature, they are both officials, businessmen and people in the world.
If there is any difference between Ming Dynasty officials and businessmen like the Shen family of the Shachuan Gang and those in the Qing Dynasty, it is that they have a high degree of independence and cannot be manipulated by the court and officials.
Because the Shen family of the Shachuan Gang was active in the Beiyang waters, and they were wealthy merchants on the sea. Similar to the Shiba Zhi (Zheng Zhilong's gang) group based in Fujian, they were all armed businessmen with guns and artillery, who were both merchants, thieves and officials.
The prefect who ruined his family and the county magistrate who wiped out his family couldn't deal with Shiba Zhi and the Shachuan Gang. Even if the serious Ming Dynasty navy (not counting the recruitment navy like Zheng Zhilong) takes action, they will definitely not be able to defeat the current Shachuan Gang.
In a sense, maritime merchant groups such as the Shachuan Gang and Shibazhi, like the Manchu military groups that emerged in the Northeast, were emerging forces in the era of great strife in the late Ming Dynasty.
However, they did not oppose the rule of the Ming Dynasty, nor would they compete with the Ming Dynasty's ruling group for land, population, and wealth. Instead, they supported the Ming Dynasty's rule and provided wealth to the Ming Dynasty's ruling group.
Their current goal is to use the maritime power in their hands as capital to serve the Ming Dynasty and become members of the Ming Dynasty's ruling group. The Shibazhi and the Shachuan Gang also got their wish and became an alternative existence in the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty.
The Shachuan Gang became official merchants earlier than Shibazhi. As early as the Wanli Korean War, they were transporting food for the Ming Dynasty army. As a result, the Shachuan Gang became a wealthy business group that traveled across the Northern Ocean and traveled between the Ming Dynasty and North Korea.
Later, when Mao Wenlong opened the town of Dongjiang, the Shachuan Gang also made great efforts. Otherwise, Mao Wenlong, who was alone overseas and could not get much food and salary, would have collapsed without Yuan Chonghuan to kill him. According to records: Mao Wenlong was an army, and his annual salary was 800,000 were all transported from Dengzhou to Dapi Island, and all the ginseng and mink genus from Liao Dynasty that were hidden in the market were also imported from Dengzhou.
The North Korean Li Dynasty also has the same record: Governor Mao took over merchants on the island, and taxed him in a year, which amounted to tens of thousands of dollars.
After the collapse of Mao Wenlong's Dongjiang Town, Shen Tingyang continued to dominate the Beiyang sea by undertaking the grain transportation and grain shipping in Liaodong. He has become a powerful maritime powerhouse that can compete with the Nanyang Eighteen Maritime Group.
Of course, the strength of the Shachuan Gang cannot be compared with Shiba Zhi. The reason why they were able to divide the Northern and Southern Oceans with the Zheng family in Fujian was, firstly, because the Northern Ocean was shallow and had many rolling waves, which was suitable for sand boat activities; secondly, the sand boat gang contributed more to the court and received official support from the Ming Dynasty.
Therefore, the Shibazhi Maritime Group will not touch the territory of Beiyang and North Korea. Zheng Zhilong refused to go north for this reason.
But now, with the destruction of Beijing and the crisis of the Ming Dynasty, the Shachuan Gang, which has always relied on the Ming Dynasty for support across the Northern Ocean, has also reached a critical moment.
There is danger, but also opportunity!
A man with big bare feet and wearing a raincoat quickly walked up to Shen Tingyang, who was deep in thought, "Chief Rudder, look over there!"
Shen Tingyang finally came out of his thoughts and looked up in the direction pointed by the man. I saw a group of soldiers walking in the rain on the embankment on the south bank of the Wei River, dragging two small wooden boats. The soldiers in this group were all wearing raincoats and couldn't see clearly their military uniforms, but they were carrying a military flag with the word "Chuang" in black letters on a red background.
"It's a bandit!" Shen Tingyang smiled coldly, turned around and strode towards the cabin. His sand boat is not an ordinary sand boat for transporting goods, but a war ship! There is a cabin on the deck surrounded by thick wooden baffles. There are no ordinary windows on the baffle, but there are many dark shooting holes. Basically, even if it’s pouring rain outside, the gunmen hidden in the cabin can still open fire!
…
"Mr. Qian, there are boats! There are so many boats!"
When the shouts rang out, General Qian of the Dashun Army named Tang Laosi was walking on his way with his head lowered and leaning on a stick. He is Tang Tong's subordinate and a member of the family. However, Tang Tong was lucky and had a worldly job to take up, but Tang Laosi had a hard life and had no choice but to follow Tang Tong, first as a servant, and now as CEO Qian. After Tang Tong abandoned the Ming Dynasty and surrendered, he had been worked hard by Li Zicheng's faction, and his subordinates were detained by the old camp of the Dashun Army as cannon fodder. There was no oil or water at all, and there were complaints from top to bottom.
The words of Tang Tong, the commander-in-chief, were not as effective as before. Many officers who were not direct descendants of Tang Tong were unwilling to work hard, so the commander-in-chief of Tang Tong could only make his own direct descendants suffer.
Therefore, Tang Laosi, Mr. Qian, could only go to work in the rain, and with three to four hundred subordinates who were very resentful because they had not received the reward for a long time, they searched for ships along the Wei River.
The task of finding a boat was sent to Tang Tong by Li Guo. The purpose was to build a pontoon bridge to completely trap the Tianjin Acropolis.
Li Guo and Tang Tong's more than 10,000 troops arrived outside the Tianjin Acropolis on March 26. Because it rained heavily, there was no fighting with the defenders. The Ming army did not know whether it was to avoid the rain or because they were afraid of the Dashun soldiers, but they all retreated into the Tianjin Acropolis.
So Li Guo decided to besiege and wait for reinforcements at the same time - he must be surrounded first, don't let Chongzhen, Zhu Cixiang and Wu Sangui escape!
But he and Tang Tong soon discovered that the Tianjin Acropolis was not easy to besiege. It turned out that the city was built along the water, on both sides of the main stream of the Wei River leading to the sea. There are two cities in the north and south, with the south city as the main one and the north city as the supplement. It stands between the river and is connected by a floating bridge.
The Wei River has a relatively wide channel, flowing into the sea, and ships can also go upstream. If we deploy troops on both sides of the Wei River and rely on bows, arrows, muskets, and tiger-crouching cannons, it will be impossible to stop the strong ships from entering and exiting Tianjin Wei via the Wei River.
To besiege Tianjin Acropolis, we must naturally find a way to block the Wei River. Otherwise, as long as the Tianjin Navy of the Ming Dynasty came upstream, they could pick up Chongzhen, Zhu Cixiang, Wu Sangui and others.
So Li Guo ordered Tang Tong to find wooden ships and build a pontoon bridge downstream of Tianjin Acropolis to block the waterway.
Tang Lao's Fourth Division is now carrying out this boring and boring job... After searching for a long time, they finally found two fishing boats. Because Tang Laosi's subordinates were all landlubbers and no one knew how to drive a boat, they dragged the wooden boat in with a rope.
"Is it a merchant ship?"
"It's heavy. It should be transporting grain from Dagu to Tianjin Wei."
"This is so exciting..."
"Master, stop them!"
Tang Laosi also burst into laughter. This was really achieved without any effort!
He waved his hand and said loudly: "Can the firecracker be fired?"
"able."
"Damn it, let's take a shot first to scare them..."
"Bah, bah, bah..."
Tang Laosi had just ordered the cannons to be fired, and a series of intensive cannon sounds sounded here! Of course, it wasn't the soldiers under his command who were firing the cannons. There was only one cannon in his team. How could he produce such continuous firepower?
Of course, it was Mr. Shen's gang who opened fire. Forty Cantonese turtle-dove-foot fire cannons were fired at the same time. One volley knocked down four or seventy-eight of Tang Lao's men.
"Rogue!" Tang Laosi exclaimed, but suddenly he felt something was wrong. Now that the rogue was in the court, he quickly changed his words, "Damn it, it's a pirate! There are muskets on the boat. Brothers, get down quickly..."
