The sound of violent beating of metal sounded in the rain curtain, piercing the layers of white water vapor mist, announcing that the Dashun Army's attack had failed.
On both sides of the Wei River, two tall mounds of earth had been built. While the siege was going on, civilian servants recruited from four villages were still struggling to transport straw bags filled with soil to the two mounds. It's better to make the pile of soil higher. No one dared to be lazy, because the menacing old soldiers from the Dashun Army were on hand to supervise the battle! In the muddy water, there were seven or eight dead bodies lying on the ground. They were all civilians who were beheaded in an attempt to escape!
The heavy rain was pouring, the military law was like a mountain, and the earth-piling project was huge and time was tight. The civil servants who were recruited were dragged in as coolies before they had time to "eat their mother and drink their mother." Not only people were pulled here, but also their livestock and stored grain!
The area on the south bank of the Wei River in Tianjin, due to the river barrier and the protection of the Tianjin Navy, suffered relatively small losses in the several battles at the entrance of the Manchurian soldiers. Therefore, the population is relatively dense, and the people's food and property reserves are relatively large. It is convenient for the Dashun army who is currently attacking the city to collect food.
It's just that the people who are now being dragged to the mountains are feeling a little cold!
Isn’t it said that if Wang Renyi breaks through, Dashun Junqiu will commit no crime? Nowadays, there is no way to recruit people to collect food. It is no different from the soldiers and horses of the red thieves!
In fact, these civilians who braved the rain to pile soil were lucky, at least much luckier than those who were taken to Tianjin Beicheng and used as cannon fodder.
Tianjin Weibei City is not big. It stands on the Wei River in the north. It is a small castle and is connected to the south city by a pontoon bridge. Between the two cities, the Wei River to the east of the pontoon bridge is where the sand boats entering the Wei River are anchored.
The Weihe Tonghai Wharf is on the south bank next to the north gate of Nancheng, and on the other side of the pontoon, there is a water transport wharf. The rice grain unloaded from the sea-borne sand ships can be directly pulled to the water transport terminal, loaded onto the water transport ship, and transported to Tongzhou.
Water transportation has been interrupted for a long time now, so there is no ship on the west side of the pontoon bridge and around the original water transportation terminal. However, the river on the east side of the pontoon was now densely packed with sand boats from the sand boat gang.
These sand ships are protected by the northern and southern cities of Tianjin and the pontoons, so they can be said to be foolproof.
Once Tianjin Beicheng is captured, the sand ships anchored on the Wei River will be in trouble. Because after Beicheng is lost, the pontoon bridge will not be preserved. Once the pontoon bridge is destroyed, the Dashun Army can use the forcibly acquired watercraft to launch an attack on the sandboats of the Shachuan Gang along the Wei River.
If the wind and rain stop and the weather clears up, the Dashun Army can also use the water flow to launch a fire ship offensive!
The Wei River is only so wide and cannot compare to the sea. If there were a large number of fire boats going down the river, Captain Shen's sand boat would be in danger of being destroyed by fire.
Therefore, Li Yan, who knew something about water warfare, chose Weibeicheng in Tianjin as the breakthrough point after some inspections. At the same time, he also ordered people to recruit a large number of civilians from the surrounding villages, and some of them were sent to pile soil on both sides of the Wei River. ——Pile up commanding heights to place archers, gunners and squatting tiger cannons. This part of the people is mainly poor farmers, so they only work as coolies without much danger to their lives.
Another group of men recruited from wealthy families around Tianjin Wei went directly into the siege of Tianjin Wei Beicheng!
At this time, under Tianjin Weibeicheng, the tragedy is ten times worse!
Due to continuous heavy rains, the water level in the trenches of Weibei City, Tianjin has skyrocketed, but several places have been filled with straw bags to form passages. Around the passage, there were layers upon layers of corpses of common people and officials.
Under the not-so-high city wall, there are many shield cars and crash cars scattered around. They are all crudely made things. They also use many door panels, beams, and wooden pillars as materials. I don’t know how many private houses have been demolished?
Those who pushed these shield cars and crashed them were all common people, men, women, old and young. Many of them were wearing torn silk clothes. You could tell by looking at them that they came from wealthy families. They didn't have any armor to defend themselves, and after a few attacks, they were dead everywhere. It turned white after being soaked in muddy water. But why would the soldiers of the Dashun Army care about their life and death? If it were the Ming army, they might not care about the life and death of the poor and lower-middle peasants, but those landlords and wealthy people with a good reputation cannot be killed casually. Otherwise, a group of civil servants in the court would jump up, and the soldiers below would be dizzy.
But Dashun doesn’t have so many scruples! Who cares whether you are a scholar or a scholar? They are not fucking good people. On the other hand, the treatment of poor farmers is better, at least they will not be immediately driven out to be used as cannon fodder.
But when the wealthy households around Tianjin Wei run out, it will still be their turn!
The first ones sent to fight were Tang Tong's men. Li Zicheng's team also followed the principle of first come, first served. The old soldiers were considered Yuan Cong, the most elite. Chen Yongfu's soldiers and horses were gathered by Li Zicheng before he captured Shaanxi, so he was considered a veteran. Tang Tong's soldiers had just surrendered not long ago. They were considered new auxiliary troops. They were naturally used in the siege and attrition war. They were forced by Li Guo's old soldiers to launch waves of attacks. They defended the city together or left the city to counterattack and started fighting. Soldiers from both sides wore the Ming army's mandarin duck war jackets and died together layer by layer. There were still some who were not completely dead, and they let out bursts of desperate wails.
Outside the north, east, and west walls of Tianjin North City, there are three fortresses made of straw bags and soil. These are artillery forts! Once the rain clears up, the red cannons and Franco machine guns brought from Beijing will be pushed into these artillery forts and used to bombard the city walls.
There are wooden curtains and walking curtains on the city wall to protect from rain and arrows, which tightly protect dozens of Franco machine guns. These dozen or so Buddhist machines are all commanded by Tang Ruowang and a new scholar named Liu Liang.
The latter is a young man in his twenties, fair-skinned and elegant, clearly a Confucian elite. But somehow he joined the Western religion and learned mathematics, chemistry and artillery from Franciscan, a Catholic priest who came to China from the Kingdom of Naples. After becoming a Jinshi in high school in the 16th year of Chongzhen's reign, Shangshu repeatedly mentioned Xu Guangqi's and Sun Yuanhua's methods of saving the country with guns and artillery. However, Emperor Chongzhen was already in dire straits at that time and had no financial resources to promote military reform, so there was nothing to follow. After that, Liu Liang continued to learn Western skills from Tang Ruowang while guarding the election in Beijing.
On March 21, he, Tang Ruowang, Li Zubai and others ran away with Zhu Cihong. Now they are all temporarily assigned to the military and political guards of the Fujun Grand Marshal's Mansion, and are in charge of firearms. Among them, Li Zubai was in charge of gunpowder, and Tang Ruowang and Su Ziwen were in charge of cannons. Li Zubai's son Li Shi was asked by Zhu Cihong to be in charge of blacksmithing.
By the way, the attitude of the scholar-officials of the Ming Dynasty towards Western exotic skills was different from that of the scholar-officials of the later Qing Dynasty. The scholar-bureaucrats of the Qing Dynasty paid more attention to Confucian orthodoxy and were wary of Western culture and strange techniques. The scholar-officials of the Ming Dynasty were more curious and had a more positive attitude toward learning Western culture and technology. Serious Confucian scholars and even great Confucian scholars such as Xu Guangqi, Sun Yuanhua, Yang Tingyun, Li Zhizao, Li Tianjing, and Li Zubai openly studied and translated Western technical books, and many even became Catholics! They don’t even pay attention to the way of body and use, which is Chinese learning as body and Western learning as practice.
In contrast, the Qing Dynasty was much more resolute in defending the orthodoxy of Neo-Confucianism. Historically, Li Zubai and his son Li Shi, who had taken refuge in the Qing Dynasty, were sentenced to Lingchi for their book "A Summary of Tian Xue"! By the late Qing Dynasty, even great scholars like Lin Zexu, who had opened their eyes to see the world, did not know whether the knees of the English could be bent. As for Li Hongzhang, a traitor and Westernizer who took Chinese learning as his body and Western learning as his application, he has long been a public enemy of the Confucian righteousness. If he didn't have an army, he probably wouldn't be able to save his head...
