Shi Kefa's strategy for the Texas Battle can be put simply in four words - surround the point and mobilize reinforcements!
The “point” is, of course, Texas City. The current Dezhou City Wall was built during the Hongwu period in the early Ming Dynasty. The city wall has a circumference of ten miles and one hundred and eighty steps. It is made of rammed earth and covered with bricks and is very strong. The city is neither large nor small, covering an area of more than 3,700 acres. It is not troublesome to defend, and it can accommodate a lot of troops, family members, money, food and various supplies.
Moreover, the city wall of Dezhou was renovated and reinforced after the "Five Years Agreement between Ming and Qing Dynasties". Prismatic castles were built outside the four city gates (Dezhou has five city gates, one of which is the water gate). A prismatic gun platform was built at the corner (Dezhou City is boot-shaped), and the outer wall of the castle was modified to have a slope that could withstand shelling.
Outside Dezhou City, along the canal, Yujin River and the long trench in the northeast of Dezhou City, there is also a series of forts, relying on dangerous points, forming the peripheral defense line of Dezhou.
Because Dezhou is the gateway to Northern Zhili, the project to rebuild Dezhou City was funded and staffed by the Qing court in Beijing.
The official who was sent to supervise the work was named Zhang Ruolin. He was the same Zhang Ruolin who was ordered to supervise the front line during the Battle of Songjin and blindly urged Hong Chengchou to advance. After the fall of Beijing, he first surrendered to Dashun, and later followed Luo Yangxing, Guang Shiheng and others to join the Qing Dynasty. Now he is a slave with a green flag and a dignified minister.
After becoming an official in the Qing Dynasty, Zhang Ruolin's official career was pretty good. He started as a prime minister of Shuntian Prefecture and rose step by step. Now he is a doctor in the Ministry of War of the Qing Dynasty...
In order to repay the favor of his master Shunzhi, Zhang Ruolin came to Dezhou almost every month in the past two years and stayed there for more than ten days. He was not here to play, but to seriously inspect the Dezhou fortress project.
Under his hard work and supervision, the Texas fort project not only progressed quickly, but also had high quality, and even the cost was reduced to a minimum.
Moreover, Zhang Ruolin felt that the city defense plan formulated by the Japanese military adviser was not safe, so he added a long trench to the northeast of the Dezhou Fortress. When the war broke out in Shandong late last month, he ventured into Texas in order to personally supervise the construction of the long trench in the northeastern part of Texas.
Under his hard work and supervision, this long trench was finally completed before the Ming army arrived.
With the protection of this long trench, canal, and Yujin River, Dezhou's city defense can be considered absolutely foolproof...
But before Zhang Ruolin could hold a celebration banquet and celebrate with his officials, Shi Kefa's army arrived! The Qing army's strongholds outside the canal, Yujin River and the long trench in northeastern Dezhou were easily eliminated. Then they started to build fortifications for the city along the canal, Yujin River and the long trench in the northeast of Dezhou.
Neither the Qing troops nor Zhang Ruolin in Dezhou City could get out. They could only stare at a civil structure wall and dozens of circular bunkers used to set up artillery and deploy musketeers, which appeared in the canal at a very fast speed. , Yujin River and outside the long trench in the northeast of Dezhou...
Is this a long siege of Dezhou to lure the imperial troops to come?
Standing at the top of Dezhou city, using a telescope to look at the Ming army and Ming dynasty civilians who were constructing in full swing in the distance, Zhang Ruolin suddenly felt a sense of déjà vu... This scene was really quite... Familiar!
"Doctor, do you think Shi Kefa wants to use Dezhou as bait?" Fan Chengmo didn't know when he appeared behind Zhang Ruolin, and he felt that the scene in front of him was quite familiar!
He also participated in the Battle of Songjin!
He had just turned 17 that year and became Huang Taiji's bodyguard. He followed Huang Taiji from Shenyang, Shenyang, all the way to the Songjin front line, and witnessed the collapse of hundreds of thousands of Ming troops...
And didn’t the Battle of Songjin begin with the siege of Jinzhou City?
"No, no..." Zhang Ruolin shook his head, "Shi Kefa is a person with a false reputation and an official with empty talk. How can he be compared with the late emperor and Chengzong? Besides, how wise is the emperor's uncle? He is definitely not Hong Chengchou. comparable."
Fan Chengmo frowned: "If Hong Chengchou does not underestimate the enemy and rushes forward, is there any way he can break the siege of Jinzhou?"
"This..." Zhang Ruolin fell into deep thought.
He really thought about this question for a long time.
He was ordered by Chen Xinjia to urge Hong Chengchou to fight quickly. On the one hand, he was unable to support it due to lack of money and food; on the other hand, it was because Jinzhou was in urgent need. Zu Dashou reported to the court in March of the 14th year of Chongzhen: "Jincheng The grain and rice provided only lasted for more than a month, and the beans fed to the horses could not last for a month..."
If Hong Chengchou does not save Jinzhou, Jinzhou will inevitably fall after the food is exhausted.
And to save...
Thinking of this, Zhang Ruolin sighed: "Fortunately, we have enough food reserves, so we are not afraid of the Ming army commander's encirclement."
...
Of course Shi Kefa knew that the Qing army in Dezhou was not afraid of a long siege, but in addition to besieging Dezhou, he also had bigger trump cards in hand, namely Shandong Governor Zuo Maodi and Shandong Tuntian Regiment Training Envoy Zhang Huangyan.
Gao Hongtu became ill due to old age and had retired from work and went home to recuperate. Zuo Maodi, the original training envoy of the Tuntian Regiment, was promoted to governor and became the largest official in Shandong Province. Zhang Huangyan took over Zuo Maodi's official position and became the training envoy of the Shandong Tuntian Regiment.
According to Zhu Cixiang's order, the governor of Shandong and the training envoys of the field regiment were controlled by Shi Kefa after the war began. Shi Kefa, the governor, had little power in peacetime, but once it entered war, he was a real frontier!
Just after Shi Kefa completed the arrangement of "encircling Dezhou, monitoring Liaocheng and Anping, and waiting for the Donglu Brigade to come south" through the Pingyuan Military Conference, he invited Zuo Maodi and Zhang Huangyan to Pingyuan and began to arrange operations to regain the lost territory.
Due to the initiative of the Qing army to shrink (some of them had no time to shrink, most of them are now dead), only Dezhou, Anping, and Liaocheng are still under the control of the Qing army in Shandong. In other places, a small part was occupied by the Ming army, and most of it was in a power vacuum.
"Zhongji and Xuanzhu," Shi Kefa, the governor of Shandong and Liaodong military gates in Ming Dynasty, was talking to Zuo Maodi and Zhang Huangyan in the study room of Shi Kefa's Zhongjun camp in Pingyuan County. "Now the Qing army on the ground in Shandong is shrinking. It is so powerful that it has vacated a large area of territory... If we can fill it, then we can continue to fight with war, and the Qing army will definitely not be able to bear it."
Zhang Huangyan has been an official in Shandong and Liaodong in the past few years. Of course he knows that there are many fertile fields in the three prefectures of Jibei, Xiyanzhou and Dongchang occupied by the Qing Dynasty... Many loyal ministers and generals from Shandong are eyeing it!
Loyal ministers and good generals...are also members of the landlord class!
How could one not like the land? If you don’t like the land, why go north?
Now that the Qing army has shrunk, the flat land of Jibei, West Yanzhou, and Dongchang is now in front of everyone...
So Zhang Huangyan did not answer Shi Kefa's question, but turned his attention to Zuo Maodi. The Zuo family was Zhongliang and the largest landowner in Shandong!
"Xianzhi," Zuo Maodi said, "the land in the three prefectures of Jibei, West Yanzhou, and Dongchang... cannot be disposed of in a hurry! The court should first make it clear that no cents will be taken and returned to the public, and then the garrison regiments and governors can The Yamen will take care of it and distribute it after the northern territory is settled."
Zhang Huangyan echoed: "It's still Zuofutai Zhoudao... But what about the farmers on the land in Jibei, West Yanzhou, and Dongchang? They have tasted the benefits of dictating land!"
This is a big problem!
The basis of the dictated land plan is the "public land system", which is also the basis of the land policy currently implemented by the Qing Dynasty!
The land system implemented by the Ming Dynasty in the two lakes, four rivers, Fujian and Guangdong in the southeast was based on the "private land system", so the court also held a large amount of land, but it could not change the basis of private land, and the Ming court had clear property rights. The private land has always been protected.
Zuo Maodi also had a headache. He stroked his beard, thought for a while, and said to Shi Kefa: "The land will definitely have to be divided...but it's best not to mention it now, and send out the parents' officials from each county first. Then put up a notice to help the people, and they will be exempted from paying taxes for three years or something."
