It was the tenth day of August in the second year of Tiancong.
One day later, the army of the Hou Jin Dynasty once again came to Zunhua County.
This time it was amazing. The people who came back last time were all "white Tatars". They were not white-skinned, but white-clothed and with white flags. They looked like they were mourning. This time it was tartar in four colors, yellow, white, red and blue, and some were trimmed with other colors. There were also a large number of people, and a large area was covered with colorful flowers. It looked like there were tens of thousands of people.
These were tens of thousands of Eight Banners soldiers of the Later Jin Dynasty, led by Huang Taiji, the Tiancong Khan of the Later Jin Dynasty. They came over with great momentum and came to find trouble with Shi Kefa, who was "possessed by Qi Shaobao."
This time, Huang Taiji led 20,000 Eighth Banner soldiers and 30,000 Mongolian soldiers to break through the border wall of Ji Town to rob. If he wanted to rob, he would have to attack the county town and the state town! These days there is a lot of war and chaos, and all the rich people live in the city. Even those who did not live in the city before are sure to hide in the city now that they heard about the entrance of slaves and thieves.
If Huang Taiji doesn't attack the city, he will have to wait in the countryside to harvest wheat...although he can also get some food. But the problem is that the great Jin Tiancong Khan of Huangtai Ji, did he go to the entrance just to cut some wheat? With this little bit of potential, is it not as good as that of Hutu Dunhan, Tuman Khan, and Chaohua Khan?
So after hearing Dorgon's report that Zunhua was difficult to defeat, Huang Taiji personally led his troops over.
Oh, it's not that I want to attack by force, but I want to take a closer look.
If it is true as Dorgon said, then change the place and go to Yutian County...it is both jade and fields, it must be very fat!
If Zunhua is not as difficult to defeat as Dorgon said, then he will work hard to defeat Zunhua and have a good start!
He said he wanted to get closer for observation, but he didn't dare to get too close... What if there was a red cannon at the top of the city waiting to hit the black cannon?
So Huang Taiji, surrounded by people, waited on a hillside three or four miles away from Zunhua County and watched with a telescope. At first glance... I was shocked!
It's not because of how strong Zunhua's city defenses are - the city defenses are certainly strong, but not to the point where Huang Taiji can be shocked.
In his opinion, the city defense of Zunhua County is not as good as that of Jinzhou and Ningyuan. The only troublesome thing is that the moat is wider and there are more debris outside the city. It would take a lot of time to tear down the pieces and fill the trenches. If there were artillery at the top of the city, many people would die during the construction. But it's not impossible to defeat him, let alone Huang Taiji.
What really surprised him was...the Zunhua garrison left the city!
We came out of the city not to escape or to surrender, but to fight!
There were not many of them, only 2,400 to 500 people, pushing 1 to 200 large carts. They came out from the east gate of Zunhua County, crossed the moat on the pontoon bridge, and then started to set up the cart array with their backs to the moat.
"Old Fourteen... did you see the Confederate army pushing a cart out of the city?" Huang Taiji suspected that he had seen it wrong, so he asked Dorgon next to him.
Dorgon rubbed his eyes, "Yeah, it seems like there are only two to three thousand people, pushing a lot of sidecars..."
Huang Taiji was very happy, "Who is the guard of Zunhua City? We have tens of thousands of people, but he dares to come with two or three thousand people. Is he stupid?"
"Great Khan," Dorgon said, "My younger brother sent someone to inquire. It turns out that the person who guards Zunhua is not a serious Southern Dynasty general, but a new scholar named Shi Kefa. He is the magistrate of Zunhua County. This spring Just took office.”
"What?" Huang Taiji was stunned again, "A county magistrate...civilian official?"
Dorgon nodded and said with a wry smile: "He is a civil servant..."
Huang Taiji asked him again: "What kind of formation is he...doing? Does anyone know him?"
What array? Isn't it just a curved car formation?
Daishan, Mang Gurtai, Dorgon, Duduo, and Azig all shook their heads and didn't know how to answer. However, there were still people around Huang Taiji who knew what Shi Kefa was doing.
"Thank you, Great Khan, the chariot formation set up by Shi County Magistrate of the Southern Dynasties is called the Queyue Formation. It was created by Liu Yu, the founding emperor of the Liu Song Dynasty in the past. The chariots formed an arc formation and lined up with their backs to the water. There are hundreds of large crossbows and two thousand soldiers hidden in the formation, which are designed to defeat the cavalry."
The speaker was Fan Wencheng, who had gotten rid of his status as a slave and became a glorious flag-bearer wearing a red flag. Although Fan Wencheng's status has been promoted one level, he still works as a study official. He does not have a formal official title and is just the clerk who runs errands next to Huang Taiji.
He was a scholar. Of course he had read "Zi Zhi Tong Jian" and knew that what Shi Kefa presented was a Que Yue Formation.
"Big crossbow?" Huang Taiji frowned, "They won't use cannons instead of big crossbows, right?"
"No," Erbeile Manggurtai said with a smile, "If they really dare to move the cannon out of the city, even if we die a few more people, we will still grab a few of them. With the cannon, we will Fight all the way to Beijing City and seize the world of the little emperor of the Zhu family!"
Huang Taiji nodded, "That's right... Erbeile, do you have a way to break this moon formation?"
"Yes!" Mang Gurtai said, "Can't we just modify the roofs of the carriages? No matter how powerful the short spears fired by the crossbows are, they can't penetrate our carriages!"
The carriage is a magic weapon in the field siege of the Kingdom of Jin!
The Ming army was not equipped with high-precision Western-style field artillery. It only had generals with poor accuracy and slow fire rates that could be dragged out into the field. However, these generals' cannons did not pose much of a threat to the mobile carts. And the other firearms of the Ming army seemed unable to deal with the simple and practical carriage.
Therefore, practice makes perfect in Hou Jinjun, and he developed the ability to quickly build and modify the carriages.
Huang Taiji smiled and said: "Er Beile, I'll trouble you."
Mang Gurtai patted his chest and said, "Don't worry, Khan, I'll take care of it!"
Huang Taiji smiled and said: "That Shi Kefa sent two or three thousand troops. We don't use many troops. We just use 2,000 banner men, 1,000 wrappers, plus a hundred laundering carts... Is that enough?"
"That's enough, that's enough." Mang Gurtai said with a smile, "If there are too many, we can't move away... The southern soldiers formed an array with their backs to the moat, and it was an arc formation. We couldn't attack in a roundabout way, so we just We can face each other head-on. There are too many people, and they are just watching the fun."
Before and after the Jin Army raided the Santun Camp, the home base of the Jizhen Army, and among the supplies seized there were many carts. There are many villages around Zunhua County, and most of the residents have fled. It is impossible to get valuable things. It is too easy to remove some door panels. Once the door panels are mounted on the cart, it becomes a loading cart. That afternoon, hundreds of trucks were pushed outside Zunhua City.
The Hou Jin Army's best car-carrying formation was put in place!
"The chariot array..." Shi Kefa stood on the vantage point of a chariot that was blocking the entrance to the pontoon bridge of the moat. He stretched his neck and looked at it for a while, then said to Wang Dadou who was standing next to him, "order the archers." Archery, a volley!”
"Yes!" Wang Dadou responded, took out a suona from his waist and started playing.
In the military manual left by Qi Jiguang, the method of mobilizing troops using suona was also used, so Shi Kefa naturally copied it correctly. After several suona sounds of varying lengths, the archers in Queyue Formation raised their small bows and began to shoot arrows. The arrows were flicked out by Xiao Wei's bow, drawing beautiful arcs in the air. Finally, they were all inserted into the mud. The tails of the arrows were exposed. The white feathers were very eye-catching, forming a range-finding pattern. mark.
Shi Kefa's eyes were just staring at the circle of "white lines", watching more than a hundred carriages that also spread out in an arc slowly approaching. When the carriage began to approach the "white line", Shi Kefa shouted again: "Zhang Nu!"
It’s a bed crossbow!
One hundred and twenty bed crossbows had long been carried to the front line and placed on the seats where two sidecars were connected. When the crossbowmen heard Wang Dadou's suona, they used all their strength to turn the winch and pull the crossbow string.
After the Jin Army's carriage had been pushed across the "white line", Shi Kefa ordered again: "Fire! Load the gun..."
What is installed on the bed crossbow is not an ordinary gun, but an iron gun head and a round thunderbolt that are struck together, and then installed together on the gun shaft.
First ignite, then load the gun, then fire...and finally explode with a bang!
