"You Hu Tu, the thieves have cannons, and we will naturally suffer a loss if we don't have cannons." The old man Huafa said, "You have to worry about there being too few cannons. You can use them all together. There is no chance that the thieves will not be able to break through the stronghold at this time."
The clan leader, Tan Qingchun, didn't have much to say in response to the elder's complaints. He could only comfort him: "Second uncle, please go back to your room and rest in peace. I promise you, the tiger thieves can't attack my place."
The old man with white hair took a look at the tall courtyard walls around him, which were not much shorter than the city walls of the county town. He felt a little more at ease, then nodded and asked his servants to help him back to the house.
As soon as the eldest member of the Tan family left, the patriarch Tan Qingchun immediately called the housekeeper and told him: "Block the courtyard door, and have our cannons ready. As soon as the thief gets close, I will use the cannons to hit him hard." beat."
Cannons are definitely a weapon.
From the princes and nobles to the traffickers and pawns, no one knows how powerful the cannon is.
Only the imperial court can really own cannons.
The Tan family was able to obtain these cannons only because of the religious rebellion. The ground in Shandong was in chaos for a while. As the head of the Tan family, he took advantage of this opportunity and spent a lot of effort to buy these cannons at a high price by bribing military attachés. .
[In view of the general environment,
In order to prevent these cannons from becoming decorations, he specially hired a gunner from the army to serve the cannons.
Several men holding bows stood behind the wall, with only half of their heads exposed, secretly observing the situation outside.
The bows and arrows in their hands were all imperial weapons.
Tanjiazhai could even get cannons, so it was not difficult to get some bows and arrows from the army.
The reselling of soldiers and armor has long been the norm in the Ming army.
The court did not provide food and wages, so the soldiers had to sell their own armor and horses if they wanted to eat. The military attachés were more direct. They not only sold the soldiers' armor, but also colluded with officials in charge of the arsenal to resell the items in the arsenal. , and then divide the accounts together.
Most of the armor and weapons in Tanjiazhai came from this way.
"Lin Qiguan, it will be up to you soon. As long as we repel the invading thieves, I will give you a reward." The steward walked up to a man wearing cotton armor.
This man was invited from the Ming army to serve the cannon.
In the army, gunners like him often went hungry to fill their stomachs, and were often bullied by their superiors into working for them in vain.
After coming to Tanjiazhai, he was taken care of by good food and drink every day. He also had a group of people who learned how to drill artillery from him, so he made himself a flag officer.
"Don't worry, as long as I'm here, the thieves will come and they will never come back." The Lin Banner assured him, patting his chest.
Dealing with a group of bandits is not a difficult task in his opinion.
As for whether the people coming to Tanjiazhai are rebels or bandits, in his eyes, it is the same. There is no difference between rebels and bandits, and even rebels are worse than bandits.
The bandits also use the gangster style to rob and dare to kill people. Most of the rebel thieves are a bunch of idiots and are much easier to deal with than those old bandits.
"I feel reassured by Lin Qiguan's words." The housekeeper was very satisfied with Lin Qiguan's assurance, and his words were encouraging.
Although the Tiger Character Banner has made a big fuss in other places, after all, they have only been in Shandong for a short time, and people at the bottom like them don't know much about it.
Even for the housekeeper, the information channel was through the conversations among the gentlemen in Tanjiazhai. He heard some, but it was extremely limited.
Another Lin Banner official didn't know what the Tiger Character Flag was, he only knew that it was a rebel. Based on past experience, he treated the Tiger Character Flag as a general rebel.
After all, he is quite experienced in dealing with rebels like Jiao Luan.
The steward trusted Lin Qiguan because he had a military background, and even the other party did not take the Tiger Flag troops who had breached the outer city seriously, so he naturally believed in Lin Qiguan.
However, there are still some people in the inner city of Tanjiazhai who are afraid.
Among those who fled back to the inner city from the outer city, except for some fools, they really didn't take their lives seriously, or they didn't think they would die, so they didn't take the soldiers and horses of the Tiger Flag too seriously.
But these people are only a minority. Even if most of them escaped, after experiencing shelling and collapse of earth walls and seeing many casualties, fear and desire for survival took over.
The reason why these people dare to hold knives is entirely because having knives in their hands makes them feel more secure.
The inner city was in a panic. Some went to get weapons, some went to defend behind the courtyard wall and followed others, and there were still people walking back and forth in different rooms.
When the soldiers and horses of the Tiger Flag surrounded Tanjiazhai, the girls had already been sent to the backyard, and even the maids were sent to the backyard.
The people staying in the front yard are all men, mostly young and strong, especially the raised thugs, who are all arranged in the front yard.
These thugs are the main force guarding the inner city, at least in the eyes of many big shots in Tanjiazhai.
No one cares about the poor people outside Tanjiazhai. Except for some young and strong people staying in the inner city who are worried about their relatives outside, the gentlemen in Tanjiazhai have not even mentioned it once.
Because they have already brought their families to the inner city.
The soldiers and horses of the Tiger Character Banner entered Tanjiazhai, and cannons were pushed in one after another.
The poor people in Tanjiazhai who live in the outer city can only hide in their homes and tremble, praying to gods and Buddhas not to break into their homes.
Whether it is bandits, Ming troops, or rebels, for the people at the bottom, it will only oppress them.
Bandits pass by like combing soldiers through a grate.
Regardless of whether they are thieves or soldiers, the common people are afraid of them. As for the tiger-character flag, to the lower-class people in Tanjiazhai, they don’t understand it at all. It’s just from the mouths of the gentlemen in Tanjiazhai that people who have heard of the tiger-character flag They are all evil people who eat people without spitting out their bones, worse than bandits.
The people of Tanjiazhai believed in the words of the gentlemen in Tanjiazhai, and believed that Tiger Character Flag was just as those gentlemen said, that he was the most evil person in the world.
Rebellious thieves are never good people in people's eyes.
"Hey! Whose big house is this? It's built like a county government office, and the courtyard walls are almost catching up with the city walls."
Arriving outside the inner city of Tanjiazhai, Xu Bingyu of the artillery team looked up at the courtyard wall in front of him.
Of course, although the courtyard wall is high, it is not as thick as the city wall.
"Who knows, but it must be the house of a certain big man in Tanjiazhai." Ran Tiancun, the captain of the combat team who came with the artillery team, stuck out the tip of his tongue and licked his lips.
He had seen many large houses built like an inner castle like the one in front of him in the northwest, but this was the first time he saw it in Shandong.
After spending so much effort to build such a house, the owner is either afraid of death or has too much money to spend.
