King Ming Xiang has been handed down for more than 200 years since he was granted the title in the Yongle period. There are eleven generations in total. The current King Xiang Zhu Yiming is nothing special. He is just an ordinary vassal king with neither ambition nor special talents. .
He is not shrewd, let alone wise, he is just an ordinary feudal king.
Even his final death was ordinary and left no trace.
After Xu Zhixian led his army to capture Prince Xiang's Mansion, he did not inspire the guards in the palace to resist desperately, nor did he leave behind one or two famous sayings to commit suicide in anger or fight to death.
When the soldiers of the 4th Infantry Battalion under Xu Zhixian attacked the palace, this man was inspecting the situation in the front yard. He happened to encounter the 200-pound artillery fire of the 4th Infantry Battalion. The shells fired by the artillery penetrated the thick wooden door. A direct hit on the man.
A clean death!
Once this man died, everyone in the palace lost their backbone. More importantly, they also knew that Xiangyang City had been completely captured, and even if they wanted to resist, it would be meaningless.
As a result, everyone in the palace dispersed in a hurry.
The eldest son, Zhu Changcheng, put on makeup and absconded. This man was very lucky. With the help of a few loyal men, he first hid in a private house, and then escaped from Xiangyang City and headed south to Wuchang.
The second son, Zhu Changfa, was not so lucky and died of an arrow shortly after his father's death.
The third son, Zhu Changgan, disappeared after the palace was breached. It was most likely that he died quietly somewhere unknown to outsiders.
Everyone else in the palace died or was taken prisoner, and a few took advantage of the chaos to escape and hide.
As for those who absconded, the Baoxiang Army actually did not spend much effort searching for them. Even the people in Prince Xiang's Mansion, even Prince Xiang's legitimate son Zhu Changcheng, ran away, but in fact the Baoxiang Army did not specifically search for them. , Otherwise, it is still unknown whether Zhu Changcheng can successfully take out Xiangyang City.
For the Baoxiang Army, it didn't matter whether they killed or captured a group of people from Prince Xiang's Mansion. Luo Zhixue did not have the hobby of killing vassal kings like Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng and others.
For Luo Zhixue and the Baoxiang Army, the so-called vassal kings are not important at all. What is important is the wealth possessed by these vassal kings, especially those materials, money and food that can be directly used, or soft treasures that are easily cashable. wait.
With this wealth, the Baoxiang Army can continue to expand its army, recruit and train more recruits, and create more guns, armor and weapons.
As a legacy of more than two hundred years, Prince Xiang's Mansion did not disappoint the Baoxiang Army. Xu Zhixian did not even have time to carefully check many properties of the Prince's Mansion, but only seized gold and silver worth at least 800,000 taels of silver from the treasury and warehouse. , copper coins and other cash
Coupled with the gold and silver cash confiscated from the officialdom and the residences of many recalcitrant officials, the cash harvest from this attack on Xiangyang City exceeded one million.
Not to mention the seizure of a large amount of grain, cloth and other materials that could be used directly.
There are countless rare items, ordinary goods, and even real estate, land and other fixed assets that need to be liquidated.
However, at this time, Xu Zhixian did not have the time to continue to carefully check the other remaining properties of the palace. He only sent troops to completely blockade the palace, not allowing people to enter and exit, and then hurriedly led troops to continue clearing the gates of the other organized troops.
Soon after, Huang Dingquan also led the First Infantry Battalion to join the sequence of clearing out the defeated troops.
The two battalions joined forces to conduct a dragnet-style clearing operation in the city, killing all the stubborn enemies who dared to carry out organized resistance.
While Huang Dingquan and Xu Zhixian led their troops to continue to clear out the remaining enemies in the city, Wang Xiazi also led his cavalry out of the city and headed south.
He led the cavalry out of the city to pursue more than a thousand enemy troops who retreated from the south gate and east gate.
The Ming troops in these two gates did not resist to the end, and the Ming troops in the east gate ran away without even fighting.
Naturally, the Baoxiang Army will not let these more than a thousand Ming troops retreat safely. If they are allowed to run away today, then these Ming troops may not be stationed somewhere in the future and resist the Baoxiang Army's attack. It is even possible In a few days, Ming troops from other places will gather to counterattack Xiangyang.
After taking Xiangyang City, it has become an important task of the current defense army to annihilate or capture the escaped enemy troops as much as possible.
To be precise, it was the task of Wang Xiazi's cavalry. After all, the first infantry battalion was all infantry and could not catch up with the fleeing enemy troops.
Wang Xiazi led the cavalry in pursuit, and first caught up with the three or four hundred people who escaped from the south city gate.
After catching up with them, the next thing was very simple. Facing a group of only three to four hundred people, with no morale or morale at all, and even missing their weapons and equipment, Wang Xiazi and these cavalry were even useless. What tactics such as cavalry shooting, formation charge, etc.
Just catch up and cover them up.
In a short time, twenty or thirty of these people were killed or wounded, and the rest surrendered en masse.
Immediately afterwards, Wang Xiazi left a few people to guard these prisoners of war, and asked the first infantry battalion in the city to send people to accept the prisoners of war, while he himself, with more than a hundred remaining cavalry, continued to pursue the enemy troops who fled from the east city gate.
It's just that this time, luck was not good. Maybe it was a misjudgment of the direction, or the opponent was running too fast, and Wang Xiazi and the others were delayed for some time in chasing the enemies at the South City Gate, but they were unable to catch up with the remaining ones. There are hundreds of enemies.
Although Wang Xiazi was disappointed, he did not pursue too much and led the cavalry to withdraw at about ten o'clock in the morning.
At about eleven o'clock that morning, at the ferry crossing dozens of miles northwest of Xiangyang, Luo Zhixue finally learned from the messenger that the army had completely captured Xiangyang City.
Although when the messengers set out in the morning, the fierce fighting in the city was still going on.
However, Wang Xiazi, Huang Dingquan and others were very confident in this. They said in the letter that there were not many stubborn enemies in the city and there was no systematic resistance. They were absolutely sure that the fighting in the city could be completely ended within one day.
After learning the news, Luo Zhixue was also greatly relieved.
What really made him relieved was not just the capture of Xiangyang itself, but the battle plan of this surprise attack. Not only was Xiangyang captured, but the cavalry brigade and the first infantry brigade did not suffer too much losses.
According to the battle report from the front, because the heavily armored soldiers of the personal camp led by Li Dongshao sneaked into Xiangyang City, raided the city gate at dawn, opened the city gate and lowered the drawbridge, the army's losses during the siege were negligible.
Subsequent clearing operations in the city did not encounter large-scale organized resistance, so the overall losses were very limited.
Such a result will not affect the subsequent battle plan of the Baoxiang Army.
After putting down the battle report, Luo Zhixue looked at the crude map spread on the simple table, and finally focused on Fancheng.
Now that Xiangyang City had been captured by surprise attack, it was time to capture Fancheng across the water.
Fancheng and Xiangyang City are only separated by the Han River. Strictly speaking, the straight-line distance between the two is only more than a thousand meters, and they couldn't be any closer.
So many times, when talking about Xiangyang, the two are often directly mentioned together, but in fact they are two cities!
Xiangyang and Fancheng are bounded by the Han River, with cities on one side in the south and one in the north built along the river.
The two cities cooperated with each other to block the Han River in the middle, becoming the most important strategic city in the southwestern region of the Central Plains.
The strategic position of the Xiangyang area composed of Xiangyang and Fancheng is extremely important not because it is a natural pass, like Tongguan, Yiyang and other places.
Rather, this place is the confluence of the Han River and the Bai River, and the Han River is a tributary of the Yangtze River. You can enter the Yangtze River by following the Han River south. After entering the Yangtze River, you can go east along the river and reach the south of the Yangtze River.
Building a city here can directly block the waterway entering the Yangtze River through the Han River.
In fact, this is also the biggest strategic role of the two cities: blocking the Han River channel.
The importance of Xiangyang can be seen from the southward routes of many northern armies in ancient times.
It’s too long to go into detail. Let’s talk about the battle of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty to destroy the Song Dynasty. After the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty relied on their cavalry superiority to capture the Central Plains, there were only two ways to continue southward. One was to take the Xuhuai area, and the other was to take the Nanyang Basin, and then reach the Yangtze River after passing Xiangyang. Go east again.
If you go to the Xuhuai area, there are dense water networks and many cities. If the Northern Army goes south, it will need to attack these cities all the way, which requires relatively high infantry and logistics supplies.
If you rely on the advantage of cavalry, you can directly bypass these cities and go south to drink the Yangtze River. However, there is a risk of logistics routes and retreat routes being cut off at any time, and after going all the way south to the edge of the Yangtze River, it is not suitable for cavalry operations, even if you go all the way around After passing through many cities and finally reaching the Yangtze River, it was at the end of the battle and it was difficult to cross the river calmly.
Taking the Nanyang Basin, the roads are flat and suitable for cavalry. They can also rely on the Baihe River and Hanshui River to transport supplies. They can even easily build ships here, and have accumulated enough ships to go all the way eastward along the river and push directly to the south of the Yangtze River. .
The only obstacle is Xiangyang!
At the beginning, the Meng Yuan Dynasty had the advantage of cavalry, so they followed the front line of the Nanyang Basin and spent many years fighting Xiangyang. After they captured Xiangyang, the Southern Song Dynasty would be over in just a few years!
From this we can also see the most important strategic role of Xiangyang: blocking the Han River channel.
According to common sense, enemies moving from the north to the south will usually attack Fancheng first. After all, Fancheng is paper and Xiangyang is iron.
Because Fancheng on the north bank of the Han River is located on a flat terrain, it is an undefendable city and its defense facilities are not very good. It is much easier to attack than Xiangyang.
However, for the sake of surprise, the Baoxiang Army chose to bypass Fancheng, but sneaked across the river dozens of miles away from Xiangyang, and finally fought all the way to Xiangyang City, and relied on internal troops to capture Xiangyang almost unscathed. city.
This also led to a very embarrassing situation.
Xiangyang, which was more difficult to attack and had a more important strategic position, had been captured by the Baoxiang Army, but Fancheng was still in the hands of the Ming Army.
