After Wang Qi entered the city, he first met with the heads of the four intelligence agencies in the city. After understanding the situation in the city, he began to operate in Jinling City, and secretly met with Li Yuankui, and then secretly met with several other major figures who were determined to surrender. Among the high-ranking civil and military officials of Chu's Ming Dynasty, there were many generals who controlled actual military power.
At the same time, large numbers of Chu troops also arrived outside Jinling City.
On October 14, the main force of the First Division arrived outside Dasheng Pass in the western suburbs of Jinling City. After taking a short rest, they launched an attack on Dasheng Pass the next day.
Dasheng Pass, with its dangerous terrain, is an important fortress in the southwest of Jinling City.
Zhu Yuanzhang once defeated Chen Youliang here, laying the foundation for the Ming Dynasty to occupy the south of the Yangtze River. Later, the Ming court set up checkpoints and garrison troops here.
This is not only the Jiang Defense Fortress, but also an important defense checkpoint outside Jinling City.
However, such a fortress currently has only more than 3,000 troops stationed there, and it cannot withstand the fierce attack of the Chu army's elite troops such as the First Division.
The indiscriminate bombardment of dozens of various artillery pieces immediately caused the defenders in the Dasheng Pass to lose the courage to resist.
Only half an hour later, the defenders in the Great Victory Pass raised their flags and surrendered after more than two hundred people were killed or injured.
Dasheng Pass, the most important bridgehead for Jinling City to resist the Chu army on the west side, and also an important river defense fort that prevented Chu naval warships from entering the river near Jinling City, fell into the hands of the Chu army so easily.
Immediately afterwards, the First Division of the Chu Army did not stop too much and continued to advance eastward. It encountered no resistance from the Ming Army along the way and arrived directly in front of the Guo City Wall outside Jinling City.
Naturally, the outer city wall could not stop the Chu army.
Because the outer city wall is too long, with a circumference of dozens of kilometers. Although the city wall itself is quite tall, the defenders simply do not have enough troops to garrison it. They can only use limited troops to garrison some important outer city wall sections. , such as near the city gate.
The First Division didn't even bother to confront the Ming troops at the city gates. They simply avoided the gates where the Ming troops were stationed. They randomly chose a place and climbed up the outer city wall, then headed towards the nearby Elephant Taming Gate to kill them. .
When the hundreds of Ming army defenders in the Elephant Taming Gate saw that the Chu army had bypassed from the side and divided their forces to kill them, hundreds of Ming soldiers decisively turned around and ran away.
Immediately afterwards, the nearby Xiao De'an Gate and the Ming army defenders at De'an Gate also ran away.
In fact, the first division directly captured the three city gates of Taming Elephant Gate, Xiao De'an Gate and De'an Gate without any fighting.
After the battle at Dasheng Pass and the Waiguo City Wall, the Chu army was able to fully see the reality of the Jinling City defenders.
The morale of the defenders in Jinling City is extremely low, and the number of soldiers is small, and the equipment is not good. There are not even a few Hongyi cannons. However, there were four Hongyi cannons on the fort facing the river at Dasheng Pass before, but they are all gone now. It fell into the hands of the Chu army.
Several major generals of the First Division discussed it and felt that they could be bolder and launch more offensives directly, or even divide their troops.
As a result, the First Division immediately divided into three groups, with the First Infantry Brigade as the core, and the main forces of other divisions continued to march westward to occupy Yuhuatai.
The two infantry regiments under the 2nd Infantry Brigade continued to attack along the outer city wall. The 3rd Infantry Regiment fought towards the river on the west side, and the 4th Infantry Regiment fought towards the east side, gradually clearing out the enemy. And control the outer city wall.
As for the series of actions of the First Division on the outer city wall, the Ming army in the city was indifferent and did not have the guts to send troops to intercept them.
Not to mention intercepting, most of the Ming troops originally stationed on the outer city wall fled and did not engage in combat with the troops of the Chu Army's First Division. Some fled back to the inner city wall, and some simply fled Jinling City.
But it was okay to escape back to the inner city. If they had escaped from Jinling City, it was actually unlikely that they would continue to maintain an organized retreat.
Because on the periphery, there are also Chu army cavalry performing blockade tasks.
The first ones to arrive at Jinling City were not the infantry and artillery of the First Division, but several cavalry regiments of the Chu Army.
That is, the First Cavalry Regiment, the Sixth Cavalry Regiment and the Guards Cavalry Regiment. These three cavalry regiments composed of about 1,600 cavalry were the first batch of Chu troops to arrive outside Jinling City.
However, these cavalry units did not launch any siege operations. Instead, they wandered around the periphery to perform blockade tasks upon arrival.
The main purpose is to intercept Ming army reinforcements coming from other directions.
When these defeated soldiers want to escape Jinling City, they will encounter these Chu Army cavalry, and the fate of the defeated soldiers when encountering cavalry is often not very good. Turning into stragglers and fleeing is their only hope of escape. !
As for an organized retreat, don't expect it.
On the first day of fighting after arriving at Jinling City, the First Division successively captured Dasheng Pass and the southern end of the Waiguo City Wall. This information was sent to Luo Zhixue, who was still on the way behind.
A smile appeared on Luo Zhixue's face: "It seems that Jinling City is easier to fight than expected!"
Xu Zhixian said: "What your Majesty said is absolutely true. Now that our army has come with the power of victory in Jiujiang, Hukou and Anqing, the puppet Ming army in the city has already been panicked. What else is there to think about defending the city!"
Luo Zhixue said: "Give me the order to speed up and try to reach Yuhuatai tomorrow!"
As he said that, Luo Zhixue looked worried: "If we delay it for one more day, we will lose some more money and food!"
After hearing this, Xu Zhixian also looked sad!
There is actually no military difficulty in attacking Jinling City this time. At least in the ground battle, it is absolutely impossible for the 20,000 Ming troops in Jinling City to withstand the Chu army's attack.
But the problem is that the Ming army, gentry and dignitaries in the city will run away. Not only will they run away, but they will also run away with a large amount of gold, silver and jewelry.
And these gold, silver and jewelry are all trophies of the Chu Empire.
A large part of these trophies will be turned into military expenses.
If we don't delay for a day now, a group of more gentry will run away and some gold and silver will be lost.
This means that the military will lose a large amount of military expenditures if it is not delayed for one more day!
Thinking of this, Xu Zhixian immediately said seriously: "Your Majesty, don't worry, I will personally urge the troops to march. Tomorrow morning, we will definitely arrive under the inner city wall of Jinling!"
After saying that, Xu Zhixian also cast a dissatisfied look at Lu Xingye, the Minister of the Navy next to him.
People like the navy, who shouted loud slogans before, were able to defeat the Ming navy in Huguang, Jiujiang and other places, but they were immediately blinded when they encountered the main force of the Ming navy.
The Yangtze River Fleet with more than a hundred warships was actually blocked outside Dasheng Pass to the west of Jinling City. There was no way to attack and effectively block the Yangtze River waterway outside Jinling City. They could only sit back and watch the gentry and dignitaries in Jinling City from a distance. Constantly running through the Yangtze River.
Minister of the Navy Lu Xingye also noticed Xu Zhixian's dissatisfied look, which made him feel ashamed and helpless at the same time.
The navy and the army are different!
After the army recruits new recruits, they can be trained for a few months with good food and drink, and then they can basically be dragged out to fight. The equipment is also simple, and even the manufacture of a nine-pound field cannon is not difficult.
But the navy is different!
The navy's large warships cannot be successfully built quickly. In order to build more than 20 centipede ships and dozens of other small warships, the navy not only plundered all the shipbuilding craftsmen in the control area, but also spent a lot of effort. Moreover, all the stored wood on the ground in Huguang that could be used to build warships was plundered.
There are only a limited number of shipbuilding craftsmen, and there is no way to train them quickly, so the shipbuilding speed cannot increase.
With wood, the problem is even bigger.
The wood used in battleships is generally special wood, and there are certain requirements for tree species, year, and size, and this is actually not the most important thing.
The most important thing is that boats cannot be built with raw wood, but with dried wood.
It usually takes three years for a piece of wood to be naturally dried to the point where it can be used to build a warship.
Even if the lumber mills under the Ministry of Industry try their best to use heat drying, it still takes several months.
As a result, the supply of wood became a big trouble that affected the Chu army's construction of warships.
In addition, the supply of naval guns used by warships is also very troublesome. The total production capacity of several arsenals in the Dachu Empire is limited, and they must supply both the army and the navy.
Even though the Army has been very supportive of the Navy and has given up a lot of artillery production capacity, it is still impossible for the Navy to obtain a large number of naval guns in a short period of time, especially those nine-pound and five-pound naval guns.
The lack of craftsmen, lack of wood, and even lack of naval guns made it very difficult for the Chu Empire Navy to build its own warships.
Otherwise, we would not have built more than twenty centipede ships in the past year or so.
You must know that if the hull cost of this thing is measured purely in money, it is actually very cheap. One ship only costs a few hundred taels of silver.
Even a hundred centipede boats only cost tens of thousands of taels of silver.
As for tens of thousands of taels of silver, that's nothing to the Chu Empire...
But the problem is, you can’t build more centipede boats if you have money.
This is still a centipede ship, and as for large river warships, this is even more difficult. So far, the Chu Empire has not built even one large river warship of hundreds of tons. That thing is difficult to build.
Main equipment such as battleships cannot be quickly manufactured, and at the same time, naval personnel cannot be quickly manufactured.
The Chu Army Navy has only been established for more than a year, and has been rapidly expanding for more than a year. However, they themselves are simply unable to train so many qualified sailors in a short period of time.
In order to search for sailors, the Chu army's navy was not afraid of fish and fish. They wanted private sailors, ship bosses, sailors and captains dragged by the Ming army's navy to surrender.
Even so, the navy does not have enough skilled sailors and officers.
Today's Dachu Empire Navy is actually a group of half-baked sailors and officers, plus more than 20 centipede ships, six captured or modified large warships as the core, plus a bunch of mess, most of which are converted civilian ships. A half-baked river fleet composed of battleships.
The Chu Navy's previous attack on the Hukou Ming Navy and the Ming Navy's cooperation with the army in the attack on Anqing were fine, because the enemy navy was at an absolute disadvantage. Although the navy itself was not very good at commanding operations, it was purely using Quantity pressure can also lead to victory.
But after arriving at Jinling City, the situation was different.
Outside Jinling City, the Ming naval forces stationed were all drawn from various coastal garrison posts, including Zheng Zhilong's.
During the previous tests, the navy found that the enemy was a bit strong, so it didn't dare to attack!
The day before yesterday, the Navy finally made up its mind to fight an offensive war and dispatched dozens of warships to press out. As a result, it was intercepted by the Ming Navy and could not fight to the death...
Among them, the fleet flying the flag of Zheng Zhilong, with the cooperation of the Dashengguanjiang defense fort, severely beat up a squadron of the Chu navy...
The navy sank two warships on the spot and captured four warships, resulting in hundreds of casualties.
The navy suffered its first disastrous defeat since it became an army, which made the senior officials of the Chu Empire very dissatisfied with the navy.
Well, people don’t care if they lose a battle or suffer hundreds of casualties. The Chu army fights every day, which results in too many casualties. At the same time, the army doesn’t think it wins all the big battles, but in fact there are many small and medium-sized combat forces. Suffering a loss or even being defeated.
The reason why the Fourth Defense Division on the transmission side has been hiding in Badong and failed to capture Wushan is because it suffered losses several times in a row at the hands of the Sichuan soldiers led by Qin Liangyu.
What the senior officials of the Dachu Empire really cared about was that the navy failed to blockade Jinling City from the river, which in turn allowed many dignitaries in Jinling City to flee across the river with a large amount of money.
In the words of Chen Xingkai, the Minister of Counselor and Secretary of the Ministry of Taxation: "That's all money!"
