In the late Ming Dynasty, there were many pirates along the coast, and it wasn't just Zheng Zhilong's family. Zheng Zhilong's group was just the largest pirate gang in the contemporary era, and it was considered a clean slate and was no longer considered a pirate in the strict sense.
But in addition to Zheng Zhilong and others, there are actually a large number of small and medium-sized pirate gangs in the coastal areas of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong today.
There are all kinds of people among these pirates, including pure pirates who are extremely vicious and kill people and destroy ships; there are also many who are sea merchants when they have nothing else to do, and they become temporary pirates when they meet a fat sheep; and there are some They are simply coastal fishermen, saltmen, and villagers who can't survive and turn into thieves in order to survive.
The coastal areas of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong that I arrived this year were very chaotic and complicated. There were numerous pirates of all kinds, not just pirates from China, but also pirates from Fusang, Korea, and indigenous pirates from various parts of Southeast Asia...
Even the Europeans came over to join in the fun, such as the Dutch, Portuguese and even Spanish.
The entire coastal area of China seems to be very chaotic, but even with such chaos, Mingting has still been able to control the situation along the local coast in recent years.
This did not rely on the Ming court's own naval strength. In fact, the main force of the Ming court's own navy, which was the official navy in the early Fujian and Zhejiang areas, had long been completely defeated by the pirate gang headed by Zheng Zhilong.
Even the then Fujian Commander-in-Chief Yu Zigao was convicted and killed for this. Well, this man himself is not famous, and many people may not know it, but his father, many history buffs should know, that is the famous anti-Japanese general Yu Dayou '.
It's a pity that the father of a tiger and the son of a dog, I am a famous general, and I beat the Japanese pirates to the point where they cried for father and mother; but the son has high ambitions and low abilities, blindly and confidently led the Ming Dynasty's last army of officers and soldiers, and stupidly rushed forward to fight with the soldiers who were far stronger than the officers and soldiers of the navy at that time. The naval force to which the "Eighteen Zhi" belonged fought a decisive battle at sea... and then suffered a complete defeat, completely ruining the power of the Ming Dynasty's official navy.
It was because of this huge defeat that the Ming court had no defense against the sea and was forced to try to recruit Zheng Zhilong and other big pirates. After the recruitment was successful, the Ming court's maritime security relied heavily on Zheng Zhilong's troops. Now Zheng Zhilong is even more important. The navy under the command of the Fujian Commander-in-Chief has completely replaced the previous official navy of the Ming Dynasty and has become the main maritime force of the Ming Dynasty in the coastal areas of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong.
However, the Ming court relied on Zheng Zhilong, but Zheng Zhilong had no loyalty to the Ming court.
Although he, Zheng Zhilong, is following the mainland, playing tricks, and yearning to be a commander-in-chief in the Ming Dynasty or even receive a title, but in his heart, he is still a businessman.
So while he worked hard for Ming Ting to fight against the Chu thieves, he also continued to contact Chu Ting, trying to find a way out for himself.
It's just a pity that so far, the conditions required by Zheng Zhilong's department are very different from the conditions provided by the Dachu Empire, and they have not been able to reach an agreement so far.
Zheng Zhilong and the maritime force under his command are the epitome of pirates in the coastal areas of the late Ming Dynasty. In addition to their recruitment, many pirates were actually recruited by the government, especially in Guangdong.
The main reason is that the Fujian and Zhejiang areas are Zheng Zhilong's base camp, and there is not much room for other pirates to survive. However, the coast of Guangdong is different. In the past, this was Liu Xiang's territory. Later, after Liu Xiang was killed by Zheng Zhilong, although Zheng Zhilong's troops ate Most of the maritime profits are made along the coast of Guangdong, but it is still unable to fully control the local coastal areas.
Therefore, in the past two years, many other pirate and merchant gangs have survived in the local area, and under Zheng Zhilong's continuous suppression, these people's lives are not very good, so many people simply accepted the government recruitment and transformed into Become a naval officer.
As for the Ming Dynasty's recruitment under the leadership of Xiong Wencan, although the general policy is to recruit people to peace, it will not tolerate Zheng Zhilong's family becoming bigger, so it is also happy to accept and support other maritime gangs who have surrendered!
However, these small and medium-sized pirate gangs recruited by Xiong Wencan did not expect that in just two years, the situation in China would undergo drastic changes.
It feels like just in the blink of an eye, all the Chu thieves have arrived in Guangzhou.
Then many of the pirates who were recruited inexplicably turned into 'officers' guarding the city...
And the number of people was quite large, at least two to three thousand people in total.
——
When they reached the gates of Guangzhou City, Lieutenant General Huang Xiangbin received a report jointly submitted by the Army Intelligence Department and the Naval Intelligence Office. The intelligence stated that there were currently about 8,000 defenders in Guangzhou City. .
Of the 8,000-strong garrison, about 2,000 were recruited from various units of the Guangdong Navy, well, that is, they were recruited as members of various pirate gangs...
Four thousand people were recruited urgently in the past half month. These young men and brave men from the country have basically not received any military training and do not even have enough cold weapons.
There are still about two thousand people who are the real officers and soldiers in the city, more than five hundred of them are the governor of Guangdong, and one thousand five hundred are left-behind soldiers belonging to several local guards.
It is known that there are about twenty long-barreled artillery pieces of various sizes deployed in the city, ranging from two and a half kilograms to ten kilograms. Most of them were temporarily dismantled from warships and moved to the top of the city.
There are also hundreds of short robes of various types, such as army cannons, tiger crouching cannons, attack cannons, Fo Lang machines, etc.
There are about 2,000 muskets from various military units in the city. They are all among the Fubiao and garrison soldiers and pirates. There is no trace of muskets or artillery in the temporary recruitment of Qingzhuang.
After Huang Xiangbin obtained the enemy intelligence collected by the intelligence department at a great cost and effort, he had a plan for the subsequent siege.
Don't rush to fight now, wait until the artillery troops and ammunition from the rear arrive.
After all, the defenders in Guangzhou City have a lot of firepower, especially the number of artillery pieces. If they attack rashly, it will easily turn into a robbery in the Liaodong region: they will be beaten to death by the artillery of the Ming army defending the city...
The Chu army has rich experience in dealing with this kind of city with artillery and thick walls.
The specific method is also very simple. Directly using artillery to wash the ground is the simplest and most effective method.
If combined with the excavation of tunnels for blasting and the heavy-armored commandos for assault, the whole set would be almost complete.
If it still doesn’t work…
Then use more artillery, fire out more shells, use more explosives for blasting, and more heavily armored commandos to do it again...
Huang Xiangbin firmly believes that in the face of absolute superiority in numbers and firepower, all city walls are scum!
What's more, it's the city of Guangzhou in front of us!
In Huang Xiangbin's opinion, Guangzhou City was easier to defeat than Ganzhou City, and it was even more difficult to compare with Jiujiang City where Shi Kefa was stationed.
It is not a question of whether the city walls are thick or whether there are many artillery, but that the defenders of Guangzhou City did not build a large number of new city defenses.
What is new urban fortification?
For the Ming army, it was a large number of artillery and city defenses used to fight against the Chu thieves.
Referring to the original Jiujiang city defense system built by Shi Kefa, there were no battlements in the traditional sense on the top of Jiujiang City at that time. The earlier battlements were either demolished, or sand and gravel were piled behind the battlements to become two or three meters thick. Small city wall.
Why, because after a solid shell hits the battlements, the thin battlements cannot withstand the impact of the solid shells, and the masonry will crack and splash, causing damage to the surrounding Ming soldiers...
The gravel that breaks apart and splashes after being hit by a solid cannonball is more lethal than the exploding bullets in Chu Thief...
Therefore, the defenders of Jiujiang City at that time simply demolished part of the battlements. Although some of the battlements were left, a large amount of sand and gravel would be piled behind the battlements, directly turning the battlements into small walls several meters thick...
Especially the artillery positions on the Jiujiang City Wall at that time were very typical!
The battlements in front of the gun positions were all demolished, and sandbags as thick as two to three meters were deployed in front of the artillery. These sandbags were also in a ring structure, and the artillery was deployed between these ring-shaped sandbags.
Even the solid shells fired by the nine-pound field artillery would hardly cause any fatal casualties to the Ming army against the two- to three-meter-thick sandbag fortifications in the front row.
At the same time, thin ring-shaped sandbags are deployed on the left, right and even behind, which can also effectively prevent the damage caused by explosive shells falling nearby.
In addition, above the ring-shaped sandbag fortification of each artillery piece, there will be a top cover supported by thick wood. Although the defense capability of this top cover is very average, it cannot stop the power of the 48-pound artillery shell exploding after it falls directly.
But if the explosive shells fired by the Chu thieves explode in mid-air, this kind of top cover can effectively block the fragments of the explosive shells.
In actual combat, it is rare for Chu thieves' explosive shells to accurately land on the top cover of the gun emplacement and explode directly.
The Chu thieves' mortar gunners preferred to cut the fuse shorter, and then explode the grenade directly in the air near the enemy's position, using air explosions to spray shrapnel to kill a large number of enemy troops.
The main reason is that after the artillery shell hits the ground, it is easy to have problems with the match fuse under high-speed impact, which in turn leads to duds.
The grenades that explode when they hit the ground these days have a very high rate of duds.
Even if you don't consider the issue of dumb bombs and only consider the issue of lethality, ground explosions are not as good as air explosions.
Therefore, the mortar gunners of the Chu army were basically thinking about how to make the cannonballs explode above the enemy's heads, instead of making the cannonballs explode under the enemy's feet...
As a targeted defensive measure, the Ming army's artillery position at the head of Jiujiang City was covered with a roof.
Not to mention, the effect is quite good!
Although the several Ming army forts at the head of Jiujiang City were always suppressed by Chu army artillery fire, these artillery positions always maintained their combat effectiveness. Even when the city was about to be broken, there were still many artillery fires. Fire back.
It was not until the Chu army attacked the city that the surviving gunners on these forts surrendered one after another...
The reason why these gunners persisted until the last moment was not because of how brave they were, but because the gun emplacement's anti-gun fortifications were really good, ensuring their safety.
This is also the reason why they surrendered in the end instead of escaping midway, because shells were flying all over the sky outside, and they would die faster if they escaped from the artillery defense fortifications...
