The sound of violent metal slapping sounded in the rain curtain, piercing the layers of white vapor mist, announcing that a round of attack by the Dashun army had failed.

On both sides of the Wei River, two tall mounds of earth had been erected at this time. While the siege was going on, the people who had been requisitioned from Sixiang were still struggling to carry straw bags full of dirt onto the two mounds. Let's make the mound higher. No one dares to be lazy, because the fierce and vicious old battalion soldiers of the Dashun Army are on the scene to supervise the battle! In the muddy water, there were seven or eight dead bodies lying down, all of them were people who tried to escape in vain and were beheaded!

Heavy rain is like an injection, military law is like a mountain, the amount of work to pile up soil is large, and the time is tight, and the people who were requisitioned and transferred were brought in to be called as coolies before they had time to "eat his mother and drink his mother". It was not only people who were brought in, but also people's livestock and grain stocks!

The area on the south bank of the Weihe River in Tianjin, because of the river barrier and the protection of the Tianjin Naval Division, was considered to have suffered relatively small losses in several battles of the Manchurian invasion. Therefore, the population is still relatively dense, and the people's food and property are also more. It is convenient for the Dashun army that is now besieging the city to collect grain.

It's just that now the hearts of the people who have been dragged to the mountain are a little cold!

Didn't they all say that King Chuang was benevolent and righteous, and Dashun Junqiu did not commit any crimes? Now how can you ask for food, it is no different from the soldiers and horses of the Zhu thief!

In fact, these people who braved the rain to pile up soil were lucky, at least much luckier than those who were escorted to the north city of Tianjin to be cannon fodder.

Tianjin Weibei City is not big, standing by the Wei River in the north, it is a small castle, connected to the south city with a pontoon bridge. Between the two cities, the surface of the Wei River to the east of the pontoon bridge is where the sand boats entering the Wei River are moored.

The Weihe Tonghai Wharf is on the south bank next to the north gate of Nancheng, and on the other side of the pontoon bridge, there is also a water transport wharf. The rice grain unloaded from the sea sand ship can be directly pulled to the Cao Yun wharf and loaded onto the Cao ship for transportation to Tongzhou.

Now the transportation has long been interrupted, so on the west side of the pontoon, around the original transportation wharf, there is not a single ship. However, on the river on the east side of the pontoon, it was densely packed with sand boats from the sand boat gang at this time.

These sand boats are under the protection of the two cities of Tianjin Weibei and the pontoon bridge, which can be said to be foolproof.

And once the northern city of Tianjin is breached, the sand boats moored on the Wei River will be in trouble. Because after the loss of the North City, the pontoon bridge will also be lost. Once the pontoon bridge is destroyed, then the Dashun army can use the forcibly recruited boats to attack the sand boats of the Sand Boat Gang along the Wei River.

If the wind and rain stop and the weather clears, the Dashun army can also use the water to launch a fireboat offensive!

The channel of the Wei River is so wide, it is not comparable to the sea, if there are a large number of fireboats going downstream, the sand boat of the helmsman Shen will have a fire.

Therefore, Li Yan, who knew some about water warfare, chose Tianjin Weibei City as the breakthrough point after some inspection, and at the same time ordered people to recruit a large number of people from the surrounding villages, and some of them were sent to pile up soil on both sides of the Wei River—piling up commanding heights one after another, so as to lay archers, fire gunners, and tiger squat cannons. This part of the people are mainly poor peasants, so they only sell coolies, and there is not much danger to their lives.

And the other part of Ding Zhuang, who was recruited from the rich families around Tianjin Wei, directly participated in the siege of Tianjin Weibei City!

At this time, under Tianjin Weibei City, this tragic situation can be ten times worse!

Due to the heavy rain for several days, the water level in the moats of Tianjin Weibei City has skyrocketed, but several places have been filled with straw bags and become passages. Around the passage, there are layers of corpses of ordinary people.

Under the city wall, which is not tall, there are many shield cars and crashing cars, all of which are shoddy things, and many door panels, beams, and wooden pillars are used as materials, and I don't know how many houses have been demolished?

The people who pushed these shield carts and crashed them were all ordinary people, men, women and children, and many of them were still wearing tattered silk clothes, and they knew that they were from rich families. They also don't have any armor to defend themselves from, and after a few waves of attacks, they die everywhere. Soak in muddy water to turn white. But how could the soldiers of the Great Shun Army care about their lives or deaths? If it was replaced by the Ming army, it would not matter whether the poor and middle peasants lived or died, but those landlords and old fortunes with meritorious names could not be killed casually. Otherwise, a group of civil servants in the court jumped up, and the soldiers below were dizzy.

But Dashun doesn't have so many scruples here! Who cares if you show off your talent or lift people? It's not a fucking good guy. On the contrary, the poor peasants are treated better, at least they will not be driven up as cannon fodder immediately.

However, when the rich people around Tianjin Wei are gone, it will still be their turn!

The first to be sent to fight was Tang Tong's subordinates, and Li Zicheng's team also said that they came first and came first, and the old battalion soldiers were considered to be Yuan Cong, and they were the most noble. Chen Yongfu's soldiers and horses were all collected by Li Zicheng before he seized Shaanxi, and he can be regarded as a veteran. Tang Tong's soldiers took refuge not long ago, and they were regarded as new annexes, so they were naturally used in the siege war of attrition, and they were forced by Li Guo's old battalion soldiers to launch waves of attacks. With the city to hold on or out of the city to counterattack to fight, the soldiers on both sides wore the mandarin duck jackets of the Ming army, and died together layer upon layer. Others who were not dead let out a desperate wail.

Outside the northern, eastern, and western walls of Tianjin Beicheng, there are also three fortresses made of straw bags and negative earth, which are all artillery forts! Once the rain clears, the red-coated cannons and Franc cannons brought from Beijing are pushed into these fortifications and used to bombard the city walls.

On the city wall, there are wooden curtains and foot curtains to protect from rain and arrows, and more than a dozen Franc machine guns are tightly protected. These dozen or so Franc machines were all commanded by John Tang and a new science and technology scholar named Liu Liang.

The latter is a young man in his twenties, born white and elegant, and is clearly a Confucian elite. Somehow, however, he became a foreign religion and studied mathematics, chemistry and artillery with the Catholic priest Bi Francis, who came to China from the Kingdom of Naples. After Chongzhen's sixteenth year of high school, he also mentioned Xu Guangqi and Sun Yuanhua's guns to save the country. However, at that time, Emperor Chongzhen was already anxious, and he did not have the financial resources to promote military reform, so there was nothing to do. After that, Liu Liang kept the election in Beijing, and at the same time continued to learn Western tricks and tricks with Tang Ruowang.

On March 21, he ran away with Tang Ruowang and Li Zubai with Zhu Cihong. Now they are all temporarily placed in the military and political guards of the Generalissimo's Mansion of the Fu Army, in charge of firearms. Among them, Li Zubai was in charge of gunpowder, and Tang Ruowang and Su Ziwen were in charge of cannons. Li Zubai's son Li Shi was found by Zhu Cihong to be in charge of striking iron.

Incidentally, the attitude of the scholars of the Ming Dynasty towards Western tricks and tricks was different from that of the later Qing scholars. The scholars of the Qing Dynasty attached more importance to Confucianism and Taoism, and were wary of Western culture and tricks. The scholars of the Ming Dynasty were more curious and had a more positive attitude towards learning Western culture and technology. Serious Confucian scholars and even great Confucians such as Xu Guangqi, Sun Yuanhua, Yang Tingyun, Li Zhizao, Li Tianjing, and Li Zubai openly studied and translated Western technical books, and even many of them entered Catholicism! I don't even pay attention to the way of middle school as the body and Western learning as the use.

In contrast, the Qing Dynasty was much more resolute in defending the Taoism of Science, and Li Zubai and his son Li Shi, who had taken refuge in the Qing Dynasty in history, were sentenced to Ling Chi for a book of "Introduction to Heavenly Learning"! In the late Qing Dynasty, even a great Confucian like Lin Zexu who opened his eyes to see the world didn't know if the English knees could bend. As for Li Hongzhang, a traitor and Westernist faction who uses middle school as the body and Western learning as the purpose, he has long been a public enemy of Confucianism and righteousness, and if he didn't have an army in his hand, most of his head would not be able to keep it......