Li Shutai led his soldiers to stop five miles outside the city of Nanjing, Li Shutai looked at the tall and mighty Nanjing city wall, and smiled at Zhang Tianlu: "General Zhang, this is your Han Yingtianfu?" The southern capital of the Ming Dynasty? ”

Zhang Tianlu scolded in his heart when he heard Li Shutai say this, as if you are not Han. But what Zhang Tianlu didn't know was that this Li Shutai was really not a pure-blooded Han, his father was Li Yongfang, who was a pure-blooded Han, but his mother was indeed the daughter of Bel Abatai, so Li Shutai could only be regarded as a mixed-race.

Zhang Tianlu immediately arched his hand and said: "Lord Dutong, this is the southern capital of the Ming Dynasty, Yingtianfu, this city has a population of hundreds of thousands, and we only have more than 30,000 horses now, why don't you camp here and wait for the arrival of Prince Yu's brigade?" ”

Li Shutai smiled and shook his hand: "You Han people don't understand, we are full of military merits, if you take this southern capital, then I will be the first hero in the army." Okay, let's talk about how this battle will be fought! ”

Zhang Tianlu is the chief soldier, and according to his official position, he is half a level older than Li Shutai. Li Shutai's Melle Ezhen is only equivalent to the deputy general soldier, but there are only two people in each banner, and the gold content is far stronger than Zhang Tianlu's miscellaneous general soldier, plus Li Shutai is the Han army banner and a close confidant of the Manchurians, Zhang Tianlu does not dare to say anything.

"The last general thinks that he will send a messenger to persuade him to surrender first, these soldiers defending the city have limited combat effectiveness, and it is best to surrender, if they can't attack the city."

Li Shutai is not bad to think about, in the past, the cities in Henan and Shandong were all persuaded to surrender in this way. After thinking about it, Li Shutai called a thousand households to surrender troops and asked him to send news to the city, so that the people in the city could quickly open the city and surrender.

That Qianhu secretly cursed in his heart for being unlucky, he didn't expect to be sent such an unlucky mission, but he couldn't help it, so he had to ride a horse to the South Jubao Gate.

At this time, a large number of houses outside the Jubao Gate have already been demolished by the Ming army in the city, if they are not demolished and kept for the Qing army as siege tools? The thousand households bypassed the ruins, came to the moat twenty feet wide in front of the city gate, stood by the river and shouted, "Where are the city guards? ”

The city was crowded with people, and after a while, a young man in his twenties showed half of his face and asked, "What are you doing?" ”

When the thousand households saw someone coming out, they shouted loudly: "My million-strong army of the Qing Dynasty has crossed the river, and we will attack the city on the same day, but we all have the virtue of a good life, so we will give you a chance to live first, and as long as the city is opened and surrendered, your life will be guaranteed." If you don't surrender, Yangzhou will be your end, and on the day the city is broken, the chickens and dogs will not stay! ”

After the thousand households finished speaking, they waited for the news, and the person in the city who knew that it had been a long time later said, "What did you say? It's too far to hear clearly, come closer! ”

Hearing what the city said, the thousand households had no choice, so they had to go closer and say what they just said again, knowing that the city hadn't heard it clearly, and there was no way for the thousand households to walk in again. Slowly, the thousand households had already walked to the moat, and then entered the river, and at this moment they heard a gunshot from the city wall, and the thousand households responded to the sound, and the shot from the city hit the thousand households in the chest. Although the thousand households wore a layer of cotton armor, he was only more than forty meters away from the city, and at this distance, not to mention a layer of cotton armor, even three layers of armor could not prevent the power of the new musket.

Li Shutai, who was in the distance, saw that his messenger was killed, and scolded: "I really don't know whether to live or die, the order goes down, and there will be no chickens and dogs left after the city is broken!" ”

After Li Shutai finished speaking, he said to Zhang Tianlu beside him: "Mr. Zhang, it's up to you below, bring your 5,000 people, and you will be the first to break the city!" ”

The first wave of siege was the most unlucky, because the soldiers defending the city were full of physical strength, and the first wave was basically cannon fodder, but Zhang Tianlu had no choice but to choose sturdy soldiers, bring basic siege tools, and rush towards Jubaomen with shouts.

It was Ma Cheng who was talking at the head of the city just now, and when he saw the Qing army messenger coming, he had long wanted to kill that guy, but at first the guy was standing far away and the musket range was not enough, so he used words to lure that guy to the city.

After Ma Cheng killed the Qianhu, he handed the gun to the soldiers beside him, and then said loudly: "Everyone has seen it!" Now that the messenger is dead, according to the traditional city of the Northern Captives, the city will be slaughtered, and everyone will resist Lao Tzu if they don't want to die! ”

As soon as Ma Cheng finished speaking, the Qing army on the opposite side had begun to attack the city, and Ma Cheng saw a group of black and oppressive Qing troops rushing over, shouting at the artillery in the city: "After entering the distance, open fire, no need to aim!" ”

The Qing army had 5,000 people this time, covering a width of five or six hundred meters outside the Jubao Gate, and there was really no need to aim.

Within a mile of the Qing army, the city's artillery opened fire. The Qing troops outside the city are all the Ming troops in Jiangbei, and they used to mainly deal with the Liukou, although the Liukou are also equipped with firearms, but there are not a few artillery, so these Qing troops naturally form a dense formation, after all, people want to hold together when they are nervous. Three k

However, this huddle was in line with the intention of the Ming army, the artillery in the city used solid bullets, this kind of solid bullets can not deal with loose formations, to deal with dense formations can be pinched, the first solid shells fell in the crowd to form the most powerful ricochet, after several bounces killed more than 20 Qing troops, in the dense formation formed a bloody alley.

These Qing soldiers who charged with their heads down were startled by the power of the artillery, and at the same time saw that their companions around them were broken into two pieces, and some of them lay on the ground and wailed, this kind of strong sensory stimulation is not something that ordinary people can resist, just when these Qing soldiers hesitated, more shells flew over.

Ma Cheng is now able to produce his own artillery, and now there are 12 cannons distributed on the wall of Jubaomen, and a salvo can form 12 bloody alleys, which can kill nearly 200 Qing troops. After three volleys, the Qing army could no longer hold on to the insufficiency, regardless of the officers behind them who were supervising the battle with steel swords, put down the siege tools and scattered ducks and ran back.

Ma Cheng's new artillery is comparable to the previous 5,000-pound Hongyi cannon in terms of power and range because of the bonus of the new gunpowder. Zhang Tianlu didn't expect that there were so many Hongyi cannons here in Jubaomen, and now when he saw his subordinates retreating, he hurriedly stepped forward with his own soldiers to stop it, but the Qing army was already frightened, where dozens of personal soldiers could stop it? Zhang Tianlu had no choice but to retreat back with the defeated army.

Zhang Tianlu returned to the Qing army's main town to meet Li Shutai, knelt on the ground and said: "Lord Dutong, the Ming army's firearms are too sharp, I didn't expect that there are more than ten Hongyi cannons at the head of a city, and the last general really can't attack it!" ”

Li Shutai looked at Zhang Tianlu who was kneeling on the ground, did not speak, but waved his hand, and the five thousand Han army flags he brought were divided into one thousand cavalry, surrounded the retreating five thousand Qing regiments, and then randomly selected five hundred people from them, and beheaded these five hundred people in front of the battle.

After killing people, Li Shutai pointed to the corpses all over the ground and said, "Zhang Tianlu, have you seen it?" This is my eleventh order in Manchuria, the whole army is defeated and retreats ten to one, according to the military law, you can't live as the chief officer, but you are a new attached, so give you another chance, next time you are defeated, then don't complain about the ruthlessness of the official! ”

Zhang Tianlu had no choice but to say, "My lord, please give the last five thousand men and horses!" ”

"Okay, this time I will send you all your three thousand old battalions, if you fail this time, don't come back!"

Zhang Tianlu didn't dare to refute Li Shutai's cruel words, so he had to bow down and accept the order.

Zhang Tianlu took the original defeated soldiers, plus the 5,000 men and horses of the new faction, a total of nearly 10,000 people came back to Jubaomen three miles away. Nanjing City was designed very tricky at that time, the whole treasure gate became a convex character, the treasure gate is in the middle of this bulge, the city wall of the treasure gate is about six miles long, there are corner towers at the corners of the city wall on both sides, this look is to be attacked by two sides of the artillery fire no matter where it is attacked.

If you give up the treasure gate to attack the city wall, the treasure gate is a three-urn city gate, there is a layer of urn city outside, give up the city gate to attack the city wall to suffer the urn city, the corner tower, the city wall body of the triple blow.

Zhang Tianlu looked at it and decided to attack the main gate directly, it was very simple, there were large houses outside the Jubao Gate, although the Ming army had pushed the houses to prevent the siege, but there were still a lot of ruins left, as long as they rushed into these houses, they could rely on the houses to put arrows on the head of the city to cover the siege troops.

Zhang Tianlu decided to come to the front of the Qing army later, and shouted to his soldiers: "Everyone has just seen it, if you don't work hard to attack the city, you will die, it is better for everyone to fight to take the treasure gate!" The town is guaranteed, so I have to enter the city, and each person will be rewarded with 100 taels of silver, and the first person to climb the city will be rewarded with 1,000 silver! ”

After saying that, Zhang Tianlu personally led the team and ran to the treasure gate to kill him. This time, the Qing army learned from the lesson of the last time, and no longer lined up in a dense formation, but scattered and rushed over like a swarm.

Although this formation was ugly, it still worked, and the artillery of the Ming army could no longer cause a large number of casualties like last time, so Zhang Tianlu and others rushed into the houses outside the Jubao Gate with a loss of less than a hundred people.

In addition to a large number of private houses outside the treasure gate, there is also a temple, which is the Great Bao'en Temple in Nanjing City. This thousand-year-old temple escaped the war at the end of the Ming Dynasty in history and was preserved until the end of the Qing Dynasty, and was finally destroyed by the war because the Qing army besieged Tianjing.

In this time and space, Da Bao'en Temple is not so lucky, as early as half a month ago, Ma Cheng sent someone to demolish the temple, and the useful wood was transported to the city, leaving a place of broken bricks and tiles, but in this way, Ma Cheng was not ready to let go of this temple.

Ma Cheng had already left a means in the houses outside the city, in order to prevent the Qing army from relying on these houses to attack the city gates. While demolishing the house, Ma Cheng dug hundreds of trenches in the ground, which were filled with oil and other oils.

Now Ma Cheng saw that most of the Qing army was hiding in private houses, and ordered to detonate the gunpowder in private houses outside the city. Hundreds of archers used rockets, it was easy to ignite the gunpowder placed, and the gunpowder ignited the fire oil in the trench, and for a time there was a sea of fire outside the treasure gate, and most of the Qing troops such as Zhang Tianlu were buried in the fire, and only more than 1,000 Qing troops who did not have time to enter the houses escaped.