Zhao Guodong listened to the emperor let him attack the city, his heart was happy, he didn't agree to do anything to persuade him to surrender, he and Hong Chengchou are old rivals, when fighting Yangzhou, the second division died more than 1,000 people under Yangzhou City, this blood feud can be said that there is no no.

After receiving the order, Zhao Guodong came out of Zhu Hongsan's big tent and came to the second division station outside Huai'an City. Now Zhao Guodong is the governor of Yangzhou, he is no longer the direct leader of the second division, and now the commander of the second division is an old acquaintance, the blind Jiang Pengju.

Jiang Pengju was originally the commander of the Second Division, and later was beaten to the end because he made a mistake in raping the little widow, and now the Northern Expedition is about to be employed, Zhu Hongsan let Jiang Pengju take this position under the recommendation of Zhao Guodong.

As soon as the Second Division arrived outside Huai'an, most of the soldiers had not yet disembarked, Jiang Pengju was sweating and unloaded the equipment, and then saw Zhao Guodong coming.

Jiang Peng raised his head and saluted and asked, "Lord Admiral, why did you come to the front line?" ”

"Old Jiang, just now His Majesty the Emperor gave an order for your second division to attack the city, how are you preparing?"

Jiang Pengju smiled bitterly, pointed to the large and small ships in the canal and said: "Lord Admiral, you can see for yourself, the ships are all crowded together, and the personnel of our second division have come down, but the weapons and artillery are all on the boat, and it is impossible to attack the city now!" ”

Zhao Guodong also knew that it was difficult now, but the emperor's order came down, what could he do?

"How many artillery pieces did your second division bring down? Build a position here at the South Gate first, and try a few shots first! ”

"My lord, this is no problem, but the army's are all small artillery, and the siege artillery is still behind, and the kind of big guy needs a special firing position, and it can't be built in five or six days!"

Zhao Guodong glared and scolded: "Your mother, Lao Tzu is your chief, you can do whatever you want!" Let's get ten small cannons first, don't let the emperor see that we don't work! At the same time, you send more people to get those ten big guys down! ”

In the Battle of Yangzhou three years ago, the army's eight-pounder cannon was like tickling the thick Yangzhou city wall, and finally there was no way to transfer the navy's heavy artillery to break through the Yangzhou city wall. Therefore, after the Battle of Yangzhou, the army felt that the firepower was insufficient, so it asked the arsenal to develop a special siege heavy artillery.

This kind of big guy that is being shipped now is this, this kind of artillery called the red-clothed general by the army is actually a kind of mortar, thanks to the good relationship between Zhu Hongsan and the Spaniards, the arsenal has also received technical support from the Spaniards. The Spaniards learned that the Chinese wanted a cannon to deal with fortifications, and immediately passed on to the Chinese the technology of making mortars that was popular in Europe.

Each of these ten big guys weighs more than five tons, and the whole body is made of stainless steel, with a length of three meters, a diameter of 50 centimeters, and a cast iron ball weighing 30 catties. Because of its short range and weight, this bulky cannon could not be used in field battles at all, and it was a good skill to deal with strong fortifications such as city walls.

Jiang Pengju, who received the order, organized people to unload the siege artillery on the one hand, and on the other hand, he ran to a mile outside the south gate of Huai'an City with the ten field guns that had just disembarked and began to open artillery bombardment.

Huai'an City is an ancient city, from the Three Kingdoms there are people who built the city here, the Ming Dynasty Huai'an City is divided into three parts, one part is the old city of the Song Dynasty, this part of the city wall is rammed earth, Huai'an is the front line when the Southern Song Dynasty and Mongolia war, so the city defense is not bad. But in the Yuan Dynasty, because the Mongols were afraid of the Han rebellion, they demolished part of the Huai'an city wall. During the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, the Huai'an city wall was rebuilt by the local government.

In the 39th year of Jiajing, in order to prevent the Japanese from coming from the sea, a new city was built in the north of the old city, and there was a sandwich city connection between the old city and the old city. In the eighth year of Chongzhen, Zhu Da pawned the governor of Caoyun, and raised silver to renovate the three cities, and since then Huai'an City has formed a pattern of three connected cities.

The city knew that the Ming army had come, and it was already in chaos, and now the artillery outside the city was even more frightened to death. Some local gentry are secretly discussing, do they need to send their families to secretly open the city gate and welcome the Ming Dynasty in? But Hong Chengchou had already predicted that he had sent his own soldiers to various major roads in the city, and when he saw sneaky pedestrians, he immediately killed them, so it doesn't matter what kind of squire and businessman you are.

Hong Chengchou led a group of generals to the Yingxun Gate in the southern city and reconnoitred the enemy outside through the battlements.

Hong Chengchou saw the large group of Ming troops outside, as well as the boats without heads and tails on the canal, and he knew that Huai'an City would not be able to hold it today. But after a while, listening to the sound of the Ming artillery outside the city, it was not like the low sound of the Hongyi cannon in Yangzhou, and the cannonballs only made a knocking sound when they hit the city wall, just breaking a few wall tiles.

You must know that Huai'an City has just been repaired for more than ten years, and the city bricks are still very complete.

Hong Chengchou looked at the battlement and saw that there were only ten small cannons of the Ming army outside, firing them unhurriedly.

Hong Chengchou never fought a field battle with the Ming army, he fought with the Ming army three times, the first time was a night sneak attack, the second time was the Yangzhou city defense battle, and the third time is now. He didn't know that the Ming army was equipped with hundreds of field artillery in one division, and thought that the ten small cannons outside the city were all of them.

In fact, it is no wonder that Hong Chengchou did not think that Hong Chengchou belonged to the ancient traditional literati, and his vision was limited to this, he knew that the European cruiser of more than 2,000 tons, a ship has hundreds of guns. There were less than 40 Hongyi cannons in the Ming Dynasty, 22 on the Beijing city wall, and 18 at Shanhaiguan, so Hong Chengchou thought that these ten small cannons were all of the Ming army outside the city.

Hong Chengchou breathed a sigh of relief in his heart, as long as it wasn't the kind of heavy artillery outside Yangzhou back then. That kind of cannon didn't come, it is estimated that the canal is shallow, and it cannot be transported from the Yangtze River.

Zhu Hongsan watched the ten field guns firing unhurriedly outside the city, which was very boring.

"Dog, when will the siege artillery arrive?" That kind of big guy of seven or eight thousand catties naturally has to be transported by special ships, and the canal is shallow, and other ships can't transport it.

Zhao Guodong hurriedly bowed down and said: "Your Majesty, because the heavy artillery is too heavy, it is still being loaded in Yangzhou, and it is estimated that it will take three days to arrive, and there is a special firing position to be built, and the minister estimates that it will take ten days to use it!" ”

Zhu Hongsan nodded: "Okay!" After the other troops went ashore, they surrounded Huai'an City, don't let the Qing army escape! And let Jiang Pengju stop, a cannonball is three silver dollars, save me some money! "Zhu Hongsan ordered the cannon to be fired just now, but in fact, his own messenger was killed, and he was angry. Now that the gas is out, what are you doing with the wasted silver!

Zhao Guodong nodded and hurriedly asked people to go down and give the order, ordering Jiang Pengju to stop shooting.

On the fourth day of the siege of the Ming army, the ten big guys finally arrived. Hong Chengchou in the city fainted when he saw that there was such a big cannon hanging in the city, it turned out that the Ming army was waiting for this big guy if he didn't attack the city in the past few days.

This mortar has a very close range, only five hundred meters. Therefore, the firing position should be as close to the city wall as possible, and finally find a suitable place outside the east gate of Huai'an City. Hong Chengchou saw that it was so close to the city wall, and in one night he sent five hundred death squads out of the city to destroy the artillery. But the Ming army had already prepared, and the 500 men were lying on the periphery of the firing position and did not rush in at all.

On the eleventh day of the siege of Huai'an, the heavy artillery was finally erected, and on this day Zhu Hongsan came to the east city early to see the power of this kind of cannon.

A heavy cannon was served by a squad of thirty people, and on the orders of the emperor, these people put in three packs of gunpowder, and then the two of them worked together to send thirty pounds of shells through the muzzle. After the ten cannons were loaded, under the order of Emperor Zhu Hongsan, the ten cannons roared angrily and shot ten red iron projectiles at the Huai'an city wall.

The accuracy of the smoothbore cannon was naturally not good, but the number made up for the accuracy, two of the ten shells hit, and one hit the battlement at the head of the city. The two that hit the city wall knocked off a large part of the bricks on the outer layer of the city wall, revealing the red rammed earth inside. As for the one that hit the battlement, it was even more powerful, and the flying rubble was more powerful than bullets, and it hit a large area of the soldiers defending the city wall, and suffered heavy casualties.

Hong Chengchou's face turned pale when he saw this powerful frightened man, and he knew that today was the time when Huai'an City was broken.

Zhu Hongsan outside the city was very happy, and he was overjoyed: "Yes, pass the order to the two gunners who hit the credit!" ”

The gunner, who had received the emperor's commendation, was even more excited, and began to load the second shell on the order of the officer. This kind of mortar cannon is very powerful, but the reload time is too slow, only one shot can be fired every five minutes, this is still the early stage, and it takes seven or eight minutes to shoot one shot after the loader's physical strength is exhausted.

However, fortunately, the Ming army was numerous, and with the unremitting efforts of these loaders and gunners, the Huai'an city wall was finally opened on the afternoon of the eleventh day of the siege.

The rest of the battle was simple, although there were many Qing troops in the city, but they were all a group of old, weak, sick and disabled, and those with some combat effectiveness were all brought to Jinan by Ma Degong. As soon as the Ming army entered the city, these Qing troops knelt down and surrendered, shouting for mercy.

Hong Chengchou saw that the city had been ruined, and returned to his headquarters, that is, the governor Yamen in Huai'an City, and ended his life with a foot of white silk.

The quality of the Ming army this time was much stronger than that of Yangzhou, and those were some newly recruited guards back then, so naturally everyone was mixed. However, the current Ming army is all selected ordinary peasants, and has not been spoiled by those soldiers, so robbery and rape rarely occur after entering the city, of course, this is also related to the perfect military judge system in the army.

Hong Chengchou is dead, but his group of civil and military officials don't want to die. Zhou Boda, the governor of Jiangning, Wang Shutang, the prefect of Huai'an, Yao Bin, the scholar of Jiangning, and others changed their makeup and disguise after the city was broken, or hid in their homes or wells, intending to avoid the search of the Ming army.

But these amateur players were the opponents of the professional player Jinyiwei, and in less than half a day, the still alive Manchu high-ranking officials were arrested one after another and escorted to meet Zhu Hongsan outside the city.