"Mr. Jin, what did you say!" Liu Zhaoji was furious when he heard this, completely ignoring Jin Shenghuan's personal soldiers, pointing at Jin Shenghuan and scolding sharply.

"If I, Liu Zhaoji, want to surrender, I will surrender when I am in Guzhen, why bother to defend for two days and then flee back with my troops. Five thousand brothers, less than five hundred fled with me here, and most of them died tragically under the butcher's knife of the Eight Banners. I have a common enmity with the Qing soldiers, and you don't have a fucking insult to Lao Tzu! ”

As he spoke, Liu Zhaoji's eyes were red and his voice choked.

Looking at Liu Zhaoji's appearance, thinking about the miserable appearance when he came back with the troops a few days ago, Jin Shenghuan also felt a little sympathetic in his heart, and his tone softened.

"Mr. Liu, don't blame, my brother lost his words. But at the moment, we still have 15,000 troops in the city, and we haven't really fought with the Qing soldiers, so it's not too early for you to say that reinforcements are too early? ”

"Is it early? There are 15,000 people in this Sizhou city, but most of them are local guards who are not fully clothed, and there are also routed soldiers who fled back from the north. Now that the trenches are about to be filled by the Qing army, the walls are about to collapse, and soon they will enter hand-to-hand combat to siege the city.

With the combat strength of our army, it may be very difficult to resist the attack of the Qing army in this kind of hand-to-hand combat. If the reinforcements don't come in time, I'm afraid that all the soldiers and civilians in this city will be slaughtered by the Qing soldiers! ”

Liu Zhaoji sighed, recalling the battle when he led his troops to retreat and was caught up by the Qing soldiers, nearly 5,000 soldiers were defeated in less than half an hour, which made him very unoptimistic about the prospects of Sizhou.

"Reinforcements are available, but I don't know when they'll come. But it should be soon, Master Hou will never allow Sizhou to fall. Jin Shenghuan thought about it and felt that he should still give confidence to a general like Liu Zhaoji, after all, such a large Sizhou still needs more than 10,000 miscellaneous troops to assist the Pingnan Army in defending the city.

Liu Zhaoji went with doubts, looking at his back, Jin Shenghuan couldn't help but think of the words that Chen Yue, the Marquis of Pingnan, told him when he set off from Yangzhou.

"Sizhou guards the Huai River, which is an important place in the Jianghuai River, and has to be guarded against. But I can't give you too many troops, so I can only send a battalion of guards, as well as local defenders from all over Fengyang Mansion.

The significance of the defense of Sizhou is not to block the southward movement of the Qing army, but to rely on the city of Sizhou and a Huai River to stop the footsteps of 100,000 Qing soldiers. Therefore, your purpose in Sizhou is to delay the Qing army's southward movement as much as possible, to destroy its living forces as much as possible, and if you are unpunctual, you can retreat immediately, and I will send a fleet from Hongze Lake to meet you.

Although there are many generals under the Governor's Palace, you are the only one who has the experience to stand alone, and I hope you can understand the intentions of this marquis. ”

Pingnan Hou Chen Yue summoned him alone, and then said earnestly. Since then, Jin Shenghuan knew that Sizhou was just an outcast, and the purpose was to slow down the pace of the Qing army, and kill and injure the Qing army as much as possible, and Yangzhou was the final battlefield.

"There is only one battalion of the army I can give you, plus Zhang Tianfu, Ma Yingkui, Shi Dewei and other local commanders, and Liu Zhaoji and other troops who retreated from the north are also under your leadership. However, Zhang Tianfu and others are not in our Pingnan military system, and most of these people's subordinates are some soldiers with extremely poor discipline, and it is difficult to say whether they are willing to fight to the death with the Qing soldiers. You must be careful not to let them sell Sizhou City. Chen Yue finally said.

"But if you know that these people are unreliable, why do you want to keep them in Sizhou?" Jin Shenghuan asked puzzled.

Chen Yue smiled bitterly when he heard this, "Our Pingnan Army has been training for a year, and it has only trained less than 70,000 troops, and the number of troops is insufficient." The combat effectiveness of these armies is not good, but they can still be filled, and there are many people who dare to fight and are loyal to my Ming Dynasty. I just hope that Sizhou will be used as a touchstone to see what those people can use and who can't! ”

So Jin Shenghuan knew that Sizhou was not only a battlefield to delay the Qing army's attack to buy time for Yangzhou, but also a place to eliminate these local miscellaneous armies. Chen Yue, Marquis of Pingnan, did not have time to train these tens of thousands of miscellaneous troops, so he used the hands of the Qing army to purge them. Thinking of this, Jin Shenghuan was also a little shocked by Chen Yue's ruthless methods.

However, what Jin Shenghuan didn't know was that Chen Yue still had the intention of using these miscellaneous armies to arrogantly indulge the Qing army. He knew that there must be many generals who would surrender, because in another time and space, when the Qing army went south, most of the Ming army in Jiangbei chose to surrender to the Qing, and there were very few who really fought to the death. And in this time and space, although the imperial court's control over the local area was much higher than that of the Hongguang court, the warlords of the four towns who did not listen to the dispatch of selfish and domineering were all wiped out except for the Huang Degong department in Luzhou. However, when the Qing army went south, in the face of the strong and invincible combat power of the Qing army, there would definitely be many troops who chose to surrender to the enemy.

When the Qing army saw that the Ming army surrendered again, its arrogance must have reached its peak, thinking that the Ming army in Yangzhou was nothing more than that, and the so-called arrogant soldiers would be defeated, and Yangzhou City would be their burial place!

Defending the city is not the more troops the better, the important thing is to unite as one, so Chen Yue did not dare to let these miscellaneous troops enter Yangzhou at all, otherwise the situation of Yangzhou in another time and space for ten days may be repeated.

Now even Liu Zhaoji, who dares to fight, is not optimistic that Sizhou can be defended, and other generals are probably thinking the same way. Jin Shenghuan knew that the surrender of Zhang Tianfu and Zhang Tianlu's brothers, who guarded Xuyi, shocked these generals a lot, and maybe there were still people with the same thoughts.

Jin Shenghuan ordered his subordinates to privately monitor these generals and control their movements, and he summoned these people from time to time and encouraged them with kind words, claiming that as long as the city was defended for half a month, the army of Pingnanhou would rush to Sizhou, and then it would be the day of the defeat of the Qing army. As long as the Qing soldiers are repulsed, everyone will be rewarded.

The important thing in defending the city is to give hope to the army in the city, Jin Shenghuan not only regretted his words with Liu Zhaoji, but he was really sensitive at that time.

When Jin Shenghuan summoned Liu Zhaoji again, Liu Zhaoji's tone was light, but he said that he would definitely obey General Jin's orders, even if he died in battle, which made Jin Shenghuan very embarrassed.

The red-coated cannons of the Qing army bombarded day and night, the city wall of Sizhou was crumbling, and the cracks on the northwest side were getting bigger and bigger, and it had reached the point that the young and strong people in the city could not be filled with bricks and stones, and the moats outside the city had already been filled, so Jin Shenghuan knew that the time for the Qing soldiers to launch a general attack was getting closer and closer.

Sure enough, in the early morning of the next day, with a loud bang, the west city wall collapsed, and a gap of more than 30 zhang long appeared in front of the soldiers and civilians of the city.