The eleventh year of Chongzhen was a turbulent year, in the first few months of this year, the Ming Dynasty army attacked from all sides, constantly defeating all kinds of rebels, and for a time it seemed that there was a momentum to completely suppress the uprisings in various places. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 At the same time, gossip began to circulate in the capital, saying that Emperor Chongzhen and Yang Sichang, the secretary of the Ministry of War, were secretly making peace with Jianzhen, and for a while public opinion in the government and the opposition was in an uproar. Even Gu Jiang couldn't help but mention this matter when he wrote a letter to Zheng Sen to discuss his knowledge.

However, Zheng Sen knew that this peace negotiation was actually just a delaying tactic for both the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, and neither the Manchu Qing nor the Ming Dynasty had any sincerity in peace talks. For Chongzhen and Yang Sichang, now that the battle to exterminate the Liukou has reached a critical moment, if the Manchu Qing Dynasty kills it at this time, then the entire strategic layout may completely collapse. And for this encirclement and suppression, the Ming Dynasty has invested a lot of manpower and material resources, and naturally it has also been lost. And now the Ming Dynasty, which is in a financial crisis, actually has no capital to organize such an encirclement and suppression of "four positive and six corners, ten sides of the net". Therefore, they need to use peace negotiations to drag down the Manchus, so that they will not suddenly kill at the most critical time, so that the encirclement and suppression of "four positive and six corners, ten sides of the net" will completely fail.

Zheng Sen knew this, and the Manchus naturally knew this. With Huang Taiji's wisdom, it is impossible for him not to see the intentions of the Ming Dynasty, and he naturally knows that if the Ming Dynasty is allowed to clean up the "Liukou" in peace, it will be very unfavorable to the Manchu Qing no matter how you look at it. Therefore, it is almost inevitable to enter the Guannai, threaten Gyeonggi, and plunder on a large scale. But Huang Taiji still put on a look of eagerness to make peace, and even said that if the Ming Dynasty was willing to make peace with the Manchus, he was willing to cancel the title of emperor and declare himself a vassal to the Ming Dynasty. Of course, for this, he needs Daming to give him some "reward" or something.

Compared with the Ming Dynasty's wishful thinking of ignoring the threat of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and pinning its hopes on the enemy's stupid strategy of "four squares and six corners, ten sides of the net", Huang Taiji's approach was obviously much more clever and insidious. The Ming wanted to use peace talks to paralyze the Manchus, but the Manchus also wanted to use peace talks to paralyze the Ming Dynasty. Huang Taiji made the appearance of being anxious for peace talks, giving the Ming Dynasty monarchs and ministers the illusion that their strategy of delaying the army might succeed. It is precisely because of this illusion that they dare to spare all their military power to fight the "rogue bandits". The greater the strength that our Ming Dynasty invests in the operation to crack down on the "rogue bandits", the greater the losses that our Ming will suffer after the failure of this strategic action in the future. And the easier it is for the Qing army to break through, the greater the harvest after breaking the pass.

In fact, within the Ming Dynasty, it was not that no one saw this problem. Lu Xiangsheng is very opposed to this kind of gambling behavior that pins hopes on the basis of the enemy's stupidity. It's just that Chongzhen, who is anxious, is facing an increasingly unsustainable situation, and it is indeed difficult to resist the temptation of gambling.

The matter of peace negotiation was really dragged on half-dead and half-alive, and both sides on the chessboard thought that the other had been fooled. The Ming Dynasty continued to devote its forces to the battle against the "Liukou", and the number of troops left near Gyeonggi became smaller and smaller. By May of that year, the Ming army continued to win important victories in the battle against the Liukou, Li Zicheng was surrounded in the mountains, in a difficult situation, and Zhang Xianzhong surrendered directly to the Ming Dynasty. Of course, in history, Zhang Xianzhong later rebelled. So many people think that Xiong Wencan, who surrendered Zhang Xianzhong, was deceived by Zhang Xianzhong. But Zheng Sen felt that if there was no later Manchu Qing Dynasty, if the Ming court really killed Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong's acceptance of Zhao'an may not be fake.

In July of this year, Huang Taiji announced that because the Ming Dynasty peace talks were not sincere, he wanted to teach the Ming Dynasty a lesson, so he sent an army to attack the Ming Dynasty. However, the attack ended hastily after the Ming Dynasty quickly mobilized troops to King Qin and sent people to "pacify" Huang Taiji again.

In order to avoid ruining the achievements of the "suppression of bandits" and to stabilize the situation a little, it is natural for our Ming Dynasty to quickly send the army back to continue to deal with Li Zicheng and them. But in this process, the army ran on both sides, and the result was naturally mobilized in vain and became a tired army. Huang Taiji took advantage of this operation, which not only made Chongzhen and Yang Sichang believe that their delaying tactics were effective, but also made the Ming army exhausted.

Sure enough, in August, the Manchu army suddenly attacked again, breaking through Jimen Pass in one fell swoop and entering Gyeonggi, and at this time, the Ming Dynasty army, which had just experienced going back and forth, no longer had the ability to quickly return to Beijing again.

At this time, Emperor Chongzhen naturally knew that he could not deceive people, but was deceived by people to fools. But now, Emperor Chongzhen can only hold on. In order to keep the "fruits of victory" some time ago, Emperor Chongzhen only ordered martial law in the capital, and did not mobilize the army that was originally used to deal with Li Zicheng on a large scale, but only mobilized some border troops nearby to strengthen the defense of Gyeonggi.

This was another gamble expected by Huang Taiji, and the army mobilized by Chongzhen was simply not enough to resist the Manchu army, on the contrary, the continuous investment of small forces gave the Manchus a chance to break through.

It was also at this time that the Zheng Jiajun near Jinghai saw the legendary Eight Banners for the first time.

The first Eight Banners appeared near Jinghai at the end of August. This is a small group of cavalry, the number is not much, about thirty or forty people, it is estimated that it should be the Manchu reconnaissance elite or something. They first led their horses up a small hill, looked at the small polygonal low earthen fortress on the edge of the harbor, and the red flag of the Ming army and the flag of the Dutch East India Company flying on the fortress, and then carefully observed the two trenches on the periphery of the fort, as well as the circle of wooden stakes and horses outside the trenches. Then he mounted his horse again, and approached the trench in a loose formation, and the stakes and horses beside the trench.

After the Manchus broke through the border wall, the Fujian soldiers near Jinghai began to deploy repulsive horses about fifty paces outside the trench. These horses were used to simulate the barbed wire of later generations. At that time, Zheng Sen's iron-making system, especially the production of wrought iron, which could be used to make iron wire, mainly relied on frying steel, and the output was quite limited. At least for now, Zheng Sen does not have that much valuable wrought iron in his hands that can be used to make iron wire. Therefore, it can only be replaced by a rejection of horses for the time being. Of course, it was much easier to deal with a horse than with barbed wire, and the lightly armed infantry could easily climb over the horse, even with the white-armored soldiers in heavy armor, it was not too difficult for them to climb over the horse. Therefore, it is also necessary to bury a large number of wooden stakes outside the horse as an aid. The main role of these high and low, long and short wooden stakes was to slow down the Manchu army's approach to the rejection of horses, and to prevent the Manchu Qing Dynasty's commonly used shield carts from approaching.

The Manchu cavalry soon approached the stakes and the horses, and because they were closer, they could now see the details of these things more clearly. The defenders seemed to have taken a long time, and there were a lot of wooden stakes buried, and the outermost wooden stakes were more than twenty zhang long to the horse. However, this approach made the leader of the team Dahashu very despised.

"Those who don't know such a defense must be fools who can't fight." Dahashu thought, "The horse is fifty steps away from the ditch, and these stakes are dozens of steps away from the horse. Moreover, there were also wooden stakes buried between the rejection of the horse and the trench, and it was difficult for them themselves to get close to the rejection of the horse, so they could only shoot from a distance with bows and arrows. Who can shoot an arrow from such a distance? It's just a waste of my own strength. ”

When you are staring into the abyss, the abyss is staring at you. While Dahashu was observing the fortifications of the Zheng army, the soldiers of the Zheng family were also observing these Manchu cavalry in their own fortifications.

"Ignore them, they're just scouts. They didn't wear heavy armor, they didn't carry any siege equipment, and there were only a few dozen of them, and it was impossible for them to attack us. The squadron instructor of the factory guard, the Frenchman Lucien, looked through the binoculars at the Manchu cavalry on low Mongolian horses.

"They're already within our range, should we fire a shot?" Guo Huaiyi asked. Guo Huaiyi is Zheng Zhilong's old general, and like most of the generals of the Zheng family, they are interested in buying and selling at sea. Much more familiar than things on land. In addition, the defense on the land here basically relied on the men and horses of the factory protection team, so Guo Huaiyi first raised such a question to Lu Xi.

Lucien was an Austrian, worked as an artilleryman for a while, and according to his own account, he participated in the war with the Bohemians, and commanded an artillery group with the great commander Wallenstein. But Zheng Sen deduced from some conversations with him that these words of this guy are true and false, judging from his proficiency in artillery, this guy has been an artilleryman, and there is no problem in commanding at least one artillery group, but commanding an artillery group is pure bragging. Zheng Sen believes that this guy has been the commander of an artillery group at most.

However, this person's brain is still bright, and he is bold, and he usually does things seriously, but he also has some training prospects. So this time, he was sent to Jinghai as the commander of the factory protection team.

"No, at this time, we shouldn't expose the killing distance of our artillery." Lucien shook his head.

Those wooden stakes were within the killing range of the six-pounder guns, and Zheng Sen gathered almost all the six-pounder guns in one go this time, and the number of guns reached as many as thirty, and as time went by, this number became more and more.

The Manchu scouts circled the stake array, and without making any further movements, they turned their horses' heads and soon disappeared.