Yang Chao arrived in Yangzhou on the 12th, and according to the agreement, Wang Pu should also come to Yangzhou on the 22nd, but there was no shadow of reinforcements.

Twenty-two days and nights.

Suddenly, a few soldiers appeared under the city wall, asking to open the city gate and let them in, Yang Chao has sealed the four gates, strictly prohibiting the military and civilians from entering and leaving, Yang Chao thinks that this practice can make the soldiers and civilians in the city fight to the end, just like Haizhou.

Yang Chao had them hanged up.

"Who are you? Whose soldiers are they? ”

A total of three soldiers, all wearing the uniforms of the Ming army, as soon as they went to the city wall, Yang Chao controlled them and interrogated them.

"The small ones are the soldiers under Huama Liu."

Several soldiers were very cooperative and knew everything, and they quickly explained it clearly.

These people are all soldiers of Huama Liu, Huama Liu is Liu Liangzuo's nickname, Yang Chao didn't expect that it was Huama Liu who surrendered.

Yang Chao didn't suspect it at all before, because Huama Liu was stationed in Fengyang and Shouzhou, and he was not on the Qing army's march route at all.

Several soldiers confessed that Huama Liu had already communicated secretly with the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and his younger brother Liu Liangchen had surrendered to the Manchu Qing Dynasty as early as the Jinzhou War.

The reason why these soldiers surrendered was because they didn't want to shave their hair, and the Qing army's requirements for surrendering troops were only the first step, and the second part was to carry the officers' families with flags and send their families to Beijing for resettlement.

After Liu Liu Liangzuo led the troops to Yangzhou, he then asked his soldiers to shave their hair according to Duoduo's order, these soldiers just didn't want to shave their hair so they secretly came here, but they were not the only ones who didn't want to shave their hair, they just stood in front, and according to them, their general soldiers didn't want to shave their hair. It is hoped that the Ming army will accept them.

I hope that a good time will be made for them to open the gates of the city so that they can enter the city.

This statement is very reasonable. Yang Chao knew that the Manchu Qing Dynasty's shaving order had almost forced the entire Jiangnan to reverse, and it was very reasonable for some officers to be unwilling to shave their hair. It's just that Yang Chao can't agree.

At this time, the great war is imminent, and opening the gates of the city to let a strange army enter the city is not something that a mature general can do.

Yang Chao not only did not agree, but also did the opposite, telling these soldiers to continue to return to the Manchu barracks.

Let them go back and tell their general soldiers, as long as their hearts are towards Daming, they have shaved their hair. The imperial court will not pursue it, just return to the hair later, but they need to cooperate with the Ming army, Yang Chao told them, don't die for the Manchu Qing Dynasty, there will be a time to return to the Ming Dynasty.

The three soldiers were sent down in frustration.

At this time, the Qing army stationed troops in the north, west and south of Yangzhou, leaving only no army in the east, not purely because of the principle of encircling three and missing one, but because Yangzhou is close to the Grand Canal in the east, Yangzhou is only forty miles away from the Yangtze River. Therefore, the water surface of the Yangzhou section of the canal is very wide, and due to the construction of the new city, the east city wall is very close to the river bank. Although it was not close to the river, the Manchu garrison was not allowed, and if the army was stationed on the other side of the wide river, it could not block the river at all, and the meaning of the siege was lost, so the Manchus simply left the east of the city.

Since the Manchu Qing Dynasty appeared under the city of Yangzhou on the 18th, there were backups almost every day, and at present, according to the size of the camp, there are almost 100,000 to 200,000 people. At first, Yang Chao was very strange, the Manchu Qing Dynasty came with a national army. Otherwise, how could there be such a large army.

The arrival of those soldiers made Yang Chao understand the truth, and it turned out that the army was stationed in the outer city of the city. Not only the Manchu army, but also the surrendered Ming army, and the main force of the Qing army, the Manchu, Han and Mongolian Eight Banner Army, was only about 30,000 people, which was the main force of Duoduo.

There are 100,000 troops in Yangzhou City, but the army with real combat effectiveness is only more than 1,000 people under Yang Chao, barely counting the remaining 30,000 people of Gao Jie, which is also an absolute disadvantage in terms of quantity.

As for the seventy or eighty thousand miscellaneous troops, Yang Chao's request to them is just not to flee and not to collapse.

The good news is that the Manchus are not monolithic, and a large number of troops may not be able to be used, after all, the army that has just betrayed its own motherland can have any combat effectiveness at all.

Probably because of this, the Manchu Qing stopped outside the city for so many days without attacking the city, probably in order to rectify military discipline, and before the reorganization of these armies, probably the Qing army will not move.

But Yang Chao miscalculated, and on the 23rd there was a calm day, and early on the morning of the 24th, the Qing army suddenly began to attack.

What surprised Yang Chao was that the Manchu Qing Dynasty had already changed its guns, and they did not use crowd tactics to attack the city, nor did they waste time cutting down trees to build siege equipment, but directly brought in cannons to bombard the city, and the cannon sound was huge, obviously a red-coated cannon!

Yang Chao suddenly realized that the Manchu Qing Dynasty had stopped for so many days, and it turned out that he was not waiting for reinforcements, but probably waiting for artillery.

As soon as the cannon sounded, the hearts of the soldiers in the city that Yang Chao had just deterred were a little confused, especially in the southwest of the city where the Manchu artillery bombarded intensively, the soldiers defending here panicked, and they jumped down the city one by one, along the city wall was a row of houses, they jumped on the roofs of the common people, and then hid in the people's homes.

Seeing that the defenders' hearts were so fragile, Yang Chao couldn't help but sigh again, most of these soldiers were actually local guards, I am afraid that they had never touched weapons before, and they were no different from the ordinary people in the city.

But at this time, he could only rely on these people, Yang Chao immediately asked Zhao Kang to bring 500 soldiers, and together with 10,000 soldiers from Li Benshen's headquarters, to patrol the north city wall, and let many men bring 500 elite soldiers, and Li Chengdong's headquarters with 10,000 soldiers, to defend the west city, Yang Chao brought 500 elite soldiers, and Gao Jie's headquarters 10,000 soldiers, and stepped on the south wall to guard.

In fact, letting these capable soldiers kick the city is not mainly to fight directly, but to supervise the battle, let those guards fight, at least supervise them not to break and escape.

Therefore, as soon as he went to the city, Yang Chao asked people to gallop on horseback on the city wall, and loudly ordered: All the armies must not flee from the battle, and those who violate the order will be beheaded!

And really killed a group of soldiers who ran indiscriminately, which stabilized the situation.

They were only frightened by the cannon for a while, and after a long time, they found that the cannonball hit the city wall, except for some shaking, there was no danger, and the high one flew over the city wall and smashed into the city. Smashed down one or two houses.

So I slowly recovered.

The siege of the captives was very orderly, there were about twenty or thirty cannons, all of which concentrated on bombarding the southwest corner of the city wall.

To the west of Yangzhou is a double-decker canal. Only between the two water gates in the south of the city, Rujiang Gate and Anjiang Gate, is a single-layer moat. However, the Rujiang Gate leads directly to the Grand Canal, and the Grand Canal makes a bend along the city wall from the east of the city to the outside of the Rujiang Gate, and then goes vertically south.

Therefore, Yang Chao guessed that the captives must have concentrated their forces on bombarding the section from Anjiangmen to Rujiangmen, and the main target was probably Anjiangmen.

Therefore, Yang Chao spread the army on this section of the city wall, and arranged heavy troops in the Anjiangmen tower.

The captives did not send troops to attack, and just kept bombarding the city walls. Artillery could be heard throughout the day.

In the evening, about eighty battles on the west side of Anjiangmen, a crack suddenly appeared, and the captives continued to bombard, and did not stop at night, and suddenly there was a loud bang at midnight, and the city wall in the southwest corner completely collapsed, and the collapsed city wall just filled a section of the canal.

Yang Chao felt his ears buzzing, and immediately asked the soldiers on the side: "Is there any cannon sound?" ”

The soldier shook his head and said, "I can't hear it!" ”

Yang Chao couldn't hear it himself, and asked several people, but they all said they couldn't hear it. It was determined that the shelling had stopped.

Yang Chao suddenly shouted: "The Tartars are going to attack the city!" Order the gunners in the city to immediately turn the muzzle of the gun and aim for the gap. Just wait for the Tartar soldiers to kill, and the big and small artillery will fire immediately! ”

At the same time, Yang Chao sent someone to the western wall to give an order: "Let Li Benshen take his 10,000 men down to the city, stay outside the gap, if the captives enter the city, they will be beaten out immediately, and if the captives can be repelled three times, the official will let people replace him!" Let Zhao Kang send troops to supervise Li Benshen, dare to take a step back, and kill without mercy! ”

There are many cannons on the city wall of Yangzhou, more than 300 guns. It's just that Yangzhou City is narrow, and Shi Kefa used to make these cannons move. Planks were also made on the battlements, so that the cannons were higher than the city walls. The shooting was open.

Sure enough, the figure of the enemy army soon appeared, and they shouted the word 'kill' loudly, not caring about exposing themselves at all, perhaps trying to use their voices to embolden themselves or scare the Ming army.

At this time, the sound of artillery suddenly rang out, and countless shells fell on the Tartar army, and a group of people retreated more quickly than when they came.

But it only took a quarter of an hour for the second wave of attacking troops to come up, and they also shouted the word 'kill', obviously this was not the Tartar headquarters, but the surrendered Ming army, which was driven to be cannon fodder.

The artillery continued to bombard.

But this time the Tartars were very resolute, and braved the bombardment of artillery, and even rushed into the gap, and at this time they encountered tens of thousands of soldiers led by Li Benshen, who were once again beaten back.

In just two attacks, the Qing army left hundreds of corpses in the gap.

The third wave of attacks was launched again, still a quarter of an hour later, and the number of Qing troops in this attack reached more than 1,000 people, and as a result, he and Li Benshen were strangled at the gap for a while, and only after 100 people escaped!

Yang Chao couldn't help but feel puzzled and angry, this group of ruffians, just surrendered, and worked so hard for the new master.

If they could have this kind of fighting will to defend the Ming Dynasty, the Tartars would not have been able to come here at all.

The tenacity of these surrendered troops made Li Benshen unexpected, he divided the army into three teams, each team of about 3,000 people, and took turns to attack, but in two rounds, he lost seven or eight hundred people, and he couldn't help but feel heartache.

But the third wave of the Qing army arrived, and he once fought with the captives at the gap, and this time he suffered even more heavy losses, directly losing thousands of people, although the Qing army suffered heavier losses, at least more than 1,000 people remained in the gap.

"Give Li Chengdong an order to go to the gap and stand by, and be sure to guard the gap. Li Liang, you lead people to unload thirty tiger squatting cannons on the city wall, set them up behind the gap, and be responsible for supporting Li Chengdong! Let many men supervise the battle, and those who take a step back will be killed! ”

Li Benshen repelled the Tartars three times, and Yang Chao immediately asked people to transfer Li Chengdong to change his defense.

At this time, Yang Chao found that it was not entirely a bad thing for the Qing army to make this gap in the artillery bombardment, at least it limited the scope of the battle.

Both sides fought around this gap, so that the Qing army could not show its strength, so that it could not show its superiority in strength.

Yang Chao is easier to defend, it should not be difficult to hold on until the day, and when it is daytime, you can organize the people to plug the gap, so that it can be delayed for at least one day, and your own reinforcements should arrive tomorrow. (To be continued)

The fastest update, no pop-up window to read please.