Chapter 470: Great Chaos
The moment chosen by Chongming to send troops was too unexpected, and the Spring Festival sent troops, and the weather was cold, not everyone could think of it. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. biquge。 info In addition, the troops were dispatched quickly along the Yangtze River, and no time was wasted attacking the cities along the way, even the attack on Zhenjiang only took a day. As a result, the city of Nanjing did not respond to the sudden attack of the Chongming army, in fact, these days, the turmoil in the area of Songjiang and Jiangsu has also been reported, but no one would have thought that the target of the Chongming army would be Nanjing. In this era, the speed of information transmission was originally slow, and the Qing troops in various parts of the river discovered the movement of the Ming army fleet in the river, and then reported the news step by step, and the speed of transmission to Nanjing was not much faster than the speed of the Chongming army's march.
Therefore, when Jia Yuanyin's cavalry went straight to Nanjing from Zhenjiang, Nanjing had just received the news of the fall of Zhenjiang, and he didn't expect the Ming army to come so quickly.
Therefore, the city gate of Nanjing will be opened normally in the early morning, and the people will be allowed to enter.
When the green battalion guarding the city gate found that it was the Ming cavalry galloping in, it was too late to close the city gate!
Jia Yuanyin took the lead and swept past the Qing soldiers defending the city, swinging his long knife and splashing blood. Fifteen hundred cavalry crossed the narrow outer gate and rushed into the city of Nanjing.
The Nanjing city of the Ming Dynasty is divided into four cities: the palace city, the imperial city, the capital and the outer city, there are four city walls, and the outermost outer Guo city wall is seventy miles long, which can be described as the largest city in this era. In terms of the area of the city, it is larger than the city of Beijing.
Not only is it large in area, but it also has a large population. Nanjing is located in the south of the Yangtze River rich place, is the Ming Dynasty with the capital, the population in the city is as much as one million, and because the Qing soldiers attacked Nanjing, the Hongguang court did not resist, so that Nanjing did not experience killing, the Eight Banners just drove the people in the inner city to the outer city, leaving the inner city as the place where the Eight Banners lived.
However, at this time, most of the Eight Banners soldiers in the city were taken to Wuchang to attack the loyal battalion of a tiger Li Jin, leaving the inner city empty.
Long before sending troops, Ren Siqi took the generals to study the map of Nanjing, and before sending troops, the General Staff Department formulated several sets of siege strategies. Jia Yuanyin only had more than 1,000 cavalry in his hands, which was not enough to capture the entire city. Therefore, his current task is to occupy a city gate to open the passage for the later Ren Siqi army, and then to create chaos in Nanjing as much as possible to delay the response of the Qing army in the city.
So after attacking the city, Li Yuanyin divided half of the cavalry to occupy the Qilin Gate behind him, and brought a thousand cavalry to kill directly in the city.
A thousand cavalry entered the city, which immediately caused a great chaos in the city, and the people in the streets cried and fled for shelter.
However, the distance between the Qilin Gate of Waiguo and the Dong'an Gate of the capital is as much as eight miles, and when Jia Yuanyin arrived at the Dong'an Gate with the cavalry, he found that the city gate had been closed, so he had no choice but to kill along the city wall to the north, trying to attack the capital from other city gates.
In the imperial city, the mansion of Xu Wenjue, the former Duke of Wei, was passed down from the Xu family of Xu Da, the Duke of Wei, and has been passed down for eleven generations since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. As the first noble family in Nanjing, after more than 200 years of operation, the Xu family's mansion is extremely large and imposing, and the luxury is comparable to the imperial palace. When the Qing army attacked Nanjing, Xu Wenjue, the Duke of Wei, surrendered, and was later demoted to a commoner, and all the family business accumulated for more than 200 years was cheaper, and this mansion was no exception.
Hong Chengchou was stationed in Nanjing as a southeast economic strategy, and he did not dare to live in the palace, so he chose this Wei Mansion as his own line. In fact, since Luck Dehun took away the main force of the Eight Banners in the city in December, Hong Chengchou has always been cautious, he is not to guard against the Chongming army, after all, Chongming is thousands of miles away from Nanjing, and there are countless cities in between. The rebels of the Ming Dynasty near Nanjing, which Hong Chengchou had to guard against.
Since arriving in Nanjing in August last year, Hong Chengchou has exterminated several remnants of the Ming Dynasty, and in September, Hong Chengchou commanded the commander Ye Chen, the commander Zhang Tianlu, the general Bu Congshan, Liu Zeyong and others to extinguish the Ming army of the Jinsheng Department entrenched in Huizhou. However, in the four prefectures of Hui, Ning, Chi, and Tai, especially in the mountains and forests around Jixi, there were still remnants of the Ming army everywhere, and they refused to return to the Qing Dynasty.
Among them, there is Zhu Yixi of the Ming Dynasty clan, who called himself the King of Ruichang, and encouraged a group of Diao people to follow, according to reports, there are as many as 20,000 soldiers under the pseudo-King Ruichang.
Hong Chengchou planned to wait for the first month and when the weather was not warm, he would transfer Ma Degong from Jingkou and work with Zhang Tianlu and other green battalions to exterminate him. Although the remnants of the Ming Dynasty in various places are numerous, they are far from being the opponents of the elite green battalion soldiers.
However, just after the Lantern Festival, Hong Chengchou suddenly received the news that Chongmingming's army came from the Yangtze River and attacked Zhenjiang. After learning the news, Hong Chengchou was taken aback, and immediately instinctively knew that something was wrong. Ren Siqi led the army to send troops on New Year's Day, not only to capture Zhenjiang, I am afraid that he is planning to Nanjing City.
Nanjing City is the capital of the Ming Dynasty, if it falls into the hands of Ren Siqi, it will inevitably cause the entire Jiangnan chaos, and then I don't know how many people will rise up and raise the banner of the Ming Dynasty again, and the consequences are unbearable for Hong Chengchou.
Hong Chengchou immediately began to dispatch troops, stopped the vacation of the green battalion soldiers, and planned the deployment. However, there are only more than 10,000 green battalion soldiers in the city, and there are not enough to defend such a long city wall. Helpless, Hong Chengchou could only focus on the city wall of the capital, and the city wall of Waiguo only sent a small part of the troops to garrison. However, before he could adjust the city defenses, the cavalry of the Ming army had already entered the city.
The speed of Jia Yuanyin's cavalry was too fast, so fast that it was completely beyond Hong Chengchou's expectations. In Hong Chengchou's view, it would take a few days for the Ming army to conquer Zhenjiang, after all, there were 5,000 elite green battalions in Zhenjiang City. And with these few days, it was enough for him to send green battalions from all over the country to reinforce Nanjing.
Fortunately, Hong Chengchou reacted in time, and as soon as the Ming army attacked Zhenjiang, he ended the vacation of the soldiers in the city, so Jia Yuanyin had no chance to attack the capital.
When he learned that there were only more than 1,000 cavalry in the Ming army, Hong Chengchou sent the general soldier Bu Congshan to kill out of the inner city with 2,000 green battalions, trying to drive the Ming army out of the city. Who knew that the speed of Jia Yuanyin's cavalry was too fast, and they went north along the inner city wall, passed through the foothills of the shogunate, and directly hit the Guanyin Gate in the north. One thousand cavalry charged to disperse the defenders of Guanyin Gate, and took advantage of the situation to occupy the northernmost gate of Nanjing. Out of the Guanyin Gate is the Yangtze River, if the Ming army comes from the river, it can just enter the city from the Guanyin Gate.
After Jia Yuanyin's cavalry galloped in the city, the whole city was in chaos, and almost all the people knew that the Ming army had fought back, so there were many unwilling people who rose up to respond to the Ming army's entry into the city. When Bu Congshan led the army to chase Jia Yuanyin's cavalry, he was attacked by the people several times.