Chapter 125: The Smoothest Strategy (Part II)

The scenery of the lake and mountains of Hangzhou West Lake is certainly so beautiful that people will not want to return, and it is poetic...... But if it is a snowy cold night, against the biting cold wind, walking one foot deep and one foot shallow in the silent and desolate dark mountain forest, I am afraid that the feeling is not so wonderful.

And on this cold night when the heavy snow had just stopped, a group of ragged Ming officers and soldiers trudged through the dark mountain forest on the shore of the West Lake.

According to the "Pingqi Strategy" formulated by the Hangzhou Prefect's Yamen with reference to the Battle of Chibi, when Fuyang County sent an arson fleet from the upper reaches of the Qiantang River to attack the thief fleet smoothly, Hangzhou City should also organize a group of soldiers and horses to launch a night attack from the land at the same time, so as to achieve a surprising victory.

Originally, the route of this sneak attack was very simple, because Phoenix Villa is the site of the former Southern Song Dynasty Imperial Palace, and it is close to the urban area of Hangzhou.

But the problem is that the prefect of Liu Mengqian and a group of literati who claim to be "knowing soldiers" also feel that the thieves also know this, and will definitely send spies to keep an eye on the Fengshan Gate, and at the same time tightly fortify the road into the villa, and the raiding troops dispatched in Hangzhou are likely to be discovered as soon as they open the city gate, and then hit the copper wall and iron wall...... Therefore, they did not dare to take the shortcut of Fengshan Gate, but asked the night attack troops to go out of Wulin Gate, circle most of the West Lake in a counterclockwise direction, and launch an assault from the southwest of Phoenix Villa, that is, the opposite direction of Hangzhou City, so as to surprise the thieves.

Okay, out of the martial arts gate out of the martial arts gate, anyway, out of the martial arts gate not far from the white causeway, after the white causeway is the lonely mountain, and then after the lonely mountain to the shore of the lake to turn on the Su Causeway, and the south end of the Su Causeway is the Leifeng Tower, behind the Leifeng Tower is the Phoenix Mountain. But the problem is that this road is also impassable, since the thieves have been entrenched in the Phoenix Villa, they have set up a guard under the Leifeng Pagoda, and they have also patrolled the lake day and night in small boats to prevent people from crossing the lake from the north to sneak attack: in the wars of Japan, the lords of all sides and the shogunate were very fond of sending ninjas to do this kind of thing.

In this way, if the official army sends a large number of troops and horses to attack Phoenix Mountain along the Bai Causeway and Su Causeway, I am afraid that they will be detected as soon as they get on the causeway!

So, the prefect and several of his staff discussed, and had to design an offensive route away from the West Lake on the map, but this would be troublesome, the West Lake in Hangzhou is indeed not too big, and a circle around the lake is fifteen kilometers. However, due to the fact that the night raiding troops could not take the shortcut road of "Baidi-Gushan-Su Dike", they even had to stay away from the lake to avoid being discovered by the thieves' patrol boats. Then, these poor night raid death squads must first go up to Baobao Mountain (where the Baochu Pagoda is located), then pass the Lingyin Temple, and then climb over Feilai Peak, South Peak, Hupao Mountain, Jade Emperor Mountain, Bagua Field...... After climbing so many mountains and hills and walking at least fifty miles of mountain roads, you can "surprise" into Phoenix Villa from behind.

It's really "move your mouth above, and break your legs below"! There is no greater disaster on paper than this!

And, first, it's still a night road without street lights; Second, the temperature at this time was minus seven or eight degrees Celsius, and it had just snowed heavily...... Moreover, due to widespread malnutrition, many lower-class Ming Dynasty people had night blindness, but they could not carry torches during night raids, so this night raid army, which was burdened with heavy responsibilities, gradually dispersed in the endless trek in the dark......

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

The cold, biting silence and snowy nights, the seeping wind through the trees, the snow that shook off the branches from time to time......

In the midst of this panicked atmosphere, like the ghost movies of later horror movies, Lee Sun-min carried a rusty spear and relied on the faint moonlight that occasionally penetrated through the trees, and several of his colleagues trudged through the snow-covered mountain forest.

Like his ancestors, Li Shanmin was a hereditary military household in Hangzhou and belonged to a member of the Ming Emperor's affairs system. But like his ancestors, Li Shanmin has never received a serious military salary for half his life, and he has also never participated in a decent drill for half his life.

However, at this time, he had to deal with the legendary "Australian thief" with sharp firearms and extremely vicious!

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the military household system of the guard, which was the cornerstone of national defense, had almost collapsed. The tuntian under the name of each guard station was basically embezzled by the officers or gentry, and some of the military households became serfs, and the remaining military households did not even have land to plant, so they could only go to the city to work.

Li Shanmin is such an unlucky military family who has no tuntian to grow and cannot receive military salaries, so he has no choice but to work in the city of Hangzhou. What's even more unfortunate is that even if they have been driven to the city to work, he still has to pay tribute to his superiors every month, otherwise he will be killed directly...... In this way, Li Shanmin's life is naturally very hard, not to mention begging for a wife, he is simply on the verge of starvation to death at all times!

But this is not the most tragic, what is even more tragic is that when the prefect decided the policy of attacking Phoenix Mountain at night, he could not find a reliable force that could carry out this plan Unlike the border areas of Liaoxi, Xuanfu and Datong. As a matter of fact, all the officers and soldiers of the guards in the entire Zhejiang Province have not trained or led troops for several generations, and have commanded real military operations. The officers at all levels in Hangzhou have degenerated into the kind of landlords who sit on the land and collect rents, and their so-called householders are nothing more than the heads of the villages who supervise the tenants' farming, and they cannot be compared with the householders of the Jiangmen in western Liaoxi in terms of combat effectiveness...... Therefore, the officers at all levels responsible for the implementation of the plan generally refused to let their cronies and family members send them to death, and they themselves refused to experience the rain of bullets and bullets of the thieves.

As a result, Li Shanmin, the military households who were working in Hangzhou, were all arrested, and barely gathered 200 people, known to the outside world as "800 strong men", and then each of them was rewarded with a full meal, a bowl of bad wine, a tael of silver, and a moldy old number coat, and then some rotten and rusty spears, fire grease for arson, and inferior bird guns that no one dared to use, and then they were ordered to go out of the city to set fire to Phoenix Mountain and kill the enemy under the mildew military flag.

Obviously, such a garbage army, which has extremely poor morale and quality, and is unwilling, let alone defeating the thieves, is a question of whether it can successfully reach its destination. Therefore, the officers in the city had to allocate a few cronies and organize a vicious overseer team, so that these fat and strong men would carry broadswords and whips to "escort" the "regular army" who had never received military training on the road......

It is a pity that these officers in Hangzhou, who have zero actual combat experience, still greatly underestimate the difficulty of marching in the heavy snow, because there is at least half a meter of snow everywhere, and the temperature is minus seven or eight degrees Celsius. Many military families were just walking on the road, and suddenly fell to the ground without warning, and then died soon after.

Imagine that even in the 21st century, modern blue-collar workers in down jackets and warm boots who are left to work in the snow in the winter will often suffer from frostbite when they finish their work. And at present, these Ming military households, who are in a state of hunger all the year round, have a very weak physique, and don't even have a dog skin jacket on their bodies, they have only a dead end when they encounter the same situation.

As a result, before they reached Lingyin Temple, more than 50 soldiers of the guards had disappeared during the march, and it was not clear whether they had fallen behind and fled, or had frozen to death halfway, or had stepped into a pond and ditch covered with thin ice and snow, and drowned silently.

Even those who were relatively stronger and had better warmth conditions couldn't stand it, so they found some dry firewood in the ruins of the Lingyin Temple, which had just been burned by thieves, poured oil and sulfur that were originally scheduled to be used to attack Phoenix Villa, and lit a bonfire to keep warm......

But poor Li Shanmin did not have such treatment, after a little respite, he had to embark on the long journey to Phoenix Villa again, those who have no father and no mother, can't marry a wife and can't have children, naturally they don't have to be so self-explanatory, some of them are more clever guys, after leaving the Wulin Gate in Hangzhou, they began to flee continuously, and after the supervision team stopped to rest halfway, because there was no supervision, the remaining singles who were not so clever were also reminded by others, They all broke away from the team and quickly fled.

But although Li Shanmin is too poor to marry a wife and have children, his parents are still there, and he is now detained as a hostage in Hangzhou...... So, he was temporarily elected as the captain, and a dozen other soldiers who were also dragged by their families, formed a team, and together with the other three death squads, they continued to slowly trek towards Phoenix Mountain in the distance.

According to the strategy formulated by Governor Liu, the night raiding team on land should lurk in the woods of Phoenix Mountain in advance, and wait until the arson boat is launched and the riverside fire starts, and then attack the thief camp at the same time. However, due to the difficulty of the snow march, when Li Shanmin finally led his small team from the west to the vicinity of Phoenix Mountain, it was already the afternoon of the next day, and half of the people on the way froze or fell and injured their legs, so they could only be left to fend for themselves on the way...... As for the other three teams, their whereabouts are unknown, and I don't know if they got lost in the snow, or they slid off the cliff collectively and died.

In any case, although the original plan to attack Phoenix Mountain Villa at night must have been lost, and the fire attack fleet on the river did not know how to fight, but these people have gone through a lot of hardships and sacrifices to get here, and they have to put a fire to make a difference......

With this in mind, Li Shanmin beckoned everyone to find a sheltered open space, and then took out the fire folds, sulfur, clear oil and other things they carried in their blankets, spread them out on the ground, and carried out the final inspection before arson. But before he could finish counting his things, he heard a gunshot, and one of his companions next to him was immediately beaten to the point that his brain burst and he fell into the snow without saying a word, flowing red and white.

When Li Shanmin, who went to the battlefield for the first time in his life, saw this, he was immediately frightened to the point that his legs and feet were sore, and he collapsed to the ground, and other military households were also so frightened that they rolled on the ground and crawled on the ground. Before these guys could stand up, they rushed over a group of soldiers carrying Xueliang steel knives and strange patterns painted on their faces, and surrounded them.

Looking at these legendary "Daming death squads", they all shrank into a ball like quails, and they couldn't stop begging for mercy in their mouths, and Captain Jinhuan, who hadn't slept all night in order to search for these cowards, finally couldn't help but spit with disdain, "...... It's really a waste, it's far worse than the Taiwanese natives! ”

Next, Captain Huan's Li Mountain Infantry Company, a few miles away, found another small unit of the Ming Army, which was also half frozen to death, spinning around the mountain like a headless fly...... Next, according to the confessions obtained from the torture of the prisoners, a team of Japanese security troops was ordered to step on the snow through the Su Causeway, and went straight to the Lingyin Temple on the other side of the West Lake, which had been burned to ruins.

At this point, the night attack plan planned by the Hangzhou prefect's yamen on land and water was completely bankrupt, and the night attack troops of more than 200 people out of the city were killed in a total of nine people and more than 20 were captured...... As for where the vast majority of the remaining Ming troops disappeared, only God knows......

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

The well-planned land and water attack was completely bankrupt, and the Hangzhou Weisuo army, which had gone out of the city to sneak attack, suffered "heavy losses", and the fire attack fleet that had high hopes became a big joke...... This series of heavy blows made the prefect Liu Mengqian, who was looking forward to the good news, suddenly feel extremely disappointed.

In a fit of rage, Liu Mengqian's prefect immediately summoned those "vulgar martial artists" who he looked down on the most on weekdays, including the commanders of the third rank and the staff of the fourth rank, all of whom were severely scolded by the lord of the fifth rank, accusing them of not implementing their "clever plan" with their hearts...... Under normal circumstances, for such a crime, these high-ranking military attaches of the Ming Empire should feel very aggrieved. But the situation at the end of the Ming Dynasty was obviously completely abnormal: on the one hand, it was because of the general environment of the noble and the lowly, and on the other hand, because they did lose the battle and had little confidence. Therefore, these military attaches had to be honestly scolded and let the prefect be angry to his heart's content.

In the south of the Yangtze River and the interior of the Ming Dynasty, because of the scarcity of wars, the status of military attachés has been incredibly low......

It's a pity that these lowly military attaches are honest, but it's a pity that their ability to fight is also lost......

After scolding these stupid martial artists who don't care about fighting, after having enough of a belly, Liu Mengqian's prefect also slowly calmed down, and never thought of going out of the city to fight with the thief for three hundred rounds, and relied on merit to save his official position Anyway, this Hangzhou provincial capital city has deep walls and plenty of grain and grass, and it has not been broken since the founding of the Ming Dynasty.

However, no matter whether this Hangzhou will be broken by thieves, in the case that the governor of Zhejiang led his troops to Wenzhou and did not return, and the political envoy of Zhejiang was temporarily vacant, even if he successfully held the provincial capital, this crime of sitting back and watching the thieves rampant and losing his teacher and land will probably still have to bear on the head of his parents, even if he wants to hide it, it is impossible. Therefore, in the case of not being able to defeat the thief, his first priority now should actually be to take advantage of the thief's flaunting power outside the city, and the gentry in the city dare not disobey, and squeeze a little more silver from them to supplement the eunuch bag. In the future, if he is dismissed by the imperial court and questioned, his family can take out two taels of silver and go to the bigwigs in Beijing to do activities for themselves.

Therefore, under the impetus of the guiding ideology of "seizing the time to make money", Governor Liu quickly launched a vigorous large-scale compulsory fund-raising activity among the wealthy merchants and gentry in Hangzhou in the name of resisting the mustard...... In the end, according to all the statistics, it was only one day to raise as much as 120,000 taels of silver!

Although so much silver was squeezed out in one go, it was really overjoying. However, in the end, Liu Zhifu is an elegant and wise person, thinking more thoughtfully, from the beginning of the consideration of the consequences of this practice, in order to prevent any big family in the tyranny of the wanton can't think of it, in a fit of anger to vote for the thief, Liu Zhifu organized the Qingke staff in advance, searched the intestines and scraped the stomach to write the article "Song Dynasty Atrocities", and let people widely copy and distribute.

For those wealthy gentlemen, "The Atrocities of the Song Dynasty" focuses on the horrific scenes of the ancestral graves of those big families outside Hangzhou being dug up, the ancestral hall being burned, the family property being seized, the fields being distributed to the lowly mud legs, and the families being hanged on the trees...... thus successfully aroused their righteous indignation, and these people soon shouted: "Swear to live and die with the provincial capital, and never let the thieves step into Hangzhou City"! No more complaints about donations.

As for those poor Confucian students who have eaten the last meal at home, but there is still a child who is famous and famous, according to the experience of previous years, it is even more necessary to take special care of them, these people are burdened by fame and fame on weekdays, although they have status but no wealth, but they are very unsatisfactory, but they have some knowledge, and they are trying to "learn literature and martial arts and sell them to the emperor's family" every day, sharpening their heads and wanting to climb up, naturally they are potential dangerous elements.

At present, this Australian thief is rampage outside Hangzhou, like a bamboo, and it looks quite vulgar and unliterate, there should be no scholar, now go to their door, maybe you can also find a good future I am afraid that at present, among these poor children in Hangzhou, there are already so many black-hearted bold people who are eager to try, want to secretly collude with these murderous thieves, and take the rich gentry and rich families in Hangzhou as their own promotion level: Obviously, If they succeed, the consequences will be unimaginable.

In this regard, Liu Zhifu played a set of exquisite compound punches: first in the "Song Song Atrocity Record", he painted a nonsense "The witchcraft of the thief hurts the heavens and the peace, and it needs to be nourished by the literary atmosphere, but the thief has always been vulgar, so every time he casts a spell, he is sacrificed to the scholar and Confucian" The barbarian blood sacrifice scene is to tell these poor scholars not to daydream, even if you go to the thief, you will let the family be an adult animal, and tie it to the altar with a thousand cuts!

Of course, it is estimated that many people will not believe this, so Governor Liu continued to cut the grass and eradicate the roots, announcing that he would "educate the four people to break the thief and demon arts", and according to the official archives, these poor scholars were each given a silver settlement fee, and they were levied to be the people to go to the city to guard the palace. Someone doesn't follow? If you don't comply, you will pay ten taels of silver for exemption from military service! And those who can't pay the fine and refuse to obey are all considered thieves! There is no negotiation about the removal of all merits!

After such a set of carrots and sticks, the gentlemen in Hangzhou were tossed so much that they were either united or silent...... The prefect Liu Mengqian was quite proud of this achievement, and showed off to his cronies and said, "...... I learned from the history books that the first priority of defending the city is to stabilize people's hearts. In the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty in the past, there was a loyal minister Zhang Patrol guarding Suiyang, whose garrison strength was less than one-twentieth of the thieves besieging the city, and Suiyang was not a famous city, but it could be defended until the people in the city were almost eaten up, and then let the rebels capture it. It can be seen that the most important thing is that the city must be stable, as long as the people's hearts are stable, the military will settle down, and the city defense will become strong. ”

In this regard, those Qingke and staff members were naturally full of sycophants, and they did not mention the "unparalleled wisdom" of the prefect.

However, although Governor Liu could repeatedly show his skills and teach a gentleman a lesson, he couldn't stop the thieves outside the city from approaching step by stepBefore the prefect could be proud, the rumbling sound of cannons from Houchao Gate instantly shook the entire Hangzhou......