There is one thing to say, the Qing army in the winter of Chongzhen's seventeenth year is still a strong army in the world after all.

On the boundary of Nanyang Mansion, the first battle between the Zhengpai Lake Guangming Army and the Zhengpai Lake Guangming Army was so embarrassing that the total casualties of the Manchurian Eight Banners cavalry reached as many as 2,000 in the two battles. The main reason for this is the rash advance of the enemy and the lack of understanding of the enemy's killer weapons.

Since ancient times, arrogant soldiers will be defeated, and people will be mad and worn, and this natural principle is also.

When these factors are removed, Azig becomes serious and rigorous, and Zhu Wenzhen will not be so easy to take advantage of in the future.

On the night after Wadak's death, Azig only received the bad news that the first cavalry was defeated, and the second line of outflanking men and horses that was defeated by Zhu Wenzhen in the afternoon of the same day could not reach Azig until the next day.

After all, Yexian County is still a little far from the front line of Yuxian County, and there are more than 100,000 Azig horses, and the deployment of the formation can cover several prefectures and counties, and it takes a lot of time to communicate with each other internally.

Therefore, Azig's warnings and deployment adjustments could not be transmitted to the front at the first time.

At the beginning of the next day, the Qing army ended its tentative attack, but it still suffered a small loss due to inertia - the Qing army finally chose to enter the city and camp after confirming that there were no Ming cavalry around Yuxian.

However, almost all the materials in Yuxian County have been emptied (except for firewood and straw), and the part of the houses and urban areas that have not had time to be emptied have also been set on fire before the Ming army withdrew, and the Qing army did not get any supplies, so they had to spend the night in a city that was almost emptied and had not yet been burned.

But what I didn't expect was that it was like this, and in the middle of the night, the Ming army left a small number of guerrilla dead soldiers behind the break, and quietly set fire to it, and then stole the horse to try to escape.

In the process, it was inevitable that there would be another riot, and some of the Ming soldiers who were killed on the mission were also killed in battle, and only a few were able to escape. However, the losses of the Qing army were obviously greater, and many of the supplies that accompanied the army were burned before they could be moved, and although there were not many soldiers burned to death, the whole army was exhausted, their faces were blackened, and their morale was degenerate.

And these Ming soldiers set fire to harass the dead soldiers, and Zhang Huangyan took out the silver of his cousin Zhu Shu's family to feed, as long as he was willing to carry out the task, and inquired afterwards that the target city was indeed on fire and the enemy was alarmed, he would give each person a hundred taels of silver. Whoever is martyred will be given a pension of three hundred taels to his family!

Facts have proved that Daming still has bloody men who are willing to do this kind of thing, and they didn't contribute in previous years, mainly because the money was not enough.

directly threw money and said that he would support his family for a lifetime, and the warriors were very enthusiastic to work for the national surname who was righteous and squandered money.

And the Qing army's forward was so embarrassed, after it was transmitted back to the rear, Azig couldn't help but drop a tea set again, scolding and scolding his vanguard for being brainless, even this kind of clumsy tactics according to "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" will be hit, it is simply stupid!

As an aside, don't be surprised that many officials who don't know the history of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties - at that time, many senior generals of the Qing army, princes, read "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" as a military book when they were fighting, but they fought well, which is a historical fact.

The level of strategy of the Ming army on the opposite side is often inferior, and it is really a wine bag and a rice bag, all relying on the opponent to set off.

In Azig's view, this series of setbacks reminded him of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" that he had already seen well, such as "burning Bowang, burning Xinye, flooding the White River, and crossing the river with the people".

After all, his current offensive line is so similar to when Cao Jun attacked Liu Bei in Xinye. The boundary of Nanyang Mansion is Wancheng back then, and the Ming army on the opposite side retreated in such an orderly manner, retreating without chaos, which made him feel cold in his bones that fell into the trap of history.

Under the effect of this fright, it is natural to further discipline the troops to advance and search closely.

After that, the Ming army never had a chance to sneak attack, but it was also given at least seven or eight additional days to evacuate the people and supplies. The Qing army's original best at deep penetration and division and plunder, was temporarily hidden at the bottom of the box by Azig, and only dared to fight a head-on battle with you, which can be regarded as a temporary self-destruction of martial arts to a certain extent.

……

"Zhu Junmen is really courageous, he can delay the speed of Azig's march for so long under such circumstances, this time our army can completely clear the wall, Zhu Junmen should be the first merit! After the siege is lifted in the future, I will definitely play the court and seek a heavy reward! ”

A few days later, after ending the peripheral harassment and confrontation, and returning to Nanyang County, Zhang Huangyan, who had fully prepared to defend the city and repaired the fortifications, of course, personally greeted Zhu Wenzhen for the first time.

Zhu Wenzhen naturally had to be modest, saying that he had done everything he had to do, as a cavalry general, he should have been responsible for delaying the enemy army and buying more time for friendly troops to prepare before besieging the city.

"Zhu Junmen is brave and brave to fight, he is really a model for my generation, the last general is young, he has gone astray, and he is going to take Zhu Junmen as a model, and when the Azig army arrives, he will ask Zhang Daotai and Zhu Junmen to watch our will to fight to the death."

Li Dingguo, who was next to him, saw Corporal Lixian of Zhang Huangyan, and he was also eager to make meritorious service, so he stepped forward to express his admiration to Zhu Wenzhen. Then he secretly made up his mind that he would perform well in the subsequent defense of the city, wash away the shame, and prove that he could also make contributions in the war against foreign races.

Zhu Wenzhen patted him on the shoulder, said a few words of encouragement, and went to rest without mentioning it.

Li Dingguo took his subordinates during this period of time, and was assigned the task of strengthening the city defense by Zhang Huangyan, which is equivalent to letting those former thief soldiers first do hard labor to repair the city wall to further sharpen their temperament, and they will not be allowed to attack casually in the field, which is not easy to manage.

After grinding during this time, the soldiers were also holding their breath in their hearts.

Fortunately, the soldiers also know that if the city wall is renovated and repaired well at this moment, they will have more advantages in the protracted battle of defending the city in the future, so they also work hard and do not find this task boring.

Many rogue soldiers just don't understand technology, and they don't understand the city repair plan required by the generals, and they complained at the beginning during the implementation process, thinking that this is a blind command-

Many uneducated soldiers figured out with common sense and felt that although the renovated Nanyang County city wall had become thicker and the base was several times wider, the outer slope was not as steep as before.

Although the original city wall is more likely to collapse and collapse under heavy artillery bombardment, the outer wall is not absolutely vertical, but at least there is a steep slope of seventy or eighty degrees.

After the re-reinforcement of the city wall, the outer wall has been lowered to below 60 degrees, and even in some places it is only 40 or 50 degrees, which is already slower than the erected ladder and flying ladder, which may completely lead to the attacking side to save the ladder and directly climb the wall with hands and feet.

But these doubts, under the guidance of the veterans of the Huguang Ming army, dispelled invisibly, those old troops who have followed Zhu Shuren for many years, are very impressed by the Governor's "strange skills", knowing that every military technological innovation of the Governor is definitely more beneficial than disadvantageous, and will not pat their heads and think about harming the three armies.

Moreover, some soldiers also came forward to say, emphasizing that they originally used a fortress similar to today's city defense structure in the Battle of Chenxian a year and a half ago to make Li Zicheng's army suffer a big loss. And the technical route of the Governor's fortification improvement is also traceable, and it is all iterated from the previous successful experience little by little, and it does not appear out of thin air.

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There are so many people who have experienced it firsthand, and those former thieves and old departments also realize that most of them have little knowledge, so they obediently shut up and work hard.

……

In the middle, the process of pulling for nearly ten days and exchanging space for time is nothing else worth repeating.

The timeline on the Huguang battlefield soon came to the beginning of November. The vanguard of Azig's army, after losing a total of about 5,000 men and horses, finally advanced outside Nanyang City-

Some of the extra losses were all casualties of the servant army, and there would also be certain losses from the counties along the way, including the attrition of patients caused by logistical disorders. In the process, the Ming army resolutely carried out the harassment of the strong wall and the relaxation, and did not surrender, so the advance of Azig's troops was not comfortable.

Fortunately, everything has passed, after Azig arrived at the city of Nanyang, he took the lead in leading the cavalry to look at the city defense from a distance, and saw that the city wall of Nanyang County was temporarily strengthened into a strange shape, the size seemed to be much thicker, but the texture did not look solid, and he was also suspicious.

Although he didn't understand the principle of such a repair, his intuition told Azig that the enemy on the other side was not easy to deal with, and this design must have other hidden evil meanings.

In the next three or five days, the Qing army was carefully outflanked one after another, and gradually surrounded Nanyang City in all directions, cutting off the back route of the Ming army's retreat from the land.

As for the retreat by water, it is not dead for the time being—Azig has also considered letting his supply convoy go down the upper reaches of the Baihe River through the section of the river east of Nanyang City.

But there is no doubt that all the boats will not be able to pass, and if they force their way, they will run aground, and the Ming army does not know how many weirs and mud have been filled in at the bottom of this river, and how many stones and iron cone reefs have been made, which completely blocked the already not wide and deep river.

A deputy commander under the command of Azig who was in charge of the siege in the north of the city did not believe in this evil. I want to urge the Han army banner under the command of the governor and the northern Han servants to surrender the army, plus the captured people, to dismantle these river-blocking fortifications.

However, from the tower in the northeast corner of Nanyang City, the Ming army could not only use Hongyi artillery to hit the construction position, but even the strong crossbow and Franc machine could cover this position.

After paying the casualties of 100 coolie auxiliaries, the construction forces of the Qing army had to give up this operation - who knows how large the amount of work will be if they continue to do it, and it will be too worthless to fill human lives in a trap that does not know the depth.

It was believed that ships from the north would not be able to pass through the White River to the south, and it was unlikely that they would quickly block the waterway for the Ming army to retreat south.

Azig pondered for a while, and knew that he had two choices: either send people to construct and build a dam directly downstream of the river, but then he had to find a way to divert water, and he couldn't completely block it, otherwise the water would flood the surrounding camps, so it was better to stop the water directly upstream, and then see if he could store a little higher and release water to flood the city - the terrain of Nanyang City is not low, and it is impossible to drown the people in the city, no matter how much water is stored, at most it is to isolate the water surface inside and outside the city.

However, considering the strength of the Han people's naval army and the ships of the water gate in the city, they must be better than the Qing army from the north, and the Qing army must not be able to do this bad idea of blocking the movement of horses and facilitating the movement of ships.

So in a word, it is very complicated to cut off the river directly, and the amount of construction required will be several times greater than the amount of construction that the Ming army previously destroyed the waterway. The Ming army has been repairing for more than ten days, won't the Qing army have to repair it for at least a month to complete?

This trick was too slow, and Azig ruled it out directly.

If you don't carry out water conservancy construction, and you have to make sure that the idea of people in the city escaping for their lives is completely broken, the second trick can only wait - Azig knows very well that the rivers in the north are easy to freeze and freeze when they are at the coldest time in winter. The Baihe River is north of the Han River, from the mountainous area, and the amount of water is not large, and it is also possible to freeze, and at that time, it will be impossible for the Ming army to break through.

Azig decided to give it a try, first take this reason, look ahead, and see if he can force the Ming army to talk about the terms of surrender.

He found a Han man whose life was worthless to demote his official, the kind of soft bones who stayed in Beijing City and first demoted Li Zicheng when Chongzhen died, and then demoted Dolgon a month later, and ordered:

"You go to the city to try to persuade you to surrender, and tell the Ming army guards that this king knows that he can do it, and if he is willing to join the new dynasty, he will definitely be a high-ranking official, and he will have it at his fingertips, that is, he will be the governor of one side, and this king can also keep it.

If they don't, the king will attack - besides, remember to remind them, don't think that there is a way to retreat at any time, if you want to flee as soon as possible, even if the city is strong, and the white river will freeze for another month, you will not be able to leave when you want to.

Where did this king put his words first, with the freezing of the White River as the boundary, after the freezing, it was impossible to tolerate surrender again! When the time comes, the city will be broken, and the whole city will not be left with chickens and dogs! In addition, no matter whether the persuasion is successful or not, take the opportunity to explore the reality of the Ming army and write down what civil and military forces you have seen! ”