The Qing army of Duoduo was treated the best when he first set out on the expedition.

Azig of the Western Expedition, when he finally hit the city of Nanyang, he was able to make up a total of more than 30 Hongyi cannons. And Duoduo this way, the loss of Fengyang and Yangzhou was not great before, and when he arrived in Nanjing, he was still able to raise more than 40 Hongyi cannons!

In addition, because the eyebrows were burned, Duoduo naturally did not keep his hands like Azig. Since you want to grab time, then more than forty Hongyi cannons are all pressed, and there is no lake at all.

The Qing army's siege firepower this time was at least twice as dense as Azig's firepower in Nanyang a while ago, and they were only staring at a point in the northwest of Nanjing City and by the Qinhuai River.

There is also a reason why Duoduo finally chose to attack the northwest of Nanjing with all his might. First of all, the design of the inner city and the outer Guo of Nanjing City was originally focused on the southeast and light on the northwest.

Facing the Purple Mountain in the southeast, there is also the cover of Waiguo, and the complex commanding heights and barracks of the Ming army relying on the mountain, which is very troublesome. To the northwest, there is a section of the city wall with only one layer, where the inner and outer cities are united.

Although the walls here are also the tallest and thickest, if you break this layer, you will directly kill the inner hinterland of the city.

As a result, the whole family of the Qing army had a total of 46 Hongyi cannons, including 4 of which were injured by the Ming army during the bombardment of the city yesterday, and then pulled back for emergency repairs, and then re-put into the battlefield.

They all set up a position outside a section of the Nanjing city wall not far from the mouth of the Qinhuai River, and aimed the muzzles of the black hole at the same point.

This relatively shallow and narrow moat of the Qinhuai River was also filled in a certain area yesterday, and it looks potholed in some places, but it is impossible to fill it completely so quickly.

Therefore, today, the Qing army handed over most of the captured people to a general soldier of the Ming army, and asked him to fill in a section of the road that could directly rush to the root of the city wall in one morning at any cost.

……

This Ming army general, named Li Chengdong, a native of Shaanxi, was originally Gao Jie's general - Gao Jie was the one who had been a thief with Li Zicheng, and later eloped with Li Zicheng's wife Xing Shitong, so he had to follow the court to suppress the thief. During the Hongguang regime of the Southern Ming Dynasty, Gaojie was also one of the four towns in Jiangbei.

Now in this life, during the Jiashen Change, Gao Jie also followed the fleet south to Huai'an to go ashore because Zhu Shuren sent Zhang Mingzhen to the sea route to meet the butterfly effect of the Ming army in the north. It avoids the dilemma that in history, it was necessary to "play the banner of breaking the army all the way, so that the cities along the way did not dare to intercept" in order to flee south.

Because of this, after Gao Jie went south, he was not as unruly as in the original history. But considering that his troops are relatively poor in thousands of miles away, and he is a thief, he likes to privately set up cards to blackmail past business travelers to supply military supplies, so Gao Jie's department still competed with friendly troops for the fat shortage of Yangzhou-

Originally, in history, Gao Jie fought with Huang Degong, and also made a scene of assassination at the Hongmen Banquet, almost like Li Ke and Zhu Wen.

Now Huang Degong has become a descendant of Zhu Shuren, and he was transferred to the direction of Xinyang in advance, and he did not come to rob Gao Jie. Liu Liangzuo became a member of the hostile camp again, so Gao Jie successfully grabbed the fat shortage of Yangzhou.

However, in the process of Duoduo going south and storming Yangzhou, because the troops of King Fu's puppet regime surrendered too quickly, Gao Jie's troops were still poorly prepared and encountered a surprise attack by the Qing army, and suffered considerable losses in the Battle of Yangzhou.

At this juncture, Gao Jie's subordinates also have different hearts, the most important of which is Li Chengdong-

Li Chengdong thought so: Previously, they were all Gao Jie's hardcores, and they had too deep a vendetta with Li Zicheng, so they could only follow the Ming court.

However, when the Qing army came this time, they heard that Li Zicheng was dead. The main core generals of the Gao Jie Department only have an old grudge against Li Zicheng, and they have no blood feud with the Tartars! Just because you can't throw in doesn't mean you can't cast in tartar!

Under Gao Jie's defeat, people's hearts were already unstable, and Li Chengdong felt that they were betrayed by friendly troops, and they were abandoned by civil officials in Nanjing, and they also had the idea of climbing up by unscrupulous means to ask for a reward, and finally Li Chengdong assassinated Gao Jie, who was injured and unprepared, and surrendered to the Tartars with the most stubborn thieves under Gao Jie's command.

Of course, the troops under Gao Jie's command are not all from thieves, and some are the old troops of Bai Guangen in the former north, those are all from the border army of the Ming Dynasty, and they have a relatively high degree of identification with the imperial court, so of course these people will not follow Li Chengdong.

In the end, it was roughly calculated that about two or three percent of Gao Jie's troops were defeated and surrendered to the Tartars, and most of them were still accepted by Shi Kefa to cross the river to rest and continue to participate in the defense of Nanjing.

(Note: Don't spray here blunt or forced, during the war, it is normal for the defeated troops to surrender, it is nothing more than a question of who surrendered.)

Even if it is forced, I promise that Li Chengdong is the last forcible traitor in my book, and he is just a representative and a benchmark of the part of the people who were defeated and defected to the enemy in the Lianghuai Campaign. Instead of playing another role, it is more convenient to let the big traitors in history serve as a benchmark.

Finally, a few words about the traitorous crimes in Li Chengdong's history. He participated in the Ten Days of Yangzhou and led the Three Massacres of Jiading. In history, Yan Yingyuan rebelled in Jiangyin, and was finally slaughtered by Li Chengdong after being breached, as well as the slaughter of the Kunshan Uprising, which is basically the number one traitor slaughterer.

Jin Shenghuan was subdued by the protagonist before, but Jin Shenghuan actually slaughtered Nanchang once in history, but he was not as famous and typical as Li Chengdong, so don't think I have a double standard, I also want to mention Jin Shenghuan's bad deeds. Li Chengdong finally rebelled against the Qing Dynasty for the sake of personal glory and wealth, but I think his anti-Qing sincerity is much worse than Wu Sangui's.

Again, because of the butterfly effect of the protagonist, some people who have become big traitors in history and may not have the opportunity to be big traitors in the book again, I also want to emphasize it in voiceover. lest a small number of new readers who have not carefully read the history of this period and are misled by my book into thinking that some historical traitors are not traitors. Li Chengdong is the last one in this book, and there will be no more such settings in the future. ）

……

Li Chengdong was directly ordered to die by Duoduo, and when he undertook such drudgery, he was naturally extremely depressed in his heart, and it can even be said that his depression was no less than that of Wang Duo and Qian Qianyi a few days later-

If Yangzhou was lost, he would have been obediently a servant of the imperial court with the remnants of Gao Jie from now on, and he would have been treated obediently and not robbed, maybe he would have been able to stay in Nanjing City at this moment and play the defensive side.

But regret is useless, after a big war, there are always people who swear to follow the old master, and there are always people who have ambitions in the chaos or germinate, or temporarily take a wrong step and follow the thief. Now that you have chosen the path, you have to climb it on your knees.

When Li Chengdong made up his mind to swing his knife at the weaker, he had already cut off the pity in his heart.

The die-hard elements of the former Gaojie's old department, who had been thieves for more than ten years and had been capricious many times, soon wore iron and cotton armor and brandished sharp blades to urge the people to speed up the filling of the river, and these soldiers themselves had to carry bags of soil and throw them into the Qinhuai River.

The Ming army at the head of the city lost stones like rain, mixed with dense muskets, and from time to time there were traitors under the command of Li Chengdong who were shot through the iron cotton armor and fell to the ground screaming. Their corpses were kicked into the Qinhuai River by their unsympathetic comrades, and used as bricks and stones to fill up this small section of the Qinhuai River.

In less than half an hour after the start of the war, hundreds of traitor soldiers were killed and wounded, and the numbers were really jaw-dropping, compared to the innocent strong men who were forced to fill the river, the number of casualties was at least three or four times that of the traitor soldiers.

The archers under the two white flags of the Qing army also carried long shields, wooden planks, and door panels, regardless of the ground and stepped forward to shoot at the Ming army across the Qinhuai River. These Qing archers also rarely wore iron cotton armor, which is completely inconsistent with ordinary people's impression that "archers should be lightly armored units".

The arrows shot by both sides missed, and soon the female wall and battlements of this section of Nanjing City Wall were shot into hedgehogs, and the dense feathers on the tail of the arrows were lost, just like the white reeds, making it difficult to see the original color of the wall.

The 46 Hongyi cannons of the Qing army, which were also no more than one and one without a lot, began to pour fire on this section of the city wall one after another. The Hongyi cannons on the city wall of the Ming army also fired back without showing weakness, but unfortunately the number was still too small compared to the Qing army cannons, and it was very miserable to be pressed for a while-

The Qing army gathered all the artillery before dawn in advance, and the Ming army had to wait for the Qing army to start fighting before it could confirm the direction of the Qing army's desperate main attack, and then make a decision to dispatch reinforcements from other directions.

Considering the heaviness of the Hongyi cannons and the difficulty of handling, the cannons on the other sides of the city walls of the Ming army may not be deployed until the afternoon, and the defense line located in the east of the city, in the direction of the Purple Mountain, may not even arrive in the afternoon.

Because the city of Nanjing is so big, the road in the city alone has to turn around and walk 20 miles to pass through the city. Pulling three or four thousand pounds of things, even if there is an ox or horse cart, it takes a lot of time.

The Qing army's temporary artillery fire density, once overwhelmed the head of the city of the Ming army musketeers and crossbowmen could not poke their heads out of the shot, even if hiding behind the battlements at a 45-degree angle diagonally sideways, it is possible that the battlements themselves were directly shattered by the flying shells, and the gunners and crossbowmen behind the battlements were killed together.

The last few timid Ming gunners could only squat behind the battlements with their heads down, throwing them diagonally upward, not daring to aim at all.

……

Less than a quarter of an hour after the general attack of the Qing army, Shi Kefa judged the direction of the main attack, and reinforcements from all over the country were also quickly transferred.

It's just that his staff and subordinates were afraid that he would put himself in danger, so they desperately pulled him to prevent him from going up the wall, saying that the heavy artillery of the Qing army was too powerful, and the city head could be killed by stray bullets and flying debris at any time.

In the end, it is easy to say that the guards and generals pulled Shi Kefa to hide under the anti-slope of the city wall, slightly thirty or forty steps away from the wall, and set up a temporary marshal tent to supervise the battle. This distance will not be hit by the parabola of the cannonballs, and it can ensure that everything is blocked by the city walls, and it will not be splashed by the stones that blow up the city because it is too close.

Rao is like this, after supervising the battle for half an hour, Shi Kefa was also covered in ashes, and the dirt and dust raised by the shelling were so smoked that he grabbed a handful of slag on his beard.

Even Shi Kefa is so embarrassed, and it can be seen how tragic the front-line soldiers are in shooting.

The battle lasted until near noon, and the Qing army outside the city had already paid the lives of at least 2,000 traitors who filled the river, and several times as many people were killed in battle, and the elite Eight Banner archers of the Qing army were estimated to have lost more than 1,000 casualties.

And that section of the Qinhuai River is basically filled in, and it is estimated that the Qing army will be able to directly attach ants to the root of the city wall after lunch, and heavy siege weapons can also be directly pushed under the city wall.

The Ming musketeers, crossbowmen, and auxiliaries who threw wooden stones at the head of the city also suffered at least 1,000 casualties.

However, fortunately, the Ming soldiers were injured and could be carried down immediately, and they had the control to clean up the battlefield, so there were relatively few direct deaths, and once the Qing soldiers were seriously injured under the city or by the Qinhuai River, they basically could not be dragged back by their comrades, which was equivalent to waiting for death in a chronic manner.

Shen Tingyang, as the secretary of the household department, did not need to be on the front line to supervise the battle like Shi Kefa of the military department, but he also did his part in the city.

First of all, he sent the Shen family, some officials and dignitaries who were friends with the Shen family, and the maidservants and medical officers of the families to take care of and treat the wounded, and asked the family to help carry the wounded down on stretchers.

Then, Shen Tingyang sent someone to discuss with Shi Kefa, and after confirming that he did not commit a taboo, he had the money to pay and announced that he would take out one million taels of property to reward and compensate the soldiers guarding the city.

If this kind of thing is done by someone else, it may violate the taboo of the royal family, and most of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty are also more cautious in this regard, when Shen Wansan funded Zhu Yuanzhang to repair part of the Nanjing city wall, and was later liquidated. But Shen Tingyang is now a family member with the emperor, so it doesn't matter.

I heard that the old Shen Pavilion had made a bloody investment, and he was as anxious and righteous as the King of Zhou back then, and the soldiers of the Ming army were also impressed.

Especially the wounded soldiers who were carried down, everyone cashed on the spot directly by the city wall, and first issued a silver ingot of five taels as a soup and medicine to spend first, and get some wine and meat to replenish the body, and the other soldiers were also quite excited when they saw it.

In addition to the reward of one million taels to the regular army, Shen Tingyang allocated another one million taels of property to recruit people to help defend the city.

Anyone who is willing to go up to the city wall to throw wood and stones, or who is willing to go up the wall to help carry the wounded and transport ammunition, can be rewarded with a certain standard of incentives. All of a sudden, the young and poor people in Nanjing were quickly encouraged to participate.

At lunchtime, as this section of the Qinhuai River was filled in with a gap that could pass through heavy siege vehicles, the Qing army also took a breath of relief, brewing a continuous general attack.

All the soldiers of the army hurried to rest, except for the artillery unit, which continued to bombard the position with a gap in the moat during the lunch break.

The Ming army also took the opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief, and Shi Kefa also retreated and hurriedly ate a few mouthfuls of dry food, and drank a bamboo tube of cold water. It was also at this time that Shen Tingyang had the opportunity to say a few words to Shi Kefa, and by the way, he asked if there was anything else he could do.

Shi Kefa gasped and drank water, and said hatefully: "Sure enough, I expected it, today's attack is so fast, it must be Wang Duo and Qian Qianyi who told Duoduo the news that our reinforcements are about to arrive, and Duoduo believed it!"

At present, the most important thing is that we cannot be chaotic internally. I estimate that this section of the wall may be blasted open in the afternoon, and I have ordered people to dig trenches and rammed earth walls behind the possible gaps in advance, so as to ensure that after the Tartars break through the outer wall, they will still be blocked behind the second line of defense.

The reserves of our army must also be assembled here in a hurry, and when the time comes, they will be completely blocked and fight with the Tartars to the end! The Tartars passed through a gap, and the Hongyi cannons could not bombard the second trench and earthen wall temporarily reinforced in the wall, so as long as we fought to the death and did not retreat, it was unlikely to be breached!

Now we must beware of the instability of the people in the city, and beware of vacillation in other places. Uncle Shen Shi, the order in the city will be handed over to you, ask Your Majesty for a handwritten order, and then take the token of my military department, and control those who are very close to other surrenders to the enemy——

We can't be innocent, some people just have personal friends with Wang Duo and them, and we can't overturn a boatload of people with a stick, but in extraordinary times, we must beware of them messing around. So after controlling it, bring all the young and strong children of those suspects to the wall to participate in the war!

Our army's henchmen are holding knives behind the scenes to supervise the battle! Those who refuse to come forward and kill the enemy will be dealt with as collaborators! Those who are willing to kill the enemy, even if they are not skilled in martial arts, as long as they do not retreat against the order, they will be considered suspicious! Gather all these people, and no one in the city will think about it! ”

Shen Tingyang can also be regarded as a chivalrous person, and after hearing this, he immediately said in a big way: "Let's not give people the handle, since we want to go into battle with our noble sons to participate in the war, I will let my youngest son also help transport ammunition...... My family members are all on the wall to kill the enemy! At that time, those who have a good relationship with Wang Duo and them can't blame me for suppressing them! ”

Shi Kefa listened, and was slightly unbearable: "Uncle Shi, I remember that you have two sons, right?" The virtuous brother of Shuren has been given a national surname, and you are left with the surname Shen......"

Shen Tingyang: "If you want to say so, you don't have a son, I remember that you only accepted one son." ”

Shi Kefa smiled bitterly: "That's true, but a certain righteous son, but he can't go up to the wall to kill the enemy, before the war, I was afraid that the Purple Mountain would be lost, so I sent him and Yan Ermei to supervise the Purple Mountain." ”

Shen Tingyang: "What's there, at least your mind has arrived." In today's situation, what we are most afraid of is that people's hearts are unstable, and our family members do not let others go, what kind of reason is this. ”

Soon Shi Kefa hastily rested enough, so he went to supervise the battle again, and Shen Tingyang also followed his instructions, and quickly invited an urgent order, announcing that those Donglin and Fushe personnel who had a close relationship with the traitors and demoted officials would be arrested, and they would not wronged good people, as long as they personally went to the wall to help the war prove their innocence.

The people in Donglin are not all spineless soft eggs, and some people with integrity are also deeply ashamed when they hear that their former mentor and old man actually became a traitor.

For example, several of Qian Qianyi's proud protégés when he was in Guozijian were arrested by Shen Tingyang at this moment, and they all said that they would draw a line with that kind of traitor, and then go to the wall to help transport rolling wood and stone ammunition to wash away the shame.

The soldiers of the Ming army at the head of the city, when they saw a group of thin people wearing scarves in leather armor or cotton armor hastily put on leather armor or cotton armor, but there were no nondescript scarves in their helmets, they also came up to help transport ammunition and transport the wounded, and their morale was also boosted.

Defend the city of Nanjing, this is the responsibility of everyone in the city! All beings are equal, regardless of whether they are high or low! Usually, these talented men may feel superior when they see the big-headed soldiers, but at this moment, even the talented masters have come to fight side by side with the soldiers!

"Brethren, hold on! The Tartars lead the beasts to eat people, we are not defending the city for the surname Zhu, but for the fathers and villagers! For the people of the world not to be a slave of the Tartars! The honor and disgrace of a family and a surname, and the meat eaters seek it. The rise and fall of the world is the responsibility of the husband! ”

The showmen who washed away the suspicion shouted the slogans they read from Zhu Shuren's "Theory of Thieves", and relayed them to the uneducated soldiers at close range in popular colloquial language as simple as possible, and the hearts of the people in the city were suddenly shocked.