The Qing army under Duoduo, after several days of pulling with the Ming army, finally succeeded in moving the main force to Wujin County (that is, the urban area of Changzhou in later generations), and used Wujin County as a base to begin preparations for a comprehensive general attack on Jiangyin County.

All the tactics to lure the enemy in the process of moving the division did not work, Zhu Shuren was not fooled at all, and strictly restrained his generals, not allowing even a violent general like Cao Bianjiao to attack and pursue the enemy.

In the process of retreating, the Qing army also made some brutal moves that were unexpected by the Ming army.

For example, when their main force moved to Wujin County, Duoduo felt that the defenders who stayed in Zhenjiang Dantu County in the rear were easy to be divided and surrounded by the Ming army in the future, so he made the decision to abandon Dantu County and let his army only concentrate in the three counties of Wujin, Danyang and Jintan.

This point is not difficult to understand by looking at the map near Zhenjiang, because the Yangtze River in the Zhenjiang area turns northward, and Dantu happens to form a protrusion with the other three counties at the tip of this most northward extension.

This place was of course important when the Qing army needed to recapture Jinshan Temple from Dantu and then liaise with Guazhoudu in Yangzhou on the other side.

But if the Qing army completely gave up the Yangtze River waterway that opened up here, and then stuck to this protruding peninsula, it would be easy to be cut by the Ming army and shut down and beat the dogs.

Duoduo didn't want to give up some of his men in vain, so he naturally had to shrink his forces.

And with the brutality of the Qing army, when Duoduo was angry and had to give up, where would he leave the Han people with population and materials?

The old, weak, sick and disabled population, who could not leave, were almost completely slaughtered by the Duoduo. The rest are either shaved and succumbed, temporarily from the thief. Either they had privately armed resistance and broken through to the Ming occupation area. Of course, all the food that can be found is taken away, and all of it is used as military rations for the Qing army.

In the end, Duoduo's troops also set a fire before abandoning the city, burning as much as Dantu County could. After the Ming army found out about the situation, they were afraid of deception and confirmed that the Qing army had indeed withdrawn, so they rushed to put out the fire and take back the county.

But there were no living people in the city, and only an empty city that had been killed and moved back was returned.

The generals of the Ming army shared the same hatred of the enemy, and their anger exploded to the peak, almost uncontrollable. The news from here spread back to the Ming Dynasty, and for the first time, the other people in Jiangnan had complete national cohesion, and the hatred and hatred brought about by the shaving order became more and more united.

At this point, Zhu Shuren also had to leave Nanjing City, lead the troops to recruit in person, and go to the front line to supervise the division in person to ensure that all the generals would not impulsively go alone, and the situation slowly returned to control.

This is likely to be the last battle against Duoduo, and of course Zhu Shuren will personally reap this great achievement and establish his absolute prestige in the Nanjing court.

And Shi Kefa, the official secretary of the military department, was told by Zhu Shuren to stay in Nanjing City to coordinate the overall military preparedness and war situation, so as not to stick to the battle in one city and one place. This is also for the sake of Shi Kefa's good, so that the future power can be better and smoothly transitioned.

In the design of Zhu Shuren's power structure, Shi Kefa is still a loyal minister, of course, he must be reused, but Shi Kefa's positioning is always a rear military coordinator, and Zhu Shucai will be the future commander of the three front-line armies.

This division of labor, just like the division of labor between the commander-in-chief of the three armed forces and the minister of defense, or the division of labor between the generalissimo and the privy envoy in ancient times, is indeed in line with the original functions and powers of the "military department."

At the beginning of the establishment of the six ministries in the Sui and Tang dynasties, the military department was originally in charge of army construction, equipment logistics, and supply raising, and those dynasties still retained the generalissimo of the world's soldiers and horses. It was later that the checks and balances of the generals in the Song and Ming dynasties became more and more stringent, and the functions and powers of the Privy Council and the Ministry of War gradually became more and more detailed, and finally they could not only directly control the promotion and appointment of military generals, but even "micro-manipulate the front line", which was one of the important reasons for the decline of the Song and Ming Dynasty's military armaments.

Of course, when the world is peaceful again, Zhu Shuren still has to beware of the division of feudal towns and military generals, but there is no need for his own living generation, he can play the role of a military monopoly for the rest of his life. As for the future, I will think of other ways.

These are all afterwords, the most important thing in front of us is the victory or defeat on the battlefield, as long as the victory is won, everything will be easy to say in the future.

……

After the Ming army gradually compressed the occupied area of the Qing army to three counties, Duoduo finally launched the first round of offensive under the city of Jiangyin.

The main force of the Qing army arrived in Wujin County on the sixth day of the lunar month, and then advanced to the west of Jiangyin City on the eighth day of the lunar month.

When Duoduo first arrived in Jiangnan, there were a total of forty-six Hongyi cannons, and after the Battle of Nanjing, the loss was reduced to more than thirty. Jinshan Temple has been consumed for half a month, and several cannons have been destroyed, and some have been damaged by excessive use.

In short, the total number of heavy cannons that Duoduo was able to pull to Jiangyin has further dropped to twenty. The decline in the number of artillery also forced the Qing army to abandon the plan of quickly attacking and breaking through the wall, and instead considered preparing some other siege weapons and taking a multi-pronged approach.

And when Duoduo personally observed the city defense of Jiangyin County opposite for the first time, he couldn't help but gasp slightly.

The terrain of the battlefield was not conducive to the deployment of the large army, and the Huanggong Mountain in the north of the city, the Huishan Mountain in the south of the city, and the muddy and rotten land brought by the canal water flooded all the plains that were originally low-lying and suitable for marching and interspersed.

If it was in the north, in this cold winter season, Duoduo would not be too afraid of water, because the Qing army was used to fighting in the bitter cold land, and the rivers in the north would have froze long ago, and even the surface of the Yellow River could freeze. This is the allusion of the Hebei soldiers of the past dynasties who took advantage of the severe cold to ride across the Yellow River.

But in Gangnam, the situation is very different. Even during the Xiaoice period, the Yangtze River or Taihu Lake cannot be frozen in winter, and after the canal water is released, it will only leave mud.

Duoduo had never been to Jiangnan before, and even his main advisers and civil officials, whether Zhang Cunren or Sun Zhiqi, had never been to Jiangnan, although Sun Zhiqi was a Han Chinese, but he was from Shandong and had been an official in the north. As a result, they didn't think much about it in the first place, and they didn't expect to end up battling mud in the winter.

The city wall of Jiangyin County, after a period of emergency repair, the outer wall has also been reinforced with an additional layer of rammed earth with a gentle slope, the texture does not look very strong, but it can definitely absorb the impact kinetic energy of the cannonball, and it is close to the Western-style fortress or the city wall of Nanyang County.

Of course, when it comes to the details, Yan Yingyuan's city is still a little different from Zhang Huangyan's Nanyang County.

Jiangyin County is smaller, the original scale of the city is more cramped, there were no corner tower batteries at the four corners of the city wall, and the number of horse faces is also very small, so it is impossible to arrange enough side-fire crossfire aircraft to bombard the ant-attached enemy at the root of the city wall. Temporarily, a large fort had to be built out of thin air, and the amount of work was too large, and the people did not have time to construct it.

Therefore, Yan Yingyuan gave up the idea of building a large fort according to local conditions, and instead set up several small independent fortresses protruding from the city wall a hundred steps away in the west of the city, and only connected to the main city by an earthen embankment -

There is no concept of this design, but it can be understood as a protruding triangular fortress on the outside of a Western-style bastion, which is also known as "rivelino" in Italian, which was invented by the Italians in 1497.

It can also be understood as the "Izumaru" built by Sanada Yukimura in the south of Osaka Castle during the Battle of Osaka thirty years ago. It's just that Sanada Maru only hides the musket team, and Yan Yingyuanxiu's forward-exit triangular forts can each be equipped with four Hongyi cannons, and the musket team is also quite a lot.

When the Qing army first arrived, they did not understand the effect of this protruding triangular fort, so they thought of directly attacking first and seizing a few peripheral fortifications to strengthen the army.

They pulled all the Hongyi cannons they had to bombard these triangular forts, and then organized a large number of ironclad soldiers to fly directly to the city, thinking that these triangular forts could not hide many people, as long as dozens of times or even more soldiers surrounded them, they could definitely take them.

However, as soon as the fight began, Dodor realized that he had made a big mistake.

The reason why these triangular forts cause triangles is that they are all mathematically calculated, and the angles of the two triangular hypotenuses on the outside of them just echo the only horse-faced forts in the main city wall behind.

If the Qing army attached itself to the two outer hypotenuses, it would be accurately fired sideways by the Hongyi cannons on the horse side of the main city wall behind them, and the musket team could also open the side fire, so that the siege soldiers were in one aiming line.

If the Qing army bypassed the two outward-facing hypotenuses of the triangle fort and had to climb from the inward-facing side, it would have been able to prevent it from just crossing the line of fire, but that position was also the closest to the main city wall, only a few dozen paces, and it would have to be attacked on the back of the enemy.

The most vicious thing is that Yan Yingyuan's three protruding triangular forts, the female wall buttresses on the top of the wall, are only found on the two hypotenuse edges facing outward, and on the side facing the main city wall inward, there are no female wall buttresses, and there is nowhere to hide.

The height of the triangle fort is also slightly shorter than the main city wall, ensuring that once these peripheral fortifications are captured by the Qing army, the Qing army will not be able to gain a foothold on the top of the wall, because they have no cover, and their position is lower than the Ming army behind the main city wall, and they will only be unilaterally slaughtered and shot, and they will be named one by one.

Obviously, the mathematical principles and design applications behind all this were pointed out by Zhu Shuren, and were demonstrated by Zhu Shuren's academic theory team in Wuchang and specifically tested by engineering and technical personnel. Fang Yizhi and Song Yingxing, everyone has made contributions to it, and in the end, Yan Yingyuan is just a master of learning and application.

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The immediate consequence of the Qing army's first rash attack was that more than 1,000 corpses were left behind, but nothing was gained. They also had to go back to the old way of slowly besieging the city and slowly manufacturing heavy equipment.

The morale of the Qing army, which had been boosted with great difficulty after the transfer of the target, also fell again. The soldiers carried around in the mud, pushing ox carts with often sunken wheels, transporting siege materials to the east and north of the city behind enemy lines, dividing and surrounding Jiangyin City on all sides.

Yan Yingyuan, who was on the opposite side, did not blindly defend it, and even dared to take the initiative to open the gate of Jiangyin County when the few besieging troops of the Qing army were in the vanguard, too deep in the baggage, or out of touch, and sent a death squad to counterattack, intercepting and killing the Qing army's lone or muddy baggage team.

Although this interception was only successful once or twice, it also greatly boosted the morale of the defenders in Jiangyin City, making them respect Yan Yingyuan more and more, and follow all his orders without reservation.

Duoduo did not expect the Ming army to have this courage at first, and after losing two batches of muddy wagons, he had to let his besieging troops be too far away from each other to be left alone, but this led to further slowdown in progress.

It took the Qing army four days to initially establish a siege position, and another five or six days to build the necessary fortifications to prevent the Ming army from being caught off guard when they suddenly went out of the city to harass them.