In the sixth year of Longwu, the first day of August, Shanhaiguan.

Since the end of July, the war clouds in western Liaoning have once again been dense, and the Ming and Qing dynasties have gathered heavy troops and come to this area after a five-month stop.

Haoge was just going to grab a handful at first, taking advantage of the fact that Shanhaiguan was still in the hands of the Qing army, and it was convenient to enter the customs, and once he crossed the Great Wall, he could be broken into pieces, and he could go back to other directions, where there was emptiness to fight, and the main force of the Ming army would run directly after catching up.

As for the main force of the Ming army in Yongping Mansion, Haoge didn't plan to touch it at all. He didn't dare to touch it when he gave up Beijing City half a year ago, and now what else is there to touch? That's not uncomfortable!

Unfortunately, Hauge planned to take a detour, but his opponent didn't want to let him go.

Before he had time to send troops, Zhang Huangyan increased the strength of the troops in Yongping Mansion in advance, and moved the camping position further forward, so that the Ming army directly arrived in front of the Shanhaiguan Pass, a few miles away from the Guanqiang City Tower, that is, it could avoid the range of the heaviest Hongyi cannon on the Guanqiang.

The Ming army is not stupid, even if it wants to block the door, there is no need to really stick to the face, it is still necessary to vacate a section of heavy artillery firepower to cover the distance, and this hole is not enough for the army to make a detour.

Seeing that the Ming army was prepared, many princes and Baylor under Hauge began to retreat. The shadow of his consecutive defeats in the past few years has not dissipated, and no one wants to play with his life anymore.

So some people persuaded Haoge not to give up, but if it was not good, he could also consider changing directions and breaking in from other places, and it was a big deal to storm a section of the Ming army's empty Great Wall wall.

The people who persuaded not only the princes who were in charge of the soldiers such as Man Dahai and Yue Le (Bo Luo was injured in the Neihuang War and died after returning, and the title was inherited by his brother Yue Le), but also Haoge's absolute henchmen like Ao Bai, which had to be taken seriously.

As for the suggestion of finding another void hole, Hauge is not impossible to consider. But to give up Shanhaiguan, he is definitely unwilling.

So Haorge reluctantly encouraged his subordinates: "Don't be afraid of the southern barbarians!" Previously, my Qing Dynasty failed one after another, because I fell into the trap of attacking and defending the city by the Han people! We think we have won the world, we don't want to lose the land, the Ming army wants to occupy the city we have occupied, we will bleed desperately!

Now we have no shackles of the city, we have returned to the situation of the first emperor, we can grab it and leave, the Ming army is not as mobile as our army, and we can't catch us! Victory will inevitably belong to me again! The Ming army wants to annihilate us, that's a fool's dream!

At present, this Shanhaiguan, by the mountains and the sea, is not an ordinary city, if it is a city, the Ming army can besiege on all sides, surround our army and try to annihilate, with the sharpness of the Ming army's artillery, our army may not dare to defend to the death.

But the road behind Shanhaiguan is open, as long as the Ming army does not cross Yanshan, our army can consume the Ming army here, hit the morale of the Ming army, stop the momentum of the Ming army with a big victory, so that they dare not underestimate our Qing Dynasty again! If we don't fight here for a few years of peace, the Ming army will always despise our Qing Dynasty in the future, and it will be disturbed every year, and there will be no peace! ”

The crowd was persuaded by Haoge's reasoning, so they reluctantly raised their will and decided to fight a defensive battle of Shanhaiguan with the Ming army.

After all, after a series of defeats, you have to win a battle to stop the enemy's covetousness and not let people look down on it. This is not only for the gain and loss of a city and a place, but also for the long-term peace.

And there is still a pressure within the Manchu Qing Dynasty, that is, their current ruling pattern, they may be able to survive if they don't rob for a while, but if they don't rob for a long time, they will definitely collapse.

When he systematically withdrew from Hebei half a year ago, Haoge was not completely unambitious, he took away the Manchu people at the same time, but also took away hundreds of thousands of Han people—this kind of plundering of the population and making them gradually Manchu has always been done, from Nuer Hachi to Huangtaiji.

On the one hand, the Manchu population is too small, and if they can assimilate some who are loyal to them and carry the flag as a coat, they will carry as many as possible.

On the other hand, the Manchurians lacked craftsmen and technicians, and when they retreated from Hebei, the technicians in the northern Central Plains naturally took as much as they could, so that they could continue to build muskets and cannons after leaving the customs, and let their skills try to imitate the progress of the Ming army, so as not to fall too far behind.

To feed so many craftsmen, a lot of money and grain were needed, and these people were not recruited to engage in agricultural production, but to engage in professional and technical work or to serve as soldiers for the Han army.

If there is an outbreak of change from within, combined with the external pressure of the Ming Dynasty, it will not be the Manchus who assimilate them, but the Manchus themselves who have been assimilated by the Liaodong Han people in turn.

After many heavy losses, the Manchu people are now only more than 400,000 people, and they are men, women, and children.

Of the core of the Manchurian men over the age of fifteen, there were only 70,000 or 80,000 left, and almost all the people needed to be soldiers, and they were beaten back to the difficult state of the Nuer Hachi era.

Children under the age of fifteen, both male and female, add up to more than 100,000. In the end, the remaining two or three hundred thousand are women over the age of fifteen.

With such a grim situation, Hauge has no more options.

……

Under this posture of not giving in to each other, the two sides began the offensive and defensive battle of Shanhaiguan.

On the fourth day of the eighth month, after a few days of preparation of simple fortifications, the Ming army began to adopt the simple Vauban siege method, and began to dig trenches from the place three or four miles away from the Shanhaiguan wall, extending towards the Shanhaiguan wall.

Historically, Vauban only gradually emerged on the battlefield of the French Civil War a few years later, but now it was dug up in advance by Zhu Shuren in advance with the fleet of the Dutch navigator Tasman, recruiting relevant talents from Europe with heavy money, and it is logical that he will contribute to the Ming Dynasty in the first place.

Yang Sen. Tasman and Descartes came to Asia a year and a half, and Vauban was transported by the second wave of Tasman's fleet, just one and a half years apart, and they were reused by Zhu Shuren as soon as they arrived in the Ming Dynasty.

At first, many generals of the Ming army were still unconvinced, but considering that the prince only let this Hongyi person be responsible for the trenching technology of the siege war, and had no other power, they turned a blind eye and slowly watched and stole learning, and no one made trouble for Vauban.

The front of the Ming army was originally to contain and delay, and it was necessary to give a reasonable excuse so that the Qing army would not suspect that the Ming army "why would it fight so slowly", so it was good to dig trenches slowly, and it didn't matter if they dug for half a month or a month.

The Qing army on the wall of Shanhaiguan was very vigilant at first, and saw that the Ming army had been digging for three days without moving, so they let the only remaining Hongyi cannon on the wall bombard the trench-

After the loss of 130 heavy artillery pieces in the Neihuang Battle at the beginning of the year, fortunately, the Qing army did not lose any more artillery when defending the city in Beijing, and withdrew the army in advance and transferred all the artillery, so now the Qing still retains about 80 heavy artillery pieces in the whole country, which can barely be regarded as a usable artillery force. At this moment, in this Shanhaiguan, the Qing army also invested in the defensive force of thirty heavy artillery.

It's a pity that these thirty cannons are of course completely useless for the professionally designed Vauban siege trenches, and they can't bounce into the ditch even if they count on ricochet rebound and kill.

Each of the trenches dug by Vauban can accurately conceal the advance routes of soldiers and cannons in the absolute dead ends of the enemy at the head of the city, even if they are only two miles away or one mile away from the city wall, the cannons on the Shanhaiguan wall still can't hit valuable targets.

The price of all this is only to let the soldiers dig a little deeper and do a little more earthwork, but they can save their lives.

The soldiers were skeptical at first, but later found that they could really save their lives, so they didn't care about digging more dirt and sweating.

After holding out until mid-August, as the Ming army's trenches got closer and closer to the Shanhaiguan wall, the Ming army moved some of the heavy artillery with relatively curved ballistics, especially the heavy siege mortars that fired blasting shells, into the gun emplacement pits in the Vauban siege trenches.

Then, taking advantage of the characteristics of the Ming army's artillery ballistic high throwing, you can hide in the anti-slope position that the Qing army's direct artillery fire cannot hit, and use the hanging white drift damage to hit the Qing army on the wall.

The ballistics tables used by the gunners are all verified and calibrated by the Ming Dynasty's own mathematicians, artillery experimental observers, colleagues from the Netherlands, and Descartes himself.

With the blessing of the most advanced mathematics of this era, the curved ballistic efficiency of the Ming artillery was, of course, jaw-dropping to the Qing army.

Within a few days, more than a dozen Hongyi cannons on the wall of Shanhaiguan were blown up, and hundreds of Qing artillery and crossbowmen were killed. The Qing army's counterattack artillery fire did not see the direct effect at all, and I didn't know whether it was hit or not, which was too demoralizing.

In fact, it was also thanks to the fact that the Qing artillery could not observe the effect of their own shelling, so they were able to consume each other for so long. The artillery positions of the Ming army were all in the pit, and the head of the city could not be seen, and it was not known whether it was blown up or not, and at most only some of the shells could be seen to have indeed fallen into the pit.

It was precisely this kind of psychological comfort that caused the Qing army to bombard each other for many days, and it was also unilaterally bleached for many days. If he had known that he was doing useless work, I am afraid that just after mid-August, the morale of the Qing artillery itself would collapse in advance.

Even now, by the end of August, Hauge finally couldn't hold it back, and he ordered the cavalry full of eight banners, taking advantage of the dark and windy days at the end of the month, to open the Shanhaiguan Gate and go out of the city to attack the Ming artillery positions at night.

Haoge estimated that he had been bombarded for half a month in vain, and he had never switched to battle, and the Ming army estimated that he would relax his vigilance, so that he could succeed in a sneak attack and annihilate part of the Ming artillery in close combat.

But he was unfortunate to meet Zhang Huangyan, who had strict military orders, and Li Dingguo, who was responsible for the specific implementation of the front-line vigilance task.

Li Dingguo's strictness in governing the army was also a must-have at that time, even if he was kept vigilant for a month or two, Li Dingguo could take the lead in ordering and prohibiting.

So the Aobai commando sent by Haoge crashed into Li Dingguo's pocket, and saw that there was a chance to rush into several large pit artillery positions, but they were calculated by the musket team ambushed by the Ming army on the left and right, and paid thousands of casualties of the Manchurian cavalry in vain!

If Ao Bai himself hadn't been brave, I'm afraid he would have been killed by Li Dingguo.

At the end of this surprise attack and the ambush and counter-surprise attack, Li Dingguo himself was surprised by the decline in the combat effectiveness of the Qing cavalry, and couldn't help but report his doubts layer by layer.

was finally sent to Zhang Huangyan, but Zhang Huangyan didn't feel strange, but commented confidently: "This is normal, Tartar has failed so many games in a row, how many veterans are left?" It is said that there are less than 100,000 adult men, and this is not a cat or a dog to be a soldier, and the combat power can be compared with the real Tartar five or ten years ago! ”

Listening to what the Governor said, the generals of the Ming army became more and more morale-boosting, and they were full of confidence in victory.

……

On the other hand, on the side of the Qing army, the artillery battle failed for half a month, and the attempt to get the cavalry out of the pass to sneak attack the artillery position of the Ming army failed again, and the Qing army suffered two consecutive losses, which made the morale of the Qing army wildly discharged.

Even though there are still tens of thousands of Manchu troops and tens of thousands of Han troops in the Shanhaiguan War Zone, people are still panicking.

If it weren't for the wall of Shanhaiguan, which was reinforced by the Qing army's fortifications and tiger dogs, I am afraid it would have been smashed a long time ago.

But even after the reinforcement of the city wall, one day at the end of August, with the repeated bombardment of the Ming army's heavy artillery, it was finally completely destroyed in several breaches.

The Ming army sent a death squad, dressed in full-body forged steel armor and holding a large shield of steel, to slowly but firmly step forward to snatch the gap.

The Qing army's bows, crossbows, and muskets could not hurt the Ming army's death squads at all, and the Hongyi cannon was blown up by the blasting shells of the Ming army's siege mortar artillery in a multi-day war of attrition, so they had to count on the improvised Franc machine, the gun, and even the more ancient tiger squat cannon to counterattack.

However, the long-range firepower of the Ming army was even stronger, and there were still a large number of musketeers on both flanks of the death squad to press the formation from afar, and the gaps in the wall were cross-fired, so that the Qing troops who were trying to plug the mouth could not raise their heads.

Under such a combat situation, the Qing army could only allow the Ming army death squad to cross the gap and then fight hand-to-hand, and any attempt to resist the enemy outside the gap would be baptized and exterminated by the Ming army's rifle fire.

Most of the long-range combat methods have been abolished, and they can only fight hand-to-hand with heavy armor soldiers on the gap, which is of course miserable. The superiority of mobility and the concentration of superior local forces, which the Qing army relied on to be proud of, could not be brought into play at all, and it was only a dull change of life, and it could not be exchanged for the well-equipped dead soldiers of the Ming army.

After two days of bloody fighting, the Qing army, as the defender, suffered many more casualties than the attacking Ming army, and the Ming army paid thousands of casualties, and the Qing army had already tens of thousands.

All aspects were completely crushed, and the battle was fought to this nest, and the generals of the Qing army could only persuade Haoge to withdraw his troops, and everyone knew that even if they wanted to defend it, they couldn't hold it.

Hauge had no choice but to obey the will. However, before leaving, he still ordered the division of troops, divided part of the troops, crossed the Yanshan Mountains and walked the prairie to the north, and found other Great Wall passes to harass and share the pressure.

The remaining main force is ready to slowly retreat along the western Liaoning corridor.

However, Hauge's imminent withdrawal was not only known to him, but also to the enemy.

The gaps in the Shanhaiguan wall have been smashed like that, and if Hauge doesn't leave, he will die! Before the breach, the Ming army had already prepared in advance.

So, just when the decision to withdraw Hauge had not yet been issued, and the various departments were still packing their bags and preparing to leave, on the second day of September, an urgent report suddenly came from the rear.

"Report! Wang Ye, Zhang Mingzhen's department of the Ming army, suddenly landed in Ningyuan, the rear, and had already divided heavy troops to attack the city, and the Ming army Zheng Chenggong's department landed on Bijia Mountain, and then attacked Tashan and Jinzhou!

In the Ming army, there are also the banners of old Liaodong generals such as Wu Sangui and Li Fuming, who were crossed by Zhang Mingzhen and Zheng Chenggong! The defenders of Ningyuan and Jinzhou are insufficient, and some of them are bewitched by Wu Sangui and others, and choose to be the internal response, and now the survival of Tashan Jinzhou and other places is unknown, please make a quick decision! ”

Haoge was completely nomadic in the steppe, the Qing army had been defeated and retreated repeatedly, most of the Han cultural and official elites had been lost, and the Qing army's own high-level generals had also suffered heavy losses, so no one was wary of this form of cross-sea landing operations. I didn't expect that the Ming army would dare to cut off the way back from the Liaoxi Corridor.

"What? How dare the Ming army land in the rear of our army? Zhang Mingzhen, Zheng Chenggong, is this looking for death? He is not afraid that the lone army will be surrounded by my Great Qing Xiong Division? ”

——

PS: I'm sorry that I wanted to rush to draft a new book outline this morning, and I submitted it for review before the holiday, but it was still not completed. Neither end has landed.

The old book is later, sorry.