"The last general, Zhang Mingzhen, has seen the overseer."

As soon as he entered the main tent, Zhang Mingzhen knelt on one knee and greeted Su Yan with a fist.

Su Yan personally stepped forward and helped Zhang Mingzhen up, and then he asked, "Dingxi Hou, how many soldiers and horses have you brought from Jiaxing Mansion?" In this siege of Nanjing, you and I should work together to resist the enemy!"

"Returning to the superintendent, the last general will bring 10,000 infantry troops and 3,000 horse troops from Jiaxing, bringing together a total of more than 13,000 people." Zhang Mingzhen replied.

Hearing that Zhang Mingzhen had brought more than 10,000 soldiers and horses, Su Yan was overjoyed, he nodded, and said, "Good, the soldiers and horses brought by Dingxi Hou can be described as a send-off in the snow, Nanjing is so big that our army can't cover every city gate."

"Dingxi Hou, this governor will hand over the west gate between Dinghuai Gate and Sanchuan Gate to you to be responsible, how about it?" Su Yan asked.

After learning that Zhang Mingzhen had brought more than 10,000 soldiers, Su Yan had a new plan, and he decided to let the sailor move to the main attack outside Yifengmen, which was the closest to the Yangtze River, and the sailor gunboats could assist in the artillery bombardment from the Yangtze River.

Although Zhang Mingzhen and Su Yan did not belong to the same system, he was already very convinced of Su Yan, so he did not refuse the task given to him by Su Yan, and nodded and agreed.

In addition to Zhang Mingzhen, Su Yan also needed to redeploy the Russian garrison that had conquered the Purple Mountain, considering that the Jinchuan Gate and Zhongfu Gate in the northwest of the city were not divided into troops to besiege, Su Yan took the former Jiangnan Governor Zhang Tianlu as the general, and led the remaining more than 5,000 Russian garrisons to garrison outside Jinchuan Gate.

After a day of redeployment, on the evening of the fifth day of the first lunar month, the Ming army outside the city finally succeeded in encircling the city of Nanjing.

Among them, Su Yan sat in the Purple Mountain, commanding the Shenji Battalion, the Zhongjun Battalion, the Xiaocai Battalion and the 3,000 Punishment Battalion to besiege Chaoyang Gate and Zhengyang Gate, and besiege Tongji Gate on the west side of Zhengyang Gate.

Wang Yi's 2,000 Ming troops and 3,000 punishment battalions besieged Jubaomen.

Zhang Mingzhen commanded 10,000 infantry troops and 3,000 cavalry troops stationed on the line from Dinghuai Gate to Sanchuan Gate, and Huang An, the commander of the naval division, stationed 3,000 troops outside Yifeng Gate.

Finally, the 6,000 Ming troops and 5,000 punishment battalions of the Su Ci Department were stationed on the shore of Xuanwu Lake to besiege the Shence Gate, and the Suzhou General Yang Chengzu led the headquarters of 2,000 to attack the Taiping Gate.

Counting the more than 5,000 Russian garrisons outside the Jinchuan Gate, the Ming army that participated in the siege of Nanjing totaled more than 47,000 people.

In fact, these forces were about the same as those that Zheng Chenggong probably invested when he besieged Nanjing nearly ten years later, but the Ming army under Su Yan did not have the characteristics of Zheng's army that separated from the water wall.

And this time the Ming army also occupied the Purple Mountain, as the saying goes, the burning of the Purple Mountain will destroy the Jinling, the Purple Mountain is occupied, and the Qing army in the city is not far from extinction.

In the following time, the Ming army outside the city did not attack, but cut down a large number of trees around the city to make siege equipment, waiting for the next siege battle, and recruited those people whose homes were burned down by the Qing army and displaced people to the camp, and hired them as migrant laborers with wages and food to help carry wood and equipment.

The Ming army did not launch an attack, but it did not mean that the artillery positions on the Purple Mountain fell silent, and under Su Yan's order, the artillery positions on the Purple Mountain began to bombard the city of Nanjing intermittently from the sixth day of the first month of May.

The target of their artillery bombardment was mainly the Nanjing city wall or the barracks of the Qing army in the city, because the artillery of the Ming army carried out the artillery bombardment condescendingly, and the Qing artillery on the city wall was completely unable to counterattack it.

The artillery deployed on the city wall can also be seen clearly from a high place, and the Ming artillery is staring at the city defense artillery, so that the Qing army has to brave the artillery fire to forcibly disassemble the city defense artillery, but even so, they have paid huge losses.

Also fired artillery on the Yangtze River moored ten Western-style warships, the fifth-level flagship led by the battleships have opened the gun windows, towards the Yifeng Gate to launch a round of indiscriminate bombardment, the early Ming Dynasty spent a huge amount of money to build the Nanjing city wall did not use to resist foreign enemies, but was used by the enemy to keep the Ming army out, in addition to leaving countless potholes on the city wall of Nanjing, the quality of the city wall itself actually did not have the slightest effect.

After eight days of continuous shelling and the consumption of a large amount of shells and gunpowder, on May 14, the Ming army finally began the official siege of the city

One shot.

With Su Yan's order, on the morning of May 14, the Ming army launched a siege on the gates of Nanjing, because the Hongyi cannons were basically transported to the Purple Mountain, so the Ming army mainly shelled the city wall with the Fran machine gun and the tiger squat cannon, and at the same time advanced to the city wall with countless shield carts, pedals, battering rams, siege towers and ladders.

Looking out from the top of the city, countless soldiers in red armor pushed all kinds of siege equipment to the city wall, and from time to time black cannonballs crossed the crowd and smashed on the city wall with a piercing whistling sound, the whole scene was extraordinarily spectacular.

On the city wall, countless Qing soldiers ran behind the wall battlements, boiling stinking dung water in one pot after another pot of iron pots that were boiling, and those dung water were collected from all over the city, and only a simple fire could be turned into the most dangerous and poisonous gold juice, and anyone who was touched by the hot gold juice, even if it was only a slight burn, the germs in the fecal water could take the opportunity to invade the wound and cause serious wound infection.

In addition to the gold juice made from dung that can be collected everywhere, the city is also full of rocks and rolling wood, and there are baskets of thunderbolts hoarded together - these thunderbolts were captured from the treasury of Nanjing, including the city defense guns on the city wall, the cannonballs fired and the black powder consumed, the large amount of weapons hoarded by the Ming army was not used to resist the Qing army in the south, but was used by the Qing army occupying the magpie's nest to hit the Ming army itself.

Don't talk about it, blood pressure is going up!

"Fire!"

With the artillery shouted to kill, the Hongyi cannons on the city wall let out a deafening roar, although the Hongyi cannons were not as exaggerated as the civil officials boasted that "the cannon burned for several miles", but it still caused a lot of casualties to the Ming army besieging the city.

Rumble –

"Shelling is coming, dodge!"

The officers in charge of pushing the siege equipment were basically the infantry of the punishment battalion, and as soon as the officers heard the thunderous sound of cannons, they immediately reacted and shouted warnings to the surrounding foot soldiers.

As soon as a hundred households finished speaking, a cannonball fell less than five meters in front of him, and the cannonball accurately hit a shield cart, directly smashing the shield cart to pieces, and the foot soldiers pushing behind were also crushed out of a bloody road.

This is not the end, after the shell killed several people, it continued to smash a deep pit on the ground, bounced upwards along the inertia, and cut off the head of a foot soldier who could not dodge, before flying dozens of meters away and stopped, and the neck of the foot soldier who was cut off was like a fountain gushing out a large amount of blood, dyeing the surrounding area of several meters bright red.

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