Zhao Guodong was happy when he heard the emperor let him attack the city. He had disagreed with any persuasion to surrender. He and Hong Chengchou were old opponents. When he was fighting Yangzhou, more than a thousand people died in the city of Yangzhou. This blood feud could be said to be gone.

After receiving the order, Zhao Guodong left Zhu Hongsan's tent and came to the second division headquarters outside Huai'an City. Now Zhao Guodong is the admiral of Yangzhou, and he no longer serves as the direct leader of the second division. Now the commander of the second division is an old acquaintance, the blind Jiang Jiang Pengju.

Jiang Pengju was originally the commander of the Second Division, but later he was beaten to the end because of a mistake in raping a young widow. Now the Northern Expedition is about to hire people. Zhu Hongsan asked Jiang Pengju to take this position with Zhao Guodong's recommendation.

The Second Division had just arrived outside Huai'an City, and most of the soldiers had not yet got off the ship. Jiang Pengju arranged to unload the equipment in sweat. At this time, he saw Zhao Guodong coming.

Jiang Pengju stepped forward and asked, "Sir Admiral, why are you coming to the front line?"

"Old Jiang, His Majesty the Emperor just now gave the order to ask your second division to attack the city. How are you preparing?"

Jiang Pengju smiled bitterly and pointed to the large and small ships in the canal and said, "Admiral, look at it yourself. The ships are crowded together. The personnel of our Second Division have come down, but the weapons and artillery are all on the ship. It is impossible to attack the city now!"

Zhao Guodong also knew that there were many difficulties now, but the emperor's orders came down. What could he do?

"How many artillery cannons are transported by your Second Division? First build a position at the South Gate, and try to fire a few artillery!"

"Sir, this is fine, but the army's all have small cannons, and the siege cannons are still behind. Those big guys need special shooting positions, and they can't be built in less than five or six days!"

Zhao Guodong glared at the eyes and cursed: "Damn it, I am your superior. Do whatever you want to do! Get ten small cannons first, don't let the emperor see that we don't work! At the same time, you can send more people to get the ten big guys down!"

The big guy Zhao Guodong mentioned was the newly developed heavy artillery of the siege in the arsenal. In the Battle of Yangzhou three years ago, the army's eight-pound cannon was tickled against the thick Yangzhou city walls. In the end, it was impossible to transfer the navy's heavy artillery to break through the Yangzhou city walls. Therefore, after the Battle of Yangzhou, the army felt that the firepower was insufficient, so the arsenal developed a special heavy artillery for the siege in the arsenal.

The big guy who is transported now is the big guy. This cannon, which is called the General of the Red, is actually a kind of mortar. Thanks to Zhu Hongsan's good relationship with the Spaniards, the arsenal also received technical support from the Spaniards. When the Spaniards learned that the Chinese wanted a cannon to deal with strong fortifications, they immediately passed on the popular European mortar manufacturing technology to the Chinese.

Each of these ten big guys weighs more than five tons, and the whole body is cast in stainless steel, with a length of three meters, a diameter of fifty centimeters, and a cast iron ball weighing thirty kilograms. This bulky cannon cannot be used in field battles because of its short range and high self-weight. It is a good idea to deal with solid fortifications like city walls.

Jiang Pengju, who received the order, organized people to remove heavy artillery in the siege, and while carrying the ten field artillery that had just got off the ship, he ran a mile outside the south gate of Huai'an City and began to bombard the artillery.

Huai'an City is an ancient city. People have built cities here since the Three Kingdoms period. Huai'an City in the Ming Dynasty was divided into three parts, part of which was an old city in the Song Dynasty. This part of the city walls were rammed earth. Huai'an was the front line during the war between the Southern Song and Mongolia, so the city defense was pretty good. However, in the Yuan Dynasty, because the Mongols were afraid of the Han people's rebellion, part of the Huai'an city wall was demolished. During the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, local governments reappeared and built the Huai'an city wall.

In the 39th year of Jiajing, in order to prevent the Japanese pirates from the sea, a new city was built one mile north of the old city, and there was a cross-city connection between the new city and the old city. In the eighth year of Chongzhen, Zhu Datang became the governor of the canal transportation and raised silver to repair the three cities again. Since then, Huai'an City has formed a pattern of three cities connected.

The city knew that the Ming army had arrived and was already in chaos, but now it was even more frightened to fire outside the city. Some local gentry were secretly discussing whether to send monks to secretly open the city gate and welcome the Ming Dynasty's royal army in? However, Hong Chengchou had already predicted that he had sent personal soldiers in important roads in the city. When he saw sneaky pedestrians, he immediately killed them. What about you, the gentry and merchants.

Hong Chengchou led a group of generals to the Yingxun Gate in the South City and investigated the enemy situation outside through the battlements.

When Hong Chengchou saw a large group of Ming troops outside and ships without heads and tails on the canal, he knew that Huaian City might not be able to defend today. But after a while, he heard the sound of Ming army artillery outside the city, which was not like the low-rise red cannons in Yangzhou. When the shells hit the city wall, they only made a thud sound, but they only broke a few wall bricks.

You should know that Huai'an City has only been repaired for more than ten years, and the bricks are still very complete. Using small cannons like the Ming army to attack the city, it would be useless in half a month.

Hong Chengchou looked at the mercedes and saw that there were only ten small Ming army cannons outside, and they were firing slowly.

Hong Chengchou had never fought field battles with the Ming army. He fought with the Ming army three times. The first was a sneak attack at night, the second was a battle to defend the city in Yangzhou, and the third was now. He didn't know that a division of field artillery like the Ming army was equipped with hundreds of balls, and thought that the ten small cannons outside the city were all.

In fact, it is not a big deal that Hong Chengchou did not expect that Hong Chengchou was an ancient traditional literati, and his vision was limited to this. He knew that the cruiser in Europe with more than 2,000 tons had hundreds of cannons in one ship. The Ming Dynasty's Red and Barbarian cannons had only less than 40, with twenty-two on the walls of Beijing and eighteen on Shanhaiguan. Therefore, Hong Chengchou thought that these ten small cannons were all the Ming army outside the city.

Hong Chengchou breathed a sigh of relief. As long as it was not the heavy artillery outside Yangzhou City back then. If that cannon did not come, it was probably because the canal was shallow and could not be transported from the Yangtze River.

Zhu Hongsan was watching ten field cannons shooting slowly outside the city, which was very boring.

"Goudan, when will the heavy artillery of the siege be transported?" Those big guys of seven or eight thousand pounds naturally need to be transported by special ships. The canal water is shallow and other ships cannot be transported.

Zhao Guodong quickly bowed and said, "Your Majesty, because the heavy artillery is too heavy, it is still loading the ship in Yangzhou. It will probably take three days to transport it. There is also a dedicated shooting position to be built. I guess it will take ten days to use it!"

Zhu Hongsan nodded: "Okay! After the other troops got ashore, they surrounded Huai'an City. Don't let the Qing army run away! Let Jiang Pengju stop. One shell is three silver dollars. Save me some money!" Zhu Hongsan just ordered the cannon to fire, but in fact his messenger was killed, and he felt angry. Now he is angry and still has to waste money. Why are you doing?

Zhao Guodong nodded and asked someone to go down and pass the order, ordering Jiang Pengju to stop shooting.

On the fourth day of the Ming army's besieging the city, the ten big guys were finally transported. Hong Chengchou in the city saw that there were such a large cannon and was so scared that he fainted. It turned out that the Ming army was waiting for this big guy if they didn't attack the city these days.

This kind of mortar cannon has a range of only 500 meters. Therefore, the shooting position should be as close as possible to the city wall, and finally find a suitable location outside the east gate of Huai'an City. Hong Chengchou saw that it was so close to the city wall, and sent 500 suicide squads out of the city to destroy the cannon one night. However, the Ming army was prepared for a long time, and the five hundred people were lying outside the shooting position and did not rush in at all.

On the eleventh day of the siege of Huai'an, the heavy artillery was finally set up. On that day, Zhu Hongsan came to the outside of the East City early to see the power of this cannon.

A heavy cannon was served by a thirty-man artillery squad, and received the emperor's order. These people put three packs of gunpowder in, and then the two worked together to send the thirty-pound shells into the muzzle. After the ten cannons were loaded, at the order of Emperor Zhu Hongsan, the ten cannons roared and shot ten red iron shells at the Huai'an city wall.

The accuracy of the smoothbore cannon is naturally not good, but the quantity is compensated for the accuracy. Ten shells hit two of them, and one hit the battlement at the top of the city. The two hit the city walls knocked out a large area of ​​the bricks on the outer layer of the city wall, revealing the red rammed earth inside. As for the one hitting the battlement, the gravel that flew was even more powerful than the bullet, and it killed a large area of ​​soldiers defending the city wall, causing heavy casualties.

Hong Chengchou was so scared that his face turned pale when he saw this power. He knew that today was the time when Huai'an City was broken.

Zhu Hongsan outside the city was very happy. He said happily: "Yes, I'll send an order to record the two gunners who shot!"

The gunner, who received the emperor's commendation, was even more excited and started loading the second shell under the command of the officer. This mortar cannon is very powerful, but the loading time is too slow, and it can only be fired every five minutes. This is the early stage. After the loading hand is overdrawn, it can only be fired for seven or eight minutes.

Fortunately, the Ming Dynasty had a large number of soldiers. With the unremitting efforts of these loaders and gunners, the Huai'an city wall was finally opened on the afternoon of the eleventh day of the siege.

The remaining battle was simple. Although the Qing army in the city was large in number, they were all a group of elderly, weak, sick and disabled. They were all brought to Jinan by Ma Degong. As soon as these Qing army entered the city, they knelt down and surrendered, shouting for forgiveness.

Seeing that the city was destroyed, Hong Chengchou returned to his command center, the Governor's Office in Huai'an City, and used a foot of white silk to end his life.

This time, the quality of the Ming army was much better than that of Yangzhou. Back then, those were newly recruited garrison soldiers, so naturally there were all kinds of people. However, the Ming army is now selected ordinary farmers and has not been damaged by those soldiers. Therefore, robbery and rape rarely happen after entering the city. Of course, this is also related to the perfect military judge system in the army.

Hong Chengchou was dead, but his group of civil and military officials did not want to die. Jiangning Governor Zhou Boda, Huai'an Prefect Wang Shutang, Jiangning Xuezheng Yao Bin and others put on makeup after the city was broken, either hiding them at home or in a well, intending to escape the search of the Ming army.
Chapter completed!