The news that Duduo's main force had left only deceived Fei Ruhe for less than ten days. After all, there were Datong troops in every city. Although Duduo used various confusing tricks, the material mobilization still could not deceive anyone.
There was no way to pursue them. If Zhang Tieniu hadn't returned early, Yizhou City would have had to rely on the peasant soldiers defending the city to hold it back.
Fei Ruhe ignored the enemy's main force and directly chose to attack Jining because the siege artillery had arrived!
A total of six siege guns were built, three of which were manufactured in Macau, shipped to the Yangtze River by sea, and then sent to Fei Ruhe via the Grand Canal. The other three were manufactured in Jiangxi and transported to the battlefield in Henan.
These siege guns weigh 3.5 tons and have a caliber of about 20 centimeters. According to the British name, they should be called "63-pound guns."
Zhao Han borrowed this method and localized it, calling it "Forty-seven Jin Cannon" (57.15 Jin).
However, the "forty-seven-jin cannon" is not impressive at all. Some soldiers followed the name of the Ming Dynasty and still called it the "mighty general cannon", or called it the "six-thousand-jin cannon" based on the weight of the gun body (actually 7,000 jin).
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At this moment, Zu Zeyuan has brought the Han army with white flags to help, and is currently stationed in Jining City.
Neither Hong Chengchou, nor Zuo Liangyu, nor Zu Zeyuan paid much attention to Fei Ruhe's siege. Because there were a large army stationed in the city, and Jining had a high city and a deep pool, as long as the spies in the city were strictly guarded, Fei Ruhe's attack would last for a year.
Want to break the city.
The Jining City Wall is 13 meters high, with a base thickness of 14 meters and a top thickness of 7 meters.
Even if a tunnel is dug and blasted with gunpowder, it won't be able to collapse with hundreds of kilograms of gunpowder!
Hong Chengchou was sitting on the tower reading a book. Outside the city, civilians were still filling in the moat. Zuo Liangyu was simply basking in the sun, thinking about the war situation in his mind. He always felt frightened these days.
"Big gun!"
Suddenly some soldiers guarding the city exclaimed.
The noise became louder and louder, and Hong Chengchou finally couldn't sit still, so he stood up and went to see what was going on.
I saw tripods set up with logs on the shore. There were several such tripods. The specific details could not be seen clearly. There seemed to be a pulley (pulley) device and a lot of ropes. The enemy soldiers and civilians were pulling the pulley set. What was it?
Things were pulled up from the boat.
Hong Chengchou took the telescope from the observer's hand and saw that what was lifted up by a pulley was a gun barrel. It was slightly longer than the common Hongyi cannon, but the barrel was really thick.
Zu Zeyuan also ran over and snatched the telescope from Hong Chengchou's hand. His mouth went dry after looking at it and he said, "We're in trouble this time!"
Another artillery officer who mastered mathematics came to the designated artillery position and took out a measuring instrument to measure angles and distances.
The Ming Dynasty had artillery ranging technology. It had a meter pole with hundreds of scales on it, and the Pythagorean chord was used to measure. Sun Yuanhua also wrote "The Magic Machine of Western France" and introduced European artillery ranging technology.
Three siege guns and a sports car with wheels.
The civilian husbands pushed the sports car hard to the side of the artillery officer. This sports car was also specially made, made of copper, iron, and hardwood. The backlash of the siege gun was entirely buffered by the wheels and the ground.
After repeated calculations, the Datong Army began to test the artillery.
Hong Chengchou, Zuo Liangyu, Zu Zeyuan and others ran down the tower to avoid waiting for the cannonballs to be loaded outside the city.
According to the weight unit of a few hundred years later, a cannonball weighed more than 57 kilograms. It was very laborious to stuff the cannonball into the barrel!
In addition to the three heavy siege guns, twenty-five field artillery pieces were also aimed at the same section of the city wall.
The wonderful scene is coming.
Three heavy siege guns and twenty-five field artillery were fired at the same section of the city wall one after another. Each time a gun was fired, the data was recorded and the angle was adjusted.
"Boom boom boom boom!"
Most of the shells were too far or too close, and only three hit the target, one of which hit the top parapet.
No one could suppress it, and no one could suppress it. Anyway, all the soldiers guarding that section of the city wall ran away.
Every time the siege heavy artillery is fired, it will be pushed back to its original position. There are ten soldiers pushing the artillery cart alone.
"boom!"
Finally, a heavy cannon hit, and a 47-pound (57-pound) iron bullet hit the city wall hard. The outer city wall bricks were smashed into pieces, but the rammed earth wall inside could absorb the kinetic energy of the cannonball.
Jining City Wall is so thick!
There are only eight banners of the Han army under Zu Zeyuan in the city, and the rest are all surrendered Han troops, including those from Shandong and the border troops.
Some Shandong generals had already decided to escape. They would flee whenever the city wall collapsed. It was impossible for them to sacrifice their lives for the Manchus anyway.
At least, they will not sacrifice their lives for the Manchus until the Manchus win the war.
The buildings close to that section of the city wall were in bad luck. After half a day, the city wall did not collapse, but a piece of nearby houses collapsed.
In the evening, the shelling stopped.
Hong Chengchou carried a lantern and walked into a mostly collapsed shop. He squatted down and looked at the shells in a daze. Hong Chengchou had never seen a shell that was much bigger than his head.
Zu Zeyuan also came over and knelt down, looked at it for a while and said: "Go out of the city and grab the artillery. We can't let the enemy bombard it like this!"
Zuo Liangyu reminded: "I can't move it."
"Then blow it up!" Zu Zeyuan said.
Zuo Liangyu said: "If we can blow up the enemy's cannon, unless our army can win a big victory, why will we blow it up by then? We have already captured it."
"We can only attack the camp at night!" Zu Zeyuan said.
Zuo Liangyu said: "A night attack on the camp will probably only cause temporary chaos. The camp outside the city has always been cautious. If there is only temporary chaos and blind fire, where can you find the enemy's cannon?"
Zu Zeyuan fell silent immediately.
Hong Chengchou said: "The ten kings have led the main force to Yizhou. Our army must not leave the city. We can only wait for news from the ten kings. As for the enemy's cannons, let them continue to bombard the city wall and collapse it.
Defend the city at the gap."
This is bullshit. With the morale of those surrendering soldiers and generals in the city, they will immediately flee once the city is breached.
But Hong Chengchou had no choice. He only had thousands of Han troops with white flags brought by Zu Zeyuan to use.
The next day, artillery was launched again to attack the city, still collectively aiming at the same city wall as yesterday.
Twenty-eight cannons were fired in order.
After the first cannon is fired, the barrel is immediately cleaned and the ammunition is reloaded. At the same time, the second cannon is fired, and so on, endlessly.
The civilian troops, under the cover of artillery, continued to fill in the moat.
Jining's moat took ten and a half days to fill in. It is both wide and deep!
On the fourth day of the bombardment of the city, Zu Zeyuan finally couldn't bear it and led the Wu Zhenha Chao Battalion out of the city to attack the artillery troops.
Four thousand Datong fire gun soldiers were arranged neatly by the moat.
Zu Zeyuan stopped and took a look, then returned dejectedly. He did not dare to go around in other directions, fearing that he would not be able to return to the city if he went too far, and there would be no reliable friendly troops in the city.
"Report!"
A horseman came from the west, traveled a long way to the north, crossed the canal, and finally arrived at Jining City.
Before Hong Chengchou asked, Zu Zeyuan said: "What military situation?"
The soldier who sent the message said: "Juye is gone. Caozhou's rebel army besieged Juye for several days. Some generals in the city rebelled. They cooperated inside and outside to break Juye City."
Zu Zeyuan remained silent.
Hong Chengchou looked helpless. There were too many Shandong rebels. There were "rebellions" in various places in the rear. In order to maintain the stability behind him, Zuo Liangyu sent two generals and led troops back to suppress them one after another.
This resulted in too few troops to take the initiative to attack other states and counties, and could only huddle up and defend the city.
Zuo Liangyu felt that he had been ruthless enough, but it turned out that the Manchus were even more powerful than him, forcing the gentry to rebel by confiscating food!
Of course, Xu Ying also made great efforts to spread rumors, instigate and connect with each other. When a Han woman gets married, she must first be given to a Tatar official for the bridal chamber. This rumor has become known to everyone.
Datong Xizuo only needs to spread the rumors and does not need to worry about the follow-up. The people will spread the rumors by word of mouth.
The more outrageous the rumor, the faster it spreads!
Moreover, ordinary people took the initiative to add fuel to the fire, and the content became more and more sinister as it spread. But no matter how crooked it was, some people believed it, because during the Chongzhen period, after the Tatars broke through the customs, they once looted all the way to Shandong, burning, killing, looting, and committing all kinds of evil.
Yan Yingyuan and other rebels joined forces with the Liangshan rebels, and then joined forces with the rebel soldiers of Caozhou. Now they finally captured Juye. These rabble-rousers have gathered 150,000 troops!
It was really a mob. Among the 150,000 rebels, only about 10,000 could understand the flag order.
Among them were a large number of civilians, whose families were ruined and who really had no food to eat. Some prefectures, counties and villages were completely empty, and men, women, old and young all joined the army, just to make ends meet.
They deeply hated Zuo Liangyu and the Manchus, and joined the rebel forces one after another. Most of them had no idea what to do when they were fighting.
But they just conquered Juye, and the next city was Jiaxiang.
Once Jiaxiang is defeated, the rebels can come to Jining and join forces with the main force of Fei Ruhe's Datong Army.
Jiaxiang County.
Guard Zhang Yingxiang's scalp was already numb. More than 100,000 people came to kill him outside the city. He almost ordered the Datong military flag to be replaced on the spot.
But the occupation was unknown, so Zhang Yingxiang did not dare to defect easily. What if the Manchu and Qing troops won?
Before it got dark, his family was not in the city, and his belongings were not in the city either. Before more than 100,000 rebel troops besieged the city, Zhang Yingxiang led his troops to abandon the city and flee, circled north and then rushed back.
Jining meets Zuo Liangyu.
The road was not enough, and the Datong Army and Navy occupied the canal near Jining!
"Why are you here?" Zuo Liangyu asked.
Zhang Yingxiang replied: "More than 200,000 rebel troops are attacking Jiaxiang. I can't hold my humble position."
Zuo Liangyu became increasingly worried. The development of the situation was very different from what he imagined.
This is no longer a war between the Eight Banners of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the Datong Army, but the entire Shandong people are rising up to fight against the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
Historically, the Manchu Qing occupied Shandong for ten years before they completely eliminated the rebels in Shandong.
Nowadays, the Datong Army is meticulously creating rumors and inciting people everywhere. With the Datong Army as its backing, the number of Shandong Rebels is several times greater than in history.
The vast ocean of people’s war!
"boom!"
The cracks in the city wall became larger, and Hong Chengchou's face became more and more gloomy.
The Datong Navy occupied the canal, and Jining's defenders were unable to leave even if they wanted to.
It is possible to withdraw the troops, but the baggage and food cannot be taken away. Because when withdrawing troops by land, the more baggage is taken, the more civilians are needed.
Once there are more civilians and a group of surrendered soldiers and generals with low morale, the Datong army may not be able to catch up for a few miles, and Hong Chengchou's side will turn from withdrawing to fleeing.
"boom!"
Another heavy artillery hit, Hong Chengchou was frightened.
A messenger came from the east. After entering the city, he said in horror: "Sishui County is gone, and the enemy is besieging Qufu County!"
Zu Zeyuan was horrified: "Where is the army of His Highness the Ten Kings?"
"Ten kings were defeated and died!" the messenger said.
Hong Chengchou and Zu Zeyuan looked at each other and at the same time looked at Zuo Liangyu.
Zuo Liangyu was far away, and he wanted to know the military situation, but Hong Chengchou wouldn't let him listen.
On Jining's side, the general has long since become disloyal.
Zu Zeyuan recruited his own soldiers, gathered around Zuo Liangyu and said: "The ten kings have been defeated, Jining cannot hold on for a long time, and we will withdraw to Dongping with our elite troops tonight."
Zuo Liangyu lowered his head and said: "Okay!"
Zuo Liangyu was kidnapped. If he said no, he would be hacked to death by Zu Zeyuan.