1554, fierce offensive and defensive battle in Zunhua City
On the third day of the lunar month, Huang Taiji personally supervised the battle.
The Eight Banners' army of more than 50,000 people surrounded Zunhua City on all sides. The Eight Banners troops formed a formation outside the city, erected ladders together, and marched forward to attack the city with shouts.
The sound of killing outside the city was loud, and the roar of cannons. But inside the governor's office inside the city, Wang Yuanya was busy with another terrible thing. After the mutiny, Chongzhen developed a great distrust of the Mongolian mercenaries in Zunhua.
After escaping back to Beijing, Wang Yuanya was ordered to immediately eliminate this battalion of more than 400 Mongolian mercenaries.
Wang Yuanya felt deeply that after the Jizhen mutiny, there was a serious shortage of troops, especially soldiers with strong bow and arrow and fighting skills. Therefore, he recruited a battalion of Mongolians to strengthen his strength.
But on the night of the mutiny, these Mongols also took advantage of the situation and robbed a lot of property. Although they killed some unlucky ones afterwards, Chongzhen had completely lost trust in them.
Wang Yuanya had no choice but to give them money to fight them back home. They had just dismissed these people, but before they had time to send them out of the city, Huang Taiji arrived. The soldiers surrounded the city, and now no one could get out.
These people were in quite a commotion because they were dissatisfied with the layoffs. Wang Yuanya was trying to find ways to appease them.
The Eight Banners army pushed carts and carried ladders, shooting arrows as they walked.
For a time, arrows were like locusts, falling overwhelmingly towards the city wall. Zunhua's defenders only had 7,000 people. After all, there were only 35,000 soldiers left in the whole Ji Town. If Zunhua was not too important,
Together with Jizhou, they form the core of Ji Town. There are probably not even 7,000 people here.
The Zunhua Guard has long existed in name only. For each of the three guards, it would be good if they could pull out 200 capable soldiers. In addition, during the Jizhen mutiny, a lot of people died, and there were even fewer young soldiers. This time, the three guards totaled
More than 2,000 people were gathered to help defend the city.
One of the characteristics of the three guards and soldiers in Zunhua is that there are many firearms. Because this is an iron smelting base, both the government and the private sector have a large number of muskets. Of course, the civilians mainly use fire gate guns. Small hand-held fire gate guns
, all over urban and rural areas.
The factory owners, mine owners, and workshop owners here all support their own team training. There are no less than twenty team training in Zunhua. There are other small-scale insurance teams, mine protection teams, etc., with dozens of people.
There were hundreds of people, too numerous to mention.
This time when the Qing army entered the pass, the Mongols dispersed, divided into hundreds of groups according to their tribes, and looted in all directions. They had fierce conflicts with these militia groups.
But after all, these militia groups were not trained by Yang Fan's Xinghe regiment. Their combat effectiveness was inferior to the cavalry, and they were basically wiped out.
While the Eight Banners were attacking Zunhua, Mongolian cavalry were burning, killing and looting everywhere within a hundred miles of Zunhua. In order to prevent bandits from robbing, ironworks and mines had forts of varying sizes. Especially mines, most of which
In the mountains, it is actually not easy to build a dock based on the location of the mine and the favorable terrain.
The Mongols attacked these forts everywhere. Once one was opened, the harvest would be huge. There were a large amount of daily necessities, food, ironware and various other materials in these forts.
At this time, these powerful men who did not listen to Wei Bancheng's words and relied on Dong Lin and other civil servants were all filled with regret. At this time, not only were all their property lost, but their people were also taken away.
Wang Yuanya could see from the city tower that there were pillars of smoke in the distance. It was like beacon smoke was everywhere. No need to ask, he knew that these were Mongols attacking scattered iron factories and mines and looting landlords' compounds in the countryside.
These landowners all live together in clans, and they also have servants and soldiers who are used to suppress local people and tenant farmers.
"Sir, it's too dangerous here. You'd better go back to the city," Counselor Wei Dezhi advised. He is a member of the Wei family and is Wei Bancheng's distant nephew.
"I'm not going there, I'm just here, watching you defend the city. I swear to live or die with the city." Wang Yuanya said forcefully.
Seeing that Wei Dezhi could not persuade him, he had to order his own soldiers to protect him closely with shields.
Soon, Jiannu's siege troops braved flying stones from trebuchets, bows and arrows from the crenellations of the city wall, three-eyed blunderbuss, and bird blunderbuss. They kept charging forward. Along the way, people were hit by bullets, and they fell to the ground after being struck by arrows.
land.
When Jiannu rushed fifty meters away, the artillery on the horse's side opened fire one after another.
When Qi Jiguang was in charge of Ji Town, considering the importance of Zunhua, he purchased a lot of French cannons and bronze cannons. Generally speaking, the scale of Zunhua city is much larger than that of Santunying, and the city walls are also very strong.
Huang Taiji also saw that Zunhua was not that easy to fight.
Wang Yuanya went from house to house to talk to the big families in the city, and persuaded them to organize their servants to go to the city wall to help defend. At the same time, they donated money and food to help.
After all, the city is broken, and everyone is finished together.
Therefore, even if you want to protect your own property, you should support the army.
At this time, many large households, landowners, wealthy owners, industrial and mining owners retreated to the city, and there were also a large number of militia groups. For a time, there were many people defending the city walls.
Qake Duli of Zhengbai Banner led his own banner to attack the north east of the city.
They charged while holding up their shields, trying to reduce the size of their bodies and use their shields to block the artillery stones. Suddenly there was a bang, and a burst of fireworks was seen on the wall facing the horses on the left.
Immediately, gravel hit them all over the face, and the seven or eight charging flag men were immediately knocked to the ground. They were covered in blood and motionless, and they didn't know whether they were alive or dead.
He knew that it was just shotshells and the barrel was filled with gravel.
The defenders did not use artillery until they rushed to the city and then opened fire. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly understood that the Ming army was short of gunpowder. They did not open fire before because they were afraid of wasting ammunition. Until now, the siege troops were filling the pits and valleys.
They opened fire only after the trenches were filled and everything as far as the eye could see was filled.
"Don't be afraid of casualties, rush up quickly and don't stop." He immediately shouted loudly.
A group of twenty people carried ladders and jumped into the moat that dried up in winter, then climbed out and came to the bottom of the city wall. They erected ladders one after another, preparing to use the steel hooks on the top of the ladders to firmly hook the blue bricks of the city wall.
.
Because the ladder is set up on the city wall at an angle, the ladder has a very heavy weight. There are also people on the ladder, and twenty people are also very heavy. Coupled with the hook, this kind of ladder is impossible to knock over.
The flag men on both sides stood high with shields to protect the people at the bottom of the ladder. The archers used large bows to shoot at the Ming troops on the horses on both sides. These archers were very good at archery and could shoot at a distance of thirty or forty meters.
Hit the opponent's eyes, neck, or at worst, the face.
The Ming army was rarely equipped with face armor, so this kind of counter-fire was very disadvantageous. However, the Ming army had stronger firepower. They used three-eyed blunderbuss and small eagle cannons to shoot downward. The eagle cannon was a type of gun fixed on the crenellations of the city wall with a rotating shaft or
Small Fran cannon on the side of the ship.
The rate of fire of this small cannon is extremely high. Each small cannon is equipped with twenty muskets, and each cannon is replaced after firing. This kind of projectile weighing half a kilogram cannot be blocked by the shields of the Qing army. Even the carts cannot get close.
Blocked by the distance, several laundering trucks were punched through a hole, and the sand inside leaked all over the floor.
At this time, we can only climb the city with casualties, without any tricks.
It was only then that they discovered a big problem.
The city wall in Zunhua is much higher than the city walls in other parts of the Ming Dynasty. The ladder they made is not long enough, the difference is more than two meters.