"Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom-" After a few loud noises, a thick smoke immediately spread in the empty field, full of choking scent of sulfur, and the fragments after the explosion also came from
It fell from the sky and fell to the ground.
After the thick smoke gradually dissipated, Shang Yi and his men also emerged from behind the thick earth wall and arrived at the center of the explosion. At this time, the ground was covered with scattered iron fragments, and it still emitted a hot heat.
Some soldiers quickly loaded all the iron blocks into a truck and collected them, dragged them into a large pit that had been dug on the other side and buried them.
Shang Yi nodded and said, "Very good, prepare for the next batch."
Another group of soldiers immediately pushed dozens of cannons, then filled them with gunpowder, preparing for the next blast.
After capturing Beijing, it was like digging a rich mine, full of various resources, but Shang Yi could not absorb them all. Therefore, he could only choose the most important parts, gold, silver and craftsmen. For others, it could destroy them.
Try to destroy as much as possible. The first thing to bear is artillery.
After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, he seized more than 400 artillery pieces of various types. This time he went to attack Shanhaiguan, and only brought dozens of light artillery pieces with his army. There were still 370 or 80 of them, including only the Red Armor.
There were more than fifty cannons, and after the Qing army entered the capital, these batches of cannons fell into the hands of the Qing army and became their weapon for later attacking the Southern Ming Dynasty. In the famous Yangzhou Battle and Jiangyin Battle, the Qing army was
All used hundreds of artillery pieces, most of which were obtained from Beijing.
But after getting the gold and silver that Li Zicheng plundered, Shang Yi had no extra power to transport all these artillery away, and could only select more than 80 small and medium-sized copper cannons from them to take them away, and to the others
The artillery can only be blown up and buried, and must not be left to the Qing army.
In fact, Shang Yi felt very distressed to blow up this batch of cannons, because although these cannons are old-fashioned cannons, Shang Yi doesn't look down on them now, but after all, they are all cast with high-quality pig iron. Even if they don't, they are completely
After it can be dissolved, recasting guns and cannons is much faster than mining iron ore. Because copper is a resource that is more difficult to smelter than iron, and copper cannons are relatively small, so you can only choose to bring all copper cannons.
Let's go. It is estimated that after this batch of copper cannons is re-smelted, twenty or thirty copycat Napoleon cannons can be cast. This is the maximum that Shang Yi can do.
In addition, there were tens of thousands of muskets in Beijing, but the last time the merchant army had picked up a batch, and Li Zicheng took away another batch when he attacked Shanhaiguan. Most of the remaining ones were three-eyed guns, although there were a small number of birds.
The guns, but they are of poor quality, will blow up the pipes if they can't fire a few shots, so Shang Yi ignored them.
In addition, Beijing also had various food and supplies, and Shang Yi also distributed them to the people of Beijing. In short, all the treasury in Beijing was empty and nothing was left for the Qing army.
In addition, on April 22, the Catholic Church also made a decision to divide the missionaries into two groups, and Johnson Chan led a group of people to go south with Shang Yi, and reopened a new situation of avoiding missionary in the south.
Long Huamin and another group of people continued to stay in Beijing, leaving the will of fate.
It turned out that after Shang Yi and Ali Sandra left the church, Long Huamin and Joshua Tsang immediately recruited several major missionaries to discuss countermeasures together. Everyone was indeed full of war with the Qing army and agreed to the southern part of China.
Go to open up the situation. Because in Arconia's letter, it also mentioned that with Shang Yi's support, Catholicism is now in the south, and the development momentum of the southeast coastal area is very good, but it also points out that it is insufficient and difficult to
There is further expansion of development, so it is also a good thing to take this opportunity to rely on Shang Yi's power to expand the development of Catholicism in the south.
But some missionaries think that developing south is a good thing, but they cannot give up the foundation in Beijing. After all, this is also the foundation that Catholics took decades to develop to this day. So, can they give up if they say they give up?
Although the Qing Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty were enemies, the missionaries were all foreigners. After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, he did not treat the Catholic Church as much as possible. I believe that after the Qing army entered Beijing, he would not make things too difficult for the church. If the Qing Dynasty prohibited Catholic Church from
Beijing is in trouble and expels missionaries, and it is not too late to leave Beijing again.
Therefore, Long Huamin finally made such a decision. The reason why Long Huamin left behind in Beijing and Johnson Chan went south was because Long Huamin was the president of the Chinese Church of the Tianjiao Church, and Beijing was the headquarters of the Chinese Church, so naturally it was
Long Huamin stayed, on the other hand, in terms of missionary methods, Joshua Tsang and Aconia have similar views, and from personal relationships, Shang Yi obviously has a better impression of Joshua Tsang, and Joshua Tsang went south,
It is easy to continue to expand the situation created by Aconia in the early stage. After all, Long Huamin does not want to come up with a second Nanjing lesson plan.
Shang Yi was also satisfied with the decision of the Catholic Church. He also estimated that these foreign monks were reluctant to give up Beijing, and it was difficult to get them all in one pot, but sending Tang Johnson to go south with him was also a good result, because Lao Tang
It was Dou Lima's support and practitioner of the missionary plan to conquer the Chinese with science and technology. Long Huamin was an objection to this method. Relatively speaking, Long Huamin was also relatively stubborn and not flexible enough, so he kept him.
In Beijing, it would not be of great help to the Qing Dynasty.
So Shang Yi also welcomed Joshua Thanh to go south, and asked him and the missionaries who were going south to prepare and set off early on the 24th.
After two days of preparation, more than 4,500 craftsmen of various types were recruited, and their families were also 14,500. Some of them were willing to go south with the merchant army, while others were forced to do so.
But whether they want to or not, they are them anyway. At the same time, all the gold, silver and bronze cannons to be transported away were loaded into the car.
Just early on April 22, Shang Yi ordered the Fourth Regiment, New Regiment, Cavalry Battalion, and Mercenary Battalion to protect the convoy, set out first, and rushed to Tianjin Harbour. The entire convoy had more than 5,000 vehicles, and they kept pulling out.
More than ten miles away. More than 3,500 vehicles were used to transport gold, silver artillery, and more than 1,000 were used to transport food, grass and other materials. Each craftsman also distributed a donkey and horse to carry it.
Their own things, or the old and weak, were allowed to ride on the ride. Shang Yi, the Second Regiment and the Reconnaissance Company stayed in Beijing for one day and were postponed for them.
That night, spies sent by Shang Yi to Shanhaiguan also sent back the news that Li Zicheng's Dashun army was defeated by Wu Sangui and the Qing army on a rock, and was retreating towards Beijing.
After receiving the report, Shang Yi immediately recruited Wu Hansheng and a reconnaissance platoon who stayed in Beijing as an undercover agent when he evacuated from Beijing last time.
First, Shang Yi conveyed the news of Li Zicheng's great defeat to them, and then said: "Brothers, the Tartars are coming into the pass again, and this time the Tartars's goal is no longer to loot, to retreat outside the pass, and to
Like the Mongols back then, they occupied our country and turned all of us Han people into their slaves. But our merchant army will never let them succeed. We must fight with them and never surrender. Are you right?
.”
This reconnaissance platoon is a veteran of Shandong, and most of them have a grudge against the Qing army. In addition, Shang Yi has always used the Qing army as his target as an ideological education for soldiers. Therefore, everyone is also passionate about it, saying, "I'll fight with the Tartars."
Then, you must not surrender to Tartars.”
Shang Yi nodded and said, "Very good, you are indeed heroes of the Merchant Army, but fighting is not just about fighting on the battlefield, intelligence work is also very important, just like this time we resumed.
It was because I arranged for you to lurk in Beijing in advance and found out about the situation of the Dashun Army that I could succeed in one fell swoop. If I had not made this arrangement before, it would probably not be so easy for us to capture Beijing. And we and the Tatars
I'm afraid that the winner will not be decided in a short while. This battle may take several years, or more than ten years. Therefore, I still need some of you to continue lurking in Beijing and explore our merchant army.
Do you still do the military situation of the Tartars?"
Wu Hansheng said: "Sir, spying on military information is the task of our scouts, not to mention that we have to blame everyone for the Tartars. You just give orders and everyone will obey the orders."
The other soldiers also said, "Yes, yes, please order me to see you even if you want."
Shang Yi also nodded. Establishing an underground intelligence network in Beijing is another important goal of his entry into Beijing this time. To fight against this huge opponent, Man Qing, the intelligence work cannot be underestimated at all, and in the future, he will use it.
Beijing was the core and gradually spread to other large and medium-sized cities occupied by the Qing Dynasty to form a strict intelligence network system. Of course, the first step was to start from here.
Then Shang Yi carefully asked about the statements of each lurking person during this period, and finally selected twenty-three people from the fifty people as the first batch of intelligence personnel lurking in Beijing.
Of course, Shang Yi also knew that underground intelligence personnel and scouts were still quite different. In the future, he would still have to accompany professional underground intelligence personnel to pay responsibilities, and these first batch of people were just to build up the intelligence network in the future.
A foundation, at the beginning, does not expect them to play a big role, and in the next one or two years, they will have to replace them with real professionals.
Therefore, Shang Yi first divided the twenty-three people into seven groups, ranging from two to four people in each group, and gave a fund for activities. The first task of each group is to gain a foothold in Beijing first, and do business.
Everyone finds ways to take root in Beijing first. At the same time, Shang Yi also stipulates that all groups will act freely, but contact is prohibited from being contacted. In the future, they will send people to manage each group, and all orders will be conveyed by the originators.
They are all single-line connections, and they have agreed with each group to contact codes and connectors, and then they are allowed to leave.