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Cao Bianjiao and Wei Guoxiang also stopped chasing and killing the defeated soldiers, and took the cavalry back to fight Wu Sangui.

Wu Sangui also ran away at the moment when the former army collapsed.The enemy army is a group of desperate lunatics, and he doesn't want to fight with such lunatics.

Zu Dashou's central army had no fighting spirit in the face of the oncoming enemy and the rout, and turned around and fled before reaching the enemy.

Zu Dashou had nothing to do, he mingled with the rout and fled skillfully on horseback.

Wu Sangui also ran fast, and no one chased him.Because there are still many cavalry who surrendered to the Qing Dynasty and are fighting with the dragoons, Cao Bianjiao and Wei Guoxiang must deal with these guys first.

On the land of the Central Plains, in the soft morning light, tens of thousands of people moved like ants.

Wu Sangui fled all the way to the north, and rushed to the vicinity of the confluence of Shahe and Woshui. There were only more than 20 family cavalry left behind him.Fearing that the enemy would come after him, he took off all his armor and swam over with his horse.

Zu Dashou was also a master of escape and ran all the way to Taikang County.

After a short rest in the city, he fled to Zhongmu by boat, and he dared not defend Taikang County.

"Catch an enemy general!"

Jiang Yu, whose younger brother was killed in the battle, rode to see who had been caught, full of anger.

He recognized this person at a glance, and said: "This guy is Zu Zeqing, Zu Dashou's fourth son!"

Zu Zeqing looked pained, fell off the horse and broke his leg.

Chapter 424 [Full Body Plate Armor]

Outside Shangqiu city.

More than 3 hungry people with their families and mouths were thrown back to the newly occupied Yongcheng County's sub-fields.They are not needed here, and keeping them can only consume military rations. It is better to arrange civil affairs work earlier.

Another [-] volunteers (starved people) were transferred to Yucheng and Xiayi counties by Zhao Han.

These two counties are also newly occupied, and they are close to Shandong.If the situation in Shandong is unstable, you can support Shandong at any time, at least you can help defend the city.

After the victory of the war, these hungry people will settle down on the spot, which can save a lot of immigration expenses.

It's just that there are more men than women, and the sex ratio is extremely abnormal.

War is like this, men are miserable, women are even worse.Therefore, even if Manchu women were caught, Zhao Han ordered that they not be killed, and all of them were distributed to good people nearby to form families.

Zhao Han intends to do population trade with the Netherlands and buy some native women from Nanyang.Otherwise, there will be too many bachelors in the north, which will not only be detrimental to population growth, but will also cause various social problems.

The policy has been discussed, and bachelors in the north who want to find a wife should go to the government to apply for a report.Zhao Han only charges the cost price, bachelors can pay in installments, and can always pay it off in ten or eight years.

Zhao Han was still in the mood to think about civil affairs, and the defenders in Shangqiu City were on the verge of mental breakdown.

53 artillery pieces have been bombarding the city gates for eight days!

Shangqiu City is tall and strong, but it has not collapsed yet.But that part of the city wall has been cracked in many places, the biggest crack is half a meter wide, and it may fall down at any time.

Tong Yangjia couldn't wait for Dorgon's reinforcements, so he ordered the garrison troops from the rear to come to Shangqiu City to support them.The number of defenders has reached 4, and they seem to want to guard the gap after the city wall collapses.

"Your Majesty, Liaodong has sent an urgent military message!"

Zhao Han opened the letter and looked at it, he was overjoyed and said, "Good job!"

The artillery continued to bombard the city wall. Zhao Han summoned civil and military officials and said with a smile: "The No. 11 Division attacked Liaodong from the sea last winter. It conquered Jinzhou, Fuzhou, Gaizhou, and Haizhou one after another, and went all the way to the outside of Shenyang. Tens of thousands of people were taken away from Haizhou and Shenyang. At present, Jinzhou, Fuzhou, and Gaizhou are the bases, and households are divided into fields, and sowing has already begun!"

Everyone was overjoyed and praised.

Hou Fangyu, who followed the army and listened to the matter, said with deep emotion: "Your Majesty's army is truly heavenly soldiers and generals. The Datong army can never imagine that our Datong army can cross the sea to attack. The old nest has been plundered. If Dorgon gets the news, the Tatars will Immediately the chieftain will lose morale."

Mao Yuanyi suggested: "Let the various departments of our army defend the city as much as possible to prolong the time. When the news from Liaodong comes, the Tatar chieftains are eager to return, and it will not be too late for a decisive battle."

Zhao Han shook his head and said, "Fight as you should, and fight as you want. You can't rely on the Tartars to mess things up."

"Your Majesty is right. Whether we can win or not depends on ourselves." Li Zheng echoed.

At this moment, another urgent military message came: "Your Majesty, Shandong urgent report!"

Zhao Han opened the letter, couldn't help laughing a few times, and said: "Zhang Mingshan (Zhang Tieniu) wiped out the Duoduo tribe in Fei County. Li Tai lost their lives in the first battle. Nearly [-] Puppet Qing Eight Banners Army, only Yild fled with a thousand cavalry."

"Long live Your Majesty!"

The civil and military officials who came with the army knelt down and shouted long live in joy and excitement.

Zhao Han smiled and said, "Get up, don't kneel at every turn."

On the ninth day of the bombardment of Shangqiu, another battle report from Shandong was received: Fei Ruhe captured Jining, captured Hong Chengchou and Zuo Liangyu, and killed Zu Zeyuan, the deputy capital of the Eight Banners of the Han Army.

Received good news one after another, and the morale of the whole army was high.

Hou Fangyu took the opportunity to speak in front of Zhao Han: "Your Majesty, since Zuo Liangyu has been captured alive, he can be ordered to recruit all the Han troops in Shandong. In this way, the Shandong soldiers under Azig's command will inevitably choose to swarm and turn against the remaining puppet soldiers in Shandong. The Eight Banners became a lone army!"

Zhao Han suddenly laughed playfully, and asked: "Zuo Liangyu and your father seem to be old acquaintances?"

Hou Fangyu was startled, and immediately fell to his knees in fright: "Your Majesty..."

"There is no need to explain," Zhao Han said, "There are some things you should not say. Now that you have said it, don't blame me for thinking too much. The situation in Shandong has been settled, and there is no need for Zuo Liangyu to make any surrender, and you don't need to do anything wrong." Brain."

Hou Fangyu heard that his vest was sweating, and bowed to plead guilty and quit.

Hou Xun had two masterpieces in his life, one was to promote Yuan Chonghuan, and the other was to promote Zuo Liangyu.

Zuo Liangyu was originally a military officer in western Liaoning. Because the border general planned a mutiny and raised wages and threatened the court to pay money quickly, Zuo Liangyu was pushed out afterwards as one of the scapegoats.After losing his official position, he made a living by robbery, and actually robbed the court supplies.He fled all the way to the capital to sell his head, and was bought by Hou Xun to be a house slave.

As a result, Zuo Liangyu began to rise to the top. If he lost the battle, someone would help him to blame him, and if he won the battle, he would immediately reward him generously.

During the years when Yang Sichang was Minister of the Ministry of War, he could not command Zuo Liangyu at all.Because Yang Sichang and the Donglin Party are deadly rivals, and Zuo Liangyu is a dog raised by the Donglin Party.

Hou Fangyu jumped out at this moment and suggested that Zuo Liangyu should recruit the soldiers from Shandong. What on earth did the Hou family want to do?

No matter what the purpose is, the future of the Hou family will be ruined by Hou Fangyu's words. Zhao Han will never allow civil officials and generals to collude.

Hou Xun in history, apart from promoting Yuan Chonghuan and Zuo Liangyu, did not do much in his later years.When Li Zicheng went to Beijing, Hou Xunma slipped to join Li Zicheng, and because he was in prison, he escaped the pay and reached the rank of Shangshu.

After the Qing Dynasty came, Hou Xun had a record of taking refuge in Li Zicheng, so he didn't dare to become an official in Nanming.Although he lived in seclusion at home, in the third year after the Manchus entered the customs, he asked his second son to take the Manchu Imperial Examination.

Even Hou Fangyu, who witnessed the successive collapse of the Nanming regime, reluctantly participated in the imperial examinations of the Manchu and Qing Dynasties.

Even, Hou Fangyu offered advice to the Manchu Qing Dynasty to solve the matter of the flooding of the Yuyuan Rebel Army.

At this moment, Hou Fangyu left in a daze.

His father and son struggled for more than half a year, and now Hou Xun's life and death were still uncertain, but they were all messed up by a single sentence.

……

The artillery was still bombarding that part of the city wall.

A report of the success of the Datong Army was shot into the city from another city wall.Although Tong Yangjia forbade these letters to be kept privately, someone still quietly picked them up to check.

Tong Yangjia was watching it himself, and was inexplicably horrified after watching it.

Is Liaodong's old nest taken away?

The population outside Shenyang City was also taken away, and the population inside and outside Haizhou City was all evacuated?

Doduo, Geng Zhongming, Li Sutai, Zu Zeming all died in battle?

Hong Chengchou was captured alive?

Tong Yangjia couldn't believe that these contents were true.

Yes, it must be false, the enemy fabricated rumors and shot books into the city in order to destroy their morale!

Tong Yangjia summoned all the generals and read the contents of the letter in public. He knew he couldn't hide it: "Everyone, don't panic, this must be a rumor for the enemy. His Royal Highness (Duo Duo) is brave and good at fighting, how can he be defeated by an unknown person? My Eight Banners is invincible, and the puppet and southern barbarians will never win. Liaodong is so far away, how can the puppet army cross the sea and attack? The regent has already brought an army of [-], and he will arrive at Shangqiu in a day or two. All the enemies outside the city will be wiped out!"

Dorgon was indeed coming, and he sent a message a few days ago, telling Tong Yangjia to guard Shangqiu no matter what.Even if the city wall collapses, you must guard the gap, and wait for him to come, and then cooperate with the inside and outside, and attack back and forth.

If it weren't for Dorgon's army approaching, some surrendered generals in the city would have defected to the city long ago.

But Shangqiu City Wall has been shelled for ten days, can it last for another day or two?

"boom!"

On the 11th day, a heavy artillery hit, and the city wall collapsed from the lower half.

The situation of the collapse was a bit embarrassing, the wall foundation was too thick, and it was still standing tenaciously until now.The broken part of the city wall is more than two meters above the ground, and it is still necessary to take a ladder to climb up.

There is no way to bombard it anymore. The 10-meter-thick wall base is now only 2 meters high. How could it continue to collapse?

"Prepare to attack the city!" Zhao Han ordered.

Tong Yangjia, Sun Dingliao, Zhao Zhilong and other guards all breathed a sigh of relief seeing this situation.A city wall more than two meters high is enough to hold on for a few more days.

The defenders in the city began to set up pots on the walls on both sides of the gap, intending to heat up oil and pour down the gold juice, and stones and rolling logs were also moved towards the city one after another.

"Continue the bombardment!"

"Boom boom boom!"

The 53 artillery pieces that had stopped suddenly fired shells again after the enemy set up the pot to burn oil.

The soldiers on the city fled one after another, and a small piece of the city wall was blasted down and killed more than ten people.

And the regular army of the two divisions, thousands of farmers and soldiers of Datong, and tens of thousands of rebels began to approach Shangqiu City from three sides.

Not only attack from the gap, but attack the rest of the city walls together!

Moreover, 300 of Zhao Han's personal troops began to wear armor.

European-style full-body plate armor, even the face is covered by a visor.

The previous idea was to have all divisions have heavy armor units, but it did not conform to the idea of ​​focusing on firearms.Therefore, Zhao Han selected 300 of the heavily armored troops he had trained to use as his own army, and obtained two sets of full-body plate armor from Macau to imitate them.

Plate armor is indeed useful, but it is not suitable for large-scale promotion.

Even in Europe, only a small number of elite troops are equipped.In Europe in this era, as in China, cloth face armor was the most equipped.

The plate armor material hammered by hydraulic power does not even count as rough embryos.

For a set of plate armor, you must first determine who the user is.Then pull to measure the body data, tall, short, fat and thin, tailor-made, and then slowly hammer with various tools.

If a man suddenly becomes fat, his plate armor is useless.The father died and passed down the plate armor, and the son's figure was not right, so he could only keep it as a family heirloom.How could this kind of armor be so popular?

The three hundred plate armored warriors moved forward at a slow pace, and the defenders did not see clearly until they got close.

Tong Yangjia said dryly, "Iron...Iron Man Army?"

Sun Dingliao was dumbfounded: "What kind of armor is this? The whole body is covered with iron. I don't know if the firecracker can penetrate it."

Chapter 425 [Broken City]

After shelling the city wall for eleven days in a row, the rest of the men were not idle.

A large number of civilians have filled several sections of the moat, and anyone who can do carpentry is sent to make siege equipment.

There are more than 500 aerial ladders, which are the kind with wooden planks for arrows, anti-push grapples, and winches for lifting.There are also more than 1000 simple ladders, which are basically useless because the city walls of Shangqiu are too high.

There is also a chariot to cover the advance of the infantry. Although it is made temporarily and is not as sophisticated as the Manchu chariot, it is enough to block arrows.

Also, there are many remaining long planks that can be put on the gap wall.For the incomplete city wall more than two meters high, dozens of hundreds of planks can be built to create slopes for attack.

The forest near Shangqiu has been cut down by Zhao Han!

Surrounded by three and missing one, tens of thousands of troops attacked the city together, without using cannon fodder to test, the city wall must be taken down today.

The chariots are in front, and each chariot can cover dozens of infantry.

Excellent ladders can also cover infantry.

When the siege troops were advancing, 53 artillery pieces were aimed at the walls on both sides of the gap, because the enemy troops were burning oil on the walls under the artillery fire.

Tong Yangjia dispatched soldiers to climb the city wall several times, but they were smashed into chaos by a cannonball.These city defenders were so frightened that they all lay behind the parapet. If any artillery hit the parapet, a group of unlucky ones would be born.

The female wall is thin and can only protect against arrows, but not artillery.

Tong Yangjia said to Sun Dingliao: "Sun Dutong, you must guard the gap!"

"We must stick to it." Sun Dingliao replied.

Sun Dingliao has been in the Qing Dynasty for more than ten years, and his official position is the deputy capital of the Han army with a red flag.The family business is all in the Qing Dynasty, he can't surrender, even if he surrenders, there will be no good fruit.

More than 20 chariots came to the gap, and Sun Dingliao's Wuzhen Chaoha heavy infantry guarded the incomplete city wall that was only two meters high.

On the intact city walls on both sides, there are more than 2000 gunfire soldiers patched together from various ministries, including three-eyed guns, matchlock guns, and flintlock guns.

Daming also has flintlock guns, but their performance is very poor, and the misfire rate is more than [-]% to [-]%.Some shoddy ones have a misfire rate of more than [-]%, and their combat effects are far inferior to matchlock guns.

When the friendly army approached the city wall for dozens of steps, all the artillery stopped firing because of fear of accidental injury.The enemy's firecrackers took advantage of this time to go up the wall, trying to shoot down the Datong infantry from a high position.

"Bang bang bang!"