Cutting over the end of the Ming Dynasty: a dog-leg knife at the beginning

Chapter 927 The Lonely Guardian

Zhou Yuji's judgment was absolutely correct. Before the Tianxiong Army had finished their dinner, Guan Ning's artillery group opened fire again. The overwhelming artillery fire tore the iron dusk into pieces, and the earth-shattering sound of the artillery shook the ground. .This time their artillery fire was a little more violent. In addition to the front-mounted cannons and rear-mounted howitzers that blasted the Tangshan city wall to be riddled with holes during the day, thunderbolt cannons also appeared.It is a 160mm thunder cannon. It was a trophy captured by the Qing army in the battle to annihilate the Northern Expedition. Huang Taiji attached great importance to these war-god hammers. He also brought them with him when he entered the customs. He also used the captured Ming army artillery to form a lightning strike. Artillery.Now Huang Taiji has not yet arrived in Tangshan, but he has sent the lightning artillery unit here first.

The addition of this force has greatly increased the pressure on the Tianxiong Army.Amidst the palpitating dull roar, 160mm thunderbolt shells flew over the city wall in pairs and fell into the city. The houses shattered and disintegrated in the violent explosion as if they were made of inferior building blocks, and the people were terrified. They fled in all directions, but as soon as the shells fell, a large area was blown away. The streets and alleys were full of corpses, bloody and bloody. The wounded fell in a pool of blood, and the heart-piercing screams echoed in the night sky. , It was so horrific that it made people feel creepy.

What's even worse is that a 130mm front-loaded smoothbore gun appeared at the west gate. It shoots a solid lead ball. Its rate of fire is slow, but its destructive power is extremely shocking.Three 130mm front-loaded smoothbore cannons were pushed to a distance of only 400 meters from the west gate city wall and fired directly at the city wall. The extremely heavy solid lead balls roared out of the gun barrels, seemed to fly over lightly, and hit the city wall. The city wall Countless frightening cracks immediately appeared on the brick skin, and with another shot, a large number of masonry fragments collapsed.These cannons were made by Huang Taiji with the help of Dutch missionaries. They have a long range, straight trajectory, and huge power. They are relatively advanced in the world, and they are perfect for attacking fortresses.

Tangshan City is like a light boat thrown into the raging sea, bumping and shaking violently in the turbulent waves, and may capsize at any time.The city wall was rapidly rupturing, and the defending officers and soldiers had to temporarily leave the city wall to avoid unnecessary casualties. They covered their ears in pain, enduring the impact of the endless sound of artillery, and then looked at the buildings in the city that burned after being hit by artillery shells. With the flames of fire, everyone has a kind of sadness of killing the enemy and being unable to recover.They are very tenacious and brave, but they are powerless when faced with the indiscriminate bombardment of dozens of cannons.

In the middle of the night, deafening bangs shook the city of Tangshan. Under heavy bombardment, the wall at the north gate finally failed and collapsed, exposing a huge gap more than 40 meters wide, and the smoke rose 30 meters high.Half an hour later, the south gate city wall also collapsed like dominoes, and a huge gap more than 30 meters wide was exposed to the ground like a bloody mouth.

Zhou Yuji's defeat is set.

Guan Ningjun shouted wildly and surged in through the huge gap.Soon, all the sandbags and stones blocking the corridor at the west gate were removed, and a big gap was blasted in the city wall. Wu Sangui's younger brother Wu Sanfu personally took the lead in the charge, brandishing a saber and leading a large number of soldiers into the city.What greeted him was a pile of obstacles made of sandbags and horses, as well as rows of gun muzzles spurting tongues of flame.Gunshots sounded like popping beans, the bullets pierced through the air, pierced through the armor, and flew out through the torso. Before the kinetic energy was exhausted, it shot into the body of the person behind. One bullet used to often thread two or three people into a string!The soldiers of the Guanning Army charged headfirst into a dense fire net, and were cut down by stubble like wheat. Wu Sanfu was relatively unlucky, and when he saw so many muzzles coming out, he knew that the situation was not good, so he jumped desperately. He dismounted and was crushed by the soldiers coming up from behind. One of his ribs was broken, but he was lucky enough to escape the fate of being pierced through the grain gourd.As for his war horse, he didn't have such good luck. It was beaten all the time!
Guan Ning's army at the south gate was not very lucky. They rushed into the city smoothly and walked straight to the city center along the street. However, they suddenly found that the street was empty. Tianxiong's army seemed to have completely disappeared, while the houses on both sides of the street The doors are closed tightly and cannot be opened.They felt something was wrong and stopped involuntarily.Then they saw a row of wooden fences in front of the street, blocking the entire street. There were rifled flintlock guns on the fence... What was even more terrifying was that there were many black jets coming out of the roofs on both sides of the street. The figure, the smoking wooden handle and the iron head, slammed towards Guan Ningjun who was crowded in the street like hail!

Guan Ningjun's eyes were bigger than a cow's egg, and he screamed in horror: "No—"

Boom boom boom boom boom!

The continuous loud explosions drowned out everything, clusters of horrific flames exploded in the crowd, set off a rain of blood, and the broken hands and feet flew all over the sky. In the death-like flames, Guan Ning's army fell in pieces. Down.At the same time, the rows of rifled flintlock guns in front of them also sprayed out fiery flames, and the lead bullets rained down, tearing the bodies of the soldiers of the Guanning Army and releasing large streams of blood. The sound of gunfire was drowned out... The Tianxiong army behind the fence remained unmoved. After the first team finished fighting, they did not retreat. Pull the trigger in the officer's password.They had plenty of muskets, and behind each musketeer there were four or five civilians helping to reload the guns. The guns were fired one after another, and the firepower was dense, knocking down the soldiers of the Guanning Army.On this narrow and long street, the Guan Ning army witnessed a massacre, a massacre of an army armed with firearms against an army armed with cold weapons, and the side with fewer people mercilessly slaughtered dozens of times more enemy!

Such battles are taking place everywhere.After the city wall was blown down, the Tianxiong army retreated into the city, built fortifications using houses, and piled a large amount of debris on the streets to form barricades. The militiamen hid on the roofs and threw grenades over the enemy's heads. After the road was blocked by the barricades, Guan Ning's soldiers were crowded into a ball, unable to advance or retreat. A grenade swung over and blew up a large area.The entire city of Tangshan turned into a high-speed rotating meat grinder. Groups of Guan Ning troops rushed in and were crushed into piles of meat paste.In previous battles, the winner was basically determined after the fortresses and satellite towns outside a city were cleared. Once the city wall was breached, the defenders basically collapsed, and what followed was nothing more than a massacre.But in Tangshan, the scale of this game that had been used for more than 2000 years was changed. Guan Ningjun painfully discovered that breaking the city wall did not mean the end of the war. On the contrary, it meant the beginning of a bloodier and more tragic battle!
This brand new fighting mode that makes them shudder is called: street fighting!
The Battle of Tangshan once again reached a stalemate. The city was like a huge beast that had been seriously injured but became more and more dangerous, constantly devouring the lives of Guan Ningjun. The two sides fought for each other street by street, and bones were like corpses in the streets and alleys. Numb, bloody, cruel war, maddening!Zhou Yuji commanded calmly, taking advantage of the terrain and weapons and equipment to inflict large-scale destruction on Guan Ning's army. The Guan Ning army's offensive was higher and higher, but it was still unable to achieve a breakthrough.

In terms of generals, few people in the entire Guanning Army are Zhou Yuji's opponents. However, now there is only one Zhou Yuji in the entire North Zhili, and there is only one Tianxiong Army. They are fighting with a mere 10,000 people against [-]+ enemy troops. , It's useless to fight again.When he was fighting endlessly with the Guanning army in Tangshan, a cavalry force of less than a thousand people from the Zhenglan Banner approached the city of Chengde, an important military town.The Ming army garrisoned in Chengde numbered six thousand and had fortified artillery, which was enough to resist for a while. The problem was that this Ming army had no intention of resisting. The Qing army immediately opened the city and surrendered as soon as it arrived, which really made the original plan to fight The Qing army, which took two to three hundred lives to take this fortified city, was taken aback.

Capturing Chengde meant that the west gate of Beijing was opened. The Qing army rushed in quickly along this gap, destroying the city along the way. Guan Ning's army was still worried about the extremely bloody street fighting in Tangshan City. The Qing army The Zhenglan Banner and more than [-] Mongolian troops have cleared all obstacles leading from Chengde to Beijing. They have spread out like a pair of huge iron pincers, one reaching Zhangjiakou, one reaching Changping, and one reaching Jixian. All the Ming troops surrendered one after another.

Now, the residents of Beijing can already hear the sound of rumbling guns from afar.

Extreme panic spread like a plague. After all, the Battle of Breach was less than ten years ago. The scene of the Qing army’s iron cavalry criss-crossing Gyeonggi and the slaughtering knives rolling down the heads of the people in Beijing is still fresh in the memory. Under the fear, many people dragged their families He fled Beijing with his mouth and a small amount of property, enduring the raging cold wind and struggling to escape south.Everyone knows that Beijing may not be able to hold on any longer. If they continue to stay here, there is only one way to die, and they don’t want to die!But there are not a few people who flock to Beijing, most of them are scholars, gentry, and outdated vassal princes from all over the country. These guys flock to Beijing from all over the country like vultures smelling the smell of carrion. The fall of the Ming Dynasty and the rise of the Qing Dynasty seem to be a foregone conclusion. They all have to rush over to attend the funeral of this old empire, and at the same time sharpen their heads to see if they can find a way out in the new dynasty.Some pretentious guys searched their brains, wrote and wrote, racked their brains to present a wonderful plan for governing the country and the world for the upcoming master, in order to get reused and gain fame forever. In teahouses and restaurants, under the shadow of lonely lamps and candles, there are pointers everywhere The figure of Jiangshan Jiyang's words and the fanatical and joyful atmosphere made the people of the capital at a loss: What is wrong with these people?The Ming Dynasty had supported them with its own blood for nearly 300 years. Now that the Ming Dynasty was about to die, shouldn't they find a way to turn the tide? How come the slaves hadn't even been brought in yet and they were thinking about how to contribute to the new master?

We little people have endured hardships and exploitation for nearly 300 years, just to support these wolf-hearted things?

All eyes are on the harem.Now the emperor's whereabouts are unknown, life and death are uncertain, the crown prince is far away in Nanyang, and the whole country has no leader. Only the empress comes out to listen to the government behind a curtain, and can control this chaotic situation that is extremely chaotic!

But, why hasn’t the queen shown up?
(End of this chapter)