Dragon Sea Empire

At the third watch of the night, the defeated officers and soldiers who had finally calmed down set up a temporary camp outside the west gate. Lighting the lit torch, the silhouette of the guardian shuttled back and forth.

The big school field outside the west gate is the place where the Tianjin guards Ding practiced. Now it has become a temporary camp for more than 400 rout soldiers. Several doctors sent from the guard city are treating the wounded soldiers. There are constant screams in the camp. I have seen gunshot wounds, but I don't know where to start, so I can only bandage them up.

There is a fence around the campus. The sentinels by the wall are the personal soldiers of Liu Yi, the commander of the Tianjin Guard sent by the city. They can watch the surroundings vigilantly at the beginning, but after the third watch, all the sentries can't bear it anymore. He staggered and slept on the ground outside the fence.

Suddenly, a group of black shadows rushed to the fence in a field dozens of steps south of the university field. They quickly raised the trigger-type steel arm crossbow to aim at the swaying sentinel on the side of the university field, pulled the trigger, and swished. With a few swishes, more than a dozen sentries were killed. Then, the group of black shadows climbed over the fence one after another while quickly winding the crossbow with the wheel mechanism.

This was a one-sided massacre. The rout soldiers were still in shock, and immediately blew up their nests, shouting and running here and there.

"The pirates, the pirates attacked the camp," someone finally discovered the identity of the attacker, no one thought of resisting, and everyone rushed to Tianjin Weiximen.

The entire Tianjin Acropolis suddenly burst into the sound of golden drums, and more torches were lit on the top of the city, and the lights were brightly lit.

Liu Yi was lying in his clothes on the small school yard in the west city. He jumped up when he heard the sound, and shouted repeatedly: "Give me an order, and the west gate is never allowed to open." He led more than a hundred soldiers under him, rolling and crawling towards the west gate. rush to.

A group of Tianjin guards who escaped from Dajiaochang shouted at the foot of Ximen City: "Open the door, brothers in the city, help!"

After receiving the order, the defenders of the west gate hardened their hearts and refused to open the gate despite the cries of the survivors in the Dajiao field below the city.

In the west of the Acropolis of Tianjin, there is Jigu Temple. Its Sutra Pavilion was built in the seventh year of Wanli (1579). Because the eaves protrude everywhere and the wind chimes dingdong, it is commonly known as the Bell Pavilion. They didn't want to leave, so they had to run straight to Jigu Temple. The Chinese army's pursuers also lost interest in them, and returned to Dajiaochang after chasing for a while.

Yang Liu was lying on the fence wall at the entrance to the east gate of Dajiaochang, and saw that Tianjin Weiximen, a hundred steps away, was brightly lit, the city gate was tightly closed, and lit firewood was continuously thrown out of the city from the top of the city.

"Damn it, the officers and soldiers just won't be fooled, and they won't let the broken soldiers enter the city, it's really..." After watching for a while, Yang Liu sighed, then turned to his subordinates and said, "Forget it, we don't have heavy firearms, explosives, etc. They didn't bring enough, they couldn't blow up the city wall,... order to withdraw, "

Throughout the night, the Tianjin Guards issued alarms several times, causing commotion throughout the city. In fact, the only attempt by the Chinese Army to attack at night was to sneak attack on the Dajiao Field. The alarms of the rest of the Tianjin Guards were all false alarms. Yi was so shocked that he couldn't sleep all night.

In the morning, as soon as the sun rose, Liu Yi was so pissed off by what he saw at the south gate; the Taiwanese pirates occupied the Zhuangzi of the local landlord Bi Laoliu just 3 miles southeast of Tianjin Wei, and erected a good They had no scruples about a big Chinese flag on a blue background, and they set up camp right under the eyes of the Tianjin guards. According to the observation of the guards at the top of the city, there were only a few hundred people coming and going in Zhuangzi.

However, he didn't have a telescope, and he didn't find that more than 1000 people had actually gathered in Bijiazhuang, as well as two Thunderbolt rocket launch vehicles, three 3-pound light field guns, and one used to launch explosive shells. Six-pound cast-iron cannon, a professional artillery sentinel came overnight to join Yang Liu's troops.

Yang Liu concentrated the artillery in the north gate of Zhuangzi, and the rocket car was carried to a slope outside the north wall of Zhuangzi. More than 1000 sailors and musketeers were divided into two teams. In Zhuangzi, they were busy digging holes and blast holes in the wall, and erected wooden frames so that people could stand inside the wall and shoot from the top of the wall.

There are canals and other rivers flowing on the north, east and west sides of Tianjin Acropolis, which are natural moats; the southwest area of ​​the city is low-lying, facing the sea, and it is easy to release water to form a water barrier.

And Bijiazhuang is on the edge of the canal sluice, just to prevent the Ming army from opening the sluice and flooding the depression in the south of the city.

The guerrilla battalion officers and soldiers who rushed back from Wuqing entered the city. Liu Yi immediately asked the guerrilla Cao Huan to lead troops out of the city, captured Bijiazhuang, and wiped out the outpost troops of the pirates.

At this time, the landing operation of the main infantry force of the Chinese Army was very unsuccessful. Dagukou was located at the mouth of the Baihe River, more than 90 miles east of Tianjin Wei, and more than 280 miles away from the capital. Has lost momentum.

The 10st Division of the Infantry, the main force of the land battle, and its affiliated troops must land at Dagukou. In fact, it is not easy to approach Dagukou from the sea. There is a circle of underwater sand dams. According to the information obtained by the Chinese Army from local fishermen, the dam crest is only five or six feet away from the water above when the river mouth is at low tide during the spring dry season. Because the water level is too shallow, large ships such as Feibao and Feihu The boat must be moored 2 miles away from the coastline. If you want to go upstream along the river, the river is very winding, and you often need to use local people to guide the water.

Therefore, the soldiers of the First Division had to climb rope nets from dozens of large transport ships and descend to small boats in batches, then transferred to small fast boats and patrol boats in the fleet, entered the river mouth and assembled behind the fort. Heavy firearms, gunpowder, artillery shells, food supplies, etc. have to be transferred many times in this way before they can land.

This made the landing troops of the Chinese army move slowly. Fortunately, the sailors and musketeers successfully landed on the beach in the early stage, and the sailors took the initiative to go deep inland, occupied some villages, expanded the landing bridgehead at Dagukou, and guaranteed the landing operations of the infantry brothers. .

On the other hand, the reaction speed of the Ming Dynasty official army was also very slow. Within three days after the first infantry division landed, no Ming Dynasty official army unit around Tianjin Wei launched an attack on the Dagukou landing site, which made Chen Zhongji , Fan Tao and other Chinese army generals shouted luck.

During this period, the Tianjin Guard guerrilla battalion launched an attack on the stronghold of Bijiazhuang, a pirate in Taiwan. It seems that it is a bad thing for the Ming army to have so many firearms; after the officers and soldiers rushed out of the city, they fired firearms at Bijiazhuang from afar; but almost none of the bullets or shells hit the target. It's just a round tube rolled out of iron sheet, the quality is bad, and it's a fire gun; the soldiers have to hold the gun in one hand and the fire in the other hand to ignite, so there's no aim at all; Few; the artillery used by the Ming army, such as the Franc machine, has no gun ears and sights-the angle and pitch angle cannot be adjusted, and it is not convenient for transportation.

The gunpowder used in the firearms of the Ming army is also powdered black powder, which is not as pure as the granular gunpowder of the Chinese army, and the explosion effect is also poor, and there are no standards in the formula.

Therefore, the Ming army continued to fire firearms during the attack, and the momentum was astonishing, but it did not hurt a Chinese sailor. Moreover, the officers and soldiers fired firearms randomly, making the battlefield full of gunpowder. In such a situation, they just rushed forward with their heads buried, and because they couldn't see each other's directions, the formation quickly became chaotic.

When the Ming army came into range, Yang Liu pouted, sneered dismissively, and ordered the artillery to fire first.

There are ten wooden guide rails on the thunderbolt rocket car, and ten straight-rod rockets can be ignited with fuses at the same time. Twenty thunderbolt rockets landed in the Ming army's charge formation, or exploded directly on the heads of the officers and soldiers; then, An explosive bomb fell into the crowd of officers and soldiers, and with a bang, human limbs were scattered in all directions...

The first charge of officers and soldiers collapsed.

It took Cao Huan a long time to organize the second attack on Bijiazhuang. This time, Tianjin Wei launched a big general cannon and fired several shots into Zhuangzi. The solid shell pierced through Zhuangzi. On the courtyard wall, the soldiers of the Chinese Army lay in the ditches and corners, unscathed.

Then, a small group of cavalry, about 200 people, rushed out of the chaotic officer army and rushed towards the Chinese army's position.

As usual, the Chinese Army fired long-range rocket bombs and six-pound cannons fired explosive shells. Finally, at a distance of 50 steps from the manor, three 3-pound light field guns fired shotguns at the same time, and tens of kilograms of iron sand opened a large net to welcome the cavalry; At the same time, 1000 sailors and musketeers fired salvos in turn on the trenches and courtyard walls. Only 200 of the 50 cavalry were able to escape.

From then on, the officers and soldiers of the guerrilla battalion were unwilling to go out of the city to fight even if they were killed.

The garrison commander Liu Yi was helpless, and desperately sent an emergency report to the capital and nearby places, requesting rapid reinforcements.

Dagukou suddenly fell, and the court was shocked when they heard the news. Even Emperor Wanli, who had not met with his ministers for many years, was taken aback. , Wuqing County, Baoding and other places, together with the inside and outside of the capital, immediately declared martial law.

The top priority is to reinforce the Tianjin Guards. The question is where the reinforcements will come from. Some time ago, the imperial court dispatched troops from across the country to the south, but now they have to deal with the Chinese army that suddenly came to the Jingqu area. The problem is that the three major battalions of the capital have long since decayed as a whole. They are short of personnel, weapons, money, and everything. They are barely used to defend the city.

The transfer of the frontier army Qinwang is the most feasible right now. However, where to transfer the frontier soldiers? At that time, the First Division of the Chinese Army Infantry finally landed in its entirety.