I

  Chapter 426 424【Full body plate armor】

   Outside Shangqiu city.

  More than 30,000 starving people with their families and children were thrown back to the newly occupied Yongcheng County's household subfields. They are not needed here, and keeping them can only consume military rations. It is better to arrange civil affairs work earlier.

   Another 40,000 volunteers (starved people) were transferred by Zhao Han to Yucheng County and Xiayi County.

  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 in the land, which can save a lot of immigration expenses.

   It's just that there are more men than women, and the **** 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 indigenous 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. 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 is still in the mood to think about civil affairs, and the defenders in Shangqiu City are about to have a mental breakdown at this time.

  Fifty-three artillery pieces have been bombarding the city wall for eight days!

  Shangqiu City is tall and strong, but it has not yet collapsed. 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 40,000. It seems that they 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 the civil and military officials and said with a smile: "The 11th 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 all the departments of our army defend the city as much as possible to delay 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 want, and fight as you want. You can't rely on the Tartars to mess up their own battles."

   "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 10,000 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 said with a smile: "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 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 was sweating in the vest, bowed and pleaded guilty and withdrew.

  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 to raise 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.

  Thus, Zuo Liangyu began to rise to the top. If he lost the battle, someone would help 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, suggesting that Zuo Liangyu recruit Shandong soldiers. What exactly does the Hou family want?

  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.

  In history, Hou Xun, 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 criminal record of taking refuge in Li Zicheng, so he dared not 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, seeing 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 flooding 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 are still uncertain, but they were completely messed up by a single sentence.

  …

  The artillery is still bombarding that section of the city wall.

  A report of the victory 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 he was inexplicably horrified after watching it.

   Liaodong's old nest was taken away?

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

  Duoduo, Geng Zhongming, Li Sutai, Zu Zeyuan all died in battle?

  Hong Chengchou was captured alive?

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

  Yes, it must be false. In order to disintegrate their own morale, the enemy made up rumors and shot books into the city!

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 100,000, and he will arrive at Shangqiu in a day or two. All the enemies outside the city will be wiped out!"

  Dorgon is indeed coming, and he sent a message a few days ago, telling Tong Yangjia to keep Shangqiu anyway. 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 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 eleventh 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 still stands 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 foundation 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. Stones and rolling logs were also gradually moved towards the city.

   "Continue shelling!"

   "Boom boom boom!"

  The fifty-three artillery pieces that had stopped suddenly fired shells again after the enemy set up a pan to burn oil.

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

  The regular army of the two divisions, thousands of Datong farmers and soldiers, 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!

  In addition, Zhao Han's personal army, 300 people began to put on 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 already 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 easy to use, 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 someone 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?

  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 Army?"

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

  (end of this chapter)