Dominate the Country

"Everyone on the city wall has seen clearly, look who these people are..."

Below Jiangling City, more than 2,000 prisoners of war were escorted by the Fu Han Army to the city. Triangle dragon flags and flags of Hubei militia were thrown on the ground by the Fu Han Army soldiers, and thousands of feet walked over them.

Xue Shiyan and Abukai's faces turned black, while the officials such as the Taotai and the prefect were all pale.

The good situation broke down in an instant. Facing the black mass of prisoners of war under the city, they knew with their heels how badly the Xiangyang reinforcements were defeated. And after Shi Liang's defeat, the "great achievement" of Jiangling City's "hard work" to withstand the "fierce attack" of the Fu Han Army for more than a day immediately became insignificant.

Without the threat from the north, the situation in Jingzhou seemed to have returned to twelve days ago. It was just that at that time, it was the Hunan Green Camp West Route Army led by Zhang Rui who came to the Yangtze River.

Oh, by the way, Zhang Rui also arrived in this battle, leading his two or three thousand remaining soldiers to join the Wuchang reinforcements. It did strengthen the Wuchang reinforcements, but it is hard to say whether the influx of this group of defeated soldiers will have an impact on morale.

Alyajiang has landed on the north bank with his troops. They crossed the river from the town of Hushi, more than 30 miles west of Jiangling City, landed on Mayangzhou, and then crossed to the north bank of the Yangtze River.

Alyajiang learned from Zhang Rui's lesson and carefully set up camps on Mayangzhou and the Yangtze River. But Alyajiang had just set up the fence when he heard the bad news of Shi Liang's defeat.

"Bang..." The table in front of him was kicked over by him, and the pens, ink, paper and inkstone on the table fell to the ground.

"Shi Liang, this idiot!" Alyajiang was furious. The defeat of the Xiangyang reinforcements completely exposed Chen Ming's plan to the Qing soldiers. Now everyone can see that Chen Ming's attack on Jiangling City is just a cover, a show to attract the attention of the Qing soldiers and let them relax their nerves. His real purpose is to defeat an enemy before the two reinforcements gather. He succeeded!

Chen Ming's calculations succeeded, and Al Yajiang was in trouble. The Fu Han Army has not yet had direct contact with his troops, but the Fu Han Army's artillery has never stopped and has been bombarding Jiangling City.

Is the wall of Jingzhou high? Is the city defense of Jingzhou strong?

Al Yajiang can tell anyone with certainty: the wall of Jingzhou is very high, and the city defense of Jingzhou is very strong.

The average height of the wall of the entire Jiangling City is more than nine meters, and the wall surface in some sections will exceed ten meters. The entire city is an irregular rectangle, seven and a half miles long from east to west, and two and a half miles wide from north to south. Now there are urn cities at the eight city gates. The wall is three feet thick, and the moat outside the city is ten feet wide and about one foot and three feet deep. It connects to the Juzhang River in the west and Changhu Lake in the east, and is connected to the ancient Grand Canal. In the pre-Ming Dynasty, in order to prevent the city foundation from sinking and flooding, glutinous rice paste was poured into the cracks of the right foot stone, so the city wall was particularly strong. In addition, the Jiangling city wall also has a urn, an enemy tower, a war house, a fort, a cave for soldiers, and a complex city gate, with a complete defense system. Although Yongrui took away all the high-end cannons in Jiangling City when he went to war. But Jiangling City, which was bombarded by cannons for a day and a half, did not seem to collapse at all.

How to fight this battle?

In Chen Ming, he naturally wanted to repeat the glory of the last battle, defeat the Wuchang reinforcements in one battle, and by the way, force the Jiangling City defenders to come out and die. But Alyajiang was much more cautious than Zhang Rui, especially after the news of Shi Liang's defeat came.

"Now the Anhui soldiers have entered Huangpi." Why can the Hunan Green Camp East Route Army be boldly released by Wuchang? It was because the Anhui Green Camp filled their gaps. It was not that the troops and combat effectiveness of the Anhui Green Camp were stronger than those of the Hunan East Route Army, but that their presence was enough to contain the Fu Han Army in the Hanchuan area.

Chen Ming brought only 7,000 to 8,000 Fu Han Army outside Jiangling City, and he still had 5,000 to 6,000 people left in the Qianjiang to Hanchuan line.

If the Anhui Green Camp had not entered Huangpi, Chen Ming would have asked the Hanchuan troops to try to attack Hanyang and Hankou. He had planned to do so at the beginning, but the arrival of the Anhui Green Camp forced the Fu Han Army that had already attacked to shrink back again.

"The Sichuan Qing soldiers have already arrived in Guizhou [Zigui, the western end of Hubei]."

"And the Qing soldiers in Jiangxi, at least 5,000 people have entered Tianjia Town." This place is the throat of the Yangtze River waterway, 300 miles away from Wuchang, and forms a horn with Banbi Mountain and Fuchikou on the opposite bank. It is the gateway to Hubei, Anhui, and Jiangxi provinces. In the original time and space, both the Taiping Army and the Guo Army had fought fierce battles with the Qing soldiers and the Japanese army in this place.

On the huge map, the Qing soldiers were marked one by one. It can be said that Chen Ming's troops were not in a good situation. But his move to Xiangyang and the south did relieve the pressure on the base.

Anhui originally had only two green camps in Shouchun and Southern Anhui. After experiencing Chen Huizu's "trouble", it was now withdrawn by Qianlong for the second time to attack the General's Mansion. Anhui's own strength has been greatly weakened. Now it has once again sent troops to Hubei, which has drained Anhui's strength. There is also the Green Camp in Sichuan. If there is no expedition to the south, it is obvious that the Sichuan soldiers will go north. But now they are rushing from the western end of Hubei to the east.

Chen Ming has stayed in the central and western parts of Hubei for a long time. He has to break Jiangling City in a short time, then attack the three towns of Wuhan, and then jump out of Hubei to guerrilla Anhui and Jiangxi. At that time, he can pose a real threat to the Qing Dynasty's money bag.

Chen Ming gestured on the map, and finally threw down the stick in his hand helplessly. He really couldn't think of any way to get away with it. So let's just fight a real battle with our real strength.

Three thousand Fu Han troops were stationed at the west end of Jiangling City, and the remaining troops attacked Jiangling fiercely.

The changes in the Fu Han army immediately attracted Alyajiang's attention. In a short period of time, the Qing soldiers could not detect how many Fu Han troops were deployed to the west of Jiangling City, but Chen Ming's actions clearly expressed a fact-he had divided the troops into two.

One part was used to attack the city, and the other part was used to stop the enemy.

Moreover, the lesson of Zhang Rui beside Alyajiang was still vivid. If he was not careful, the Fu Han army that was divided into two might merge into one, turning the blocking of the enemy's attack on the city into besieging the city and attacking the reinforcements.

Chen Ming's strategy was not profound, but was clearly exposed in front of the Qing soldiers. But this heavy pressure was to keep Alyajiang awake all night.

When the dawn of a new day came, in the last days of the twelfth lunar month, the Fu Han army that had been "bombarding" the siege had taken real effort when attacking Jiangling City.

One shield car after another allowed the logistics troops of the Fu Han Army to enter the city smoothly. In the late November, the ice surface of the moat, which had been cut off by the Fu Han Army, was very thick. Although some shells fell into it, they broke a gap in the ice surface of the moat like a jade belt.

The logistics troops of the Fu Han Army used five-foot-long small wooden boats as the "base". One by one, the small wooden boats they had prepared were placed on the frozen river surface, and then the bundled rafts were dragged to the city by carriages and laid on the "base". They were connected with ropes and iron rings in front and behind, and a floating bridge was formed. During this period, the flying thunder cannons were still bombarding the top of Jiangling City one by one.

What if the small cannons in the hands of the Qing army could fire shells onto the surface of the moat? Chen Ming was very careful.