Chapter 50: The Battle of Jinhua

Jinhua City.

The Jinhua city wall is extremely dilapidated.

In particular, the west city wall of Jinhua City looks like it is full of holes and crumbling. This is Li Chengdong's main direction of attack. With the large-scale casting of the Hongyi cannon. The Hongyi cannon has become a conventional weapon for both the offensive and the defensive.

However, in comparison, the Hongyi cannon does more damage to the besieging side.

Therefore, the west city wall of Jinhua is under the bombardment of Hongyi cannons, and there is a crumbling feeling.

Xu Jiaying stood on the city wall, looking at the craters left by cannonballs on the city wall, most of the bricks on the city wall had collapsed, and the rammed earth inside had also collapsed in large areas, and many enemies had penetrated deep into the city wall one or two people deep.

Standing on top of the city walls gives you the feeling of being suspended in the air.

And Xu Jiaying could clearly see the cracks on the city wall. The big ones can go deep into one hand, and the small ones are just cracks, hidden and invisible. But even hidden cracks must be taken seriously.

"The walls are no longer able to hold up." There was some bitterness in Xu Jiaying's expression.

Compared with Xu Du, Xu Jiaying does not have too high achievements in the military, but he is just cautious. However, these two words are very appropriate here.

Since the siege of the city, Xu Jiaying has never taken off his armor for a day, and he has worn his armor every day and night. The face has long been sunken, and the whole person has lost a lot of weight, but the armor is draped on the body, but it can't be seen, every day with red eyes, patrolling the city, supervising the battle, inspecting materials, etc., it can be said that everything must be bowed to himself.

Fortunately, Yan Yingyuan was there, and he shared a lot of things for Xu Jiaying, so that Xu Jiaying would not die of exhaustion.

But the gap in strength between them made Xu Jiaying unable to stop the Qing army from approaching a little bit, no matter how hard he tried

When the Qing army had just arrived in Jinhua. Xu Jiaying also led people to fight with Li Chengdong's generals outside the city. Fighting according to the city, Xu Jiaying's department performed very well, and he didn't suffer any losses, after all, Xu Jiaying's department was of the same origin as Xu Du, and his combat power was not low.

But Xu Jiaying finally gave up fighting outside the city and retreated to the city, because he couldn't bear the casualties.

There are actually not many soldiers left in Jinhua Mansion, most of them are fighting outside with Xu Du, so there are not many truly elite soldiers under Xu Jiaying, but there are about 5,000 people.

These people are the backbone of Jinhua's defense of the city, and it is impossible to suffer heavy casualties. Otherwise, the rest of the war will not be able to continue.

Xu Jiaying retreated into the city, and he fell into the situation of being passively beaten. And as the city defenders rely on the city wall, there are also some that can't bear it.

Xu Jiaying asked, "How is the second line of defense in the city?" ”

Yan Yingyuan said: "It's almost ready, just ten zhang behind the city, the second city wall has been built. A total of three gullies were dug between the two walls, and a lot of gunpowder was buried in the outer city. Enough to inflict heavy losses on the enemy. ”

Yan Yingyuan is very powerful, but if it weren't for today, he wouldn't have been able to come out at all.

However, Yan Yingyuan's own ability was very good, and when Nanjing fell, he was preparing materials to defend the city. It can be said that all the materials related to the defense of the city near Jinhua Mansion were scraped into Jinhua City, and this act of scraping did not stop from getting the news of the fall of Nanjing to Li Chengdong's troops coming to the city.

It was also Yan Yingyuan's preparation that allowed Jinhua to defend the city with sufficient material preparations.

And Yan Yingyuan showed his skills in Jinhua City, first publicized the Nanjing Massacre, and made the people of Jinhua City very frightened in Jinhua City, and then organized all the people in Jinhua City who were panting into a Shiwu. Whether it was a man or a woman, an old man or a child, almost all of them were used to defend the city, and the food was distributed uniformly. Yan Yingyuan almost organized Jinhua City as a whole.

If Xu Jiaying is the banner of Jinhua City, then Yan Yingyuan is the torso of Jinhua City, which seems to be inconspicuous, but without him, Xu Jiaying can't support it at all.

Just like today, from the time when Xu Jiaying realized that the city wall could not withstand it. It's only a few days. Within a few days, after completing this big project, you can see Yan Yingyuan's organizational ability.

"That's fine." Xu Jiaying said.

Yan Yingyuan said: "General Xu, it seems that the Qing army will not be able to attack for a while, but the materials in the city are also quite limited, I estimated that it can support it for half a year, and after half a year, especially the consumption of sulfur, it is beyond my expectations." Yan Yingyuan's face was a little ugly, he had already tried his best to collect the supplies, but as soon as the battle started, the gunpowder consumption was so large that Yan Yingyuan couldn't believe it.

Regarding the food problem, Yan Yingyuan has already arranged for everyone to plant food in a free place in the city, and wants to supplement it. Among the gunpowder, charcoal, some reserves in the city, and saltpeter, some can be collected by boiling nitrate, but there is no way to solve the problem of sulfur.

Only sulfur can rely on stockpiles.

Xu Jiaying said: "In this way, we must use gunpowder sparingly. ”

Yan Yingyuan said: "I'm afraid so." ”

Xu Jiaying's face was ugly again.

There are not many soldiers under Xu Jiaying, so the main force defending the city is the people. In order to make up for the lack of combat power of these people, a large number of firearms are used, which is very important, and now the use of firearms is limited, and I am afraid that the casualties of defending the city will be greater.

The only thing that comforted Xu Jiaying a little was that whenever he was in one go, the second was declining, and the third was exhausted, Li Chengdong's first wave and the most powerful offensive had been blocked by Xu Jiaying. The next offensive will probably slow down.

It's just a lonely city. Xu Jiaying didn't see much hope. I didn't want to talk much, only a deep silence.

In the Qing army camp outside Jinhua City, Li Chengdong was also deeply distressed.

Because Nanjing has come to urge Li Chengdong for the second time.

You must know that Duoduo's goal in letting Li Chengdong go south was not to conquer Jinhua City, but to attack Fujian. Now he can't attack Jinhua City for a long time, how to satisfy Duoduo, so Duoduo urged again and again, the first urging, between words, it was polite, and the second urging, there was not so much politeness between words.

Li Chengdong clearly felt the change in Duoduo's attitude. Although he was a little dissatisfied in his heart, he was helpless. Xu Jiaying was even more unhappy.

He summoned the generals and said loudly: "Now the ten kings have ordered us to go south immediately and not stay under the city of Jinhua. If you can't attack the city again, then the matter of the ten kings looking for me, I will be ahead of yours, and now the city wall of the west city is crumbling. I ordered all the troops to be ready, and when the wall fell, to begin a general attack, and all the troops took turns to fight, not to break the city, not to stop, but to kill anyone who dared to retreat. ”

Li Chengdong's eyes swept over everyone and said: "Of course, there are still rewards that should be given, whoever breaks Jinhua first, then all the money and silk of the women in Jinhua City belong to him, and I won't take a penny." ”

The implication is that the city will be slaughtered when it is broken.

To tell the truth, many times the generals and soldiers did not have too many moral concepts, so when they heard this reward, their hearts couldn't help but move, although Jinhua Mansion is not as good as Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Ningbo and other big mansions, but it is also a prosperous place.

I will definitely be able to make a lot of money.

Under the encouragement of Li Chengdong, the soldiers under Li Chengdong's command were like being beaten with chicken blood, and they were gearing up to make a fortune in Jinhua City.

Perhaps it was the reason why the gunpowder in the city was restricted, and in the next few days, the artillery of Jinhua City did not counterattack as often as before, and the artillery of the Qing army was mighty, and finally collapsed the western city wall of Jinhua. Without waiting for Li Chengdong's order, all the units of the Qing army rushed forward with a roar, lest they rush to the brim and be preempted by others.

It's just that although part of the city wall collapsed, the Xia army did not give up. On the walls on both sides of the gap, countless soldiers' longbows and crossbows shot down one after another, like rain, and in an instant, there seemed to be knee-deep grass and trees on the ground.

This plant is nothing but an arrow.

And under the arrows, there are even more people who are shot to death on the ground, or simply nailed to the ground and dying. But such casualties do not stop them.