Jin Shenghuan's mood was very bad. It's a hundred times worse than the time when his favorite concubine died of a sudden illness!

Originally, he was making great progress in Jiangxi, and Scholar Hong had already given him a request for credit, and this time he was likely to be awarded the post of governor of Jiangxi.

For this reason, he also specially sent Gao Jinku to bring 15,000 troops to capture Fuzhou. As long as Fuzhou is taken, only Ganzhou is still in the hands of the Ming army in the entire Jiangxi, and he can still form a siege of Ganzhou with a three-way army. At that time, his position as the admiral will naturally be nine out of ten.

Unexpectedly, Gao Jinku was defeated so quickly, not only did he not take Fuzhou, but all the soldiers and horses he led were lost, and only a few hundred people fled back to Jianchang.

When the news reached Beijing, the matter of sealing him as the governor of Jiangxi immediately came to naught.

That's not all, just now the king of Chenzhou in the Ming army actually sent a messenger, saying that he had captured eleven officers under Gao Jinku, and asked him to ransom these people with money!

"Ransom a fart!" Jin Shenghuan kicked over the chair next to him and roared angrily, "If you lose Lao Tzu's fifteen thousand army, even if these wastes come back alive, Lao Tzu will slaughter them!" ”

"Go, cut me the messenger first!"

Before he could finish speaking, a tall man with a meaty face hurriedly lifted the curtain and entered the military tent. The braid on the back of this man's head was yellow in white, red in yellow, red with black in red, and two red beards on his cheeks, which was his lieutenant Wang Deren. Because of his colorful beard, he got the nickname "Wang Zamao".

Wang Deren hurriedly saluted and hurriedly stopped Jin Shenghuan, "Big brother, I can't help it." ”

"What's not to do?!"

Wang Deren glanced at the several officers at the door, and said in a low voice: "The generals under the command of the eldest brother know that you treat them like brothers, and you will serve them to death on the battlefield.

"But if the eldest brother doesn't save the captured officers, it will definitely make everyone feel that their life is not as heavy as ten thousand taels of silver in the eyes of the eldest brother, how can this be chilling? Once the hearts of the people in the army are scattered, it will be difficult to get together again.

"I heard the battalion sergeants and soldiers talking about this matter just now, and I'm afraid someone has already publicized it. If the eldest brother gives up some silver, he should win people's hearts. ”

Jin Shenghuan was also stunned when he heard this, and immediately figured out the stakes, Yu Guangwang saw the officers waiting outside the tent to report to him, and remembered that Feng Junrui was also a fierce general, so he deliberately said loudly: "Don't you just want some silver?" My Jin Shenghuan's life is worth tens of millions!

"Go tell Na Chen what the king, and let him release Feng Junrui and them immediately. A little silver, Lao Tzu doesn't care! ”

"Big brother is benevolent!" Wang Deren bowed his hand, and turned to inform the messenger.

Wan Yuan Ji stood outside the camp, watching the Ming army messenger leave briskly, jumping to his feet and roaring: "He Ming, why did the cannons stop?!" ”

He pointed to the soapmouth fortress on the opposite bank, and said hoarsely: "Bomb Lao Tzu hard!" Mother*, when Ganzhou is taken, these silver Lao Tzu will definitely be found ten times and a hundred times over! ”

His Majesty He Ming hurriedly bowed down to receive the order and ran to urge the Qing artillery artillery.

Several Hongyi cannons of nearly 2,000 catties were neatly lined up on the east bank of the Ganjiang River. At the end of January and the beginning of February, it was the dry season of the Ganjiang River, and the river at the Soakou Ferry was no more than one mile and two or three wide, and the 12-pound heavy artillery could easily hit the opposite bank.

At the urging of He Mingma, the Qing soldiers hurriedly shoveled gunpowder into the cannon with an iron shovel, pestle, and then stuffed it into the iron ball.

Soon, with a loud bang, an eleven-pound iron ball burst out from the muzzle of the cannon, drew a straight arc, crossed the Ganjiang River, and smashed heavily on a brick wall more than three feet high on the west bank.

The masonry flew around, and a huge pit with a diameter of five or six feet appeared on the wall of the fortress!

As soon as the pieces fell, some Ming soldiers pushed stones, Sanhe soil, etc., and desperately filled the terrible crater under the artillery fire on the opposite bank.

And inside the fortress wall, Chen Yi was holding a hanging ruler to measure a huge wooden frame.

Not far from him, a sloping inward-sloping wall base took shape.

Thousands of shaved captives of the Qing army were building the fortress day and night, driven by the overseer's leather whip.

According to Su Chengyu's plan, Chen Yi used the old wall of the Soapkou Fortress as a cover to shield the artillery fire, and built a new fortress behind the wall.

In this way, the artillery fire of the Qing army could not interfere with the construction of the fortress. When the previous wall was destroyed by Qing artillery, they were surprised to find that there was an even stronger fortification behind the wall!

Chen Yi carefully measured every angle and every line to ensure that it was built exactly according to Su Chengyu's drawings.

The bastion on the drawing is divided into two layers, the inner and the outside.

The outer layer is a thick wall more than two zhang high with a large slope of the trapezoidal cross-section.

The outer side of the wall is made of cement and bricks, and the outermost part is covered with a thick layer of cement. In fact, after the fort is built, a layer of virtual soil will be pasted in addition to the cement to slow down the impact of the cannonballs.

The inside of the wall is piled up with earth and stone to improve the stability of the wall. The entire outer wall is two feet thick, and there is a trench in the top of the wall, in which the Ming soldiers can hide during the battle.

The inner layer of the fortress is three percent higher than the outer layer, and it sits on the soil foundation more than one zhang high, and is five or six zhang away from the outer wall.

The wall slope of the inner layer is not as large as that of the outer layer, but it is designed with more points of fire. It is also made of bricks and cement, but due to the insufficient amount of cement, the surface is not covered with a cement layer.

In the event of an enemy attack on the fort, the steep and extremely thick outer walls were used to withstand enemy shelling. Sloped surfaces can cause shells to slide upwards, while hard cement surfaces are extremely difficult to destroy with solid iron balls.

If the enemy crosses the trenches around the fort and climbs the outer wall with heavy casualties, they will see that there is an inner wall inside, and a large number of guns and artillery are arranged. The soldiers on the inner layer can easily eliminate enemies on the outer walls.

The most terrible thing is that after careful design, the entire fortress has absolutely no dead ends in firepower.

The bastion is a concave hexagon when viewed from above. Each vertex of the hexagon has a tower, and if the enemy wants to attack the bastion from any point, they will receive crossfire from at least two towers, so that the defender's firepower utilization is more than double that of a normal planar city defense.

If there is a disadvantage of the fortress, it is that it is expensive to build and troublesome to build.

The Europeans of this era also built many fortresses, but they were all built with huge stones. Quarrying, square, sanding, and then erecting a fort usually takes at least a year or more to build.

But Chen Yi has a sharp weapon like fairy stone powder, and the time to build such a fortress is almost the same as that of a brick and earth city wall, and it can be completed in a month without sparing manpower.

However, the cost is also extremely high, fortunately, the fairy stone powder is produced by Su Chengyu himself, and the price is quite acceptable.

The 6,000 Qing troops were divided into dozens of "construction teams", supervised by the Ming army, accompanied by the rumbling cannons, building wooden frames, stirring fairy stone powder, building bricks, and picking soil everywhere, rushing to work day and night, and the labor force was squeezed to the point that there was no left.

For these traitors, dogs and traitors who brutalized the people of the Ming Dynasty, Wan Yuanji's instructions were: No need for mercy, death is not a pity.