On the fifth day of the sixth month of leap month, outside the city of Fuzhou. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

The Ming army that went to Xianxia Pass on the north road to Fujian has arrived at the city of Fuzhou, and the Ming army that entered the river from the mouth of the Min River on the East Road will join the division, the two Ming armies have a total of 38,000 soldiers, 22,000 sailors, 40,000 auxiliary soldiers, 50,000 people, and more than 60,000 people recruited with the army and craftsmen, a total of 210,000 troops surrounded the city of Fuzhou with three layers inside and three layers outside, and even a sparrow could not fly out.

Although there are 210,000 people, Wang Xinyu does not claim to be 500,000, 800,000, or million, but to claim 100,000.

Indeed, there are only 100,000 soldiers who are really counted, and the so-called people and craftsmen who accompany the army and the people, Wang Xinyu did not count them into the soldiers. Many of the auxiliaries and minzhuang were captured by the original Qing soldiers, and the minzhuang still had a certain combat effectiveness, while the soldiers and craftsmen were ordinary people who volunteered to attack the army, mainly responsible for transporting and building siege tools.

In order to avoid unnecessary non-combat attrition, Wang Xinyu finally decided to adopt a siege plan rather than a strong attack in the summer.

When the main force of Luo Xiang's land division, which entered from the northern front, marched along the Min River through the mountainous areas of Fujian, it marched in dense jungles and fought in the mountains, except for a little hot at noon, it was not hot in the morning and evening along the way. But as soon as the army entered the Fuzhou Basin, although it was in the morning, as soon as it entered, it felt like a heat wave was rolling.

When the Ming army was in Hangzhou, it was not that they did not feel this kind of heat, the summer in Hangzhou was not better than Fuzhou, and the heat wave was rolling, but it was a rest, not a march to fight, and it could be endured. Marching with heavy loads on your back is extremely physically exhausting.

Upon entering the camp, every soldier looked as if he had been fished out of the water. In the summer of Fuzhou, the temperature difference between day and night is small, and it is unusually hot in the morning and evening, not to mention the war in the weather of leap June, and the prostration will be put on for a while after putting on the armor.

Since the siege was to be besieged, it was necessary to build fortifications, dig trenches, and build barracks. The weather is hot and unbearable, and although most of the auxiliaries and Minzhuang are prisoners, in Wang Xinyu's eyes, prisoners are also human beings, and a large number of non-combat attrition cannot occur in vain. So the work of digging trenches and building fortifications was done in the evening and in the morning.

Every day, when the sun goes down and the distant mountains block the sunlight, the auxiliary soldiers and civilians begin to carry hoes and enter the construction site to carry out work. Even though it was still hot, it was much better than in direct sunlight.

Busy until the sky is completely dark, the auxiliary soldiers and the people go to the Min River or the creek to bathe, and then eat. Go to bed after eating. I got up before dawn, carried a hoe to the construction site, and worked from three o'clock in the morning (half past four in the morning) to the hour, that is, about seven o'clock in the morning, and then ate breakfast, took a bath and rested.

The camp of the Ming army was set up in a ventilated place, but it was not located in the woods, which was to prevent the Qing army from sneaking up on the fire.

The barracks were made of adobe bricks and were topped with wooden beams covered with tiles. Trenches were dug around the barracks and earthen cities were built, so that the Qing army was discouraged, and they did not dare to attack or attack at all. Every day at twelve hours, there are people on duty in turn to prevent the Qing army from stealing the camp.

However, what is puzzling is that Wang Xinyu also asked Minzhuang to dig a deep hole along the foot of the mountain, which looks like a cellar ready to store something, and this cellar has a lot of work and seems to be able to hold a lot of things. Li Rui and Luo Xiang both felt strange: strange thing, is this a cellar where ice cubes are placed? We didn't bring ice cubes either.

Two clippers docked on the bank of the Min River and docked at the pier.

"Something good has arrived! Brethren, go and move! Seeing the arrival of the clipper, Wang Xinyu shouted loudly.

The soldiers boarded the clippers, and after the officers on board had registered, the soldiers removed barrels from the ship, loaded them into carts, and sent them to the cellars.

Originally, Wang Xinyu's Nanyang Company was not in a position to produce beer, because there was no refrigeration technology back then, and it was necessary to use natural ice in a cold place to produce beer. Since Wang Xinyu occupied the Trans-Khingan Mountains and Sakhalin Island, there were naturally conditions for the production of beer.

So under the instruction of Wang Xinyu, Zheng Xi built a brewery on Sakhalin Island and produced a large amount of beer.

Beer is a good thing, it can be sold in the South Seas, and both local aborigines and Western sailors are very welcoming to this thirst-quenching and alcoholic drink.

There is also a large amount of ice in the bilge of the clipper, which was excavated by the clipper when it returned from the far north. The ice cubes are placed in the bilge of the boat, and the outside is covered with a thick layer of cotton to ensure that the ice does not melt.

The soldiers brought the ice ashore, loaded it into trucks, and sent it into the cellars.

The ancients used cellars to preserve ice, which could be used to preserve ice from winter to summer. Now the Ming army is digging tunnels in the mountains south of Fuzhou, which are used to preserve the ice. Put the ice cubes together with the beer keg and take it out for a cold and delicious cold beer.

After the barracks were completed, Wang Xinyu was thinking about finding something to do for the Qing army.

"The people and craftsmen cut down the trees overnight to build large return cannons. Others go around to collect some animal carcasses, which will come in handy these days. Wang Xinyu gave the order.

On a hot day, there are still a lot of animal carcasses around, and after the Minzhuang and craftsmen have built a large return cannon, the auxiliary soldiers and some people have collected a large number of animal carcasses, most of which are dead cats and dogs, and some dead animal carcasses in the surrounding mountains and forests have been collected.

Wang Xinyu raised his head and glanced at the sky: "The return cannon has been built, the weather is very good today, the sky is clear, we should add some temperature to the fake tartars in the city." ”

The transport ship docked, and the auxiliaries and civilians removed a large number of barrels from the ship. The barrels were filled with fire oil brought from the Far North.

The so-called fierce fire oil is actually oil that has been simply refined. Originally, there were no oil fields in the area controlled by Wang Xinyu, and although the Nanyang Company controlled Nanyang had oil, the technology of this era could not extract oil from the sea. And after Zheng Xi went to the former slave Gandu Division, there was a lot of oil in the area of Wai Xing'an Mountains. According to the knowledge brought by later generations, Wang Xinyu knew that there was shallow oil in those places that could be developed.

The technology of oil extraction is not a new technology, the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties all exploited oil, and the fierce fire oil of the Ming army was simply refined.

Zheng Xibu opened a well in the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River, and after opening the oil well, it built some pulley winches to carry oil in wooden barrels and lift it up from the ground in the same way as pumping water with buckets. The extracted oil is first filtered, precipitated and dewatered. These are not the new technologies of later generations, and the Ming army used these methods to build fierce fire oil tanks in the past.

The treated oil is heated in a pot, and the oil distilled from the lid is light oil, which is actually a mixture of gasoline, kerosene and light diesel, which was called fierce fire oil in those days.

The refined oil was loaded into wooden barrels and shipped in large quantities to the south, where it was used to make various weapons.

When the boat reached the shore, the auxiliaries took down the wooden barrels filled with fierce fire oil, and then poured the processed clay pots into the fierce fire oil to make the fire oil cans. It's just that unlike the previous fire oil tank, the previous fire oil was made of tung oil and pine resin, and now it uses fierce fire oil.

The oil canister was also different from the previous one, and there was a small canister filled with gunpowder and a fuse connected to the outside. This kind of oil tank will explode when smashed out, and the power of the gunpowder explosion ignites the explosive oil, which sprays everywhere, and can cause a large-scale fire.

The so-called large return cannon is a kind of large-scale trebuchet made by the Mongols when they attacked Xiangyang, this kind of trebuchet is a counterweight trebuchet, the range is very long, can shoot the boulder out of a hundred zhang away. The Ming army launched a canister of oil, and the range was even farther, reaching one mile.

In order to be able to deliver the canisters to the center of the city, it was necessary to advance the return cannon to the front. However, the head of the city was defended by the artillery of the Qing army, and the return artillery could not be too close, so the artillery of the Qing army at the head of the city had to be destroyed first.

On the evening of the eighth day of the sixth month of the leap month, the Ming army launched a tall watchtower car in the camp.

"It's broken, is Minggou going to attack the city?" When Kong Yuanzhang, the guard general of the Qing army, heard the report of his own soldiers, he immediately walked up to the city tower and looked at the watchtower car launched by the Ming army.

Kong Yuanzhang saw countless figures shaking on the artillery position of the Ming army in the distance, and one cannon after another had been erected, and the muzzle of the cannon was aimed at the city wall of Fuzhou, and he shouted anxiously: "Get ready!" Minggou may be about to attack the city! Defend the city for me, and fight to the death! Those who retreat without permission, slash! ”

Before the words fell, I saw someone waving a small flag on the watchtower car of the Ming army, reporting the situation of the Qing army at the head of the city to the artillery position.

"Fire!" Gong Xiaoda gave an order.

On the artillery positions of the Ming army, twenty-four twelve-pounder cannons, forty-eight eight-pounder cannons, twelve thirty-two-pounder mortars, and hundreds of six-pounder and four-pounder cannons took turns to emit a deafening roar, and the shells whistled and smashed towards the head of the Qing army.

"Hit it all accurately! If you play well, enjoy a cold beer tonight! Gong Xiaoda opened his voice and roared.

Just imagine how comforting it is to drink cold beer and smoke a cigarette on a hot summer day, and every pore of your body feels cool. Thinking of cold beer, the gunners threw an overwhelming barrage of shells at the city, regardless of the heat.

The tower was hit by shells repeatedly, and the arrow tower was shattered in the sound of cannons, and turned into ruins and fell. The battlements of the female wall at the head of the city were smashed to pieces by solid cannonballs, and all kinds of defensive equipment at the head of the city were smashed to pieces.

The ordinary flowering shells fired by the mortar fell on the head of the city and exploded. Although it was an ordinary flowering cannonball filled with ordinary black [gunpowder], the power was far inferior to that of a flowering cannonball filled with new gunpowder, but the power of a thirty-two-pound cannonball was not small, and hundreds of flowering cannonballs fell, and the city was in shambles.

The range of the artillery of the Qing army was not as good as that of the Ming army, and they could only watch as the shells kept flying up, smashing their artillery into the sky, and when they fell again, the cannons were all smashed.

Since most of the Qing soldiers were hiding during the artillery bombardment of the Ming army, the casualties of the Qing army were not very heavy. But the head of the city was bombed like this, the Qing army was bitter, and after the Ming army's shelling stopped, they had to repair the female wall battlement, so as not to attack the city when the Ming army attacked the city, the Qing soldiers at the head of the city had no shelter.

It was dark, and the Qing army did not dare to fire torches to repair the city, for fear of being shelled by the Ming army.

Although it was night, the summer night in Fuzhou was very hot, and at the end of July in the Gregorian calendar, it was the hottest time of the year, and the Qing army and auxiliary soldiers repaired the city in the dark, and everyone was miserable.

In the camp of the Ming army, piles of bonfires were lit, and the gunners who had just made great achievements drank cold beer, smoked cigarettes, and ate barbecue.

Early the next morning, the Ming army again launched a heavy artillery bombardment of the city. The cannonballs fell on the head of the city, and the battlements of the female wall that the Qing army had worked hard to repair all night were smashed again, and the cannonballs also left countless pits on the city wall, and the whole city wall shook, and the city wall in some sections could collapse as long as the bombardment continued.

Needless to say, the artillery of the Qing army, yesterday evening's artillery destroyed part of the Qing army's artillery, and some of the artillery that could still be used was collected by the Qing army and erected at the head of the city, but a batch of artillery bombardment was destroyed in the morning.

The sun rose, the sun shone on the earth, the heat wave rolled, and the temperature soon rose to a high temperature of thirty-eight or nine degrees.

Kong Yuanzhang was horrified when he saw the Ming army pushing the trebuchet up. But he still didn't understand: the Ming army already had so many cannons, why bother to build these large trebuchets? You must know that trebuchets are eliminated by cannons, and trebuchets are not as good as cannons in terms of range and accuracy.

"Brothers, work harder, smash the oil cans into them, throw them into the oil cans, and enjoy cold beer at noon!" Li Rui, who was in charge of commanding the trebuchet, shouted.

Hearing that they could drink cold beer like the soldiers, the auxiliaries put the canisters in the trebuchet's gondola and the counterweights on the other side, regardless of the heat.

Someone lit the fuse of the oil can, and then the auxiliaries pulled the handle, and the trebuchet made a piercing sound of wood, and the oil tank that lit the fuse flew into the air and smashed into the city.

A tank of fire oil filled with fire oil fell into the city, and the gunpowder exploded, and the burning oil splattered everywhere, and the city suddenly burned into a sea of fire.

The hot weather, coupled with the barbecue, the taste of the Qing army in the city can be imagined.

"It's out of the water!" The city was filled with terrified shouts.

"Extinguish the fire!" Kong Yuanzhang and the prefect took the people Zhuang and fetched water everywhere to extinguish the fire.

In the hot summer, a fire breaks out during the day, and it doesn't taste good. The soldiers and men carried buckets of water and poured them on the fire, and when the water met the fire, it formed water vapor, which made the temperature in the city even higher.

And the auxiliaries who had just fired the canister of fire oil were sitting in the pergola at this time, drinking cold beer.

"That's a good thing!" One of the auxiliaries drank a large bowl of cold beer.

Most of these auxiliaries were captured by the original Qing soldiers, and it was the first time they had drunk this kind of thing. In the summer, I don't know how comfortable it feels to drink a cold beer and take a lunch break at noon. (To be continued.) )