stubborn thief

Chapter 636: For Chenggitula

August, the twenty-fourth day of the siege of Tomsk.

Before the early morning mist had dissipated, Warlord Ivan had already gone up to the bell tower and looked southeast outside the city with his binoculars.

In that direction, tall siege engines have been set up, all indicating the choice of the siege army.

Even in the face of the Tsarist Russian army that had increased to more than 4,000 troops on the left bank of the Tuomu River, the siege army was still determined. They refused to withdraw from the siege, and a brutal siege was about to begin.

Ivan once saw a person on the hillside in the distance through the telescope. The person was covered in a crimson robe with his left shoulder exposed. He wore an iron hat and was incompatible with the groups of Tatar cavalry.

At first glance, they look like Khitan people.

Ivan originally thought that the Khitan commander had a strong will to attack the city and had something to rely on, but now it seems that the siege equipment is mediocre.

They are nothing more than pieces of earthen baskets, tall catapults, catapult carts with shooting holes, sturdy ram carts, and strange carts with big wooden signs hanging on them. They are all primitive siege weapons.

Of course, being primitive does not mean that it is not easy to use, and the castle in Tomsk is also very primitive, but this is a siege war after all, and troops and artillery have the final say.

At this moment, the reinforcements on the left bank of the Tomu River were close to 5,000. In addition to the more than 1,000 Cossacks and hunters who came from nearby for support, there were also more than 2,000 Tatars recruited.

You said that your Khitan Kingdom suddenly came to open up territory today and started a big war as soon as it started. This is illogical. Did your Khitan Kingdom just be established?

Did the border line get pushed here silently?

The scale of the battle progressed to such an uncontrollable situation in a short period of time, which caught Ivan, the governor of Tomsk, by surprise. He was panicked and wanted to cease the war.

He didn't want to die in this weird battle.

During this period, the city's outer city positions had only been supplemented by five or six hundred Tatars. They still only had four very light small bronze cannons, which were arranged in the wilderness southeast of Tomsk. It seemed that that was their main attack direction. .

With the level of the enemy's primitive siege engines in the siege camp, it was difficult for Tomsk to be breached. The longest range of those catapults was only 200 meters. The defenders had an absolute advantage in artillery, and it was impossible to let the catapults out. near.

Ivan really wanted to stop the war.

Ivan couldn't figure out why the war suddenly started, let alone why the war suddenly started in Tomsk.

Ivan gave the envoy a lesson and sent out a second group.

Of course, the reason that really made him want to cease the war was that on the one hand, the legendary Khitan was right in front of him, and on the other hand... this battle was too confusing for him.

But the reason why two groups of envoys were sent shows that at least the first group did not go well.

In addition, there is a regular army going from Tyumen to Yeniseisk Fort, including the 700 Shooting Corps and two mercenary regiments composed mainly of German mercenaries, with a strength of 1,500 people.

This is the case in the Siberian campaign. Everything here is limited by the environment, and small-scale conflicts are the mainstream.

In fact, we didn’t talk about anything.

Just give them all the Kyrgyz and blacksmith Tatars, a total of 10,000 or 20,000 people.

The second group of envoys pinched their noses and saluted the defenders at the door. They also entered the camp and met Chu Hu'er. However, after they had no idea what they were talking about, they were all killed.

After all, if the Oirat cavalry ran, as long as they did not get close to the river, the Russian army would not be able to catch up.

These scattered and patchwork troops used ships to transport more than 700 guns, 12 large and small artillery pieces, and more than 500 kilograms of gunpowder to the city of Tomsk. They also added 700 troops, bringing the number of garrison troops in the fort to 1,000. Five hundred people.

The word battle has nothing to do with Siberia.

Therefore, this decisive battle that has not yet begun is a lose-lose situation for Ivan.

He wants to go back to Moscow to brag.

But he didn't think he would win easily, or that it would be difficult to win.

Think about it, east of the Ural Mountains six thousand miles away from Moscow, on the quiet bank of the Tomu River, a Gunpowder Khanate that popped out of a crack in the rocks suddenly began to besiege the city.

To be honest, Warlord Ivan is not only full of questions, but also full of desire for survival.

The most magical part is that there are real reinforcements in Qiu Meng. Within a month, both sides increased their troops to four to five thousand, and their general strength reached 10,000.

Of course, Tsarist Russia's military governor would not be so easy to talk to. He just felt that the Tatars were nothing compared to trade with Khitan.

Suddenly, at the end of the summer of that year, more than 3,000 Ourat, Kyrgyz, and Khitan coalition forces surrounded the city like a ghost.

There are already 1,500 people here to support us.

This battle is so magical.

In order to find out why the war started, Ivan sent two groups of envoys to the siege camp.

The most critical thing was the timing of the war, which happened to be when Tyumen sent 6,000 reinforcements to Yeniseisk Fort.

He didn't think he would lose the battle. On the contrary, it was more difficult for him to lose the battle in the current situation.

He thought to himself that if it was for the tribute people like in previous years, he could give in completely.

He even suspected that the siege army in Tomsk was just a bait, and that there was another Khitan army in the east to destroy the fortresses in the Yenisei River Basin.

why?

The city of Tomsk, east of the Ural Mountains, has been established for thirty years.

The first group of envoys did not see Chuhu'er at all. Because they were unwilling to take the lead in saluting the Tatars outside the camp, they were beaten by Chuhu'er's soldiers at the gate of the siege camp, and were carried and thrown under the city.

To this day, he still doesn't know why this battle, which is too large to be controlled, started.

More importantly, the Oirat cavalry was stationed in their farmland. According to Ivan's understanding of the Tatars, they could not break the city and would definitely burn up the rye planted in the ground with a torch when they withdrew the siege.

Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.

As soon as Ivan's envoys finished speaking, asking Chuhu'er to withdraw his troops and surrender to the tsar, they did not hold the soldiers accountable for the siege of Tomsk, and went further to Chuhu'er's territory to negotiate.

Tsarist Russia has ruled this land for about twenty years. This is not a border.

Fort Kuznesk, seven hundred miles to the south, is barely bordering the territory controlled by the Oirat people.

If this is purely to prop up the scene, no one needs to take it seriously. Tsarist Russia never dared to ask big nobles to pay tribute in Siberia. At most, they would ask people to write a letter. Even most nobles did not need to write letters. They just saluted the envoy.

But who is Chu Hu'er? The entire Yizhong Ya Lu Bu even beat his own father, and he didn't accept this trick at all.

If I want to surround you, I can surround you. If I want to beat you, I can beat you. If I want to retreat, I can retreat. It’s none of your business!

Zhou Zhouqiang originally heard that Orusi had sent envoys, and wanted to talk to them. After all, if you know yourself and your enemy, you will never be in danger of a hundred battles.

As a result, before the others entered the tent, Chu Huer's soldiers had already picked up the envoy's head and threw it outside the camp. Kyrgyz soldiers kicked him away.

Kicked all the way to Tomsk.

There was nothing Zhou Qiang could do, but he was helpless and could only tell Chu Hu'er: "The scarecrow has been tied up, and the general can kill people."

Lao Zhou tried casting cannons outside the city. After trying it, he discovered that cannons are really not something ordinary people can make.

At least Kyrgyz craftsmen couldn't make it.

The lion cannon is made of cast iron. The craftsmen here cannot cast iron, only forge it.

Sunday Qiangxin said that it’s okay if he knows how to forge, so let’s forge some Franco machines for fun.

As a result, after more than ten days of forging, a Franco machine gun with a pound of ammunition was forged. I tried firing it with double the charge, and it exploded smoothly.

In the end, even these catapults and wooden curtains for charging carts were made by his personal guidance of craftsmen.

If he were to build something outside the city again, he would drive Sunday crazy.

Fortunately, Liu Chengzu's fleet had sailed into the mouth of the Tuomu River last night. It would be enough to have some of these primitive tools. After all, he did not plan to rely entirely on catapults to break the city. Sunday forced people to tie up scarecrows.

Fortunately, the Kyrgyz people are pretty good at making scarecrows.

His plan was to plant a large number of scarecrows in the siege camp, and let Chu Huer lead his cavalry to Chencang secretly, and then move to the left bank by boat in the south.

The terrain on the left bank is more suitable for armored cavalry to rush and attack, and let him kill the Orusi reinforcements there.

In some ways, there were mixed feelings about the arrival of enemy reinforcements on Sunday.

This civil servant, who had not experienced much life and death, was afraid of the huge enemy force.

And beneath these human fears, there is a huge and crazy joy.

Zhou Qiang thought to himself that the more Orus reinforcements there were on the other side of the river, the closer he was to death.

But finding wealth in danger will bring you closer to being famous in history.

This was no joke to him. In preparation for this battle, he spent a whole year sorting out many unheard of things.

For example, Orus could not abandon Siberia just because one or several fortresses were uprooted. Furs were already the backbone of Orus' existence, as important as the Ming Dynasty's summer taxes and autumn grain.

So this battle is bound to be a protracted see-saw.

Sunday Qiang was determined to start a war, bypassing Kuznetsk Fort and reaching the city of Tomsk in order to choose the most suitable war front.

This front line cannot be too close to Oirat, otherwise it will inevitably be affected by the Oirat nobles; at the same time, it cannot be too far, because it will not be able to support and occupy it.

Tomsk is the most strategically advantageous location in the future tug-of-war.

This is what Zhou Qiang learned from Liu Chengzong.

This is Liu Chengzong’s idea of ​​​​solving the Hami problem.

Winning this battle is the foundation, but more important is winning the next battle that breaks out here next year.

Only by winning the next battle can we truly secure this place.

And if you want to sit tight, the first thing to bear the brunt is the Orus strongholds, garrisons, and hunters scattered within a thousand-mile radius of Tomsk.

Now that they are all here, there is no better opportunity for Sunday Qiang to catch them all.

Chu Huer was very interested in Sunday Qiang's proposal, but he had more military experience than Sunday Qiang and did not accept all the proposals.

He decided to personally lead 1,700 horsemen across the river from the south.

In addition, the remaining thousand armored cavalry from Chuhu'er camp were left behind to guard Zhou Qiang's safety to prevent the dog-headed military advisor who had finally been recruited from dying.

Most of the cavalry in the Chuhu'er camp are armored cavalry, but they are not the heavy cavalry with both men and horses in the Central Plains. They are cavalry equipped with leather armor, chain armor, four-mirror armor and cloth face armor.

Chu Hu'er had his own plan. He did not plan to attack the enemy directly. He just went to the left bank to let his horses graze. He wanted to wait for Liu Chengzu's fleet to come over and the enemy to prepare to cross the river for support before attacking.

Soon, a horseman came from the south and told Zhou Zhou that Liu Chengzu had divided his troops into two groups. The navy had unloaded the war horses. On the land route, there were 300 cavalry and 70 carriages to transport the baggage. Both groups of soldiers and horses would arrive early tomorrow morning. .

By the early morning of the next day, the cavalry arrived and everything was ready.

Zhou Qiang did not give the Orus defenders in the city a chance to react, and immediately ordered the siege camp to blow the horn.

More than a thousand Kyrgyz troops pushed siege equipment and slowly pressed down on the city.

Tomsk's urgent bells echoed over the dense forest for a long time. Countless Cossacks, hunters and Tatars rushed out of the inner city and rushed to the arrow towers of the outer wooden fort.

Immediately, flames burst out, and the well-supplied Tomsk garrison fired muskets outside the city. The smoke obscured each arrow tower.

The Kyrgyz archers under Taben hid behind the carriages and discovered that this wooden carriage could really block the enemy's guns. The people's morale was greatly boosted, and they mustered up the courage to draw their bows and nock arrows, and fired back at the archery tower like rain.

However, the real attack was still carried out by the Tianshan Army among the Kyrgyz soldiers.

Having received seventy carts of firearms supplies, General Wang Jinzhong was gearing up. He had been waiting for this moment for too long. Seeing that the guards were all on the wooden fortress archery tower, he immediately gave the command to his team to blow up the archery tower.

Led by two squadrons, the two squads rushed to the carriage, drove away the friendly troops hiding behind, and each launched a non-stop round of fire at the archery tower with twenty flying cannons.

Amidst the muffled sound of bang bang, the ignited cylindrical cartridges flew out of the gun barrel one after another, drawing parabolas in the air and falling to the vicinity of the arrow tower. The continuous explosions shook the wooden arrow tower, and even made the people outside the arrow tower shake. The Cossacks howled all over the place.

It wasn't until the third wave of shooting that a shell finally flew in from the shooting window of the archery tower.

After two breaths, there was a loud bang, and the Feizhen cannon exploded in the arrow tower, sending out a cloud of blood mist upstairs.

Immediately, another arrow tower was also removed, and the bunker that the two Cossacks relied on to counterattack was taken down.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Taben shouted an order. Dozens of Kyrgyz soldiers pushed heavy carts, and hundreds of other soldiers rushed forward with earth bags on their shoulders and began to bury the two dumb rocket towers outside the village wall. of trenches.

Ivan on the bell tower saw this scene and immediately ordered the shooting army as a reserve to fill the gap in the two archery towers.

Little did they know that this was just Baizong Wang Jinzhong’s plan.

When the two archery towers were again garrisoned by soldiers, gunfire broke out outside the city again. All the Kyrgyz soldiers in front of the formation were running backwards.

Just when the defenders thought they had repelled the enemy, fifty rockets screamed into the sky outside the city, covering the two archery towers with great coverage.

This naturally includes the outside and inside of the wooden village wall.

More than five hundred kilograms of gunpowder were released at once. Continuous explosions exploded inside and outside the wall. Countless iron pellets hit the wall and the defenders inside like tearing cloth.

In the smoke that permeated the battlefield, the fleeing Kyrgyz soldiers turned back again. They used all their strength to push the car and reached the village wall. The huge logs hit the wooden wall heavily.

On the other side of the battlefield, on the left bank of the Tuomu River, the noisy sound of siege awakened Orusi's reinforcements from afar.

The shooters, mercenaries and Cossacks gathered supplies in a hurry, pushed the flat boats into the river, and prepared to cross the river to attack the flank of the siege camp.

However, at this moment, two loud bangs and booms came from the horizon, attracting people's attention.

A mighty fleet appeared on the broad Tuomu River. The ships were equipped with huge wheels on both sides, and the wheel blades kept rolling with the river water. A shirtless man with a red scarf on the bow of the ship was beating war drums, like With roaring thunder, it was speeding towards them.

Before the ships even approached, launchers made of rocket wooden boxes had been set up on the decks of each large ship. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of rockets took off, crashing towards the shore with a shrill roar.

The Cossacks and mercenaries who swarmed to the shore and prepared to board the ship dispersed in all directions at a faster speed, but they were still inevitably killed by the iron pellets released by the rocket explosion.

Even the lucky ones who were not injured were not standing on the shore at this time. Compared with the monsters in the river, their boats were almost overturned and crushed at a touch. Wherever they still had the courage to continue boarding, they rushed to grab the horses. They fled on horseback or on foot, scrambling to leave the shore.

However, Liu Chengzu and his fleet were not the most brutal people in this land.

In a field covered with reeds less than fifteen miles away from the Orus reinforcement camp, thousands of Oirat Lancers with single braids on their heads and iron armor were marching slowly towards their direction.

Chu Huer walked slowly and leisurely, with an indifferent and frivolous smile on his face, holding his pagoda-style alms bowl engraved with scriptures on horseback and wiping it.

It was as if there were some invisible stains on the bright bowl.

It wasn't until the armored spearmen from Chu Hu'er's camp dispersed and approached two or three miles outside the camp that Chu Hu'er finally came to his senses, put on his alms bowl upright, and pulled out the finely crafted Marshal's Mansion from his waist. Making a wild goose feather sword, he looked around at his subordinates who were walking slowly with their spears raised. His rough and frivolous face was suddenly filled with violent anger.

The sharp tip of Yan Ling's knife pointed straight forward.

roar.

"For Chengitullah!"

good afternoon!