stubborn thief

East of Xing'an Mountains, at Mazong Pass, is the headquarters of the Marshal's central army.

Inside the commander's tent, Liu Chengzong was sitting at a desk carefully looking at a design drawing of the Songmo Prefecture's city defense works.

Monk Xue, the cartographer of the Marshal's Office, stood by with dark circles under his eyes. He looked tired but excited.

City planning has always been a job that only people like the county magistrate can do, but I didn't expect that in Songmo Prefecture, a small painter like him would be able to do the job!

Liu Chengzong looked at the sketch, raised his eyes to glance at Monk Xue, and praised: "Good idea, good craftsmanship!"

The sketch shows a simple design of a four-cornered bastion.

Thanks to the fact that Monk Xue often made maps, the proportions of the castle design are also very detailed.

Based on the marks left by the charcoal pencil, Liu Chengzong saw how Monk Xue drew the picture, which was simple and ingenious.

The Songmo Prefecture City that Zhang Xianzhong was supervising the construction of was a square city with four city walls that were 300 steps wide. Monk Xue connected the four city corners and the four city walls, drew a rice character inside the square city, and extended these four lines outward.

Then connect the vertices of the extended line with the two adjacent city corners to draw the main outline of the four-cornered bastion.

After hearing Liu Chengzong's praise, Xue Heshang happily said respectfully: "The commander-in-chief taught me well. Didn't the commander-in-chief say that the sharp-angle enemy tower is to pile up fortifications so that the guns on the wall have no blind spots. Shooting from three sides will prevent the enemy from digging holes in the city and ants from attacking."

"The gun lines and cannon lines are all straight, so I just use a ruler to draw straight lines, connecting all the parts together, and then cut off the excess."

As he spoke, Monk Xue pointed at the map and said, "According to your idea, the four enemy towers are 150 steps apart, which is within the range of my heavy guns, lion cannons and scattered bullets."

"At the same time, the side of the enemy tower, to the sharp corner of the adjacent enemy tower, is 400 steps, which is also within the killing range of the Portuguese general cannon. As for the enemies farther away, we can use the thousand-jin cannon and the heavy cannons captured by our army."

Liu Chengzong nodded continuously, feeling very happy.

It’s not that Monk Xue’s drawing is perfect. In his opinion, there are still many areas that can be improved.

Rather, Monk Xue himself was an expert in mapping skills, but he had no experience in building cities or designing fortresses.

After a night of thinking, he handed in this picture. It is obvious that he has made great progress in designing sharp-angle enemy platforms, and it is only a matter of time before he masters it.

This was more important to Liu Chengzong than this simple sketch, as it meant that he would personally train an expert in designing military fortresses.

At the same time, he had only read a few books by Xu Guangqi and only knew the appearance of the sharp-angled enemy tower castle, but he did not know how each key point was designed.

Now that Monk Xue has put his entire thinking process on the diagram, it is clear to Liu Shizi.

It also gave him a better understanding of the design.

"very good!"

Liu Shizi first encouraged him, then pointed at the corners on the map and said, "But there are still some things that can be changed on this map. On the side of the enemy tower, the line you drew comes from the adjacent corner of the city. On the inner side near the city wall, the guns and cannons cannot reach the outside of the adjacent corners and are blocked."

He was referring to the two opposing enemy towers on the left and right sides of the city gate.

What needs to be changed are the two sharp-angled sides of the enemy platform.

Monk Xue drew inferences from one example, and nodded in agreement when Liu Chengzong asked him the question, saying, "The commander is right. The outer edge of the sharp angle should extend from the edge and the city wall, so there will be no blind spots."

"Not bad!"

Liu Shizi then pointed out several more flaws, such as the sharp edges cannot be flattened and should have two wings extended like an arrowhead to better protect the gun positions on the inside of the edge.

Then he called over several apprentices under Monk Xue, drew several copies of the improved design, and copied them onto the topographic map of Songmo Prefecture. According to the terrain of the mountain, a suspension bridge was built on the top of the east wall, and a triangular fort was added on the top of the mountain fifty steps away from the east wall. A triangular fort was also added outside the west wall.

A deep and wide trench was designed between the two triangular forts and the main city.

At the same time, only one west gate was opened on the four sides of the city wall, connecting to the triangular fort outside the west gate. A road was designed outside the triangular fort, bypassing the moat, winding around the south side of the castle, leading to the east, and turning down the mountain at the triangular fort on the east side.

This mountain of theirs is actually the foundation of the former Songmo Prefecture City.

In the past, city walls were built high to prevent enemy troops from climbing up. However, the higher the walls were, the easier it was to be hit by catapults and stone cannons, and the easier it was to collapse. Therefore, by the Ming Dynasty, city walls were relatively low.

As for Songmo Prefecture, it was built on a high platform on the original site, which itself has a certain height. However, the new city is much smaller than the old city in terms of planning. The edge of the platform can be built into an anti-artillery slope to minimize the hit rate of direct fire from distant artillery.

At the same time, this also gave Liu Chengzong more insights into building the bastion.

He realized that in order to maximize the defensive capabilities of this kind of castle, it should not be built out, but rather high ground and low mountains should be chosen to dig out wide and deep moats to build the castle.

Large underground cave.

In this era, all cities that were captured had to be climbed in the end. If the sharp-angle enemy towers had sufficient firepower, they could try to prevent the enemy from climbing the city walls before the ammunition, water and food ran out. What they feared was direct artillery fire.

It all comes down to the battlements, and the gun positions on the battlements cannot be destroyed by enemy artillery.

So if you want to build a protected gun position, first you must avoid being hit, and second the battlements must be thick.

Therefore, trenches were dug directly from the ground. The gun positions on the city walls were only slightly higher than the ground when viewed from the side. Outside the wide trenches were anti-artillery slopes, which prevented enemy artillery from firing directly and could only eject them, thus avoiding being hit to the greatest extent possible.

Liu Chengzong could only record these techniques, but he could not enjoy them in Songmo Prefecture. The place itself was a narrow river valley. If he dug out a city in that terrain, he would not need anyone to attack because the groundwater would flood the city first.

Therefore, in Songmo, they could only think of ways to improve the city's defense techniques, such as making the steps outside the city high and low at different times to create difficulties for the attacking army.

The inner horse path of the city wall is two or three bricks higher than the outer gun positions, and a small slope about ten feet long is set in the middle to use gravity to make the recoil of the artillery return to its original position faster after firing.

However, even if all means cannot be used, as long as the sharp-angle enemy tower of Songmo Prefecture can be built and equipped with enough guns and artillery, it will still be a city with extremely high defensive capabilities.

Of course, for Liu Chengzong, many things are conserved.

The castle was built and has excellent defensive capabilities, but the amount of work required to build it was huge, far exceeding the construction of a larger traditional city.

Moreover, the troops, artillery, and ammunition reserves were all huge.

Because this kind of sharp-angled enemy tower must be coordinated with guns and artillery, this is also the reason why Liu Chengzong did not build a bastion in Corning in his early years.

In order to give full play to the firepower advantage of the four enemy towers and four city walls, at least four Lion Cannons, Generals, Thousand-Jin Cannons and Red Heavy Cannons must be deployed on each side. There must be sixty-four Thousand-Jin Cannons and Red Heavy Cannons alone.

Sixty-four heavy artillery pieces, what does that mean?

Gao Yingdeng's First Field Brigade was equipped with only 26 thousand-jin field artillery.

Liu Chengzong had four battalions of Han, Tang, Yuan and Ming, plus two field brigades, to make up this number.

Not to mention the heavy artillery for defending the city, there were only the nine guns seized from the Later Jin.

In this way, no matter which direction the enemy attacks, once they get within three miles, they will be exposed to the firing range of sixteen field guns and heavy artillery.

In a strategically located river valley, deploying so many artillery pieces, let alone building a bastion, even an ordinary checkpoint would allow a battalion of troops to resist tens of thousands of troops.

At the location of Songmo Prefecture, this range covered the entire river valley, and even the other side of the river was within the artillery range.

The Marshal's Office can be easily dealt with by artillery.

When Liu Shizi was in Liangzhou, he once forged a cannon on the battlefield. He used an iron mold to cast a monster that weighed 5,700 kilograms and fired 20-kilogram iron bullets.

That cannon was a super defective product in terms of design, materials, technology and quality. Its weight was more than four times that of a thousand-jin field cannon, but in terms of cost-effectiveness, it had very limited impact on improving the army's combat effectiveness. It was used only once at the mouth of the Zhuanglang River and then put into the treasury of Liangzhou City, gathering dust.

It couldn't climb the Liangzhou city wall either, because it was an ancient city that was built very high, and the wall was very narrow. Even if they put a cannon on it, it would fall down after firing a shot. But since they had just built Songmofu City, the city wall was built by placing cannons, and they also served as defensive cannons, so they didn't have to consider mobility issues, so naturally the bigger the better.

Liu Shizi planned to directly transfer military craftsmen from Shaanxi, and then transfer mining supervisors from Qinghai, to conduct large-scale mineral exploration between Guihua City and Shangdu, and build an iron factory between Shangdu and Songmo Prefecture.

After all, when it comes to supplies, the closer the better.

Not only cannons be cast, but also the shells needed for hundreds of cannons. If one round of each is fired, a thousand-jin cannon can be fired.

At that moment, Liu Chengzong ordered Monk Xue to collect the city construction drawings and take his apprentices to Songmo Prefecture to assist Zhang Xianzhong in building a new city.

First, a square city was built, and then it was expanded outwards based on the foundation of the square city. At the same time, the soil and rocks needed for rammed earth construction were mined according to the planned moat.

It was only when Monk Xue set off that Liu Shizi really started to have a headache.

What gave him a headache were the Mo Nan cavalry returning from the east.

This bunch of grassland horse bandits are all talented people. Not only did they make Huang Taiji so angry that he had a nosebleed, they also made Liu Chengzong so angry that he had a headache.

He has been suppressing his anger.

Liu Shizi just didn't understand. Although the composition of the Mo Nan cavalry was a bit higher than that of forest bandits, tribal troublemakers, and grassland horse bandits.

But among the officers, there are still some hereditary aristocrats, accounting for at least a quarter.

How could they fight such a battle?

It wasn't that the battle was fought badly or that he couldn't run back. The order Liu Chengzong gave was to let E'linchen avoid the battle and run wherever he wanted. As long as he was not caught by Huang Taiji, he would be considered a winner.

E'linchen did a good job. Although the reason was unknown, Huang Taiji's Eight Banners Army was indeed tied down on the Khorchin grassland.

But Liu Shizi could never have imagined that this group of people could fight a war like this.

Throughout history, no matter whether among the Hu or Han people, there have been defeats, reprisals, and retreats, but an army generally would not disperse.

On the contrary, the more critical the battle situation is, the more the army wants to stay together, and the more the enemy hopes that they will disperse and lose organization.

Because of this, all military forces have a system of collective responsibility in their military laws, such as if a soldier dies, a general dies, or if a general dies, a soldier dies.

For example, if the entire Ming army retreated, the captain would be beheaded; if the captain died and the entire team retreated, the entire team would be beheaded.

This is a very normal military law of collective responsibility, which is designed to prevent generals from abandoning their troops and escaping in times of crisis.

For example, Liu Chengzong's good brother Cao Yao cried when he drank too much. While crying, he went to the grave of Liu Yujie, the lieutenant general who helped him escape from the Battle of Sarhu. That Liu Yujie left everyone else on the battlefield and ran away.

To be honest, if E'linchen ran back on his own and left 10,000 Mongolian cavalry in the south of the desert, even if Liu Chengzong had someone kill him, he would only be angry in his heart without any doubt, which is understandable.

But now, that’s not the case.

Of the 23 Wanhu who went out to fight, except for two who were killed and four who were missing according to intelligence, the remaining 15 all returned, and even several of the Qianhu from Ordos came back.

Only Sanang Taiji and his commander E'linchen, who was ordered to lead them to the war, were left in enemy territory.

Liu Chengzong didn't know how E'linchen was able to be a commander. Why did he just throw his generals onto the battlefield and leave them alone?

Moreover, they did not say that E'linchen was killed by the Eight Banners Army, but that he led his troops into the northern part of the Khorchin grassland and destroyed their nest.

Liu Chengzong had never seen such a scene.

Each of the ten thousand households brought their horses to ask the commander-in-chief for rewards, saying that they had made great contributions.

After the incident, Liu Chengzong was really heartless. He held a grand banquet at the entrance of Xing'an Mountains and even took out the milk wine seized from the Northern Yuan Camp and laughed heartily at the thousands of households in Mo Nan who had made contributions.

Even Zuo Liangyu, the horse groom, couldn't stand it anymore. He felt that according to military law, at least half of these Wanhu should be killed. How could the commander-in-chief order people to make reward plaques while giving lectures at a banquet?

It was a real class, mainly for those thousand households who were qualified to attend the class, telling them not to slaughter and destroy the enemy's livestock directly, but to take them away even if they knew they could not bring them back.

Because in this way, when you are caught by the enemy, you can abandon your livestock and drive the cattle and sheep indiscriminately to disrupt the enemy's pursuit formation. And the enemy will not chase you again after getting the spoils, thus avoiding casualties of soldiers.

All the thousand households were confused. Little Zhamusu, the nephew of Elinchen of the Ordos tribe, wondered, "Great Khan, won't the livestock help the enemy?"

"What enemy? We are just teaching them to keep themselves alive for the time being."

Liu Shizi glared and said, "We can't take it back now because the war is not over yet. We can take it back after the war. Even if we lose the war, we can take it back next year when the lambs are born. They are not as decisive as you in slaughtering livestock."

Liu Chengzong did not drink. He waited until both the host and the guests were having a great time and the officers from Mo Nan had replied to their letters. He also returned to the commander-in-chief's tent. Zuo Liangyu and Wu Sihu followed suit and asked for a meeting.

Without even looking at Li Qifeng who was holding his sword, Yizhang saluted Liu Chengzong and said directly: "Grand Marshal, the tribes in the south of the desert are scattered. It would be fine if you don't ask them to atone for their sins, but why are you giving them such a huge reward?"

Liu Chengzong raised his eyes to see Zuo Liangyu and wanted to laugh but didn't.

The banquet was prepared by Zuo Liangyu and Wu Sihu.

He did not expect that his reward to the generals in Mo Nan would make Zuo Liangyu feel angry. He was just like a general in the marshal's office, running to offer suggestions.

He thought to himself, do I need you to remind me about Mo Nan's affairs?

Mo Nan's organizational system is a failure, and Liu Shizi certainly knows it better than anyone else.

"A pile of loose sand" is a nice word. Except for the Ordos tribe, the rest of the troops are no different from large and small bandit dens.

This battle also proved that even E'linchen found it difficult to command the troops among the new Mongolian tribes south of the desert.

This is a bad thing for the Mo Nan Governor's Office, not a good thing for the Marshal's Office, but it is not a bad thing for Liu Chengzong.

"Those who have made contributions should be rewarded, and those who have made mistakes should be punished. We have to wait until E Linchen comes back before we can punish him."

Liu Chengzong replied lightly, but he didn't really think so in his heart, but he couldn't explain it to Zuo Liangyu in detail.

Because in his heart he never really regarded the many tens of thousands and thousands of households in Mo Nan as tens of thousands and thousands of households. He just granted them titles by indiscriminately.

But what could he do? As the saying goes, fame and power should not be given to others indiscriminately. He was in Qinghai at the time and could not provide any support to Yang Qi and others in the south of the desert.

The only support that can be given is a piece of empty paper to grant official titles to win people's hearts.

People really believe it.

The policy at that time saved the life of the Mo Nan Governor's Office, but now it has become a problem for enforcing military discipline in Mo Nan.

To put it bluntly, they are just thousands of households. When they go to war, they are at most captains and team leaders. They are not even as good as middle and lower-level officers. Many of them are simply old soldiers who have not received proper military education.

But they were asked to command the war themselves, which of course they were not capable of doing.

"Wu Sihu sent the cavalry of the Northern Yuan Camp to the various thousand households to pass on the order, asking them to report the meritorious soldiers tomorrow and issue reward plaques. The thousand households will select ten brave warriors and send them here, each with a war horse and armor, and grant them the title of Batul, and establish the Batul Camp."

Liu Chengzong came from a military background, so he was good at things like building up the army and strengthening its military capabilities.

Even if the military discipline of the Mo Nan cavalry is poor, they can still pick out a few hundred brave warriors. If they are trained well and sent back to the various Wanhu tribes, they will soon become the new backbone of the force.

The most important thing is that the Mo Nan cavalry did not obey E Linchen, but they obeyed his orders very well.

After Wu Sihu received the order, Liu Chengzong glanced at Zuo Liangyu and said with a smile: "I'll have to trouble Brother Zuo to take charge of the Tu camp." (End of this chapter)