stubborn thief

Shang Kexi had already received Kong Youde's letter asking for help.

It’s not that he didn’t want to save Liaoyang, nor that he couldn’t save Liaoyang, he just didn’t want to respond to Kong Youde and didn’t reply to his letter.

In fact, since the day he received the letter for help, Shang Kexi had been preparing warships and artillery in Haicheng. He drew soldiers from the Niulu under his command and ordered Jiala Zhangjing Lu Ke to lead the gunboats and navy to station at the mouth of Dongshengbao River, ready to send troops to Taizi River at any time.

It was nothing for him to think about.

Although his father and brother died in the battle against the Jin Kingdom, his wife and concubine committed suicide by jumping into a well in Lushun, and his servants jumped into the sea, Shang Kexi did not actually have much hatred for them.

Each is his own master.

This was not even as great as the hatred Huang Long felt for Dai Qing after his death in the battle at Lushun.

Because Huang Long is his future and the best person to him in the world, far better than his father and brother.

I can never repay your kindness.

The person he hated the most was neither the Eight Banners nobles nor the rebellious generals Kong and Geng, but Shen Shikui of Dongjiang Town who stood in his way.

Emperor Chongde, Huang Taiji, treated him very well.

He was promoted from deputy general to commander-in-chief, his hometown Haicheng was given to him as a fiefdom, he was given a dragon robe and fox fur, and he was named King Zhishun.

Shang Kexi was very happy and was willing to serve Emperor Chongde wholeheartedly.

If we can capture Dongjiang Town and kill Shen Shikui, we will be willing to go through fire and water for Emperor Chongde.

Because of this, he also hated Liu Chengzong.

If Liu Chengzong had not sent troops this time, Shang Kexi had a premonition that the opportunity to eliminate Dongjiang Town and deal with Shen Shikui would soon come.

However, Shang Kexi had a clear understanding of his own strength and he was unable to rescue Kong Youde.

Even if he ignored the defense of Haicheng and pushed all the troops and fleets to Liaoyang, at most he would only have two overstretched Jiala, less than 4,500 people. If he failed to cooperate well with Kong's troops, Liaoyang would not be able to be defended and Haicheng would also be lost.

So he could only save Liaoyang but not Kong Youde.

Shang Kexi's plan was to take the siege of Liaoyang City as an opportunity to blockade the Taizi River with a fleet of sand ships equipped with red cannons on the bow, destroy the bridges on the river, and bombard the enemy troops along the coast.

They swarmed and fired at the enemy troops along the coast with small boats equipped with three-barreled rifles, muskets, and strong bows.

Liu Chengzong's army was held near Liaoyang until Emperor Chongde led the Eight Banners Army to the battlefield and joined forces to destroy it.

But Shang Kexi did not expect that the fire in Liaoyang City would spread so quickly.

He had just received Kong Youde's request for help three days ago, and had sent a fleet to station at Dongsheng Fort two days ago. He was still loading food and gunpowder onto the ships yesterday. The cavalry sent to Anshan Post passed a message to Haicheng, saying that black smoke was rising everywhere from Liaoyang to Anshan, and the suburbs had been plundered by the enemy. There was even a huge fire in the direction of Liaoyang City, lighting up the night as bright as day.

Shang Kexi from Haicheng was stunned when he received the news.

I wondered what kind of military power Liu Chengzong had. Why did he burn the city on the day of the siege...an internal response?

No matter what, this was his opportunity to send troops. It didn't matter if it was a few days earlier or later. Even if Liu Chengzong got the warships in Liaoyang City, he would not be a match for his Shang navy.

He had seen and fought against Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming's ships. The ships were equipped with small Portuguese cannons and only had a large cannon on the bow. They were different from the Lushun fleet he brought to Haicheng. They would only get beaten in a naval battle.

The fleet set sail the night before, using both oars and sails, traveling 160 miles day and night, and was 30 miles close to Liaoyang on the afternoon of the next day.

Black flags are flying.

Jiala Zhangjing Lu Ke stood at the bow of the ship in armor, looking at the shore with a telescope in one hand, and gently twisting the thumb of the other hand behind his back between each knuckle.

On the path along the river bank, the Marshal's cavalrymen, with flags on their backs, were running in all directions.

Lu Ke said, "Send the order, send a small boat to explore the river mines, set sail and row the boats, the enemy has sentinels on the shore, they already know we are coming."

It was not surprising that the Marshal's army deployed cavalry defenses on the river bank.

In fact, during this voyage, Lu Keyeng, as the commander-in-chief, considered a lot.

He was an old general of Huang Long. He had fired cannons under the city of Zunhua in the year of Jisi. He knew Yang Yanchang and Wang Ziyong, two influential figures who recruited the Eight Battalions of Luojiao Cao Gang and Wen Xiang Bailian.

Unlike Shang Kexi, the lucky new general who was young, he had extremely rich combat experience.

Lu Ke knew that if Liu Chengzong knew military knowledge, he would definitely deploy defenses on the Taizi River to guard against their Haicheng navy.

Therefore, the quick fall of Liaoyang City was actually a good thing for their fleet. The shorter the Marshal's army's siege preparations, the more hasty their arrangements on the river were.

What he feared most were iron chains blocking the river and mines, which could really trap his fleet.

However, the former requires a long time to prepare, which the Marshal's Army may not be able to do; and the latter requires a certain amount of experience in water battles. As far as he knows, the Marshal's Army that emerged from Shaanxi should all be landlubbers.

As for ordinary underwater hidden stakes, Lu Ke is not afraid of them.

To guard against river mines, his fleet specially prepared two ramming boats with iron plates on the bottom for the purpose of clearing obstacles.

These two ships were looted by Shang Kexi when he attacked the Dongjiang Islands and captured people before he surrendered to the Jin Dynasty. He also attacked the shipbuilding base established by the Later Jin Dynasty in Yichuan, Korea during the Battle of Pi Island.

Ordinary underwater piles will be crushed when a ship hits them.

Just as Lu Ke ordered the launch of small boats to guard against traps in the river, a huge cloud of dust rose not far from the shore.

After looking through the telescope, Lu Ke realized that he was overthinking.

In the mirror, horses were galloping, skilled riders were riding horses and drawing bows, spreading across the plains, and war horses were pulling artillery vehicles that were rumbling forward in the smoke and dust.

It was obvious that he was going to have a battle with him on the shore.

Lu Ke was relieved.

He thought to himself: Okay, the Eight Banners nobles contemptuously called you barbarians, and I felt uncomfortable listening to that. After all this fuss, you really are barbarians.

It is not a very wise idea to use cavalry to fight warships.

The same thing was done by the Eight Banners in their early years when they lacked naval artillery. Twelve thousand people entered Korea and wanted to build a city along the coast outside Pi Island to implement a siege. As a result, they were bombarded by ship artillery and fled all over the place. At most, more than 700 people were killed in one day. Finally, they had no choice but to withdraw their troops and declared the siege a failure.

Lu Ke originally thought that the Marshal's Army would set some traps in the river to give them time to evacuate the coast, but looking at the way the cavalry swarmed in, it seemed that they had made no preparations in the river at all.

For him, the wisest choice for the Marshal's Army at this time was to shrink the defense line and give up three to five miles along the coast so that the artillery on the ships could not reach it.

This is also the most comfortable state for Lu Ke. He does not have to fight with the Marshal's Army on the battlefield, and can still complete the assigned task of blocking the river.

It just seemed that the Marshal's troops intended to fight him with their ships and cannons on the shore.

Then he is not afraid.

If you want to compete, come on!

The fleet sailed a few miles further east, and Lu Ke could see the outline of Liaoyang City through the telescope. He finally understood why the Marshal's army wanted to fight him on the shore, because one-third of Liaoyang City was in flames, especially the East City near the river bank, which was the best place for the city defense artillery to bombard the river ships.

The city wall is located on high ground and is protected by brick walls. The artillery on the wall has stronger protection than ship guns, and the shooting is also more stable. Concentrating a large number of artillery can prevent the fleet from passing through the river section near the city wall.

Unfortunately, the city walls were so burned by the fire that no one could stand on them.

This certainly made the mission of blocking the riverbank easier.

Lu Ke immediately ordered the fleet to sail along the Taizi River, first using the bow guns to destroy any pontoon bridges or even bridges that might exist on the river, and then turn back to bombard the enemy forces along the coast.

However, before the fleet approached Liaoyang, several cannon shots were heard from the shore.

At the northwest corner of Liaoyang City, there is a two-story corner tower called Pinghu Tower.

Liu Chengzong was standing on the second floor of Pinghu Tower, looking at the river bank through a telescope.

He was standing high and could see clearly. The Shang navy was coming from the west with large ships and many people. Zuo Guangxian's cavalry was on the south bank of the Taizi River, raising trails of dust and moving quickly under the cover of the river embankment.

The sound of the cannon came from several lion cannons pulled up to the river bank.

The Lion Cannon was light and could keep up with the speed of the cavalry. Once they reached the riverbank, they deployed their formation and fired at the boats on the river. The Haizhou navy also fired back with bows and arrows and muskets from the shore, and the battle between the two sides was filled with smoke.

Liu Chengzong could only see that after several lion cannons fired two rounds at the same time, they were suppressed by the muskets on the river and could not reload, and were forced to retreat from the river bank.

There was no way. The ships were moving in a state of round-robin fire. After the first ship fired, the second ship followed closely. The soldiers on the ship's side fired again. Hundreds of muskets fired continuously, and even the most elite artillery would be suppressed and unable to move.

But this was also Zuo Guangxian’s tactical strategy on the front line of the battlefield.

There were five Lion cannons in the first round of firing. After being suppressed and retreating from the river bank, they followed the cavalry and galloped eastward.

Not far away, the remaining fifteen lion cannons of the mobile battalion were lined up in a row. Taking advantage of the opportunity when the sailors on the ship were reloading after firing, they sprayed ammunition at the front warship of the fleet with a roar.

In one salvo, nearly eight hundred three-cent pellets swept across the deck like a violent storm, creating a cloud of blood for the sailors on the ship who had no time to dodge. The brig's sail was riddled with holes, the rope of the foremast was broken, and half of the sail fell off the mast.

After a successful attack, Zuo Guangxian was about to let the artillery use the same trick again.

However, the fleet waved flags, and the soldiers on board rushed into the cabins or hid behind the starboard wall, and simply refused to fight them.

Lu Ke, who commanded the navy, entered the cabin at the stern as soon as the first cannon was fired on the shore.

He was not in a hurry to engage in battle with the enemy on the shore, and he didn't even fire the cannon on the bow. In his opinion, this kind of battle was not the place for the navy to use its skills. He had to complete his mission first - destroying the bridge over the river.

As long as he could trap the Marshal's army near Liaoyang, he would be invincible, since the horses could not rush into the river anyway.

With his fleet cruising on the river, it was fine during the day, but at night, Liu Chengzong couldn't sleep well.

Once the main force of the Eight Banners of Emperor Chongde arrives, their sailors will be able to seize the opportunity to land and attack the Marshal's army from front and back.

Only then will it be the time for the navy to demonstrate its power.

After all, the Dongjiang Navy was not good at naval battles.

This is not a technical matter. Generals such as Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou during the Jiajing and Longqing periods hunted down Japanese pirates along the southeastern coast, which led to the evolution of Ming army warships into gunboats. It has been seventy or eighty years since then.

There are many plywood ships along the coast that carry cannons, and even have Spanish hulls, Chinese sails, single or double decks, and six or eight heavy cannons on the lower deck.

But in Dongjiang Town, there is no place for that kind of gunboat. The gunboat has too deep a draft and cannot move in inland rivers and along the coast. Here, the final victory or defeat will still depend on land battle.

Therefore, warships in Dongjiang Town are just a kind of transport equipment used for landing operations.

What are we firing at the shore now?

But Lu Ke didn't know that his ordering the sailors to retreat into the cabin and sail at full speed to get away from the artillery position was exactly the purpose of Zuo Guangxian's bombardment of the fleet from the shore.

Because the river bend ahead is blocked by a sunken ship!

In fact, ever since Zuo Guangxian received the order from Liu Chengzong to beat the navy, he couldn't suppress the smile on his face.

The Taizi River was originally shallow, with the deepest part less than three meters. The river bend where the Marshal's army buried the inverted piles was only two meters deep. From the moment the inverted piles were hit from the back by the entire fleet's ships, the river section leading to Liaoyang from west to east was a natural pocket formation.

The sand ship is an excellent transport ship, and its shape is famous for being wide, large, flat and shallow.

The origin of its name is not because it transports sand and gravel, but because it is not afraid of the sand on the seabed.

It has a tall mast, a large sail and a flat bottom, so it is not afraid of sandy beaches. When it touches the bottom of a sandy riverbed, as long as it is not completely solid, it can rely on the tall mast and large sail to control the wind, and the rudders and water boards on both sides of the ship to adjust the direction and move forward on the sand.

It really got stuck and sank to the beach, and could be pulled out by another boat.

It can sail against the wind with sails, and even if the wind direction and tide direction are opposite, the flat bottom will not be affected by the tide so as not to capsize. It can sail with the wind or against the wind, and even against the water.

Even if it can no longer move and runs aground on the shore, the wide and flat bottom of the boat will cause it to run aground instead of capsizing.

It's like a flat wooden board floating on the water, very stable.

But they are no match for the strong winds and waves at sea. The famous battle of the sand ships was when the Yuan Empire mobilized more than 900 warships in the Yangtze River Basin to attack Japan in the east. When they were retreating, they encountered a typhoon and all the ships capsized.

Those more than 900 warships were all sand ships.

The flagship of the entire section was a large sand boat. Even though it was leaking, it did not capsize and sat steadily in the middle of the river.

There are already three large sand ships sitting in the river, basically blocking the navigable section of the river.

Before the Haizhou navy arrived, Gao Yingdeng drove two more boats over and sank them, intending to get a few more boats over. By then, by driving piles several dozen steps deep in the shallows on both sides, a bridge could be built, and it would be stable.

Zuo Guangxian deployed two rounds of lion cannons in order to use scattered bullets to force the sailors on the deck into the cabin, so as to slow down the time it took them to discover the sand ship running aground.

This battle made Zuo Guangxian's heart boil.

They sent it, and the Marshal's Army also sent it.

Even without mentioning the ships, there seemed to be seven or eight red-haired heavy cannons on the ships alone, plus the cannons, gold and silver in Liaoyang City. The Marshal's army had never fought a battle with such a great harvest!

The most important thing is that he also found out that it might not have been his turn to fight in this riverside battle, but Gao Yingdeng's camp had to suppress Liaoyang, and Li Hongsi's standard camp looted for a day and a night, and Zhang Xianzhong took Tang Tong's reinforcement camp to Dongjing City.

In the First Brigade, he was the only one who could move.

The military achievements will only belong to him!

The fleet sailed eastward, and thousands of cavalrymen from the mobile battalion dragged lion cannons along the shore.

"Hurry up!"

The officers wearing red armor and helmets urged the cavalrymen with flags on their backs all the way, and they rushed to the position where the twelve thousand-jin heavy artillery of the First Brigade were ambushed before the fleet entered the ambush range.

"Pass on General Zuo's order! When the fleet passes, the artillery team will fire at the enemy ship at the rear of the fleet and make sure it is sunk in the river! Make sure the fleet cannot return!" (End of this chapter)