I want to be emperor

Chapter 393 The pirates guarding the city
In the late Ming Dynasty, there were many pirates along the coast, not just Zheng Zhilong's family. Zheng Zhilong's subordinates were just the largest pirate gang in contemporary times, and they had already been laundered and landed, not pirates in the strict sense.

But apart from Zheng Zhilong and others, in fact, there are still a large number of small and medium-sized pirate gangs in the coastal areas of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong.

There are all kinds of people among these pirates, some are pure pirates who kill people and destroy ships; It is purely a coastal fisherman who can't survive, Yan Ding, and a villager who turned into a thief in order to survive.

The coastal areas of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong that arrived this year are very chaotic and complicated. There are so many pirates, not only Chinese pirates, but also pirates from Fusang, Koryo, and the natives of Nanyang...

Even the Thai and Westerners came to join in the fun, such as the Dutch, the Portuguese and even the Spaniards.

The entire coastal area of ​​China is very chaotic, but even so chaotic, the Ming court has been able to control the local coastal situation in recent years.

This does not depend on the strength of the Ming court's own navy. In fact, the main force of the Ming court's own navy, that is, the official navy in the early Fujian and Zhejiang areas, has long been completely defeated by the pirate gang headed by Zheng Zhilong.

Even Yu Zigao, then the general soldier of Fujian Province, was convicted and killed because of this. Well, this man himself is not well-known, and many people may not know it, but his father should be known to many history lovers, that is Yu Dayou, a famous anti-Japanese general '.

It's a pity, the tiger father and the dog son, Lao Tzu is a famous general, and the Japanese pirates who beat him cried for his father and mother; the son, however, has high eyesight and low power, and blindly confidently led the last officer, soldier and navy of the Ming court to rush forward foolishly, and was far superior to the officers, soldiers and sailors at that time. The naval army to which 'Eighteen Zhi' belonged fought a decisive battle at sea... and then suffered a complete defeat, completely destroying the power of the official navy of the Ming court.

It is because after this big defeat, the Ming court had no defense at sea, and was forced to try to appease Zheng Zhilong and other big pirates. After the appeasement was successful, the Ming court's maritime security relied heavily on Zheng Zhilong's subordinates, and now Zheng Zhilong is even more important. The Fujian General Soldier, the naval force under his command, has completely replaced the previous official naval forces of the Ming court, and has become the main maritime force of the Ming court in the coastal areas of Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong.

However, the Ming court relied on Zheng Zhilong, but Zheng Zhilong had no loyalty to the Ming court.

Although he, Zheng Zhilong, was in the mainland, even though he was playing tricks, and he also aspired to be the commander-in-chief of the Ming court and even be granted a title, but deep down, he was still a businessman.

So while working hard for the Ming court and continuing to fight against the Chu thieves, at the same time, he kept in contact with Chu Ting, trying to find a way out for himself.

It's just a pity that so far, the conditions requested by Zheng Zhilong's subordinates are very different from those given by the Great Chu Empire, and so far they have not been able to agree.

Zheng Zhilong and his sea power are the epitome of pirates in the coastal areas in the late Ming Dynasty. In addition to their being recruited, there are actually many pirates who were recruited by the government, especially in Guangdong.

The main reason is that the Fujian-Zhejiang area is Zheng Zhilong’s base camp, and there is not much living space for other pirates, but the Guangdong coast is different. In the past, this was Liu Xiang’s territory. Later, after Liu Xiang was killed by Zheng Zhilong, although Zheng Zhilong’s troops took it. Most of the sea profits along the coast of Guangdong, but after all, they have not been able to fully control the local coastal areas.

Therefore, in the past two years, there have been many other pirate maritime gangs living in the local area, and these people have not lived well under Zheng Zhilong's continuous suppression. It's a sailor.

As for the recruiting under the leadership of Xiong Wencan, although the general policy of the Ming court is recruiting, it will not tolerate Zheng Zhilong's family becoming bigger, so they are also very happy to accept and support other sea gangs who have surrendered!
It's just that these small and medium-sized pirate gangs recruited by Xiong Wencan did not expect that in just two years, the situation in China has undergone drastic changes.

It feels like the blink of an eye, and the Chu thieves have all come to Guangzhou.

Then many of the pirates who were appeased became "officers and soldiers" who defended the city for no reason...

And there are quite a few people, at least two to three thousand people.

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When he reached the city of Guangzhou, Lieutenant General Huang Xiangbin received a report jointly submitted by the Army Intelligence Department and the Navy Intelligence Office. According to the intelligence, there are currently about 8000 defenders in Guangzhou. .

Among the 8000 defenders, about 2000 were conscripted from various departments of the Guangdong Navy, um, that is, members of various pirate gangs who were recruited...

The 4000 people are the young and strong and the village brave who were urgently recruited in the past two weeks. These people have basically not received any military training, and they don't even have enough cold weapons.

There are about 2000 people who are real officers and soldiers in the city, of which more than 500 are the Fubiao of the governor of Guangdong, and [-] are left-behind soldiers belonging to several local guards.

It is known that there are more than [-] large and small long-barreled artillery deployed in the city, ranging from two and a half catties to ten catties, most of which were temporarily dismantled from warships and moved to the top of the city.

There are also hundreds of short robes of various types, such as military cannons, tiger squatting cannons, attacking army cannons, Frang machine and so on.

There are a total of about [-] muskets from various departments in the city, and they are all among the soldiers in Fubiao, the guards, and pirates. There is no trace of muskets or cannons in the temporary recruitment of young men.
After Huang Xiangbin obtained the enemy intelligence collected by the intelligence department after spending a lot of money and energy, he had a plan for the follow-up siege.

Don't rush to fight, wait until the artillery units and ammunition in the rear arrive.

After all, the defenders in Guangzhou have a lot of firepower, especially the artillery. If they attack rashly, they will easily become captives in the Liaodong area: they will be beaten to death by the artillery of the defending Ming army...

To deal with this kind of city with artillery and thick walls, the Chu army has a lot of experience.

The specific method is also very simple. Directly washing the ground with artillery is the simplest and most effective method.

If it is combined with digging tunnels for blasting and heavy-armored commandos for assaults, then the whole set is about the same.

If not...

Then use more artillery, shoot out more shells, use more explosives for blasting, and more heavily armored commandos to do it again...

Huang Xiangbin firmly believes: In the face of absolute numbers and firepower advantages, all city walls are scum!

What's more, it's the city of Guangzhou in front of you!

In Huang Xiangbin's opinion, Guangzhou City is easier to fight than Ganzhou City, and it cannot be compared with Jiujiang City where Shi Kefa was stationed.

It is not a question of whether the city wall is thick or not, and whether there are too many artillery pieces, but that the defenders of Guangzhou City did not build a large number of new city defense fortifications.

What are new city defense fortifications?

For the Ming army, it was the city defense fortifications used to fight against the large number of artillery pieces of the Chu thieves.

Referring to the Jiujiang city defense system built by Shi Kefa at the time, there were no battlements in the traditional sense on the top of Jiujiang City at that time. The earlier battlements were either dismantled, or sand and gravel were piled up behind the battlements to become two or three meters thick. small city wall.

Why, because after the solid shells hit the battlements, the thin battlements couldn't withstand the impact of the solid shells, and then the bricks and stones would crack and splash, causing damage to the surrounding soldiers of the Ming army...

The crushed stones that were hit by solid shells and sputtered were more lethal than the explosive bullets in Chu Bandit...

Therefore, the defenders of Jiujiang City at that time simply demolished some of the battlements. Although some of the battlements remained, a large amount of sand and gravel would be piled up behind the battlements, directly turning the battlements into a small city wall several meters thick...

Especially the artillery position on the Jiujiang city wall at that time was very typical!
The battlements in front of the artillery positions were all dismantled, and then sandbags with a thickness of two to three meters were deployed in front of the artillery, and these sandbags were still in a ring structure, and the artillery was deployed between these annular sandbags.

Even if it is a solid shell fired by a nine-pound field cannon, it is difficult to cause fatal casualties to the Ming army with this kind of sandbag fortification two or three meters thick in the front row.

At the same time, thin ring-shaped sandbags are deployed on the left, right and even the rear, which can also effectively prevent the killing of explosive shells falling nearby.

In addition, above the ring-shaped sandbag fortifications of each artillery, there will be a roof supported by thick wood. Although the defense capability of this roof is very general, it cannot stop the power of a 48-jin shell that explodes after it falls directly.

But if the flowering bullets fired by the Chu thief exploded in mid-air, this kind of top cover can effectively block the damage caused by the shrapnel of the flowering bullets.

However, in actual combat, it is rare for Chu Bandit's explosive shells to land on the top cover of the gun position and explode directly.

The mortar gunners of the Chu bandits prefer to cut the fuze shorter, and then explode the grenade directly in the air near the enemy's position, killing a large number of active forces of the enemy by spraying shrapnel in the air.

The main reason is that after the shell hits the ground, it is easy to have problems with the matchlock fuze under the high-speed impact, which will lead to dud bombs.

The dud rate of grenades that explode on the ground these years is very high.

Even if the problem of dud bombs is not considered, and only the lethality problem is considered, the ground explosion is not as good as the air explosion.

Therefore, the mortar gunners of the Chu army are basically concentrating on how to let the shells explode on the top of the enemy's head, instead of letting the shells explode under the enemy's feet...

As a targeted defensive measure, the Ming army's artillery positions above Jiujiang City at that time added a roof to themselves.

Not to mention, the effect is quite good!
At that time, the forts of the Ming army on the top of Jiujiang City were always suppressed by the artillery fire of the Chu army, but these artillery positions have always maintained their combat effectiveness. Fire back.

It wasn't until the Chu army killed the top of the city that the surviving gunners on these forts surrendered one after another...

And these gunners were able to persist until the last moment, not because of how brave they were, but because the anti-gun fortifications of the gun positions were really good, which ensured their safety.

This is also the reason why they surrendered at the end and did not escape midway, because the shells were flying all over the sky outside, and if they escaped from the artillery emplacement defenses, they would die faster...

(End of this chapter)