weaving

Chapter 1447 How can we possibly fight this battle?!

According to the preliminary agreement reached between Zhang Cheng and Liu Tichun, the various units of the Yongyi Army will retreat ten miles to set up camp, while the Chuang Army will abandon the supplies and provisions of Zhuxian Town, taking only their personal belongings and some necessary military supplies and grains, leaving everything else as spoils of war.

Meanwhile, apart from leaving behind all the starving people, the main force of the rebel army could only retreat from Kaifeng Prefecture via the route of Weishi, Weichuan, Xuzhou, and Xiangcheng, and was forbidden from looting or plundering grain within Kaifeng Prefecture.

Although this condition met the demands of Li Zicheng and others, the Earl of Yongning's demand for all military supplies and valuables in Zhuxian Town clearly exceeded the bottom line set by Li Zicheng for Liu Tichun.

Liu Tichun did not dare to make the decision on his own. He could only write a letter to the rebel leader and ask him to discuss and decide with his generals before he could decide whether to agree.

The Earl of Yongning understood this perfectly, but he made one request: Liu Tichun could not leave and had to stay and drink with him until they were both drunk.

For the sake of the peace talks, Liu Tichun had no choice but to reluctantly agree. However, when he went to find his men, he discovered that all twenty knights he had brought were drunk and passed out on the table...

Although he was shocked and furious, he could not show his anger in front of the Earl of Yongning, nor could he punish them.

Fortunately, one of them was still relatively sober, although he could no longer speak clearly, but at least he was not completely drunk, so he could be used as a token.

At that moment, Liu Tichun clumsily wrote a letter, which clearly explained the main contents of the meeting. He handed the letter to the knight and asked him to deliver it to the rebel king in person.

Meanwhile, the Earl of Yongning also dispatched his central officer Zhang Mingyuan with four knights to personally escort Liu Tichun's personal guard back to camp to deliver the message.

Liu Tichun was naturally very grateful for this.

To show his sincerity, the Earl of Yongning wrote four letters in front of Liu Tichun...

Firstly, the letter to Xu Jinyong, Wei Zhice, Zhang Guodong, Chen Zheng, and their group explicitly stated that peace talks were underway and that they were to withdraw their troops to a camp ten miles outside Zhuxian Town. They were not to attack Zhuxian Town without further military orders.

Secondly, it was also clearly instructed to Jiang Mingwu, Chen De, and Li Jiyu to suspend their attacks on the various units of the rebel army, and to follow the new military orders once they arrived.

Thirdly, he informed Zhang Guangda, who was far away in Xiangcheng, to cease harassing the rebel army and to withdraw his entire army from Xiangcheng to Yuzhou, thus giving the rebel king a way to retreat.

Fourthly, Luo Rucai, who was stationed in Guide Prefecture, was instructed not to come to Zhuxian Town to meet him again, but to lead his troops to retreat from Qi County to Fugou, Taikang, Xihua and Chenzhou to stay temporarily and await new orders.

After the aforementioned four letters were written, they were sent out one by one in front of Liu Tichun to increase his trust.

The letter addressed to Luo Rucai in this story is actually fake...

The purpose was to completely spread the news of Luo Rucai's surrender, thereby cutting off his escape route, making him unacceptable to the bandits, and preventing him from going back to his old ways.

Seeing Zhang Cheng's actions, Liu Tichun felt much more at ease, and his goodwill towards Zhang Cheng increased dramatically. He began to regard Zhang Cheng as a hero of the era, second only to Li Zicheng, the rebel leader.

…………

Next, Zhang Cheng, the Earl of Yongning, arranged for someone to take Liu Tichun around the army, showing him the new look of the Yongyi Army.

If the Yongyi Army had ample provisions, with smoked meat, cured meat, dried meat, and dried fish readily available even to ordinary soldiers, and even canned meat and fish, it was already quite astonishing. But what he saw next almost completely overturned his understanding of the Ming Dynasty's imperial army…

All the soldiers I saw, whether officers or soldiers, were neatly dressed, and except for the musketeers, everyone was armored. Although it was in the military camp, soldiers not on duty could go without armor, but those on sentry duty and patrolling were all fully armored.

Although they were covered in sweat, none of them were disheveled or unarmored. Even during routine patrols within the camp, they were methodical and diligent, without the slightest slackening.

What surprised him even more were the tanks, uniformly equipped with breech-loading cannons and rocket magazines, with neatly arranged shields and plates, all polished to a shine, showing that they were well-maintained and arranged in an orderly manner.

Liu Tichun circled the tanks one by one, two circles, three circles... He lingered there for a long time, and would touch them from time to time, sometimes touching the breech-loading cannons, sometimes the rocket magazines, sometimes the cannons in the carriages, and sometimes the shafts of the tanks...

"It's not unfair, it's not unfair at all... I didn't lose unfairly at all!" Liu Tichun exclaimed from the bottom of his heart.

If all of this had made Liu Tichun fully realize his shortcomings, recognize the true strength of the Yongyi Army, and see the huge gap between the two sides in terms of manpower and equipment, then what he saw next was enough to shock him completely.

The exploding shell—a revolutionary weapon that could change the way warfare is conducted!
Yes, those are the exploding shells fired by the flying cannon.

If you were to show Liu Tichun the flying cannon or the exploding shell directly, he wouldn't be able to discern the slightest difference. Not to mention him, even Zhang Nai, the commander of the artillery battalion in the rebel army, would find it the same.

After all, this is a groundbreaking product!
Marquis Yongning, Zhang Cheng, was truly something else – he organized a small-scale military exercise for Liu Tichun to watch.

A simple small camp was built a mile away, with wooden and straw figures of people and horses placed inside. Flying cannons bombarded the small camp with ten rounds each from a distance of one and a half miles away.

The artillery preparation and firing process was neat and fast, but there was nothing particularly outstanding about it.

But when he arrived at the small camp after the shelling, Liu Tichun's eyes immediately widened in shock. He stared intently at every spot, scrutinizing every detail.

The more he looked, the more shocked he became: "This...this...how could this be...?"

The camp for the exercise was littered with pebbles, small pieces of iron, and other debris. The tents were in disarray, with no part intact. The straw figures and wooden horses were riddled with holes, and some pebbles and small pieces of iron were embedded in the wooden horses, requiring tools to remove them.

"All done? Ten shots... only ten shots!"

"How...how are we supposed to fight this war?!"

…………

Ever since witnessing the power of the exploding shells fired by the flying cannon, Liu Tichun's eyes have become vacant, and he seems like a walking corpse, almost losing the ability to think.

Even at the banquet, Liu Tichun had not fully recovered. He kept thinking about the power of the exploding shells, as if the small pebbles and iron pieces were hitting him.

Fortunately, he remembered his mission and after drinking three bowls of wine with Zhang Cheng, he refused to drink any more, only drinking water instead of wine to keep the Earl of Yongning company...