Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 298 Ming's Revenge

Kaiping City.

The Tatar army blew the horn again and pressed towards the city gate.

The thousands of corpses near the city gate did not seem to scare away the Tartars.

Perhaps for the Tatars, it would not be worthwhile to raise an army of 100,000 and then retreat just because of the loss of a few thousand cavalry.

His descendants also knew that there were only about 2,000 Ming troops in Kaiping City. Therefore, he was unwilling to give up the attack on Kaiping City so easily after losing only a few thousand cavalry in the first battle.

After all, the warriors of his Doyan Guard were going to break into the territory of the Ming Dynasty to plunder and make a fortune. It didn't matter how many people were killed or injured. The important thing was to seize the property.

of course.

The Tartars also knew that they had to surround the city on three sides and leave one side open, so they continued to press towards the city walls from three directions.

More than 2,000 Ming troops were also mainly distributed in these three directions. Gui Yong ordered the battalion-level garrisons of the three battalions to be responsible for the city defense in the three directions respectively.

The battalion-level commanders of the Ming army had all received comprehensive professional training and were able to command operations involving multiple arms, including muskets, artillery, and cavalry.

but.

Because this is a defensive battle, the cavalry are also used as musketeers.

Siege and defense warfare has been a common combat mode throughout history, especially land warfare. After all, geographical terrain will affect the outcome of the entire war.

And holding a key military town is equivalent to controlling the overall situation.

The same is true now.

If the Tartars wanted to invade the capital of the Ming Dynasty and plunder, they had to capture Xuanfu, and to capture Xuanfu they had to capture Kaiping.

There is no other trick to siege warfare. It's nothing more than the attacker using human lives to fill the gap, and the defender using human lives to defend.

The two sides became a meat grinder under a city, waiting for whoever's reinforcements to arrive first from the outside to win.

But what was different between Kaiping City at this time and the common siege and defense battles was that there were only more than 2,000 Ming troops in Kaiping City, while there were 100,000 Tatars outside Kaiping City.

The numerical ratio between the two sides is already very large.

Logically, it would be easy for the Tatars to break into Kaiping City.

His children and grandchildren indeed thought so at this time. Although the first attack was thwarted and even their only artillery team was bombarded by the Ming army's artillery and had no combat effectiveness.

However, these descendants still believed that as long as they were willing to sacrifice their lives, they could capture Kaiping City in the shortest time possible.

He ordered his sons and grandsons to shoot arrows from the Tartars while approaching the city walls, in an attempt to suppress the Ming army's musket attacks with the dense rain of arrows.

However, the Tatar cavalry used light arrows, which could be shot very far, but their range was still not as good as the rifled muskets in the hands of the Ming army, and even the smoothbore percussion rifles.

Moreover, the light arrows of the Tatar cavalry had little destructive power after being shot from a long distance, and it was basically difficult for them to penetrate armor.

Now, when the Tatar cavalry rode forward and shot a rain of arrows at the Ming army in Kaiping City, the Ming army in Kaiping City had already set up a gauze tent several feet high.

The light arrows with insufficient power shot into the gauze tent, just like a fist hitting cotton. Most of them had their momentum lost by the soft gauze tent and fell directly under the city wall. Basically, those that could penetrate the gauze tent could hardly cause any harm to the Ming army.

In short, the powerful Mongolian cavalry in the 13th century has completely declined by now, and its tactics and combat methods have never been improved. It is not surprising that it was ruled by the later rising Jurchens in history.

Even the Ming Empire today has already mastered the ancient tactics of the former grassland overlord after years of fighting with it, and has even improved its own tactics. Today's gauze tents are just a common way for the Ming Empire to deal with Tatar cavalry sieges.

Moreover, with the development of the Ming Dynasty's textile industry, the Ming Dynasty was able to easily weave long, dense and low-cost cloth. As a result, weaving workshops specifically for making gauze tents for city defense emerged. These gauze tents were stored in all the major border towns of the empire and could effectively stop the Tartar's rain of arrows.

Snapped!
Naturally, the Ming army would not allow the Tartars to attack without fighting back. Their well-made percussion rifles and rifles could accurately overturn the Tartars' heads within a hundred steps.

At this time, a Ming army musketeer fired a shot, which pierced a Tartar's back and knocked him to the ground immediately.

Moreover, the Ming army's shooting speed was very fast, even not inferior to the Tatars' bow and arrow shooting.

When the Tatars shoot light arrows, they need to pull the arrow string to their ear, and then rely on their naked eye experience to shoot upwards towards the city wall.

The skilled Ming army musketeers could use the principle of lever to pull the bolt when the Tartar pulled the arrow string to their ears, and use the principle of spring to automatically load the bullet and pull the trigger to aim and fire. Even the aiming was not just the primitive aiming method of the Tartars based on the naked eye and experience, but a method of crosshair positioning based on mathematical principles.

What's more, after the Ming army's musketeers fired a shot, the huge impulse generated by the bullet after the propellant exploded, which gave the bullet a strong momentum. Compared with the impulse generated by the Tartars pulling the light bow with their arm strength, the impulse generated by the propellant made of guncotton in the Ming army's muskets was naturally much greater. After all, the explosive power of guncotton is two to three times that of black powder.

A bullet fired by the Ming army would naturally penetrate directly into the Tatars' ordinary cotton armor.

As a result, although the Tatars were numerous and powerful and could use their horsemanship to shoot down a rain of arrows, they could not cause effective damage to the Ming army in Kaiping City.

However, the Ming army was able to accurately inflict casualties on the Tatar cavalry with their advanced muskets.

His descendants looked at this phenomenon with great depression. As a noble of Doyanwei, his ancestors had a good relationship with the Ming Dynasty and were even once part of the Ming Dynasty's army.

Because of this, the Ming Dynasty basically had never fought with him. Now it was the first time that Duoyanwei fought with the Ming Dynasty, but he did not expect that the Ming army's muskets had become so powerful.

then.

He could only use the most primitive method to deal with his children and grandchildren, using his own cavalry as infantry and sacrificing their lives.

These cavalrymen carried ladders, huge shields and huge logs and rushed towards Kaiping City. At the same time, there was a supervision team behind these Tatars attacking the city. The Tatars in the supervision team were still riding on their horses and killed those who were afraid of death and cowardly fighting.

It was precisely because of this that the Tartars dared to rush to the city wall without regard for their lives and risked their lives to set up ladders on the city wall.

The Ming army had a small number of defenders. Although their firearms were powerful, they were sparsely distributed behind the three city walls. As a result, they could not completely stop tens of thousands of Tatars from rushing to the city walls. As a result, many Tatars rushed to the base of the city walls after risking their lives to charge and set up ladders on the walls.

However, because the Ming Dynasty now had sophisticated cement concrete manufacturing technology, the cement concrete had a much shorter solidification time than mortar, which allowed the Ming Dynasty's city walls to be built higher and higher. For a while, these Tartars were unable to build ladders between the battlements and could only build them three or four feet away from the city wall.

The city wall is made of cement and is smoother than the wall made of bricks.

Therefore, even if these Tatars who climbed up the ladders were not killed by the Ming army's muskets, they would not be able to climb up the city wall for a while. Sometimes, because of their unstable center of gravity, they would even slide down the smooth city wall with the ladders and then smash to pieces.

The Ming army was too lazy to waste bullets shooting these Tartars, so they simply poured a bucket of pepper water on them. The Tartars who could not fly up from the city wall within three or four feet of the city wall had to be sprayed with pepper water, which irritated their eyes so much that tears streamed down their faces. If they were not careful, they would fall down and be smashed to pieces. Then the ladders would slip because the people on them fell, and some ladders would slip because the pepper water poured on the smooth cement wall increased its smoothness, so the Tartars on the ladders would fall down with them.

Kule felt helpless as he watched his Mongolians die one after another outside the city of Kaiping. Sometimes he could not understand why his Mongolian leaders were so keen on robbery. Robbery always resulted in the loss of many lives. If there was no need to rob or fight, couldn't they still get the tea, salt and fine silk they wanted through business without sacrificing so many lives?

Naturally, his children and grandchildren did not have the same idea as Kule. As the ruler of Tatar, he naturally did not care about the lives of these lower-class Tatars. What he cared about was to intimidate the Ming Dynasty and get more benefits from it.

However, tens of thousands of Tartars had no way of taking over the city of Kaiping. Most of them could only stand on the top of the ladders, staring at the city wall which was only three or four feet away and doing nothing.

The Ming army didn't even need to fight back. If they jumped down within a distance of three or four feet, it would not be difficult to jump over this distance, but it was completely impossible to climb up this distance on a vertical surface.

His descendants had never expected this kind of situation, and looking at his cavalry who were unable to get up or down the ladders, he had no choice but to order the army to retreat.

An army of one hundred thousand was helpless against a city wall defended by only two thousand men, which made his children and grandchildren very depressed. Although his Mongolian cavalry gathered food on the spot and killed cattle and sheep to fill their stomachs, he did not have to worry too much about logistics problems, but if they stayed under the city of Kaiping for too long, they would be killed by the nearby cattle and sheep. Therefore, he had to give up the plan to attack Kaiping City.

However, the Ming Dynasty is no longer a country ruled by Confucian scholars who repay evil with kindness, but an empire that advocates national interests above all else. Naturally, they will not stop pursuing their children and grandchildren for the crime of provoking the Ming Dynasty just because they gave up on attacking Kaiping City.

However, the leader of Doyanwei, Hua Dangze, did not realize that the Ming Dynasty would pursue the matter. After seeing his son and grandchildren return empty-handed, and surprised that his army of 100,000 could not break through the Kaiping City with only 2,000 people, he just felt that he might have underestimated the fighting power of the Ming Dynasty. His goal of relying on looting and intimidating the Ming Dynasty to agree to increase the tribute of his Doyanwei was impossible to achieve. In order to continue to rely on paying tribute to the Ming Dynasty, he decided to send envoys to apologize to the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao was already on his way to Yingchang at this time. After receiving Hua Dang's apology, he couldn't help but laugh and get angry: "Do these Tartars really not take the dignity of my Central Plains Dynasty seriously? Just because I refused to increase their tribute, they dared to detain my border town! Now that they found that they couldn't attack my Kaiping City, they came to apologize. What? Do you really think I will forgive them and not care about it?" Yang Yiqing saw Zhu Houzhao say this, and asked hurriedly: "What does your majesty mean?"

Zhu Houzhao snorted, but did not directly express his thoughts. He only ordered: "Pass the order, bring Hua Dang's messenger up!"

Not a moment later.

Hua Dang's envoy Bie Bu Luo Hua came up and when he saw Zhu Hou Zhao, he just bowed and said, "Greetings to His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty!"

"Kneel down! Don't you know the rules? I am the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. You are not even my subjects now, but lowly slaves. I have not granted you human rights. Who gave you the courage to stand before me?"

After Zhu Houzhao finished speaking, he winked at Jinyiwei Guo Rong.

Guo Rong understood, and without waiting for Biebu Luohua to come to his senses, he walked over, grabbed Biebu Luohua's shoulders, and kicked Biebu Luohua's knee.

Biebuluohua fell to his knees in pain, but angrily tried to get up, shouting, "Your Majesty, the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, you are humiliating the warriors of the Duoyan Guard!"

Snapped!
Zhu Houzhao picked up the imperial pistol in his hand and shot Biebuluohua in the head, causing a bloody mess. He then said to Yang Yiqing: "This is what I mean. All the envoys who followed Biebuluohua will be killed! The Ming Dynasty will not accept their apology! Biebuluohua must pay the price for his stupidity and recklessness!"

After Zhu Houzhao finished speaking, he ordered: "Pass the order, let Wang Shouren lead the army on the east route, marching from Kaiping City, commanding the Imperial Guards, the Ordos tribe, and the Yongshebu tribe to encircle and suppress the Tumed tribe! Let Yang Yiqing lead the army on the west route, marching from Daning City, commanding the Imperial Guards, the Jurchen tribes, encircling and suppressing the Duoyan Guard and the Khorchin tribe!"

Upon hearing this, Yang Yiqing hurriedly responded and accepted the order.

Yang Yiqing understood what the emperor meant, but he knew that he could only do this himself.

Therefore, Yang Yiqing walked out with a cold face, looked at the envoy Hua who followed Biebuluohua to Daming outside, and ordered: "I am the Left Commander of Daming Imperial Guards and the Privy Envoy of Imperial Guards. Your Lord Biebuluohua has been executed by me, and you will not be able to escape death either. Come, drag them down and execute them!"

With the instruction of Zhu Houzhao, Guo Rong cooperated with Yang Yiqing's order. With a wave of his hand, more than a dozen Jinyiwei drew their swords.

The Hua Dang envoys were all horrified when they saw this. One of them shouted directly, "Why are you executing our Lord Biebuluohua? We want to see your emperor!"

"Yes, we want to see your emperor!" The other envoys also echoed.

While Guo Rong was not paying attention, Yang Yiqing pulled out an embroidered spring sword from Guo Rong's body, and then swung it vigorously. The blade directly cut off the head of an envoy: "How can you see the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty just because you want to?"

After saying that, Yang Yiqing pushed the wooden wheelchair and turned away. But not long after he left, he only left one sentence: "Hack him to death!"

then.

Next, the Jinyiwei hacked all the messengers sent by Hua Dang to death with their swords, and blood flowed like a river!
then.

Yang Yiqing formally led 80,000 guards to attack Daning in accordance with Zhu Houzhao's order. Many of them were new recruits, officers and soldiers newly recruited and trained by the Ministry of War. Yang Yiqing brought them with him naturally to practice their actual combat capabilities.

Zhu Houzhao did not lead the troops in person to avoid suspicion, because the Ming Dynasty would not show any mercy in its revenge on the Tartars. As an emperor who would rule all the ethnic groups in this land in the future, he could not show his cruel side directly. Some less glorious things naturally needed to be done by his subordinates.

Kule originally thought that the war would end with Duoyanwei's apology to the Ming Dynasty, but he did not expect that the Ming Dynasty would not forgive these Tatars as easily as before, but instead took retaliatory actions.

Kule chose to flee with his tribe. For the Tatars who had lived by following the grass for generations, they were not afraid of the revenge of the Ming Dynasty. For them, it was nothing more than leaving the grassland closer to the Ming Dynasty and then returning after the Ming army retreated.

but.

What Kule did not expect was that this time, the Ming army did not choose to retreat, but installed barbed wire at regular intervals on the grassland.

Because of the severe cold in winter, he was forced to lead his tribe to migrate back to the grassland further south, namely Xuanfu area. Then Kule discovered that the grassland here had been divided into countless areas by the Ming army using barbed wire.

When Kule tried to cut the barbed wire, he found that the Ming army's barbed wire was harder than his own scimitar, and the cut caused the barbed wire to ring bells.

Jingle Bell!
Jingle Bell!
Jingle Bell!
As the bells rang, a team of Ming soldiers armed with muskets walked out from the barbed wire and fired directly at Kule and other Tatars.

Snapped!
Kule was also shot. He saw with his own eyes that he was shot by a Ming army soldier who looked similar to Shan Tai.

Kuler fell to the ground, but he couldn't help but smile, he knew he deserved it.

But the gunfire did not stop because of Kule's fall. The Guards used barbed wire to shoot the Tatars who were scattered across the grassland one by one.

This is the order from Yang Yiqing and Wang Shouren. Do not let anyone go! Use the toughest means to make the Tatars understand the means of offending the Ming Empire.

Outside Daning City.

Jiang Lian, a new recruit of the Imperial Guards, skillfully aimed his musket at the Tartar in front of him and shot him dead directly under the barbed wire with a bang. Then, he continued to move forward and hunt down the next Tartar.

The leader of Ordos, Manduda, was standing next to Yang Yiqing at this time, watching the warriors under his command raise their knives to the Tatars of the same ethnic group and chop them down one after another, but he did not say anything, nor did he feel any discomfort. As a Tatar nobleman, he was just glad that he did not betray the Ming Dynasty, and thus became the one holding the butcher knife instead of the one being killed.

Yang Yiqing forced the Tatars to kill Tatars and the Jurchens to kill Tatars in an almost harsh manner, and the Royal Guards became the supervisory team. If the Tatars and Jurchens who had surrendered to the Ming Dynasty were unwilling to be the swords of the Ming Dynasty, the Royal Guards would have to eliminate these people together.

Gui Yong and his subordinates were re-incorporated into the Imperial Guards for no other reason than that Wang Shouren wanted to give them a chance for revenge.

Gui Yong did not waste the opportunity given to him by Wang Shouren. He rode his horse for a day and a night, launched a surprise attack on the Tumed tribe, and killed all of them.

Banao was an ordinary Tartar from Tumed, but he never expected that those Han people who usually only knew how to do business would also retaliate against him, and their means would not necessarily be merciful.

Looking at the barbed wire that had covered half of Duoyanwei, Hua Dang and his sons and grandchildren felt mixed emotions.

Hua Dang, in particular, did not expect that his provocation against the Ming Dynasty would lead to such a severe retaliation from the Ming Dynasty, which almost left no living Tatars in the entire southern grassland, and forced him and his tribe to migrate to a colder and northern place in the wind and snow.

Zhu Houzhao came to Yingchang, where he could already smell the blood in every corner of the grassland. He didn't know if what he was doing was right, but he knew that it was all he could do now. Like the Ming officials of that era, he had thought about getting along well with these Tatar nobles and trading with them.

but.

The Tatar nobles did not seem to change their mindset, and did not seem to realize the benefits of trade. Instead, they regarded Ming's openness to trade as cowardice, and even coveted Ming's wealth because of its openness. They still advocated looting and slaughter, and still attempted to seize profits through violent and brutal means.

Zhu Houzhao could only deal with the Tatars using the method that the Tatars most admired, that is, leaving no one alive!
There was no way, because Zhu Houzhao knew that if the Ming Dynasty was not so powerful, these Tartars who did not treat humans as human beings would not be too polite to the people of the Ming Dynasty, and might even be more brutal.

For barbarians who only want to kill people, the only way to rebuild civilization is to eliminate them with barbaric means.

Looking at the leaders of several Tatar tribes who had not been eliminated because they still submitted to the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Houzhao just smiled faintly. He believed that after these leaders smelled the blood on the grassland, they would understand the consequences of angering the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao knew that it was impossible to wipe out all the Tatars on the grassland with muskets. If you want to make a race disappear, violence alone is not enough. Other means must be used, such as forcing them to migrate to wild areas or forcing them to accept assimilation into their mainstream culture.

Zhu Houzhao knew that it would be difficult for the Ming Dynasty to eliminate Hua Dang and other Tatars who fled to the north, so he could only slowly extend the barbed wire and city walls to the north, gradually eroding Hua Dang's living space. But by the time the Ming Dynasty built the city to the coast of today's Arctic Ocean, Hua Dang would have already died in the severe cold.

However, Zhu Houzhao did not want to make life easy for the Tatar and Jurchen tribes who had now submitted to his Ming Dynasty.

Because, although these tribes have submitted to the Ming Dynasty and are helping the Ming Dynasty kill many Tatars, and are even more ruthless than the Ming army, this does not mean that these people will not betray the Ming Dynasty in the future and become time bombs.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao decided to forcibly relocate these Tatar and Jurchen tribes who had surrendered to the Ming Dynasty to America and the New World of the Ming Dynasty, namely Australia, and let them deal with the local indigenous people and Western colonists. Separated by the ocean, Zhu Houzhao naturally would not worry that these tribes would pose a threat to the Ming Dynasty in the future.

Jiabao, the leader of the Duoluo tribe, did not expect that the emperor of the Ming Dynasty would confer him the title of earl. He knew how rare the title of earl was in the Ming Dynasty. What he did not expect was that the emperor of the Ming Dynasty would actually confer him a fiefdom. This made Jiabao even happier. As a small tribe originally belonging to the Tumed tribe, he had almost no fiefdom. Now that the emperor could confer him a fiefdom, he was naturally very happy and could not help asking, "May I ask His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, where is my fiefdom, Kanzhou?"

"Kanzhou is in the south and requires a boat," Zhu Houzhao said at this time.

Jiabao was even happier when he heard this, thinking that the South had always been a very suitable place to live, with no cold winters, plenty of fish and meat to eat, and plenty of clothes to wear. So, Jiabao kowtowed to Zhu Houzhao with tears of gratitude.

However, three months later, when Jiabao and his more than 10,000 tribesmen were on the big ship, sailing out to sea from Tianjin for forty or fifty days, he began to feel something was wrong. He realized that he seemed to have been deceived by the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The so-called South should not be the South he imagined. Therefore, he could not help but find Qi Zhong, the Ming official in charge of escorting the Duoluot tribe to Kanzhou: "Lord Qi, you are deceiving us. You want to trick us into starving to death or drowning in the sea. We want to go back, we want to go back to the grassland!"

(End of this chapter)