Red Mansion: Seizing Jiangdong, starting with pirates

Chapter 220, The End of the War

As soon as it was ignited, the cannon exploded instantly.

Several gunners were blown away and their bodies were torn into pieces.

Cannon barrel explosion was nothing in that era. Due to the non-standard manufacturing technology, it was normal for a few cannon barrels to explode during a war.

However, continuous artillery explosions are obviously a big problem.

On the city wall, more than half of the cannons had exploded.

A large number of gunners were killed.

The remaining gunners were so frightened that they dared not touch the guns.

This is naturally the credit of Luo Daqing.

The ratio of gunpowder has strict requirements. It cannot only consider the power, but also needs to ensure the stability and bearing capacity of the gun barrel.

Luo Daqing secretly changed several of the ratio requirements, which greatly increased the instability of gunpowder, and countless soldiers were killed as a result.

The morale of the defending soldiers therefore dropped sharply again.

The Huaiyin army beat the fallen dog.

The artillery continued to roar, bombarding the defending soldiers on the city wall.

The gap in the city wall became a breakthrough point for the Huaiyin army's attack, directly starting a brutal hand-to-hand combat!

In this small gap, only two or three people wide, countless soldiers from both sides fought for their lives. Shouts of killing rose one after another, corpses were piled up, and blood dyed the city wall dark red.

A huge crossbow cart is coming.

"One, two, three, release the crossbow!"

"Whizzing!"

The huge crossbow arrows pierced through the gap like javelins, shooting several defending soldiers who came to defend into a string.

Life becomes worthless at this moment.

A Huaiyin soldier poured kerosene into the gap, and the soldiers around him threw in torches and ignited it, and immediately a raging fire broke out inside.

A defending soldier was engulfed in flames and rolled on the ground in pain, eventually being burned to death.

"Hold on, hold on!"

Deng Ren roared with red eyes.

The supervision team kept driving the soldiers forward.

The gap in the city wall was like a meat grinder, continuously strangling the lives of the soldiers.

The Huaiyin army also suffered casualties.

But no matter how many people died, there would always be more Huaiyin troops rushing from behind.

They are everywhere in the sky and on the ground, endless. I don’t know whether they are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions.

The ordinary soldiers didn't know the exact number, they just felt that the gap between the two sides was too huge, so that they were trembling and could hardly move at all.

"cut!"

The supervising team behind him killed the cowardly soldier without hesitation.

Seeing this, the rest of the soldiers had no choice but to move forward to fill the gap.

However, there is always a gap in strength.

The wild sand rolled in and invaded the puddles.
The surging river drowns even the smallest reed.

The battle lasted from early morning to late evening. Deng Ren sent people to ask Li Hao for help several times, but the news he received was always orders to hold on. Until finally, the gap became bigger and bigger, and the Huaiyin army even rushed into the city. Li Hao could no longer hold on, so he chose to let Deng Ren retreat to the inner city for defense.

The Huaiyin army took advantage of this opportunity and launched a massive pursuit. Deng Ren's soldiers were frightened and retreated towards the inner city. Many of them were unable to retreat in time and were blocked outside the city by the Huaiyin army. About four to five thousand people knelt down and surrendered.

Fang Yong didn't have any good feelings towards these traitors, but he didn't have any extreme malice towards them either.

To put it bluntly, the reason why heroes are heroes is that those who would rather die than surrender are ultimately a minority.

Faced with life-threatening situations, most ordinary people would still risk their lives to survive...

Fang Yong issued an order to let these people attack the city from the front, and they would be exempted from the charges if they killed three enemy soldiers. So in a blink of an eye, these people turned their guns around and became Fang Yong's helpers.

The capital's city defense system is divided into four parts: outer city, inner city, imperial city, and palace city.

Among them, the outer city and the inner city are the main city defenses. The palace city is the Forbidden City. The imperial city was built around the palace city during the Yongle period. Its main function is to protect the Forbidden City.

Some people speculate that it was because Emperor Yongle came to the throne illegitimately and was afraid that his nephew would lead his troops to attack and seize the throne back, so he built this imperial city as a protection.

However, from a practical point of view, if the enemy troops had reached the imperial city or the palace, there would be no need to resist any further.

The inner city where Deng Ren retreated to at this time was exactly the area that Chen Zhengdu was responsible for defending.

At that time, Li Hao's withdrawal had just been half completed, and it was not yet Chen Zhengdu's turn to retreat, so Chen Zhengdu was still defending the city.

There may be some friends here who do not often attack the capital and are not very clear about the city’s defense structure, so I will give some additional explanation.

The outer city and inner city of the capital are not distributed in the shape of a "U" as imagined.

When the outer city was being built, it was very expensive, so only the south gate was built. In other words, the entire city was laid out in a "convex" shape. (See picture for details)
Deng Ren defended the outer city, which is the area around the South Gate.

Chen Zhengdu guarded the inner city, while also guarding against the west gate that Ma Laohei was responsible for attacking and the east gate that Zhang Yuan was responsible for attacking.

After the outer city was breached, Deng Ren retreated to the inner city to defend, and together with Chen Zhengdu, they managed to temporarily hold off the attack of the Huaiyin army.

However, the situation remains grim.

Instead of stopping the joy of the attack from appearing on the soldiers' faces, there was a hint of sadness.

The outer city has been breached, how far can the inner city be?

In contrast, the soldiers of the Huaiyin Army were filled with joy at having captured the outer city.

Every soldier believed that the time to completely capture the capital was not far away, so they were fearless and launched the attack with high morale.

By the next day, the evacuation of Li Hao and others had been basically completed, and Chen Zhengdu also followed Li Hao and prepared to leave.

Of course, Deng Ren’s explanation was still that he followed Kah Khan out of the city to launch a surprise attack on the Huaiyin army.

Li Hao told Deng Ren that the location of the Huaiyin army's food and grass had been discovered, and Kah Khan was ready to achieve success in this operation in one fell swoop, so he asked Deng Ren to defend the city at all costs.

Deng Ren still has doubts about the details of the matter.

In order to stabilize Deng Ren, Li Hao directly gave half of the remaining food to Deng Ren.

When Deng Ren saw the food, he felt relieved and no longer questioned it.

Chen Zhengdu then left with Li Hao. He looked at Deng Ren, as if he saw his former self.

Chen Zhengdu sighed silently.

There is no other way, someone has to cover the rear...

Chen Zhengdu took the last group of people and left the capital. Looking back at the capital, he couldn't bear to let Deng Ren defend it foolishly.

He wrote a note, put it in an envelope, and sent someone to give it to Deng Ren.

At this time, Sun Shaozu was guarding a city wall in a panic.

He hadn't seen the grassland people in the past few days, and the outer city was breached, so he always felt uneasy.

At this moment, a soldier ran past him.

"Stop, what are you doing?"

Sun Shaozu asked.

The soldier answered honestly: "I am a subordinate of General Du, and I am delivering a letter to General Deng on General Du's orders."

Sun Shaozu raised his head.

"Letter, what letter?"

The soldier said:
"I don't know either. General Du said it was his private matter and General Deng couldn't open it until three days later!"

It was not uncommon for generals to occasionally help each other with some private matters. Sun Shaozu did not doubt it and just said, "General Deng guarded the city all night yesterday and is resting now. Please give me the letter and I will pass it on."

The soldier then handed the letter to Sun Shaozu.

(End of this chapter)