Chapter 125, Ping Kun’s Strategy (Part 2)
The scenery of the West Lake in Hangzhou is certainly so beautiful and poetic... But if it is on a snowy cold night, against the howling and biting cold wind, walking one foot deep and one foot shallow in the silent and desolate dark mountain forest Among them, the feeling may not be so wonderful.
And on this cold night when the heavy snow had just stopped, a group of Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers in ragged clothes were trudging through the dark mountains and forests on the shore of the West Lake.
——According to the "Pingkun Strategy" formulated by the Hangzhou magistrate's office with reference to the Battle of Chibi, when Fuyang County sent out an arson fleet from the upper reaches of the Qiantang River and went straight to the Kun thieves fleet, Hangzhou City should also organize a fleet Soldiers and horses launched night attacks from land at the same time to achieve a surprise victory.
Originally, the route of this sneak attack was very simple, because Fenghuang Villa is the site of the former Southern Song Dynasty Imperial Palace and is close to the urban area of Hangzhou. As long as you exit Fengshan Gate in the south of Hangzhou, there is a road leading to the main entrance of Fenghuang Villa. Broad avenue.
But the problem is that the prefect Liu Mengqian and a group of scholars who claim to be "knowing soldiers" feel that the thieves also know this, and they will definitely send spies to keep an eye on Fengshan Gate. The raiding force is likely to be discovered as soon as the city gate is opened. , and then hit the copper wall and the iron wall... Therefore, they did not dare to take the shortcut of Fengshan Gate. Instead, they asked the night attack troops to go out of Wulin Gate and circle the West Lake in a counter-clockwise direction, starting from the southwest of Fenghuang Villa, which is the opposite side of Hangzhou City. Launch an attack in a certain direction, making sure to catch the thief by surprise.
Well, just go out of Wulin Gate. Anyway, not far from Wulin Gate is Bai Causeway. After Bai Causeway, you will reach Gushan. After passing Gushan, you will go to the shore of the lake and then go up Su Causeway. At the southern end of Su Causeway is Leifeng Pagoda, and behind Leifeng Pagoda is Phoenix Mountain. But the problem is that this road is also impassable - since the Kun thieves took over the Phoenix Villa, they have set up sentries under the Leifeng Pagoda and patrol the lake in small boats day and night to prevent anyone from the north from crossing the lake to make a sneak attack: The War in Japan Among them, the lords and shogunate armies of all parties like to send ninjas to do this kind of thing.
In this case, if the government army sends a large number of troops to attack Fenghuang Mountain through Bai Causeway and Su Causeway, they will be noticed as soon as they get on the causeway!
Therefore, the prefect discussed with several of his staff and had to design an attack route away from the West Lake on the map - but this would be troublesome. The West Lake in Hangzhou is indeed not too big. The circle is fifteen kilometers. However, because the night attack troops could not take the shortcut "Baidu-Gushan-Sudi", they even had to stay away from the lake to avoid being discovered by the Kun thieves' patrol boats. Then, these poor night attack suicide squads must first go to Baoshi Mountain (the location of Baochu Pagoda), then pass Lingyin Temple, and then climb Feilai Peak, Nanfeng Peak, Hupao Mountain, Yuhuang Mountain, Bagua Field... After climbing so many mountains and hills and walking at least fifty miles on the mountain road, I was able to enter the Phoenix Villa "unexpectedly" from behind.
——It's really "a mouthful at the top, but a broken leg at the bottom"! There is no greater disaster than this on paper!
Moreover, first, this is still a night road without street lights; second, the temperature at this time is minus seven or eight degrees, and there has just been a heavy snowfall... Moreover, due to widespread malnutrition, many lower-class Ming Dynasty residents Everyone suffers from night blindness, but they cannot carry torches during night attacks. Therefore, this heavy-duty night attack force, during the endless trek in the dark, unsurprisingly gradually dispersed...
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The cold and silent snowy night, the penetrating dark wind passing through the woods, and the snow that shakes off the branches from time to time...
In this frightening atmosphere, which was like a horror movie and a ghost movie in later generations, Li Shanmin leaned on a rusty spear and relied on the faint moonlight that filtered through the trees from time to time. Together with several of his colleagues, Li Shanmin was covered with white snow. A difficult trek through the mountains and forests.
——Like his ancestors for generations, Li Shanmin was a hereditary military household in Hangzhou and a member of the military system of the Ming Empire. But just like his ancestors for generations, Li Shanmin has never received a decent military salary for half his life, and he has also never participated in a decent drill for half his life.
However, at this time, he had to deal with the legendary "Australian Bandit" who had sharp weapons and was extremely cruel!
By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the garrison and military household system, which was the cornerstone of national defense, had almost collapsed. The farmland under the name of each guard post was basically occupied by officers or gentry. Some military households were destitute and became serfs. The remaining military households did not even have land to farm and had to go to the city to work.
Li Shanmin was such an unlucky military household who had to go to Hangzhou to work because he had no farmland to farm and could not receive military pay. What's even more unfortunate is that even if he has been driven to the city to work, he still has to pay tribute to his superior officers every month, otherwise he will be beaten to death... In this way, Li Shanmin's life will be easy. It was very hard, let alone asking for a wife, I was on the verge of starving to death all the time!
But this is not the most tragic thing. What is even more tragic is that when the prefect decided to attack Fenghuang Mountain at night, he could not find any reliable troops that could carry out this plan - with Liaoxi, Xuanfu, and Datong These border areas are different. Since the Japanese pirates were quelled in Zhejiang, there is no longer a fighting system of generals, servants and recruiting soldiers. In fact, all the officers and soldiers of the guards in Zhejiang have not trained, led troops, or commanded real military operations for several generations. Officers at all levels in Hangzhou have transformed into the kind of rich locals who sit on the ground and collect rent. Their so-called servants are just village heads who supervise the farming of tenants. In terms of combat effectiveness, they cannot be compared with the servants of generals in Liaoxi... Therefore, Officers at all levels responsible for implementing the plan were generally unwilling to let their trusted servants die, and they themselves were even less willing to experience the hail of bullets from the thieves.
So Li Shanmin and other military households working in the city of Hangzhou were all arrested, and they managed to gather 200 people, known as the "Eight Hundred Heroes", and then each of them was given a full meal and a bowl of bad wine. , one tael of silver and a moldy old uniform, some rotten and rusty spears, tinder grease for arson, and low-quality blunderbuss that no one dared to use. Then under the moldy military flag, he was ordered to go out of the city to set fire to Fenghuang Mountain. And killed the enemy.
Obviously, such a garbage army with extremely poor ambition and quality, and unwillingness to do so, let alone defeat the Kun thief, whether it can successfully reach its destination is a problem. Therefore, the officers in the city had to allocate a few close servants to organize a fierce supervising team, and let these fat and strong servants hold swords and whips to "escort" this ticket. They had never received military training. The "regular army" is on the road...
Unfortunately, these officers in Hangzhou, who had zero actual combat experience, still greatly underestimated the difficulty of marching in heavy snow - there was at least half a meter of snow everywhere, and the temperature was minus seven or eight degrees Celsius. Next, these military households, who were only wearing a half-worn single uniform and their feet were randomly wrapped in rags and weeds, had only gone a few miles out of the city. They had already started before they reached Lingyin Temple. There has been widespread non-combat attrition. Many military households were walking on the road and suddenly fell to the ground without warning, and died soon after.
Just imagine, even in the 21st century, if those modern blue-collar workers wearing down jackets and warm boots are allowed to carry out construction outdoors in heavy snow in winter, there will often be a lot of unlucky people with frostbite after the work is done. But now these military households of the Ming Dynasty, who have been hungry all year round, are extremely weak, and don't even have to wear a dog-skin coat, will have no choice but to die if they encounter the same situation.
As a result, just after arriving at Lingyin Temple, more than fifty soldiers from the guard station had already disappeared during the march. It was unclear whether they fell behind and escaped, froze to death on the way, or stepped in. The ponds and ditches covered with thin ice and snow drowned silently.
Even the servants of the supervising team who were relatively stronger and had better thermal insulation conditions couldn't bear it, so they found some dry firewood in the ruins of Lingyin Temple that had just been burned to death by the Kun thieves, and poured it with the originally reserved water. Come fire to attack the clear oil and sulfur of Phoenix Villa, and raise a bonfire to keep warm...
But poor Li Shanmin did not receive such treatment. After taking a breather, he had to embark on the long journey to Phoenix Villa again - those bachelor military households who had no parents, no mothers, no wives and no children, naturally they were No need to ask for trouble like this, some of them are smarter The guy started to flee after leaving the Wulin Gate in Hangzhou. After the supervising team stopped to rest midway, because there was no supervision, the remaining bachelor soldiers who were not very clever were also reminded by others. They all broke away from the team and fled quickly.
But although Li Shanmin is too poor to get a wife and have children, his parents are still there, and he is currently being held as a hostage in Hangzhou. He is not as homeless as those bachelors, and he really doesn't dare to become a deserter... So, he, who was temporarily elected as the captain, and a dozen other soldiers who also had families to hold back, formed a small team, and together with the other three suicide squads, they continued to slowly trek towards the distant Phoenix Mountain.
——According to the strategy formulated by Magistrate Liu, the land-based night attack team should lurk in the woods of Fenghuang Mountain in advance. When the arson boat is launched and the riverside is on fire, they will sneak attack on the bandit camp at the same time. However, due to the difficulty of marching in the snow, when Li Shanmin finally led his small team from the west to the vicinity of Phoenix Mountain, it was already the afternoon of the next day, and half of the people were frozen or injured on the way. They lost their legs and could only be left to fend for themselves on the road... As for the other three teams, their whereabouts are unknown. It is not known whether they got lost in the snow or whether they collectively slipped down the cliff and died in the line of duty.
In any case, although the original plan to attack Phoenix Villa at night must have been ruined, and the fire attack fleet on the river did not know how well they fought, at least they had gone through many hardships and made so many sacrifices before leaving. When we get here, we have to set a fire before we can reach the top...
With this idea in mind, Li Shanmin invited everyone to find an open space sheltered from the wind, and then took out the fire sticks, sulfur, clear oil and other items carried in their respective bags, spread them out on the ground, and conducted a final inspection before setting fire. But before he finished counting the things, he heard a gunshot, and a companion beside him was beaten until his brains burst, and he fell to the snow without saying a word, with red and white flowing into it.
When Li Shanmin, who was on the battlefield for the first time in his life, saw this, his legs and feet were so frightened that he collapsed on the ground. The other military households were also so scared that they rolled and crawled on the ground. Before these guys could stand up, a group of soldiers carrying bright steel knives and strange patterns on their faces rushed over and surrounded them - although the Li soldiers in the mountain infantry company were freezing because their hands and feet were freezing. Damn, the combat effectiveness is generally somewhat reduced, but it is not easy to catch these Hangzhou military households who have exhausted their strength from climbing mountains and wading in rivers, and were frozen to the point of having only half their lives left.
Seeing these legendary "Ming Dynasty Death Squadrons" huddled together like quails, begging for mercy, Captain Zhen Huan, who stayed up all night to search for these cowards, finally couldn't help but scorn him. Di spat, "...What a waste, even worse than Taiwanese natives!"
Next, Captain Zhenhuan's Li mountain infantry company discovered another small Ming army unit that was also half-frozen to death on the Yuhuang Mountain a few miles away, wandering around the mountain like headless flies. When the Kun thieves came to kill them, they knelt down and asked to surrender. All the Li mountain infantry suffered no casualties... Next , according to the confessions obtained by torture of the prisoners, a group of Japanese security forces were ordered to walk through the Su embankment through the snow, and went straight to Lingyin Temple, which had been burned to ruins on the other side of the West Lake. After a short battle, they lost zero casualties. Easily annihilated the Ming army's servant Ding Du's team who were still warming up here and waiting for news.
At this point, the land and water night attack plan planned by the Hangzhou magistrate's office was completely bankrupt. A total of nine people were killed in the night attack force of more than 200 people out of the city, and more than 20 people were captured... As for the vast majority of the remaining Ming troops, they disappeared. Where it is, only God knows...
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The well-planned land and water attack completely failed. The Hangzhou Guards Forces who went out to attack the city "suffered heavy losses". The fire attack fleet that had high hopes also became a big joke... This series of heavy blows made the people who were eagerly looking forward to good news Prefect Liu Mengqian suddenly felt extremely disappointed.
In anger, Prefect Liu Mengqian immediately summoned those "vulgar warriors" who he usually looked down upon the most, including the commanders of the third rank and the generals of the fourth rank, who were all beaten one by one by the master of the fifth rank. Er scolded them fiercely, accusing them of not carrying out their "clever plan" carefully... Under normal circumstances, these senior military attachés of the Ming Empire should feel very aggrieved for such crimes. But the situation at the end of the Ming Dynasty was obviously completely abnormal: on the one hand, it was because of the environment where the nobles and the military were lowly, and on the other hand, because they had indeed lost the battle and had little confidence. Therefore, these military attaches had no choice but to be scolded honestly and let the prefect vent their anger to his heart's content.
——In the Jiangnan and inland areas at the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to the scarcity of wars, the status of military attachés had been reduced to an incredible level. An ordinary scholar could be disrespectful to a fourth-rank general, while a seventh-rank county magistrate could be disrespectful to him. The commander of Zhengsanpin was beaten, scolded and scolded at will...
It is a pity that these humble military attaches are so honest, but their fighting skills have also been lost...
After scolding these stupid warriors who didn't care about fighting, and feeling full of cowardice, Prefect Liu Mengqian slowly calmed down and never thought about going out of the city to fight the Kun thieves for three hundred rounds. Come and save your official position - anyway, the provincial capital of Hangzhou has deep walls, abundant food and grass, and has not been attacked since the founding of the Ming Dynasty. I think this time, as long as nothing goes wrong, the old routine will not be broken by mere thieves.
However, regardless of whether Hangzhou will be captured by the Kun bandits, when the governor of Zhejiang has not returned from the expedition to Wenzhou, and the chief envoy of Zhejiang is temporarily vacant, even if he successfully defends the provincial capital, this city will sit back and watch the Kun bandits wreak havoc and lose their troops. I'm afraid the crime of losing land will still be It is the responsibility of his parents as an official - even if he wants to hide it, it is impossible. There is a Zhejiang inspector in Hangzhou who has always been at odds with him. He keeps an eye on the mistakes of the prefect's Yamen every day. Be prepared to impeach at any time! Therefore, since he is unable to defeat the Kun thieves, his first priority now should actually be to squeeze out a little more money from them while the Kun thieves are showing off their power outside the city and the big gentry families in the city are daring to follow them. To supplement the eunuch's purse. In order to avoid being dismissed by the imperial court in the future, his family can use the money to go to the big bosses in Beijing to do activities for them.
Therefore, driven by the guiding ideology of "seize the time to make money", Magistrate Liu quickly launched a vigorous and large-scale forced fundraising campaign among the wealthy businessmen and gentry in Hangzhou in the name of resisting Kun. Even the stingiest big business owner, facing the smiling faces of a bunch of small officials, had to hold his nose and take out a few hundred taels of silver... In the end, after all the statistics, they actually raised a full 120,000 taels of silver in just one day!
Although it is really surprising to squeeze out so much money in one go. However, after all, Magistrate Liu is an elegant and wise man with a comprehensive mind. He has considered the consequences of this approach from the beginning - in order to prevent any big family from being overwhelmed by excessive taxation and becoming angry and defecting to the thieves, Magistrate Liu organized the cleaning staff in advance , wrote the article "Records of Atrocities in the Song Dynasty" after much searching, and had it widely copied and distributed.
For those Jin gentry whose families were quite wealthy, "Records of the Atrocities of the Song Dynasty" focused on describing how the ancestral graves of the wealthy families outside Hangzhou were dug up, their ancestral halls were burned, their property was taken away, and their fields were given to lowly mud-legged people. The horrific scene of families being hanged from trees... successfully aroused their indignation - these people soon shouted, "I swear to live and die with the provincial capital, and never let the thieves set foot in Hangzhou." "! No more complaints about donations.
As for those poor Confucian scholars who have a good meal at home but still have a child-born scholar and other famous scholars, according to the experience of the past years, they need special care - these people are usually burdened by fame, although they have He has a status but no wealth, but his life is very unsatisfactory. However, he has some knowledge. Every day he is trying to "acquire literary and martial arts and sell them to the emperor's family". He sharpens his head and wants to climb up. Naturally, he is a potentially dangerous person.
Right now, this Australian thieves are rampaging outside Hangzhou City. They are unstoppable, and they look quite vulgar and uncultured. They probably don’t look like scholars. If you join them now, you might be able to find a good future. I’m afraid that right now, Among these poor children and talented scholars in Hangzhou, There are already a few daring and arrogant people who are eager to try. They want to secretly collude with these brutal thieves, cooperate internally and externally, and use the wealthy gentry households in Hangzhou as their stepping stone: obviously, if they are allowed to once If it succeeds, the consequences will be unimaginable.
In response to this, Magistrate Liu used a set of exquisite compound punches: First, he made some vivid nonsense in "Records of the Atrocities of the Song Dynasty": "The witchcraft of the thief Kun harms the harmony of heaven and earth, and it needs to be nourished with literary spirit. However, the thief Kun has always Vulgar, so every time The barbaric blood sacrifice scene of "all the magicians are sacrificed to scholars and scholars" - this is to tell these poor scholars to stop daydreaming. Even if you surrender to thieves, you will be treated as human sacrifices and tied to the altar to be cut into pieces. End!
Of course, many people would not believe this, so Magistrate Liu went on to eradicate the root cause and announced that he would "educate the four people to break the evil arts of the thieves." According to the government's file list, each of these poor scholars was given one or two pieces of silver. They were paid to settle down and sent to the city to guard the city. Anyone disobey? If you don't comply, you will be fined ten taels of silver for exemption from service! Anyone who cannot pay the fine and refuses to obey is considered a thief! There is no question of removing all charges!
With such a set of carrots and sticks, the Jin gentry in Hangzhou were either united or silent... The prefect Liu Mengqian was quite proud of this achievement and showed off to his cronies, saying, "...I read the history books and learned that , the first priority of defending the city is to stabilize the people's hearts. During the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, the loyal minister Zhang patrolled Suiyang, and his defense force was strong. It was less than one-twentieth of the number of thieves who attacked the city. Suiyang was not a famous city, but it was able to defend it until almost all the people in the city were eaten before allowing the rebels to capture it. This shows that the most important thing is. The city must be stable. As long as the people's morale is stable, the military's morale will stabilize, and the city's defense will become strong. As long as everyone in the city is united, why fear the might of foreign thieves? "
In this regard, the Qing Dynasty officials and staff were naturally full of flattery, and did not even mention the compliments to the magistrate who was "unparalleled in intelligence and strategy". However, although Magistrate Liu could use his skills repeatedly to teach the gentlemen of Jin into obedience, he could not stop the thieves outside the city from pressing forward step by step. Before the magistrate could be proud, a message came from Houchao Gate. The rumbling sound of cannons instantly shook the entire Hangzhou...