Chapter 1178 Cover the lid
Although Gao Xuewu's suggestion was pertinent, it was somewhat unrealistic in Liu Feng's view. It was not much easier to use military means to cut off the supply lines of the Haihan Army than to defeat them on the frontal battlefield. If the Ming army was really capable of doing this, the Haihan army probably wouldn't even be able to enter the Qiantang River, let alone land outside Hangzhou. However, Gao Xuewu fought bravely, and his performance on the battlefield did not embarrass the Ming army. Liu Feng did not want to speak too harshly, so he only asked him to return to the city to recuperate from his injuries.
Earlier, when Zhejiang organized elite troops to go north to the Central Plains to participate in counter-insurgency, most of the capable generals had been transferred away. Nowadays, there are not many generals in Hangzhou who can take charge of the army alone. Generals like Gao Xuewu are already among the best. Otherwise, There is no need for half-hearted commander Qi Jie to take command in battle. Liu Feng had no one under his command, so he forced Qi Jie to go into battle. As a result, his army almost collapsed before the battle started. This kind of performance must not be entrusted to him anymore.
Of course Liu Feng can continue to send troops to launch an offensive. The army in Hangzhou city is not enough, and he can also mobilize troops from the various state capitals in Zhejiang. After all, from the perspective of Zhejiang as a whole, if a full-scale war is really going to happen, tens of thousands of Ming troops can still be gathered together. But the problem is that the effect of using pure military superiority to deal with Haihan is not good, and if things get out of hand, Zhejiang officialdom will not be able to explain to the court. You must know that when the imperial court ordered Zhejiang to send troops some time ago, it specifically asked not to allow chaos in the area, so as not to ruin the overall situation of the imperial court to first calm down the country and then fight against the outside world. In less than a month, foreign troops were allowed to attack the city of Hangzhou. If the imperial court knew the causes and consequences, Zhejiang Dusi and other officials would have to bear corresponding responsibilities.
The chief envoy Wang Ji, who had originally criticized the main war faction, looked at today's battle situation, and his attitude can be seen without asking any more questions. Obviously, he cannot expect that the chief envoy can still be with him after things get serious. Standing on the same front and facing the court's questioning, Liu Feng must find a way to save himself.
So that night, a Ming army quietly came out of Hangzhou City and tried to launch a night attack on the Haihan camp on the Qiantang River. But it was a night attack, so there wasn't much privacy at all. After all, Haihan's camp was too close to Hangzhou City. If there was any disturbance at the city gate, Haihan could basically monitor it in real time. Although the Ming army boldly launched a charge after approaching the Haihan camp, the effect was not ideal. The Haihan defenders in the camp responded with musket fire.
Although the sky provided excellent cover for the Ming army's offensive, the extremely poor visibility was actually a double-edged sword. In order not to become a living target, the Ming army gave up the use of lighting tools such as torches in the attack. While reducing the shooting hit rate of Haihan soldiers, it also naturally caused great trouble for them to pass through the obstacle area outside the camp. If you want to quickly pass through the defense fortifications, which are more than 30 meters deep in the dark night, and are composed of high and low barbed wire fences, large and small horse pits, and scattered deer villages to resist horses, it is not easy for even a veteran who has been on the battlefield. The whistling sound of bullets piercing the air and the screams of companions after being shot and injured were constantly heard around them. It was easy to lose the direction of progress in the darkness.
In the end, a few lucky people got through the fortifications under the cover of night, but only then did they discover that a trench more than five feet wide had been dug outside Haihan's village wall, although no water had been drained into it yet. But if you jump into this trench, you will not be able to reach the top of the wall. When the Ming army left the city for a night attack, they did not carry tools such as ladders. At this time, there was no other way except to build a ladder. Think about it.
However, it was easy for Haihan to deal with this primitive attack method. His condescending jabs made it almost impossible for those at the top of the ladder to escape. The Ming soldiers who finally reached the finish line were stabbed over one by one. In the trench. The desperate Ming army found that it was impossible to invade the Haihan camp with only the scattered troops arriving at the trench, and there was not even much chance of causing chaos. They could only choose to give up the useless offensive and retreat from the battlefield.
After leaving many corpses in the night attack, the Ming army still failed to make significant progress. Seeing that the hard battle was fruitless, they had no choice but to retreat into the city. The order given by the Haihan Army was to stick to the camp. Seeing that the opponent was actively retreating, they did not leave the camp to pursue them, in case there was another ambush in the dark. When the results of the battle were counted at dawn, the soldiers found more than 130 corpses on the defense line outside the camp. However, most of the various defenses in front of the camp were destroyed and needed to be rearranged. In addition, because the Ming army reached a relatively close place in the dark, the archers fired intensively, causing several casualties to the Haihan army in the camp.
Wang Tom inspected the battlefield in the early morning and saw the arrows stuck on the wall outside the camp. At that moment, he sighed at the persistence of the Ming army. During the day, the attack of the Ming army was stopped at a safe distance by Haihan's long-range weapons, and it was difficult to cause direct damage to Haihan soldiers. However, after the Ming army came close at night, this kind of covering shooting with eyes closed On the contrary, it caused damage. Fortunately, the casualties were limited, and the Ming army was unable to confirm the results they had achieved.
Wang Tom ordered the dead soldiers to be buried properly, and later arranged for special ships to transport their bones back to Zhoushan, where they would be cremated and then transported back to the cemetery in Sanya for burial. The biggest shortcoming of the Haihan Army is still the lack of troops. Even if the combat power can defeat the opponent, it is still unable to launch an offensive in a large area due to too few troops. Similar to the attack on Hangzhou this time, if the troops are sufficient, they can be divided into nearby states and counties to show force and further put pressure on the Zhejiang government. However, now they can only concentrate all the participating troops here to offset the opponent's huge advantage in military strength.
According to the action plan formulated in advance, the battle under Hangzhou City must be resolved within ten days as much as possible, otherwise it will drag on for too long and turn the small-scale conflict into a full-scale war, which will not be in line with Haihan's purpose of deterrence. . Now the battle under the walls of Hangzhou has caused the Ming army to lose hundreds of people. If the battle continues like this, the situation may really develop into an uncontrollable direction. Wang Tom also hesitates a little in his heart, whether he still needs to increase his attack on Hangzhou. attack intensity to apply pressure.
However, his concerns were actually a little unnecessary. There was already a huge commotion in Hangzhou. Some wealthy and wealthy gentry with means managed to buy a way out of Hangzhou with their families. While the Haihan Army was mobilizing troops, rumors that the next step was to besiege Hangzhou City also spread like wildfire in the city. The asymmetry of information caused many people to believe this to be true. Even those who could not leave Hangzhou City and fled began to try their best. Stock up on daily necessities and supplies. The price of food in the city has increased fivefold in just two days, but even so, the supply is still in short supply, and the government can only take over and control the food trade.
Although the government claims that the city's grain reserves are sufficient for at least two months of consumption, the sharp changes in grain prices and the government's actions to control the market still make the people feel very uneasy. The city of Hangzhou has been living in peace for more than two hundred years under the rule of the Ming Dynasty. It has never been attacked by enemy troops and was unable to fight back. Both the government and the people have a very poor ability to withstand such a situation. Although the Haihan Army has not officially launched an offensive against Hangzhou City, the social order in the city has been disrupted. It stands to reason that if both sides are determined to fight, then it is normal for everyone to use their financial resources and fight in Hangzhou to decide the winner. But the subtle thing is that both sides have their own scruples. The consciousness is controlling the intensity of the conflict, and does not want to escalate the scale of the war to a point of no return like a national war.
The main war faction that once had the upper hand suffered successive setbacks from the Ming army fighting out of the city, and its influence also dropped significantly. Both the official and the private sector expressed a pessimistic attitude towards the prospect of defeating Haihan and driving him out of Hangzhou. Now it has entered the fourth day that the Qiantang River's sea channel has been blocked by the Haihan Army. It is not just the city of Hangzhou that is affected. Currently, ships that are unable to go to sea because of the blocked channel are docked on the river bank in Fuyang upstream. Whether it is investigating the case or compensating for losses, in the eyes of the businessmen, Haihan's conditions indicate that there is at least room for negotiation, and blindly using force to resolve the current deadlock will only worsen the situation. The wealthy businessmen whose interests have been harmed are lobbying the officials in Hangzhou through their own channels, hoping that the government can change its attitude and start peace talks with Haihan as soon as possible.
At this moment, a life-saving straw finally appeared in front of the officials who were about to drown. Qu Yutong, the prefect of Ningbo, sent people to cross the Qiantang River by land via Shaoxing Prefecture and arrived in Hangzhou. He sent an official document asking for orders to go to Hangzhou to negotiate peace with the Han people in order to resolve the crisis in Zhejiang. Qu Yutong's capital for voluntarily coming forward was his experience of dealing with the Haihan people many times in the past year - what was originally considered a flaw by Zhejiang senior officials has now become an opportunity to save the situation.
Although many people had criticized Qu Yutong's stance before, when the two countries were at war, they could take the initiative to ask envoys to go to the enemy-controlled areas to negotiate, even if they didn't like him. It is hard to criticize such courage. At least among the people in Hangzhou who clamored to fight and kill, no one dared to go out of the city as envoys to visit the Haihan Army on the Qiantang River.
The chief envoy Wang Ji was originally inclined to find an opportunity to replace Qu Yutong's current position and ask the court to find an official with a tougher attitude to serve in Ningbo Prefecture, so as to change the situation where Haihan did whatever he wanted in the local area. But through these days of armed conflict, he gradually realized how troublesome it was to deal with the Haihan people. Haihan has been settled off the coast of Ningbo for more than a year, but there has never been any trouble in Ningbo Mansion. It is extremely difficult to do this. After the Ming army suffered successive setbacks, no one in Hangzhou dared to stand up and take responsibility. Qu Yutong was very thoughtful in taking the initiative to step forward and ask for help at this critical moment.
Of course, considering the face issues of some people, Wang Ji politely held another meeting and informed the military of Qu Yutong's suggestions. Although Liu Feng and others were unwilling, they also knew that the current situation could not allow any more mistakes. Even if the Haihan people could not capture Hangzhou, if this confrontation continued for a few more days, they would not be able to hide it from the court. The top priority is to get Haihan to withdraw his troops as soon as possible. At this time, we can no longer think too much about the conflicts of different political opinions.
At the meeting a few days ago, there were quite a few people shouting and killing, but this time no one insisted on using force to resolve existing disputes. Although there are still some people who doubt Qu Yutong's purpose of coming forward at this time and are unwilling to trust his ability to solve the crisis, at this time no one can come up with a more practical and effective solution. To put it harshly, no one can propose a more practical and effective solution. , asking Qu Yutong to come forward already feels like treating a dead horse as a live doctor. If Qu Yutong also failed, then Wang Ji would have no choice but to report to the court in a desperate attempt to mobilize more troops from neighboring provinces to deal with the Haihan Army.
So with very little opposition, Wang Ji decided to immediately appoint Qu Yutong, the prefect of Ningbo, as a special envoy for negotiations to contact Haihan on behalf of the Zhejiang government. Wang Ji personally drafted the relevant appointment documents at the meeting venue, and then immediately ordered the messenger who accompanied him to deliver the official document to return to Ningbo by the same route so that Qu Yutong could leave early.
While the officials in Hangzhou were anxious, Qu Yutong was hosting a family banquet in his courtyard to entertain the secretly visiting Haihan envoys. In this great drama performed by the Haihan Army, Ningbo Prefecture did not suffer much harassment. The Haihan Army only stayed at the mouth of the Yongjiang River for a short time, then left Ningbo and entered Hangzhou Bay. From then on, the progress of Haihan's itinerary in various states was sent to Qufu by Haihan's special envoy every day, which also allowed Qu Yutong to have an excellent grasp of the execution status of the entire operation.
As for the documents to be submitted to Hangzhou City, they had actually been drafted a long time ago, and they were just waiting for Haihan to notify him of a suitable time to send them over. Qu Yutong has now completely boarded Haihan's ship. Regardless of the direction of the ship, he can only follow it as a passenger. Fortunately, Haihan did not break his promise. He set up camp at the foot of Hangzhou City and did not take the initiative to take offensive measures.
This also made Qu Yutong, who had been worried about the Haihan army pretending to be a fake attack on Hangzhou, finally relieved. He knew very well that as long as the big guys in Hangzhou found that they could not defeat the Haihan army, they would try to evade responsibility by turning to the imperial court. To conceal the chaos here, they just want to solve the war crisis. They also lack a reliable communication channel. At this time, if Qu Yutong comes forward as the peacemaker to resolve the crisis, he will gain a lot in terms of favor and credit. Heihan's role has almost been played, and his role should appear next.
(End of chapter)