Nanming Engineer

Chapter 285 Black Gunpowder

After Wang Huan made a decision, without any delay, Wang Yingxiong, who was tied with thick bandages on the inner sides of his thighs, called over and briefly explained the matter. His face turned pale.

Immediately the old man claimed that he wanted to rush back to Zhaoqing, and would rather have his head beheaded by the emperor than go to die with Wang Huan.

Wang Huan looked at him patiently and yelled, and when he was tired and calmed down, he told him that he couldn't leave, and someone had to go to Changde. If Du Yinxi could trust Du Yinxi and have prestige, he had better be a court official. Among the people here, there is no one except Wang Yingxiong, so I have to go to Changde to meet Du Yinxi.

Of course Wang Yingxiong didn't want to go, but he had no choice. Ma Wannian tied two pieces of cowhide around his legs to relieve the pain from the friction. Then, without any explanation, he helped him onto the horse and sent a centurion sergeant to escort him. , went directly to the official road, and left without dust.

When Wang Yingxiong left, he looked at Wang Huan and the others, full of regret and confusion. He felt sorry for losing a general he could rely on. It would be very difficult to find such a brave general in the future. Most of the positions of Jidian University Bachelor and cabinet ministers have come to an end.

In his eyes, Wang Huan is already a dead person.

However, Wang Hua didn't have the consciousness of a dying person at all, and he didn't feel the look in Wang Yingxiong's eyes at all. He immediately ordered the whole army to prepare and rush to Xinhua to send the sad governor away!

To get to Xinhua, you must pass through Baoqingfu, because the city of Baoqingfu is being surrounded by the Qing army, and you have to go around in a circle to avoid the Qing soldiers besieging the city from the outside. Fortunately, the cavalry is fast and you can walk a little longer.

The most taboo thing about marching in a hurry is chaos. In high-speed running, it is easy to disrupt the organizational system. You can’t find soldiers, you can’t find generals, you can’t keep up with the team, you’re injured by accident, and you’re afraid of war and desert. Running at a fast pace will lead to fewer and fewer people unconsciously. When the ancient army marched to a place in a hurry, the number of ten stops would go to three stops, which shows the negative effect of such a pursuit of speed marching.

In order to prevent this situation, the Kuizhou Army marched in units of centurions. The squad leader was responsible to the centurion, and the centurion was responsible to Wang Huan. Huan led the team to run at the front, and Li Dingguo was at the end. They ensured that the Kuizhou Army would not be disintegrated. More than 2000 people were like a torrent. On the ground, he ran towards the wolf smoke of Baoqing Prefecture.

Along the way, groups of refugees coming from the opposite direction kept appearing. These people panicked and came carrying each other with burdens and rolls on their backs. Children were crying and women were screaming, and they stumbled along the official road. The huge smoke and dust raised by the Kuizhou cavalry team hurriedly avoided the side of the road, and when they saw the flag of the Ming army, they stared blankly in a daze.

The Kuizhou Army with white armor and angry horses passed in front of them. The knights on the horses were wielding arrows, the tiger and leopard war flags were flying, the armor was clanking with murderous intent, like dragons and tigers, and they had an aura of unshakable military power. This made the people of Baoqing Mansion, who were used to seeing the decadent soldiers of the Ming Dynasty, suddenly have the illusion that soldiers from heaven descended to earth.

The cavalry rushed past, the wind rolled up the skirts, and the power that made the ground tremble was so great that it was easy for these people who had suffered so much to feel a sense of security that they had not seen for a long time.

I don't know who took the lead, but was overwhelmed by the Kuizhou army's deterrence, and knelt in the dust beside the official road, crying "Long live" while crying.One person knelt down, two people knelt down, three people knelt down, hundreds of people knelt together, and the common people scattered in the mountains and plains, weeping and laughing, watched the group of Ming soldiers who passed by solemnly disappear into the sky. in the dust.

"Mother, who are they?" A child hid behind the woman in fear, looking at the backs of the cavalry on the official road, and asked softly.

"Son, they are officers and soldiers of the imperial court. They were sent by the emperor to avenge us." The father beside him looked tired, but his eyes glowed with hope, and he clenched his fists and said happily, "How many years?" Oh, I have never seen such a powerful army, the Ming Dynasty is hopeful, hopeful!"

The woman knelt down beside the man, pulled the child over and said with tears in her eyes: "I just ask God to bless them and drive away the Tatars. That will be fine."

The child is young, no more than four or five years old. He wears an upside-down braid and wears old clothes that were obviously picked up. His eyes are blinking and blinking like big jade carvings. He is very cute. Already getting to know each other, hearing what my parents said, raised my face, and shouted seriously: "Mother, Father, when I grow up, I want to be an officer, and I want to kill Tartars!"

The parents changed their colors when they heard the sound, and the father hurriedly scolded: "What kind of army are you? Did the army harm us less? Our family was robbed and defeated by the army. The army is worse than the bandits!"

The child was immediately puzzled, and asked aggrievedly, "But, just now, my parents said that the officers and soldiers killed Tartars, why is it so bad?"

Father was at a loss for words, raised his eyes to look at the direction where the Kuizhou army disappeared, stood up slowly, and slowly said with confused eyes: "The officer army just now is not like ordinary officers, um, yes, it is different, at least it looks no the same."

Seeing that he was hesitating and unable to explain clearly, the bewildered expression on the child's innocent face deepened.

……

From Yongzhou to Xinhua, it took nearly four hundred miles on the official road. The Kuizhou army abandoned the baggage, and the whole army only carried weapons and dry food with them. It took six days to travel day and night. There is no horse to change, and about seventy miles a day has reached the limit of the mount. It is not impossible to hurry up, but in this way, some horses will inevitably be overwhelmed and exhausted. Without horses, the Kuizhou army can walk on two legs , is unimaginably passive.

But the Kuizhou army was like this, and so was Li Maozu's Qing army, and the majority of the Qing army was infantry, so when Wang Huan stood at the head of Xinhua City, Li Maozu and others were still trekking along the official road of Baoqing Mansion.

Xinhua County, which belongs to Baoqing Prefecture, has registered household registrations of less than [-] households and a population of less than [-]. Even in the era when the population was greatly reduced in the late Ming Dynasty, it was still a small county. The county seat was built in the mountains of Western Hunan. On the side, surrounded by mountains on all sides, is a basin.

Although the county is small, it is very important. The official road from south to Baoqing to Changde to the north extends from the dilapidated earthen wall of the county town. During the Taiping Festival, people here are doing merchant business from south to north. Teahouses, inns, Goulan Ma Xing is also booming. The county has an inspection department on the side of the official road, and there are plenty of oil and water. Therefore, the posts of Xinhua county magistrate and inspection are of seventh rank and ninth rank. Although they are not popular, they can be grabbed. broken head.

But at this time, the county magistrate has long disappeared, the gate of the county government office is open, and there is not even a ghost to be found. , I couldn't even find a mouse in that small courtyard.

All the people in the city, except those who couldn't run, had already fled up the mountain with their families. The Tucheng had become an empty city.

Wang Huan stood on the city wall, stroking the loess wall with his hands, and felt emotional. The disasters caused by soldiers were indeed fiercer than tigers, leopards and wolves. It is difficult to build a city, but it is easy to destroy it.

There was a sound of iron leaves in his ears, and Wang Huan turned his head to look, but it was Li Dingguo who had come to the top of the wall.

"My lord, the last general has inspected the city. The circumference of this county is only four miles. The city wall is an earthen wall built during the Chenghua period. The wall is one foot and three feet high. The wall is made of loess. The material is extremely poor. Many places It's almost collapsed, and you can jump in without even using a ladder." Li Dingguo's brows have become habitually furrowed these days, as if they won't unfold, and his face looks a lot older: "The city has east, west, north, south four directions. There is no moat, not even a ditch, and it is open on all sides, and you can deploy troops to attack the city. My lord, according to the art of war, this city cannot be defended."

Wang Huan smiled lightly, and said: "As expected, if the local officials of Daming can concentrate on official affairs, it would be strange. Is there any gain in the city?"

Li Dingguo sighed helplessly, and said: "There are ten rooms and nine empty rooms in the city, and those left are the old, weak, sick and disabled. The government offices and county yamen are unattended. There is not a grain of rice in the official warehouse, which can starve mice to death. As for the arsenal. , the last general also took people to see, they are all broken copper and iron, unusable. There are some bows and arrows, but they can't match our mountain-destroying crossbows, but the only harvest is to find some limestone for defending the city bottle, and twenty barrels of black gunpowder, weighing hundreds of catties."

"Oh?" Wang Huan grinned, as if he had known it for a long time, and smiled happily, "How is the quality of the gunpowder?"

"The color is dry, and it will be fried at one touch." Li Dingguo said.

When Li Dingguo searched the whole city, he had already inquired a lot of information from the remaining population in the city, and now he came up one by one in an orderly manner: "It turns out that this Xinhua County is a big county that produces fireworks and firecrackers in several nearby states. Firecrackers are famous far and wide, and many merchants come from other places to buy and sell firecrackers during the Chinese New Year, so there are quite a few shops in Xinhua County that manufacture fireworks, and even the county government is openly selling gunpowder for profit.”

Wang Huan blinked, and said: "Then hurry up and look for it again, uncover all the shops in the city, and find out all the gunpowder they hid. Anyway, the merchants ran away after looking for it, and borrowed some of their gunpowder." Nobody knows either."

Li Dingguo promised, turned around and wanted to go down, but turned his head back and asked with a strange expression: "Uh, my lord, did you know that there will be so much gunpowder in Xinhua County, so you decided to rush The strategy for coming here?"

Wang Huan smiled cunningly, and Fang Wailao waved his hands like an expert, but without saying a word, he signaled Li Dingguo to go to work quickly with gestures.

Li Dingguo was stunned and admired, thinking to himself that my lord really knows astronomy and geography, and even knows about firecrackers and fireworks in a small county thousands of miles away. Your lord is a master of firearms, and he specially found a place full of gunpowder for defense. Have special plans in mind.

However, Wang Huan secretly called luck. How did he know that the special gunpowder and firecrackers in Xiaoxian County, Xinhua, which are hardly marked on the maps of this era, were all because he had accidentally seen a Ming Dynasty court painting in later generations. The scene of the Lantern Festival in the palace of Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty is marked with large pictures and texts. The scene of the palace people entertaining the emperor with fireworks and firecrackers offered by Xinhua County. It is a big county, so as soon as I came here, I asked my subordinates to search for it as soon as possible, and I found gunpowder.

The Kuizhou army carried no more than two captive ammunition per person, and a total of 2000 bombs for 3 people. It was certainly not enough for defense, but with the addition of thousands of catties of black powder in Xinhua County, Wang Huan was confident that he would Li Maozu's [-] people stayed under the city of Xinhua.

The next thing to think about is how to dig a hole so that the Tartars can jump into the explosive pit.

As Wang Huan thought about it, the sly smile on the corner of his mouth became more and more sinister.

(End of this chapter)