Nanming Engineer

Chapter 335 Offense and Defense

"Retreat? Self-protection?" Wang Yongzhen and Gao Youcai were stunned at the same time, and then confused.

Wang Yongzhen was impatient, and asked immediately, "Brother, it would be cowardly to retreat without a beating. There are so many of us..."

Before he finished speaking, Wang Yongqiang glanced at him, turned around, turned his back and walked away, ignoring him.

Wang Yongzhen and Gao Youcai looked at each other, and Gao Youcai made a calm gesture to him, signaling not to say more, the commander-in-chief had his own measure.

Unlike Wang Yongzhen, Gao Youcai has sincere admiration for Wang Yongqiang in addition to being in awe of Wang Yongqiang. In the uprising in northern Shaanxi, Gao Youcai just beat off the magistrate of Shenmu County and led a group of aboriginals in the county to make trouble. Wang Yongqiang had long been suppressed by the Qing soldiers on the Shenmu Road on the East Road. How could he be today.

Seeing that Wang Yongqiang conquered nineteen states in northern Shaanxi and was known as the commander-in-chief of northern Shaanxi. He contacted the Ming court and fought against the Qing army. He was a man who did great things. Gao Youcai admired him from the bottom of his heart. He originally thought that he, a local tycoon, was a hero in the world. , It turns out that there is a world outside the sky and there are people outside the world. It is true that if you don’t go out, you don’t know the affairs of the world, and if you don’t study, you don’t know the outsiders.

Gao Youcai had no objection to Wang Yongqiang's decision, no matter whether he could understand the reason for this decision, so at this time Wang Yongqiang heard that the Qing soldiers would stop fighting as soon as they arrived, and he had no doubts.

He pulled Wang Yongzhen and followed Wang Yongqiang to the bottom of the hill.

Wang Yongqiang jumped on the war horse led by his own soldiers, reined in the horse, and stood quietly in front of the mountain, listening to the chaotic sound of the gongs in the Chinese army, and watching the "crash" of people withdrawing from the city of Xi'an, which was raging with flames in the distance, condensed Mei was thinking.

After a while, he turned his head and asked Wang Yongzhen and the two: "Do you still remember that when we followed Duchen Sun to encircle and suppress the intruders, Zu Dashou, the deputy general of Liaodong, led the troops to help?"

Gao Youcai was at a loss, he had never joined the army, of course he didn't know, Wang Yongzhen immediately replied: "Remember, during the reign of Chongzhen, my elder brother was still a general banner under the general army of Yulin, and I was still a small banner, leading a dozen or so soldiers. A soldier hangs around."

Wang Yongqiang nodded, looked far to the west, and sighed: "At that time, the robbers were very powerful, and tens of thousands of people were rushing across Shaanxi and Henan like locusts. There was no one who could stop them. When Zu Dashou arrived, he brought three thousand Guan Ning Iron cavalry, charged head-on against the thieves' formation, invincible like a knife cutting tofu, defeated the army in one battle, and then chased them for two hundred miles all day and night. After leaving Shaanxi, if Liaodong was not in a tight spot and the imperial court transferred Zu Dashou back, the intruders might just disappear."

Speaking of this, Wang Yongzhen's eyes brightened, and he immediately recalled the brilliant achievements of the Liaodong cavalry at that time, and Gao Youcai's eyes became straight when he heard it.

Wang Yongqiang took a deep breath and asked, "Compared with the robbers back then, who is stronger and who is weaker?"

The two people who were listening were choked for a moment, and shook their heads at the same time: "We might as well break into the robbers."

At that time, Li Zicheng ruled the seven provinces. Although there were many refugees under his command, the background of his own military battalion and the leaders of the rebel army, large and small, were not weak. The Ming army in the mainland can't hold a candle to it. His cavalry is one man and two horses, and they come and go like the wind. The current army of the Wang brothers is simply incomparable.

Wang Yongqiang said: "That's exactly the case. Li Zicheng was unable to resist Zu Dashou back then. Now we are facing the Liaodong army, how can we be against? Uncle Pingliang taught me to stay behind. Don’t be brave enough to send troops, uncle said, as long as we can drag the Qing soldiers under the city of Xi’an, we will be victorious.”

He sighed and said: "Uncle is far-sighted, if we don't listen to him, I'm afraid that the Tartars have already conquered northern Shaanxi, and you and I have already gone to see the King of Hades!"

Wang Yongzhen and Gao Youcai took a breath together. It turned out that Uncle Pingliang had already set up this chess game. They were all pawns. No wonder Wang Yongqiang finally made up his mind to allow Chen Xiang to gather the refugees to go to Xi'an. He thought he had listened to the two of them. The result is that I thought of this layer.

"As long as we can hold on and nail the stronghold here, although the Liaodong Army is strong, it won't be able to wipe out so many of us overnight." Wang Yongqiang saw the crowds coming back one after another pour into the huge camp. The supervising team was constantly driving back some refugees who were trying to desert, so they rode forward slowly, and said as they walked: "Uncle didn't ask us to lay down many cities or kill many people, as long as we restrain Wu Sangui, it will be considered complete." The mission is over, we will be promoted after the war and rewarded according to merit, and the sin of surrendering and betraying the Ming court can also be wiped away."

Wang Yongzhen and Gao You were speechless, of course they couldn't think of this.

"Let's go, let's go to patrol the camp once to appease the refugees. They are the main force of the momentum." Wang Yongqiang urged his horse to go, and rushed to the camp. It is a wooden city with a radius of several miles. In order to build it, the refugees almost cut down all the trees on the nearby mountains.

……

Half an hour later, Li Benshen and Wang Pingfan arrived at the city of Xi'an.

They didn't enter the city, but passed by the west gate, greeted the city, and went straight to the north gate.

When they arrived outside the north gate, the two of them were startled. There was nothing wrong outside the west gate, but the place was in a mess. The densely covered corpses, bomb craters, and arrows all over the ground seemed to make this open land a wheat field with arrow shafts, and a huge nest cart. The remaining wreckage after being pierced by iron bullets was still emitting thick flames and smoke. Near the city wall, there was almost no place to set foot. Broken arms and limbs and fleshy corpses were everywhere. The stench was so strong that people covered their noses.

Seeing the arrival of the reinforcements, there was cheering from the top of the city. Meng Qiaofang organized some people to open the city gate and go out to carry and burn the corpses. Although the weather turned cold, the corpses would still rot and smell after a long time.

Li Ben went deep into the city to meet Meng Qiaofang. Wang Pingfan led his troops and ran five miles away, and saw the wooden city that Wang Yongqiang spent tens of thousands of people building in a few days.

Wang Pingfan was a little confused at the time. Didn't these rebels come to attack the city? Why did they build a city?Are you really going to fight a protracted war?Do they have that much food?
They ran around Mucheng flamboyantly, except for the cavalry who shot a burst of arrows when the cavalry got too close, half of the people in Mucheng did not come out, they were extremely cowardly.

Wang Pingfan finally opened his eyes. Tens of thousands of people huddled in the wooden city, allowing two thousand cavalry and four thousand horses to parade under their noses. They didn't even dare to fart. Such a weak army, such a way of fighting, Never seen before.

However, Mucheng is also a city, and the deep ditch outside the city, which is a few points wider than the moat of Xi'an, is an insurmountable obstacle. Of course, no matter how fierce Wang Pingfan was, he could not imitate the courage of the Gan Ning army in the Three Kingdoms to break into the enemy camp alone, so he shouted a few times in the distance. Sentence, stayed out of the range of the bow and arrow and scolded a few mothers, the Qing soldiers rode back to Xi'an city.

The night was calm, there was no movement on either side, the air was eerily quiet, but there were faint restless movements, just like the weather at this time, dark clouds rolled in, and the first autumn rain was about to come.

(End of this chapter)