18718 Break Luoyang

Originally, there was Zhang Renxue, the general of Henan, outside the city, but Zhang Renxue was not a military general. He was originally born as a scholar during the Apocalypse. He experienced civil officials such as Taiyuan Zhixian. Later, he was gradually promoted to Fengyang Patrol. After returning to the court last year, he was released to Henan. As a result, he saw that the generals of Henan did not want to serve the country. If he could use things, he scolded these generals angrily and asked him to change to a military position. He wanted to fight against the thieves in person. Emperor Chongzhen finally agreed to his request. He said that he was also a quite upright official, but after becoming a general officer, Zhang Renxue did not have a soldier in his hand. Later, he originally wanted to transfer some soldiers from Shanxi to his command. However, because of a big fight with the Xingtian Army in Jinnan last year, Shanxi lost soldiers and soldiers and horses, and horses could not be transferred to him for a while. In the end, he only pieced together some soldiers and horses from the area of Zhangde Mansion to give him.

Zhang Renxue took this piece of soldiers and horses to win a battle in Henan, relying on sneak attacks to defeat Lushan County. Although Xiao Tianjian defeated Zuo Liangyu and returned to Yuxi and took the initiative to give up Lushan County, it was also a rare highlight in this battle between the officers and Xing Tianjun in Henan.

After giving up Lushan County, Zhang Renxue returned to Kaifeng Mansion. Soon after, he was ordered to lead his troops to Luoyang for reinforcements. As a result, he really took these miscellaneous soldiers to Luoyang City, stationed outside the city, and was ordered to supervise the officers and soldiers outside the city. However, he didn't think that when he arrived in Luoyang that the situation here was extremely bad. Point, Luoyang is short of food, and King Fu is not stingy. The officers and soldiers have long been separated. Few people want to fight with the thief army in Luoyang to the end. Although Zhang Renxue sits outside the city, he can't restrain these officers and soldiers outside the city at all. When the officers and soldiers saw the Xing Tianjun attacking, they suddenly dispersed. Although Zhang Renxue However, he tried his best to dissuade them, but he failed to stop them from continuing to stay and work hard. On the contrary, even the two or three thousand subordinates he brought by him also ran a lot. As a result, Zhang Renxue basically became the light pole commander again.

Zhang Renxue is also respectable. The situation has developed to this extent, but he still gathered a very small number of loyalists to stay. Seeing that the army of the Xing Tianjun had come to the city, he took these hundreds of loyalists to launch a suicidal attack on the army of the Xing Tianjun.

Xiao Tianjian was strangled in the army. Looking at the last officer and army of hundreds of people left outside Luoyang City, he couldn't help but be greatly surprised. At the same time, he and the generals under his command also secretly admired these officers and soldiers. No matter which dynasty, there will always be a group of loyalty when they are about to die. The loyal and brave people of the empire died for him, and Zhang Renxue was just one of those people.

Then Xiao Tianjian ordered the troops to stop moving forward and line up to meet the enemy. Seeing these hundreds of people rushing over like dragonflies shaking trees, everyone looked at the officers and soldiers with a solemn face, and rows of fire were put down flat...

All Luoyang officials and defenders on the wall witnessed this tragic scene with their own eyes. Under the leadership of Zhang Renxue, hundreds of loyal officers and soldiers rushed to the Xingtian Army, which was many times stronger than them, and then in front of the Xingtian Army, they were cut down by the fire of the Xingtian Army like cutting rice. This The scene was almost indescribable. Many officials either fainted or cried on the spot.

Zhang Renxue fell to the ground with several bullets in the first wave of muskets, but he still struggled to climb forward slowly. Finally, he stopped crawling until the fresh blood on his body, leaving behind him a blood road more than ten meters wide, and the rest of the two or three hundred officials Soldiers, everyone was hit by several bullets and fell in front of Xing Tianjun's battle. This suicide charge almost did not cause any casualties to Xing Tianjun, and everyone died under the firing of Xing Tianjun's gun.

After solving Zhang Renxue's two or three hundred loyal officers and soldiers, Xiao Tianjian personally came to the army and got off the horse in public. He walked to Zhang Renxue's body, took off his helmet, bent down deeply, bowed his head and bowed three times to Zhang Renxue's body, and the soldiers who followed him also silently took it off. Helmets or wide-edged felt hats, under the orders of the officers, Qi Qi bowed his head and bowed to Zhang Renxue and other Ming loyalists, expressing their admiration for these people.

After the event, Xiao Tianjian ordered to properly collect all the bodies of Zhang Renxue's group of people, and personally chose a piece of land. He ordered the engineering battalion to bury them on the spot outside Luoyang City, and set up a large stone tablet in front of their tombs, and asked Li Jinde, who was good at calligraphy to mention a few words of the Ming Dynasty's loyal tomb. It is engraved on the stone tablet to show admiration for these people.

It was also because of the decisive counterattack launched by Zhang Renxue that the attack on the city was delayed by one day. It was not until May 20 that Xiao Tianjian officially ordered the siege.

All the artillerymen were gathered outside the south gate of Luoyang City. Nearly a hundred six-pound and eight-pound guns pointed to the south gate of Luoyang City and slowly raised the turret of the black hole.

Luoyang City, as a famous ancient capital in Chinese history, has an important position, and has always been valued by all dynasties that have controlled the Central Plains. Although it has been destroyed by the war several times, it has been rebuilt. After the Ming Dynasty, Yangcheng has been rebuilt again, and the current city wall Up to four feet tall, the whole is a masonry structure, surrounded by moating trenches. The circumference is eight miles, three hundred and forty-five steps, and the trench is five feet deep and three feet wide. There are four gates in the east, west, north and south. Heavy buildings are built on the top, Yuecheng is built outside, four corner towers are built, and 39 enemy towers are built. Moreover, during the Ming Chenghua, Hongzhi, Zhengde and Wanli years, the city has been repaired many times. In the recent four years of Chongzhen, due to the peasant army's attack on the Central Plains at that time, Henan Province has built a blocking soil by the city trench. The wall is one foot high. And extend the earth wall thirty-three miles to divert water into the trench.

Therefore, Luoyang City can be said to be as solid as gold. If it weren't for the Xingtian Army's siege of Luoyang for a long time in advance, which made Luoyang's Henan Province seriously lack of food reserves and triggered a mutiny among the officers and soldiers, it was just the 20,000 officers and soldiers left outside the city, as long as they were dead and defended outside the city. I'm afraid it won't take ten days and a half months for Xing Tianjun to attack the city of Luoyang, and it will be difficult to clean up these defenders outside the city before paying a huge price.

At present, these strong city defense facilities have become empty. By this time, no one has planned to fight to the end. There may be very few officers and soldiers in the city who want to die with the city, but the vast majority of officers and soldiers have no fighting spirit.

Under the unified deployment of Xiao Tianjian, the artillery of Xing Tianjun bombarded Luoyang City for three consecutive days outside the south gate of the city. As a result, the wall of the south gate of Luoyang City was full of holes, and even the gate tower was bombarded by the fierce artillery fire of the Xing Tianjun. In such artillery Under the fire, the officers and soldiers defending the city were beaten and lost their final fighting spirit.

Originally, when the officials in Luoyang City saw that the officers and troops outside the city had disintegrated, they also divided the responsibilities of guarding the city. Wang Yinchang, the deputy envoy of the army, guarded the west gate, the governor Kang Meng Hui guarded the south gate, Zhang Zhengxue guarded the east gate, sentenced Bai Shangwen to guarded the north gate, pushed the officials and guards to patrol the city, and ordered everyone in the city to be 15 years old. All the men under the age of 40 have to come out to help defend the city and try to make the last desperate struggle.

But today, not to mention that the people in the city will follow them to resist desperately, even the soldiers have not wanted to do it for a long time. Everyone knows very well that this time the Xing Tianjun will come here. It can be said that it will be a matter of time or later to capture Luoyang City. Not many people want to die with these officials in Luoyang City. What's more, I don't want to fight for Zhu Changxun, the fat man in the city, so the hearts of the army and the people have long been scattered.

On the fourth day, Xiao Tianjian ordered the troops to start organizing troops to use all kinds of newly built siege equipment to start attacking the city. In addition to the South Gate, Luo Li and Li Shuanzhu also led their own troops and launched a siege battle at the east and west gates. Even the north of the city also transferred some soldiers and horses to attack. In short, this time, he besieged Luoyang City. The Tianjun did not intend to let anyone in the city go at all, so it adopted an attack on all sides, and did not use the strategy of encircling three and one, which was commonly used in the siege.

At first, when the Xingtian Army attacked the city, the officers in the city were more or less interesting. They resisted a few times, fired a few shots, and also fired a few arrows. However, when a large number of Xingtian Army troops attacked the foot of the city, the resistance became sparse. The officers had the intention to order resistance, but the soldiers turned a deaf ear and did not buy it at all. Not to mention the people who were forced to go to the city to assist in defense, they couldn't wait for the Xing Tianjun to rush into the city! How can there be a desperate resistance!

As a result, on the afternoon of the day when the Xing Tian Army began to attack the city, hundreds of defenders at the west gate muted under the leadership of some low-level officers in the army, and directly cut down one of the thousands of them on the wall, and tied the king of Henan government, who supervised the battle here, to the gate tower and set off a big fire. The gate tower was burned. On the one hand, they were informed that they had rebelled and surrendered to the Xingtian Army outside the city, but on the other hand, they burned the participating king Yinchang alive in the gate tower.

Not long after, the defenders of the West Gate opened the gate and put down the suspension bridge on the gate. Seeing this, Luo Li immediately rushed across the suspension bridge with the lead, and the tide poured into Luoyang City. At the same time as the mutiny of the West Gate defenders, Liu Jianyi, the deputy general of Luoyang, the main general of the garrison guarding the East Gate, and Luo Tai, were also The crowd announced that they would give up resistance and surrender to the criminal army. The officers and soldiers under his command responded and immediately opened the East Gate. At the same time, Zhang Zhengxue, who was responsible for supervising the battle at the East Gate, was tied into a zongzi and handed it to Li Shuanzhu who led the troops to rush into the city.

As soon as the east and west doors were opened, the officers and soldiers on the north and south sides also suddenly surrendered one after another. The magistrate Kang Meng Hui immediately changed into a civilian clothes and hid among the people in the city. As for other officials also fled around one after another. After Xing Tianjun entered the city, he quickly controlled the four gates and did not let anyone out of the city, and And sent troops to quickly begin to clean up the last dead in the city, and transferred the iron bone battalion and rushed straight to the Fuwang Mansion in the city.