The sound of violent beating of metal sounded in the rain curtain, piercing the layers of white water vapor mist, announcing that the Dashun Army's attack had failed.

On both sides of the Wei River, two tall mounds of earth had been built. While the siege was going on, civilians recruited from four villages were still struggling to move straw bags filled with earth.

These two mounds of earth were transported up so that they could be built higher. No one dared to be lazy, because the menacing old soldiers from the Dashun Army were supervising the battle at the scene! Seven or eight dead bodies were lying in the muddy water.

They were all people who were beheaded for trying to escape!

It rained heavily, the military law was like a mountain, and the earth-piling project was huge and time was tight. The civil servants who were recruited were dragged in to work as coolies before they had time to "eat their mother and drink their mother." Not only some people were recruited

, as well as the livestock and grain stored in people’s homes!

The area on the south bank of the Wei River in Tianjin, due to the river barrier and the protection of the Tianjin Navy, suffered relatively small losses in the several battles at the entrance of the Manchurian soldiers. Therefore, the population is relatively dense, and there are more food and property among the people.

It is convenient for the Dashun army who is currently attacking the city to collect food.

It's just that the people who are now being dragged to carry the pile of dirt are feeling a little cold!

Isn’t it said that King Renyi and Dashun’s army did nothing wrong in the autumn? Now they can’t pull miners to collect food, they are no different from the soldiers and horses of the Zhu thieves!

In fact, these civil servants who braved the rain to pile soil were relatively lucky, at least much luckier than those who were taken to Tianjin Beicheng and used as cannon fodder.

Tianjin Weibei City is not big. It stands on the Wei River in the north. It is a small castle. It is connected to the south city by a pontoon bridge. Between the two cities, the Wei River east of the pontoon bridge is where the sand boats entering the Wei River are parked.

The Weihe Tonghai Wharf is on the south bank next to the north gate of Nancheng. On the other side of the pontoon, there is also a water transport wharf. The rice grains unloaded from the sea-carrying sand ships can be directly pulled to the water transport wharf and loaded onto the canal.

Shipping to Tongzhou.

The water transport has been interrupted for a long time now, so there is not a single ship around the original water transport wharf on the west side of the pontoon bridge. However, the river on the east side of the pontoon bridge is now densely packed with sand boats from the sand boat gang.

These sand ships are protected by the northern and southern cities of Tianjin and the pontoons, so they can be said to be foolproof.

Once the North City of Tianjin is breached, the sand ships moored on the Wei River will be in trouble. Because after the Beicheng is lost, the pontoon bridge will not be preserved. And once the pontoon bridge is destroyed, the Dashun Army will be able to use the forcibly commandeered canoes.

Follow the Wei River to launch an attack on the sand boats of the Sha Chuan Gang.

If the wind and rain stop and the weather clears up, the Dashun Army can also use the water flow to launch a fire ship offensive!

The Wei River is only so wide and cannot compare to the sea. If there were a large number of fire boats going down the river, Captain Shen's sand boat would be in danger of being burned.

Therefore, Li Yan, who knew something about water warfare, chose Weibeicheng in Tianjin as the breakthrough point after some inspections. At the same time, he also ordered people to recruit a large number of civilians from the surrounding villages, and some of them were sent to pile soil on both sides of the Wei River.

——Pile up commanding heights one by one to place archers, gunmen and tiger squatting cannons. This part of the people are mainly poor farmers, so they just work as coolies and there is not much danger to their lives.

Another group of men recruited from wealthy families around Tianjin Wei went directly into the siege of Tianjin Wei Beicheng!

At this time, under Tianjin Weibeicheng, the tragedy is ten times worse!

Due to continuous heavy rains, the water level in the trenches of Weibei City in Tianjin has skyrocketed, but several places have been filled with straw bags to form passages. Around the passages, there are layers of corpses of common people and officials.

Under the not-so-high city wall, there are many shield carts and crash carts scattered around. They are all crudely made things. They also use many door panels, beams, and wooden pillars as materials. I don’t know how many private houses have been demolished?

Those who pushed these shield cars and crashed them were all common people, men, women, old and young. Many of them were wearing torn silk clothes. You could tell they were from wealthy families. They had no armor to protect themselves.

After a few waves of attacks, they were all dead everywhere. They were soaked in mud and water until they turned white. But how could the soldiers of Dashun Army care about their life and death? If it were the Ming Army, they might not care about the life and death of poor and lower-middle peasants, but those with meritorious status

Landlords and wealthy people cannot be killed casually. Otherwise, a group of civil servants in the court would jump up and the soldiers below would be dizzy.

But here in Dashun, there are not so many scruples! Who cares whether you are a scholar or a scholar? You are not a good person. On the contrary, the treatment of poor farmers is better, at least they will not be immediately driven out to be used as cannon fodder.

But when the wealthy households around Tianjin Wei run out, it will still be their turn!

The first ones sent to fight were Tang Tong's men. Li Zicheng's team also followed the principle of first come, first served. The old soldiers were considered Yuan Cong and the most elite. Chen Yongfu's soldiers and horses were gathered by Li Zicheng before he captured Shaanxi, so they were considered veterans.

Tang Tong's soldiers had just taken refuge not long ago. They were considered new auxiliary troops. They were naturally used in the siege and attrition war. They were forced by Li Guo's old soldiers to launch waves of attacks. Tong Ping held the city or left the city to counterattack.

A fight broke out. Soldiers from both sides, all wearing the Ming army's mandarin duck war jackets, died one after another. There were still some who were not dead, and they let out bursts of desperate wails.

Outside the north, east and west walls of Tianjin North City, there are three forts made of straw bags and soil. These are artillery forts! Once the rain has passed and the weather has cleared, the red cannons and Franco machine guns brought from Beijing

They would be pushed into these forts and used to bombard the city walls.

There are wooden curtains and step curtains on the city wall to protect against rain and arrows, which tightly protect more than a dozen Franco machine guns. These dozens of Franco machine guns were manned by Tang Ruowang and a new scholar named Liu Liang.

In command.

The latter was a young man in his twenties, fair and elegant by birth, and clearly a Confucian elite. But somehow he joined the Western religion and learned mathematics, chemistry and artillery from the Catholic priest Bi Fangji who came to China from the Kingdom of Naples.

Six years after becoming a Jinshi in high school, Shangshu once again mentioned Xu Guangqi and Sun Yuanhua's method of saving the country with guns and artillery. However, Emperor Chongzhen was already in dire straits at that time and had no financial resources to promote military reforms, so there was nothing more to say. After that, Liu Liang was doing

While guarding the election in Beijing, he continued to learn Western tricks from Tang Ruowang.

On March 21st, he, Tang Ruowang, Li Zubai and others ran away with Zhu Cixiang. Now they are all temporarily assigned to the military and political guards of the Generalissimo's Mansion in Fujun, and are in charge of firearms. Among them, Li Zubai is in charge of gunpowder, Tang Ruowang and

Su Ziwen was in charge of the cannon. Li Zubai's son Li Shi was asked by Zhu Cihong to be in charge of blacksmithing.

By the way, the scholar-officials of the Ming Dynasty had a different attitude towards Western exotic skills and tricks than the scholar-officials of the later Qing Dynasty. The scholar-officials of the Qing Dynasty paid more attention to Confucian orthodoxy and were wary of Western culture and fancy skills. And the Ming Dynasty scholar-officials paid more attention to Confucian ethics.

The scholar-bureaucrats in the dynasty were more curious and had a more positive attitude toward learning Western culture and technology. Serious Confucian scholars and even great Confucian scholars such as Xu Guangqi, Sun Yuanhua, Yang Tingyun, Li Zhizao, Li Tianjing, and Li Zubai openly studied and translated Western technical books, and even

Many people have become Catholics! They no longer even pay attention to the way of body and use, which is Chinese learning as body and Western learning as practice.

In contrast, the Qing Dynasty was much more resolute in defending the orthodoxy of Neo-Confucianism. Historically, Li Zubai and his son Li Shi, who had taken refuge in the Qing Dynasty, were sentenced to Lingchi for a copy of "An Introduction to Tianxue"! In the late Qing Dynasty, even Lin Zexu was

Great Confucians who open their eyes to see the world don't know whether the knees of the British people can be bent. As for Li Hongzhang, a traitor and Westernizer who uses Chinese learning as his body and Western learning as his application, he has long been a public enemy of the orthodox path of Confucianism. If it weren't for his hands,
Chapter completed!