Tianjin Wei, March 27, the 17th year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty.

The sudden southeasterly wind brought a heavy rain to the Wei side of Tianjin, making everything around it disappear. The Wei River, which leads to the sea after gathering many rivers, is no longer as peaceful as before. It is just under the wind and rain. Turbulent waves rolled through it, seemingly trying to wipe out the heroes of this year of sudden change in the world.

This sudden storm was extremely fierce and seemed to be trying its best to wash away all the smoke and blood that shrouded the Sanwei area of ​​Tianjin.

Twenty or thirty miles away from Weidong, Tianjin, on the rolling waters of the Wei River, more than a hundred sand ships are sailing in the wind. The leader is a ship ten feet long and two feet wide, with two sides. A large centipede warship with forty long oars. On the bow of the ship, stood a middle-aged man dressed as a Confucian scholar. The man held an umbrella, but it could not cover the rain blown by the strong wind. The silk Confucian clothes They were all wet, but he didn't know it.

This Confucian scholar's name is Shen Tingyang. He was a civil servant in the Ming Dynasty. He was worshiped as the Imperial College Secretary and was in charge of shipping and Liaodong payroll. However, he was not an ordinary civil servant, because besides his official status, he also had a special His identity is that he is the chief helmsman of the Beiyang Shachuan Gang!

The Shen family of the Shachuan Gang was also famous in shopping malls and arenas in Nanzhili. In the words of later generations, he was a red-top businessman. There were no "red-top men" in the Ming Dynasty, and there were no red-top merchants. One way to say it, but they are all similar in nature, they are both official, business and political.

If there is any difference between Ming Dynasty officials and businessmen like the Shen family of the Shachuan Gang and those in the Qing Dynasty, it is that they have a high degree of independence and cannot be manipulated by the court and officials.

Because the Shen family of the Shachuan Gang is active in the Beiyang waters, they are wealthy merchants operating on the sea. They are similar to the Shiba Zhi (Zheng Zhilong and his gang) group based in Fujian. They all have guns and artillery, and they are both businessmen, thieves and officials. Armed businessman.

The prefect who ruined his family and the county magistrate who exterminated his family couldn't deal with the Shibazhi and the Shachuan Gang. Even if the serious Ming Dynasty navy (not counting the recruiting navy like Zheng Zhilong) took action, they would definitely not be able to defeat the current Shachuan Gang.

In a sense, maritime merchant groups such as the Shachuan Gang and Shibazhi, like the Manchu military groups that emerged in the Northeast, were emerging forces in the era of great strife in the late Ming Dynasty.

However, they did not oppose the rule of the Ming Dynasty, nor would they compete with the Ming Dynasty's ruling group for land, population, and wealth. Instead, they were new forces that supported the Ming Dynasty's rule and provided wealth to the Ming Dynasty's ruling group.

Their current goal is to use the maritime power in their hands as capital to serve the Ming Dynasty and become members of the Ming Dynasty's ruling group. Shibazhi and the Shachuan Gang also achieved their wish and became an alternative existence in the Ming Dynasty's officialdom.

The Shachuan Gang became official merchants earlier than Shibazhi. As early as the Wanli Korean War, they were transporting grain for the Ming Dynasty army. As a result, the Shachuan Gang became a wealthy business group that traveled across the Beiyang and traveled between the Ming Dynasty and North Korea.

Later, when Mao Wenlong opened the town of Dongjiang, the Shachuan Gang also made great efforts. Otherwise, Mao Wenlong, who was alone overseas and could not get much food and salary, would collapse without Yuan Chonghuan to kill him. According to records: Mao Wenlong was an army, and his annual salary was 800,000 were all imported from Dapi Island in Dengzhou, and all the ginseng and mink species in Liao Dynasty that were hidden in the market were also transported from Dengzhou.

There is also a similar record from the Li Dynasty of North Korea: Governor Mao took over merchants on the island, and the tax revenue in one year amounted to tens of thousands of dollars.

After the collapse of Mao Wenlong's Dongjiang Town, Shen Tingyang continued to dominate the Beiyang sea by undertaking the grain transportation and grain shipping in Liaodong. He became a maritime powerhouse that could compete with the Nanyang Shibazhi Maritime Group.

Of course, the strength of the Shachuan Gang cannot be compared with Shibazhi. The reason why they can divide the Northern and Southern Oceans with the Zheng family in Fujian is because the Beiyang sea is shallow and has many rolling waves, which is suitable for sand boat activities; secondly, the sand boat gang is He contributed more to the court and gained official support from the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, the Shibazhi Maritime Group will not touch the territory of Beiyang and North Korea. Zheng Zhilong refused to go north for this reason.

Now, with the destruction of Beijing and the crisis of the Ming Dynasty, the Shachuan Gang, which had always relied on the Ming Dynasty for support across the Beiyang, has also reached a critical moment.

There is danger, but there is also opportunity!

A man with big bare feet and wearing a raincoat quickly walked up to Shen Tingyang, who was deep in thought, "Chief Rudder, look over there!"

Shen Tingyang came out of his thoughts and looked up in the direction the man was pointing. He saw a group of soldiers walking in the rain on the embankment of the south bank of the Wei River, dragging two small wooden boats. .This group of soldiers were all wearing raincoats and couldn't see clearly their military uniforms, but they were carrying a military flag with the word "Chuang" in black letters on a red background.

"It's a bandit!" Shen Tingyang smiled coldly, turned around and strode towards the cabin. His sand boat was not an ordinary sand boat for transporting cargo, but a warship! There was a thick layer of wood on the deck. It is a cabin surrounded by wooden baffles. There are no ordinary windows on the baffles, but there are many dark shooting holes. Basically, it is pouring rain outside, and the gunman hiding in the cabin can also open fire!

…

"Mr. Qian, there are boats! There are so many boats!"

When the shouts rang out, General Qian of the Dashun Army named Tang Laosi was walking on his way with his head lowered and leaning on a stick. He was a subordinate of Tang Tong and a member of his family. However, Tang Tong had a good fortune and had a worldly position that he could take over. Tang Laosi's life was miserable and he had no choice but to follow Tang Tong, first as a servant, and now as General Manager Qian. After Tang Tong abandoned the Ming Dynasty and surrendered, he was forced to do hard work by Li Zicheng, and his subordinates were also used as cannon fodder by the old camp of the Dashun Army. , there is no oil or water at all, and there are complaints from top to bottom.

The words of Tang Tong, the commander-in-chief, were not as effective as before. Many officers who were not direct descendants of Tang Tong were unwilling to work hard, so the commander-in-chief of Tang Tong could only make his own direct descendants suffer.

Therefore, Tang Laosi, the Qian Boss, could only go to work in the rain, and with three to four hundred subordinates who were very resentful because they had not received the reward for a long time, they searched for ships along the Wei River.

The task of finding a boat was sent to Tang Tong by Li Guo, with the purpose of building a pontoon bridge to completely trap the Tianjin Acropolis.

Li Guo and Tang Tong's more than 10,000 soldiers and horses arrived outside the Tianjin Acropolis on March 26. Because of heavy rain, they did not engage in battle with the defenders. The Ming army did not know whether it was to avoid the rain or because they were afraid. After defeating the Great Shuntian soldiers, they all retreated into the Tianjin Acropolis anyway.

So Li Guo decided to besiege and wait for reinforcements at the same time - he must be surrounded first, don't let Chongzhen, Zhu Cixiang and Wu Sangui escape!

But he and Tang Tong soon discovered that the Tianjin Acropolis was not easy to besiege. It turned out that the city was built along the water, on both sides of the main stream of the Wei River leading to the sea. There were two cities in the north and south, with the south city being the main one and the north city being the supplement. It stands between the river and is connected by a pontoon bridge.

The Wei River is relatively wide, and it flows into the sea, and sea ships can also go upstream. If we deploy troops on both sides of the Wei River, relying on bows and arrows, firecrackers, and tiger squatting cannons, there is no way to stop the strong sea ships from entering and exiting the Wei River.

Tianjin Wei.

To besiege Tianjin Acropolis, we must naturally find a way to block the Wei River. Otherwise, as long as the Tianjin Navy of the Ming Dynasty came upstream, they could pick up Chongzhen, Zhu Cixiang, Wu Sangui and others.

So Li Guo ordered Tang Tong to find wooden ships and build a pontoon bridge downstream of Tianjin Acropolis to block the waterway.

Tang Laosi's subordinates are now carrying out this boring and boring job... After searching for a long time, they found two small fishing boats. Because Tang Laosi's subordinates are all landlubbers and no one knows how to drive a boat.

So we dragged the wooden boat in with a rope.

"Is it a merchant ship?"

"It's heavy. It should be transporting grain from Dagu to Tianjin Wei."

"This is so exciting..."

"Master, stop them!"

Tang Laosi also burst into laughter, this was really achieved without any effort!

He waved his hand and said loudly: "Can the firecracker be fired?"

"able."

"Damn it, let's take a shot first to scare them..."

"Bah, bah, bah..."

Tang Laosi had just ordered the muskets to be fired, and a series of dense muskets sounded here! Of course, it was not the soldiers under his command who were firing the muskets. There was only a bird musket in his team. How could he produce such a continuous firepower?

Of course it was Mr. Shen's gang who opened fire. Forty Cantonese turtle-dove-footed fire cannons were fired at the same time. One volley knocked down four or seventy-eight of Tang Lao's men.
Chapter completed!