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The joy that the victory in Texas brought to the entire Ming Empire is difficult to describe in words.
However, Zhu Cixiang did not remain immersed in it.
As a time traveler whose soul came from later generations, he knew very well that the Manchus sent to regain Shandong this time were just a partial force.
If Dorgon was stimulated by the defeat in Texas and changed his overall strategy and shifted his forces to the east, the Ming army would face tremendous pressure.
Of course, Zhu Cixiang would not have any illusions about the Manchus.
All he had to do was to prepare for a rainy day and take all possible situations into consideration.
Ever since Nurhachi raised his troops, the Manchus have lacked the ability to siege the city, so they mostly used time to create chaos from within, open the city gates, and capture the city without any blood.
This tactic naturally has limitations, and it was precisely because Huang Taiji saw this that he formed Wu Zhenchaoha, an army equipped with a large number of artillery.
Huang Taiji's strategic vision is still very vicious.
He knows that the Ming army's advantage lies in artillery.
So as long as the Eight Banners Army can catch up with the Ming army in this aspect, it will have an overall advantage in the showdown with the Ming army.
The Ningjin defense line created a huge shadow for Huang Taiji, so he was naturally extremely eager to have a heavy artillery army to blast through the solid city walls.
Unfortunately, only the Manchus in Liaodong lacked artillery-making technology.
Even if Huang Taiji invested a lot of manpower and material resources, he could not make Wuzhenchaoha's artillery comparable to the Ming army.
Until the Dengzhou Rebellion occurred, Kong Youde rebelled against the Ming Dynasty and surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, bringing a large number of Dengzhou artillery with him.
These artillery pieces were all French cannons brought by Portuguese mercenaries from the entrenched territory of Macau, and were among the most advanced artillery pieces of the era.
With these prototype cannons, Huang Taiji could order craftsmen in Liaodong to imitate them.
Although the imitation heavy artillery is not as good as the original version of the Fo Lang robot, it is still much stronger than the original crude artillery.
At this point, the Manchurian artillery was no longer inferior to the Ming army.
In the original history, in the 17th year of Chongzhen, Kong Youde and other Sanshun kings entered the pass with the Qing army, and their main role was to attack Li Zicheng.
Together with Wu Sangui's troops, they served as the vanguard to charge for the Manchus.
Among them, Wu Sangui, Shang Kexi and other troops followed Azig and marched from Datong to Yulin, and from northern Shaanxi to Xi'an.
Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming and other troops, led by Duduo, attacked Tongguan from Huaiqing, Henan.
Li Zicheng's response was to send Li Guo and Gao Yigong to defend northern Shaanxi, while he personally led an army to defend Tongguan.
In the end, Tongguan fell, and Li Zicheng knew that Xi'an could not be defended, so he once again made the decision to retreat.
After that, he was chased and beaten by the Qing army, and finally died in Jiugong Mountain.
If the original historical development is followed, the Qing Dynasty's use of troops against Shaanxi occurred in late October of the 17th year of Chongzhen.
Before that, the Han army such as Kong Youde could not threaten Shandong.
But Zhu Cixiang was worried that the butterfly effect brought about by the victory in Texas would affect Dorgon's decision-making.
If Dorgon sent Kong Youde and other troops to Shandong, the situation would be completely different.
Although Dezhou is a fortified city, it may be under great pressure when faced with the heavy artillery bombardment of Kong Youde's Han army.
Perhaps these heavy artillery could not directly destroy the city walls of Dezhou, but they could seriously damage the battlements and defensive equipment, causing the number of casualties of the Ming army to rise sharply.
This is certainly not what Zhu Cixiang wants to see.
After much thought, Zhu Cixi decided to build a bastion in the northern part of Shandong, namely Wucheng, Dezhou and Leling.
The essence of the so-called bastion is to change the city from a convex polygon to a concave polygon.
Such an improvement will make the attacking side exposed to several bastion faces no matter where they attack the castle.
The defenders can use cross fire to attack the bastion.
It delivers multiple hits.
The existing cities of the Ming Dynasty, including the fortress complex built by Sun Chengzong in Liaodong, are all square cities in the traditional sense.
If such a city is built solidly, it may not have any problem facing ordinary artillery, but its biggest weakness is that it will require more soldiers to defend the city.
Just imagine, even if a thousand men were assigned to guard each of the four walls, the entire city would still need to be garrisoned by at least five thousand men.
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Five thousand people means five thousand mouths.
Even if there is not a single commoner in the city, all the food is supplied to the soldiers, and the consumption is staggering.
Huang Taiji's strategy to capture the Daling River back then was to besiege rather than attack.
Even if the Qing army cannot directly capture the city, they can still surround it and starve the ancestral army to death.
The siege was all about consumption.
Although the consumption of the Qing army was huge, the consumption of the ancestral army in Dalinghe City was even greater, and it was all in vain.
In the end, Zu Dashou ate all the people in the city and Kaicheng surrendered.
Huang Taiji took Daling River effortlessly.
What if the Daling River was replaced by a group of Western-style fortresses?
There is no doubt that the effect will be very good One of the great advantages of a bastion is that it requires very few garrison troops.
A small bastion only needs a few hundred or even dozens of people to withstand thousands of siege soldiers.
Although these small bastions are not large in area, they are like nails driven there.
Do you want to pull it out or not?
If you don't pull it out, it will disgust you.
If it is pulled out, the bastion's ability to withstand artillery fire is much higher than that of an ordinary city, and the city will eventually have to be besieged.
But how to surround a bastion garrisoned by dozens or hundreds of people?
How many people should be sent to surround it?
If you send too few people, you won't be able to surround them.
If you send too many people, food consumption will be a big problem.
If the siege team sends tens of thousands of people to surround a bastion defended by hundreds of people, how much food and grass will be consumed for half a year?
The defenders in the bastion can completely store hundreds of people's rations for a year or more.
No matter how you look at it, it's the siege party that suffers.
If it is a bastion group, it will be even more terrifying and can effectively prevent the cavalry from advancing.
To remove all these nails, I'm afraid it would take the entire country's efforts.
Of course, the strength of the bastion is based on specific historical conditions.
Only with sharp muskets can the bastion maximize its advantages.
This is why Zhu Cixiang is so eager to set up a Firearms Department to build high-quality firearms.
The bastion can provide crossfire, and if paired with sharp firecrackers, it can undoubtedly play the role of machine gun crossfire.
Bastion and firecracker, both are indispensable.
If the fire blunderbuss is replaced by a crossbow, the effect will be greatly reduced.
Of course, the bastion cannot be absolutely invincible.
It was born because of the emergence of old-style artillery, and its disappearance was due to the widespread use of explosive shells.
Zhu Cixiang couldn't develop a flower bomb himself now, and it was naturally impossible for the Manchu and Qing Dynasties to develop one.
Therefore, the bastion is invincible in this era.
The most important thing is that the cost of building a bastion is too low.
A bastion garrisoned by dozens or hundreds of people costs less than one-tenth of a county seat.
With the current economic strength of the Ming Dynasty, it is possible to build a group of bastions in northern Shandong to completely isolate the Manchu and Qing armies.
If the Manchus and Qing dynasties didn't pull out all these bastions, it would be impossible even if they wanted to plunder the villages and towns behind the bastions
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