One Hundred and Twelve, The Last Struggle (Part 2)

Seeing that there was still some money available at hand, King Qing ordered the establishment of the Nanjing Preparatory Defense Bureau. Strictly speaking, it should be the City Defense Bureau. He ordered people to raise flags on the busiest streets, intending to recruit a group of soldiers to rescue the emergency.

But the problem is that the more effective managers and family generals in the Prince Qing’s mansion had already fallen into the battlefield in Zhenjiang at this time, so he had to force himself to use the officials of the Interior Affairs Office who felt unreliable and let these slippery gangsters be responsible for recruiting soldiers.

Although this method is simply to sharpen guns in the face of battle, since each person had ten hang copper coins and two coarse cloth settlement fees were paid on the spot, the work started smoothly at the beginning. On December 5 alone, two thousand new troops were recruited, which was a remarkable achievement.

Unexpectedly, before King Qing had time to be happy, on the morning of December 6, after the enemy appeared in Zijin Mountain, the two thousand new troops that had just been recruited actually scattered in the blink of an eye, and the officials of the Interior Affairs Office responsible for recruiting were nowhere to be seen.

It turned out that these so-called "new troops" were actually some unemployed vagrants and second-rate men, and a group of officials in charge of the Ministry of Internal Affairs took the opportunity to make up enough money and get enough money to run away. Then they all rushed to the front before the enemy arrived...

What's even more terrible is that on the eve of running away, these officials of the Internal Affairs Office had not forgotten to embezzle state-owned assets again and privately divide the remaining copper coins and coarse cloth used to recruit soldiers and prepare for war, which made the poor King Qing lose both his life and his wealth for a moment, and he almost vomited blood.

While recruiting troops urgently, in view of the tragic situation of empty arsenals in the city and lack of weapons to use, King Qing then pulled out a few old Hanlins who had been foolish in reading from the six ministries of the court that had almost escaped, saying that they would die to serve the country, so that these old and strong "slaughter officials" could use their remaining energy, and serve the court again, serving as a porter foreman, supervising the civilians in the city to transport a batch of small stones to the city tower.

According to His Highness Qing's plan, in this way, when the enemy attacks the city, even if there are no weapons, the guards can order the unarmed soldiers to throw these small stones down and use them as rookie-level grenades.

However, God seemed to be worried that King Qing was too open-minded and was so angry that he was so angry that he had been in a while. When the two thousand newly recruited soldiers from the Nanjing Defense Bureau fled all the money in half a day, the old Hanlin, who was responsible for carrying stones, then gave him a blow.

——On the afternoon of December 6, the old men came back excitedly and reported that the work of moving stones had been exceeded because they felt that the small stones were not powerful enough, so they specially selected a large number of huge stones and sent the recruitment of the civilians to drag them up...

King Qing quickly climbed up to the city and saw that every stone had hundreds of pounds. Who had such great strength to throw it down? He was speechless when he was angry.

After a few days of merging in this way, the little money left by Emperor Kant was soon spent by King Qing, but the city defense was not strengthened at all - because there was no navy, the river defense was forced to completely release it.

The Western Fleet's reconnaissance speedboats had already wandered deep into the Qinhuai River every few days; and due to the weak force, Tianbao City and Shitou City Fortress in the suburbs were forced to give up, and the traffic lines to the outside world were completely interrupted for a while.

The only achievement was to use earth bags to seal all the thirteen city gates before the enemy attacked the city.

But this did not make people feel at all relieved - because from December 7th, the Western fleet that had been wandering on the river and the Western artillery that occupied the Tianbao City Fortress in the suburbs began to bombard Nanjing City with solid bombs intermittently, which shocked the whole city several days. After hearing the news, King Qing Wanyan Natong was shocked and quickly climbed to the city to supervise the battle. Then, seeing that there were many artillery on the top of the city, he ordered the artillery to fire.

But the problem is that the original city defense artillery had already fled at this time. King Qing had to let the royal guards around him be experts and find ways to fire the cannons. Then because of his unfamiliar technology, the quality of the artillery itself was also poor, and he did not have any expert guidance. As a result, he fought vigorously all day. In addition to causing five explosion accidents, wasting thousands of kilograms of gunpowder, and causing the royal guards to lose more than ten, he did not kill an enemy at all.

However, seeing the people in the city became even more frightened. In order to strengthen their courage, even if the royal guards who were scared to death by the repeated explosions were dissuading them and even resolutely disobeyed their orders, His Highness Qing still refused to stop the artillery. Even though he knew that he could not kill several enemies, he would have to continue bluffing like this.

In the end, both sides had to give in: the shelling could not be stopped, but the royal guards could not continue to die.

Therefore, King Qing could only pinch his nose and raise a group of prisoners from the prison, allowing them to fill in medicine, load, ignite, and shoot under the supervision of the royal guards... Therefore, the explosion of the city's artillery firecrackers became more frequent, and the accuracy of the artillery and the results of the artillery were even more undesirable.

At the same time, most of the Eight Banners children in Nanjing, looking at the shells falling into the neighborhood every few days, felt that the situation was hopeless and they were just thinking about drinking and prostitution, and smoking opium. People died every day from the wind, alcoholism or drug overdose...

A small number of Manchurian Banners, who were still somewhat bloody, rummaged in the cellar, dug out all the rusted ancestral armor and sabers in the cellar. If they really couldn't find decent weapons, they would tie a sharpened knife with wooden sticks, or sharpen bamboo to make bamboo guns, and then claimed fiercely that they would fight to the death with the foreign riots... But as soon as they heard the sound of cannons on the top of the city, they would immediately indent into the cellar.

In this way, Nanjing City lasted for a few days with the rumbling cannons. In addition to capturing a few street hooligans with extreme attitudes and treating them as spies who collude with enemies, they are basically busy making noises with gunpowder to cheer themselves up.

Then, on December 12, all this numb, absurd, mad and tragic end-time picture all ushered in the final moment.

Because, a towering giant ship like a moving castle,

With an unstoppable aura, it suddenly broke out from the sky and shone brightly in the warm winter sun, proudly overlooking the countless lives below

——The rebuilt Xiangrui floating battleship arrived in Nanjing at noon on December 12th

The military and civilians in the city, which was originally very fragile, finally collapsed completely after seeing the huge warship pressing above their heads...
Chapter completed!