Chapter 125 (9) Bizarre Tunnel Battles

Laoguantun is a stone's throw away from Xinjie. Burmese soldiers suddenly appeared in that area, and built a fence along the hillside.This is actually the Burmese soldiers shouting at the Qing soldiers: Come here, I am here, come and attack if you have the ability! Whether to fight or not to fight, the Qing soldiers held several meetings on this matter, and they all felt that this old Guantun was not so easy to fight.But if you don't fight... If you don't fight, what are you doing here? So Fu Heng, who was sick in bed, was carried by someone to go straight to Laoguantun. When he arrived at the place, he first built a mountain with soil, carried the cannon up, and then fired at the barracks of the Burmese soldiers.But the battalion fence is made of rattan, which has great elasticity and toughness. It is a bit like the wicker city of Kuqa in the Battle of Huijiang. So the artillery attack failed.

The Qing soldiers came up with a second method. They got old rattans hundreds of feet long, first sent people to take the rattans, sneak up to the Burmese barracks, tied the rattans to the barracks, and then three thousand Qing soldiers The soldiers worked together: one, two, three, "Oh my mother", three thousand Qing soldiers all made ground gourds. What's going on? It turned out that it was the Burmese soldiers who cut off the vines and made a big somersault of three thousand Qing soldiers. The rattan attack failed, and Fu Heng ordered to switch to the fire attack. If you want to attack with fire, you first make a huge rattan shield. One rattan shield can cover dozens of people. Two soldiers carry the rattan shield and walk in front. Behind the rattan shield are more than a dozen soldiers, each carrying a bundle of dry firewood.More than a hundred huge rattan plaques were raised side by side, like a huge wall that was pushed forward with a bang.Sure enough, he pushed it to the fence of the Burmese soldiers, removed the antlers, and crossed the trench. The soldiers lit dry firewood and threw it into the fence of the Burmese soldiers.

Unexpectedly, the northwest wind blew up at this juncture, and the Burmese barracks were damp and not easy to ignite. Instead, the fire burned towards the Qing soldiers, who were ashamed and turned around and fled. The artillery plan, rattan plan, and fire attack plan all failed. Fu Heng took his time and made the last move: tunnel warfare! So the Qing soldiers dug a tunnel and entered, but the Burmese soldiers didn't know it, squatting in the barracks and waving at the Qing soldiers and screaming strangely.The Qing soldiers ignored it, and quickly dug the tunnel under the barracks, buried the explosives, lit the fuse, and then the Qing soldiers waited calmly with their knives and guns in their hands.

Hearing a loud "boom", the barracks of the Burmese soldiers flew into the sky, and the Burmese soldiers screamed strangely in shock, but the Qing soldiers were full of energy and shouted: "Kill, go to the Burmese soldiers who have no barracks!" The battalion rushed away. Seeing that the Qing soldiers were about to rush into the Burmese camp, something strange happened suddenly, and there was a "bang chirp", and a barracks fell from the sky, just blocking the Qing soldiers from the Burmese camp.The Qing soldiers were stunned, and the Burmese soldiers were also stunned. The hatchback was separated by a barracks. You looked at me, and I looked at you. Both sides were full of confusion and incomprehension.

What's going on?The Burmese soldiers and the Qing soldiers looked up at the sky at the same time, and it took a long while before they suddenly woke up.It turned out that it was the battalion fence that was blown up into the sky by gunpowder. After flying into the air, it fell down again.Because the camp fence is made of soft vines, although it flew into the sky, it did not disperse, and still fell as a complete camp fence, and it just landed in its original position. The soldiers of the Qing Dynasty couldn't tell the truth and got angry, but they felt it was funny: if it doesn't work once, then do it again.Dig the tunnel again, go under the barracks, bury explosives, and blow it up again. After seeing the barracks fly into the sky, they fall back to the original place intact.Not only the Qing soldiers were confused, but even the Burmese soldiers were surprised.

One more time...for a fourth time... They bombed several times in a row, but the battalion fence just jumped around in place, and it was unscathed. The Qing soldiers had no choice but to report to the commander-in-chief Fu Heng and asked the leader what was going on. How could Fu Heng know what was going on. I could only find a group of experts and discuss it for a long time before I came to a conclusion, saying: The slope of the vertical fence is slanted down, while the tunnel is flat, so the slope soil is thick and cannot be cracked. When the tunnel battle was declared a failure, Fu Heng had nothing to do.At this time, he checked his soldiers again, and found that of the 40,000 soldiers who came, 27,000 were killed, and only 13,000 remained.Other generals such as Ali Gun, Admiral of the Navy, Ye Xiangde, General Wu Shisheng, Fu Xian, Hu Erqi, Adimbao and other generals died of illness due to acclimatization.

Fu Heng was forced to switch from offense to defense, which meant that the Qing army was surrounded by the Burmese army again. In the most optimistic case, Mingrui's end was Fu Heng's end. Unless... Fu Heng on the sickbed was crying and panting with difficulty: Unless...accepting Burma's request for surrender, even Qianlong would not be able to step down.