The Japanese are at the gates of the city, and I am sleeping on top of it!
Zhu Ping'an's miraculous operation deeply shocked and moved the people who were fleeing in front of the city gate, and gave them an injection of strong sedative.
The news that the county magistrate had slept on the ground on the city wall and vowed to live and die with the county soon spread throughout Jingnan County. The atmosphere of panic that had been hanging over Jingnan was instantly dispelled.
So... ... there is still some fear... ...
"Master Magistrate, please, please order the city gates to be opened so that we can flee. Master, I kowtow to you, please open the city gates so that I can take my mother and flee."
"Master Magistrate, if you want to live and die with the county, then go ahead and die with the county. We won't stop you, but you can't drag us along. I'm a coward, and I don't want to die yet. I don't want to live and die with the county."
"My Lord, I kowtow to you. Please give the order to open the city gates. If you don't open the city gates, I will kneel down and cannot get up."
Although Zhu Ping'an shocked and infected many people, there were still many people at the scene who requested, or it would be more appropriate to use the words "threat" or "demand", asking Zhu Ping'an to order the city gates to be opened so that they could escape the city.
"My fellow villagers, it's not that I, Zhu Ping'an, don't want you to flee the city, but fleeing the city at this time is undoubtedly seeking death. The Japanese pirates are burning, killing and looting outside the city, and are now gathering in the county town. If you leave the city now, you will run into the blade of the Japanese pirates... At this time, staying in the city and relying on the city wall for defense is the best choice..."
Zhu Ping'an stood on the city wall and patiently explained to everyone. Zhu Ping'an's explanation was similar to Liu Dadao's previous explanation. After all, Liu Dadao's words at that time were also learned from Zhu Ping'an.
Just like Liu Dadao's explanation, many of the panicked people who wanted to flee the city did not buy it. They just wanted to flee the city and did not listen to Zhu Ping'an's explanation at all, nor did they believe what Zhu Ping'an said.
If it were normal times, Zhu Ping'an would definitely continue to do their ideological work patiently. However, today was different from normal times. The Japanese pirates were about to attack the city, and the situation was critical and very serious. The current defense situation of Jingnan County was not optimistic. Jingnan County was in danger, and Zhu Ping'an had no time to explain more to them.
"Please stand up, fellow villagers. At this moment, the Japanese pirates are about to attack the city, and the city gates must not be opened. I am responsible for the tens of thousands of people in the county, so I ask for your forgiveness." Zhu Ping'an bowed and apologized to the people below the city.
Suddenly, there were sounds of cursing and crying from under the city wall.
Zhu Ping'an prioritized the issues and, despite the cries and curses from the people below the city, began to arrange the defense of Jingnan County.
When he started to deploy the defense, Zhu Ping'an found that the defensive situation in Jingnan was much more severe than he had imagined.
The first problem is that there are too few people.
The defense force of Jingnan County mainly consisted of county yamen runners and city guards. There were three shifts of 106 yamen runners in Jingnan County, but 23 of them fled with Li Dianshi, leaving only 83 runners. There were 80 city guards in Jingnan County, but 12 of them fled, leaving only 68. In other words, there were 151 city guards available in Jingnan County.
Although it is unclear how many Japanese pirates plundered Jingnan, based on the scope of their devastation, it is estimated that there were no less than two thousand of them.
There were 151 of us, and more than 2,000 Japanese pirates. The ratio of our strength was close to 20 to 1, which was a serious situation. In addition, the more than 2,000 Japanese pirates were desperate criminals who often shed blood and were extremely cruel. It was said that the real Japanese pirates were all highly skilled in martial arts. The 151 of us... The yamen runners were good at catching petty thieves, but it was really difficult for them to go to the battlefield. The soldiers guarding the city were obviously in disrepair, lacked training, and were hollowed out by alcohol and sex. Zhu Ping'an really didn't dare to have much hope for their fighting power.
However, given the current situation, Zhu Ping'an has no choice but to maximize their combat effectiveness.
In order to maximize their fighting power, Zhu Pingan issued three orders on the city wall with the county seal.
A reward order. Zhu Ping'an issued a reward order: all the yamen runners and soldiers who were brave enough to defend the city would be rewarded with 10 taels of silver each; those who were injured while defending the city would be rewarded with an additional 10 taels of silver; those who died while defending the city would be compensated with an additional 50 taels of silver. As the saying goes, there must be brave men under a heavy reward. Zhu Ping'an's reward order more than doubled the morale of the yamen runners and soldiers.
A beheading order. Zhu Pingan appointed Liu Mu, Liu Dadao and six other people, as well as six other selected yamen runners, a total of twelve people, as supervisors. Zhu Pingan issued three beheading orders: The supervisors should be beheaded in battle if the yamen runners and soldiers retreated first; if the yamen runners and soldiers did not obey orders and retreated in battle, the supervisors would be beheaded immediately! No matter who dared to disobey the military order, they would be killed without mercy!
Zhu Ping'an divided 151 people into five defense teams of 30 people each, with one team deployed at the east gate, south gate, and north gate, and two teams deployed at the west gate. The teams were ordered to support each other at any time.
The second problem was that the city defense equipment was in disrepair.
First of all, there was no trench outside Jingnan County, and there was no time to dig a trench at this moment. As for things like thorns to repel the enemy, there was no such thing.
Secondly, there was a serious shortage of defensive weapons. There was not a single cannon, and the catapult had long since fallen apart and decayed. A few crossbows were found in the weapons warehouse, but they had fallen into disrepair and most of them were unusable. Only two crossbows were barely usable, and there were only about twenty crossbows that could be used. Zhu Ping'an directed the placement of all three crossbows at the west gate. There were not many rolling logs, only eight, and the nailed sharp weapons embedded in the wood were all rusted, but they could still be used after polishing. There was not a single wolf tooth dagger commonly used for defending the city in Jingnan County.
Finally, there were not enough bows and arrows. There were less than a hundred bows in the county armory, and not many feather arrows either.
The only good news was that there were quite a few standard sabers, spears and shields in the armory, enough to arm the yamen runners and soldiers, with a lot left over. In addition, there were some simple cloth breastplates in the armory, although the defensive power was not very good, but after the yamen runners and soldiers put on the cloth breastplates, they felt a lot of comfort, their sense of security increased a lot, and they also became a lot more courageous.
While the main force of Japanese pirates had not yet arrived, Zhu Ping'an ordered the yamen runners and soldiers to carry stones and huge logs to the city walls to serve as defensive weapons. Some civilians also volunteered to join in and carried a large number of stones and huge logs to the city walls.
In addition to these, Zhu Ping'an also carefully prepared a "gluttonous delicacy" for the Japanese pirates: golden juice.
Zhu Ping'an ordered people to collect a huge amount of feces and urine from nearby houses, and set up more than thirty large pots on the city wall, boiling the mixture of feces and urine non-stop until it boiled.
It is no exaggeration to say that the power and lethality of this "dish" are much higher than other defensive weapons on the city wall.
This falls into the category of biological and chemical weapons.
It was a hot autumn, and the Japanese pirates were barefoot and shaved. The boiling golden juice was enough to burn them. Once burned, the bacteria and microorganisms in the feces would infect the Japanese pirates through the wounds. In this way, even if the Japanese pirates were lucky enough to survive, they would die from the infection of the wounds.