The end of the Ming Dynasty swept the world

Chapter 736 Take refuge in Dongjiang Town?
At this time, not only the peasants were afraid that the Ming Dynasty Returning Mission would come back, but even the gentry were afraid that the officers and soldiers would extort property from them when they arrived, and even beheaded and ransacked their homes on the charge of "trafficking thieves".

Because Sun Chuanting was almost driven crazy by Chongzhen, the situation in Henan has completely changed. Li Zicheng seems to be an official soldier, while Sun Chuanting seems to have become a rebel.

So Li Zicheng concentrated his main force in Xiangcheng, and if he couldn't hold on, he deliberately exhausted him.

"Build more than [-] small earthen cities, one in each city, and a big banner on the platform. The pawns clap their hands and clap their horns, and the Hou Jun advances. Each city gate lays down a cannon, and the guards hold their bows and spears on their sides. Between the small cannons. There are pits dug one or two miles in front of the city, and the gaps in the city are also the same."

Sun Chuanting was completely at a loss.

At this time, even more unlucky things happened. Suddenly, it rained heavily for six consecutive days. The roads were muddy, and the supplies of the Ming army could not be delivered.

It took Sun Chuanting a lot of effort to persuade them to follow him to lay down another county to grab food.

However, the county that Sun Chuanting attacked was Jia County, which he had seized last year. It was so poor that the officers and soldiers plundered the entire city, only to find more than 200 livestock. How could they be eaten by the army.

At this time, Sun Chuanting's soldiers and horses had completely turned into an army of refugees, even more ruthless than Ding Yi.

Sun Chuanting has gone crazy in the later stage, and there is nothing he dare not grab.

We guess it is Lu Xiangsheng's bloody example, which is warning him every day.

But at this moment, another bad news came. Wang Weiguo led a long-distance attack on light cavalry and captured Baisha at the junction of Ruzhou and Luoyang. Now the Ming army's grain road was cut off.

The soldiers clamored one after another, demanding to fight back to Shaanxi.

Sun Chuanting didn't plan to go back to Shaanxi. If he wanted to go back to Shaanxi, he would have to go straight back to the Heavenly Prison. However, with such morale in the army, he had no choice but to follow suit, so he adopted a compromise plan. Defeat Wang Weiguo and get through the grain road.

Sun Chuanting left Chen Yongfu's Henan soldiers to stay in Jiaxian County, and led the Shaanxi soldiers to attack Wang Weiguo.

From the perspective of Henan soldiers, they hadn't eaten anything for several days. Sun Chuanting's main force withdrew and left them in Jiaxian County to face Li Zicheng's main force. What's the difference between this and waiting to die?
The Henan soldiers mutinied, and they chased after the Shaanxi soldiers, disrupting the Shaanxi soldiers.

Li Zicheng's army took advantage of the situation to chase and kill them. The Ming army, who had been hungry for several days, had no fighting spirit, ran away and collapsed on the spot.

The two old chicken thieves, Bai Guangen and Gao Jie, led their own troops to flee first, and the entire establishment escaped, while the rest of the Ming army ran around like headless chickens.

Forty thousand of the Ming army died, and another [-] directly surrendered to the Chuang army.

In the end, only [-] remnants of Sun Chuanting's [-] army were defeated and fled back to Tongguan with him.

When Chongzhen heard the news, he was furious again, and reprimanded Sun Chuanting for "light advances and few schemes, and the supervisors were repeatedly defeated", and asked him to be demoted and retained, and made meritorious service.

He used to urge Sun Chuanting to enter the army as if he was urging his life, but when he lost the battle, he said that Sun Chuanting was a man of few schemes, anyway, his emperor was always right.

Before Chongzhen's imperial decree arrived, Chuangjun had already chased Tongguan, and Sun Chuanting ordered Gao Jie and Bai Guangen to fight.

Bai Guangen took the lead in the battle, but Gao Jie also remembered him.

Because of Baofeng's defeat before, Bai Guangen saw Gao Jie was defeated and ran away first without saving him, so Gao Jie will watch "Yongjun disregard" from the sidelines and take revenge on Bai Guangen.

So Bai Guangen was defeated, and the Ming army fled in all directions. Bai Guangen fled to Guyuan in one breath, and Gao Jie fled to Yan'an.

Only Sun Chuanting defended Tongguan, and Li Zicheng's army went around from behind the mountain to fight in front of the city. In November, the city fell and Sun Chuanting died in battle.

Sun Chuanting's wife, three concubines and two daughters committed suicide.

Afterwards, just like Lu Xiangsheng died in battle, Chongzhen felt that Sun Chuanting must not have died, but had fled the battle, so he did not give shade.

After Sun Chuanting's death, the last army of the Ming Dynasty in the Central Plains that could fight was gone.

After Sun Chuanting's death, Li Zicheng continued to lead troops into Shaanxi according to the original plan.

Originally, the Ming Dynasty still had many troops in Shaanxi at this time, including Bai Guangen and Gao Jie who were defeated in Shaanxi, Fumin, the commander-in-chief of Ningxia stationed in Ningxia, Zuo Guangxian from Yulin Town, and You Shiwei from Yan'an. Five or sixty thousand soldiers and horses.

In the original history, except for Gao Jie who fled to the east, the rest either surrendered or were destroyed.

Li Zicheng decided to wipe out the Ming army in Shaanxi one by one, completely occupy Shaanxi, and then, like Henan, dispatch local officials and garrison generals to consolidate his territory and achieve the cause of overlord.

He first sent Li Guo to pursue Gao Jie, and Gao Jie had two paths at this time.

He was guarding Yan'an, and to the north was Ding Yi's territory, but he didn't know that Ding Yi had already occupied that side, he only knew that it was the territory of Yulin General Soldier Jiang Rang.

At that time, his subordinates were divided into two factions, one of which proposed to flee north and join Jiang Rang.

The other part said that Zuo Guangxian was also in Yulin, and this guy would flee first in every battle, fearing that the intruders would come, and he would surrender immediately.

Gao Jie thought about it and decided to flee to the east. He first went east to Yichuan. At this time, it was winter and the river was frozen, so he passed, and then entered Pujin City to garrison troops. Melting can't cross the river, so Gao Jie can be regarded as having escaped bad luck.

There was You Shiwei in Yan'an who did not escape, defending the city to the death, and was finally breached.

When Gao Jie escaped from Shaanxi, he had entered Chongzhen for 17 years (1644). Chongzhen saw that there were no troops in the Central Plains, so he quickly appointed him as the commander-in-chief (formerly the deputy commander-in-chief), and went to Shanxi to continue fighting against the enemy.

After Gao Jie fled, Li Zicheng's main force continued to go to other places in Shaanxi.

At the beginning of December, Li Zicheng came to Guyuan in person.

Bai Guangen had no choice but to retreat at this time.

Because Li Zicheng occupied Yan'an along the way and Qingyang on the other way, now he must either flee north to Ningxia Town, or go west to Lanzhou.

Bai Guangen felt that the Ming dynasty was over, so he decided to surrender.

Li Zicheng sent He Jin, king of Zuojin, to lead his troops to the west, and arrived in Gansu not long after. Gansu general Ma Jian and Gansu governor Lin Rirui resisted desperately, and He Jin broke through Ganzhou at the end of December.

So far, in the entire territory of Shaanxi, except for Yulin and Ningxia, there are no major Ming troops anymore.

After Bai Guangen surrendered, Li Zicheng asked him to recruit Chen Yongfu.

When Li Zicheng's peasant army captured Luoyang in the 14th year of Chongzhen, Chen Yongfu was the deputy general of Kaifeng City Guard. At that time, he led the army to rescue Luoyang.After that, Li Zicheng stayed in Kaifeng when he opened it three times, and was promoted to the general soldier because of his military exploits.Li Zicheng was unable to attack Kaifeng for a long time, but was shot by an arrowhead in his left eye.
When Sun Chuanting pursued the Chuang army last time, he left Chen Yongfu and Henan soldiers to guard Jiaxian.

At this time, Chen Yongfu was also in a dilemma.

Sun Chuanting's entire army was wiped out (the news of Bai Guangen's surrender and Gao Jie's defeat in Shanxi hadn't come yet), the rebels were so powerful that he was the only officer and soldier in Henan, and there were either rebel territories around or no officers and soldiers.

At this time, he also had to consider the route of retreat. One was to run north to Shanxi, and the other was to run south to Hunan.

The third is to run east to south to Zhili, where the officers and soldiers still occupy a lot of territory, but it is relatively far away, and they also have to pass through many bandit territories along the way.

On this day, Chen Yongfu convened his subordinates to attack and discuss the matter of breaking through.

His subordinates are all Henan soldiers, and most of them are clamoring to retreat to Henan where there are no bandit soldiers.

Chen Yongfu could tell right away that these people probably wanted to surrender, but they couldn't say it in public.

But Chen Yongfu didn't dare to surrender. Li Zicheng shot one of his eyes when he was fighting with him.

Some people at the scene also wanted to go to Nanzhili, saying that Nanzhili had many military sites and granaries.

Everyone was arguing with each other, and the scene was a bit chaotic.

At this time, someone suddenly shouted: "Brothers, stop arguing."

Everyone looked, it turned out to be the guerrilla general Du Zhixiong.

Du Zhixiong was born in Chen Yongfu's own army, and he can be regarded as Chen's confidant.

He stopped everyone with a loud voice, then clasped his fists and said, "I heard that Ding Yi in Dongjiang town is victorious in every battle, even the Tartars are no match for him."

"His soldiers and horses are in Shanxi now, why don't we go and seek refuge with him."

Many people at the scene had never heard of Ding Yi's name. After all, Ding Yi was well-known in the Liaodong area, but in the Central Plains, few people knew him.

Someone immediately said: "He is the commander-in-chief of Datong, and our general is also the commander-in-chief. When we arrive in Datong, who will listen to whom?"

Chen Yongfu remained silent.

Historically, Chen Yongfu has been standing still, and then Bai Guangen came to persuade him to surrender.

He was also hesitant at this moment, not knowing which way to run would be better.

In fact, on the Henan side, Li Zicheng took up a lot of places, and he didn't feel safe running there.

It was winter again at this time, and he was afraid that after running, there would be no food on the road, so Chen Yongfu decided to prepare food and grass first, and then prepare to run after spring.

As for running there, we'll think about it later.

Chen Yongfu was actually able to fight. Li Zicheng fought Kaifeng three times that year, and he was the guard.

He will decide to learn from the peasant army, he will be a bandit, and after raising enough food, he will roam around Henan to drive the peasant army, and then look for opportunities to go south to Zhili.

I have to say that Chen Yongfu is still very thoughtful about fighting.

Now that Henan is occupied by Li Zicheng, he turned to learn from the peasant army. This trick can actually be used.

But the key to this trick is food.

The land of hundreds of battles in Henan was swept by the peasant army countless times in the late Ming Dynasty. Sun Chuanting was seriously short of food, let alone him now.

Fortunately, he has few soldiers and horses, so he can handle it now.

As for raising food again, it is not easy.

Just as he was racking his brains to raise food, not long after, someone suddenly reported to him that the old brother Bai Guangen came to the door.

What?Chen Yongfu was overjoyed at first, thinking that when Bai Guangen defeated Li Zicheng, he would look bad when he reached the city wall.

In the distance outside the city were Li Zicheng's soldiers and horses. Bai Guangen came to the city with a few soldiers and called him to surrender.

Of course Chen Yongfu refused, for fear of being liquidated by Li Zicheng.

(End of this chapter)