national surname chiming

Chapter 305
Gu Yanwu is not someone who is good at scheming and scheming, he only knows how to do things in an upright manner, and tries every means to help his lord occupy a righteous position.

Zhang Huangyan's brain is more flexible than his. After all, he is a hero who can lead the anti-Qing team to fight for nearly 20 years in history.

Now that he has cooperated with Zhu Shuren for many years, he also has a very deep understanding of this talented cousin.

So after listening to Gu Yanwu's report, although Zhang Huangyan didn't think about it that day, after a day or two, he slowly realized Zhu Shuren's subtext.

"Could it be that my cousin wants to support the bandit's self-respect and keep a bargaining chip in his hand. To prevent His Majesty's random life, use him to fight fires?"

When he first thought of this possibility, Zhang Huangyan was also taken aback by his own thoughts, trying to drive this terrible idea out of his mind.

But thinking, once sprouted, is the most difficult thing to get rid of. There is no such thing as "Inception" or "Persona" in the real world. If you want to change your mind and brainwash yourself, you should save yourself.

After calming down, Zhang Huangyan felt that this kind of thinking was understandable—now that Chongzhen has been in power for 16 years, there are far more than one generals and governors who have such thoughts.

Loyalty to the emperor is not absolute, and it does not mean that he wants to replace him. There is still a big gap in it.

In particular, Chongzhen is a person who cares about face, and his policies are inflexible. If a small mistake is made by the local governors and generals, they will be easily punished and dismissed by the online G.Therefore, many officials who have the idea of ​​preserving their strength and raising their own self-respect are only trying to protect themselves.

They don't want to replace Chongzhen, they only think that Chongzhen can't replace them.

Zhang Huangyan pondered over and over again, and felt that his cousin had this kind of mentality at most.

Considering that Chongzhen did not allow him to be promoted to governor and governor of Sichuan, he wanted to install Fang Kongzhang to divide him, and he was not allowed to marry Fang Ziling...

After so many operations, it can be regarded as the king suspects the minister first, and there is nothing wrong with the minister leaving behind for his own safety.

After the heart disease went away, Zhang Huangyan knew what to do anyway.And not only did he have to do it himself, but he also subtly instilled it in Liu Guoneng, Yuan Shizhong, and Zhu Wenzhen, who were in the same industry, so that they should not think too much about the right and wrong between Futai and His Majesty, and just execute the order and fight the battle ahead.

Zhang Huangyan had to appropriately borrow the theoretical weapons provided by Zhu Shuren and Gu Yanwu in previous years, and emphasize the difference between "subjugation of the country" and "subjugation of the world".

A little bit of nationalism was instilled in these generals to further implant in the minds of these generals the idea that "now the Han people are in danger, and the honor and disgrace of a family is far less important than expelling the Tartars and ensuring that the Han people are not enslaved".

It's a little early to say this kind of rhetoric, after all, the Tartars haven't entered Beijing yet, but everyone can understand it, and it's not wrong to instill it in advance.

After a few days like this, Zhang Huangyan led his troops and launched a siege of Leshan County after he was fully prepared in terms of spiritual and ideological preparations and material preparations for the siege.

Today, it is already February 24.

……

It has been more than ten days since Sun Kewang arrived around Leshan and blocked the waterway for the officers and troops to go north.

During this period of time, his mood was also disturbed and complicated.

Among Zhang Xianzhong's righteous sons, Sun Kewang is by far the most trusted one. Half a year ago, he advised Zhang Xianzhong not to go to Xiangxi, not to go to Changsha and Hengzhou to entangle with the government and army. This advice was finally proved by history to be very That's right.

In contrast, Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu were both deducted a lot of impression points by Zhang Xianzhong in that decision.And Li Dingguo later had a series of suspicions of ineffective combat and preservation of strength, and was further refrigerated by Zhang Xianzhong.

However, Sun Kewang's trust also opened the first crack after he successfully entered Sichuan. When Chongqing was taken down, Sun Kewang also joined Li Dingguo in admonishing Zhang Xianzhong not to engage in massacres. , and use the money obtained to win over the poor in the surrounding cities that were not slaughtered."

As for the money needed to win the hearts of the people and the strong men at that time, Sun Kewang also felt that there was no need to rob, because when Zhang Xianzhong fled from Xiangxi, he still had a large amount of gold and silver that he had obtained through massacres in Hunan.

After the Battle of Hengzhou, Zhu Shuren asked Zhu Wenzhen to chase after him with cavalry, and recovered property worth millions of taels, but after all, he couldn't recover all of it.

When Zhang Xianzhong was in Hunan, he massacred cities and looted. At his peak, he earned more than 1000 million taels?Even if Zhu Shuren later intercepted and recovered about half of it, Zhang Xianzhong would still have at least several million taels of gold and silver when he arrived in Qianzhong Road.

If all the surplus money obtained from the massacre in Hunan was used to distribute money to buy Sichuan people, maybe they could gain a firm foothold in Chongqing.

But Zhang Xianzhong was obviously afraid of poverty. He always felt that if he didn't even have three or five million taels of money around him, it would be easy for him to have a situation where "after losing the army, he would lose all the capital to make a comeback at any time next time".

His miser mentality makes him have to ensure that the wealth in his army is like snowballing and cannot be completely spent.This kind of mentality eventually led to the massacre of more than 20 people in Chongqing, and all of them were robbed.

In that remonstrance, Sun Kewang left some rifts with his adoptive father, and sighed: It’s hard to come to a place where the people are isolated and simple, and don’t know our misdeeds in other places. How can you win people's hearts for a long time?

(Note: This is a historical fact. Both Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo complained about the massacre after Zhang Xianzhong first entered Sichuan. Of course, it is not ruled out that it is because they finally reconciled with Nanming and recognized Yongli as Zhengshuo, so "Ming History" gave them Save face and say good things)

Of course, this kind of rift was shared by Zhang Xianzhong and his three adopted sons, and it was not only aimed at Sun Kewang.But in the next month or so, some new contradictions appeared within Zhang Xianzhong's army.

When Zhang Xianzhong's army massacred the city of Chongqing, he said that "more than [-] people were empty", but in practice, they didn't kill everyone. They mainly killed men, the elderly, and boys.

For those young girls, massacres in any era will not kill them all, because people have animal nature. The tens of thousands of old battalion soldiers under Zhang Xianzhong have followed for many years, and they are basically bachelors. They were also lost after years of tossing and turning.

Now after such a long and hard life, and finally entered the Land of Abundance, how could he be willing to kill all the women he saw?Of course, he was slightly served as a soldier and concubine, and was taken with the army.

However, because of the several massacres after Zhang Xianzhong's army entered Sichuan, many of these young women's family members were slaughtered, so they harbored deep hatred for Zhang Xianzhong.

After following ordinary soldiers for a month or two, some of these women also resigned to their fate, and those who were soldiers also began to loosen their will, and some fell in love with each other for a long time, and no longer treated them as slaves. Have a good time.

As a result, under such circumstances, the official army entered Chongqing and began to counterattack. The news came that the old battalion soldiers in the army who married Bashu women also began to become unstable internally.

Many female family members began to blow their pillows. Privately, it was rumored that Qin Liangyu, the general soldier of Qin, had received reinforcements from foreign soldiers, and he would be able to recover soon. And these women had revenge for the murder of Zhang Xianzhong's whole family. How could they not take this opportunity to encourage the men to find another way out? Don't follow the butcher all the way to the dark?
However, Sun Kewang's troops were the most aggressive in admonishing Zhang Xianzhong not to massacre before, so his lieutenants also had the highest proportion of Sichuan women in private.

After Zhang Xianzhong noticed that the morale of the army was not stable, he quickly issued a strict order: It is strictly forbidden for soldiers entering Sichuan to marry local women, and those who violate the order will engage in military law! (This command is also a historical fact)
At most, it is allowed to ratify the existing fait accompli and use these snatched women as slaves to vent their insults, but they are absolutely not allowed to marry wives and have children.

This order has been strictly enforced for the time being, but fluctuations in people's hearts are definitely inevitable.Those long-standing old thieves who have been wandering in the hard-pressed area for more than ten years find that they can live in peace with relatively attractive beauties in the land of abundance. Who would want to be banned from marrying wives?
On the contrary, the newly attached young men in Sichuan are not restricted by this prohibition. They are originally locals, and it is only right and proper to marry local women.In this way, instead of worrying about scarcity but inequality, the fluctuation of people's hearts in Shaanxi and Yu Laoying became more and more obvious.

In history, after Zhang Xianzhong entered Sichuan, he resented "the people in Sichuan turned against me", so he relied more and more on massacres, and finally lost his support. This is probably the reason.

He probably never dreamed that in a region with more beauties, he would rely on this kind of blunt knife to dismantle people's hearts and give FH his troops who have been as cold-hearted as a knife for many years.

Under this series of coquettish operations, Sun Kewang's fear became more and more obvious. He deeply felt that after Zhu Shuren's army came under pressure, the future of Zhang Xianzhong's troops was really uncertain.

But after all, he was Zhang Xianzhong's most trusted adoptive son, and it was unreasonable to surrender directly to the enemy, so he thought of a compromise to protect himself.Lead an army alone and ask for orders to intercept the official army waterway army on the southern line.

Zhang Xianzhong agreed to this plan considering that he could indeed divide the power of the official army and reduce the pressure on Chengdu, and that Liu Wenxiu and Li Dingguo were even more unavailable.

At the same time, Zhang Xianzhong was also inspired by Sun Kewang's suggestion, and by analogy, he not only sent Sun Kewang to the south line, but also sent Liu Wenxiu to the Mianzhu and Jiangyou areas on the north line.

However, Liu Wenxiu did not take away many troops. What Zhang Xianzhong wanted was for Liu Wenxiu to guard Chengdu's retreat route northward to Jianmen Pass and Jinniu Road. road.

Zhang Xianzhong himself took Feng Shuangli and Li Dingguo to defend Chengdu, and temporarily went out to Jianyang with a part of his troops, forming a corner.

Thinking that if the army is powerful and difficult to fight in the field, and can only defend the city, then take back Jianyang's troops. If there is hope in the field battle, then directly fight the army to the death in Jianyang.

……

It was under such a situation that Sun Kewang had a stalemate with Zhang Huangyan in Leshan.

At the beginning of the stalemate, he also thought about several countermeasures and deduction - at the beginning, Sun Kewang was still whimsical, thinking that in case Zhang Huangyan's troops were weak in combat strength, or suffered heavy losses after attacking the city first, he could try to counterattack and counterattack. Push, counterattack all the way from Leshan to Yibin!
If you can hit Yibin, of course it would be the best, because there is a transportation hub where the Minjiang River and the Jinsha River converge.It can also go upstream directly along the Jinsha River and escape to Yunnan when something unexpected happens to one's own side.

Sun Kewang knew the geography of the Sichuan-Yunnan border, and he knew that the Jinsha River was navigable all the way to Laojun Beach.After arriving at Laojuntan, based on the level of broken warships of Zhang Xianzhong's army, it is estimated that they would have to abandon the ship and go overland, and enter Yunnan via Wumeng Mansion (Zhaotong) by land.

But the idea was so good that in fact he never had the slightest chance of carrying it out.During the initial period of confrontation with Zhang Huangyan, the two also fought on a small scale a few times, the scale was not large, but the intensity was not low.

Zhang Huangyan supervised Liu Guoneng's troops, supported by Zhu Wenzhen's cavalry. All of Sun Kewang's field attempts ended in failure, and it was a crushing failure.

While Sun Kewang was surprised, he also realized that the combat effectiveness of this official army had definitely increased by at least a few percent compared to when they met half a year ago!

It seems that the army that was able to defeat Li Zicheng in Kaifeng has grown significantly again!The army's weapons and equipment have also been improved under Zhu Shuren's careful supervision, and he is not an opponent at all!
After giving up the idea of ​​backtracking to Yibin, Sun Kewang retreated to the next best thing. In the past few days, the new retreat that he had thought about was to take the Tsingyi River (Dadu River) in case of unfavorable conditions, from the west of Sichuan via Jianchang Road, along the Dachong River ( Yalong River) went south, and Huichuanwei (Panzhihua) sought to cross south into Yunnan to escape.

This path will definitely be more difficult, but he has no choice under extreme circumstances.

People who don't know much about geography can roughly understand this road as "going against the long Z road to Yunnan". After all, the Dadu River and Jinsha River are all involved, and they still go south from the mountainous area of ​​western Sichuan.

The only thing Sun Kewang was worried about was that if he really got to that point and gave up his adoptive father and ran away alone, would the officers and soldiers pursue him like they hated his adoptive father?

Perhaps when the adoptive father was still alive, the officers and soldiers would not be too concerned about him, but if the adoptive father really died and the Bashu officers and soldiers had no targets, would they try their best to find a new target?
In such apprehension, Sun Kewang ushered in Zhang Huangyan's all-out siege.

On February 25, the officers and soldiers had been preparing for Leshan for more than ten days, and the siege weapons that should be prepared were of course completely complete.

Even because there was too much time, the officers and soldiers were too lazy to let the 42-pound bow guns still be used on the warships on the river. Instead, they took great pains to unload the cannons and set up siege artillery positions on land——

After all, the terrain of Leshan County is dangerous and steep, and the height of the city is relatively high. Although it can barely hit the city wall and city gate in the west of the city on the famous Jiangjiang River, there is a hillside near the river on that side, making it difficult to attack from above.

In contrast, the slope to the east of Leshan City is much gentler, making it easier to attack this mountain city.Moreover, the temporary turret that put the cannon on the land also avoided the loss of accuracy caused by the shaking of the launch platform, and could better aim at the city gate.

After the battle started, the offensive of the officers and soldiers was very fierce. At the beginning, Sun Kewang tried to let the elite of the old battalion set an example and defend on the wall.

It's a pity that Leshan is a small city. The city walls, gates, and towers are very simple. The only defense is the steepness and steepness of the mountains. It belongs to the kind of existence where at least [-]% of the defense is maintained by natural terrain.

Under the fierce bombardment of the officers and soldiers, the city gate and wall in the east of the city failed to hold up for a long time, and Liu Guoneng's troops rushed into the city with their teeth and claws in the afternoon.Thousands of veteran battalion soldiers under Sun Kewang and more than 1 new recruits were annihilated in Leshan City.

There are also countless diehard officers and confidant old bandits and soldiers, seeing that the city is irretrievably destroyed, they also tried to seize the boat to cross the Minjiang River and flee to the west bank.

However, the official army already has the advantage of warships on the Minjiang River, and this attempt is obviously futile.This place is located at the confluence of the Minjiang River and the Dadu River. There are already undercurrents and turbulent waters, as well as whirlpools. There are countless northern bandits with poor water quality, and their boat handling skills are not good.

To make a digression, the reason why there is Leshan Giant Buddha in Leshan is because before the Tang Dynasty, at the confluence of the Dadu River and the Minjiang River, the water situation was too dangerous, and the dark eddies were too terrifying. Seven or eight times out of ten, a ferry would die if it crossed this place. Only monks come here to pray for blessings to build a giant Buddha in Zhenjiang, so that the undercurrent when the Dadu River flows into it can be alleviated.

(Note: In fact, when the Leshan Giant Buddha was built, a piece of the nearby mountain was chiseled out, and the confluence mouth that was originally opposed by an acute angle was changed to form an obtuse angle downstream, so the vortex and undercurrents were alleviated later. This is in line with the laws of physics and has nothing to do with the Buddha. Before the construction of the Leshan Giant Buddha, the water of the Minjiang River and the Dadu River were facing each other, so the undercurrent was particularly large)

Local people from Sichuan had to be cautious when passing through this area, and Sun Kewang's landlubbers from outside households still hoped to control the Dadu River, so they were looking for a dead end.

The city of Leshan County was quickly breached, and more than ten thousand partial divisions were directly destroyed, which gave Sun Kewang a solid blow, and made his heart even more shaken and timid.

He huddled in the Emei County on the opposite bank, terrified all day long, not knowing when Zhang Huangyan would kill him.

(End of this chapter)