national surname chiming

Chapter 322 Your Majesty is not dead yet, you are ready to move

The conscience of heaven and earth, at the end of August in the 16th year of Chongzhen in this time and space, Li Zicheng's military strength and generals are weaker than those of the same period in history.

The backbone veterans are at least [-] to [-] percent less, and the number of cannon fodder can be quickly recaptured to hundreds of thousands, but the future five governors of the Dashun regime, he also lost two members, leaving only three.

Calculated comprehensively, Li Zicheng's ability to exert three-quarters of the combat effectiveness of the same period in history is almost the same.

Under such circumstances, he still chose to resolutely go east and north to fight Chongzhen, not because he was really sure of it, but because he was threatened by Zhu Shuren behind his back, like a knife piercing a chrysanthemum, and it was impossible to live a peaceful life for a few days.

Dasanguan and Baoji County are in the hands of Cao Bianjiao, and Cao Bianjiao will also receive the support of Zhu Shuren's arms and equipment. This means that even if the road to Shu is difficult and the northern expedition from Hanzhong will not last long, the ability to cause damage is definitely there.

Therefore, Guanzhong is no longer a stable rear, and it may be "destroyed if it can't be obtained" by the officers and soldiers at any time, so Li Zicheng is forced to continue to fight mobile warfare, coercing and fighting all the way.

Although, in fact, Zhu Shuren still has the bottom line of being a man, he will not engage in the scorched-earth war strategy of "if you can't get it, you will destroy it" in the Han-ruled areas.

But Li Zicheng can't afford to gamble. He judges others by himself, or just compares Zhu Shu's human beings to Zuo Liangyu. It is normal for Zhu Shuren to think that Zhu Shuren will kill and destroy indiscriminately like the most shameless murderers in the army. idea.

Anyway, under the comprehensive consideration of various factors, Li Zicheng was still under the macro-control of Zhu Shuren's invisible big hand, and he was driven to the northeast and embarked on a journey.

……

Cao Bianjiao's victory at Dasan Pass happened in mid-August, and the news reached Xi'an two days later.It will also take time for Li Zicheng to strengthen the walls and clear the fields to concentrate the army, so it is already early September that he left Tongguan east.

Li Zicheng's remaining troops at the beginning of this year were about 10,000+ people. When he fought Sun Chuanting, he lost tens of thousands of people in the battle, but he caught more cannon fodder during the two months of rest.

Moreover, Sun Chuanting's Ming army also collapsed and fled, not the whole army died in battle, so after Sun Chuanting's death, there were [-] to [-] Ming troops who were coerced into surrendering. In a battle to the death, until the last soldier is killed, it is impossible for Sun Chuanting to die, and it is impossible for Li Zicheng to win.

It is precisely because the morale of the newly recruited Ming army at the end of the Ming Dynasty was low that they could only fight with the wind.Therefore, after each defeat, the captives who were captured alive and the deserters who escaped accounted for at least half of the number of participants in the battle.

Therefore, for this attack, he brought another 40 million troops and divided the troops into two groups, all the way directly from Tongguan through Luoyang, and then went east from Xingyang to Kaifeng.The other route is Pubanjin back to the east of the river, and approaches Taiyuan along the Fenshui River.

The land of the Ming court in Taiyuan and the land to the west of Kaifeng had already been almost lost, so these two important towns at the provincial capital level were directly exposed to Li Zicheng's troops with almost no buffer.

Kaifeng was flooded last winter, and the government was unable to organize effective repairs. So far, the Yellow River breach has not been completely treated, and there are still yellow flooded swamps everywhere.Hundreds of thousands of people were drowned by the plague last winter, and Chen Yongfu's troops were unable to hold on and were withdrawn. Therefore, Kaifeng was almost like a staking enclosure, and was directly collected by Li Zicheng.

Taiyuan was barely able to defend. After Cao Bianjiao left, Zhou Yuji took over as the commander-in-chief of Taiyuan, but Li Zicheng's troops didn't need to worry about food supply. So you won't be hungry.

Zhou Yuji considered this risk, so he was worried that the intruders would go around the city and rush out of the Taihang Mountains to the Hebei Plain.In that case, with Chongzhen's temper, even if none of the important prefectures in Shanxi were lost, as long as the thieves entered Beizhili through the border of Shanxi, Zhou Yuji and other generals, as well as civil officials of all sizes in Shanxi, would surely lose their heads.

So Zhou Yuji discussed with Governor Cai Maode before the battle, and Zhou Yuji led troops east to Taihang, patrolling and besieging all dangerous roads in Taihang.Governor Cai Maode took the deputy commander Ying Shisheng to guard Taiyuan.

When the Chuangjun's North Route Army just arrived at the foot of Taiyuan City, Liu Zongmin, who was in charge of this route, chose to encircle one and lack three, only besieged the south side of Taiyuan City, and let go of the other three sides.

Ancient Taiyuan City is a city located on the west bank of the Fenshui River Valley. The Fenshui River flows through the east of the city, and the east and west sides of the city are surrounded by mountains.When the mountains spread to the vicinity of Taiyuan, the depression formed a mountain basin, which was flat and could accommodate large cities.

Therefore, there is nothing worth encircling on the east and west sides of the city. There are mountains as barriers. If you do not encircle the north and only attack the south, it is clear that you will leave the north to allow the defenders to escape.

But the governor Cai Maode and the deputy commander Ying Shisheng still had the backbone. The Chuangjun left them the north of the city to escape and they didn't run away.

Jin Wang Zhu Shenxuan who was in Taiyuan also gave Cai Maode tens of thousands of taels of silver, and asked him to distribute pensions to encourage the soldiers who defended the city. , but it is already a little better than the old Fuwang in Luoyang.

If it really goes on, this amount of money will be a drop in the bucket, but even so, Jin Wang Zhu Shenxuan still underestimated the corruption of Ming officials.

Cai Maode himself is not greedy, but it is impossible for him as a governor to hand out the money himself. The enemy has a lot of clues at the moment, so he always asks his subordinates to help him handle it.

As a result, a group of civil servants from the Qingshui yamen, such as academic officials and teaching officials from Taiyuan Prefecture, volunteered to help him do this. Banknotes in the nature of treasure notes.The defenders complained a lot.

Judging from the greedy ink of these dog officials, the only lesson learned by the civil servants and gentry of the Ming Dynasty from history is that they will never learn the lesson.That is to say, King Zhou learned a lesson from the death of King Fu, and after King Zhou, others returned to their old ways.

……

Although the rewards for the defenders were not in place, Taiyuan was strong and survived in the first few days.

After fighting for a few days, Liu Zongmin saw that the Taiyuan officials were not afraid of death and refused to surrender, so he asked Li Zicheng whether he wanted to move his troops eastward and bypass Taiyuan.

Li Zicheng was very angry when he heard that Little Taiyuan could not be taken down, and he was determined not to allow it at first:
"This time, I will follow the heavenly soldiers to the east. If I want to fight against rebellion, I must first show my prestige! If I encounter a provincial capital and cannot attack it, even if I don't have to worry about food roads, my army's momentum will not be so strong! Damaged! When the time comes to kill the city of Beijing, will the soldiers still have the courage to fight bloody and attack regardless of casualties! Taiyuan must be broken to stand up!"

In Li Zicheng's heart, he already regarded Taiyuan and Kaifeng as bargaining chips before the war against Beijing in the future. If other small places are too strong and not on the main road, they can be circumvented. How can a provincial capital be circumvented?

However, when Li Zicheng was in a stalemate, Song Xiance, the military adviser next to him, helped him with an idea: "Your Majesty, considering my prestige in Dashun, it is right that you don't want to go around the city. But what Liu Shuai said is true in the details." Quite in line with the art of war,

Why don't our army take the opportunity to let out the wind and use the circle around the city as a bait to see if the officers and soldiers will further divide their troops because they are afraid of our circle around the city, weakening the strength of the defenders in Taiyuan City. "

When Li Zicheng heard it, since he didn't really go around the city, but just cheated and tried to disperse the defense of the officers and soldiers, he could try it.Anyway, there is no loss if you fail to try.

So he ordered to do as Song Xiance did, let out the wind along the army, and sent a part of the troops to march around the city in a big way, pretending to ignore the food road at all, and only asked to kill them through the Taihang Mountains, enter the Hebei Plain, and threaten Beijing.

This strategy is actually very clumsy. If you encounter a general who knows a little about the art of war, you shouldn't be tricked.

The Shanxi region is so poor, if Taiyuan cannot be conquered, they can only go to small places like Yangquan to massacre the city a few times, and they will not be able to grab much food.If Cai Maode and Zhou Yuji really came to close the door to fight dogs, and vowed to consume them to the death, even if they could not kill Li Zicheng, they might consume them until the Shun army was panicked because of the shortage of food.

It's a pity that Cai Maode is just a pedantic civil servant who reads sages' books and doesn't understand fart strategy. Of course, his loyalty is remarkable, at least he can stick to it.

Seeing the Shun army going east, he immediately felt that there was an opportunity to pursue it, or harass the Shun army's rear and burn its luggage.In short, no one else can know what he thinks.

Anyway, he was forcing the deputy commander-in-chief Ying Shisheng's several capitals and garrison-level generals Niu Yong, Wang Yongkui, and Zhu Kongxun to lead [-] troops out of the city to pursue the Shun army.

(Note: There is no cheating here. Cai Maode forcibly sent [-] troops out of the city to fight against Li Zicheng. This is a historical fact. I don’t know how he dared it. Maybe it’s really too pedantic, and I can’t ask a dead person how he feels.)

Liu Zongmin was suffocated at first, and he was dubious about implementing Song Xiance's plan to lure the enemy, and there was no hope at all.

Unexpectedly, Cai Maode actually sent someone out for free. Of course Liu Zongmin was overjoyed, and immediately turned around to hide and kill Niu Yong, Wang Yongkui, Zhu Kongxun and other five thousand Ming troops.

The morale of the Shun army was overwhelmed, and they shot back and attacked Taiyuan again. The guards in the city were indignant at Cai Maode's mental retardation and the greed of his subordinates, filled with righteous indignation, and led the way one after another.One of the guards, Zhang Xiong, took the initiative to make an appointment with the internal response, and opened the Yingze Gate to let the Shun army enter the city.

Although Cai Maode is mentally handicapped, he still has integrity. At the last moment, he himself did not choose to break through, but hanged himself in the governor's office. Ying Shisheng, the unlucky deputy commander, had no choice but to help Cai Maode simply collect the body, and then committed suicide and died for the country.

Except for those troops led by Zhou Yuji in Shanxi, the rest of the Ming army was sent away by Cai Maode and others for nothing.

Li Zicheng and Liu Zongmin spent a month marching and trekking, and spent another month sweeping away most of Shanxi and massacring the resisting cities to raise food.By the end of October, the soldiers had already forced Ningwu Pass, facing the last Taihang Mountain defense line guarded by Zhou Yuji.

If Zhou Yuji's Taihang Mountain line of defense is also breached, the north road invading army will really be in a no-man's land on the Hebei plain.

Fortunately, Zhou Yuji is also considered a good general, and at the same time he is also steadfast and unyielding.Relying on the danger of Taihang, Li Zicheng was temporarily withstood.The Shun army attacked fiercely for ten days, with no casualties and no breakthrough for a while.

……

While Zhou Yuji temporarily withstood Li Zicheng on the Taihang Mountain defense line, the Shun Army's South Route Army developed more smoothly than in the same period in history.

As early as about ten days before the destruction of Taiyuan City, the South Route Army captured Kaifeng with ease because the road was close and there were no obstacles along the way.

It's just that Kaifeng is really worthless. There are only hundreds of thousands of corpses that have not been disposed of and buried, and you can't even smell the rotten smell-because many corpses have been dead for at least half a year, and the meat is rotten, or it is rotten. It was eaten up by all kinds of hungry birds, beasts and small animals before, leaving only bones.

This is the real bones exposed in the wild, and there is no rooster crowing for thousands of miles.

Only vultures chirping at most.

The general in charge of this journey is also Li Zicheng's new governor, Liu Fangliang.His army is a little smaller than that of Beilu. There are 20 people in Beilu, and only 10,000+ on his side.

After Liu Fangliang took Kaifeng lightly, the first city that encountered a little resistance was Shangqiu County in Guide Prefecture-this place can be regarded as an old acquaintance. Yuan Zongdi came to fight last year when he was raising food for the army. The split teacher Huang Degong defeated.

But this year, Huang Degong was transferred to another place by Zhu Shuren. After learning that Henan was in an emergency, he sent troops from Huguang to the north to rescue, but after all, he still couldn't catch up——

The battle of Shangqiu lasted only ten days, and the city was broken.Most of the soldiers and civilians in the city were killed, and Shangqiu became the first important town that was funded by the South Route Army of the Shun Army.After Liu Fangliang robbed Shangqiu of the people's grain storage, the Nan Lu Shun army was no longer afraid of starvation.

The Huguang army was already very strong, because the governor of Huguang hadn't received the imperial court's rescue order at that time, and he sent troops to rescue the friendly army on his own, risking the risk of resisting the order and crossing the border to Henan.

If you want to blame, you can only blame that everything came too suddenly.After all, the Chuang army was prepared at the end of August, marched and dispatched to the front line in September, and only left the Sishui Pass in Xingyang at the end of September, giving the Huguang officers and soldiers too little time to react.

The only butterfly effect in the battle of Shangqiu was that part of the Henan army was inspired by last year and kept counting on someone to rescue them, refusing to give up their last hope.In the end, when the city could not be defended, some of the defenders chose to break out and escape, hoping to find reinforcements to join them.

The prefect Liang Yizhang, Tongzhi Yan Zekong and other civil servants who made friends with King Lu and Huang Degong last year fled to Bozhou in embarrassment with two or three thousand remnants and two guards, and finally met Huang Degong's men.

However, Chongzhen is not dead yet.

After all, Liang Yizhang and Yan Zekong committed the crime of "falling into the city and losing their land". They failed to die in the city and should be punished for fleeing Shangqiu.

So after arriving in Bozhou, Ma Shiying from Fengyang quickly handled it impartially, took it according to the national law, and planned to send him to Beijing for interrogation at an appropriate time.

In the end, after Huang Degong returned his troops back, by chance, he told Lu Wang about the situation with regret.

Zhu Changhao thought that when he took refuge in Shangqiu last year, he was sheltered by these two civil officials, and he couldn't bear it for a while, and wanted to rescue him.But he was not ambitious, timid and afraid of getting into trouble. He was afraid of being reprimanded by Chongzhen for the crime of "interfering with the Secretary", so he finally gave up.

It is actually the little Fu Wang Zhu Yousong who escaped together and lives together in Hefei now. He is more responsible and dares to win people's hearts.

After hearing about this, Zhu Yousong actually ignored the group training that "the vassal king is not allowed to enter the Sandu without edict", and personally led the guards to ride a horse from Hefei to Fengyang, explain the situation to Ma Shiying, and help the two Plead for mercy, let these lost civil and military personnel of Guide Mansion suspend being sent to Beijing.

Ma Shiying saw King Xiaofu, got in touch with him a little bit, and had a good impression of this vassal king. He felt that this prince was a bit responsible, but he was much smoother than His Majesty. This kind of character is fatal in itself)
After thinking about it, considering that the Shun army has fought so far, Beijing doesn't know what the future will look like.

Ma Shiying actually plucked up the courage and sold Zhu Yousong's face, saying: Since His Royal Highness Fu said that these few had kindness to you last year, then I will take care of it and not send it to Beijing for the time being.

Zhu Yousong was overjoyed, and quickly thanked Governor Ma—as an aside, about two years ago, at the end of 14th and early 15th years of Chongzhen, Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng got involved with Zhou Yanru and wanted to buy an official and reinstate , At that time, 20 taels of gold were also given.

But because there were not enough vacancies at that time, the position that Ma Shiying wanted to compete for was taken away by Zhu Shuren, so under the butterfly effect, he could only be the magistrate of Fengyang at that time.

Ma Shiying worked as the magistrate of Fengyang for more than a year, and relied on Ruan Dacheng's gold and silver in various ways to make his way, and continued to curry favor with Zhou Yanru to place bets.And because in the last years of Chongzhen, the depreciation of official positions was relatively fast, and there were many high-level officials who were convicted, and the frequency of fat job vacancies also increased a lot (after all, in the last two months before Chongzhen died, even Wei Zaode, the number one scholar in Chongzhen for 13 years, could be in the cabinet Shoufu)
Due to various reasons, Ma Shiying finally waited until his immediate superior, Shi Kefa, was transferred to be Minister of the Ministry of War in Nanjing, and later added other positions, thus leaving the vacancy of Governor of Water Transport.

The imperial court considered the position of governor of water transportation, which may not exist in the future. Because of Shen Tingyang’s butterfly effect, Daming set up a plan to "change all water transportation to the sea in five years" from the 13th year of Chongzhen, and after 17 years of Chongzhen, theoretically The grain in the canal had to go to the sea, so the position of governor of water transport was worthless.

Zhou Yanru insisted that "Anyway, this official will only be in office for a year at most, or even a few months, and he will leave the last appointment to Ma Shiying to enjoy himself", which can be regarded as paying off Ruan Dacheng Ma Shiying's favor of several 10 taels of gold. .

In the end, Ma Shiying became the real governor before Chongzhen's death, but his foundation in Anhui is obviously far inferior to that of the same period in history——

Historically, when Chongzhen just died, Ma Shiying had served as the governor of Huainan and Jiangbei for two or three years. Now he has only been in office for half a year, at least one and a half years of farming management and winning people's hearts are missing, and his foundation is not solid.If he really wants to do something outrageous in the future, there may not be many people who are willing to follow him all the way to the dark.

It has to be said that this person still dared to gamble. Chong Zhen dared to sell face to the vassal king before he died.

(End of this chapter)