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Chapter 354 Li Zicheng: Crossing the Han River for the last time in his life

A few days later, Nanyang Prefecture, Tang County.

This is already the front line at the junction of Nanyang Prefecture and Xiangyang Prefecture.

Going further south from here, although Xinye and Deng County still belong to Nanyang Prefecture in terms of administrative division,
But since the 14th year of Chongzhen, Zuo Liangyu was convicted by the court.Before his death, the elder Yang Sichang used his last power to try to help Zhu Shuren keep the two military critical areas, and put Xinye and Deng County under Zhu Shuren's control, so as to restrain Zuo Liangyu and prevent him from taking it easy. Go south to harass and eat.

For more than three years after that, Zuo Liangyu did not dare to provoke him, including Li Zicheng, who went deep into Nanyang County temporarily during the Henan campaign, but did not disturb Zhu Shuren's territory. .

At this moment, Li Zicheng, who had been defeated in Hebei, Shanxi and Henan, and his troops were exhausted, had already arrived in Tang County, and had been lingering there for a long time.

Xinye in front of him is less than a hundred miles away.But after Li Zicheng fell from Heluo and escaped southward from Funiu Mountain, he didn't dare to act rashly again.

Obviously, he has been a little scared and confused recently. Although he insisted on choosing to go south, he was more cautious and full of hesitation-if the Qing army behind him chased him urgently and pressed hard, then Li Zicheng would work hard and fight hard. Die forward and fight to survive.

If the Qing army turned around and was not so urgent for the time being, he would slack off and be eager to repair, restore morale, and let the troops recover the source of wounded and sick soldiers.

And the reason why he was able to recover safely in the past ten days or so clearly shows that Azig behind him is not in a hurry to catch up.

The Qing army was not good at fighting in mountains. Azig had tried it once before, crossing Funiu Mountain from Heluo with a few small troops and entering the Nanyang Basin.As a result, they were defeated by the Chuang army and Zuo Liangyu army who were waiting for work, respectively, in remote mountainous places such as Taigu Pass and Yique Pass.

The Qing army was not completely invincible. After fighting too many battles, there were always small defeats. How could you not get your shoes wet when you often walked by the river.

However, Azig's losses were not too great. The two groups of troops only killed hundreds to a thousand people in battle, and thousands of people were wounded and captured, and most of them were Han army flags and servants.There is no way to cause a decisive blow to Azig's [-] Manchurian army and the supporting Han army flag.
It's just that Azig himself thinks it's not worthwhile. He thinks it's more important to watch Wu Sangui completely take over Shaanxi and prevent Wu Sangui from occupying the dangerous separatist regime in Tongguan.

As long as Tongguan is in hand, Azig can go south if he wants to go south in the future, and there is no rush for this moment. In contrast, from Heluo to Nanyang, there is no place in between that can reach the importance of Tongguan. , don't pay too much attention to seizing the opportunity.

Azig's slow move, together with Li Zicheng who was being chased away, the inertia of being happy with the situation rose again, and he began to be afraid of taking risks again.

Who made him be pushed away by the situation all his life.No one chased after him, and he himself didn't seem to take the initiative to set a clear goal in life, he just took one step at a time, and took one more step if he couldn't survive.

……

Li Zicheng's hesitation and lying down made both parties very uncomfortable. Until this day, Li Zicheng finally waited for some good news.

His advisor, Song Xiance, took a bunch of military information from his subordinates, and came to report the good news to him with a rare look of excitement:
"Your Majesty! Sure enough, God has blessed me with Dashun! I found out the confidential military situation from the puppet defenders in Xiangyang. The cowardly new puppet emperor in Nanjing, because he heard that Duoduo was faster and faster than Azig Azig went well, so he was too scared to sit still.
He also asked Shi Kefa to discuss openly in the court hall to send troops to attack Huainan as soon as possible and seize the Huaihe defense line.Shi Kefa, a corrupt Confucian, also helped to quote scriptures, saying that to guard the river, you must guard the Huai River, and to keep Nanjing, you must advance the line of defense to the Huai River. "

When Song Xiance spittled and said this step, Li Zicheng didn't feel anything, but just snorted coldly: "Shi Kefa is right. In terms of the art of war, it is not the past dynasties. But if the north and south are separated, you must guard the river and the Huaihe River. ?”

Song Xiance hastily added: "Your Majesty, don't be impatient, I haven't finished talking yet—but the cowardly emperor still doesn't believe that Shi Kefa can mobilize the local troops in Jianghuai, so he insists on his son-in-law Zhu Shuren to transfer the Huguang Army Play the main force. I heard that Zhu Shuren was also forced to express his position at the court meeting, and he was willing to dispatch 10 people to assist Nanjing. However, some civil servants from other factions in Donglin were worried about foreign soldiers entering Beijing, so they stumbled and chewed their tongues in private. It's too much to deal with."

Li Zicheng frowned suddenly when he heard this step: "Zhu Shuren is still in Nanjing? Are you sure?"

Song Xiance quickly explained that it was a few former Beijing civil servants who had surrendered to Dashun, and had relatives and old friends in the Six Ministries of Nanjing.

Considering that the court of the Ming Dynasty was always infiltrated by intelligence, and everyone was looking for someone to marry, Li Zicheng soon lost his doubts after hearing the source of the intelligence.

It has to be said that the anti-osmosis work is poor, and sometimes it is beneficial. When the Ming court wanted to spread false news, it spread it very efficiently.

Li Zicheng saw that the source of information was reliable, so he finally stopped lying down, and was inspired to earn a ticket. He paced back and forth, making decisions in his head irritablely, and gritted his teeth after a while:

"Zhu Shu's soldiers are strong and horses are strong, so they are not very easy to deal with. They are just a little weaker than the Tartars. I have led the army so far, but I have no choice. Since Xiangyang is currently empty, Zhu Shu's soldiers and horses were transferred to attack Huainan. Missed Then there is no chance.

According to my will, the whole army will take out the last wine and meat, reward the three armies today, and advance lightly tomorrow, attack Xinye first, and then go down the Baihe River, all the way to Xiangyang!Tell Zuo Liangyu again that he is willing to follow, and I will give him part of the world!In the future, when I enter Sichuan, I can leave Huguang to him!If not, don't regret it in the future!Just stay here and wait for Azig to clean up! "

And at this moment, besides Song Xiance, there was also an important civil servant, Prime Minister Niu Jinxing.Before Song Xiance came, he was telling Li Zicheng about the daily government affairs.

Niu Jinxing has a relatively calm temperament and is not good at intrigue. After hearing such a hasty decision, he felt absurd to directly lead 10,000+ people to kill just because of Song Xiance's words and a piece of information he brought.

However, he was dismissed by Li Zicheng after only a few words of persuasion, and then he could only remain silent, and at the same time, he thoroughly understood a truth:
So far, how can Li Zicheng have a perfect plan?He was forced to be pushed away in the first place, and he didn't have the courage to turn back and fight Azig to the death, so it's normal to think about it as soon as he comes out.

……

After Li Zicheng was finally lured out, in the following five or six days, the progress of the war was very "smooth", and it was in line with Li Zicheng's expectations and Song Xiance's intelligence.

On September [-]th, Li Zicheng's army took the lead in rushing forward and surrounded Xinye on three sides. Originally, they planned to encircle the city and attack the city, but the defenders escaped overnight.In the middle of the night, the Chuangjun wanted to sneak a sneak attack in the dark, but when they climbed the tower, they found that it was an empty city.

Chuang Jun was still suspicious of fraud, so he groped inside cautiously, and did not dare to let the soldiers entering the city sleep.

Before dawn, there really were a small group of Ming troops hiding in the dark to make a sneak attack, using the most exhausted point of the Chuang army to set fire and harass everywhere.

But the fire was quickly extinguished and the chaos was completely under control.Chuangjun was just a part of the recruits who were emotionally unstable and bombed the camp, and were soon suppressed by the veterans. In the chaos, they just trampled on each other and killed hundreds of thousands of people. For a group of farmers who have changed their blood many times For the army, this loss is completely acceptable.

On the opposite side, the Ming army who left behind secretly set fire to it, also killed and injured hundreds of people in the fight, and dozens of slow-moving dead soldiers were captured.

Li Zicheng didn't care about these small things, and after getting the report, he just laughed at Zhu Shuren for going backwards, and actually imitated the strategy used in "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", it was just talking on paper!
However, Song Xiance was relatively cautious. Hearing that some prisoners had been captured, he quickly sent someone to ask them to find out where the dead soldiers of the Ming army belonged.

As a result, after interrogation, it was learned that these soldiers of the Ming army were originally from bandits, and were former troops of Li Dingguo, Liu Wenxiu and others of the former Western Army.

Of course Song Xiance knew that he had to distinguish between the real and the fake, so he asked them to interrogate them in Shaanxi dialect, and these captives could really speak Shaanxi dialect fluently.Ask them about the past when the thieves teamed up, and these people can also tell the details.

After careful deduction, Song Xiance went back to report the good news to Li Zicheng: Zhu Shuren was recruited by the Longwu puppet emperor because of his direct lineage, and went to participate in the counterattack against Huainan. Zhang Xianzhong's old department!It is because it is not a pity for these troops to die, and it is not easy to abandon the territory without fighting, so let these gangsters be cannon fodder, and use gangsters to fight gangsters!
Li Zicheng laughed after hearing this.He inquired again, and learned that the general guarding Xiangyang is only Jin Shenghuan, whom Zuo Liangyu knew, and some generals of Ming army rank.And further down, the dirty and dangerous defense areas were all left to the old Western Army, and the Ming Army was mainly responsible for supervising the battle in those directions.

In the next few days, as time entered late September, Li Zicheng's 10,000+ army, together with Zuo Liangyu's tribe who came to pick up cheap after smelling the benefits, went down the Baihe River and soon arrived at the mouth of the Baihe Hanshui River. The area around Fancheng is only one river away from Xiangyang.

Li Zicheng was still hesitant at first. After all, the Han River is one of the main tributaries of the Yangtze River. The water is magnificent and broad. If you are not prepared enough, it is difficult to regret crossing the Han River.

However, the Ming Army's Jiang Water Division did not appear for a long time, and the ships in the nearby state capitals were also very scarce. There were still some old rogue generals in the Western Army's old troops who had never changed their character and colluded with Li Zicheng in letters, complaining that Zhu Shuren The old department under his command looked down on them as rogues anyway.They are willing to take the old troops of the Eight Great Kings to surrender to King Chuang, and to accompany King Chuang to cross the river.

These words are obviously relatively clumsy.Under normal circumstances, Li Zicheng didn't know how long it would take to screen before he could make up his mind.

But the thing is, it's not normal right now.

Later, Azig's troops had already detoured to Fangcheng Pass, occupying Ye County, Kunyang, Bowang and other dangerous passes in Tongbai Mountain. For a month or two at most, Azig would chase Li Zicheng's ass and continue to hunt him down sooner or later.

But now it is only Hanshui, and in the next month or two, Li Zicheng may not wait for such a god-sent opportunity of Xiangyang's emptiness.

Based on the idea of ​​surviving from death, Li Zicheng directly asked to cross the river after he managed to collect ships with at least enough carrying capacity, regardless of the size of these ships or whether they were capable of water warfare.Of course, sufficient deception work must be done before crossing the river, and an unexpected ferry crossing must be selected in the dark, so as not to be detected by the enemy, so as not to be intercepted by half-crossing.

With complicated emotions, Li Zicheng finally detoured upstream from Fancheng to a small remote county near Yunyang Prefecture in Xiangyang Prefecture on September 27, avoiding all the main ferry crossings in the upper reaches of the Han River, and secretly started crossing the river.

Pioneer crossed the river very smoothly. Li Zicheng himself stayed in the north of the Han River and observed nervously. In the middle of the night, at least 4 to [-] people crossed the river.
Li Zicheng saw that the sky was about to light up, and the initial defense line and the rammed earth wall of the simple earth trench had been firmly established on the south bank, so he personally crossed the river with the Chinese army's personal guards.By the time the sky officially began to light up, all 8000 to [-] members of Li Zicheng's direct line of the army had crossed the river, including his distant relatives, confidantes, civil servants and staff servants.

However, no matter how concealed the intelligence work is, after the sky is completely bright, everything will definitely not be concealed, and the Hanshui patrol fleet of the Ming army will appear sooner or later.

When the time came to the end of the day, Li Zicheng's army was finally discovered, and only two hours later, the Ming army came one after another.

Li Zicheng's army had not yet crossed the Han River, and the rear army and a large number of old and weak remained in Hanbei.Fortunately, the army on the south bank has been building and stabilizing overnight, so it will not be attacked by surprise.

Li Zicheng saw that the first batch of Ming troops were not many, so he also made a decisive decision: "Prepare to fight! The Ming troops must have marched in batches and wanted to attack our army halfway through!

Kill me!Taking advantage of their exhaustion from the journey and lack of troops, let's kill the courage of the Ming army first! "

(End of this chapter)