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Dorgon seemed to be very thoughtful about how to resume frontier provocations in the fourth year of Shunzhi and find a good excuse to inspire the whole army.

And until the last moment, he was very confident about the development of the situation and whether it could be implemented according to his vision.

There is no other reason, only because the history of the Ming and Qing wars in the past 20 years has already told the world: the Qing army is always the one that breaks the promise and breaks the contract and goes to war, while the Ming Dynasty is always the one that cowardly defends peace and seeks peace.

This inertia is so strong that when the strength of the enemy and the enemy are reversed, people's mentality still has a lag, and it has not been reversed for a long time.

Ming people also dare to take the initiative to ask for a fight?Or at least dare to set up a run, at the cost of detonating the powder kegs in advance, in exchange for a more active situation in the early stages of the war?impossible!

And this kind of thinking inertia is destined to need to pay a little price.

……

At the beginning of July in the third year of Longwu, Xi'an.

Wu Sangui, who lives in Shaanxi, is caught in a decision.

Since he hunted down and killed Li Zicheng's remnants three years ago, and finally broke Li Zicheng's nominal capital Xi'an, he can be regarded as a fig leaf for himself, and he has the face to say that he is avenging the late emperor Chongzhen, and he did not deliberately release the Qing soldiers. Entry.

Because of the butterfly effect of historical changes, Shaanxi is even more dilapidated than in the same period in history (in the second year of Shunzhi, he was asked to count the population, and there were only 30 civilians left in the province. Of course, the fleeing refugees and hidden households cannot be ruled out). After Wu Sangui arrived in Shaanxi, the Qing court also He was not forced to make a clear statement, but he was allowed to sit on the fence to form a separation belt between the Ming and Qing Dynasties on the western front.

This situation seems weird, but it is reasonable and it actually happened.

On the one hand, the Qing court felt that Shaanxi had no value in economic exploitation. After it was swallowed up as a direct-administrated province, it might implicate other provinces and carry even heavier burdens of bottomless pits.

Then it's better to leave it to Wu Sangui for self-government temporarily, he can do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn't ask Da Qing for money and food, even if he tosses and kills the remaining people in Shaanxi, it doesn't matter to Da Qing.

The Qing army in this period of history was obsessed with Shaanxi, not for Shaanxi itself, but for a springboard to enter Sichuan.Since Sichuan is very stable and cannot enter Sichuan, who needs Shaanxi?
The Ming court in the south, and the governor of Sichuan, Fang Kongxuan, also turned a blind eye to this situation, and occasionally sent people to contact Wu Sangui through Qin Liangyu and Yuan Zongdi, who was a surrendered general, to declare to him The policies of the Ming court:
It is said that the Nanjing court can determine that his act of letting the Qing soldiers enter the customs was just a moment of confusion. In order to avenge the late emperor at all costs, Wu Sangui has only fought against the peasant army so far, and has not fought civil wars with the territories and troops directly under the Ming Dynasty.

It shows that his conscience as a Ming minister has not been completely wiped out, and Da Ming still looks forward to his contribution to Da Ming on the battlefield again in the future, and will give him a stable and rich ending—but he didn’t say that he will be in charge of the military for the rest of his life in the future.

Fang Kongxuan has no right to write bad checks randomly, and he doesn't want to do things that are treacherous, and there is no need for the court to play too vainly on this issue.

Everyone on the earth knows that Wu Sangui indulged the Qing soldiers.In the future, when Ming Dynasty reunifies the world, it would be unrealistic for him to expect to hold military power for a long time.

If he now starts to abandon the dark and turn to the bright, and re-definitely help Daming fight the Qing army, in the future he can be given a glass of wine to release the military power and become a rich man with a title.

So Fang Kongzhang didn't make random promises, and Wu Sangui didn't take it seriously. Instead, he felt that what Fang Kongzhang said in the bargain should be true——

If you are really like Liu Bang, when you are used, you are willing to agree to everything, that would be terrible. Who knows if you will be wiped out like Han Xin, Peng Yueyingbu in the future.

In the first two years, this kind of contact did not have any substantial impact. Anyway, there was a truce between the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Since last year, crops such as corn and potatoes have finally begun to spread to the north, and some of them have also been tentatively planted in military villages in Huaibei, Shandong, and Heluo, areas occupied by the Qing army.

And when it was time to harvest, the harvest was quite satisfactory, which gave the northern ruler a great surprise, and immediately asked to save all the seeds as much as possible and continue to expand the planting next season.
And we must find ways to expand private trade with the greedy and profiteers in the Nanming occupied area, import more seeds, and speed up the speed and scale of this expanded planting.

In contrast, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei were relatively late to benefit from crops such as corn and potatoes.

Shanxi and Hebei are not bordered by the Nanming-occupied area. When the seeds of new crops first spread over, they were not enough to be intercepted by the bordering provinces. How can there be seeds distributed to the northern provinces?
Shaanxi borders Sichuan, which was occupied by the Southern Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, the road to Sichuan is difficult. During the wartime, when the customs were closed, the Shaanxi garrison did not even know what the Sichuan government was doing. How could they talk about privately expanding transactions and obtaining seeds?
You must know that after Liu Bei's death, Zhuge Liang announced the closure of the pass. As a result, until Cao Pi's death and Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition, Cao Wei didn't know what Ji Han was doing for four years.As long as Fang Kongzheng wanted to seal the customs, the effect would be the same.

Wu Sangui could not get corn and potato seeds through normal channels, and learned from colleagues in Heluo that the yield of corn can be nearly double that of wheat. The most important thing is that it is also drought-tolerant and requires very little irrigation. How not to be jealous?
After all, natural disasters are secondary to getting Shaanxi into what it is today. The key is not to repair water conservancy. Landlords and farmers without the protection of permanent tenancy rights have destructively cultivated land, exhausted their lakes and fished, and soil erosion has already turned the Loess Plateau into a plateau.

In areas where loess cannot retain water resources, crops that can save water are simply a godsend.

Moreover, Wu Sangui brought tens of thousands of Guanning Army and more than 20 family members of Guanning Army to Shaanxi. The previous two years of rule had wiped out the local area, so he had to find a way out.

When Wu Sangui first arrived, Shaanxi still had a population of 30 on the books. In fact, it might be more, because there were refugees living in seclusion, and they formed cottages everywhere to grow and eat (the bandits in Shaanxi at that time had nothing to rob, so the so-called To be a thief is to enclose a piece of land to grow and eat by yourself, and not to pay taxes to anyone)

Wu Sangui wants to supply military rations, how can he squeeze out the local population of 30?The bandits were unwilling to become obedient citizens again, and the natural disaster was not over yet. After two years of fighting, more than half of the population was tossed away.

In the end, there were only 10,000+ civilians left, who were completely incorporated into militarized management by Wu Sangui. There was no free citizen or bandit in Shaanxi, only the dead and military households under Wu Sangui's command.

Therefore, there are still 30 living people in Shaanxi province today, but of these 30 miles, more than [-]% are soldiers of the Guanning Army, and [-]% are the family members of the Guanning Army, and less than [-]% of the remaining people are the soldiers of the Guanning Army. Conquer militarized native civilians.

However, after complete militarized management, Wu Sangui was barely able to prevent his subordinates from starving to death on a large scale.Because the locals have no chance of running or destructive farming any more, and they are completely controlled to death.That is to say, "small country with few people", the total number of people is small enough to allow such refined management, but if the population exceeds 50, he can't manage it like this.

In such a difficult environment, when Wu Sangui learned that Fang Kongzhen had the corn and potato seeds he urgently needed, of course he would be jealous.

The governor of the Qing court in Heluo couldn't grow it himself, and refused to give it to him. Wu Sangui took advantage of last year's autumn harvest and when Fang Kongxuan sent people to contact him again, he put forward his needs with a single blow. Didn't have much hope at the time.

Unexpectedly, after Fang Kongzheng asked for instructions internally, he quickly replied to Wu Sangui, expressing his willingness to give him corn seeds.This made Wu Sangui overjoyed, and his trust in the Ming court in Nanjing increased a bit.

And Fang Kongzhang did this, of course, he also asked Zhu Shuren for instructions, and in the end the actual decision maker was Zhu Shuren.

Zhu Shuren thinks this way: since the Qing government has planted corn and potatoes in Huaibei and Shandong in a small area, after three to five years of propagation and diffusion at most, each time try to save the seeds, it will definitely cover the entire north in the end.

The reproduction of seeds is multiplied by at least a dozen times each year and grows exponentially, or even faster, which is uncontrollable.

So Wu Sangui will get it in the end whether he gives it to Wu Sangui or not, it's just a time difference.If you give it now, you can still make more favors with Wu Sangui, try to win over him, maybe you can win him over.Even if it is unsuccessful, this loss is controllable.

Zhu Shuren just made a little extra request for Fang Kongxuan: When he asked Wu Sangui to take the corn seeds, he promised that he would only plant them in Shaanxi within five years, and secretly plant them in private. Don't let other governors of the Qing court know, and he is not allowed to sell the seeds to other Qing courts. Governor.Otherwise, if he breaks the contract first, Daming will naturally expose other connections between him and Daming!
As long as Wu Sangui did not sell the seeds to Shanxi, Hebei and other areas under the actual control of the Qing court, and did not strengthen the comprehensive national strength of the Tatars, Wu Sangui closed his door in Shaanxi to grow grain for himself, and it would not affect the overall situation of the Northern Expedition.

Wu Sangui wanted something from others, so he had no choice but to agree to this condition at that time. He felt that he didn't grow enough, so there was no way he could export it to the outside world, so why bother to be such a villain.

Now, it is already the third year of Longwu/July of the fourth year of Shunzhi, and a large number of corn seeds that Wu Sangui obtained from Fang Kongxuan have also been harvested on a large scale in the Guanzhong Plain.

Until the harvest, most of the military farmers who were militarized and forced to plant new crops by him were still in a nervous mood.The local people have been poor and isolated for many years, and have no chance to go outside to broaden their horizons. They do not trust any new things, and they are forced to plant them by swords and guns.

Now it's finally harvested, and it's still a bumper harvest. It finally allowed Wu Sangui to gain a firm foothold in Shaanxi, won the hearts of the people, and solved the problem of military rations.

No matter how dilapidated Shaanxi is, it has such a large land after all. As long as the population is as small as 30, and each person manages hundreds of acres of land with a wide range of crops and a small income, they will be able to support themselves.

If we have surplus grain, we can slowly restore water conservancy, plant trees in the north, or return farmland to forests and grasslands to control desertification. There is always a way to survive.

……

It's a pity that Wu Sangui met Dorgon's order during the first harvest season after he reached a secret corn seed deal with Fang Kongxuan at this juncture.
He "invited" him to send his eldest son, Wu Yingxiong, to Beijing to "learn Manchurian etiquette, riding and archery, so as to integrate into the high-level Manchurian circle and promote his talents according to his ability."

How does this make Wu Sangui not nervous?He thought it was the flirting between himself and Fang Kongzheng, and Dorgon finally caught him.

He hurriedly asked if Jiang Yu, the commander-in-chief of Datong in the neighboring province, had sent his son to the capital, but the news he got made him even more nervous: Jiang Yu had already sent him without hesitation.

Some people may think that if Jiang Yu is given away, doesn't that mean that Dorgon is targeting everyone?It's not about Wu Sangui alone!
But Wu Sangui didn't dare to gamble, because he quickly thought of a similar case he had heard a few years ago:
Eight years ago, when Zhang Xianzhong surrendered and rebelled, Yang Sichang, then Shangshu of the Ministry of War of the Chongzhen Dynasty, recruited all the heirs of warlords who had been appeased by Xiong Wencan like Zhang Xianzhong back then to study in the Nanjing Imperial College...

At that time, Yang Sichang also covered it up. He didn't say it on the surface. In order to deceive Zheng Zhilong into sending Zheng Sen (Zheng Chenggong), he also tried his best to get Shen Tingyang to send Shen Shuren (Zhu Shuren) too.

Why didn't Dorgon's move today not follow Yang Sichang?Why isn't Jiang Yu the Shen Tingyang of this era?Why is Wu Sangui not the Zheng Zhilong of this era?

He hesitated again and again, considering the observations over the past few years, he felt that the national power of Ming Dynasty had faintly surpassed that of the Qing Dynasty again. The south under Zhu Shuren's governance was well-organized, and the military industry was progressing at a rapid rate.

He and Zhu Shuren had a little friendship many years ago. Since the two sides still have a way to communicate, they can ride on the top of the wall and slide in any direction, so let's just pull the flag!

……

On the fourth day of July in the third year of Longwu, Wu Sangui received Dorgon's order and delayed the envoy in Xi'an for about ten or eight days to stabilize the opponent and delay the preparation time for the army.

On July [-]th, under the repeated urging of the envoy, Wu Sangui said that "the dog is seriously ill, which is not conducive to walking", and declined Dorgon's request to take hostages to Beijing.

Of course, at this time the two sides hadn't completely broken each other. Wu Sangui asked the envoy to bring back a seal to state his difficulties.

Even though the emissary had sensed Wu Sangui's instability, he didn't dare to expose it immediately. After all, he wanted to save his life, so after receiving Wu Sangui's reply, he galloped straight to Beijing.

Just six days later, on July [-]th, Dorgon in the capital learned of Wu Sangui's resistance. Of course, he would order to further suppress the opponent, and on the other hand, he had to make two-handed preparations to send troops to deter Wu Sangui.

The Qing court was not very interested in winning and completely controlling Shaanxi, because Shaanxi's geographical environment was still closed, and it was not enough to mobilize local resources to other battlefields (it could provide a source of troops, but the Guanning Army has not Ken was used by the Qing court and has always been in a free state)
Therefore, even if there is trouble in Shaanxi, the key is to block the opening, so as not to let Wu Sangui spread, disturb the rear of the Qing Dynasty, and be used by Nanming.As long as Wu Sangui can't play a role and completely separate Shaanxi from other battlefields, that's all.

And if Wu Sangui really colluded with the Ming Dynasty, the Qing court could further use this news to unite the internal forces—originally Dorgon wanted to find an excuse to provoke and restart the southward invasion.

If something like Wu Sangui happened, it would mean that Ming Dynasty first took the initiative to invade the Qing Dynasty, and Dorgon could use it for publicity, so that the whole Qing Dynasty could play a role of defending their home and country, which greatly boosted morale.

After all, at any time, the morale of the Great Patriotic War is always higher than that of the Aggressive War, and this level of psychological buff is neither in vain nor in vain.

……

Considering that it is not easy to make military achievements in the Shaanxi battlefield where there is renewed chaos, and it may take long-term low-intensity stalemate and consumption, Dorgon decided to send Hauge to the Shaanxi battlefield again to face off against Wu Sangui.

At the same time, Shanxi Jiangguan's army should also be temporarily allocated to Hauge for unified dispatch, mainly relying on the Shanxi army in the rear to confront the Shaanxi Guanning army, and by the way, also guard the dangerous pass of Tongguan.

When Wu Sangui wiped out Li Zicheng's remnants of Guanzhong three and a half years ago, the Qing army took control of Pubanjin and Tongguan. This was also to ensure that the key points were in the hands of the Qing army, which allowed Wu Sangui to actually stand on his own in the northwest.Of course Wu Sangui didn't want this, but he had no choice at the time, because if he had to garrison Tongguan in person, the Qing court would tear himself apart at that time.

It is precisely because the Qing army holds Tongguan that it has not been too worried about Wu Sangui's troubles.

After some arrangements by Dorgon, the second appeasement letter to Wu Sangui was sent from Beijing on July 26, and should arrive in Xi'an on the third day of August as planned.

Hauge himself also started to leave for Shanxi on July [-]th, and the Manzhenglan Banner led by Hauge was also gradually mobilized westward.Before Hauge arrived, the local Qing troops in Shanxi and Tongguan had also received the news in advance and entered the alert.

In the end, Dorgon's envoys did not arrive in Xi'an on the third day of August as planned - because on the first day of August, two days before the arrival of Dorgon's second batch of envoys, Wu Sangui officially raised the flag , in response to Ming’s resistance to the Qing court,
Wu Sangui immediately sent troops to block the west exit of Tongguan Road, set up camp on the road to confront the Qing army, and sent troops on the other side to block the west bank of Pubanjin.

What Wu Sangui announced to the outside world was only to officially recognize the Nanjing court as Zhengshuo and help the Nanjing court to keep Shaanxi, but he did not say that he would attack the Qing-occupied area.

But just the official change of flag in Shaanxi, as the trigger for the two countries to go to war in an all-round way, is already enough.

Hauge and Wu Sangui quickly fought each other on the front line of Tongguan, and both sides suffered casualties. It is said that Hauge had a favorable geographical position, but the Qing army could not quickly obtain results.

Wu Sangui's Guanning Army is not weak, and the most important thing is that Fang Kongzhao in Sichuan has been closely monitoring Wu Sangui's actions.
After the war on the northern front, he also temporarily moved the yamen from Chengdu to Hanzhong in order to obtain first-hand information on the war situation as soon as possible.Discovering that Wu Sangui had really abandoned the dark and turned to the bright side, Fang Kongzhang ordered Qin Liangyu to send Yuan Zongdi, the original bandit who was surrendered three years ago, to Guanzhong to help Wu Sangui in the battle, so that he could temporarily return to Wu Sangui's control.

Of course, Fang Kongzheng is very good at the supply speed of the reinforcements and armaments. Basically, it will not cause Wu Sangui to become stronger and stronger in the Vietnam War, but Wu Sangui will make up for as much as he loses, so that Wu Sangui and Hauge can take it easy. exhausted.

And Fang Kongzheng's reasons are also very good: the road to Shu is difficult, and transportation is not easy. It is not bad to be able to supply at this speed. No matter how many people are on the road at once, I am afraid that Wu Sangui's grain storage in Xi'an will not last until next spring famine, right?

The infrastructure conditions of the Shu road meant that Fang Kongzheng could only provide ammunition and arrows for the soldiers, and it was impossible to count on Hanzhong for rations.As much food as Wu Sangui himself has, he can only maintain as many living people in the Guanzhong Plain at the same time.

……

After the war broke out on the Western Front and entered a stalemate, the Ming and Qing Dynasties were completely torn apart.

Of course, Dorgon knew that the western front was not the decisive place to use it, the road conditions were too poor, and it was too far away from the heart.

What can really make the final decision are the fronts in the middle.

Therefore, in just half a month after Wu Sangui raised the flag, the Qing army launched an offensive again in Xinyang and Fengyang.

The front line of Nanyang and Xinyang was still under the command of Azig, the commander-in-chief three years ago, and launched the offensive on the tenth day of August.

On the front line of Fengyang, Abatai and his two sons, Boluo and Yue Le, were in charge of attacking, and launched the offensive on August [-]th.

In the northern part of Huai'an in the east, that is, the counties of Suqian, Pizhou, and Haizhou in Huaibei, the Qing army took a defensive position, leaving only the size of troops needed for defense, under the command of Man Dahai.