A century-old family that runs through the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 78
The Yan army seized Peiping with lightning speed, and then quickly launched an attack on the few armies loyal to the Southern Court. The strongest among them was Song Zhong, who had [-] troops.

Although Song Zhong was on guard, his strength and that of King Yan were not at the same level.

Moreover, he made a stupid move and told his subordinates that the King of Yan had executed all their family members in Peiping. Naturally, the crowd was excited and everyone followed suit. As a result, the King of Yan pulled the parents of the soldiers away in the blink of an eye. Out.

After shouting randomly, the southern army collapsed without a fight. Song Zhong died unyieldingly after being captured.

The remaining governors were also defeated by the Yan army.

Zhu Di was very fast and quickly brought the three counties of Beiping, Baoding and Yongping under his command. Because he had a high prestige in the Northern Army and the ambiguous attitude of his direct superiors, a large number of Ming troops surrendered to Zhu Di's subordinates. , and then he broke through several cities and occupied Hejian Mansion, with a total force of 12, and restored his prosperity.

He divided his troops into two groups, one with 10 people, led by Zhu Wenzheng, who went west to rescue King Dai, and the other with 2 people, followed him to launch an offensive against Zhending Mansion.

At this time, Daiwang was truly in dire straits.

After repelling several attacks, King Dai became even more proud and domineering, and even openly said on many occasions: "Feng Sheng is old."

As for Feng Sheng, after basically figuring out the actual strength of Dai's army, he immediately launched a general offensive.

The Confederate army has 20 troops and the Dai army has [-] troops.

Fortunately, although King Dai is proud, he is not ignorant of soldiers. Seventy thousand against 20, he is not mentally ill, otherwise he may not be defeated in one battle.His strategy was to delay, strengthen the walls and clear the country until Feng Sheng ran out of food and was forced to withdraw.

But he overestimated the ability of his men to defend the city, and not everyone was Geng Bingwen.

In the Battle of Shuozhou, more than [-] Dai troops were wiped out, and the commander died in the battle.

Then came Shanyin, Yingzhou...until they broke Huairen and came to Datong City.

In just half a month, Dai's army almost collapsed and all the land in northern Shanxi was lost. The southern army surrounded Datong. King Dai reduced his last [-] soldiers to carry out desperate resistance in Datong City.

Although Datong Mansion is an important border town with high walls and thick walls, it cannot withstand 20 people fighting like this. In continuous battles, the Dai army suffered heavy losses and the city walls were damaged. The Southern army even almost entered the city several times. King Dai even went to the battle in person to encourage him. Morale, they were barely able to fight back.

The Dai army fought less and less, and by September of the first year of Jianwen, there were less than ten thousand people left, and the city was crumbling.

Dai Wang began to despair.

He began to keep a small bottle in his arms containing a highly toxic poison.

He is a king, and he does not want to suffer the humiliation of being captured.

That night, King Dai was sleeping in his mansion when he suddenly felt loud shouts in the city.

Has this moment finally come?Zhu Gui smiled bitterly and took out the poison.

Fortunately, just when he was about to drink the bottle of poison, a servant knocked open the door and broke in:
"Your Highness, I am so happy! The Confederate army has retreated!"

With a clang, the small bottle in King Dai's hand fell to the ground. He looked at the attendant with dull eyes and murmured:
"The Southern Army has retreated?"

In early September, King Yan's message spread all over the country, and the world was shocked. When Zhu Yunwen got the news, he felt like he was hit hard. His plan was completely messed up!
Fortunately, he just listened to Yan Ji's words and sent someone to inform Fu Youde, so it should be too late.

The news that the King of Yan, with Zhu Wenzheng as commander, sent one hundred thousand troops to the west, soon reached Feng Sheng's ears. By this time, the Yan army had already reached the edge of Shanxi.

After judging the strength of the city in front of him and the speed of the Yan army, Feng Sheng decisively gave up and continued to besiege King Dai, and led the main force eastward to prepare for a decisive battle with the Yan army.

Anyway, sooner or later, you will have to fight.However, he still left [-] troops behind, led by a general, and continued to attack the city. Of course, it was not so much about attacking the city, but more about keeping an eye on the king to avoid being stolen.After all, it is not easy to defend a fortified city of [-] and [-].

In order to prevent King Dai from being killed, Zhu Wenzheng also sent Yan Keng to lead his troops from Lingqiu in northern Shanxi to the west to rescue Datong.

After Feng Sheng learned the news, he immediately sent Ping An and led an army of [-] to intercept.

And he himself brought 13 people against Zhu Wenzheng's 8 people.

Although the Yan army had fewer troops, it had just won a great victory and its morale was high. However, Feng Sheng's 20-strong army failed to capture Datong after ten days, so its morale was still somewhat declining.

More importantly, Feng Sheng himself was not very motivated to fight.

In fact, during the Jingnan Campaign, except for the upper-level personnel of the two armies, the rest of the bureaucrats did not have a particularly firm stance.Because whoever wins is the boss named Zhu. They are more waiting to see who wins and who they follow.

For example, Ping An and the famous Sheng Yong, they actually fought either with the idea of ​​being loyal to Jianwen to the death, or simply to complete the mission of the capital.

After King Yan came to the throne, they all chose to surrender.

In the eyes of most people, they will follow whoever is in the capital.

This was still the case in the original time and space when Zhu Yunwen was justified, but in this time and space, the military ministers were actually dissatisfied with Zhu Yunwen's ascension to the throne, not to mention the old-timers like Feng Sheng.

Zhu Wen was working hard for his final glory in his later years, but Feng Sheng was absent-minded and did not want to fight the enemy with all his strength.

The two people are of similar level, but have completely different mentality, which also seriously affects the trend of the battle.

After several battles, the Confederate army retreated repeatedly without a decisive defeat, but it also lost hundreds of troops and had low morale.

Although Feng Sheng gave in, it was impossible for him to directly defeat the battle or surrender to the enemy. He decided not to hold on.

The two armies just faced off.

The center of the battlefield has moved to the north.

Ping'an was a heroic general in the Southern Army. He was the adopted son of Zhu Yuanzhang. He had followed Zhu Di to the fortress and understood the fighting methods of the Northern Army, so he was ordered to lead his army to intercept Yan Keng's troops.

But Ping'an certainly understood the Northern Army, but Yan Keng's subordinates were not the Northern Army with infantry and cavalry, but complete cavalry troops.

King Yan transferred away his Yanshan right guard, but gave him a more powerful army.

During the previous battle with the King of Liao, a large number of Mongolian troops were captured.

Historically, this battle was an expulsion war, which only drove away the King of Liao. The few captured Mongolian troops were also dispersed and incorporated into the Ming army.

But this time it was different. There were too many Mongolian troops.

So at Yan Keng's suggestion, Zhu Di selected [-] elite soldiers to form a separate cavalry unit.

When Zhu Yuanzhang learned of this, he specially named this Mongolian cavalry.

Shunyi cavalry.

(End of this chapter)