Autumn of the 17th year of Chongzhen

Chapter 17 Wang Shiheng, Save Zuo Maodi
Hong Guangchao was keen on the strategy of uniting the captives and suppressing the bandits, so it became a top priority to send a mission to negotiate peace with the Qing court.

Chen Hongfan, the former governor and chief military officer, volunteered to play the northern envoy, and then recruited Zuo Maodi, the right servant of the Nanjing military department and the imperial envoy of the right prosecutor, and Ma Shaoyu, the imperial servant, to form the northern envoy.

The Hongguang court sent a mission to the north to negotiate peace with the Qing court. There should have been a clear plan as a basis for bargaining, but the actual situation was not like this. Before Zuo Maodi left, Hongguang court had not come up with a specific plan.

Emperor Hongguang ordered the ministers to discuss, or say, "take the two Huaihe Rivers as the boundary." Gao Fu Hongtu said: "Shandong's hundred and two mountains and rivers must not be abandoned. If you have to, you must be the ear of Hejian." Ma Fushiying said: "The Lord You are still young, so you can be uncle and nephew with His Majesty."

On the first day of August, Ma Shaoyu wrote a letter to Wu Sangui, saying that after the reconciliation was agreed, the uncle and nephew, the two families and one family, would work together to kill Li thief and share peace.

Hongguang's rulers and ministers intend to rule by dividing the territory between Ming and Qing. Hongguang is an uncle and Fulin is a nephew. To some extent, he wants to save some face for the boss empire, but such ideas are so naive.

Not to mention other things, Beijing is the old capital of the country, and the mausoleums are all in the north. Emperor Chengzu Wen, the bow and sword of the ancestors have been hidden, the catalpa palaces of the previous emperors have not been laid, and the common people still rely on the tombs. How can the emperor abandon the cemetery?
Besides, the Hongguang monarchs and ministers put all their hopes on the Qing army, but they did not prepare soldiers and horses themselves, and did not think about going north to seek thieves, but hoped that the Manchu Qing would eliminate Li Chuang and live in peace with him. This is simply wishful thinking.

Zuo Maodi, the chief envoy of the Northern Mission, felt that something was wrong before his mission, so he wrote a letter, intending to clean up Shandong along the way and connect with Wuzhen, in case there will be changes in the future. Can't listen to his opinion.

When Zuo Maodi passed by Sizhou, he met Shi Kefa and wanted to persuade him again, but Shi Kefa said: "The manager has a literary ear; Tonghe is an imperial edict. You should hurry and don't stay."

Zuo Maodi had no choice but to embark on the northbound road against his will. When passing through Shandong, Zhao Yingyuan and other rebels were willing to serve Hongguang Dynasty, but he was afraid of the pressure from the court and did not dare to use it. He could only encourage him with good words .

When they arrived at the capital, the Northern Mission held Hongguang Yushu and entered the city through Zhengyangmen. The Qing court arranged for them to live in Honglu Temple and sent troops to take strict precautions.

The next day, officials from the Ministry of Rites of the Qing court came to Honglu Temple and asked, "What are the princes from the south doing to our country?"

The envoy replied: "I asked the emperor to ask your country to borrow troops to destroy the bandits and return to mourning clothes for the late emperor. Now we will send an imperial letter to thank you."

Officials of the Qing Dynasty said: "There are books to pay my family."

The envoys told the imperial letter to be handed over to the supreme ruler of the Qing court, but not to the Ministry of Rites. The upright official said arrogantly: "All tribute documents must be forwarded to the Ministry of Rites."

Zuo Maodi and others couldn't help being furious, saying that what they held was the national document of the heaven and the dynasty, not a tribute document, but the officials of the Qing court ignored it.

In the next few days, the Qing court tried every means to humiliate the members of the Northern Mission and wanted to make them submit. Gang Lin, a scholar of the Qing Inner Academy, was extremely arrogant and even threatened to send a large army to attack Jiangnan. There are a lot of horses, so don't take a peek." Responding to him, the two sides broke up unhappy.

Then the Qing court sent troops to confiscate the property brought by the northern mission to Beijing, and wanted to drive the mission out of Beijing and order it to return to the south, threatening to send troops to the south afterward.

Seeing that the Qing court had no intention of peace talks, Zuo Maodi retreated to the next best thing and wanted to pay homage to Emperor Chongzhen, but Ganglin flatly refused: "I have already cried for you, sacrificed and buried you. What are you crying for, what are you sacrificing, and what are you burying? When Emperor Lie was alive, thieves would not send troops;

Then Ganglin took out another proclamation and read it out on the spot, blaming the ministers in Nanjing, "It is the first crime not to save the emperor, the second crime is to set up Hongguang without authorization, and the third crime is supporting soldiers and abusing the people in every town.

The matter has come to this point, and the mission of the Northern Mission has completely failed.

The next day, the Qing court sent [-] soldiers to send the mission back south.

On the first day of November, the mission was escorted to Tianjin, but Chen Hongfan in the team had other thoughts.

The Hongguang Dynasty sent Chen Hongfan as an important member of the northern envoy. The original intention was to consider that he had been in the army for a long time and had an old relationship with Wu Sangui, so it was easy to contact, but he didn't know that he had already intended to surrender to the Qing court.

As early as June [-]th, Tang Yushi, a general of the Ming Dynasty who surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, played Doer Gun, "If you think about Zhang Xianzhong and Zuo Liangyu at both ends, Chen Hongfan, the former town minister, can recruit them. The minister Qilong He is the son-in-law of Hong Fan, who once served as a general under Shi Kefa's bid, and many of the generals in the middle of the ranks are well acquainted, so if you beg him to send an order to recruit him, the near and far will be happy, and the unification will be accomplished."

Dorgon quickly agreed to appease Chen Hongfan, and ordered his subordinate Tang Qilong to wait on the road that the northern mission must pass, and secretly meet Chen Hongfan.

The failure of the mission of the Northern Mission made Chen Hongfan determined to fall to the Qing court. In order to sell himself at a good price, he secretly wrote a memorial and asked Dorgon to keep Zuo Maodi, Ma Shaoyu and other members of the Northern Mission who were with him. Let him return to the south alone, so as to recruit and surrender the troops of the four towns for the Qing court on the way.

Dorgon was overjoyed when he got his secret performance, and then dispatched the great scholar Zhan Ba ​​to lead forty or fifty cavalry southward in the starry night. On the fourth day of November, he finally caught up with the mission team in the south of Cangzhou.

When Zuo Maodi saw that the Qing army wanted to detain the members of the northern missions back to Beijing, but let Chen Hongfan go south, his heart sank.

Chen Hongfan left the team and went all the way south, while the Northern Mission was escorted by the Qing soldiers to the north, silently on the way, Zuo Maodi pondered the Qing court's intention with a sullen face.

There is no need for other tricks. Chen Hongfan only needs to spread the message of peace after arriving in Nanjing, falsely reporting that the Qing court has accepted the peace talks, so that the southern officials are negligent, and the consequences will be disastrous.

Along the way, Zuo Maodi was so worried that he couldn't swallow the food, and his face was so ugly that he was already in his sixties.

The team marched in the territory of Beizhili, an area controlled by the Qing army. There was no need to worry about safety, and the team leader Zhan Ba ​​asked the team to stop and rest.

But he would never have imagined that in the woods a few hundred meters away from them, there was a group of about a thousand people hiding. Their clothes were chaotic, they couldn't see the flags, and they didn't know whether they were rebels or horse thieves.

Seeing the soldiers of the Qing Dynasty get off their horses and rest on the side of the road, a scout who looked a bit ruffian dropped the weeds in his mouth, slowly got up, and then quietly retreated into the woods.

The men and horses in the forest did not expect to encounter a group of Qing soldiers. If they were bitten by Qing soldiers and cavalry, they would probably be in trouble.

When the spies returned to the forest, they quickly touched a man wearing a net scarf and said, "My lord, fifty cavalrymen, three hundred infantrymen, and more than a dozen Ming officials are still being detained, shall we fight or not?"

The spy is Liu Shun, and the man in Taoist uniform is naturally Wang Yan who escaped from Qingzhou.

In the battle of Qingzhou, the rebel army broke through the North Camp of the Qing army, burned a large amount of Hetuo's supplies, and also robbed many war horses, which made Hetuo very angry.

Although he captured Qingzhou, he still felt that he had lost face, and he couldn't swallow his breath, so he led the Qing army around to look for the Shandong rebels and launched a crazy revenge.

After the failure of the Qingzhou Incident, the rebels did not dare to seize the big city of Shandong again, but because of the rebels gathered in Qingzhou, they could only flee and fight.

In order to eradicate Shandong, Hetuo, Li Sutai and others did their best.

Pursued by the elite Eight Banners soldiers, the rebels who had just won a victory were killed and defeated before they had time to rejoice.

The Shandong volunteer army numbered more than [-]. Although there were many people, they were not regular army troops, nor were they war-torn thieves. They lacked training and experience, so they could not compete with the Qing cavalry, and they did not dare to occupy the city. Escape into the mountains, exhausted.

Wang Yan, who was unconscious, was protected by Liu Shun and others, and hid in Tibet with the rebels. More than [-] rebels were successively defeated by the Qing army, and their numbers decreased rapidly. They could not stay in Shandong, so they decided to leave Shandong and find another place. way out.

They originally wanted to go south to Huainan to vote for Shi Kefa, but Hetuo wanted to kill Wang Yan and quickly, hating the Shandong rebels so much that they deployed heavy soldiers on the way south. In desperation, they had to take Wang Yanliu to Beizhi Li area.

Compared with Shandong, Beizhili was captured by the Qing army for many days, and the rebels had already been wiped out by the Qing army, but the Qing army's defense was much looser. Wang Yan and the others had been wandering in for many days, but they were not discovered by the Qing army.

In the forest, there are more than 1000 rebels, the only surviving essence of the rebels from several routes in Shandong, more than [-] horses. They lie on the ground and dare not make a sound. He has the ability to save his life.

At this time, Wang Yan heard Liu Shun's words, and couldn't help frowning and thinking. If the Qing army in Beizhili and Pingchuan could not be completely wiped out, once their whereabouts were exposed, they would most likely face another chase. However, more than 300 people were detained Dozens of Ming officials, but it aroused his interest.

After weighing the pros and cons, Wang Yan decided to vote, firstly because they were in urgent need of supplies, secondly because their number was three times larger than that of the Qing army, and thirdly because he felt that the status of the detained officials was not ordinary and it was worth the risk First rescue.

Immediately, Wang Yan called Wang Wei, Qian Yifeng and other old brothers, each with hundreds of troops, and agreed to divide them into a joint attack.Quietly, they divided into three groups and surrounded the Qing soldiers.

The Qing soldiers resting on the side of the road were completely unaware of the crisis, and Zhan Ba ​​was not to blame for his carelessness. This place is only ten miles away from Cangzhou. How could he have thought that someone would be so bold as to sneak attack here.

The Qing soldiers were lying or sitting by the side of the road, some were resting with their eyes closed, some were drinking water leisurely, when a rain of arrows hit them.

I could only smell "嗖~嗖~嗖~" a gust of wind hit.

In an instant, dozens of Qing soldiers were killed and injured amidst screams, which immediately caused confusion in the team. That Zhan Ba ​​was a civil servant, who had never seen such a scene before, and was almost frightened into cerebral palsy.

"Brothers! Follow me to kill the prisoners!"

As soon as Wang Yan drew his waist knife, the rebel army beside him jumped up and rushed towards the Qing army by the side of the road.

"Young master has an order! Don't let anyone go, kill me!"

Shouts sounded from three sides, blocking the way for the Qing soldiers to advance and retreat.

At this time, the Thousand Rebel Army was no longer comparable to the Zhao Army guarding Qingzhou City. They moved to most of Shandong and fought dozens of times with the Qing soldiers. .

Qin Shangxing originally had two or three thousand men under his command, but under the pursuit of the Qing army, there were only a hundred cavalry left. Out of the 3000 men, 100 were selected, and the elimination ratio was 1000 to [-]. The rest naturally became elite soldiers.Wang Yan's [-] troops are composed of several remnants of the rebel army, which is the essence of the Shandong rebel army.

After a burst of fighting, Zuo Maodi and others who were detained nearby were shocked when they saw that the rebel army killed most of the Qing soldiers like tigers entering a flock of sheep.

"Master Zuo?"

A sudden call drew Zuo Maodi's eyes away from the fiercely fighting rebels, and when he saw a man with a knife not far away, he suddenly said in surprise, "Wang Shiheng!"

"Why are you here?"

"Why is Shi Heng here?"

The two looked at each other and couldn't help asking at the same time.

"Oh, it's hard to say!"

　Thank you for your recommendations and comments!
　　


(End of this chapter)