Back to Daming to be a genius

Chapter 224 The Scary Goofy Dog
(PS: The ranking of the monthly pass is terrible, and the monthly pass is turned 720 degrees.)
"Hey, how did the water in the Yellow River become so small today? It didn't seem that the river was so small a few days ago, right?"

In the early morning of the second day of June in the eighth year of Tianqi, on the bank of the Yellow River on the west side of Fugu County, a group of rebel soldiers who came here to fetch water for drinking suddenly discovered that the Yellow River, which was more than a mile wide a few days ago, had become narrower unconsciously. More than a quarter of it was covered, revealing many river banks full of grayish-yellow river mud.These rebel soldiers who fetched water couldn't help being very surprised, "I remember that it wasn't like this a few days ago. It's only been a few days, why is the river so much smaller?" "Yes, I also remember that the water was not so small a few days ago. What's the matter?"

"What's the noise? What's the noise?" At this time, a rebel general who was in charge of patrolling the river bank came over, and after asking the reason, the rebel general said impatiently: "The river water has gradually become smaller since the past few days. What's so strange? It has been drought for so many years, not to mention that the water of the Yellow River has become smaller, even if it stops flowing, it is not surprising that the rivers such as Zhujiachuan and Qingshuichuan have long run out of water?"

"That's right, mother, I don't know how many years the drought will last in Shaanxi." The chief cook of the rebel army agreed, and greeted the soldiers who fetched water: "Don't be wordy, let's fetch water and cook. It’s not that we can’t fetch water, and if we miss the meal, our gang leaders will be scolded again.” All the gang leaders said yes, and hurriedly braved the rising sun, took a few more steps deep into the river bank, and went to the depths of the river bank to fight. water for cooking.

The sun gradually came into the sky, and before noon, the sun was already so hot that the land stationed on both sides of the Yellow River in Fugu was covered with green smoke. Going into the woods to hide from the sun is like rushing to the banks of the gentle Yellow River and jumping into the river to escape the heat. Among the thieves and soldiers, the consumption of drinking water has also increased suddenly-nonsense, running and swinging a knife under the poisonous sun, do you want to be dehydrated if you don't drink more water?But what most people don't notice is that the water flow in the Yellow River channel is gradually decreasing bit by bit. There is also a faint smell in the river, which is very similar to the corpse being burned by the scorching sun. The foul smell that comes out after being exposed to the sun and smelly, but the smell is not obvious, so if you don't pay special attention, it is difficult to find it.

In the early morning of the next day, when the leader of the gang of thieves came to fetch water from the Yellow River again, everyone couldn't help being shocked—in just two days, the water volume of the Yellow River had actually decreased by nearly half. And it's obviously a lot turbid—you know, Fugu is located at the northernmost tip of Shaanxi, and the water of the Yellow River has not been polluted by the sediment on the Loess Plateau, so the river flowing through Fugu has always been very clear, not like the Yellow River at all. Like the middle and lower reaches, the river is so turbid that a bowl of water can contain half a bowl of sand.But the water quality has suddenly become so bad, these lowly gang leaders can't pursue anything, they can only go a few more steps to fetch water honestly, go back to cook and serve the uncles in their team with knives and guns .But at noon, the trouble came again.

"Damn it, what did you eat this morning? How did you get it like this? Ouch, my stomach hurts again, and I have to find a place to squat again." There were hundreds of thousands of soldiers who complained. Many old and weak women and children with weaker bodies are even more serious. They just vomit up and down, vomit, vomit, and vomit all the bitter water of jaundice. What they pull out is white excrement like rice swill.And with the passage of time, and as more and more soldiers and their families drank the water of the Yellow River, more and more patients suffered from diarrhea and vomiting. More than 29 rebels lived and slept in the Yellow River in Fugu. The sanitation conditions on both sides of the Taiwan Strait were already very bad, and so many patients appeared at once, and under the mutual infection, the epidemic broke out all at once, and finally attracted the attention of [-] big thieves.

Because they will be stationed in the Fugu area for more than a month, after receiving the epidemic report, the twenty or so thieves who used to kill people also began to pay attention to the health of the soldiers. Wang Jiayin personally dispatched, with More than [-] thieves went deep into the army to investigate the cause of the epidemic, but most of these thieves were illiterate and did not know a single word, and they did not have military doctors and medicines in their hands. To treat these patients with obvious symptoms of cholera, they could only take The ancient folk way to treat leprosy patients is to exile them to the distant mountains to fend for themselves.As a result, many sick soldiers who knew that being exiled would be starved to death began to panic. In order to save their own lives, they scrambled to avoid the inspection of the officers. Those who went to the depths of the military camps or among the old and weak, women and children, invisibly expanded the scope of transmission.

On the third day, the continuously decreasing flow of the Yellow River was only one-third of the normal level. In this way, the change in the flow of the Yellow River finally attracted the attention of the bandits headed by Wang Jiayin. Under suspicion, Wang Jiayin had to contact the stationed Luo Rucai's department in Hequ City in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, and Luo Rucai reported that the flow of the Yellow River section in Hequ where he was stationed had also decreased significantly. In order to investigate the reason, Luo Rucai had sent scouts to the upper reaches of the Yellow River to investigate, but Laoniuwan, which was further upstream Under the control of the Ming army, it is difficult for scouts to approach, so it will take some time.Although Wang Jiayin thought it was a bit strange, the emaciated camel was bigger than a horse. No matter how much the water volume of the Yellow River, the second largest river in China, was greatly reduced, it still did not threaten the drinking water supply for the rebels in Fugu. After a third of the time, the flow of the river was basically maintained at this level, and there was no tendency to completely stop the flow, so Wang Jiayin didn't take it too seriously, but continued to pay attention to the cholera disease that had intensified in the army.

It should be Luo Ru's bad luck. Although the scouts he sent out were extremely careful and attentive, these scouts had just crossed the mouth of the Guan River into the Yellow River, and they were discovered by the more experienced and well-equipped Ming army scouts. , Next, the scouts of Luo Rucai's army stabbed the hornet's nest. As soon as the scouts of the Ming army called out that there was an enemy, hundreds of Ming army cavalry armed to the teeth came out from all directions, and ping-pong every two hundred steps. Pang fired firearms indiscriminately, making Luo Rucai's scouts cry for their fathers and mothers, and turned their backs. Immediately afterwards, the soldiers of the Ming army, all wearing white cloaks, stepped on their horses, relying on their horses to easily catch up with the Luo Rucai army scouts who were running away with their heads in their hands. With grayish-yellow smoke, the tigers swung their sabers like a flock of sheep and slashed wildly. It didn't take long for the thirty or so scouts of Luo Rucai's army to be chopped down to corpses all over the field.Moreover, after this battle, the reconnaissance range of the scouts of the Ming army nearly doubled, and the number of troops invested was also greatly increased. The interception and killing of military scouts were either shot to death by muskets or hacked to death by sabers. Occasionally, a few fish that slipped through the net could only flee back to Hequ City with their heads in their arms, and dared not go further north.

While waiting in doubt, on the seventh night of the first month of June, a traitor who was in charge of scouting the movement of the Ming army in Shanxi Town suddenly rushed into Fugu City with a body covered in wind and sand, and shouted hoarsely at the gate of the Fugu County Yamen. The [-] or so thieves who were appreciating the beauty singing and dancing shouted loudly: "King Shan, you great kings, something is wrong. Officer Zhang Gou has sent troops! Officer Zhang Gou personally led the army and left Shanxi Town to kill Fugu. Already!"

"Officer Zhang Gou leads the army in person?" Wang Jiayin jumped up in fright, and asked nervously, "When did you send the troops? How many troops are there?"

"Yesterday at noon, Officer Zhang Gou personally led the army from Shanxi Town." Xi Zuo screamed with a pale face, "Officer Zhang Gou personally led a small number of troops, only 6000, but they were all from the slave slaughtering army of Officer Zhang Gou. Generals like Ma Dengyun and Zhang Honggong are escorting food and supplies for the army of Officer Zhang Gou!"

"Six thousand slave-slaughter troops?!" All the thieves present gasped—they were ignorant, but they had heard that Young Master Zhang used four thousand slave-slaughter troops and four thousand cavalry to kill hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The Tatar army fought like ghosts and wolves.Moreover, officers and soldiers like Ma Dengyun and Zhang Honggong were only serving as a supply team for the slave slaughter army, escorting food and grass. How ferocious Master Zhang came this time, these thieves dare not imagine.Under tension, Wang Jiayin hurriedly yelled: "Where's Fan Wencheng? Didn't that traitor say that Officer Zhang's army dare not go west to attack Fugu? He's there, call him here!"

"Shaan Wang, isn't that traitor Fan Wencheng in Hequ with Luo Rucai? Why did you forget?" Zhang Xianzhong reminded with a frown.Only then did Wang Jiayin wake up, and hurriedly shouted again: "Then send someone to Hequ, call Luo Rucai and Fan Wencheng back, and discuss how to deal with Zhang Gouguan's slave-slaughter army."

"Decree." Zhang Liwei, Wang Jiayin's right-hand assistant, brother-in-law, stood up and clasped his fists in agreement, and was about to come out to make arrangements.Zhang Xianzhong suddenly shouted again: "Wait a minute, don't panic, listen, it sounds like there is some sound?" The rumbling sound, some like thunder and some like flood, came from north to south, and the sound was getting closer.

"The sound of the river!" Bai Jiu'er was the first to wake up, and shouted, "The Yellow River is flooding!" Before he finished speaking, the faces of all the thieves in the hall turned gray—the terrain around Fugu is very flat Low-lying, only a few places are at the same level as the Yellow River or higher than the Yellow River, most of the low-lying places are even lower than the water surface of the Yellow River, and the Yellow River suddenly flooded. The rogue army and their families in the open area outside the city will be in bad luck.

"Flood! Flood! Water!" When more than [-] thieves hurried up the city wall to check, there was already a swamp country outside Fugu City, and thousands of rebel soldiers were rolling in the waist-deep muddy river water Struggling, the embankments of the Yellow River, which was in disrepair due to war, collapsed in many places, and the white water rushed out of the embankment with roaring and surging waves, whirling and rushing towards the unprepared bandit camp. , was immediately dizzy by the flood, and the smart ones knew how to run to higher places, while the soldiers who could not swim or reacted a little slower cried and shouted in the flood, scurrying around like headless flies, trampling each other in the chaos , Countless dead.And in the area where the family members are stationed farther away, countless cries and shouts can be heard clearly even on the tower - all the family members of the rebel soldiers and generals stationed there are mostly old and weak, women and children. In the worst case, the casualties are not comparable to the soldiers in these barracks outside the city.

"This, how is it possible?" Seeing this scene, Wang Jiayin and other gangsters were all dumbfounded, and shouted in disbelief: "Shaanxi has been in drought for so many years, how could there be such a big flood?" "Before the Yellow River Isn’t there still a shortage of water for a few days? Why is there so much water today, and it’s raining heavily in the north?” “It’s over, my military camp! How could I set up the military camp so close to the Yellow River, or in a low-lying place, It's over—!"

"A group of idiots, this must be the work of Zhang Gouguan!" The rebel genius Zhang Xianzhong suddenly roared, and roared: "Zhang Gouguan must have built a dam upstream, so the water in the Yellow River became smaller a few days ago. Today, Zhang Gouguan Digging the dam again, of course the water in the Yellow River will increase! No wonder Jiannu said that Zhang Gouguan is the most insidious plague god in the world, he is indeed powerful, Shaanxi has been drought for so many years, and he still has a way to attack with water!"

"No wonder Cao Cao's men couldn't get close to Lao Niu Bay. Officer Zhang Gou's soldiers must have built a dam there!" Wang Jiayin also came to his senses, yelling hysterically.But what's the use of waking up now?The rebel army stationed in Hequ was not affected by the flood because of its high terrain, but the low-lying Fugu County, the base camp of the rebels, was helpless in the face of the flood.There are more than 10 thieves with a manpower of tens of thousands of people, but they can only watch helplessly as the flood floods the land of Fugu, spreads and swallows them, and they can rush into Xuanda to grab money and food in a month or two. The women's bandit soldiers struggled and rolled in the flood, crying for help, completely helpless.

In [-] A.D., on the seventh night of June in the eighth year of the Ming Dynasty, Xuanda Governor Zhang Haogu ordered the excavation of the Laoniuwan Dam. The Yellow River, which had been confined for many days, surged down and instantly swallowed the low-lying Fugu downstream. In the counties and counties, the main forces of the rebels entrenched here were caught off guard, and suffered heavy casualties in the face of the sudden torrential flood, and their morale was also greatly frustrated.After the war, Zhang Haogu’s Xiaobaiqi’s name became even more popular, and it became a point of criticism for later historians—to deal with hundreds of thousands of hungry people who were tortured by hunger and were forced to rise up, using such vicious methods, It's too harsh to start.

On the afternoon of the eighth day of June, when the main force of the rebels in Fugu was still struggling in the flood that had not subsided, Master Zhang's [-] slave slaughter troops had already arrived at the Hequ City in the upper reaches of Fugu, and escaped the flood due to terrain factors. The raiding bandits, Luo Rucai, did not dare to go out to fight, and closed the city gates tightly to wait for help.I never imagined that after Master Zhang let the army take a rest, taking advantage of the strong wind at night, he suddenly seized the upper hand at night, moved out the small cannons brought by the army, and used kerosene, butter, crushed rice husks, and crushed paraffin Semi-solidified incendiary bombs made with a small amount of yellow phosphorus bombarded the meander, igniting the fire in the city.The slave-slaughter army took the opportunity to attack the city, and Wu Liuqi led the army to charge, and easily seized the position on the top of the wall.Luo Rucai, Fan Wencheng and others did not dare to fight in the streets, and fled from the city. The slave slaughter army took advantage of the momentum to chase and kill Luo Rucai's defeated army, and drove Luo Rucai's defeated army back to Baode City, which is across the river from Fugu, with the follow-up tactics repeatedly emphasized by Young Master Zhang.

Using a well-armed and well-trained slave slaughter army to fight against some disorderly rebel soldiers is like killing a chicken with a sledgehammer. The family members of the hungry people made Master Zhang very troubled. He wanted to learn how to build slaves and massacre the city, but he couldn’t be cruel to the Han people; stay, and Xuanda, who has also been troubled by the drought for many years, will not be able to support him for a while. from so many people.In desperation, Young Master Zhang had no choice but to harden his heart and ordered the expulsion of the hungry people who were not from Hequ, forcing them to cross the river and return to Shaanxi with a leather whip, and let them go to Shaanxi to fend for themselves.

After Young Master Zhang’s order was implemented, the results were taken for granted. When the slave-slaughter army forced the non-Hequ people to cross the river and return to Shaanxi, those hungry people who were looking forward to having a meal in Xuanda refused to leave. Skinny old people and children knelt by the river and wailed loudly, while the women hugged the legs of the slave soldiers, expressing that they were willing to do anything for the soldiers of the Ming army. The wailing by the pontoon bridge was loud, and tens of thousands of disaster victims knelt and wailed by the river bank. The scene moved people to tears.But Master Zhang was really powerless, so he had no choice but to harden his heart and order forcible expulsion. He hacked to death hundreds of victims who refused to cross the river and return to Shaanxi. They were forcibly driven across the Yellow River one after another.Even so, during the period, many hungry people jumped into the Yellow River to swim after crossing the river, and in the end they forced Young Master Zhang to order shooting, which suppressed the chaotic scene.

With great difficulty, most of the hungry people who were not from Hequ were driven across the Yellow River. Sun Chuanting, the governor of Datong, brought his iron convoy to join forces with Master Zhang. Together with them, there was also Tu who secretly went to Laoyingbao to reinforce the water attack. The slave army Wu Sangui.Seeing the hungry people on both sides of the Yellow River looking at the river and crying bitterly, Sun Chuanting, the last famous general of the Chongzhen Dynasty in history, was also in a heavy heart. He did not feel the slightest joy at the success of the water attack he was responsible for. On the bank of the Yellow River, watching the crowd of hungry people on both sides of the Yellow River in a daze.After a long time, Sun Chuanting asked Young Master Zhang in a hoarse voice: "Zhang Xiantai, are you really going to drive them all away? We can't accept some hungry people when we proclaim the University? Saving a life is better than building a seven-level pagoda. It's okay to drop three to four percent."

Young Master Zhang didn't answer, and after a while he pointed to the nearby Hequ City and said calmly: "Did you see that? In this city, there are tens of thousands of Hequ local people. Their food has been robbed by the thieves. They have also been robbed of their money; the food they eat, the clothes and quilts for the winter, and the seeds and farm tools for the next spring, all have to be borne by us Xuanda! It is already very difficult for Xuanda to feed them If we leave these starving people behind, what else can we feed them? Wouldn’t they have to rebel? Shouldn’t they take up arms again and rebel with the thieves? At that time, not only will we not be able to save them, but we will harm even more So many innocent people."

"But what can they do when they return to Shaanxi?" Sun Chuanting's voice became lower and lower.Young Master Zhang turned around, looked at the land of Shanxi in the distance with his hands behind his back, and said slowly in a heavy tone: "It depends on their luck, if they are lucky enough to persist for two or three years, and wait until Daming's food can feed If we can help them rebuild their homes and live and work in peace and contentment, we will go to save them. At that time, I can swear that I will never abandon any Han people.”

"But now, I can only wrong them." Young Master Zhang lowered his head, tears gleaming in his eyes.

(End of this chapter)