As soon as it got dark, the Governor's Mansion was crowded with people. Liu Yuliang, Lu Weiqi, Governor Li Xianfeng, military garrison Wang Yinchang and Pang Gang gathered together. Liu Yuliang sat on the main seat and looked at the people sitting in the hall.
My heart is filled with an emotion called contentment.
Liu Yuliang coughed and said loudly: "Everyone, our Ming Dynasty has been suffering from internal and external troubles since the end of Tianqi. It has never been peaceful. The more thieves are suppressed, the more the disasters become. In recent years, people have died.
Displacement, like the deeper the water, the hotter the fire, often the bare ground is thousands of miles away, the smoke is cut off, the children are exchanged for food, and it is unbearable. In the past three hundred years, the country has never been as poor as today's people, and their wealth is exhausted. The Eastern captives are waiting for the opportunity.
The invasion has become increasingly arrogant. Since ascending to the throne, we have entered the fortress four times and surrounded the capital on three sides. Since ancient times, when fighting outsiders, we must first pacify the inside. If the rogue thieves are not eliminated, we will not care about the outside world, and the disaster of the Southern Song Dynasty will be inevitable. Fortunately,
Thanks to the spirit of our ancestors, the fate of the country has turned around. The giant thief Gao Yingxiang was executed in the autumn of the previous year, and Zhang Xianzhong and his colleagues had fled to Sichuan. The remaining groups of thieves were either dead or dispersed, or were waiting to see the wind, and did not dare to wear the same clothes as in the past.
Rampant. Only the intruder Li Zicheng was stubborn and vowed to fight against the imperial soldiers, showing no signs of surrendering without fear of crime.
But even so, the emperor was still lenient and allowed him a way to survive. However, instead of repenting, the wolf came back with even greater force, and now it is even more harmful to the people of Henan. In view of this, the emperor specially ordered the governor of Henan to kill the wolf as soon as possible.
If it is wiped out, the court will be very lucky, and the people will be very lucky! I hope you will encourage your officers and soldiers to bravely kill the thieves in front of the battle today, and complete the victory in one battle, and do not let a single thief slip through the net. I will repay your kindness, save the people, and be prosperous in the future.
, in this battle, you especially hope to capture the giant thieves Li Zicheng and Liu Zongmin alive and offer them to the prison. Even if they cannot be captured alive, they must be killed and reported to the capital. The emperor issued edicts one after another, supervising and censuring them.
I hope you will not let your superiors down!"
Liu Yuliang was talking so much that he was drooling over the top, but Pang Gang was dozing off while listening to him below. This guy was worthy of being a bachelor, and he was so eloquent in his writings that he even talked about pre-war mobilization.
It sounded like the old lady's foot-binding cloth was smelly and long, which made Pang Gang feel sleepy.
After finally waiting for Liu Yuliang to finish speaking, Pang Gang still didn't know what this guy wanted to express. After Liu Yuliang finished speaking, he turned to Pang Gang with a smile and said: "General Pang, the bandits will definitely come to attack the city again today. I will bother you with the defense of Luoyang."
Please pay more attention."
Looking at Liu Yuliang's attentive smiling face, he sighed secretly and said, "My Lord Governor, I will do my best in the end."
"Very good!" Liu Yudian nodded and said to Wang Yinchang, the guard on the side: "Wang Guard, a Tibetan saying goes like a snake can't do without a head, and the army can't do without a unified order. Now the enemy is facing us, and the soldiers in the city can't do it."
Ma must have another unified order, so the governor has decided that the original Luoyang defenders must obey General Pang's orders during the bandits' siege, and there must be no mistakes. Do you understand?"
Obey your duty!"
Wang Yinchang was a little depressed. He was the military garrison of Luoyang City. Originally, all the soldiers and horses in Luoyang were under his control, but now Liu Yuliang has handed over all the city defense of Luoyang to the guest troops from afar. This makes him feel embarrassed.
ah.
However, after the Ming army won a great victory in yesterday's battle, Liu Yuliang's status and reputation became more and more stable. He did not dare to go against Liu Yuliang at this time, so he could only say yes with a depressed fist.
Suddenly there was a burst of alarm bells. It was heard that the sound was coming from the city wall. Everyone looked a little nervous for a while. Pang Gang quickly stepped forward and clasped his fists at Liu Yuliang and said: "Liu Dawu is also a crazy cow provider. Both the alarm bells and the sound of alarm bells are heard."
Come on, the bandits must have started to attack the city again. I will go up to the city wall to defend, but I hope you can work with Mr. Lu to collect silver for me. Last night, I only collected 300,000 taels of silver. What's the return?
There are two hundred thousand taels left unaccounted for." After saying that, Pang Gang strode out.
How long has this kid been thinking about his little money?" Liu Yuliang, Lu Weiqi, Li Xianfeng and others looked at each other, and they were all dumbfounded. This General Pang is really different!
Looking at Pang Gang's disappearing figure, Liu Yuliang said to Lu Weiqi and Li Xianfeng: "Two adults, since the two adults have agreed to give General Pang 500,000 taels of silver, King Fu gave 300,000 taels yesterday, and the remaining two
How do you two think we should ask for one hundred thousand taels of silver?"
Lu Weiqi smiled confidently and said: "What's so difficult about this? When I summon the wealthy gentry in the city to go to the restaurant for a banquet, I and Mr. Li mentioned this casually. Is there anything that can be done? The big enemy at the moment must be them.
Don’t you dare not betray me to save face.”
"Ahem, cough, mm." Liu Yuliang coughed lightly before saying, "Mr. Jie Ru, I would like to ask who can come forward to help with this matter."
Lu Weiqi said without hesitation: "Since I agreed to General Pang, naturally mmmmmmmm" At this point, Lu Weiqi understood what Liu Yuliang meant. He stared at Liu Yuliang thoughtfully for a while before tentatively saying: "
What do you mean by Master Yi Liu?"
Well." Liu Yuliang pretended to ponder for a while before saying: "I think that this time the apportionment to the rich gentry cannot just ask for General Pang's 200,000 taels of silver. There are so many soldiers in Luoyang City and we cannot watch the Qingzhou Army eat.
Meat, but they can't even drink the soup. I thought I could ask for more silver to reward the defending soldiers. Please note that the soldiers in Luoyang have not been paid for several months. Mr. Jie Confucianism, Mr. Li, what do you think?
?”
As soon as Liu Yuliang said this, Wang Yinchang almost rushed forward to grab the food. As long as we capture it, we will have food. "Capture the city?" Hao Yaoqi sneered: "Where do you plan to attack? Nearby villages? Or maybe?
A small county town? Currently, there are only two cities in Henan that have enough food and fodder to support our army, Luoyang and Kaifeng. The past few days of fighting Luoyang have already caused heavy losses to our troops. Do you think we can still run away with these remnants of our army?
Are you going to attack Kaifeng five or six hundred miles away?"
Li Guo was speechless for a moment. It was not that he didn't understand the truth, but he just couldn't pass his own test.
Qi sighed, patted Li Guo's shoulder and comforted him: "Okay, just think about it. If you can't stand it anymore, go back and have a good rest. I guess we will have a big move tonight."
"No!" Li Guodi shook his head and said sadly: "I'll just stand here and see them off with my own eyes, but Old Hao, what do you think our uprising was for in the first place?"
Hao Yaoqi was astonished.
Night slowly fell in the night sky. Today's siege battle is over. The invading army consumed almost half of the rolling stone troughs and arrowheads of the Luoyang City defenders at the cost of more than 40,000 casualties. The Qingzhou army consumed half of the shells today.
half of the amount they carried.
In order to repel the crazy attacking bandits, Pang Gang led the sergeants of the Qingzhou Army to destroy more than 2,000 Mini rifles, and six Napoleon cannons had to be scrapped in advance due to their high firing frequency.
"Isn't it time to reach Li Zicheng's bottom line?"
Under the dark night sky, Pang Gang murmured to himself. He calculated an account and found that the corpses abandoned by the bandits at the foot of Luoyang City in the past few days have exceeded 70,000.
The bandits' losses have reached more than 90,000 yuan. This number should have reached Li Zicheng's bottom line, right? If the losses continue, it will not be in his interests.
If the prediction is good, they should take action tonight, but should he really go out of the city overnight to pursue? Pang Gang was still thinking in his heart.
There was a blazing bonfire burning in the woods. Li Zicheng and dozens of his generals were sitting by the fire, quietly eating horse meat. Although the horse meat without seasoning tasted sour and astringent, they still ate it.
They relish it because they know that if they miss today, they don’t know how long they will have to wait until they want to eat this sour and astringent horse meat.
Liu Zongmin took a roasted horse leg and ate it until his mouth was full of oil. He made a tut-tsk sound while eating.
For a long time, Liu Zongmin kept the horse's leg that had eaten all the meat aside, clapped his greasy hands, wiped them on the hem of his clothes, and then wiped his mouth randomly with his sleeves, then grinned and said: "Chuang."
King, now that the brothers have eaten and drank enough, should we set off?"
Li Zicheng nodded, threw away the half-eaten horse meat and stood up. He walked to a tree stump, looked around at the generals and whispered: "Brothers, our attack on Luoyang failed this time, but it doesn't matter.
If we lose, we can start from scratch and I will provide it to you. I think when we came out of Shaanxi, we only had a few thousand brothers, but as soon as we arrived in Henan, we quickly had an army of hundreds of thousands. Even now, we have suffered a loss.
But there are still tens of thousands of troops, and I believe it won’t take long for us to regain our strength!”
The generals thought the same thing. They had nothing to begin with. Although they lost the battle today, what's the point? We can just earn it back later. Li Zicheng's voice became louder and louder. "Now the defense in Luoyang City is strong. We are here."
We can't defeat it, but it's okay. I don't believe that all the cities in the world are as strong as Luoyang City. As long as we can capture one or two cities, we can gather hundreds of thousands of troops and fight to the death with those officers and soldiers!"
Listening to Li Zicheng's words, the generals' eyes gradually shone with light again, and the shadow caused by the defeat during the day also gradually weakened. Liu Zongmin first smiled and said: "What King Chuang said is that we have not endured any hardships in these years, and the team has not suffered."
Let’s just pull them together again, what’s the big deal, King Chuang has long said that as long as the mediocre imperial court doesn’t fall, our rebel army will kill them all!”
Li Zicheng said happily: "Haha, what Jiexuan said is good. Our rebel army originally had nothing, and now everything we have is for nothing. What else can't we kill? We have killed and injured one hundred thousand brothers these days. Let's let tomorrow know
Just return the army a thousand times as much, is that what everyone thinks?"
Gao Yigong also said loudly: "Yes, we have earned our lives, so why are we reluctant to part with them? King Chuang, tell me, where are we going to fight?"
Li Zicheng saw that confidence had returned to everyone, and nodded with satisfaction: "Everyone must have guessed that we are leaving tonight, but you may not be sure about where to go. We can't go back to Shaanxi for the time being.
Now Shaanxi has not recovered yet, and we cannot develop even if we go there, so there is only one place we can go, and that is Hubei!"
Everyone exclaimed: "Hubei?"
"Yes, Hubei!" Li Zicheng's eyes flashed with a cold light, "Hubei, Hubei is a land that produces food. As long as we get to Hubei, we no longer have to worry about coming to do that!"
ps: Huh, I finally finished the formalities at the bank and got home in the evening. Sorry everyone! (To be continued!~!
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