"Why are you making such a fuss!" Huang Peng, the official of Kaifeng Prefecture, burst out suddenly. He slapped the back of his chair and said through gritted teeth, "It's nothing more than a dead ear. Since the whole city is destroyed, then both the jade and the stone will be destroyed. The official led people to dig out the embankment.
Drown all the thieves outside the city."
"That's right! Be loyal to the country, and you won't lag behind others when you are a low-ranking official. Mr. Huang! Let's get together." Yan Jingyun, the patrol censor, also agreed. It seems that Huang Peng has found another one in the city these days.
Allied Forces.
But this time, no officials thought that this was just Huang Peng and the others venting, and the officials really began to consider this motion. The hall suddenly became quiet, and everyone looked at Gao Mingheng, waiting for his final words.
Decide.
Gao Mingheng pondered for a while and then asked the prefect of Kaifeng: "How many days will the food and grass in the city be enough?"
"More than ten days."
Of course, the answer given by the Kaifeng magistrate was not the days used by all the soldiers and civilians in the city, but only the days used by the necessary city defense troops, officials and their families.
"How many days will it take before Wu Runing leaves Feng?" Gao Mingheng asked Chen Yongfu again.
"We have traveled more than 400 miles from Runing to this point. We marched fifty miles every day, which is about seven or eight days. However, we don't know how long it will take for General Wu to assemble, how long he will fight with the bandits on the way, and we don't know if he will set off. So at the end of the day, General Wu
I dare not speak nonsense." Chen Yongfu answered very conservatively and carefully.
Gao Mingheng thought about it for a while, and finally decided decisively: "Okay! Then wait for another twenty days. Mr. Chen! You immediately send the dead soldiers to Wu Runing and ask him to hurry up. After twenty days, if
There is no news yet, so just do as Master Huang said. Master Huang! You can also choose one or two hundred dead men and be ready to dig the dam at any time."
"Follow the order!"
"Yes! Sir!"
Gao Mingheng finally figured it out. Even if he gave Kaifeng City to the Dragon King, he, the governor of Henan, could always escape on a boat on the Yellow River. At this time, he didn't care about the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians in Kaifeng City. As long as he could let Li
, the siege troops of the Luo Allied Army were buried with Kaifeng City, maybe the court could still be lenient. As for the rescue of the Runing Army, Gao Mingheng held on to his last glimmer of hope.
"General! Please save Kaifeng City! Please save my father!" Chen De cried bitterly and led several soldiers who risked their lives to come out of the city again. He knelt on the ground and knocked to Wu Shigong "bang bang bang"
He shook his head, and soon there was blood on the foreheads of these people.
Wu Shigong, who was sitting on the commander's chair, was in quite a dilemma. He was not willing to deceive Chen De, but he was also unwilling to change his battle plan without authorization. So he could only make a gesture to the soldiers to stop Chen De and the others' "
Self-injurious" behavior.
"Major General, don't be anxious. As soon as I learned that Kaifeng City was in danger, I sent troops to central Henan. However, the Shaanxi bandits were cunning and might fall into an ambush, so I was extremely careful in using troops. But I didn't know that Kaifeng City was so short of food.
I am very anxious now. Let's do this! Let the Major General go down to heal his wounds first, and then I will tell you the strategy after I come up with it. What do you think?" Wu Shigong said with concern.
"Thank you so much, General. I hope the General will send troops soon! Send troops soon!"
After Chen De was helped out, Wu Shigong kept tapping on the big case with the pencil in his hand. The officers in the big tent kept quiet. They all knew that Wu Shigong had fallen into deep thought again.
In the original plan, the Runing Army would not care about the life and death of Kaifeng City and the Heiyun Army. After all, the worst result is that these two official armies were wiped out by the peasant army, but hundreds of thousands of people in Kaifeng City
There will never be any fear of life.
But the situation is completely different now. When Wu Shigong learned that the officials in Kaifeng City were preparing to dig up the Yellow River dam and die with the peasant army, Wu Shigong could no longer remain calm. Hundreds of thousands, even millions
The life of Wu Shigong was at the mercy of Wu Shigong's thoughts, which made him feel as if there was a huge weight on his shoulders.
To be honest, before the war, the Runing Army never considered the possibility of the government army or the peasant army digging the Yellow River dam, because this approach was simply too crazy. Not to mention the complete destruction of Kaifeng City, it would also be destroyed in northern Henan.
The creation of an extremely vast yellow flood zone has displaced more people, not to mention that floods alone can cause more than a million casualties and homelessness.
But Wu Shigong didn't know that in the history of that time and space, such crazy things did happen. At that time, the Kaifeng defenders had been besieged for four months by the coalition forces of Li and Luo. They had no food and grass inside and no reinforcements from outside. Finally, they finally
He came up with this desperate plan to dig up the embankment of the Yellow River and flood the peasant army.
So under the order of Gao Mingheng, Kaifeng Prefecture official Huang Peng and patrol censor Yan Jingyun organized manpower to excavate the Zhujiazhaikou embankment. After the peasant army learned of the news, they immediately moved to Gaofu and in turn sent people to excavate the horse embankment.
The Jiakou embankment was used to flood the Kaifeng garrison. The peasant army also simply made things worse.
At that time, the autumn was high and the water was strong, and the raging Yellow River burst its banks. The entire city of Kaifeng was submerged. Countless residents inside and outside the city drowned, and more than 10,000 peasant soldiers were killed in the flood. In Kaifeng City, only Gao Mingheng
Waiting for a group of high-ranking officials and the family members of the King of Zhou to escape by boat.
In this man-made disaster, the total number of people who drowned and died of post-flood diseases exceeded one million, a large amount of land was destroyed, and the property losses were simply difficult to count. It was not until decades later that the destroyed Kaifeng City and Huangfan District
The farmland was finally rebuilt, and this incident was also a catastrophe in the late Ming Dynasty.
In that time and space, the submergence of Kaifeng City also caused the Ming Dynasty to lose an important stronghold in the Central Plains. From then on, the peasant army completely occupied the active position in the Central Plains war situation until the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by the Shun Army.
Of course, in a short period of time, the destruction of Kaifeng City also caused the coalition forces of Li and Luo to lose a large number of captures in the city, and also lost a large number of supplementary troops. Especially due to the issue of "fixing the capital", the coalition forces of Li and Luo had to abandon Kaifeng.
, and went south to Huguang to occupy Xiangyang. Therefore, it indeed delayed the time for the peasant army to launch a general offensive.
Therefore, the outcome of this embankment breach is a lose-lose situation.
Another note: Although some officials in the DPRK came forward afterwards and demanded that the Kaifeng City Guard officials be held responsible for breaking the dikes and flooding the city on their own, Emperor Chongzhen believed that they had always resisted to the end when the peasant army attacked Kaifeng three times, which showed that they had
Because of their loyalty and integrity, not only were they not punished, but they were rewarded generously in recognition of their hard work.
Although Wu Shigong now does not know this period of history, he had a premonition of this catastrophe. If he wants to save hundreds of thousands of people in Kaifeng now, the Runing Army will have to change its plan and change from stalemate and consumption to emergency rescue.
In short, it means exchanging the lives of the soldiers of the Runing Army for the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Kaifeng City.
Moreover, this will also disrupt the overall strategic deployment of the Runing Army. There will be many variables in the battle with the Li and Luo coalition forces. It is possible that the plan drawn up before the war to drive the Li and Luo coalition forces to Huguang will not be realized.
, and the Runing Army’s overall strategy is to overturn and start over.
It was really a difficult choice. Wu Shigong smiled self-deprecatingly, and he couldn't help but think: "The only effect this military plan can have is that it was overturned on the first day of the war!"
After thinking for a long time, the sense of responsibility still prevailed. There is a famous saying: The greater the ability, the greater the responsibility. Now Wu Shigong has tasted the pain of this famous saying.
"Hey——!" Wu Shigong sighed, and then he said to the officers who were all looking at him, "We have always said that the Runing Army is the guardian of China's clothes and the elite of the Chinese nation. But when things come, we really need to
We have sacrificed our lives and those of our brothers to rescue the people, but I still hesitated for such a long time. Let’s make a new plan! We will attack Kaifeng within five days.”
"No!" the officers' reply was extremely loud. The sense of honor of the Runing Army made these officers very proud. In their hearts, these officers wanted to save those people, and their eyes when they looked at Wu Shigong were full of
worship.
…
On the eighth day of September, the Runing Army, which had changed its combat plan, suddenly turned from defense to offense and began to make all-out efforts to rescue Kaifeng City.
In the early morning, a soldier hurriedly rushed into the tent. He shouted to He Yaoqi and Tian Jianxiu, who were just fully clothed, "Two generals, the official dog on the opposite side has crossed the river."
"Hurry up!" He Yaoqi and Tian Jianxiu didn't even care that they hadn't had breakfast yet, so they rushed out of the tent, got on their horses, and ran towards the front line. The officers in the camp also urged the troops
Hurry out of camp and prepare for war behind the fortifications.
After running to the fortifications on the bank of the Huiji River, He Yaoqi and Tian Jianxiu took a breath of air. After a few days of silence, the south bank of the Huiji River was now filled with densely packed Runing troops.
It looks like the army is on the move.
"Old He! What do these official dogs want to do?" Tian Jianxiu asked strangely.
"No matter what he wants to do! We can't let them break through our place." He Huaiqi replied.
To be honest, some monks like He Yaoqi were confused. Butcher Wu's troops did not cross the river before they arrived at the camp and were defeated. Instead, they chose the time to cross the river when the construction was completed. Could it be that they
Want to challenge a high level of difficulty? This is really puzzling to He Waiqi.
Seeing the auxiliary soldiers of the Runing Army orderly, lining up in a long line and throwing sacks filled with sand and gravel into the Huiji River, and approaching the north bank of the Huiji River step by step, He waved the flag and shouted: "Let the cavalry go first.
Come here. If the official dog has just crossed the river, find an opportunity to hit them halfway across the river. Then let the men and women speed up and quickly form a formation behind the earth wall."
Fortunately, the Runing Army's actions were very dogmatic. They did not launch an attack when they filled the river. It seemed that they wanted to wait until the dirt road was paved in the river before the entire army crossed the river. So the soldiers who broke into the camp also ran to the wall behind the earth wall.
They stood up in formation.
Seeing that their soldiers were well prepared, He Yaoqi and Tian Jianxiu felt a little relieved. They took the dry food handed over by the soldiers and started to eat breakfast.