Eight hundred and fortieth chapters Qin army annihilated
Facing the menacing Qin army, Li Zicheng's Shun army could not remain indifferent.
When Sun Chuanting's Qin army arrived in Xiangfen, Yuan Zongdi led an army of 15,000 to intercept the Qin army. In the fierce battle on the first day, the Shun army failed to break through the Qin army's sidecar formation and lost more than a thousand soldiers.
The people were defeated and retreated. On the second day, a battalion commander of the Shun Army led hundreds of people to surrender before the battle, causing a chaos in the Shun Army. After a pursuit, the Qin Army completely defeated Yuan Zong's troops and beheaded them.
The number of captured Shun troops exceeded nearly 4,000. The first intercepting force of Shun troops returned in defeat.
Then on the 18th day of the first lunar month, the Qin army arrived at Xiangfen County. Li Yangchun, the commander of the Shun army, led three thousand troops to surrender and opened the door to Linfen City. On the 19th day, they arrived at Linfen City. Chen Kexin, the governor of Baozhou appointed by Li Zicheng, and the state magistrate Jiang
Li organized the people to occupy the city to resist.
On the evening of the 22nd, a squire in the city led 288 people to surrender privately out of the city. The city was breached, and the armies swarmed in. The city was abuzz with fire, and the fire shone like daylight. Chen Kexin, Jiang Li, and others were arrested and killed. Sun Chuanting surrendered.
Among the 288 people in the city, two old men were selected and ordered to name them one by one. The more than ten people who could not be named were all suspected of being thieves, and they were all killed. As for the other people in the city, they were all killed on the pretext of "standing for thieves".
Guang carried out a bloody massacre.
A partial division of the Qin Army also captured Fushan County on the night of the 22nd. They also used the excuse that the old camp of the Shun Army had stayed in the county and massacred all the residents in the city.
The battle has reached this point, and the Qin army that entered Shanxi has won successively, and this group of temporary troops has gradually gained confidence. Moreover, because Li Zicheng's Shun army took the initiative to show weakness, they all thought that the Shun army was nothing more than this, and they were full of arrogance.
thrive.
At this time, Qiu Zhitao, Infernal Affairs, also believed that the time had come. He used his position as minister of the military government to send forged intelligence to Li Zicheng, who was commanding the battle on the front line, and lied that Baoding's Beijing camp troops had arrived from
Attacking Taiyuan from the east, the situation in the rear is critical.
But as soon as Qiu Zhitao's false information was delivered, Li Zicheng immediately sent someone to call him, and then took out Sun Chuanting's reply letter to expose his identity as a traitor and sentenced him to death.
After eliminating internal hidden dangers, Li Zicheng's Shun army began to engage in an all-out battle.
On the fourth day of February, the Shun Army and the Qin Army engaged in battle in Fenxi County. The Shun Army failed in the first battle, and General Guo Yi Xie Junyou was captured and killed. However, this was also a return to the glory of the Qing Army's expedition to Shaanxi.
Because the Qin army was advancing alone, it was getting further and further away from the rear supply base. It was also spring thaw, and the roads were muddy. The Qin army's grain trucks were making slow progress, and the soldiers and horses on the front line were hungry and thin.
At this time, someone persuaded Sun Chuanting to return to the army to get food, but Sun Chuanting replied: "The teacher has already left. Even if we return, we will still be hungry. It is better to break through Fenxi County to get food."
Maybe it was hard to disobey the emperor's order, maybe Sun Chuanting was dazzled by the victory. But Sun Chuanting knew very well: If such a Qin army, which was temporarily formed, does not take advantage of the current consecutive victories, and rushes to Taiyuan in one go, what will happen to the Qin army in the future?
In the battle against the Shun Army, we will never find such a good opportunity again.
However, Fenxi County was originally a small and poor county. After the Qin army broke through the city, they only captured a few hundred mules and horses, and the tens of thousands of soldiers were quickly exhausted. When Li Zicheng saw that the Qin army was deep into the desperate situation, he mobilized the people
The strong walls and clear fields prevented the Qin army from raising food on the spot. On the one hand, he sent general Liu Zongmin with more than 10,000 cavalry to the rear of the Qin army from the side roads, and cut off the Qin army's food routes in Longma Township, Hongdong County. They launched a decisive attack on the Qin army.
kill.
Sun Chuanting was shocked when he heard the news, and his subordinates were also unsteady in military morale. However, Li Zicheng wrote a letter of war with a big name at this time, specifying a date for a decisive battle with the Qin army. Sun Chuanting had nothing to do, so he ordered the commander-in-chief Qin Yiming to stay behind in the military camp, and he himself commanded the Shaanxi officers and soldiers.
They retreated along the road in an attempt to open up the food road.
However, Qin Yiming's soldiers saw that the Shaanxi soldiers had withdrawn to meet the grain supply, but they were left to starve and serve as scapegoats. They were all resentful and refused to obey orders. They followed the Shaanxi officers and soldiers and ran around. Qin Yiming sent his own soldiers to kill and stop them.
, but could not stop. In the end, because the military morale could not be violated, they had to retreat with the troops.
As soon as the blocking troops deployed by Sun Chuanting escaped, the Shun army took advantage of the situation and launched a general offensive. The Qin army was in chaos and the entire front collapsed. In order to escape for their lives, the soldiers of the side carriage battalion commanded by Bai Guangen, the commander-in-chief, untied the horses and rode away.
The carriages overturned and rolled over, and the roads were blocked, which caused the Qin army to collapse.
The cavalry of the Shun army leaped over and pursued them bravely. The infantrymen held big sticks and attacked the officers and soldiers, and the heads and helmets of the soldiers were broken. The Qin army was defeated, more than 40,000 people died, and tens of thousands of armored soldiers, horses and mules were killed.
All of them were owned by the Shun army. The rest were captured, captured and escaped, and there were countless others.
In just ten days, the Qin army lost all its victory and fled for nearly 500 miles. Sun Chuanting and the general Gao Jie gathered thousands of scattered soldiers and rode across the Yellow River, passing through Dali County to Tongguan. The general Qin Yiming also
He led the remaining defeated soldiers to Tongguan.
The defeat of Fenxi caused the Qin Army, the only "elite force" left by the Ming Dynasty, to suffer a devastating blow. From then on, there were no Ming troops in the northwest who could hold back the peasant army.
Then, while Sun Chuanting was still breathing, Li Zicheng led an army of 300,000 to Tongguan on February 19. At this time, under Yu Zilian's management, the Heiyun Army in Henan Prefecture had also expanded to 30,000.
However, they did not dare to fight against the highly motivated Shun army, so they huddled in Luoyang City and allowed the Shun army to move freely.
When the news of Sun Chuanting's defeat in Shanxi reached the imperial court, Emperor Chongzhen was shocked and angry. He also put all the responsibility for the defeat on Sun Chuanting: "The Ministry of War was ordered to say: Chuanting advanced lightly and had few plans, and the supervising troops were defeated repeatedly.
He went to supervise the ministers and punished the governor of Qin to collect the remaining soldiers and guard the pass, in order to redeem himself. If he allowed a thief to enter the Qin Dynasty, his previous crimes would be treated equally."
Then Emperor Chongzhen was worried that if his troops ignored Sun Chuanting and went east to seize the capital, he "repeatedly ordered the Ministry of War to order Jin, Yu, Bao, and Dongfu to organize their troops and horsemen, station themselves on the river stems, and work together to block the enemy."
, no thief is allowed to peek across."
Soon after, the imperial court ordered Bai Guang'en to be promoted to the rank of chief military officer for the suppression of bandits, with the seal of general for suppressing bandits, and to allocate 30,000 troops. It was hoped that with a generous reward, the defeated general would be grateful for his service and join Sun Chuanting in defending Tongguan and protecting Shaanxi.
And this series of orders was nothing more than a desperate struggle, because Li Zicheng did not give the remaining Qin army a chance to breathe. Although there were still 40,000 soldiers in the remnant army that retreated to Tongguan at this time, they were all frightened and there were not many.
of combat effectiveness.
At the end of February, the Shun army approached Tongguan. Sun Chuanting ordered Bai Guang'en, the commander-in-chief, to camp at Tongluochuan outside Guancheng, and Gao Jie, the commander-in-chief, to camp at the top of the west hill outside the south gate. He himself ordered the strong men in the city to defend the city.
On the third day of March, the Shun army arrived at Guanpo from Taojiazhuang and attacked bravely. Gao Jie's troops left without fighting and fled westward. Bai Guang'en's troops could not resist the enemy and collapsed in the face of the wind. Since the wives of the officers and soldiers all lived in
Inside Guancheng, the soldiers scrambled to escape into Guancheng, protecting their wives, children and family members and rushing out of the gate. Some soldiers were eager to enter the city and used their knives to split the Nanshui Pass fence. They followed the army and took advantage of the situation to occupy Tongguan.
Sun Chuanting and deputy supervisor Qiao Yuanzhu were killed in the chaos.
If you have any friends who have been to Tongguan, you will know what it means when you see the terrain of Tongguan - one man is in charge of the pass, and ten thousand men cannot open it. But now in the Chongzhen Dynasty, the peasant army has broken through Tongguan several times, as if this place is an uninhabited land
.It is true that although Guancheng is dangerous, there is no danger without brave soldiers. But once Tongguan is broken, the door to Xi'an will be opened.
Then Li Zicheng left Ma Shiyao to guard Tongguan and led his troops to continue advancing. When the Shun army arrived in Weinan, the county magistrate Yang Xuan's descendants took the city to hold on and tried to resist. However, the county's top official, Wang Minggao, opened the door to welcome the Shun army into the city.
On the seventh day of March, Li Guo's vanguard captured Lintong County and arrived at Xi'an City the next day. Since the elite Shaanxi official army had been annihilated, the defensive force in Xi'an City was very weak. Local officials left behind 5,000 Sichuan soldiers passing through Xi'an.
Soldiers assist in defense.
As a guest army, the Sichuan soldiers had no food and pay. Officials in Xi'an persuaded King Zhu Cunshu of Qin to give some money to the soldiers to boost morale. However, this request was flatly rejected by Zhu Cunshu. Anyway, this happened again and again.
It proves that all the vassal kings of the Ming Dynasty did have pig heads.
So Wang Genzi, the deputy general who defended the city, was very dissatisfied and decided to surrender to the Shun army. He wrote a letter of surrender and shot it at the bottom of the city, and opened the east gate to welcome the Shun army into the city. On March 8, Li Zicheng's Shun army occupied the ancient capital of Xi'an. Qin King Zhu Cunshu
He was captured alive. Shaanxi governor Feng Shikong and the inspector Huang Jiong were killed. The chief envoy Lu Zhiqi and others surrendered. The Shun army immediately set out to calm the people and ordered not to kill anyone indiscriminately, and the officials who made the mistake would be punished with their lives. The situation in Xi'an was quickly stabilized.
The 100,000-strong right battalion of the Shun Army led by Yuan Zongdi, Bai Minghe, Lan Yingcheng and others also arrived in Shangzhou, Shaanxi Province on March 9th. They captured the city on the 12th and executed Huang Shiqing of Ming Dynasty Shangluo Road who drove the people to resist. 10
On the 4th, they occupied Luonan County and successfully joined forces with the main force led by Li Zicheng in Xi'an.
After occupying Xi'an, Li Zicheng immediately deployed to wipe out the Ming Dynasty's strongholds in the northwest region. They divided their troops into three groups: Li Zicheng personally led an army composed of the rear camp under Li Guo and the left camp under Liu Fangliang to pursue the Ming Dynasty northward.
Bing Gaojie's troops captured northern Shaanxi; Tian Jianxiu led his troops south to Hanzhong to pursue Gao Ruli's troops, the general of the Ming Dynasty, and opened the tunnel south to Sichuan; Liu Zongmin, He Jin, Yuan Zongdi and others pursued the troops of Bai Guangen's troops westward and captured Ningxia.
Gansu, Xining and other places.
In the next one or two months, Li Zicheng's Shun army launched a frenzied northwest offensive.
Compared with the surge of Li Zicheng's army, Wu Shigong's Runing army was struggling every step of the way. Let's not mention Xue Yongli's troops who faced the superior Qing army. First, let's talk about the 80,000 Runing army rushing to Wuchang.
When the Runing Army, under the command of Wu Shigong, successfully surrounded Wuchang City, they suddenly found that Wuchang City had become a hard nail in front of them.
Li Dingguo carried out Zhang Xianzhong's orders to the letter, abandoned all important places outside the city, and withdrew all the troops into Wuchang City. They would use the high walls of Wuchang City and the city's supply of supplies for the entire city's soldiers and civilians for more than a year.
Food and grass must be stepped up to prepare for war, and we must hold back the Runing Army here.