Subsequently, Xiong Zhengen's tribe began to exert great power, killing the bandits in this area, including Jiaozhou Han Jiben, Gaomi Shanzhishang, Zhang Yu, Jimo Huang Zongxian, Saturday, Qiu Shangzuo, Wang Erxi, Pingdu Tamao, Zhai Wushang, Zhang Guang, etc.
They were wiped out one by one.
However, in May of this year, the Qingzhou Incident occurred again. After a force originally belonging to the Dashun Army lost contact with the main force of the Dashun Army retreating to the west, Zhao Yingyuan and Yuan Ming, who surrendered to the Dashun regime,
Under the leadership of official Yang Wangxiu, they came to Qingzhou. On the morning of May 29th, they took the opportunity to break in under the pretext of visiting the city.
Then, Zhao Yingyuan sent his infantry to build a stack at the top of the city, and he led the cavalry directly into the prefect's office in the city. However, the prefect of Qingzhou, who was appointed by the Daping court, thought that Zhao Yingyuan was leading his troops to surrender, and suddenly saw the soldiers with their swords exposed.
They swarmed in and were caught off guard and killed.
Zhao Yingyuan's recapture of Qingzhou was not to reestablish the local power of Dashun. He claimed that he just wanted to support one person from the Ming Dynasty. So he supported King Heng to sit in the palace. At this time, King Heng had already surrendered to Daping, so he was afraid that
Zhao Yingyuan's support for Fu Ming brought about a fatal disaster. After King Heng was supported, he cried every day and his eyes were as swollen as peach. The standard Liu Adou who couldn't help him!
When Xiong Zhengen arrived with his troops, Li Shiyuan, the former Ming Qingzhou garrison who had already surrendered, came up with a plan to outwit Zhao Yingyuan. He secretly communicated with the officials and gentry in Qingzhou City and entered Qingzhou City to act as a lobbyist. During the lobbying, Li Shiyuan threatened and induced Zhao Yingyuan and persuaded Zhao Yingyuan.
He turned to the Daping Dynasty and promised Zhao Yingyuan that he would not kill anyone and granted Zhao Yingyuan a title.
Zhao Yingyuan was indeed fooled, and brought hundreds of soldiers out of the city to meet with Xiong Zhengen and others. Both sides swore an oath to heaven with their swords and blood. That night, Zhao Yingyuan held a banquet at the Zhanchen Tower at the north gate of the city, with great drinking and entertainment. The Daping army followed Li Shiyuan and others' agreement
The plan was to ambush outside the city. During the banquet, the sound of artillery broke out. Li Shiyuan, Han Zhaoxuan and their entourage killed Zhao Yingyuan and Yang Wangxiu on the spot. The Zhao army was in chaos. The Daping army rushed into the city, killed Prince Heng's family and recruited the remaining party members to surrender. The battle of Qingzhou
Changes immediately settle down.
When Wu Shigong learned the news, he was furious. He issued an imperial edict, angrily denounced Xiong Zhengen and others. He also ordered all Daping armies in the world to strictly implement the "Amnesty Order". He tried his best to maintain the credibility of the Daping court and never made any expediency.
plan.
After that, Wu Shigong sent people to find Zhao Yingyuan's concubines, and they sent them to the capital, where they were conferred count and given a large sum of money for their mansion. This was to make up for Xiong Zhengen's fault.
However, Xiong Zhengen was forced to do this. His troops were limited, and rebellions in Shandong were also coming one after another. At this time, in Gonzales in the north, Huang Ding's Marine Corps was preparing to cross the sea to Korea. Chi Ming was
The Lu Army, which led the First Town of the New Army and Liu Zeqing's legacy, was also launching an aggressive offensive against Nanming to cover up the decisive battle between the Daping Army and the Qing Army. In addition, Xiong Zhengen's army was also a newly formed division.
Therefore, it was not until the second year of Qiongyuan that Shandong was finally completely wiped out.
At this time, the foreign policy of the Hongguang Dynasty of the Southern Ming Dynasty was to use the power of the Ping Dynasty to resist and destroy the two mortal enemies of the peasant army and the Qing army. They also hoped that there would be a triple defeat between the three.
They are all injured, and can fight with each other like snipes and clams, but Nan Ming is still in peace in the south of the Yangtze River.
For this reason, the Hongguang Dynasty was even willing to negotiate peace with the Daping Dynasty. It proposed conditions such as surrender, annual coins, pledges, and marriage, hoping that the Daping Dynasty would divert its attention and not point the blade at Nanming first.
For this reason, the civil servants of the Hongguang Dynasty even put forward a theoretical basis. They even wrote a book on the topic of the Tang Dynasty's pacification of the Huangchao Rebellion. Their intention was to use historical experience to explain: The Tang Dynasty pacified large-scale peasants like the Huangchao Rebellion. For rebellion, it is not enough to have generals like Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi. It is also necessary to borrow Li Keyong's Shatuo soldiers and recruit peasant army traitors like Zhu Wen to surrender, in order to have any hope of revival.
It can be seen that the Hongguang emperor and his ministers regarded Dashun, Daxi and other peasant rebel armies as their first enemies. In order to eliminate them, the Hongguang emperor and his ministers were even willing to cooperate with the Manchus, not to mention Wu Shigong, who was a Ming general.
It should be said that this theory is quite unified among the Hongguang monarchs and ministers. Even the leader of the "main war faction" - Shi Kefa, is only very noble in terms of personal ethics, but in terms of basic policies, he is not much different from other civil servants. The differences are all decision-makers who agree with the policy of "borrowing against the invaders".
Even Liu Zongzhou, the imperial censor of Zuodu, and other leaders of the world's literati also agreed with this national policy. They even believed that Wu Sangui's surrender to the Qing Dynasty was just an expedient measure, and they wanted to send people north to contact Wu Sangui in order to obtain support from Chi Su to persuade him to return. Wonderful effect.
What makes people laugh even more is that some officials actually think that Wu Shigong can be influenced by "Ming Shigong's kindness" and make Wu Shigong voluntarily become a minister. This kind of fantastic idea will not be commented on. However, this topic is not The Fengyue world in Jinling is very popular, and more than one person is willing to "feed a tiger" and use his beauty and wisdom to complete this impossible task. To this end, some good people even organized a group This "draft" will build momentum for all of you.
Of course, is it that everyone is stupid, the speculators are stupid, or everyone is stupid, or none of them are stupid? This is a matter of opinion and wisdom. Anyway, this topic brought infinite joy to Jinling City at that time. Should we say: "Shang women don't know how to hate the country's subjugation"?
However, there are still some middle- and lower-level officials who have a clear mind. They believe that in the Southern Song Dynasty, it was because of the "muscles" of military attachés such as Yue Fei and Han Shizhong that the Southern Song Dynasty signed a peace treaty with the Jin Kingdom. And now the Daping Dynasty We are at war with Dashun, Daxi, the Qing army and the Nanming Dynasty. We should take advantage of this opportunity to actively carry out the Northern Expedition. If we can recover the lost territory, it would be best. Even if we cannot, we can sign a more favorable peace treaty with the Daping Dynasty, so that He was scrupulous and did not dare to invade the south rashly.
However, although these officials have good knowledge, their official positions are too low to affect the affairs of the Hongguang court. In addition, the reason why Zhu Yousong ascended to the throne was to rely on contacting the military commanders in the towns, and the military commanders in the towns were known as "determined". "Ce" was granted a title, and he no longer had any ambition to make progress. The internal disputes in the court caused the civil and military ministers to be unable to properly manage northern affairs. Therefore, these suggestions were quickly ignored.
At this time, Shi Kefa and other important officials of the Hongguang court were holding back and clinging to the south of the Yangtze River. In fact, they were quite timid in their hearts. The main military pillars of the Hongguang court, such as Zuo Liangyu, Gao Jie, Liu Liangzuo and others, all fled to avoid fighting. The general of the defeated army, and the Dashun army was defeated by the Qing army and the Daping army successively. The strength of each army can be seen at a glance.
Therefore, Shi Kefa and others thought that the wisest strategy was not to go too far, so as not to "provoke" the Daping Army and give them an excuse to go south. Then, they were better than the Daping Dynasty in being humble and polite, maintaining a peaceful situation. That's it. At this time, Hongguang's monarchs and ministers still held the illusion of peace talks and acted cautiously and pitifully in an attempt to win the favor of the Daping Dynasty.
This weakness allowed the Daping Dynasty to easily take over a large number of prefectures and counties in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. In this area, many officials and gentry who were still close to the Ming Dynasty were suppressed because they were not protected by the troops of the Hongguang court.
They were forced to surrender to Daping. As the Daping Dynasty showed strong military power and implemented some "good policies" one after another, these officials and gentry eventually became loyal ministers and good citizens of the Daping Dynasty.
It is not that there are no officials and gentry who still have hope for the Southern Ming Dynasty. Some people even dragged their families and moved south. However, those officials and gentry who stayed in the same place could not hope that "the king's army would conquer the Central Plains from the north", so they finally gave up their illusions.
The short-sightedness of Hongguang's monarchs and ministers resulted in the loss of the last opportunity to continue the Southern Ming Dynasty.
In fact, at this time, in addition to the combat effectiveness of the troops, the Hongguang Court established in Nanjing had a very obvious advantage over the Daping Dynasty, Dashun regime or the Manchu Qing Dynasty in terms of manpower and material resources. It controlled half of the country.
, the south of the Huaihe River was the most densely populated and economically developed place in China at that time, and it was least damaged by the war. It should be said that if it worked hard to govern, the Hongguang court could still accomplish something.
However, these armies of the Southern Ming Dynasty have degenerated into tools for generals to protect and expand their private interests. They are timid in public battles but brave in private fights; they flee when encountering enemies and treat the people as if they are meat.
Precisely because soldiers were unavailable, although there were many soldiers in the Hongguang court, they gathered in the Jianghuai area to pursue pleasure and had no intention of making progress. In order to cover up their inner cowardice, Shi Kefa, the great scholar in charge of the division, and his restrained military commanders in various towns,
We can only make a fuss about the issue of food and salary.
At that time, the Hongguang court stipulated that each town had 30,000 soldiers, 200,000 shi of rice and 400,000 taels of silver annually. Since one shi of rice was worth about one tael of silver at that time, it can also be said that the annual salary for one town was 600,000, and the annual salary for four towns was 600,000.
A total of 2.4 million per year.
This military salary distribution is indeed generous enough. However, in order to win over the military attachés in various towns, in just four months, under the threat of poverty from the military generals in various towns, the Hongguang court actually distributed a year and a half's worth of silver salary.
It should be said that it was very prosperous. What's more, at the beginning of the establishment of the town, the Hongguang court also allocated grain harvesting, commercial tax and other revenue from some areas in the north of the Yangtze River to the towns. It was really a flood of money! The south of the Yangtze River was really rich.
As for Shi Kefa, the governor of the military generals in each town, although he was an honest official, he was also very diligent. He was also very clear about the number of soldiers in each town and the amount of pay he had received.
There are quite a few. However, in his memorials, he also sang the same tune as the towns and made alarmist remarks in order to defraud them of food and wages.
Shi Kefa's helplessness can be seen here. Because he had been tempered for a long time in the officialdom of the late Ming Dynasty, he was familiar with the long-standing abuses of Wen Tian and Wu Xi at that time, and he also accumulated a set of tricks to deal with public opinion between the government and the opposition.
Although Shi Kefa himself did put a lot of effort into coordinating the towns and protecting the environment and the people, and it is certainly inappropriate to blame him too much, he did fear the enemy like a tiger and regarded the towns as his pride, causing these warlords to invade the north of the Yangtze River and prey on the people.
Therefore, it can be said that after Shi Kefa became the superintendent, he spent a lot of food and salary from the people in Jiangnan, but he was still unable to do anything about the military situation. It is not too much to say that he tolerated traitors and fed tigers to cause trouble. (To be continued...)