On October 12, Li Zhi sat in the magistrate's office in Jining Prefecture and made military arrangements with the generals of the West Route Army to attack Li Zicheng.
After a series of conquests and mobilizations, Li Zhi finally blocked the Jiangbei Army who stabbed him in the back, wiped out the Korean state who raised a rebellion, and was able to free up his hands to attack Li Zicheng.
Although the recruits have only been trained for more than six months and are not yet capable of fighting in battle, they can be used to suppress North Korean farmers. Twenty thousand recruits were transferred to North Korea to garrison and liberated North Korea's 12,000 veterans. Now Li Zhi's 60,000
All veterans can be put into the battlefields in Henan and Huai'an. If 20,000 veterans are deployed on the Huai'an front, Li Zhi will have 40,000 veterans left to fight against Li Zicheng.
Li Zhi stood in front of a huge sand table of Henan's terrain and asked: "This crusade against Li Zicheng, our 40,000-strong West Route Army is ready to go. How do you think we should fight?"
The generals looked at the sand table and said nothing.
Hong Chengchou looked at the generals, stood up and cupped his hands and said: "The Tiger Army has strong firepower and is best at attacking fortified cities. I suggest that we take the north of the Yellow River, cross the Yellow River from the north bank, and cut into Henan from north to south. If we cross from Fengqiu County
The Yellow River leads directly to Kaifeng. After capturing Kaifeng, he quickly moved from the flat belly of Henan to the south, attacked Xuchang, and headed straight to Xinyang, occupying three large cities in central Henan and dividing the intruders in Henan into two."
"After occupying three big cities, if the intruders still have soldiers and horses left in eastern Henan, I am afraid that these soldiers and horses will be in a state of panic. When we use a small number of soldiers and horses to defend the big cities and send a large army to sweep eastern Henan, we will definitely be able to sweep away eastern Henan.
A bunch of thieves.”
Li Xing looked at the sand table and said thoughtfully: "The efficiency of fighting like this is very high. But it is a thousand miles from Kaifeng to Xinyang, and the grain road is very long. What if the intruders send the main force to attack our grain transport team?"
Hong Chengchou said: "Second General, don't worry about the problem of food roads. Henan had a great harvest last year, and rural people have food stored everywhere. As long as our Tiger Army trades fairly, we can raise food and grass locally, and there is no need to transport it from Shandong."
go."
Everyone gathered around the sand table, thinking about Hong Chengchou's words.
Li Xing shook his head and said: "Intruders are very popular in Henan. What if the people favor the intruders and are unwilling to sell food and grass to us?"
Hong Chengchou stroked his beard and said: "The military is a major event for the country. It is the place of life and death, and the way of survival. Our army has invaded the hinterland of Henan to fight against thieves for the country. This is a great cause of justice. If the people support the thieves, this is rebellion. If the people are unwilling
To provide food, the army can forcibly steal food from the people."
"If you are worried that the people will have no food to survive the winter, just grab the food and leave the corresponding money."
"Henan is flat in the east and arched in the west. There are mountains in the west of Henan, but the central and eastern Henan are fertile and wild for thousands of miles. We attacked from Kaifeng all the way south, and everywhere we went was plain. Even if the people wanted to hide food, there were no mountains to hide it. So as long as we
If we forcefully collect food, we will definitely get food and grass. In this area, our army will not have any food and grass problems."
"If we can annihilate one-third of the intruders' troops in central and eastern Henan, the frontal pressure will be greatly reduced when we attack the mountains in western Henan. By then, we can mobilize more troops and horses to transport food in the mountains in western Henan to prevent
The way is broken."
Hong Chengchou spoke very tactfully. When he and Li Xing were arguing, he looked at Li Xing with a smile and his tone was very soothing. Although Li Xing was repeatedly refuted by Hong Chengchou, he did not feel embarrassed.
After listening to Hong Chengchou's analysis, everyone felt that it made sense and started thinking about it on the sand table.
After thinking for a while, no one had any objections.
Li Zhi nodded and said: "What Deputy Chief of Staff Hong said is reasonable. We will forcefully cross the Yellow River from Kaifeng and cut Henan in two from the middle road, trying to annihilate part of the bandit army in eastern Henan."
When all the generals heard Li Zhi's words, they all bowed down and accepted the order.
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On the first day of November, the north wind from Siberia has begun to dominate the sky in Henan. The cold wind is howling in the air, and the temperature is getting lower day by day. The soldiers of the Tiger Army have put on cotton-padded clothes.
However, the Huben Army's march plan was not affected by the weather, and they marched forward with great success.
Only five days after entering Henan, the Huben army crossed the natural barrier of the Yellow River and entered Kaifeng Prefecture.
The Chuang army obviously took the initiative to withdraw westward and abandoned Kaifeng City. There were only a thousand soldiers and horses left to defend the city. When they saw the 40,000 tiger soldiers attacking, these hungry soldiers immediately surrendered.
Li Xing rode into Kaifeng, an important town in the Central Plains.
But in this city ruled by thieves, all Li Xing saw was the barren land.
Both sides of the street were very depressed, and it seemed that most of the shops had been closed for a long time. Some large shops were even burned down by the intruders, leaving only a scorched black mess. The roads in the city were very dirty, with all kinds of rubbish everywhere, which made it difficult to
The whole city is shrouded in the stench of garbage.
Obviously, as a military force whose main occupation is robbery, the Chuang Army has not yet learned how to manage a city.
There are still people living in the poor houses on both sides of the road, and it is unclear whether they have been robbed. But the slightly more respectable houses of wealthy families are all empty, and it is obvious that all the original residents have been killed.
Without exception, everything in the yard was completely destroyed. Looking from the outside, the most intuitive feeling is that all the door panels are gone, probably because they were chopped down by the peasant soldiers and used as firewood.
Li Xing walked into a courtyard with three entrances and saw that the yard was in a mess. The third entrance of the courtyard was completely filled with garbage. There were all kinds of food scraps and old clothes everywhere, as well as fat rats and unspecified species.
Insects were crawling around. Apparently the peasant soldiers who occupied the yard were too lazy to throw away garbage, so they used the third yard as a garbage dump.
All the furniture and furnishings in the first two courtyards were destroyed. The porcelain, calligraphy and paintings were all smashed and destroyed. The rosewood furniture in the main hall was considered a luxury item for the gentry, which probably aroused the anger of the peasant army.
, was burned, and Li Xing only saw a few burned chair legs in the corner.
The occupiers of the courtyard moved dozens of rough wooden chairs of various colors from the side rooms to form a circle, and used the main hall as a meeting hall for this group of intruders.
Around the "meeting hall", the main rooms and side rooms were used as barracks for the invading army. When Li Xing walked into a main room, he only smelled a sour smell. There were no women to greet the lower-level soldiers of the invading army.
I don't know what hygiene is, so I probably don't take showers very often, and I don't wash the sheets and bedding. The corners of the room are full of various animal bones. Li Xing only took a glance and saw four or five cockroaches crawling in the garbage in the corner of the room.
Li Xing frowned and cursed: "The mob!"
Li Xing exited the courtyard and rode into the Prince Zhou's Mansion in Kaifeng City.
King Zhou had been killed by the Chuang army, and the Prince of Zhou's palace had been used as Li Zicheng's palace. The palace was very desolate at this time, and there was no one there. All the valuables in the main hall of the palace were taken away by Li Zicheng, leaving the palace bare.
Li Xing walked to the harem of the palace, but saw that there was no one in the harem. Most of the manhole covers of the wells were sealed with military drums and other objects.
Li Xing curiously opened a well and looked inside, only to find that he couldn't see anything in the dark place.
Li Xing's soldiers captured a royal eunuch from a nearby house and brought him to Li Xing.
Li Xing asked: "Why are these wells closed?"
The eunuch walked with a limp, as if he had been beaten by a soldier. When he saw Li Xing, he seemed to see his own relatives, kneeling down and holding Li Xing's boots and crying bitterly.
"Chief Soldier! Chief Soldier Mingjian! After the intruders invaded the palace, they bullied the palace maids. The soldiers at the bottom took turns insulting the harem maids and their families. After being humiliated one after another, those palace maids lived in disgrace. In a few nights, more than ten people threw themselves into the well.
suicide!"
"The Chuang army didn't bother to clean up the bodies of these palace maids, so they sealed these wells."
Li Xing was stunned for a while when he heard this.
After a long time, he sighed: "He is a true thief."
