Zhu Yihai noticed that the situation around Taihu Lake was getting more and more chaotic. King Yiyang of Chongming seemed to have become more aggressive because he drove high and moved low.
They are planning to gather troops to attack Suzhou. In order to capture Suzhou and compete with Lu Jianguo in eastern Zhejiang, the small court of King Yiyang on Chongming Island is now recruiting troops everywhere, including pirates, water pirates, and mountain pirates.
The thief will not let go either.
It is said that there have been dozens of dukes, princes and counts, not to mention the chief soldiers and general guards. They even started to confer titles and titles on a number of civil and military officials in eastern Zhejiang. Fang Guoan was awarded the title of Yue.
Wang Zhiren was awarded the title of Duke of Wu, and Zheng Zhilong was awarded the title of Duke of Fujian.
Zhang Mingzhen was awarded the title of Marquis of Ningyuan, and even Zheng Zunqian, the Yixing army leader of the Shaoxing uprising, was also awarded the title of Yixing Bo.
Huang Fei, who held 40,000 troops, was worshiped as the crown prince's Taibao Zuodudu, and he recruited the marshal by land and water. Qi Guogong and Jing Benche were appointed governors of Zhejiang Province. Zhao Guogong, Wu Zhikui, Lu Zhiyu and other generals were awarded counts, and they each led their headquarters to attack.
Suzhou.
Many pirates and water bandits were also awarded the title of deputy general and guerrilla general.
King Yiyang is said to have publicly declared that he would first go to Suzhou and then return to Nanjing. He would go to Nanjing in person to worship Taizu, and then ascend the throne and proclaim himself emperor in the Nanjing Palace.
In this regard, Zhu Yihai felt that King Yiyang was not only a dandy with no strategic vision, but also lamented that the people in the Chongming court were all idiots.
However, seeing that they were about to cause trouble and make big news, Zhu Yihai thought about it over and over again. After discussing with his ministers, he still felt that he could not sit in Jiaxing. So in the middle of leap June, Zhu Yihai led his troops along the canal.
Go north and enter the junction of Jiahu and Wusanfu on the south bank of Taihu Lake.
More than 30,000 troops marched northward one after another, and some of them had already accepted Duke Yan's offer to surrender. In fact, they were pretending to be surrenderers with some intimidating titles such as Uncle Hou, General Guoyin, and Deputy General of the General Army.
The soldiers were then given flags and seals by Yan Wogong, and then the land was laid out and settled.
Haiyan, Pinghu, Jiashan, Tongxiang and other Jiaxing counties were handed over to these local township regiments in this way. Zhu Yihai sent them some liaisons and some veteran instructors, and then handed over these counties to them.
In order to make it easier for him to recruit and surrender, Yan Wogong dug out a bunch of names of criminal thieves from the old files of the Jiaxing Prefecture County Yamen, and then reported to them that he had successfully recruited people for the imperial court, and gave them the titles of Commander-in-Chief, Commander-in-Chief, Guard, etc.
They were given the title of Dusi and so on, so that they could guard their respective places.
In fact, he just copied these names from the files. As for these big thieves, Yan Wogong had never seen them or planned to see them. He just borrowed their names. In fact, he was directly awarded official titles, flags, etc., and they were all from Jiaxing.
The township soldiers and militia group above was a team reorganized by Zhu Yihai.
These country gentry and righteous people suddenly transformed into such-and-such thieves who killed countless people and stole goods. Now they accepted the recruitment and became the local garrison, guarding one side.
Yan Wogong also used this method to intercept most of the tax money and food money from various places, and used it to secretly support the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty in the name of appeasement, silver reward, salary, etc.
Li Yuchun, the deputy commander-in-chief of Jiaxing in Xiezhen, now not only trusts Yan Wogong, but also respects him very much. He has changed his identity very well and has become Yan Wogong's loyal and reliable subordinate and accomplice. Every time Yan Wogong reports,
Li Yuchun's signature must be added.
They even used Li Yuchun and his troops to suppress the gentry, landlords, bandits and water bandits who surrendered. Afterwards, with the proceeds seized, the two of them worked together to make up for the trouble. Li Yuchun was very satisfied with this kind of cooperation.
Even for the gentry and landlords from various parts of Jiaxing who surrendered, Yan Wogong asked Li Yuchun to persuade them to donate and borrow money. Under the temptation of the white money, Li Yuchun did not tell those people that they were one of his own.
Every time someone is targeted by him, they have to shed several layers of skin even if they don't die, and their family wealth has to be extorted to an extent before they stop. If they are ignorant of current affairs, Li Yuchun will be very skillful in framing them as treacherous traitors and destroying them.
Search your home.
Because of Yan Wogong's suggestion, Li Yuchun no longer loots towns and cities at will, but mainly targets the wealthy gentry, landlords and wealthy businessmen. However, the list provided to him by Yan Wogong is often those who have been demoted.
The Qing faction and even the leading party.
The two cooperated. Yan Wogong used Li Yuchun's help to eliminate the traitor surrender faction, while Li Yuchun used Yan Zhaofu's banner to grab money. Both were very satisfied.
It has to be said that with the help of Li Yuchun, a big traitor, Yan's "recruitment and surrender" in Jiaxing went very smoothly, and there was not the slightest suspicion in Hangzhou.
Even Wu Kai from Haimen was secretly summoned to Hangzhou, and he boldly met with Bo Luo, Zhang Cunren, etc., passed their test, and was successfully accepted as one of his own.
Therefore, Wu Yuan, the commander-in-chief of Shipu who pretended to be the Marquis of Kaiyuan in the Ming Dynasty and had the seal of General Kaiyuan, was asked by Dorgon, the regent of Boluo, to be granted the title of Marquis of Shacheng and let him be the president of Shacheng, Zhoushan, Dagang, and Dongbaihai Island.
The chief military officer also gave python robes, pommel horses, Liao ginseng, Dongzhu and gold, etc.
Very generous to this surrendered general.
Wu Kai's proven success in recruiting and surrendering, as well as Gu Qixun and others in Hangzhou who had surrendered to Yan Wogong, all believed in them and reported to Beijing one after another to request titles for these surrendered generals.
As for the lower-level former water bandits, mountain bandits, pirates, etc., Hangzhou didn't even bother to study it in detail. They approved the list according to the list, granted official positions, given camp numbers, divided the garrison and defense zones, and gave each a silver reward.
, let them guard the place well and combat hypocrisy and rebellion.
They never thought that someone could tell them a big lie and deceive them all over again.
After all, both Yan Wogong and Wu Kai have personally verified it, and Li Yuchun has always testified. They believe that seeing is believing.
Furthermore, I also believe that the Ming Dynasty is over. It is normal for the civil servants and generals of the Ming Dynasty to surrender to the Qing Dynasty and find other ways out. Those who are still holding on to the Ming Dynasty, such as Wang Zhiren, Zhang Guowei, Zhang Mingzhen, Yu Ying, etc., are abnormal.
of.
Abnormal ones are always in the minority after all.
And when letters asking for help from Tuguobao, Wu Zhaosheng, Li Chengdong, etc. in the Susong area continued to arrive, Hangzhou's main attention was focused on the Susong area.
They began to focus on King Jianguo of Yiyang, who openly claimed that he would attack Suzhou first and then regain Nanjing. They focused on Admiral Huang Fei, who was said to have nearly 50,000 troops, and on Wu Zhikui, Jing Benche,
Shen Tingyang waited for the troops of King Yiyang, and even the rebels of Taihu Baitou Army Wu Yi.
As long as the men and horses in eastern Zhejiang cannot reach the Qiantang River, then it is more important to ignore them for the time being. It is more important to mobilize the troops to join forces to kill the false King Yiyang and his 200,000 men.
Bolo has received a letter from Jiangning Duduo, asking him to start the division in advance, and asked him to lead troops along the way to suppress the rebellion in Susong and other places. The letter even mentioned that in order to suppress the growing arrogance of the rebels,
, we can imitate the massacre of the city after the capture of Yangzhou, pick a big city in Susong, and carry out another bloody massacre, using one or two hundred thousand people to kill the arrogance of these rebels.
He also said that even the Beijing court now had strong objections to King Yiyang's claim to be the governor of the country, and believed that it must be suppressed quickly and decisively, and that King Yiyang should be captured and sent to Beijing.
Because of Zhu Yihai's intentional control of the Qiantang River defense line, especially after suppressing the counterattack plan led by Fang Guoan in Hangzhou, eastern Zhejiang has always shown a tepid attitude towards the outside world, especially since Hangzhou did not pose any threat to the Qing army.
sex.
Zhu Yihai sent his troops to the Northern Expedition and kept it very secret. On the side of Hangzhou Boluo and others, they still believed the reports of Li Yuchun and Yan Wogong, and severely defeated the Ming army from eastern Zhejiang heading north at Zhujiazhuang.
After a temptation, their false admiral Zhu Wu was beaten and fled, never to be seen again.
Zhu Yihai's strategy successfully kept the eastern Zhejiang court low-key and secretive, and reduced the Qing army's risk assessment of them. On the contrary, King Yiyang and the others became impatient and aggressive after suffering several heavy losses from Zhu Yihai.
Radical, it successfully attracted the Qing army commanders in Hangzhou and Nanjing, and even alarmed the Qing court in Beijing, and listed King Yiyang as the next one to be eliminated by the Qing army.
Suzhou, Zhenze Town.
In the first battle when Zhu Yihai led his troops into Suzhou, he defeated a group of bandit salt traders and the guerrilla generals under the command of King Yiyang.
However, this is not the first time Zhu Yihai has taken action against King Yiyang's people, and now he doesn't care much about it.
They're all the stuff of a den of thieves, so let's just cook them all in one pot.
"The King of Yiyang even recruited such people as guerrilla generals, and even dared to talk wildly about seizing Suzhou and Nanjing."
Looking at the rebel soldiers under the banner of King Yiyang, Zhu Yihai and others looked with disdain. From the beginning when Zhu Yihai heard that King Yiyang and others were raising flags in Chongming and insisting on resisting the Qing Dynasty, they felt quite admired. Now, they are already
Deeply disgusted.
They were not anti-Qing martyrs at all, they were just a group of deserters and defeated generals who gathered together to raise the banner of the imperial court, so that they could collect food, pay, and plunder the place.
They have been raising the flag for so long. They claim to have 200,000 to 300,000 people, but they have not done anything decent until now. They have neither taken advantage of the Qing army's direct advance to Susongchang Town in Hangzhou to restore the place, nor have they been able to defend the village.
,maintain security.
They are just recruiting grain workers, soliciting donations and raising salaries, and the money and grain they get are used to continuously recruit soldiers and horses to expand the army, but they are only used to deal with local people, to grab money and grain to show their prestige and blessings.
It is said that people's support is against them, but if they act like this, who among the people is really willing to support them?
Even former governors of Guangdong and Guangxi like Shen Youlong were so blackmailed by these guys that they couldn't bear it anymore and openly declared that they would revolt.
Chen Zilong and others from Fushe who once had high hopes for King Yiyang and worked hard to contact them all gave up. They would rather start over again and recruit volunteers to retake the city by themselves, rather than support these bandits anymore.
"If they want to attack Suzhou like this, wouldn't that mean they're going to die?"
"Let them fight. It will attract the attention of the Tatars and facilitate our actions."
Several courtiers accompanying him were discussing, and Zhu Yihai frowned. Although he looked down upon King Yiyang and the others more and more, he said that he would just sit back and watch them die. This was not only a matter of not saving anyone, but also a matter of not saving them.
It is related to the overall situation of the resistance against the Japanese.
King Yiyang and the others are now in the open, so that the imperial court of Lu Jianguo in eastern Zhejiang can develop secretly. If they are destroyed by one blow, Zhu Yihai and the others will be completely exposed under the eyes of the Qing army.
"Your Highness, the governor of Hunan, Du Yinxi, the governor of Fujian, Zhang Kentang, the governor of Guangxi, Qu Shishu, and the Zheng family of Fujian, who gave the country's surname Zhu Chenggong, and the Zhongzhen camp, who gave the surname Li Chixin, have arrived."
When Zhu Yihai heard these names, he felt excited, "We're finally here, please hurry up and invite us."
"Why does Your Highness expect so much?" Chen Qianfu was puzzled. "I believe that these provinces are beyond our reach after all, and the people's hearts have not yet truly returned. For example, the Zheng family in Fujian may not be really willing to contribute."
"I don't know, but since I can come, I have taken a crucial step. Moreover, what I am most looking forward to this time is not the arrival of the Zheng family, but Du Yinxi and Li Chixin."
"Why? The Zheng family in Fujian is much stronger than them?"
Zhu Yihai replied seriously, "Because Huguang is in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and we are now in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. If the Ming army in Huguang and the Thirteen Families of the Loyalty Battalion can unite and launch a counterattack against the Tatars in the upper reaches, they will definitely be able to threaten
When we get to Nanzhi downstream, the Tatars here will divide their forces to deal with the threats upstream. Don't you think this is the most direct and effective support for us?"
On the contrary, although the Zheng family in Fujian was very strong at sea, they were still south of Zhejiang. It was Zhejiang that helped Fujian block the Qing army.
"Your Highness, can the intruder be trusted?"
"We'll know after we meet and talk!" Zhu Yihai said bluntly.