Heavy rains in Henan Province, Lanyang County, Kaifeng Prefecture, flood peaks overlapped with copper tile roofs, and river embankments overflowed with water.
The flood season is fierce, with all rivers rising simultaneously. The Yellow River, Qin River, and Yiluo River surge at the same time. The flood peaks are encountered, and the downstream rivers cannot vent in time.
The river section below Xunsanbao and above Sibao in Lanyang.
Gao Yuanmei took Huang Dengxiao, Zhang Yutian and his entourage and arrived quietly. They braved the heavy rain and arrived quietly by boat. Being familiar with the Yellow River, he knew very well that this section of the river embankment was an unworked area and was not a key construction area.
There are neither weirs nor dams.
Compared with the main section of the embankment, which is ten feet wide at the base and four feet wide at the base and three feet wide at the top, the top of this section of the embankment is only two to three feet wide.
Moreover, this section has been in danger several times in the past two years and has overflowed the embankment many times.
A southerly storm broke out and huge waves rolled up.
The peak of the Yellow River passes through, and huge waves surge into the sky.
Gao Yuanmei was an old river official during the Ming Dynasty. After a brief inspection, he determined that even if they didn't come to dig, the place probably wouldn't be able to hold on.
Of course, if a local official quickly brings people to protect the embankment, it is still possible to hold on to it, and even if the embankment overflows, it will not burst.
"God is really helping me, let's do it!"
The embankment has already been overflowed with water. Although it is only a little bit of water, it is already very dangerous.
Zhang Yutian couldn't help but think, even though he was wearing a raincoat, why didn't the river workers and the officials organize strong men to go to the embankment to guard the river at this time?
The Yellow River is already an above-ground river in Henan, and the dams need to be repaired every year.
However, since the late Ming Dynasty, internal and external troubles and natural disasters have continued, and Henan in the Central Plains has been hit hard. Secondly, although there are river officials in the imperial court, corruption in river engineering has long been serious. Officials at both upper and lower levels colluded to commit fraud, and river engineering expenses were huge.
Those river officials who originally specialized in managing rivers and building river embankments regard river engineering as a channel to make money. The state invests a lot of money every year to control the river, but as a result, the embankments frequently burst. In fact, many of them are officials secretly instructing river engineering to deliberately dig holes.
, in order to recommend for reimbursement.
Every year, less than ten percent of the money invested by the imperial court to control the river was used on the river, and the rest was embezzled by officials.
There is too much pulling out but not enough, all kinds of corruption and embezzlement, and the river management project is naturally full of rubbish. Under such circumstances, there are often overflows of embankments and small breaches, but now in this chaotic time, the problem has become more serious.
Last year the Chuang army occupied Henan, then the Qing army came again, and then the Ming army went northward. Many forces competed in the Central Plains. The Chuang army was defeated and plundered places. The Qing army went south and plundered places.
The Qing army was defeated on the front line, and Henan levied additional money and grain.
There is absolutely no money to repair the river. Originally, with the money, something could be done, but now that no one is taking care of it, how can the river be any better?
"dig!"
Gao Yuanmei picked a place.
They brought their trusted servants and started digging immediately. At this time, the water overflowed the river embankment. All they did was accelerate the collapse of the river embankment.
After quickly digging a hole, the rising flood water immediately washed away the hole and washed it deeper and deeper.
Gao Yuanmei quickly asked people to leave.
"Is that enough?"
"The fight is about to break, so hurry up and leave."
Sure enough, when they got on the boat and sailed not far away, they saw that the opening was getting wider and wider quickly, one or two feet, seven or eight feet, more than ten feet, seven or eighty feet...
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At this time, the wind was violent and the rain was fierce, the flood peaks in the river were superimposed, and the water was not released in a hurry. A sudden opening suddenly became a new outlet for the Yellow River in the sky.
The rolling floods began to rush toward the northeast, flooding the Jinshan Mountains.
The Yellow River originally went southeast in Lanyang, passed through Yifeng, entered Kaocheng in Guidefeng, and then passed through Xuzhou to seize the Huai River and enter the sea.
But now, the North Embankment has burst, and the water has begun to rush towards the Changyuan of Daming Prefecture in North Zhili. Even with Gao Yuanmei's expertise, he knew at a glance that not only Daming Prefecture, but also Caozhou Prefecture in Shandong Province would become the queen of the Yellow River Battle.
It is even very likely that the Yellow River will change its course again.
Originally, the Yellow River has experienced several major changes in its course over thousands of years, and it was only in the Southern Song Dynasty that it took over the Huai River and entered the sea. In the past, it always entered the sea through Shandong, and even entered the sea in Hebei.
This overhanging river would be difficult to control after its embankment breaks, unless the imperial court rushes to block it and restrict the Yellow River to flow south again.
But the problem is that with the current situation in Henan, the imperial court does not have the power to stop it, and Henan does not have the ability to do so.
They don't even have anyone to guard such a dangerous section, how can they expect to block it afterwards?
"Let's go,"
The height of the embankment on the back of this overhanging river is generally one to three feet high, and in some places it even hangs five feet high. The copper-tiled carriage is more than four feet high. If such a breach is missed, it will be impossible to block it later.
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During the Taiping years, the imperial court made every effort to provide disaster relief and blockade measures. It is estimated that it will take several months, after the flood has passed.
But now, it's impossible.
Based on the current flood, it is estimated that this mouth can be eight, nine or even ten miles wide, and as deep as three or four feet.
Therefore, it will be difficult to block the water until the water dries up after autumn.
The floods surged to the north.
It quickly flooded Fengqiu and Xiangfu in the northwest, then turned to the northeast, flooded Lanyang, Kaocheng, and directly controlled the famous Changyuan County.
Wherever the flood passed, everything was submerged.
The plain terrain of the Central Plains has no power to resist such a huge flood.
The village was flooded, leaving only a few treetops of the big trees in the village, the roofs of the houses were submerged under the water, many houses were directly washed away, and many people were even swept away by the flood in their sleep.
A few days later, the breach in Tongwaxiang was indeed several miles wide. The floodwaters were divided into two streams below Changyuan Bailantongji. One stream entered the Zhaowang River, crossed Hezedong, crossed the west and northeast of Yuncheng, and the other stream
Go northwest, pass Xiaoqingji under Changyuan County, turn east, pass through Yifengli, and join the Zhangbiaotun area of Dongming County from Yili, Qingqiuli, and Haiqiaoli, then turn north to Lei in Dongming County
Jiazhuang is divided into two sections. One section starts from outside the south gate of Dongming County, Zhili Province, and flows seven-quarters of the way to join the overflowing Zhaowang River. The other section crosses the Hong River and continues to flow northeast to merge with the Qi River.
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Several large rivers near Lanyang were blocked.
The surrounding prefectures all became Zeguo.
At this time, the group of instigators had already returned to Caozhou Mansion by boat and stayed high in the city looking at the Yellow Sea.
The water was so powerful that even Zhang Yutian and Huang Dengxiao did not dare to face it.
However, when the flood came, Li Huajing's rebellion was indeed washed away. Both Li Huajing and the Yuyuan Army were caught off guard by the sudden flood.
Officials, powerful people or poor people are all treated equally.
There is water everywhere.
Countless places were submerged, only a few places became isolated islands in the floods, and the surviving people became victims of the floods. How can we talk about anything else.
The most serious losses were caused by the Yuyuan Army, which originally occupied the base camp of Yuyuan. After many years of operation, it had hundreds of miles of underground passages. As a result, a flood suddenly came and many people were drowned. The people living in the tunnels also lost their food and grass.
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The survivors escaped by hugging the tops of elm trees, but they had to face difficult choices about what to eat and where to go.
In the flood, there were dead bodies of people and livestock everywhere, soaked and swollen.
After the flood, there will be a great epidemic, and then there will be a great famine. For the people in Henan, Hebei, and Shandong provinces, the most tragic time has arrived.
At this time, no one else can care about anything else, everyone has to find a way to survive.
Thousands of miles of plains suddenly turned into vast oceans.
The Yellow River flows for 800 miles in Shandong and flows through 21 prefectures and counties. After it burst, 34 prefectures and counties were affected by the disaster, and many counties were submerged.
Compared with Henan and Hebei, Shandong suffered the most serious floods due to this breach.
The Yellow River turned to the northeast and eventually took over the Daqing River to flow to the sea. This was another major change of course of the Yellow River. It also overflowed many river dams and even washed away canal embankments.
The silt accumulated in the suspended rivers on the ground poured down, leaving countless silt wherever the water passed, and the fertile fields and fertile soil were destroyed.
At this time, it was the rainy season, and heavy rains were still falling continuously. The floods from the upper reaches continued to release, causing the floods to continue to expand, all the way eastward.
Covering three provinces and dozens of states and counties.
Everything was interrupted.
Li Huajing had no choice but to take a boat on the water. The horse thief Ding Weiqiu and even his horse were washed away, so he went up Liangshan on a raft.
The Yellow River burst, and the natural disaster coincided with the man-made disaster when the Qing Dynasty moved to Huainan not long ago. The people in Huainan had just been driven to Huaibei, and as a result, the Yellow River burst, causing a great disaster thousands of miles away in the north.
The encounter between the two was inhumane.
The wide area was tens to more than a hundred miles wide and 800 miles long. Tens of millions of acres of farmland were flooded, and countless people drowned.
And more people were starved by the floods and barely escaped, but they will also face subsequent famine and epidemics.
This will affect nearly dozens of states and counties in three provinces, and at least hundreds of thousands or even millions of people will drown and starve to death.
Such a tragedy happened because a river channel activist who was afraid that the city would be captured by the rebels took the initiative to breach the embankment.
Such a historical tragedy occurred once again in later history, when the embankment burst at Huayuankou.
When Li Zicheng opened the seal, he also crossed the Yellow River embankment, but the impact was not as great as this time. It coincided with the rainy season, and there were overlapping flood peaks. The water was already heavy, and the remote location was at a key location on the Yellow River. Copper
The Yellow River here in Washiang turned a big bend and flowed southeast. This breach spread to the northeast, and most of Shandong was affected.
Li Zicheng opened Kaifeng three times and broke open the embankment of the Yellow River. The water rushed into Kaifeng. It is said that the 340,000 people in the city were almost killed, and only about 30,000 people remained.
This breach will surely cause disasters to tens of millions of people.
In fact, the previous course of the Yellow River was also artificially diverted. In order to prevent the Jin soldiers from going south, the Southern Song Dynasty army dug up the Yellow River embankment in Huaxian County, Henan Province and blocked the soldiers with water, causing the Yellow River to flow into the Surabaya River and finally seize the Huai River and flow into the sea.
After this time, the Yellow River formed two river channels, the old and the new, and swayed everywhere from the Yellow River to the Huaihe River. Since this location happened to be on the front line of the confrontation between the Southern Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty, neither the Song Dynasty nor the Jin Dynasty had any intention to block the breach, so that the Yellow River was in
Throughout the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a situation of overflowing and oscillating conditions in the north.
Later, the Jin Dynasty was defeated by the Mongols. Pursued by the Mongols, Jin Aizong had to flee south to Kaifeng, and then fled to Guide, which was only more than 200 miles away from Kaifeng. At that time, the Jin soldiers tried to open up the water of the Yellow River.
Flooded the Mongolian army, but all the troops sent out to dig up the embankment were wiped out. Then, the Mongolian army did not stop, and a general came up with a plan to flood Guide, so they directly dug up the embankment of the Yellow River. Unexpectedly, the terrain of Guide City was high
, the water of the Yellow River actually flowed around the city, but the overflowing Yellow River caused great harm to the Yellow Flood Area.
Two years after the Mongols opened up the Yellow River, taking advantage of the peril of the Jin Dynasty, the Southern Song Dynasty army went north to compete with the Mongols for the Central Plains. In order to stop the Song Dynasty army, the Mongols again artificially opened up the Yellow River. This time, the location was chosen just over 20 meters north of Kaifeng City.
This also caused the fifth major diversion of the Yellow River in history.
No one could have imagined that now that the Ming and Qing Dynasties were fighting in the Central Plains, the local Tatar governors, fearful of the rebels who would defect to the Ming Dynasty, also came to block the troops by digging up dikes and releasing water, which would cause the sixth major diversion of the route.
Gao Yuanmei and others would not have thought that although they had protected Caozhou Mansion from being captured by the rebels, and even severely damaged Li Huajing's rebels, this move was tantamount to a stab in the heart of the Qing court.
The Qing government, which was originally very passive in the war in the Central Plains, lost Jiangnan, corrupted Huguang, and abandoned Huainan. Now Shandong has been flooded again. More than ten prefectures and forty prefectures and counties in three provinces have been affected, and seven or eight cities have been flooded and destroyed.
The yellow flood zone is one to two hundred miles wide and several hundred miles long.
The canals in Henan were washed away, and tens of millions of people were affected.
Isn't this a knife in the heart?
When the situation was urgently reported to Laizhou, Zhu Yihai couldn't believe it after receiving the news. If this was done, the Central Plains would be completely corrupted. How could the Tatars continue to fight this war?
