The troops Zhang Xianzhong sent to counterattack outside the city were completely wiped out, which would naturally bring about a series of chain reactions.
The morale of the official troops who were attacking the city on the other side was getting higher and higher, while the morale of the remaining rebel garrison in the city had dropped to the bottom.
Under the cover of the Hongyi artillery, the officers and soldiers continued to charge bravely, and everyone was as powerful as a rainbow. While charging, they shouted: "Bai Wenxuan, Feng Shuangli, and Li Dingguo have surrendered! Those who follow Zhang Xianzhong will die! Those who surrender will avoid death!"
The people inside the rebel army were in panic. Even the soldiers who were on the front line were confused by the shocking news. But those who were not on the front line for the time being could still think about Governor Bai and Feng.
Did the governor and the second general really surrender to the government and have no intention of fighting?
Finally, in the evening of that day, the government troops blew down a corner of the Chengdu city wall. When tens of thousands of government troops rushed in, the defenders completely collapsed. Even though there were still 100,000 people in the city, they surrendered.
In a hurry, Zhang Xianzhong had no choice but to let Di Sanpin and Qi Sansheng kidnap Li Dingguo. He took several thousand direct cavalry and all the old battalion infantry to break out of the siege in the west of the city. Taking advantage of the getting darker and darker in the evening, they rushed to Xinjin Ferry in an attempt to seize the ship and break out of the siege.
The remaining treasures he had left in western Hunan, as well as all the things he grabbed after entering Sichuan, including light gold, silver, jewelry, damask and brocade, were also loaded into a cart and pulled by horses to break through. He just wanted to throw them on the ship as soon as he arrived at the dock.
, the sails were full, and they went down the river, using the sails and oars together as they ran wildly.
The reason why he kidnapped Li Dingguo and did not execute him immediately was because after all, there was still the last trace of humanity that had not been extinguished, but not much.
After all, he still hasn't figured out: Is all this really the betrayal of Li Dingguo and Feng Shuangli, or is it the result of Zhu Shuren's stratagem?
If Li Dingguo was chopped into pieces at this juncture, it would undoubtedly appear that he was very intolerant and could easily be manipulated by the enemy's alienation schemes.
The only people around him, such as Di Sanpin and Qi Sansheng, may not follow his path to the dark side. Maybe everyone will be in danger and wonder, "When the eight kings are really at the end of their rope, will they become paranoid and crazy?"
If you don’t trust anyone, whoever you arrest will be killed.”
This chain of suspicion is really not groundless or a battle of wits and courage. In history, after Zhang Xianzhong's rule in Sichuan could not be maintained, one of the most important reasons for the crazy massacre in the final stage was that people become suspicious when they betray their relatives.
It's so outrageous that everyone looks like a traitor.
If this kind of suspicion is combined with a slightly crueler and more vicious personality, it will be easy to kill innocent people indiscriminately.
Li Dingguo looked at all this with lamentation, but his heart was filled with despair and he was completely speechless. He was like a walking zombie after being tied up.
He had no excuse, because two months ago, he asked Zhang Xianzhong to show mercy and release Bai Wenxuan's family members and stop detaining the families of the generals who died in the city. This suggestion was originally made by him to Zhang Xianzhong, and there was no denying this.
The only thing that can be defended is that "Li Dingguo was also deceived by the words of Bai Wenxuan's confidants sent by Zhu Shuren, and he did not know that Bai Wenxuan was actually alive and had surrendered." But at this juncture, Li Dingguo knew this and could not defend himself.
Useless.
Incompetence, misjudgment and disloyalty are all sins.
Does it make sense to dismiss infidelity as being deceived? It is meaningless at this time. If you want to defend, you have to get out of danger and defend again.
Zhang Xianzhong's last old battalion cavalry totaled more than 10,000 people, and there were tens of thousands of old battalion infantry. The more than 20,000 soldiers and horses became Zhang Xianzhong's final desperate escape.
Not to mention, although Zhang Xianzhong was not capable of fighting a decisive battle with the government and the army, he still had a good chance of escaping.
After all, until now, he still has more than twice the number of troops as many officers and soldiers.
Although his hundreds of thousands of Sichuan peasants surrendered in groups, the hundreds of thousands of them were still engaged in chaotic fighting and lost their command structure. The officers and soldiers had to hold on for a long time, which was enough to contain most of the Zhu Shu people's troops.
One hundred thousand organized soldiers who surrender can be surrendered in a matter of seconds. But one hundred thousand soldiers who have lost their organization and are fighting on their own are as difficult to catch as one hundred thousand pigs scattering. This is common sense.
Anyone who has been in a war knows this.
What I was most afraid of when I surrendered was that the enemy no longer had a command system, and no one's words counted.
On the other hand, Zhu Shuren can be regarded as a commander who is well versed in the art of war. Of course, while attacking the city, he will detach his troops to surround and contain Zhang Xianzhong outside Chengdu City and block Zhang Xianzhong's route at any time.
But this time Zhang Xianzhong wanted money rather than his life, or he felt that even if he chose to die, the probability of survival might not be much higher than if he chose to pay for money, so he simply took a big gamble and went to Xinjindu to break out, but still wanted to evacuate to the south of the Minjiang River.
.
Zhu Shuren never expected this. He always felt that if Zhang Xianzhong wanted to have a higher chance of survival, he should retreat to Mianzhu and Jiangyou and hide in Jianmen Pass. At least he could ensure that he would live for half a year and a few months longer.
die.
The blockade troops deployed by Zhu Shuren in the direction of Xinjin Ferry only had a few thousand men. Zhang Xianzhong rushed into them wildly regardless of casualties. Zhu Shuren's troops did not have enough cavalry there, so they could only fight in formation and output crazy firepower.
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However, Zhang Xianzhong's men just tried their best to open a hole, and then ran wildly into the corridor and gap. After breaking through the blocking military formation, they continued to run without looking back.
In such a desperate fighting situation, after all, some officers and soldiers are afraid of death. Why do they have to block the enemy from the front and increase casualties when they can kill the enemy from the flank?
Naturally, the frontline generals chose to shoot and fire arrows at the enemies rushing towards them from the side, harvesting lives, chasing after them to kill them, and using the defeated troops of Zhang Xianzhong's army to attack as free vanguards, trampling on each other to expand the results of the battle.
Therefore, the twenty-mile road from the west gate of Chengdu to Xinjin Ferry, at least a dozen miles, was littered with the corpses of Zhang Xianzhong's soldiers, and more soldiers were surrounded and blocked, unable to break out, and they knelt down and surrendered.
Zhang Xianzhong rushed to Xinjin Ferry and grabbed hundreds of small and medium-sized ships. There were no professional warships, so he set sail one after another, almost running from one ship to another, and there was no time to wait for his comrades.
In the chaos, some veteran soldiers wanted to get on the overloaded boat. Naturally, they performed another "finger-in-the-boat" stunt, and they all lined up to chop off the fingers that were climbing on the boat.
The wailing sound along the Minjiang River shook for ten miles, and floating corpses floated hundreds of feet out of the river - but these people still followed Zhang Xianzhong at this stage. They were considered to be serious thieves, and they were not very innocent.
Historically, in April of the 16th year of Chongzhen's reign, they should have massacred innocent people in Wuchang.
At this moment in another time and space, the Wuchang Mansion was so killed that "the floating corpses covered the river, blocked the Parrot Island, and the people's anointing was more than an inch thick, and it was scattered after a month."
It is the parrot island of "Qingchuan Lili Hanyang Tree, Fragrant Grass Wife and Wife Parrot Island". Human corpses were washed away by the river and piled up where the flow was slow, allowing the sandbank in the river to be directly connected to the land beside the river, turning it into a peninsula.
, the human oil stuck in the middle can be more than an inch thick.
(Note: The Wuchang section of the Yangtze River is two kilometers wide. Modern Parrot Island has been connected to the land. There is a map from the Song Dynasty. The distance between Parrot Island and the narrow place on the south bank is "about a hundred feet". The data from the late Ming Dynasty cannot be found, and it is estimated that it is at least narrower than the Song Dynasty.
More than half, even the narrowest part, is a small island less than 100 meters offshore.
In addition, it is not ruled out that the massacre of the city and the dumping of corpses changed the geological structure around Parrot Island and accelerated the process of connecting the sandbar to the land. Without Zhang Xianzhong, the modern Parrot Island may not have been completely integrated with the main land of Wuhan so quickly.)
After Zhang Xianzhong seized the ship, he went down the river and thought for a moment that he had escaped. But he obviously underestimated the technical content of the naval force——
Even if the officers and soldiers failed to accurately determine the direction of his escape, the ships they pursued obviously had better navigation performance and the sailors were much more skillful in handling the ships.
Before midnight, the official and military fleets were already arriving in droves. The torches illuminated the Minjiang River and there was nowhere to hide. There were hundreds of warships.
What made him even more desperate was that in the south and downstream, there were also warships going upstream to search. They were obviously the troops left behind at the docks along the river in Meishan, Leshan and other places.
Those officers and soldiers seemed to have received a quick message from the land. Because the galloping horses were faster than the ships, they got the news in advance to intercept them. There were even some officers and soldiers who were clever enough to arrest some people who had been arrested in Emei County, Leshan County and other places.
The officers of Sun Kewang's troops who had surrendered were captured and placed on the bow of the ship, ordering them to identify themselves and shout.
You must know that among Zhang Xianzhong's direct troops, the news that "Sun Kewang has given up Emei and fled eastward, completely betraying his adoptive father's large army" has not been confirmed so far.
A considerable number of die-hard loyalists still think that this is a plan to alienate the army and that General Sun is still supporting them in Emei County.
This was also the reason why Zhang Xianzhong's last loyalists dared to go south to break out. If they really knew that Sun Kewang's escape was completely in vain, at least half of their determination would be discouraged.
The combination of siege and pincer attacks by the government and the army, which also attacked people's hearts, completely destroyed Zhang Xianzhong's last direct lineage.
The fleet of pirates with a large target was directly hit, scattered and annihilated on the river.
At first, the officers and soldiers wanted to bombard the large ship with a Folang machine or directly ram it down. In the end, Shen Lian, the navy commander in charge of leading the army, was more knowledgeable and quickly ordered his subordinates not to overturn it or use heavy artillery. At most, they could only use
Turtle dove gun.
Before setting off, he got the attention of his young master and asked him to pay attention to whether Zhang Xianzhong's escape fleet was loaded with gold, silver and jewelry, because Zhang Xianzhong's temperament liked to take the most valuable soft belongings with him when escaping.
Fortunately, their combat power was already overwhelming. None of the ships Zhang Xianzhong's troops grabbed had cabin armor. The Turtle Dove Guns were able to sweep across them. After some strafing, the officers and soldiers jumped in to help pull the ships away. Sure enough, they found that many of the ships had gold.
Silver, for a moment, fell into a robbery.
Shen Lian quickly reiterated the military order that the property seized must be returned to the public and the rewards should be redistributed. To this end, he even had to kill seven or eight jealous officers and soldiers who were so jealous that they lost their humanity.
Seeing that it was difficult to escape, Zhang Xianzhong's eyes were bloodshot. He roared and drew his knife and slashed at the side of the ship. He turned around and cut off the thick hemp rope tied to Li Dingguo's body. Li Dingguo retreated and was unable to dodge, and was even scratched with a shallow cut on his chest.
Wound.
"Father! At this point, do you still want to kill me? I'm not collaborating with the enemy! Even if I am, is there any point in worrying about this now? Why!" Li Dingguo was also aroused with ferocity, and after breaking free from the restraints, he jumped back,
He drew the knife from Qi Sansheng and refused to sit still and wait for death.
Zhang Xianzhong saw that he also had a weapon, and just smiled miserably: "If I want to kill you, I won't chop off the hemp rope at the same time! I will just chop off the head with a horizontal knife! This is to let you go, and the attack will not be serious. How can you
It’s impossible to hold a grudge and kill your father!”
After hearing his explanation, Li Dingguo found some truth in it. He held the knife motionlessly for a moment, as if thinking.
Zhang Xianzhong was too lazy to hide it, and finally issued an order: "For the sake of father and son, who was right and who was wrong in the past, whether it was a trap or a betrayal, how about you and I clean up both sides and let bygones be bygones?"
If you don't want to bear the name of betraying your father, do the last thing for me. I will take these boats of cavalry to the west bank and sneak to the north to join Xiu'er. If you are caught and killed on the way, that's fine too
Such is the destiny.
As long as you continue to go south with these fleets, pretend to be me, and lure away the government troops, all the treasures on this fleet will be left to you! But my father advises you, when you are caught up by the government troops, you should take all the ships.
It’s better to sink it! What we can’t get, we can’t let anyone in the world get it!”
As Zhang Xianzhong spoke, he ordered the boat to dock to the west, gathered a small group of cavalry in the dark, and climbed up Qingcheng Mountain, intending to detour north from Qingcheng Mountain and follow the edge of the mountain to Jiangyou to join Liu Wenxiu.
He has completely given up his treasure, and just wants to gamble one last time to see if he can save his life.
And he ordered Li Dingguo to lure away the enemy and finally sink the property into the river, which was indeed in line with his temperament - Zhang Xianzhong has always been a person who said, "As long as I temporarily control something and I can't keep it in the end, it's better to destroy it."
"drop" person.
Historically, the "Jiangkou Sinking Silver" he carried out in Sichuan was almost exactly the same as what he is doing now. He wanted to give up the territory and massacred the city. This is also the mentality.
Li Dingguo's hand holding the knife tightened, thinking that after all, it was not easy for him to do something treacherous when he made him his adopted father.
After about another stick of incense, the fighting on the Minjiang River was completely over, and the chaos gradually subsided.
Li Dingguo made a decision to let all the twenty-odd small boats he could control, carrying the most precious gold, silver and jewelry, beached on the Qingcheng Mountain on the west coast, and then abandon the boats and go ashore to prepare for surrender.
"Second General, don't we follow the king's order to scuttle the ship and sink the gold and silver into the river?" Qi Sansheng had no idea and finally asked.
"Do you really want to die? Leave these gold and silver to Zhu Shuren. Maybe Zhu Shuren will leave us a way to live in the hope that we have a chance to sink the silver without sinking. At this point, we have repaid our kindness enough, and we have broken all ties.
If you can't survive like this, it's your fate. We've killed as many people as the Tatars."
Soon, Shen Lian also noticed the last and largest group of thieves who gave up resistance and abandoned the ship and washed up on the beach. It seemed that at least they could not escape. He did not open fire randomly and gave several rounds of orders to the musketeers to cease fire.
, and then lined up on the shore to search for and suppress the prisoners.
"I am Li Dingguo! Don't fire! The stranded ship is full of gold and silver! If it explodes, rush into the river!" Li Dingguo took the lead in shouting, and also asked all the surviving soldiers to shout.
When Shen Lian heard that this was indeed the case, these prisoners were all standing in a pile of gold and silver, and he quickly became more civilized, fearing that these small broken boats would fall apart and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands more taels would be rushed into the Minjiang River.
"All put down their weapons! Those who surrender will not be killed!" the officers and soldiers shouted slogans, carefully registering the captives on the boats filled with property.
Shen Lian had Li Dingguo tied up, then he pulled out his saber and put it on his neck: "Are you Li Dingguo? Where is Zhang Xianzhong?"
Li Dingguo sighed, and Qi Sansheng, who was next to him, quickly helped and said: "Eight Kings...ah, Zhang Xianzhong asked the second general to lead the fleet to lure you away. He just took a few boats and hundreds of horses to sneak through the water and reeds in the north.
They washed up on the beach in a densely populated area and went into the Qingcheng Mountains."
Seeing that the other party's whereabouts had been exposed, Li Dingguo added: "Stop searching randomly. He will definitely go to Jiangyou and join his third brother Liu Wenxiu in the end."
If the ordinary officers and soldiers search randomly with a dragnet, it will inevitably disturb the people. If the direction is pointed out, then we only need to search in one direction.
However, Shen Lian did not take seriously the hypocrisy of the other party and said proudly: "At this time, you are the one who harms the people and kills them to pretend to be a good person? Our Shen family army is no better than other soldiers and horses, and never disturbs the people! Even if it is searching mountains and seas,
It is also possible to freeze to death without demolishing the house, and to starve to death without looting!
If you really still have a clear conscience, you should have captured Zhang Xianzhong just now to receive the reward! Now why are you pretending to be benevolent and righteous? Our Lord Governor likes to re-employ those who killed the foster father among the bandits!"
…
After Li Dingguo was captured, Zhang Xianzhong's last main force was completely destroyed. Early the next morning, Li Dingguo was escorted back to Chengdu, along with the unspent Zhang Xianzhong's previous massacre of Xiangxi and those who had massacred and plundered in the past few months.
The treasures gained by Sichuan.
Zhang Xianzhong's "Jiangkou Sunken Silver" was a spectacular sight in history. In the 21st century, several sunken silver ships were unearthed by archeology. There is also a "Jiangkou Sunken Silver Museum" between the northern suburbs of Meishan City and the southern suburbs of Xinjin District, Chengdu.
But this will obviously not happen again now. At least more than 90% of the stolen gold and silver have been recovered, and less than 10% was scattered or sank with the ship in the Minjiang River.
However, the Shen family army now knows the location of last night's battle, and can proceed steadily and slowly send soldiers with good water skills to dive and salvage it. It is completely different from the history of Zhang Xianzhong's secret sinking of silver, where no outsider knew the specific location.
Zhu Shuren was a little depressed when he learned that Zhang Xianzhong had not been captured yet. He asked the prisoner for his confession. After thinking about it, he made some arrangements and asked the troops to intercept him in possible directions.
Then, he personally interrogated Li Dingguo, and also brought Fang Kongzheng, Zhang Huangyan and other civil officials to bear witness, and the three parties held a joint trial.
Zhu Shuren also asked repeatedly why the other party didn't cut off Zhang Xianzhong's head as a sacrifice. He had nothing to say to someone who wanted to save face and couldn't kill his father to surrender.
It is true that he likes to reuse the person who killed his adopted father, but this kind of thing is rare.
But if Li Dingguo is sent to Beijing in accordance with the laws of the Ming Dynasty, he will probably die.
He thought for a while and discussed with Fang Kongzhen and Zhang Huangyan: "Fang Shibo, cousin, I thought that this Li Dingguo was after all the highest-ranking general among Zhang Ni's troops who had surrendered and captured. In the end, it was said that he did not listen to Zhang Xianzhong's Shen Yin Order.
Turned over all the stolen gold and silver.
If we still send him to the capital, I am afraid that the tens of thousands of prisoners will be panicked and will not be convenient for us to reform. It is better to set up a private court here and give a final opinion on his punishment without sending him to the capital, so as to calm the people as soon as possible.
"
Fang Kongzhen did not understand why Zhu Shuren did this, and thought it was just out of the need to quickly stabilize the situation, so he expressed his responsibility as the governor of Sichuan.
The governor of Sichuan is of course responsible for the civil affairs work in Sichuan. Now after the official restoration of Chengdu, the first sentence was passed in Chengdu, and it was presided over by Fang Kongzheng. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the law.
On the contrary, Zhu Shuren's identity is just that of a provincial governor who crosses the border to pursue the rebels. In the end, he should only sign the matter.
I believe that after the eucalyptus was finalized and the news was reported to Beijing, Chongzhen would have been too overwhelmed to care about such nonsense.
Zhu Shuren unified everyone's ideas and then gave Li Dingguo a step down: "Li Dingguo! When Chongqing was captured, did you suggest Zhang Xianzhong massacre the city! When Chengdu was captured, did you suggest Zhang Xianzhong massacre the city!"
Li Dingguo: "No, my eldest brother and I both dissuaded my father... We dissuaded Zhang Xianzhong from massacre in the city, saying that this law would not last long."
Zhu Shuren: “Do you have any witnesses?”
Li Dingguo: "Feng Shuangli and Bai Wenxuan can serve as witnesses."
Zhu Shuren: "Those are your own people. Of course they helped to get rid of the crime. What about the three massacres in Changde, Changsha and Hengzhou?"
…
Zhu Shuren asked for a long time, and the final result was that Li Dingguo was finally able to figure out the relationship between Li Dingguo and those who massacred the city.
His final surrender could only absolve him of the basic crime of being a thief. Handing over gold and silver could absolve him of some other war crimes.
But there is one last item that is really difficult to deal with: a sneak attack on Xiangyang two years ago, looting and killing countless people, and also killed King Xiang and King Gui.
That was the crime of killing two feudal kings.
If this happened a year later and Chongzhen was dead, then there would be no need to say that the Southern Ming Dynasty would pardon any crime if you were in danger, as long as you were willing to fight for the imperial court.
But now it is just one year later. Chongzhen is still alive. Ai Nengqi, who was the same prisoner as Li Dingguo, was sent to Beijing Lingchi two years ago. If Li Dingguo had nothing wrong, he would really not be able to convince the public. The news spread
There is no need for Zhu Shuren to be the governor anymore.
So in the end, it was just a matter of voluntarily surrendering and handing over the money, exempting him from the death penalty, giving him a hundred rods, and serving the crime, which atones for the fact that he led a team to attack and kill the two vassal kings.
During the execution, Zhu Shuren personally struck him with thorns thirty times as a warning before handing him over to the officials.
Li Dingguo was severely beaten, but he didn't say a word and was carried off after the beating.
That night, Zhu Shucai went to the prison to continue the interrogation: "Think about it carefully, you Shaanxi people can't survive, what grudges do you have against the Sichuan people and the Huguang people! These innocent poor people can't provoke Zhang Xianzhong!"
Your Majesty's increase of three rates is just to fight against the Tatars! What makes the world miserable is the Tatar invasion! If you are a man, in the future, you will help me reform those Zhang Nijiang soldiers, and follow them to kill the Tatars. There will be more in this life.
A chance to wash away the shame!
Otherwise, the imperial court is fighting the Tatars for the common people in the front, but you only dare to hold back from behind. In the future, your names will be recorded in history, and you will only leave the name of traitors! Whether you want to cleanse the traitors or not is just a matter of thought! All you have to do is kill them together.
Tartars, all your past sins have a chance to be wiped out!"