Chapter 232 Your Majesty is not dead yet, you are ready to move
The conscience of heaven and earth, at the end of August in the 16th year of Chongzhen in this current time and space, Li Zicheng's military strength and general strength were weaker than at the same time in history.
The number of key veterans must be reduced by at least 20 to 30%, and the number of cannon fodder can be quickly re-captured to hundreds of thousands. However, he has also lost two of the future five governors of the Dashun regime, leaving only three.
All in all, Li Zicheng can exert three-quarters of the combat effectiveness of the same period in history, which is almost enough.
Under such circumstances, he still chose to resolutely march eastward and northward to fight for his life against Chongzhen. It was not because he was really sure of this, but because he was threatened by Zhu Shuren behind his back. It was like a knife stabbing a chrysanthemum, and he was sitting on pins and needles. It was impossible to live a peaceful life for a few days.
Dashanguan and Baoji County are in the hands of Cao Bianjiao, and Cao Bianjiao will also receive strong arms and equipment support from Zhu Shuren. This means that even if the road to Shu is difficult and the army's northern expedition from Hanzhong will not last long, they will definitely have the ability to cause destruction.
Therefore, Guanzhong is no longer a stable rear area and may be "destroyed if not obtained" by the army at any time. This forces Li Zicheng to continue to fight mobile warfare and fight to the death along the way.
Although, Zhu Shuren actually has a bottom line as a human being, and he will not engage in a scorched-earth war strategy of "get it or destroy it" in the Han-controlled areas.
But Li Zicheng couldn't afford to gamble. He used himself to save others, or just compared Zhu Shuren to Zuo Liangyu, thinking that it was normal for Zhu Shuren to kill and destroy like the most shameless people in the army.
idea.
Anyway, after comprehensive consideration of various factors, Li Zicheng was driven northeastward and embarked on the journey under the macro-control of Zhu Shuren's invisible hand.
…
Cao Bianjiao achieved great victory at Dashan Pass in mid-August, and it was two days after the news reached Xi'an. Li Zicheng also needed time to clear the country and gather military supplies, so it was already early September when he left Tongguan in the east.
The size of Li Zicheng's remaining troops at the beginning of this year was about 200,000 or so. When he attacked Sun Chuanting, he suffered tens of thousands of losses, but during the two months of rest, he captured more cannon fodder.
Moreover, Sun Chuanting's Ming army also collapsed and fled. Not all the army died in the battle. Therefore, after Sun Chuanting's death, there were also twenty to thirty thousand Ming troops who were coerced into surrender. This was something that could not be helped. If Sun Chuanting's subordinates had such morale, everyone would
If they fight to the death and fight to the last soldier, it is impossible for Sun Chuanting to die, and it is impossible for Li Zicheng to win.
It is precisely because of the low morale of Xinla's Ming army at the end of the Ming Dynasty that they could only fight with the wind. Therefore, after each defeat, the number of prisoners captured alive and the deserters who escaped totaled at least more than half of the number of people participating in the battle.
Therefore, for this attack, he brought another 300,000 to 400,000 troops, divided into two groups. One group went directly from Tongguan to Luoyang, and left Xingyang in the east to Kaifeng. The other group returned to Hedong via Pubanjin and approached Taiyuan along the Fen River Basin.
The Ming Dynasty had lost most of its land west of Taiyuan and Kaifeng, so these two provincial capital-level cities were directly exposed to Li Zicheng's military front with almost no buffer.
Kaifeng was flooded last winter, and the government was unable to organize effective repairs. Therefore, the Yellow River burst has not been completely controlled, and there are still yellow flood swamps everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of people drowned and died of the plague last winter. Chen Yongfu's
The troops were unable to hold on and were withdrawn, so Kaifeng was almost a horse race and was directly captured by Li Zicheng.
Taiyuan was barely able to defend it. After Cao Bianjiao left, Zhou Yuji took over as the commander-in-chief of Taiyuan. However, Li Zicheng's troops did not need to consider food routes. They just carried them wherever they went. If they encountered those who refused to be coerced, they would directly slaughter the city and rob them all.
So you won't be hungry.
Zhou Yuji considered this risk, so he was worried that the intruders would bypass the city and rush out of the Taihang Mountains to attack the Hebei Plain. In that case, with Chongzhen's temper, even if none of the important cities in Shanxi were lost, as long as the thieves passed through Shanxi
If the territory enters Beizhili, Zhou Yuji and other generals, as well as Shanxi civil servants, big and small, will definitely lose their heads.
So Zhou Yuji discussed with the governor Cai Maode before the war. Zhou Yuji led his troops eastward from Taihang and patrolled and blocked the dangerous roads in Taihang. The governor Cai Maode led the deputy general to guard Taiyuan in response to Shisheng.
When the Northern Route Army of the Breaking Army first arrived at Taiyuan City, Liu Zongmin, who was in charge of this route, chose to encircle one but not three, and only besieged the south side of Taiyuan City, leaving the other three sides open.
The ancient Taiyuan City was a city located on the west bank of the Fenshui River Valley. The Fenshui River flowed from the east of the city. The east and west sides of the city were surrounded by mountains that contained the Fenshui River. When the mountains spread to the vicinity of Taiyuan, they sunk into a basin in the mountains.
, the terrain is gentle and can accommodate large cities.
Therefore, there is nothing worthy of encirclement on the east and west sides of the city. There is a mountain as a barrier. If you do not encircle the north and only attack the south, it is clear that the north is left open for the defenders to escape.
However, Governor Cai Maode and Deputy Commander-in-Chief Ying Shisheng were quite courageous, and they refused to escape even though the intruders left the north of the city to escape. They persisted in defending for three to five days, even though the insurgents were initially defeated but could not succeed immediately.
Zhu Shenxuan, the king of Jin, who was in Taiyuan, also gave Cai Maode several thousand to ten thousand taels of silver, asking him to distribute it as a pension to encourage the soldiers who defended the city. This amount of money was much more embarrassing than that of the King of Zhou in Kaifeng.
, but it is already a bit better than the old Fu Wang in Luoyang.
If it were to continue to be distributed, this little money would be a drop in the bucket, but even so, Jin Wang Zhu Shenxuan still underestimated the corruption of officials in the Ming Dynasty.
Cai Maode himself is not greedy, but as a governor, he cannot personally distribute money. The enemy has so many things at hand, so he must let his subordinates help him handle it.
As a result, a group of civil servants from Taiyuan Prefecture, including the academic administration and teaching officials who had become relatively clear in recent years, volunteered to help him do this. During the process of distributing the money, more than half of it was stolen and exchanged for white slips, and some similar items that had long been invalidated.
The banknotes, which were considered treasures, made the defenders complain.
Judging from the corruption of these dog officials, the only lesson the Ming Dynasty civil servants and gentry learned from history is that they will never learn a lesson. In other words, King Zhou learned a lesson from the death of King Fu. After King Zhou, others recovered
Same old thing.
…
Although the rewards for the defenders were not paid in full, Taiyuan was strong and could hold out in the first few days.
After several days of fighting, Liu Zongmin saw that Taiyuan officials were still unwilling to surrender, so he asked Li Zicheng for instructions whether to move his troops eastward and bypass Taiyuan.
Li Zicheng was very angry when he heard that he couldn't even take Taiyuan, and he refused at first:
"This time my Da Shuntian troops march eastward to defeat rebellion with subjugation. Of course, we must first establish our authority! If we encounter a provincial capital and cannot attack it, and we go around the city, even if we don't have to worry about food routes, won't our army's momentum be affected?
Are they damaged? When they really reach the gates of Beijing, will the soldiers still have the courage to fight bloody battles and attack regardless of casualties? We will definitely break through Taiyuan to establish our authority!"
In Li Zicheng's mind, Taiyuan and Kaifeng have been regarded as chips to establish prestige before attacking Beijing in the future. If other small places are too strong and not on the main roads, they can be bypassed. How can a provincial capital be bypassed? The prestige will be lost.
However, when Li Zicheng was in a stalemate, Song Xiance, the military advisor who accompanied the army next to him, gave him another idea: "Considering my prestige as Dashun, it is right that your Majesty does not want to go around the city. But what Liu Shuai said is also true in the details.
Very suitable for the art of war,
It is better for our army to take the opportunity to spread the word and use the encirclement of the city as bait to see if the officers and soldiers will further divide their troops and weaken the garrison strength in Taiyuan City because they are afraid of us encircling the city."
When Li Zicheng heard this, he thought that since he was not really going around the city, but just trying to distract the army from defense, he could give it a try. Anyway, there would be no loss if the attempt failed.
So he ordered Song Xiance to follow Song Xiance's instructions, spread the word to the Shun army, and detach a large force to march around the city, pretending to completely ignore the food route, and only wanted to fight to the death through the Taihang Mountains, enter the Hebei Plain, and intimidate Beijing.
This strategy is actually very clumsy. If you meet a general who knows a little bit about the art of war, you shouldn't fall for it.
The Shanxi area is so poor. If we can't conquer Taiyuan, we can only go to small places like Yangquan to massacre a few cities, and we won't be able to grab much food. If Cai Maode and Zhou Yuji really come to beat dogs behind closed doors, they will fight to the death, even if
Even if Li Zicheng is not killed, it is possible that the Shun army will be panicked due to the lack of food.
It's a pity that Cai Maode is just a pedantic civil servant who has read the books of sages and doesn't know much about strategy. Of course, his loyalty is commendable, at least he can stick to it and not surrender.
Seeing the Shun Army heading east, he immediately felt that there was an opportunity to pursue him, or to harass the rear of the Shun Army and burn its baggage. In short, no one knew what he was thinking.
Anyway, he forced several generals under Deputy General Ying Shisheng, including garrison-level generals Niu Yong, Wang Yongkui, and Zhu Kongxun, to lead five thousand troops out of the city to pursue the Shun army in the field.
(Note: There is no cheating here. Cai Maode forced 5,000 troops out of the city to fight in the field to attack Li Zicheng. This is a historical fact, and I don’t know how he dared to do it. Maybe he is really too pedantic, and there is no way to ask a dead man his thoughts)
Liu Zongmin was already holding back his anger, and he was dubious about the timing of Song Xiance's plan to lure the enemy. He had no hope at all.
Unexpectedly, Cai Maode actually sent someone to give him a free gift. Of course Liu Zongmin was overjoyed and immediately turned around to cover up the attack, directly killing Niu Yong, Wang Yongkui, Zhu Kongxun and other five thousand Ming troops.
The morale of the Shun army was so high that they turned back and attacked Taiyuan again. The city guards were indignant at Cai Maode's weakness and the greed of his subordinates. They were filled with righteous indignation and led the way. One of the guards, Zhang Xiong, took the initiative to recruit internal help and opened the Yingze Gate.
Let the Shun army enter the city.
Although Cai Maode was mentally retarded, he still had integrity. At the last moment, he did not choose to break out of the encirclement, but hanged himself in the governor's office. The unlucky deputy commander Ying Shisheng had no choice but to help Cai Maode collect his body, and then committed suicide by himself.
Except for those men and horses led by Zhou Yuji personally, all the other Ming troops in Shanxi were given away by Cai Maode and others.
Li Zicheng and Liu Zongmin spent several months marching and trudging, and another several months clearing most of Shanxi, massacring the resisting cities to raise food. By late October, they had reached Ningwuguan and faced the last battle, led by Zhou Yuji.
The defense line of Taihang Mountain.
If Zhou Yuji's Taihang Mountain defense line was also broken, the North Route Army would really be in an uninhabited land on the Hebei Plain.
Fortunately, Zhou Yuji was considered a good general, and he was also steadfast and unyielding. Relying on the danger of Taihang, he temporarily withstood Li Zicheng. The Shun army attacked fiercely for ten days, with no reckoning of casualties and no breakthrough at all.
…
While Zhou Yuji temporarily withstood Li Zicheng on the Taihang Mountain defense line, Shunjun's Southern Route Army developed more smoothly than at the same time in history.
As early as ten days before Taiyuan City was captured, the South Route Army captured Kaifeng easily because the road was close and there were no obstacles along the way.
It's just that Kaifeng is really worthless. There are only hundreds of thousands of buried corpses with no one to deal with them. You can't even smell the rotten smell - because many corpses have been dead for at least half a year, and the flesh has rotted away, or is rotting.
It had been eaten by all kinds of hungry birds, beasts and small animals before, leaving only white bones.
This is the real white bones exposed in the wild, and there is no rooster crow for thousands of miles.
At most, there are only vultures singing.
The general in charge of this road is also Li Zicheng's newly appointed governor, Liu Fangliang. His troops are slightly smaller than those of the North Road. There are 200,000 people on the North Road, while only a hundred thousand on his side.
After Liu Fangliang easily captured Kaifeng, the first city that encountered slight resistance was Shangqiu County in Guide Prefecture - this place was considered an old acquaintance. Yuan Zongdi had visited it last year when he was raising food for the army, and was later attacked by Zhu Shuren.
Huang Degong, the branch commander who was separated, was defeated.
But this year, Huang Degong was transferred to another place by Zhu Shuren. After learning that Henan was in danger, he transferred troops from Huguang to the north for rescue, but in the end he still failed to catch up——
The Battle of Shangqiu only lasted ten days before the city was breached. Most of the soldiers and civilians in the city were killed, and Shangqiu became the first important town to supply the Shun Army's South Route Army with food supplies. After Liu Fangliang robbed Shangqiu's civilian grain stores, the South Route Army's Shun Route Army
Immediately I no longer have to worry about going hungry.
The Huguang Army was already very powerful, because the Governor of Huguang had not yet received the imperial court's rescue order at that time, so he sent out troops to rescue friendly forces on his own initiative, risking the risk of crossing the border to Henan to resist the order.
The only thing to blame is that everything happened so suddenly. After all, the invasion army was prepared at the end of August, marched to the front line in September, and only left Sishui Pass in Xingyang at the end of September, giving the Huguang army too little time to react.
Already.
The only butterfly effect of the Battle of Shangqiu was that some Henan officers and soldiers, inspired by last year, kept hoping that someone would come to rescue them and refused to give up their last hope. In the end, when the city could not be defended, some of the defenders chose to break out and escape, hoping to find reinforcements to join them.
.
The prefect Liang Yizhang, Tongzhi Yan Zekong and other civil servants who had formed friendship with King Lu and Huang Degong last year fled to Bozhou in embarrassment with two to three thousand remaining soldiers and two guards, and finally met Huang Degong's men.
However, Chongzhen is not dead yet.
After all, Liang Yizhang and Yan Zekong committed the crime of "trailing the city and losing territory". They failed to die in the city and should be punished for fleeing Shangqiu.
Therefore, after arriving in Bozhou, he was quickly handled impartially by Ma Shiying of Fengyang, and he was captured in accordance with national law, and was ready to be sent to Beijing for trial at an appropriate opportunity.
Finally, after Huang Degong withdrew his troops and returned, by chance, he sadly informed King Lu of the relevant situation.
Zhu Changzi thought that he had been protected by these two civil servants when he took refuge in Shangqiu last year. He couldn't bear it and wanted to rescue him. But he had no ambitions and was timid. He was afraid of being accused of "interfering with Yousi" and being punished.
Chongzhen scolded him and finally gave in.
It is actually Zhu Yousong, the little lucky king who escaped together and now lives with him in Hefei. He is more responsible and dares to win over people's hearts.
After hearing about this, Zhu Yousong actually ignored the training that "the feudal king is not allowed to enter the three capitals without permission" and personally took the guards from Hefei to Fengyang on horseback, explained the situation to Ma Shiying, and interceded for the two of them. Let these landless civil and military personnel from Guide Prefecture be temporarily sent to Beijing.
Ma Shiying met Prince Xiaofu, had a little contact with him, and had a good impression of the vassal prince. He felt that this prince was a bit responsible, but also much smoother than his majesty. His talents were hard to say, but his personality was probably not fatal (Chongzhen Na) The character itself is fatal)
After thinking about it, considering that the Shun army has fought so far, Beijing doesn't know what the future will look like.
Ma Shiying actually had the courage to sell it to Zhu Yousong, saying: Since His Highness Prince Fu said that these people were kind to you last year, I will take care of the relationship and not send it to Beijing for the time being.
Zhu Yousong was overjoyed and quickly thanked Governor Ma. As a side note, about two years ago, at the end of the 14th year of Chongzhen Emperor's reign and the beginning of the 15th year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng got into a relationship with Zhou Yanru and wanted to buy an official position and reinstate him. , he was also given two hundred thousand taels of gold at that time.
But because there were not enough vacancies at the time, the position Ma Shiying wanted to compete for was taken by Zhu Shuren. Therefore, due to the butterfly effect, he could only serve as the prefect of Fengyang first.
Ma Shiying served as the prefect of Fengyang for more than a year, relying on Ruan Dacheng's gold and silver to clear the way, and continued to curry favor with Zhou Yanru. In addition, in the last years of Chongzhen, the depreciation of official positions was relatively fast, and many high-level officials were convicted. The frequency of official vacancies has also increased a lot (after all, in the last two months before Chongzhen died, even Wei Zaode, who was the number one scholar in Chongzhen for 13 years, became the chief minister of the cabinet)
Due to various reasons, Ma Shiying finally waited until his immediate superior, Shi Kefa, was transferred to the post of Shangshu of the Ministry of War in Nanjing. Later, other positions were added, leaving the vacancy of Governor of Water Transport.
The imperial court considered that the position of governor of water transportation might not exist in the future. Because of Shen Tingyang's butterfly effect, the Ming Dynasty made a plan to "convert all water transportation to sea in five years" starting from the 13th year of Chongzhen. By the 17th year of Chongzhen Later, in theory, all grain transported through the canal had to be transported by sea, and the position of governor of water transportation was no longer valuable.
Zhou Yanru believed that "anyway, this official can only serve for a year or even a few months at most, so he gave the last one to Ma Shiying to enjoy himself." This can be regarded as repaying Ruan Dacheng and Ma Shiying's hundreds of thousands of gold favors. .
Ma Shiying finally became the official governor before Chongzhen's death, but the depth of his foundation in Anhui was obviously far less than that of the same period in history——
Historically, when Chongzhen died, Ma Shiying had already been the governor of Huainan and Jiangbei for two or three years. Now he has only been in office for half a year. He has lost at least one and a half years of farming and winning over people's hearts. His foundation is not stable. If he really does it in the future, If he wants to do something treacherous and unethical, there may not be many people who are willing to follow him all the way to death.
I have to say that this man still dared to gamble. Before Chongzhen died, he actually dared to sell it to the vassal king to save face.