Da Ming started to ascend the throne

Chapter 795 Changes in Kaifeng Mansion

In the outskirts of Kaifeng Prefecture, Henan Province of the Ming Dynasty, there is a village called Chenzhuang.

Like other places in Ming Dynasty, it is developing very well now.

It was once desolate because of the Kaifeng War, but now it is restored to its original state, more precisely, it is better than what was discovered before.

Chenzhuang has become a brand new village, with newly built houses everywhere.

Although there are only brick houses, the streets are very clean and tidy, and several roads have been turned into cement and gravel roads.

There are shops on both sides of the road, and people come and go very lively. A few old people are sitting and chatting on the street. It is hard for them to imagine that the village under the rubble can become what it is now.

The construction of the entire Kaifeng city is also changing with each passing day, and the prosperous scene of the Song Dynasty Qingming Shanghe Tu has been restored.

They are all ordinary people who survived the Kaifeng War. Now that they think of the past, they are still terrified and unable to look back.

In that war, the embankment of the Yellow River was blown up, and soldiers and civilians were killed in battle. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the Battle of Kaifeng.
Why is Kaifeng Mansion introduced here, because there is a big man living here.

In the first month of 1641, Li Zicheng, who had risen again, finally entered Luoyang, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties.

The soldiers of the Peasant Army, who were in high spirits, quickly collected Zhu Changxun, the King of Fortune who had been penniless in the war, washed them clean and cooked them into the famous "Fu Lu Banquet".

After the main leaders had a full meal, they immediately formulated a battle plan to attack Kaifeng, the capital of Henan Province.

On February 2th, Li Zicheng led 9 troops to Kaifeng.

Among them are a large number of hungry people who joined the group because they had nowhere to go, and there are also 3000 elite cavalry trained by King Chuang according to the Mongolian legacy.

Since the Ming army had exhausted the best of the Kaifeng city to rescue Luoyang and King Fu, they could only rely on the old and weak, women and children to hold on to the city.

Relying on the maneuvering advantages of many horses, the Chuang army arrived before the Ming army returned to aid.

Some of them even disguised themselves as cavalry troops, and took the lead in launching an infiltration raid on the west gate of the city.

If the roads were not blocked by dense refugees, Kaifeng, which was not vigilant enough, would soon be taken by the besiegers.

Fortunately, as a provincial capital, Kaifeng's city defenses are relatively strong, with both an outer earth wall and an inner second brick wall.

The height of the wall is about 12 meters, and the width is mostly close to 8 meters. There are a large number of watchtowers and 5 giant towers.

As for the heavily fortified Zhou Palace, it is located on the central axis of the city and can serve as a fortress in battle.

Any enemy that lacks heavy firepower will find it difficult to break through the defenders' defenses through frontal attacks.

In addition, in view of the tragic ending of King Fu next door, King Zhou, who understands righteousness, also offered a huge bounty to the soldiers and civilians who defended the city.

It is stipulated that those who go out of the city to kill the bandits can get 50 taels of silver, and the warriors who kill the bandits can also get 30 taels, even if they only wound the enemy, they will be rewarded with 10 taels.

He proudly paid a huge sum of money in advance to reward the army, and led the officials and gentry in the city to actively donate money and materials.

In the end, because the number of garrisons was really insufficient, tens of thousands of civilians were hired at the price of 5 cents of silver per day.

Let them walk up the city wall and stab their opponents with the bamboo poles in their hands.

On the Chuangjun side, due to the failure of the previous raid, they switched their strategy to a frontal assault.

Li Zicheng, who had served in the Northwest Frontier Region, ordered to follow the old Mongolian customs and use a large number of captured villagers as cannon fodder for the forerunners.

During the melee, some temporary engineers also tried to excavate the rammed earth city wall.

Relying on the long-range fire cover of Francophones and catapults, several gaps for hiding people were successfully dug on the west side.

But such an approach was too inefficient after all, forcing Chuangjun to send out the tactics of tunnel digging.

When the defenders used gunpowder to destroy the tunnels one by one, they simply sent a large number of non-directed infantry to charge.

It's just that Kaifeng's defense is too strong, and it has never been able to take advantage of the chaos.

A bigger change occurred on the eighth day of the siege.

Chen Yongfu, deputy general of the Ming army, led thousands of Bian soldiers who were homesick, and returned to Kaifeng day and night.

Chuangjun was caught off guard by them, and lost thousands of troops due to fighting and trampling each other.Annoyed Li Zicheng also personally deployed the command, but was shot blind in the left eye by Chen De, the son of the opposing general.

At the same time, the Ming court also mobilized many Hebei government troops to rush to help, forcing the Chuang army to take the initiative to end the siege and move to Dengfeng, Henan for food.

The unanimous Kaifeng army and civilians have won the first stage of the battle for themselves.

In July 1641, Luo Rucai, who was Zhang Xianzhong's old partner, fell out with the former.

Immediately, he chose to go to Henan to join the Chuang army and became the deputy commander of the camp and Li Zicheng's close comrade-in-arms.

The two sides immediately hit it off and prepared to go south to Huguang to attack Chengtian.

On the way, he also defeated the Guanzhong troops commanded by Fu Zonglong, governor of the three sides of Shaanxi, and captured and executed the latter.

The defeat of the reinforcements in Guanzhong led to the collapse of the entire battle in Henan.

Li Luo's coalition forces then occupied Ye County, Chenliu, Shangshui, Dengzhou, Xiangcheng, Xinzheng and other counties, and the Ming army along the line was completely helpless.

By the end of December, the peasant army once again approached the city of Kaifeng, setting off the second stage of the city closure war.

At this time, outside the north gate of Kaifeng, there were still 3000 Ming troops transferred from Nanyang by the supervisor Ding Qirui.

Wang Xie, who was in charge of guarding the gate, ignored the wailing of the friendly army and resolutely ordered to close the gate and defend himself immediately.

In order to prevent these 3000 people from taking refuge in Li Chuang, he also asked his subordinates to set fires, and the methods were outrageously brutal.

The interior of Kaifeng at this time has also undergone significant changes from the previous closure period.

Due to the fall of western and central Henan, a large number of refugees fled into it with their old and young children, exacerbating the already bad food supply situation.

It was winter, and the guards and civilians did not have enough clothes, and many people died of frostbite.

On the other hand, the besieger camp has captured a lot due to successive victories, and the logistical supplies are very sufficient.

Ordinary rogues have warm clothes and two full meals a day.As for the elite core troops, they can get three meals a day.

Seeing that the morale of the defenders was low, the king of Zhou, who was trapped in the city, threw coins frantically again.

The gentry in the city also provided a large amount of wine and food to the defenders every day according to the apportionment by the government.

They also raised a large amount of old clothes through pawn shops in the city and made them into winter clothes for the defenders to wear.

However, the food and clothing of the hundreds of thousands of refugees are completely ignored, and terrible famine and disease continue to wreak havoc among them.

In the end, the stalemate lasted until the first month of 1642, when Chuangjun left sadly because he could not succeed.

However, Kaifeng City has long been covered with barren land, forming a large man-made desert, which has the effect of closing the city invisibly.

Chongzhen, who was far away in Beijing, was also at a loss for the corruption of the Central Plains.

Elite reinforcements were sent out one after another, but in the end they just lost their heads.

The first to suffer a disastrous defeat was Wang Qiaonian, the newly-appointed governor of the three sides of Shaanxi.

This Confucian scholar who was born as a Jinshi made calculations, thinking that digging Li Zicheng's ancestral grave would cut off the opponent's dragon veins.

As a result, in the Battle of Xiangcheng in the first month of 1642, Zhang Yinggui, the soldier and the commander-in-chief under the account, was brutally shot by the army.

By May 1642, Li and Luo's allied forces defeated the Ming army of the third route, which claimed to have 5 people, in Zhuxian Town. They received tens of thousands of soldiers, thousands of mules and horses, and countless weapons were seized.

So far, Kaifeng has been reduced to a dead city, in a situation of isolation and helplessness.

Under Li Yan's suggestion, Li Zicheng no longer demolished the city walls of prefectures and counties as in the past.

Instead, bureaucrats and troops were sent to garrison and operate, which was in stark contrast to Zhang Xianzhong, who was still looting around.

(End of this chapter)