Daming kill

Chapter 205 Chapter [-]

When Xu Wenqi visited Fuchi without doing business, Li Ping was also in Fuchi.

On the third day after conquering Qizhou, he returned and left Ma Yong in Qizhou to preside over the defense.

Unlike Qizhou, which has a fortified city, Fuchi is too vulnerable to attack, and he must sit in the town himself to be at ease.

Although there is a natural danger in the Yangtze River, the capital city of Huangzhou is far upstream, and Li Ping does not have enough troops to defend the long Yangtze River, especially his main force is still assisting in the defense of Qizhou.

And Zhang Xianzhong is too good at sneak attacks.

However, Li Ping in Fuchi did not live in Wujiaba, but in Fuchi Town at the mouth of Fushui River, and only occasionally went to Wujiaba to have dinner with Song Baolai, Gao Lei and others.

Ever since he decided to save Xu Wenqi, Li Ping moved out of Wujiaba on the grounds that it was convenient to plan military affairs and he didn't want to disturb everyone. His staff also lived with him at the same time.

They often still need to discuss and plan countless details late at night.

At first everyone thought this was normal, after all, it was in line with Li Ping's habit and needed to be like this.

But within a few days, Li Ping directly ordered the original maid Li Jing to be transferred back to his side on the grounds that he needed someone to help sort out the paperwork, and sternly rejected Wang Xiaofeng's request to come with him.

Although Li Ping did not mention Liu Xiaohui again, his move still caused some minor disturbances.

Gao Lei began to often go to Fuchi Town at night to deliver supper to Li Ping, who was working late at night.

It wasn't until late one night that Gao Lei left Li Ping's room suddenly with a bad face that everything came to an end.

Nobody knows what happened.

The staff officers who were still working next door just knew that Li Ping was a little too tired that day, and said they wanted to take a nap first, then Gao Lei came and only entered Li Ping's room for a few minutes before something happened.

But according to Li Jing who hurried in to check after the incident, Li Ping was still fast asleep.

After that, Gao Lei never came again, and Li Ping always acted as if nothing happened.

After fighting Qizhou and returning to Fuchi, Li Ping continued to live in the headquarters in Fuchi Town by the river.This time his reason was to guard against Zhang Xianzhong, and even Xu Wenqi basically did not accompany him when he visited Fuchi.

This is not a lie.

Li Ping's current thoughts are mainly concentrated on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, in Huangzhou Fucheng.

Zhang Xianzhong's desire for revenge was too strong, he had to guard against it.

In particular, Li Ping lost a large number of grassroots leaders in the battle to capture Xiongwumen, and it took a while for the injured backbones to recuperate. This caused Li Ping's army to not change as most people imagined after capturing Qizhou. stronger, but actually weaker.

Then they had to guard Qizhou and Xingguo Prefecture separately, which further weakened the already stretched strength.

All these put Li Ping's spirit in a state of high tension.

But Zhang Xianzhong was beyond everyone's expectations.

He seemed to be more afraid of Li Ping.

For several days in a row, not only the peasant army in Guangji County, about 50 miles north of Qizhou, shrank into the city, but the peasant army in Huangzhou Fucheng also seemed to be shrinking its defense.

Not to mention being close to the Qihe River, which is close to Qizhou, the peasant army in Huangzhou can only be seen on the banks of the Xishui River, which is more than 70 miles away from Qizhou, and then only a small number of horses, and they will never cross the river.

It seems that what is on the defensive is the strong peasant army.

This is very abnormal.

But it also made Li Ping more nervous. He was even more worried that Zhang Xianzhong would sneak across the river to attack Fuchi.

It wasn't until a small group of armed officials and gentry from the Macheng area who had escaped along the edge of the Yinghuo Mountains appeared that Li Ping calmed down a bit and solved his doubts.

On April [-], Zhang Xianzhong entered Macheng.

It turned out that Zhang Xianzhong was not only not in Huangzhou Fucheng, but also took away a large number of elites. Li Ping's tense nerves were finally relieved.

But soon, he was shocked again.

Where will Zhang Xianzhong go next?
Are you coming back to trouble him?Or do something else?is becoming a very important issue.

And no matter how Zhang Xianzhong chooses, Li Ping will be quite troublesome.

From Macheng to the east is Li Zicheng's control area, and the possibility of Zhang Xianzhong's choice is almost impossible.To the north is to enter the mountains, and Zhang Xianzhong at this time can't choose.

Then there are only two roads left: crossing the south of the Yangtze River and going back to fight with Li Ping!

Although Li Ping's staff office analyzed that Zhang Xianzhong was most likely to cross the river south to attack the empty Wuchang.

This is also in line with the historical process that Li Ping roughly knows.

But this is also the worst case.

Once Wuchang falls, Li Ping's troubles will be even greater.

Xingguo Prefecture, which belongs to Wuchang Prefecture, will then be in high danger, which means that Li Ping will directly face Zhang Xianzhong's military pressure, but Jiangbei and Jiangnan will face pressure at the same time.

This is no ordinary trouble, but extremely dangerous.

Wuchang cannot be lost.

Although a staff officer immediately proposed to try to reinforce Wuchang or use ships to prevent Zhang Xianzhong from crossing the south, this time, let alone Zhou Wen, Xu Wenqi did not put any pressure on Li Ping.

Everyone, including the proponents, is pessimistic about the proposal.

Everyone knows how many catties and taels they have.

Not to mention the weakening caused by the continued division of troops, the fact that the artillery has not yet been produced in batches also makes it difficult for their few ships to do anything.

Moreover, entering Wuchang also means that Li Ping will be alone in the fight against the two giant bandits, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong. With Li Ping's current strength, it is simply a dream.

And this is not over yet, in the next few days, several powerful and powerful armed forces fled from Macheng one after another.As they brought more and more detailed information about Macheng, Li Ping was completely dumbfounded.

Many historical records all use the same word when commenting on Zhang Xianzhong's entry into the small Macheng:

The momentum is revived!

Since Zhang Xianzhong fled into the Yinghuo Mountains from Henan, he has attacked and killed countless cities, but he has never used this word, even when he captured such big cities as Luzhou, Qizhou, and Huangzhou Fucheng. word.

He was so evaluated after occupying the small county of Macheng. It cannot but be said that Macheng is very special to Zhang Xianzhong.

And it's not an exaggeration to use "momentum recovery".

So what exactly did he get?
This has to start with Zhang Xianzhong's force structure and the particularity of Macheng.

In fact, no matter whether it was Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong or any other peasant army, the core and elite of their military power were never the coerced people, but the surrendered government troops and old bandits, mainly the government troops.

The general public is mostly just consumables and pretentiousness to them, and they neither have the energy to train them nor generally know how to train them.

Li Ping had estimated Zhang Xianzhong's military strength before he occupied Macheng, that is, there were no more than a thousand elites, and these elites were not veterans who had always followed him, but included a large number of soldiers who had newly joined him and had certain combat effectiveness.

Don't forget, in the Battle of Tongcheng a few months ago, Zhang Xianzhong managed to gather a group of soldiers and horses that were almost lost. Even his most valiant general, the adopted son Sanyaozi Wang Xingguo, was directly beheaded, and even himself He was almost captured alive by Huang Degong.

In other words, there are probably no more than a hundred elite veterans who have been with Zhang Xianzhong for even a little longer.And those officers and soldiers who surrendered later were very limited in number and training level, and there were very few elite fighters.

In this way, the combat effectiveness of Zhang Xianzhong's entire army can be imagined.

After the Battle of Tongcheng, the reason why Zhang Xianzhong was able to continue to conquer the city was not because of his large number of troops and strong combat effectiveness, but because of the successful surprise attack and luckily, every time someone betrayed them.

Because of this, Zhang Xianzhong's troops looked down on even Xu Wenqi, and despised him as a mob.

But Macheng changed everything.

The core force of the Lirenhui in the Macheng uprising was the private soldiers trained by Mei Zhihuan.

Qian Qianyi mentioned in "The Biography of Mei Changgong": Mei Zhihuan "used the Ministry of Military Law to recruit the children of officials and townspeople, child slaves... raised hundreds of Gan'er as regular soldiers, ready to go to war; Rangers, please help."

Here we must pay special attention to the word "military law", which shows that this army has undergone formal training, and it is still strict training.

Moreover, since Mei Zhihuan began.From Macheng to Huangzhou and Qizhou, officials, gentry and landlords from all over the country followed suit, gathering family members and clansmen in cottages to protect themselves.For a time, hundreds of cottages sprang up in the north and south of the Dabie Mountains, the most famous one being Qihuang 48 Village.

It is said that when Mei Zhihuan was alive, countless bandits and peasant troops all took a detour when they passed through Macheng, because they were afraid of the powerful private soldiers in Macheng.

Qihuang 48 villages eventually developed into Jianghuai 72 villages.These cottages first defended against the grass bandits, and then resisted the Qing soldiers. After decades of turmoil, one fell and the other rose, and it was not until the 13th year of Kangxi that it was finally wiped out by Jackie Chan.

This phenomenon has even attracted the attention of European and American sinologists, and they have written books to discuss it.

After Zhang Xianzhong entered Macheng, it is said that 7000 people descended.

Not only did he get the power of the Liren Society and the Zhidao Society, but also many of the powerful and powerful people who had besieged Macheng were lowered.

Although most of these 7000 people are still ordinary slaves and civilians, there are also a large proportion of trained armed personnel, and most of these armed personnel have received strict training, and the training level is much higher than the current level. The vast majority of the military.

Of course, most of those who didn't surrender hid in the dangerous place in Yinghuo Mountain to defend themselves, or they ran far away, and they couldn't make any waves.

Furthermore, the majority of the slaves and civilians have not received military training, but they all take the initiative to seek refuge and have extremely high "revolutionary" enthusiasm.This is completely different from the people who were mostly coerced in the past.

So, how could Zhang Xianzhong not be overjoyed, his behavior in Macheng, who is fond of killing people, was completely uncharacteristic: "Xianzhong never killed a single person in the city."

Wu Jinshi Hong Zhenglong led more than a thousand people to surrender, offering loyalty and courtesy to each other.

It is particularly worth mentioning that Li Zhongsu, the grandson of Lian Mei Zhihuan and the grandnephew of Li Changgeng, the fourth minister, was only 10 years old at the time, and secretly ran out of the house to join the peasant army.

Macheng made Zhang Xianzhong's strength skyrocket.

After the great joy, Zhang Xianzhong took measures to improve the status of Macheng, changed Macheng County to Changsheng Prefecture, and appointed the prefect to manage it, creating a precedent for Zhang Xianzhong to establish a local government.

Even "Don't offend the Mei family, goat wine sacrifices to Chang's grave, and Luo Bai goes away."

The 7000 people in Macheng were also set up by Zhang Xianzhong as an army, named "Xinying".

It was this new battalion that later became Zhang Xianzhong's main force in breaking Wuchang.It is said in history that "the defeat of Wuchang in May is due to the strength of the army."

At the same time, this new camp was also the main force for Zhang Xianzhong to enter Sichuan later.Now, many people in Sichuan say that their ancestral home is Macheng, Hubei, which has something to do with this incident.

Knowing this, how could Li Ping's head not hurt, and it was still in severe pain.

Zhang Xianzhong had already fully possessed the strength to retaliate against him head-on, and he could no longer be treated by a mob.

However, this is not all of Li Ping's troubles.

Further to the west, the situation in Xiangyang is also reported intermittently, and a series of major events seem to be happening there.

Li Zicheng also established a regime in Xiangyang, and a large number of scholars began to vote for thieves in batches.

The Peasant Army has been upgraded to a whole new level!

(End of this chapter)