Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 500
June nineteenth.

Heavy rain in Henan, Lanyang County, Kaifeng Prefecture, Tongwaxiang flood peaks overlapped, and river embankments overflowed with water.

The flood season is fierce, all roads rise together, the Yellow River, Qinhe River, and Yiluo River rise sharply at the same time, the flood peak encounters, and the downstream rivers cannot vent.

The river section below the three forts and above the four forts in Lanyang flood.

Gao Yuanmei arrived quietly with Huang Dengxiao, Zhang Yutian and his party. They braved the heavy rain and arrived quietly by boat. He was familiar with the Yellow River and he knew very well that this section of the embankment was a place without work, not a key construction site. There are neither dikes nor dams.

Compared with the embankment in the main section, which is ten feet wide at the bottom and four feet wide, the weir crest is three feet wide, the crest of this section of the embankment is only two or three feet wide.

And this section has been in danger several times in the past two years, and the embankment has overflowed many times.

The south wind blows, and the huge waves stir up.

The peak of the Yellow River passes through the border, and the huge waves are surging.

Gao Yuanmei was an old river official in the Ming Dynasty. After a simple inspection, she was sure that even if they didn't come to dig, it probably wouldn't last here.

Of course, if a local official rushed to bring people to protect the embankment, it was still possible to hold it, even if the embankment was overflowing, it would not burst.

"It's God helping me to wait, let's do it!"

There was already water overflowing on the dike, although it was only a little water, it was already very dangerous.

Zhang Yutian couldn't help but think, what about the river workers and the officials, why didn't they organize strong men to go to the embankment to guard the repairs at this time?

The Yellow River in Henan is already a river hanging above the ground, and the dams have to be repaired every year.

However, since the end of Ming Dynasty, due to internal and external troubles and continuous natural disasters, Henan in the Central Plains has been hit hard.Secondly, although there are river officials in the imperial court, the corruption of the river workers has long been serious.

Those river officials who were originally specialized in managing rivers and repairing embankments regarded the river workers as a way to make money. The country invested a lot of money every year to control the rivers, and as a result, the dikes broke frequently. , to recommend for reimbursement.

Of the money that the imperial court puts into the river every year, less than one tenth of it was spent on the river, and the rest was embezzled by the officials.

There are more uproots and less, all kinds of corruption and embezzlement, and the river treatment projects are naturally full of bean curd dregs. Under such circumstances, dikes are often flooded and small breaches, etc., but now in this chaotic time, the problem has become more serious.

Last year, the Chuang army occupied Henan, and then the Qing army came again, and then the Ming army made another northern expedition. Many forces competed in the Central Plains. The Chuang army was defeated and plundered places.

The Qing army lost on the front line, and Henan imposed additional money and food.

There is also no money to repair the river course. At first, the money was withdrawn, and at least it could be implemented a little bit, but now there is no one to take care of it. How can the river be any better.

"dig!"

Gao Yuanmei picked a place.

They brought in their confidants and immediately started digging. At this time, the water flooded the embankment, and all they did was hasten the collapse of the embankment.

After quickly digging a hole, the rising flood immediately washed away quickly, deeper and deeper.

Gao Yuanmei hurriedly told people to leave.

"Is that all right?"

"It's about to break, hurry up and go."

Sure enough, when they boarded the boat and sailed not far away, they saw that the opening soon became wider and wider, one or two feet, seven or eight feet, ten feet, seven or eighty feet... ·
At this time, the wind was violent and the rain was violent, and the flood peaks in the river were superimposed, and the water was not in a hurry. A hole was suddenly opened, which immediately became a new outlet of the Yellow River in the sky.

The rolling flood began to rush towards the northeast, flooding Jinshan.

The Yellow River originally went southeast in Lanyang. After passing through Yifeng, it entered the test city of Guidefeng, and then all the way through Xuzhou to seize the Huaihe River and enter the sea.

But now, the North Embankment broke, and the water began to rush towards Changyuan, the famous mansion in Zhili in the north. Even Gao Yuanmei knew at a glance that not only the Daming mansion, but also the Caozhou mansion in Shandong, would become the queen of the Yellow River decisive battle. It is even very likely that the Yellow River will divert again.

Originally, the Yellow River has undergone several major diversions for thousands of years. It was only in the Southern Song Dynasty that the Huai River entered the sea. In the past, it always entered the sea through Shandong, and even entered the sea in Hebei.

This river hanging above the ground will be difficult to control after the embankment breaks, unless the imperial court rushes to block it and re-constrain the Yellow River to flow southward.

But the problem is the current situation in Henan. The imperial court has no spare power to stop it, let alone the Henan province.

They don't even have anyone to guard such a dangerous place, so do they still expect to block it afterwards?
"Let's go,"

The embankment on the back of this hanging river is generally one to three feet high, and in some places it is even five feet high. The copper tile chamber is more than four feet high. If such a breach occurs, if the first time is missed, it will be impossible to block it later. up.

In the peaceful years, the imperial court tried its best to rescue and block the disaster. It is estimated that it will be a few months later, after the flood.

But now, it's impossible.

Based on the current flood, it is estimated that the mouth can reach a width of eight or nine miles or even a dozen miles, and a depth of three or four feet.

Therefore, it is difficult to block the water until the water dries up after autumn.

The flood rushes to the north.

It quickly flooded Fengqiu and Xiangfu in the northwest, and then turned to the northeast, flooding Lanyang, Kaocheng, and Changyuan County in Zhili Daming.

Wherever the flood passed, everything was submerged.

The plain terrain of the Central Plains has no resistance in the face of this kind of flood.

The village was submerged, leaving only a few treetops of the big trees in the village, and the roofs were submerged under the water. Many houses were washed away directly, and many people were even washed away by the flood in their sleep.

A few days later, the breach in the Tongwaxiang was indeed several miles wide. The flood water was divided into two streams below the Bailantongji in Changyuan. Going northwest, crossing Xiaoqingji, which belongs to Changyuan County, turning east, passing through Yifengli, Youyili, Qingqiuli, and Haiqiaoli, and entering the Zhangbiaotun area of ​​Dongming County, and then turning north to Lei, Dongming County Jiazhuang is divided into two sections, one is poured from the south gate of Dongming County, Zhili, and the water travels seven points, converging with the overflowing water of Zhaowang River, and the other passes through the Hong River and continues to flow northeast, converging on the Qi River .

Several large rivers near Lanyang were taken away.

The surrounding prefectures are all Chengze Kingdom.

But at this time, the group of instigators had already returned to Caozhou Mansion by boat, staying at a high place in the city looking at the Yellow Sea.

The water was so powerful that even Zhang Yutian and Huang Dengxiao dared not face it.

However, when the flood flooded, Li Huajing's rebellion was indeed washed down. Whether it was Li Huajing or the Yuyuan Army, they were all caught off guard by the sudden flood. Officials, powerful and poor people are all treated equally.

Water is everywhere.

Countless places were submerged, only a few places became isolated islands in the flood, and the surviving people became flood victims, so how can we talk about other things.

The Yuyuan army suffered the most losses. It originally occupied the base camp of Yuyuan. After years of operation, there were hundreds of miles of underground passages. As a result, the flood suddenly came, and many people were drowned. up.

The survivors hugged the elm tree tops to escape, but they had to face difficult choices about what to eat and where to go.

In the flood, there were dead bodies of people, livestock and animals everywhere, and the bubbles swelled.

After the flood, there will be a great plague, and then there will be a great famine. For the people in Henan, Hebei and Shandong provinces, the most tragic time has come.

At this moment, they couldn't care about anything else, and everyone had to find a way to struggle to survive.

Thousands of miles of plains suddenly turned into vast oceans.

The Yellow River flows through Shandong for 21 miles, and flows through 34 prefectures and counties. After the breach, [-] prefectures and counties were affected and many counties were submerged.

Compared with Henan and Hebei, Shandong suffered the worst floods from this breach.

The Yellow River turned to the northeast and flowed, and finally took the Daqing River to the sea. This was another major diversion of the Yellow River, and it also flooded many river dams and even washed away the canal embankments.

The silt deposited by the hanging river on the ground poured down, leaving countless silt where the water passed, and those good fields and fertile soil were destroyed.

But it was the rainy season at this time, the heavy rain was still falling one after another, and the flood from the upper reaches continued to vent, making the flood continue to expand, all the way to the east.

Throughout the three provinces, dozens of states and counties.

Everything is interrupted.

Li Huajing had no choice but to take a boat on the water, and the horse thief Ding Weiqiu even rushed up to Liangshan on a wooden raft.

The Yellow River burst, and the natural disasters met with the man-made disaster when the Qing government moved to Huainan not long ago. The people in Huainan had just been driven to Huaibei.

Two encounters, cruel and inhumane.

The flooded area was dozens to hundreds of miles wide and [-] miles long. Tens of millions of acres of cultivated land were flooded, and countless people were drowned.

And more people were starved by the flood, barely escaped, and will face the next famine and epidemic.

This will affect nearly dozens of states and counties in the three provinces, at least hundreds of thousands or even millions of people will be drowned and starved to death.

This kind of tragedy came from the voluntary breach of the embankment by a river Tongzhi who was afraid that Fucheng would be captured by the rebels.

Such a historical tragedy happened once again in later history, when the embankment burst at the entrance of Huayuan.

When Li Zicheng opened the seal, he also crossed the Yellow River embankment, but the impact was not as great as this time. At this time, it coincided with the rainy season, and there were flood peaks overlapping. The Yellow River here in Waxiang turned a big bend and turned to the southeast. This breach spread to the northeast, and most of Shandong was affected.

Li Zicheng opened the seal three times, broke open the embankment of the Yellow River, and the water rushed to Kaifeng. It is said that 34 people in the city almost died, and only [-] people remained.

And this time the breach will surely make tens of millions of people suffer.

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 army broke the Yellow River embankment in Huaxian County, Henan Province, and used water to block the troops, causing the Yellow River to flow into Surabaya and finally seize the Huaihe River into the sea.

After this dike removal, the Yellow River formed two channels, the old and the new, and swayed from the Yellow River to the Huaihe River.Since this location is just at 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 of blocking the breach, so that the Yellow River has been flooding and swaying in the north throughout the Southern Song Dynasty.

Later, the Jin Dynasty was defeated by Mongolia. Under the pursuit of 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. The Mongolian army, as a result, the troops sent out to pick up the embankment were wiped out.Afterwards, the Mongolian army kept on doing nothing, and when a general came, he planned to flood Guide, so he directly opened the Yellow River embankment.Unexpectedly, the terrain of Guide City is so high that the water of the Yellow River goes around the city, but the flooded Yellow River has caused great damage to the Yellow River flooded area.

Two years after the Mongols broke through the Yellow River, taking advantage of the peril of the Jin Dynasty, the Southern Song army went north to compete with the Mongols for the Central Plains.In order to stop the Song Dynasty army, the Mongols once again artificially opened up the Yellow River.This time, the location was chosen at Cunjindian, which is only more than 20 miles north of Kaifeng City, which also caused the fifth major diversion in the history of the Yellow River.

No one would have imagined that now that the Ming and Qing were at war in the Central Plains, the local guards of the Tartars, out of fear of the rebels who had defected to the Ming, also came to block the embankment to release water to block the soldiers, but it would cause the sixth major diversion.

Gao Yuanmei and the others would never have imagined that although they saved Caozhou Mansion from being captured by the rebels, and even severely injured Li Huajing's rebels, this move was tantamount to stabbing the Qing court in the heart.

The Qing court, which was originally very passive in the Central Plains war, lost Jiangnan, corrupted Huguang, and abandoned Huainan. Now Shandong is flooded again. More than ten prefectures in three provinces and more than forty prefectures and counties were affected, and seven or eight cities were flooded and destroyed.

The yellow flood zone is one or two hundred miles wide and hundreds of miles long.

All the canals in Henan were washed away, and tens of millions of people were affected.

Isn't this heart attack?
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 can the Tartars fight this battle?
(End of this chapter)