I have a cornucopia

Chapter 258: Fighting the Rebellion

When the gunshots suddenly rang out, the Emperor, who was acting as a wise and benevolent ruler on the carriage, immediately screamed and covered his right ear.

Then blood instantly gushed out from between his fingers.

Li Zicheng, who was quick to react, jumped off his horse without hesitation.

"Catch assassins!"

He shouted as the guards quickly closed in around him.

In fact, there was no need for those soldiers, as the surrounding people were already swarming over.

There is still plenty of martial virtue in Guanzhong, especially under Li Zicheng's current system, which leads to a very high proportion of civilians being considered reserve forces.

One of the two assassins was hit by a brick and fell down with his head covered. The other one was hit by him and missed the target. Although he quickly drew his knife and stabbed himself in the heart, he was still held down by the people who rushed over, and the knife didn't penetrate completely. After all, it was winter now, and he had to pierce through his thick cotton coat first. During this delay, a clever young man quickly grabbed the hand holding the knife, and then used brute force to pull it out for him...

Of course, he is not important here. What is important is the assassinated Emperor.

The old king who was standing beside him had already pounced on the emperor, but the emperor suddenly stood up, pushed him away, and looked furious.

"Traitors, these traitors dared to kill the king, I will kill all nine generations of their clan!"

He roared with full force.

Suddenly, I felt a bit like my ancestor.

Li Zicheng was also a smart man. He immediately rushed onto the carriage, stood beside the emperor, drew his sword and pointed it forward with great momentum.

"Brothers, those traitors in Jiangnan dared to kill the emperor. This is simply treason. Follow me to kill them and confiscate their entire clans and their homes!"

He roared as well.

Indeed, no matter who sent the assassins, they must be the traitors in Nanjing.

This shot was really perfect. Even without this shot, he was still holding the emperor hostage to control the princes. There was actually no justice. No matter how he performed with Chongzhen, to those other local forces, he was still holding the emperor hostage to control the princes. He was just forcing Chongzhen to act with him. The Emperor was in his hands, so of course he could only be forced to do whatever he wanted.

He has no sense of justice.

Even if various places are standing idly by, it is only out of self-interest rather than any greater good.

But this shot changed everything. He was no longer a traitor who held the emperor hostage to control the princes, but a loyal minister who fought against the enemy for the emperor.

The local forces' submission to him was no longer for the sake of profit or to gild their own reputation with loyalty, but was truly loyal.

This is regicide.

Even Li Zicheng didn’t dare to do this!

And in such a public place, with such a high-profile shooting method...

I turned off the lights!
Really, it is not impossible to regicide, but you have to turn off the lights. You cannot be so high-profile, and you cannot shoot the emperor in broad daylight in public. This is purely brainless. You can poison him, so that later you can say that Li Zicheng poisoned the emperor. You can let him fall into the water and it was an accident. You can even let him eat too many elixirs, but you cannot do this in broad daylight and shoot him in front of hundreds of thousands of people. This is no longer regicide, but a pursuit of leaving a name for eternity.

There will be a place reserved for you in future history books.

Moreover, it can be ruled out that this incident was directed and acted by Li Zicheng himself. After all, Li Zicheng could not let Chongzhen die. Chongzhen was the most important bargaining chip in his hand, and this shot was obviously aimed at killing Chongzhen. How accurate must the shooting be to ensure that it was directed and acted by himself? Besides, such shooting skills did not exist in this era. With the accuracy of the short gun at that time, even if you shot Chongzhen from five meters away, you could not guarantee that he would not really hit his forehead.

There is no such thing as self-directed and self-acted drama. It is just that someone wanted to kill Chongzhen in this way, and killing Chongzhen is indeed understandable.

After all, His Majesty the Emperor should have died long ago.

But it can't be this way.

The smartest thing to do would be to poison the emperor and then say that Li Zicheng poisoned the emperor. This would make Li Zicheng the target of public criticism.

But this assassination...

This is purely to help Li Zicheng!
"King Qin accepts the order!"

Chongzhen, who was still covering his ears, shouted with a sullen face.

Li Zicheng was stunned for a moment, but then he came to his senses. He quickly turned around in front of Chongzhen and knelt down to pay his respects to the Emperor.

"You are the commander-in-chief of the anti-rebel garrison. All the troops in the world are under your command. Find these traitors for me and kill all of their nine clans!"

Chongzhen covered his ears and shouted.

He probably just lost one ear, after all, a lot of blood flowed out from between his fingers, but he probably didn't injure other parts of his body, otherwise he wouldn't be so strong. As for this minor injury, it's not worth mentioning. His Majesty the Emperor has experienced a lot over the years, so there's no need to rush to bandage it. Instead, he should use this opportunity to show his imperial power in front of the people and force Li Zicheng to kneel down to him.

"The minister obeys the order!"

Li Zicheng said.

The current situation forced him to kneel. After all, he needed to form a clear contrast with the regicide traitor. On one side was the assassin who killed the emperor, and on the other side was the King of Qin who knelt at the feet of the emperor. The contrast between the traitor and the loyal minister was so clear.

"Your Majesty, I think it is up to Your Majesty to lead the army in person."

He went on to say.

It would be troublesome if Chongzhen took the opportunity to refuse to leave.

After lying dormant for a year and a half, His Majesty the Emperor is clearly trying to make a comeback. Although Li Zicheng needs his cooperation, he does not want him to cause trouble. Once he uses his injury to stay in Xi'an and Li Zicheng goes south, it cannot be ruled out that he will cause trouble behind the scenes. After all, with his recent public appearances, the people do not seem to be really unacceptable to this Emperor. After all, he has been emperor for nearly 20 years, and the people, even those in Guanzhong, have become accustomed to him.

"Of course, I still want to see the King of Qin defeat the enemy."

Chongzhen said.

in the crowd.

Yang Feng looked at the scene with a complicated look.

This assassin was obviously deliberately helping Li Zicheng. Of course, it would be best if Chongzhen could be killed, but not being able to kill Chongzhen would also be a good thing.

This was a great favor to Li Zicheng.

It's not just about righteousness. In the final analysis, this method will make those who maintain the bottom line of loyalty extremely disgusted or even angry. Li Zicheng did not kill Chongzhen even when he used the emperor to control the princes. He was still a Ming minister. This is also the bottom line of those who maintain the bottom line of loyalty. There has always been a shortage of powerful ministers, but as long as they can maintain their position without usurping the throne or killing the king, most people will accept it. We are all people who live a life. As long as we don't break the bottom line and don't affect our own interests, there is no need to fight hard and involve the family or even the entire country in the war. But breaking the bottom line is another matter. In the final analysis, there was no shortage of loyal ministers in the late Ming Dynasty, and there were many ministers who were willing to die for Chongzhen.

Even more people died for Ming. But now...

Regicide!

Killing the king in public!

You are a traitor, and all loyal ministers will regard you as their enemy.

And Li Zicheng, who originally held the emperor hostage to control the princes, will truly achieve the righteous cause of suppressing rebellion.

Such a stupid thing is really not something that those people in Nanjing could do. These guys are not stupid. Even if they wanted to kill Chongzhen, they would only poison him, drown him, etc., and then frame Chongzhen.

In this way, they will use this as an excuse to justify their actions.

It seems that we have already determined who is behind the assassin.

"GunGun, you are giving everyone a surprise!"

Yang Feng sighed with emotion.

The only one who can do this is Gungun.

This would mean that Li Zicheng's confidence would soar, and he would be more resolute in his determination to continue fighting with Jiangnan. Regardless of the final outcome, the war between Li Zicheng and Jiangnan would give Gun Gun a chance, and it might even be possible for him to turn the tables. After all, the one who was most eager to fight was Gun Gun. Otherwise, if the current situation continued, he would be unable to breathe even if the Northern Expedition Army did not go north.

Then Yang Feng quietly left among the crowd.

On the carriage behind, His Majesty the Emperor was bandaging his wound. With one ear missing, he looked even more imposing.

Because of the Emperor's injury, the march southward was delayed for half a month. After all, he couldn't just go south with a bandage on his head. During this period, the assassin was also tortured, but the latter was very resistant and refused to say who sent him no matter what torture he was subjected to. Of course, this did not prevent Li Zicheng from determining that he was sent by Nanjing. However, it certainly could not be the Regent, so there was still room for error. At this time, Li Zicheng had already known about the situation in Nanjing, and the Regent had obviously been imprisoned by the Jiangnan rebel group headed by Liu Zongzhou. Therefore, the assassin must have been sent by the Nanjing rebel group headed by Liu Zongzhou, Gu Xichou, Zhang Guowei and others, including Qian Shisheng, the head of the Elders' Council.

It was them, it was them, they were the ones who committed regicide and treason. These traitors are so cruel and insane that they deserve to be killed by anyone.

Of course, Nanjing also knew about Chongzhen’s assassination.

Li Zicheng did it!
It was definitely Li Zicheng who did it!
In order to cover up the fact that he was holding the emperor hostage to control the princes, the traitor Li Zicheng did not hesitate to risk the safety of Your Majesty.

He framed the Nanjing elites for the assassination of His Majesty in public.

It's absolutely crazy.

In fact, this incident made all the wise men in Nanjing panic. With their intelligence, they certainly understood what this assassination meant.

So the Senate finally passed a resolution to limit rent, and the land rent in each place should not exceed 50%.

Then it was issued by the Nanjing court in the form of an imperial decree.

Although it is actually meaningless, after all, the landlords in various places have to obey, and in fact it is impossible for them to obey.

But at least it's showing goodwill to the people.

However, the Council of Elders did not count on the people. Their gesture of goodwill was only to stop them from rebelling. The most important thing was to strengthen their military force, so they finally completed the unified command of the militias in the three provinces, that is, to set up an anti-rebellion army under the Council of Elders...

Similar to the Northern Expedition.

The Northern Expedition Army was composed entirely of civilian militia, so the Anti-Rebellion Army could certainly also be composed of civilian militia.

The Northern Expedition Army was commanded by the King of Donghai, so the anti-rebelion army also needed a senior official of the court to lead it, and this senior official eventually fell to Du Yinxi.

The Huguang Governor Du Yinxi was appointed to command the anti-rebel army.

Then there are three more general managers, that is, the commanders of the militias in each province. Jiangxi is still Yang Tingshu, Nanzhi is of course Chen Zilong, Zhejiang is still Xudu, and there is also a navy commander. Because Zheng Chenggong has withdrawn from the Yangtze River and followed his father to besiege Fort Zeelandia, the navy commander is Shen Tingyang. And his navy is even stronger than Zheng Chenggong before. In this year, several elders in Zhejiang and Susong were stimulated by the bullying of Zheng Zhilong before...

Of course, the main purpose is to compete with the Zheng family for business in the future.

More than 30 gunboats were also quickly built. Although they were not as large as the largest ones built by Zheng Chenggong, they could already carry more than 20 red-haired cannons.

Leave all of these to Shen Tingyang.

Including the Yangtze River, there were also Zhejiang's original official navy, namely Wu Zhikui and Huang Binqing. The latter was previously the deputy general of Zhoushan. They also openly joined the militia and followed Shen Tingyang to fight. These two were purely for money. The Elders' Council gave them 500,000 taels each, and then gave each family one million as a reward, and then they happily worked for the Elders' Council.

After all, in theory, government troops do not participate in wars.

Gao Jie had made it clear that his men were only dealing with the Jianlu, which was the previous arrangement of the King of Donghai, so they continued to obey the order, including Liu Yuanqing and Liu Zhaoji under the control of Zhu Dadian. In fact, the combat effectiveness of the official army is not as good as that of the militia. Except for their retainers, the others were completely beaten by the militia on the battlefield. Even though Gao Jie's men were much stronger after he took control of the salt industry, it was only the retainers who were strengthened. He expanded the retainers to an astonishing 10,000 people, and the total force was said to be 70,000, but in reality it was 40,000, and the remaining 30,000 were all cannon fodder responsible for consumption on the battlefield.

But even if he had 10,000 family servants, he still could not defeat the Zhejiang militia in a real fight on the battlefield. The 30,000 Qi family troops in Xudu were transformed into the Zhejiang militia, and they were really rampant in any area with water networks.

Of course, it will be useless without the water network.

After all, they couldn't expect their increasingly heavy tanks to maneuver long distances on land.

Xu Du himself actually had limited military talent. He was only good at uniting his subordinates like Chao Gai. He and his subordinates, such as Zheng Zunqian and other generals, relied on Qi Jiguang's military books and the surviving veterans of Qi Jin's subordinates, as well as the superior equipment brought by sufficient financial resources.

Therefore, the way they solved the problems that they did not face due to technical issues in the era of Qi Jiguang and Qi Jin was to spend money to upgrade equipment.

The tank can't stop the bullets from the turtledove gun?

Then add a layer of carburized wrought iron plate on the outside, which can block not only the bullets from the turtledove gun, but also the shotgun shells from the small red cannon.

If the Qi family army's bird guns are not powerful enough, then they can use all dove guns. If the opponent has cannons that will pose a serious threat, then they can also equip them with red cannons, or even heavy red cannons.

Lack of melee combatants?
That is to be equipped with an iron army.

There is no problem that cannot be solved by throwing money at it.

Of course, it also makes their mobility worse and worse.

But this does not need to be considered in most places in Jiangnan.

In the end, the Council of Elders assembled an army of 200,000 to resist Li Zicheng, including 30,000 Zhejiang militia, 40,000 Nanzhi militia coalition forces, 70,000 Jiangxi militia, and the rest were navy. However, a large part of the 200,000 troops were garrisons in fortresses. The actual mobile operations were mainly carried out by the Zhejiang militia, plus some elite militias from Nanzhi and Jiangxi, with a total force of 60,000. Of course, these 60,000 were truly elite troops, all of whom could fight the Jianlu on the battlefield.

Li Zicheng really couldn't defeat them.

No wonder the elders of the Senate are so arrogant. They really have the confidence to be arrogant now.

(End of this chapter)