golden scales

In September of the 17th year of Chongzhen, the whole world fell into a stalemate, or anxiety.

For Ming Dynasty, Shenjing was occupied by Donglu, which was the biggest national humiliation after Tumubao; the provinces in the northwest fell into the hands of Chuangni; Sichuan in the southwest fell into the hands of Zhang Xianzhong.Even the emperor's safety is divided and it is difficult to distinguish.

For the Qing Dynasty, although the dream of entering the customs was fulfilled and even occupied Beijing, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, the army of more than [-] people fell into a dead end.

The Ming army in the south of Gyeonggi occupied the line from Zhending to Cangzhou, built villages, and new artillery arrived every day. Obviously, they did not intend to join forces with the Qing Dynasty to suppress thieves.This means that the Manchurian iron cavalry cannot cross the Yellow River into Shaanxi, otherwise the Ming army will attack Beijing, and the army will have no way to return to help.

For the same reason, the army cannot go south, otherwise Li Zicheng will definitely lead his army across the river, seize Shanxi and Datong, isolate Mongolia from the pass, and even go straight down to the third pass, and come to Beijing again, putting the Manchus in a dilemma of fighting on two fronts.At that time, the [-] troops can only go to the bitter cold outside the pass again.

Because of this obvious situation, there are fewer and fewer banner people enclosing land near Gyeonggi, and more people choose to send the robbed population and property out of the customs, lest it will be too late to transport them away.Dorgon himself lacked the confidence to hold on to Beijing, but he still issued strict orders to prevent such morale-damaging things from happening.

For Li Zicheng...

"I still want to fight!"

Li Zicheng stood on the Xi'an city tower, with Liu Zongming and Tian Jianxiu standing beside him.Because Zhu Cihong's Eastern Palace Army was born, the Dashun Army was not pursued further after withdrawing into Shaanxi, and finally stood firm.

Bahana and Shi Tingzhu failed to reinforce Ye Chen and Jiang Guan according to the original historical script, which made the progress of the Manchu Qing attack on Shanxi lag behind for a long time.

Under the leadership of Dashun Shanxi Jiedu Envoy Han Wenquan and Chief Soldier Chen Yongfu, the Taiyuan garrison moved to Yu County with an army of [-] and [-] people.Pass Jingxing and resettle in the area of ​​Zhendingfu.In addition, some people fled to Shaanxi and chose Li Zicheng, but when the Qing soldiers entered Taiyuan, it was almost an empty city.

If there is no population, there will be no coated Aha, and there will be no pawns to die.The military strength of the Donglu is not enough to continue to invade the western part of Shanxi, let alone cross the river to attack.The Qing government ordered Jiang Guan to lead his troops to attack and follow the immigrant brigade and attack Yuxian County, but was ambushed by the Ming army in Danangou, causing heavy casualties, so he had to return to Taiyuan to rest.

"After the grain is harvested, let's fight across the river." Li Zicheng said again, "I don't believe we can't beat those Tartars!"

Liu Zongmin heard Tian Jianxiu talk about the battle of a piece of rock, and said worriedly: "My lord, our soldiers are probably weaker than the Tartar soldiers. The best strategy is to first defend the river, consolidate Henan, and occupy Huguang."

"Your Majesty, Zuo Liangyu's bandit is now occupying Wuchang. If Huguang is not recaptured, the army's rations will be unsustainable." Tian Jianxiu said anxiously.

The Little Ice Age began in the Southern Song Dynasty and reached its peak in the late Ming Dynasty.Especially since the eighth year of Wanli.The sunspot activity disappears, and this astronomical phenomenon will continue for 70 years.That is to say, it will end in the 23rd year of Chongzhen—the seventh year of Shunzhi in the original historical time and space.In the past 70 years, the natural environment of the northern generation in Shanxi and Shaanxi has been extremely harsh, and crop failure has become the norm. Farmers even eat seeds directly, otherwise they will not even be able to recover the cost after planting.

Fortunately, Daming has a vast territory, and Huguang is familiar with the world.When such a natural disaster occurs in the Northwest, food from Huguang can also be used for disaster relief.However, once the government was corrupted, disaster relief food was divided up layer by layer, and profiteers raised the price of rice again, the fragile social ecology of the Northwest was suddenly broken.Peasant uprisings are also a matter of course.

Chuangying came from this period. Everyone knows that mountains of gold and silver are not as good as mountains of rice and mountains, and Huguang Granary is far more important than Shanxi, which has no harvest.

"If Shanxi is not in our hands, the army will have to defend along the Yellow River. How many troops will it cost?" Li Zicheng asked: "How can the remaining troops take back Huguang from the left thief's 20 army? Only Shanxi can be defeated. Only by guarding the pass with elite soldiers can we draw out the army to go south as soon as possible."

Liu Zongmin felt that it was correct to say so in principle. After all, the pass is dead. If 2000 people guard the pass, even if the opponent has 1 people, it may not be easy to capture.The biggest problem with defending along the river is that it is easy to be smuggled, and in winter, the river is frozen, and there are many places to cross, so it is useless to just guard the ferry.

Li Zicheng sighed: "There is not enough food, so I can only ask people to buy it from the left thief."

Zuo Liangyu occupied the land of Jingchu and established himself as a feudal town. He never thought of trapping and killing Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng.This kind of thing of selling food to the enemy is nothing to him.What's more, he didn't have to show up in person, the people below smuggled food, so they would naturally respect him.

Seeing that Li Zicheng had made up his mind, Liu Zongmin and Tian Jianxiu had to say: "Your Majesty, if this is the case, now we still have to train soldiers, equip them with ordnance, and collect eagle feathers and fish gelatin, otherwise it will not be enough for the expedition."

Li Zicheng said sadly: "Sure. I will leave this matter to you."

The three of them were talking, when Li Zicheng turned his head and saw Gu Junen walking quickly, holding a yellow paper military newspaper in his hand: "Your Majesty! Marquis Bo Li Guo has led his troops across the river!"

"Who gave the order!" Li Zicheng was furious when he heard the words, his heart was sad and resentful, he thought to himself: Even his nephew is going to surrender to the Tartars!

Gu Junen shook his head slightly: "I haven't found out yet."

"Explore again!" Li Zicheng only felt that his eyes were dark, and he stretched out his hand to support the city wall.In terms of the territories he occupies, he now controls the three regions of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, and also occupies western Henan and northern Jingbei. There are a million people in armor under his command.However, judging from the situation, there is a sense of the end of the road. Even the senior officials of Dashun feel that this regime will not last long, and they are secretly looking for a way out.

"Your Majesty," Gu Junen said softly again, "Some merchants have come from the east and want to exchange cotton clothes for horses..."

Li Zicheng propped his head up, his eyes were bloodshot: "Which east?"

"It's Prince Zhu's side." Gu Junen said cautiously: "We want to exchange [-] cotton coats for [-] good horses."

A cotton coat can be sold for two renminbi in Shaanxi, but in Suzhou and Songjiang, where cotton cloth is produced, the price is less than that.The price of a good horse is more than 20 taels, and even a pack horse costs more than ten taels of silver.But from the price point of view, one hundred cotton coats corresponds to one good horse, and the East Palace has already taken advantage of it.

"Does he think I'm a fool!" Li Zicheng said angrily.

"I'm going to drive those profiteers away." Gu Junen didn't want to facilitate the deal, so he deliberately reported it when Li Zicheng was furious.

"Wait!" Li Zicheng suddenly stopped Gu Junen and asked, "How many catties of cotton did you use?"

"It's three catties of cotton," Gu Junen said.

Li Zicheng lowered his head and said: "There are too few products in the Northwest, and we have to change winter clothes for the soldiers after seeing winter. But eight hundred good horses are still too many. If Prince Zhu can ensure that every cotton coat is not short of catties, I will take it." Six hundred horses in exchange for his cotton coat."

"Your Majesty..." Gu Junen stood still and said, "Nowadays, people's hearts are unstable. If these cotton-padded clothes are allowed to come in and be worn on the soldiers, I'm afraid someone will take the opportunity to say something unfair."

"If I don't agree, the "Emperor Ming Bulletin" in the east will definitely say that I don't care about the lives of soldiers!" It took Li Zicheng half a month to get this plausible "Di Bao". It comes out that the Chinese characters imply praise and criticism, which means the court's tongue-in-cheek.The most frightening thing is that he doesn't know how to prevent this false report from being circulated in Shaanxi, because someone will risk beheading and copy it secretly.

"Your Majesty, how dare he be accused of adultery with Dashun?" Gu Junen disagreed.

It made sense for Li Zicheng to think about it. After all, Shunming was still in a state of war. If outsiders knew about this deal, it would be bad for Prince Zhu.However, these 5 cotton-padded clothes are necessary for winter, at least to ensure that [-] people will not freeze to death.

Li Zicheng had never considered the life and death of Dingkou below. In his opinion, in troubled times, everything is left to fate, and the only way to survive is to fight for one's own life.If you can pull it over, you will live, if you can't pull it, you will die, and the most you can blame is the ruthless master.It wasn't until he really asked about politics like an emperor that he realized that it was his own responsibility to raise the people of Li, and that no matter how many people there were, it was not enough, so he definitely couldn't give up easily.

With such an understanding, Li Zicheng suddenly understood Yang He's strange remark of "Why don't you just sit and starve to death!".

Sure enough, the position determines the attitude. Of course, the emperor hopes that the people would rather starve to death than rebel against him. (To be continued, please search, the novel is better and updated faster!

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