golden scales

Chongzhen 16th year, August [-]th.

On the platform behind the Yuntai Gate, the curtain was drawn again, and the throne of His Highness the Emperor was placed in the middle of the door opening. The Prince sat on the lower head, and the other ministers sat on both sides with drum stools.

Zhang Fengxiang came together with His Highness the Crown Prince, which inevitably made people look sideways.He knew that some of his colleagues had misunderstood, but even if this kind of thing was misunderstood, he couldn't explain it, otherwise he would be dissatisfied with the prince.He was young and strong, and judging from the generally low life expectancy of the Tian family, he was likely to become an important minister of the two dynasties, and it was impossible to cut himself off from the future emperor.

Zhu Cihong never thought of communicating with ministers.He is very clear that the future of Ming Dynasty does not depend on these senior ministers.If he could turn the tide, the Metropolitan Procuratorate controlled by Li Banghua would be enough.If he can't change the wheel of history, then it doesn't make sense for him if these people either follow the thieves or commit suicide, or abscond in Nanjing.

Emperor Chongzhen didn't take this trivial matter seriously, he was ecstatic at the moment, he raised his hand and patted the armrest of the throne from time to time, his voice was beating briskly, he was in a good mood that he hadn't felt in years.

"The governor is really a capable minister." Chongzhen praised Sun Chuanting for the third time, but he never thought of sending this man into prison, depriving him of his official status, and demoting him to a commoner.

Such a severe punishment, such a huge grievance, Sun Chuanting did not have the slightest bit of resentment, and still went through life and death for the court.Zhu Cihong felt that it was too arbitrary to attribute it to stupid loyalty, and more importantly, it was a subconscious habit.Once some people are no longer loyal to a spiritual sustenance, it is probably more terrifying than killing them.

"The recently delivered Tang Bao," Chongzhen turned to Zhu Cihuang and said with a smile, "Sun Chuanting contacted Henan General Chen Yongfu, brought [-] Qin soldiers with him, and recovered Luoyang on the tenth day of the lunar new year!"

Luoyang is a famous place of ancient capital and a place where Chinese culture gathers together.Relying on the dangerous obstacles of Yaoshan and Mianchi, it can strangle the key points of Qinchuan and Longshan, and become a barrier for Hebei.If China is safe and sound, Luoyang will surely prosper and prosper. Once there is an accident, Luoyang will be the first to suffer from military disasters.Therefore, Li Gefei from the Song Dynasty said: "The prosperity and decline of Luoyang is the time when the world is in chaos." The recovery of Luoyang today is not to restore the family property for King Fu, but to herald the imminent peace of the world and the hope of China's stability.

What's more, it is really a disgrace to the court that a thoroughfare city like Luoyang, Wuchang, has fallen into the hands of thieves.Now that Sun Chuanting has regained Luoyang, it can be regarded as washing away half of the court's shame.

Zhu Cilang didn't feel happy when he heard the words.He knew that if Sun Chuanting gained a firm foothold in Luoyang, and could even go south to conquer Xiangyang, Hanyang, and Wuchang... then in the original time and space, there would only be Chongzhen Zhongxing, and it would not be Jiashen Tianchang.

"The thieves heard the names of the ministers, and they all collapsed. The ministers swore to be clear about Yu, and not to worry about the king and father with a thief!"

Chongzhen took Sun Chuanting's memorial and read it aloud, and he especially liked this sentence.His hands trembled slightly, and he yelled in a tone almost dreamlike: "The thief will perish soon!"

Although the emperor was so happy, the ministers below seldom resonated.They just sat with their heads bowed and did not participate in the festive scene, making His Majesty the Emperor seem to be performing a one-man show.

Zhu Cihong couldn't bear to face his biological father, so he pretended to smile and asked, "I don't know how brilliant the military feats of Governor Qin are, so that the intruders fear him like a tiger?"

Chongzhen was on his head, and he didn't care that the prince's words did not have honorific words, but he was asking the officials, not him.He answered first: "This Sun Chuanting is also capable. He was the one who captured the intruder Gao Yingxiang back then. At that time, Li Bandit was just Gao Bandit's pawn. Presumably it was because of the prestige he had accumulated."

When Gao Yingxiang was captured and killed by Sun Chuanting, Li Zicheng was indeed under King Gao Chuang's command.But at that time, Li Zicheng had already led his own battalion, and he was a well-known "breakthrough general", not a small soldier.It's not that Chongzhen deliberately belittled Li Zicheng, but that he really only knew that Li Zicheng came from Gao Yingxiang's camp, but he didn't know what Li Zicheng's status was at that time.

Zhu Cilang couldn't help sighing when he heard the words: After fighting for so many years, the emperor was fooled by a thousand and half civil officials, and he didn't even know the details of the opponent.

"Then who and who fought the Battle of Shiyuan?" Zhu Cihong asked knowingly.

Chongzhen didn't hear the implication of these words, and he was rather dissatisfied: "The prince should still study the military books and battle reports patiently, have you forgotten what happened last year?"

Zhu Cihong didn't expect that his status in the heart of his father was not high enough, so he couldn't help but choke. The arrogance he had recovered outside the palace these days suddenly exploded, and he said in a deep voice: "Your Majesty, the defeat of Qin Du's tomb that day, the funeral There were thousands of divisions, 78 of them were killed, and Xiao Shending, the commander in chief, was beheaded. Zuo Yi, the commander in chief, was the successor of the veteran Zuo Guangxian, and he was lucky to be spared. My servant remembers this battle, so is Li Zicheng the only one who can't remember it?"

This time it was Chongzhen's turn to be choked, and his pale face became even paler.

The defeat at Zhongtou was really a rare defeat in Sun Chuanting's life.At that time, he had just recovered from prison and took up the post of governor of Shaanxi Province. He had only recruits in his hands and lacked training.However, Kaifeng was besieged, and Emperor Chongzhen anxiously dispatched patrol censor Su Jing to urge Sun Chuanting to leave the customs.

In September of 15, Sun Chuanting couldn't stand the emperor's strict imperial decree, and he had just made a big mistake before, and felt guilty, so he had to send troops hastily.Speaking of which, if he made that mistake first, it wouldn't be a big deal, but Yuan Chonghuan had already made it before, and when it was his turn, his surname was particularly bad.

At that time, Sun Chuanting had just come out of prison, and he didn't know that the situation of officials and thieves had reversed. When the emperor summoned him, he said confidently: Only [-] elite soldiers can put down the thieves.When he arrived in Shaanxi and found out the truth, it was impossible to complete the task without [-] elite soldiers, so he could only brazenly ask the emperor for an increase in salary.

Emperor Chongzhen was hit hard by Yuan Chonghuan's "Five Years of Ping Liao". Everyone looked like a liar, and now he issued an imperial decree, to the effect that: You fool me back and forth, I am magnanimous and don't care about you, but your son If you get paid, you have to go to customs and fight, otherwise don't blame me for being ruthless.

Under such circumstances, Sun Chuanting had no choice but to swallow Coptis chinensis himself, and took the general soldier Gao Jie as the Chinese army, and went out to break the siege of Kaifeng.

The army marched halfway and got the news that Kaifeng had fallen, so they had to divert to Nanyang.

At that time, Li Zicheng and Luo Rucai joined forces to face Sun Chuanting in the west.

On the first day of October, the two armies fought in Jia County.

Sun Chuanting ordered Zheng Jiadong, Gao Jie, and Zuo Yi to set up an ambush, and Niu Chenghu, the commander in chief, went out to lure the enemy.Li Zicheng fell into ambush and was defeated by the officers and soldiers, so he had to retreat eastward.

Sun Chuanting already had the chance to win, but who would have expected that the officers and soldiers saw that the camp had dropped a lot of armored supplies on the way to pursue and suppress them, and they rushed to grab them. Department, other general troops also collapsed one after another, from a big victory to a big defeat.

Because it rained heavily on the day when Sun Chuanting dispatched troops, the grain carts could not keep up, and the soldiers could only eat green persimmons that were not ripe, so the Yu people called it "the battle of the persimmon garden".Perhaps people at the time felt that the Battle of Shiyuan was better than the defeat of Zhongtou, so the Battle of Shiyuan was more widely known.

If it is said that Sun Chuanting caused Li Zicheng a psychological shadow because of the capture and killing of Gao Yingxiang, wouldn't the defeat of Zhongtou not be enough to give Li Zicheng self-confidence?Thinking more deeply, isn't the reason why Li Zicheng used the trick to lure the enemy to pretend to be defeated at that time is because he underestimated Qin Bing and Sun Chuanting, and believed that it is normal for the army to be defeated at the first touch?In this way, where is the possibility of "thieves who hear the name of the officials are all defeated"?

"Your Majesty," Feng Yuanbiao, Minister of the Ministry of War, came out of Ban Dun's head and said, "Those thieves see Lei to lure our teachers, which is taboo in the art of war. I can't be carefree."

Old Shangshu was already very worried, seeing that His Royal Highness brought up the battle of Persimmon Garden, he naturally no longer kept his words in his heart.Anyway, at his age, he is already satisfied with being a center, and there is nothing to regret even if he cannot join the cabinet in the future.

Most of the cabinet assistants in the Chongzhen Dynasty were appointed by Zhongzhi, and they were not as appealing as the cabinet assistants launched by the Jiajing and Wanli courts.At that time, if someone entered the cabinet with Zhongzhi without being recommended by the court, he would be ridiculed by his colleagues.

There is no such thing as a man who seeks to be proud of himself, so Feng Yuanbiao dared to speak if he didn't ask for the title of "Ge Lao".Seeing the emperor's originally beaming face, the other people immediately restrained themselves, and they couldn't help but feel drummed in their hearts. Considering their own career prospects, they all kept silent.

Emperor Chongzhen's face was even more frosty, and he pursed his lips in silence.

The happy atmosphere on the platform has been blown away by the cold wind, and the scene is as cold as an icehouse. (To be continued.)