Dragon Sea Empire

In the history of the Ming Dynasty, only the Tumubao Incident was a disastrous defeat, which could be compared with the defeat in the eastern suburbs of the capital.

The elite of the Beijing camp (whether they are elites or not, no one can know now, because most of the selected "elite" soldiers of the Beijing camp who participated in the war have never returned to the barracks,) lost 1 yuan, except for Shanhaiguan. Outside the Ministry, only more than [-] people from the Qin King's army in other towns fled back to the capital.

The army of more than one hundred thousand troops collapsed in one day. Such a major blow almost stunned all court officials. It seemed that the army of pirates could enter the city immediately, but none of the civil and military generals in the capital could come up with a feasible plan to deal with the crisis.

Only two people were able to stay awake, and immediately went to the palace to persuade the emperor to go on tour: Fang Congzhe, the chief assistant of the cabinet, and Huang Jiashan, the minister of the Ministry of War.

After the Chinese army won a great victory on the battlefield, some generals were a little impulsive. They ignored Chen Zhongji's order to withdraw the troops and return to the camp.

Changping's Jiliao Governor Wang Keshou had only a few thousand people under his command, and the rest were routs with no fighting spirit, with a completely chaotic organization, no organization and no discipline.

It was the student army camp that pursued and killed Changping City. The battalion commander Wang Shuowang was young and vigorous, but the officers and troops were defeated too quickly. His troops were serving as a reserve force, and before they had time to participate in the battle, the battle was over. In the evening, after receiving the order to clean up the battlefield, I led the team to chase in the direction of Changping without authorization. On the way, there were two sentry teams of sailors and marines, and a sentry team from the first division and one brigade were also hard at work chasing the Ming army, so these 1000 people promoted the ranks together. The tallest (major) Wang Shuowang led them all to Changping. They did not have heavy firearms, but only carried more than [-] Thunderbolt rockets.

They came to the city of Changping at dawn the next day, set up rockets on a special launcher on the plain 200 steps away from the east gate, and fired more than [-] rockets into Changping in one go.

The soldiers of the Ming army, who had been in a panic all night, were sleepy, and were suddenly awakened by the sound of the explosion. With a roar, the camp was blown up.

At the beginning, Wang Keshou's direct subordinate battalion was able to control the situation of the four gates. However, when the student army blew the conch, the soldiers of the Ming army who were scared by yesterday's defeat and hadn't recovered from their senses were completely confused. set.

The four gates of Changping City were wide open, and all the soldiers fled out in one go, ignoring everything with empty hands.

The soldiers who escaped from the east gate bumped into the barracks of the Chinese Military Academy head-on, and immediately knelt down and surrendered. The rest of the soldiers ran around, and after a while, Changping became an empty city.

Wang Shuowang and the two captains of the sailor marines looked at each other, full of suspicion. They sent people into the city to investigate and found that the officers and soldiers had indeed escaped, so they entered the city with confidence. Governor Wang Keshou of Jiliao.

Wang Shuowang and others were taken aback by the results of their battles: all kinds of materials in Changping City were piled up like a mountain, not only food and grass for 10,000+ troops, but also a large amount of gunpowder, countless cold weapons and firearms, and 50 taels of silver. The imperial court originally planned to reward the three armies with these silver coins. Wang Shuowang and the others only had more than 1000 people in total, so they couldn't move these things away anyway.

When Mai Haisheng, the superintendent of the Sailors and Musketeers, came to hear the news, he was also taken aback by so many supplies. He dispatched manpower to set up defenses in the northern suburbs of the capital, and sent newcomers and scouts to set up guard posts everywhere. At the same time, He sent messengers to the camp to report, and asked Chen Zhongji to send someone to carry the spoils.

Fortunately, although there are still 6 or [-] soldiers in the Beijing camp, they are huddled in the city and dare not leave the city at the moment. Chen Zhongji organized tens of thousands of people in nearby places, and even sent most of the first division's troops to carry supplies Well, the Chinese Army spent three full days in Changping City before evacuating all the supplies. During this period, they were not disturbed by any officers and soldiers. All the supplies collected by the Ming court from half the empire were seized by the Chinese Army.

In addition to the materials in Changping, around the battlefield in the eastern suburbs of the capital, the Chinese Army also seized 80 catties of clear nitrate, 950 catties of sulfur, 17 catties of gunpowder, and large and small lead There are 25 catties of ammunition, 5 iron bullets of various sizes, more than 5 artillery pieces of various sizes, bird guns, fast guns, and Franc machine guns, and more than 3000 horses, cows, donkeys, mules, etc. There were nearly [-] vehicles such as horses and carts. The materials handed over in Changping were mainly grain and grass, which solved the problem of winter grain and grass supply for the Chinese Army’s northern front troops in one fell swoop, and there were far more. Chen Zhongji ordered a large amount of grain and grass to be allocated , began to distribute food to the people around the capital, Tianjin Wei and other places to buy people's hearts.

With so much gunpowder seized, if it weren’t for the poor quality of the gunpowder of the Ming army, the Chinese army’s arms supply burden could be reduced a lot. The Chinese army opened a temporary arsenal on the basis of the Tianjin Weijun fire workshop, and used the captured gunpowder to process and produce a large number of gunpowder. Thunderbolt rockets, grenades, landmines and other items, as well as high-quality musket propellant, cannon propellant and flowering shell explosives, must be supplied by Taiwan.

……

The fall of Changping made the nerves of the court officials in the capital all on the verge of collapse. High court officials continued to abandon their posts and leave. The regulation of leaving the city without authorization has been neglected, and the eunuchs in charge of the city gate also abandoned their posts and fled. For several days in a row, large vehicles and small vehicles came out of the city gate. After the Kou-Chinese army captured Changping, they stopped further military activities.

Fang Congzhe and Huang Jiashan proposed that the emperor hunt Luoyang or Chang'an in the west, or set up Fengyang as the "traveling"-temporary capital, that is, move to the south. At the same time, they also suggested to keep the prince in the capital. After staying in the deep palace for decades, he never left the palace and didn't want to leave. He also counted on King Qin's army to arrive in time to save the crisis.

However, a large group of speech officials jumped out, criticizing that several academicians in the cabinet "greed for life and fear death, and encouraged the emperor to abandon the ancestral mausoleum and ignore it. They are undoubtedly treacherous officials.

There are also ministers who are afraid that when the emperor moves south, he will leave himself to assist the prince to guard the capital and become a scapegoat. , Noncommittal, some court officials, such as Li Banghua, the censor of Zuodu, advocated that "the emperor will naturally guard the country" and cannot hunt west or move south. Moreover, the southern capital has also fallen, and moving south may not be safe. Regardless of the Chinese army, the ministers of the imperial court began to divide the parties again, attacking each other as "gentlemen and villains" and "treacherous ministers and ministers", and another round of quarrels began.

Over the past few decades, Emperor Wanli has been aware of the old problems of the civil servants, but he is not a leader, powerless and unwilling to completely reform politics. On the same day, he convened ministers to discuss the matter of moving the capital, and some people proposed to send the crown prince to Fengyang or Luoyang to supervise the army. , Hypocrites who sell fame and sell straight, in order to "leave a name in history", it is their specialty to go online unrealistically and disregarding facts.

Emperor Wanli was furious, patted the armrest of the throne, and said loudly: "The ancestors have worked hard and fought many battles, and set the tripod on this land. If the thieves come and go, why should Lian Pingri be responsible for the city guards of the gentlemen and the people? Minister? Let’s go alone, like the ancestral temple and the country? How about the ancestral mausoleum? How about the millions of souls in the capital? Although the rebels are rampant, I will use the spirit of the ancestors of the world and the full assistance of the gentlemen, or it will not be so. If things are not known, the king of the country will die, and righteousness will be right, and my will has been decided!"

When Fang Congzhe heard this, he was very disappointed, and hurried out to persuade him: "Your Majesty is thinking of the people of the country, please send His Royal Highness to Fengyang to supervise the army, with a plan to suppress the bandits."

Emperor Wanli sneered from his throne and said: "All the ministers have been here to assist me in running the world for more than ten years, but they still can't help me. Brother and child, what are you doing? Sir, I talked about the strategy of fighting and defending, and all the ministers are thinking about how to defeat the enemy. Policy, there is no need to say anything else," after finishing speaking, Emperor Wanli walked away in a huff.

The princes of the imperial court looked at each other, each seeing the light of despair, disappointment or hope in each other's eyes.

Of course, these days the imperial court is not without plans in terms of military affairs. Dozens of emergency reports from the Ministry of War are flying to various places a day, requiring soldiers from the Nine Frontiers, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Henan, Shandong, and Huguang to immediately dispatch soldiers Come to the capital to defend the city.

As a result, the Ming army that had originally gathered in Huzhou and other places to recover Nanjing, Huguang, Shandong and other places had to turn around and go north to support the capital. it's over.

As a large number of troops were transferred to the northern and southern capitals, and the defenses in various places were empty, the great chaos in the whole of the Ming Empire had begun to take shape.

The first is Shandong, which has suffered disasters for several years in a row. Under the instigation of the Chinese army, civil uprisings occurred everywhere in Dezhou, Qingzhou, Jinan, Dengzhou and other places. state and county.

Then, after a large number of Sichuan soldiers left Sichuan, the people of Chengdu, Chongqing, Pengxian, and Yazhou in Sichuan rose up at the end of the 45th year of Wanli, and spontaneously punished the subordinate officials, the children of the gentry, and the minions of the royal family. Each entered the city with guns and sticks, demolished the houses of the yamen servants, and killed dozens of yamen servants. Many people with accumulated wealth in the workshop suffered as a result.

Public riots also spread throughout the Northwest. The people of Shaanxi, who were overwhelmed by the newly increased "sea rate", started food riots as winter was approaching.

All kinds of information were gathered in the hands of Yin Feng in Nanjing city one after another. He laughed and said to Zeng Qi: "My lord father-in-law, now is the time to negotiate."