Crazy at the end of the Ming Dynasty

However, what made Xue Yongli even more distressed was that whenever Xue Yongli ordered the entire Runing army to move forward and prepare for a decisive battle with the Qing army, General Duoduo ordered the Qing army to retreat to avoid the attack of the Runing army.

Because the Runing Army had to maintain the integrity of the infantry phalanx, the speed of pursuit was always inferior to that of the Qing Army's cavalry.In addition, the Runing Army did not dare to pursue too deeply. After all, there was a Weishan Lake between Heze and Xuzhou. Xue Yongli was afraid that he would not be able to take care of the troops in Xuzhou, so Xue Yongli was fighting quite sadly.

"Master Li! Are you going to attack tonight?" Zug asked.

"Forget it." Xue Yongli thought for a while, shook his head and said, "You guys have worked hard these days. The tartar on the opposite side is like brown sugar. I don't know how long it will stick to it. For the time being, I don't need to use dangerous tricks." gone."

"Fuck! This Tartar fights and doesn't fight, and doesn't retreat. It seems that we are going to end up with us." Chu Ge cursed.

"What did you say?" Unexpectedly, this sentence aroused Xue Yongli's vigilance.

"No...it's nothing! Let's just say that the Tartars and us are exhausted." Zuge repeated the words again, with a look of confusion on his face.

"Grandma!" Xue Yongli immediately reacted, "This time the Tatars entered the customs against our Runing army. I didn't expect our face to be big enough! Send someone to Huguang to tell my uncle. Chuge! You Also take your Pegasus Town to assist Xuzhou. Ma De, I was almost deceived by the Tartars."

Regarding the entry of the Qing army this time, everyone in the Runing army thought it was the same as usual, nothing more than capturing some wealthy cities and capturing a large amount of property, people, and livestock and returning to Liaodong.

And the performance of the Qing army is indeed the same.After they entered Shandong, they even conquered Shandong prefectures and counties, and captured Yanzhou, where King Lu lived. Zhu Yipai, King Lu, King Dongling, King Yangxin, King Dongyuan, King Anqiu and other county kings were killed. Kill, commit suicide.The Qing army also obtained a large number of seizures.

For the purpose of the Qing army's entry and looting.The Runing Army intercepted the Qing army from entering Henan in Heze and Xuzhou.Because Heze is the channel between the Yellow River and Weishan Lake, and Xuzhou is the channel between Weishan Lake and Hongze Lake.As long as these two places are guarded, the Qing army will not be able to enter the hinterland of Henan.

Therefore, the original strategy of the Runing Army was also to procrastinate, planning to delay the Qing army for a month or two. When the rivers in the north froze, the Qing army would always have to return to Liaodong.Moreover, after the Qing army hit a wall in front of the Runing army, they are likely to turn to enter the southern and northern Jiangsu areas, and no longer plan to enter Henan.After all, the Qing army came to plunder, not to quarrel with the Runing army.

You can see the current performance of the Qing army.Xue Yongli suddenly understood that the Qing army was indeed targeting the Runing army.To use an analogy, it is like a few robbers broke into a warehouse, and they were discovered by the warehouse security.But instead of escaping, those robbers entangled the security guards.Then these robbers must be looking for an opportunity to knock down the security guards and break into the warehouse to grab things.

But this way.There was a problem with the original arrangement of the troops of the Runing Army.If they knew that the Qing army was targeting themselves, the Runing army would never formulate a strategy of defending from the north and attacking from the south.Wu Shigong will not transfer most of the main force to Huguang.Instead, it is necessary to concentrate the main force of the entire army to fight against the Qing army.

And now.Xue Yongli can only hope that Shumo's Guide Town can block the passage to Xuzhou.And Wu Shigong also quickly led the main force back to the north, and first dealt with the Qing army, the biggest enemy in front of us.

Wu Shigong in Wuchang City was also shocked when he heard the news.So without any hesitation, he let Xue Yong's Jiao attack town rush towards Xuzhou first.But before the Runing army could withdraw the siege of Wuchang City, the whole army rushed to Xuzhou.Unexpectedly, Zuo Liangyu, who was approaching, made another "shattering".

Although Xiangyang, Wuchang and other large areas were lost again and again, the troops of Zuo Liangyu, the general who suppressed bandits and the commander of the aid and suppression army, were still the most powerful military group in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in the Ming Dynasty at that time.According to the records of the Ministry of War, Zuo Liangyu's Ministry has only 5000 people.Among the soldiers and horses under the jurisdiction of a town, the number is extremely large.However, because Zuo Liangyu was good at preserving his strength in dealing with the peasant army for many years, and worked hard to recruit and surrender the rebels to expand the team, the actual strength of the troops at this time had actually reached 20.

This is not only far beyond the number of troops under the command of the general general army, but even much more troops than any superintendent or governor who is equivalent to the commander of the theater can actually dispatch.

It should have been a blessing if the Ming Dynasty, which was in decline, had such a large army led by a general and with considerable combat effectiveness.It is a pity that this army has been fully warlordized during the long-term battle, and has become Zuo Liangyu's private army, which does not obey the imperial court at all.

Since the food and salaries provided by the imperial court were less than one-tenth, Zuo Liangyu's army has been maintained by searching, looting and looting for a long time, so it is hated by the local people wherever it goes.The Zuo army harmed the villagers more than the bandits, the court was not ignorant of this, but they always turned a blind eye and rarely asked.

What Emperor Chongzhen and his ministers hoped for was that this large army, which did not cost the court too much food and pay, could withstand the impact of the peasant army at critical moments and serve the court.But when the real enemy is approaching, Zuo Liangyu is used to sitting idly by or fleeing without fighting.

When Kaifeng was besieged, in order to take advantage of Zuo Liangyu's military strength, the imperial court specially appointed Hou Xun, the former Minister of the Household Department who had appreciated and promoted Zuo Liangyu in his early years and had great kindness to Zuo Liangyu, and appointed him as the right servant and right minister of the Ministry of War. The censor governor of Qiandu, Baoding, Shandong, Henan, and Hebei military affairs, was in charge of all towns to aid and suppress officers and soldiers, thinking that Zuo Liangyu would always be more obedient.But Hou Xun called Zuo Liangyu's troops north to rescue Kaifeng, but Zuo Liangyu only sent 5000 people there, and at the same time threatened the court with the reason of insufficient food and wages.

After Zhang Xianzhong's Great Western Army attacked Xiangyang, Zuo Liangyu resisted for a while, burned all the vicinity of Xiangyang, and then led his army to flee eastward.This 20 army, which was worse than bandits, first fled to Wuchang, and then went eastward along the river.When Wuchang residents saw Zuo Jun go east on Snake Mountain, they all cheered: "Zuo Jun has passed!" to celebrate the new life.

Zuo Liangyu's army who escaped from the stronghold in Xiangyang really became a group of unscrupulous bandits. They not only burned, killed and looted wherever they went, but even openly attacked counties that closed their doors. They completely turned into a group of rebels.

In March, the Zuo army had already arrived near Wuhu, declaring that it would go to Nanjing to raise military pay, which frightened the capital of Nanjing into chaos, and hurriedly sent troops to Chen Shijiang to defend the Zuo army.Later, Li Banghua, the new censor of Zuodu, who was still in Hukou, repeatedly persuaded Zuo Liangyu, and asked the governor of Anqing to take out 15 taels of silver as military pay. Chizhou line.

Regarding this incident of Zuo Liangyu's army, Chongzhen's monarchs and ministers didn't even have the courage to denounce it.Later, after Li Banghua arrived in Beijing, he suggested to Emperor Chongzhen that the crime of rebellion should be pushed to Wang Yuncheng, a subordinate of Zuo Liangyu, because the robbery of the prefectures and counties was the most rampant.

And Emperor Chongzhen also knew that Zuo Liangyu still had to rely on Qiancheng and could not be provoked; moreover, he was powerful and could not be provoked.He had no choice but to praise Zuo Liangyu for his "conquer incident" and asked him to behead the "leader" Wang Yuncheng to protect the court's face.But Zuo Liangyu didn't even give this little face, and still kept Wang Yuncheng in the army, continuing to do his own way.

In this incident, Hou Xun fled to Wu Shigong's army in a hurry.Although Hou Xun knew that Zuo Liangyu would not do anything to him, no one wanted to sleep with such a "powder barrel".At this time, neither Wu Shigong nor Hou Xun knew whether Zuo Liangyu was really rebelling.So the Runing army immediately deployed defenses in the direction of the left army.

By the time the news of Li Banghua comforting Zuo Liangyu reached Wuchang, more than half a month had passed.But at this time, Wu Shigong was surprised to find that Shumo, with the support of the two towns of Chuge and Xue Yong, actually prevented the Qing army from entering Henan (details later).Therefore, Wu Shigong simply gritted his teeth and continued to besiege Wuchang City, and must completely kill this kid Li Dingguo.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty was not only unable to deal with the Qing army outside the country and the rebel peasant army inside, but also unable to deal with the warlord forces inside its own camp.Zuo Liangyu is just the most representative of the warlords. Other powerful generals, such as Wu Shigong from Runing, Wu Sangui from Ningyuan, Liu Zeqing from Shandong, and even Yu Zilian as a civil servant, actually Both have become warlords on one side.The imperial court can only carefully win over them, but they have to decide their attitude towards the imperial court according to their own interests.

And Emperor Chongzhen himself couldn't figure out, since when did the majestic emperor and the court degenerate to the point of following the winks of a few vulgar warriors.But for the sake of the overall situation, winks still have to be seen.This is a very painful helplessness. The only way that Emperor Chongzhen can think of is to send powerful ministers with prestige and courage from the court to the front-line supervisors to effectively control the army and fight a decisive battle with the "rogue bandits".

But since Yang Sichang passed away and Hong Chengchou was trapped in the Qing Dynasty, such a capable minister is really hard to find.Emperor Chongzhen counted all the senior officials in the court and counted, and felt that only the cabinet scholar Wu Zhen was not satisfactory.Wu Zhen was a Jinshi in the 41st year of Wanli. He served as the censor of Henan and Shaanxi and the governor of Shanxi. capable talent.It is precisely because of this talent that he has been appointed as the Minister of the Ministry of War since the 11th year of Chongzhen, and he is very familiar with the military situation in the country and the situation of various troops.

In the 15th year of Chongzhen, Emperor Chongzhen specially promoted Wu Zhen as an assistant minister, mainly for the purpose of having a military advisor in the cabinet.Compared with Yang Sichang and Hong Chengchou, although Wu Zhen is inferior, but in terms of qualifications, status, prestige and ability, he is also considered a rare candidate. (To be continued..)