Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 504 The Northern Expedition: Sweeping Thousands of Armies (Part 23)
Gong Zhaolu was very aggrieved, he had already told Bi Fuguang in an almost pleading tone, but he did not expect that Bi Fuguang was still unmoved.

Bi Fuguang just shook his head: "I'm more interested in how long you can go on a hunger strike and die."

"You! A scholar can be killed and cannot be humiliated. Gong is a dignified scholar. How can you let you be teased like this. Gong would rather jump down and die than let you achieve your goal!"

Gong Zhaolu walked to the city wall in a panic, but when he saw all the rocks below and the corpses of the Qing army lying on the ground, he backed away in fright.

"You are jumping!"

Bi Fuguang couldn't help shouting with a smile.

"Falling to death will damage the hair and skin after all, but the hair and skin can be given to parents, and if it is destroyed, it is not filial. I still choose to die on a hunger strike. I swear to the death to be a person of the Qing Dynasty. You don't need to persuade the Nankou!"

Gong Zhaoli shouted angrily.

"We didn't persuade you either!"

Bi Fuguang shouted bitterly.

The next morning.

Bi Fuguang came here again: "Is he dead?"

And Gong Zhaolu had completely collapsed, and he knelt on it and kowtowed to Bi Fuguang: "Master, please, please save my life, I don't want to die, I don't want to starve to death !"

"Do you want to be a chastity-observant of the Qing Dynasty?"

Bi Fuguang replied.

"No, no, I won't do it. I just beg you to let me go and save me. I will give you all my property and my Ruyun."

Gong Zhaolu held his mouth shut and begged Bi Fuguang with tears in his eyes.

"I'm not interested," Bi Fuguang only replied lightly.

"That's good! Since you are determined to let me die, can you let me be a full-fledged ghost, and a condemned prisoner must eat a good meal before beheading, not to mention that I am still a scholar!"

Gong Zhaolu suddenly yelled confidently but then started crying again: "I'm really hungry, please, please, can I be your slave, please, you will be my master from now on, as long as you reward me I ate it in one bite."

"It is precisely because you are a scholar that you are asked to die on a hunger strike. After all, we also respect your decision. I guarantee that the marching record will write that on October 22, 28 of Chongzhen, the First Corps of the Third Army of the Guards recovered the guards. In Huifu, all the people in Fucheng went on a hunger strike to die, to be loyal to the Manchu Qing Dynasty!"

Bi Fuguang left after saying that, and continued northward with the main force in the afternoon.

And Gong Zhaolu was dying after starving for another day: "I don't want to be loyal, why do you force me?"

In the end, Gong Zhaolu fulfilled his promise to keep the festival, and starved to death on the wall of Weihui Mansion.

……

at this time.

The Second Corps of the Third Army of the Guards also surrounded Huaiqing Mansion.

The difference between Huaiqing Mansion and Weihui Mansion is that Luke, the prefect of Huaiqing Mansion, took the initiative to join forces with the local landlords to resist the Second Corps of the Third Army of the Guards, and even organized an army of [-] to go out of the city to attack the Guards. The Second Corps of the Army came to kill.

Lu Ke, the magistrate of Huaiqing Prefecture, served in the Ministry of War of the Qing court. He knew that the current city could no longer withstand the artillery, so he chose to take the initiative to attack.

Seeing the densely packed infantry and archers approaching, many of them were still holding hoes and kitchen knives, Liu Qian, the deputy commander of the Second Corps of the Third Army of the Guards, couldn't believe his eyes.

If he hadn't seen many officers of the Qing army in padded armor and the civil servant wearing the fourth-rank top of the Qing court, he would have thought that what he had encountered was a group of rogues.

"Let the six infantry battalions go up and practice marksmanship. The artillery and cavalry don't move for now. There will be plenty of opportunities to train in the future."

Liu Qian said so, and not long after, the six infantry battalions of the Second Corps of the Third Guards Army also presented a fan-shaped offensive, armed with Chongzhen Type 22 rifles or Chongzhen Type 21 breech-loading flintlock guns, and Chongzhen Type [-] flintlock guns. He fired a gun and walked towards the Qing army led by the prefect Lu Ke.

Among them, Lin Baishui, an infantryman from a certain infantry battalion of the Guards, participated in actual combat for the first time. He even trembled when he held the gun. After all, this was his first time killing people. He was a little nervous, but he still followed the training seriously The operation process that I was used to at the time began to shoot a gun in the face of a Qing army.

bang!
The Qing soldier fell in response and looked at Lin Baishui in astonishment. From the beginning to the end, the Qing soldier didn't understand how he was killed so quickly.

As the killing of the first Qing army began, Lin Baishui, the infantryman of the Guards, instinctively chose to continue shooting, one after another, and began to become excited from nervousness.

The same is true for the infantry of the other guards. The crackling bullets are like a sickle harvesting wheat, constantly harvesting the lives of these Qing troops.

The Qing army collapsed directly!
The prefect Lu Ke did not expect that the Ming army was already so powerful not only with artillery and strong firearms, but when he saw the Qing army he organized running back throwing away their armor and armor, he also panicked:

"Oh my God, how are you going to fight this battle, Daming, Daming, why don't you die, why are you still coming back, why are you still coming back!"

When Lu Ke, the prefect of Huaiqing Prefecture, shouted, dozens of infantry soldiers from the Guards had aimed at him, and dozens of bullets hit him, directly smashing him into a sieve.

The Second Corps of the Third Army of the Guards successfully occupied the capital of Huaiqing Prefecture.

And the people in the Fucheng of Huaiqing Mansion, like the people of Weihui Mansion, were bewitched by the local gentry, thinking that the Guards would wash the Fucheng with blood after entering the city, so they rushed to flee, but because the Guards appeared too quickly, But being blocked in the city by the guards, some people were so frightened that they knelt on the ground:

"Military men, spare your life, spare your life, we are just ordinary people, whether it is the Qing Dynasty or the Ming Dynasty, we don't understand these principles. We know that the Ming Dynasty was the emperor of the Han Dynasty, and we are also Han people, but no one has ever Taught us to only recognize the Han Emperor!"

"Fellow folks, don't be afraid. Our guards are the master of the king. We will not attack the common people. We only attack the traitors who betrayed the country. You still do your own thing. Our guards will never interfere. Someone in the guards has insulted you, you can directly come to our Military Law Division to file a complaint, anyone with such epaulets on their shoulders is from the Military Law Division, you can tell them first."

Ren Huai'an, the governor of the Second Corps of the Third Army of the Guards, seriously conveyed the policies of the Guards to these people, and gradually these people felt relieved when they saw that the Guards did not do anything to them.

And when the guards took the initiative to recruit local people to bury and lime the corpses of the Qing army who died in battle, some people gradually took the initiative to undertake such post-war processing work when they saw silver dollars.

Because the domestic trend of the development of the Northern Expedition is very optimistic, a large amount of funds flowed to the use of the Northern Expedition through the issuance of Northern Expedition coupons.

As a result, the various ministries of the Guards paid generous salaries when recruiting local civilians, and as a result, more and more people in the newly occupied areas began to actively serve the Northern Expedition, allowing a reform movement to continue to advance smoothly to the north .

(End of this chapter)