Wu Sangui galloped to the city, Zu Dashou personally went out of the city to greet him, and when he saw him bleeding all over his face, he couldn't help but exclaim: "Good job!" Wu Sangui dismounted and bowed to Zu Dashou.

Wu Sangui suffered a slight scar from a traumatic nose in this battle, but he recovered quickly thanks to his vigorous vitality.

His feats have been praised by the people, and his superb skills in riding and archery, his fearless spirit of courage and courage in battle, and his resourceful strategy have all begun to attract widespread attention and attention from the people. From this time on, Wu Sangui came to run and was promoted step by step. He rose from the Chinese army to guerrilla warfare, shortly after this battle.

In August of this year, Huang Taiji launched the battle to capture the Daling River, he surrounded the city with tens of thousands of troops, and Zu Dashou led 30,000 soldiers and civilians in the city to defend it. Huang Taiji adopted the tactics of besieging but not attacking, digging trenches and building walls, surrounding the city with heavy troops on all sides, cutting off its pay road, and stationed another army in the west of the city, specifically intercepting the reinforcements from Jinzhou, trying to go through a period of siege, the food in the city was exhausted, and forced Zu Dashou to surrender the city.

The Ming Dynasty saw through Houjin's combat intentions, and could not sit idly by and not save it, so more than 40,000 troops went to help. Traveling to a place thirty miles away from Songshan, that is, between Changshan and Xiaoling River, and encountered the Houjin soldiers, the two sides started a big battle, killing and wounding each other, and the Ming reinforcements withdrew. In mid-September, the Houjin soldiers continued to besiege Dalinghe City on the one hand, and attacked Jinzhou on the other hand, reaching the city.

The Ming army crossed the Xiaoling River, traveled five miles, built a train camp, the Jin soldiers held the long mountain, the Ming soldiers were not allowed to advance, the emperor Taiji personally led the eight banner cavalry, divided into two wings, and went straight to the Ming soldier camp. The soldiers of the Ming Dynasty used firearms and bows and arrows, and the lead was like hail, and the arrows rained down. The right flank of the Houjin soldiers first rushed into Zhang Chun's camp, and the Ming soldiers rose up to engage in the battle, but they could not withstand the fierce impact of the Houjin soldiers, and the formation was chaotic.

Later, the Jin soldiers took advantage of the situation to chase from behind, and chased thirty or forty miles before collecting their troops, causing 33 generals below Zhang Chun to be captured alive. The Ming Dynasty repeatedly reinforced, failed repeatedly, and the losses were greater and greater, and Zhang Chun and others suffered the most heavy losses in this reinforcement. Since then, the reinforcements have been cut off, Zu Dashou no longer dares to break through the city, and sits and waits for death, and the news of defeat reaches Beijing, and the court is shocked.

Shandong erupted in a mutiny led by Kong Youde and Li Jiucheng, Kong Youde was originally a general in Dengzhou, Shandong, and when the Jin soldiers besieged Dalinghe City, he was sent by the governor Sun Yuanhua to lead 800 cavalry out of the pass to help. When they reached Wuqiao, Hebei, the soldiers lacked food and plundered the village fort, and then mutinied. Kong Youde and Li Jiucheng and others secretly discussed, declared an uprising against the Ming, led the army back to Shandong, and captured the counties of Linyi, Lingxian, Shanghe, and Qingcheng.

The following year, Kong Youde returned to capture Dengzhou and set up an official office, and he claimed to be Marshal Du, Li Jiucheng Deputy Marshal, Geng Zhongming and others as chief military officers. So the soldiers and horses were reorganized, the city was conquered, and the wave of anti-Ming struggle swept through Shandong. Shandong is close to Beijing, the relationship is very serious, Kong Youde raised troops against the Ming, so that the imperial court is very panicked, and urgently ordered Baoding, Tianjin, Changping towns to suppress the soldiers. The officials and troops suffered one defeat after another, and the imperial court was at a loss for a while.

Liu Chongqing, the right attendant of the household department, and Wang Wanxiang, the imperial historian of Sichuan Dao, suggested that the tenacious Shanhaiguan and Ningyuan's Liao soldiers should be transferred to deal with Kong Youde's rebels. After discussion by the important ministers of the imperial court, Chongzhen asked for approval, and Chongzhen issued an edict ordering Gao Qiqian, the eunuch who was the director of Guanning, to lead the deputy general Zu Dabi and the chief military officer Jin Guoqi to Shandong with tens of thousands of soldiers and horses to suppress.

The eunuchs were originally servants of the emperor's palace and could not participate in state affairs. However, the Ming Dynasty used eunuchs since the time of Yongle, especially when it came to the apocalypse, the eunuchs were released from the palace and placed in the army, and they were ordered to monitor the words and deeds of generals at all levels. Chongzhen ascended the throne, although he suppressed the eunuch group headed by Wei Zhongxian, but continued to appoint eunuchs to supervise the army, which was actually a major malpractice in the late Ming Dynasty, and Wu Sangui followed Zu Dabi as a guerrilla general to participate in the counterinsurgency.

The Liao soldiers and Kong Youde's troops first fought at Shahe and defeated each other; advanced to Baima, the two sides fought a big battle, Kong Youde was outnumbered, and was forced to retreat and retreat to Dengzhou. The Liao soldiers took advantage of the victory and advanced, and the troops approached the city of Dengzhou, and quickly surrounded the whole city.

At the beginning, Kong Youde sent troops out of the city to fight, trying to break the siege of the Ming army, Kong Youde organized two consecutive breakouts, but they were all driven back to the city. Deputy Marshal Li Jiucheng was unfortunately shot and killed, and many soldiers were also lost, and the situation of the rebels became more and more difficult. Zu Dabi and Jin Guoqi commanded the Ming army to besiege them tightly, wanting to trap them in the city.

The Ming army had been besieging the city for three months, the morale in the city was low, and he gradually lost confidence in whether he could hold on, so Kong Youde decided to organize another large-scale breakthrough and fight to the death in order to find a way out. Unexpectedly, a soldier named Hong Chengxun escaped from the city by night, surrendered to the Ming army, and revealed that Kong Youde would break through from the west gate of the city on the night of three days.

When Jin Guoqi, the chief military officer, received this important information, he hurriedly made a plan with Gao Qiqian, the supervising army, and other important generals, and set up an ambush, while the officers and men of the rest of the battalions put on armor and mounted their horses to prepare, and transferred 300 firearms to ambush in front of the mountain to bombard Kong Youde's brigade.

On the third day, at dawn, Kong Youde quietly led the army out of the city, counting seven or eight thousand horse infantry, divided into three units to break through. The officers and troops also ambushed in three ways, preparing to meet the attack, Jin Guoqi and Gao Qiqian led the deputy generals below, to the general of Qian, and more than 40 generals and officers of the general and general as the main force to block the key points of Kong soldiers out of the city. Wu Sangui was also among these many generals and participated in the ambush of Kong soldiers.

Kong Youde had no idea that the breakout plan had been leaked, and the Ming army had made preparations for encirclement and suppression. He led his troops out of the city with confidence and boldness, and marched to the ambush circle of Jin Guoqi's troops, and the Ming army immediately waved a red flag to meet the battle and intercept the fight. Suddenly, the sound of shouting and killing resounded in the morning sky of dawn, and the sound of guns and cannons was loud at the same time, shaking the earth and shaking.

As soon as Jin Guoqi's troops engaged, Zu Dabi led his troops to gallop from the southeast to respond. The Kong army could not resist the enemy who had been prepared on all sides and could not break through, so they turned their horses and retreated into the city. The Ming army chased to the city and tried to break the city in one fell swoop, but the city was raining down on the cannon and stone, and it was impossible to get close to the city. Jin Guoqi had no choice but to give an order, raise the number to collect the troops and return to the camp.

On the night of the defeat and return to the city, Kong Youde decided to escape from the sea, led the remaining troops and the families of the whole army, a total of more than 10,000 people, divided into hundreds of boats, sailed Liaodong, and defected to Houjin. Dengzhou was already an empty city, and it was soon occupied by the Ming army, and the battle of Guanning to aid Shandong, which lasted nearly a year, ended like this. Among the hundreds of generals, Wu Sangui is the least qualified one, and his status is not obvious.

Wu Sangui is a very diligent person, in addition to practicing martial arts, he is also diligent in reading and learning literature, he gets up every day when the rooster crows, and only goes to bed in the middle of the night to rest, and there is no laziness all day long. He insisted on reading, constantly absorbing ideological nourishment from the ancients, and germinating and establishing his own ambitions from them. He once read "The Book of Han", and there are two sentences in it that deeply touched his heart, these two sentences said: "An official should be regarded as a ruling Jinwu, and a wife should be Yin Lihua." It means that an official should be an official next to the emperor, and marrying a wife should get a beauty like Yin Lihua in the Han Dynasty.

In the era of feudalism, the pursuit was nothing more than a famous eunuch and a peerless beauty. He struggled all his life to achieve this goal, and later he really achieved fame and got everything he wanted, but this idea became the bane of his own destruction.

Wu Sangui made rapid progress in the path of eunuchs, and in the eighth year of Chongzhen, he was promoted to the general of the right battalion of the forward; in September of the eleventh year of Chongzhen, he was already the deputy general of the right battalion of the forward. In less than eight years, Wu Sangui has gone from a guerrilla to a general and a deputy general, and the speed of his promotion is still quite fast. He still has one step to ascend to the throne of the chief military officer, which is within easy reach for him. Wu Sangui is moving towards the pinnacle of power at a rapid pace, step by step.

When Wu Sangui rose, the huge Ming Dynasty was in the midst of rapid collapse, and an armed struggle of peasants against grain broke out in Chengcheng County, Shaanxi, which was like a spark and ignited the fire of the peasant war at the end of the Ming Dynasty. In the early years of Chongzhen, the world was full of heroes, and the peasant rebel armies of all walks of life had penetrated into the hinterland of the Central Plains, and they were active in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan, Sichuan, Hubei and other provinces, and launched a fierce attack on the Ming Dynasty.

Later, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, who later became the main leaders of the peasant rebel army in the late Ming Dynasty, also participated in the uprising at this time, and developed rapidly in the struggle. The great peasant uprising throughout the country has become a prairie fire, and the Ming Dynasty is struggling to cope with it, and its soldiers are exhausted and extinguish one place, and then rise up again; one group runs away, and another group appears in front of the Ming soldiers, and the Ming soldiers are unable to defend against it, and they cannot win the battle. The Ming Dynasty was dragged on by a massive peasant uprising, and it was like a long-ailing giant, approaching the sad point of exhaustion and shaking.

Outside the Shanhai Pass, the newly established Manchu aristocratic regime, after Nurhachi opened the foundation and established the industry, Huang Taiji made bold changes and became unprecedentedly powerful. Huang Taiji officially took the throne in Shenyang in the ninth year of Chongzhen, changed the name of the country to the Qing Dynasty, and the weather was new. He and his brothers, nephews, and military generals were more confident than ever in seizing power in the country. The Ming Dynasty only relied on the Ningjin defense line, and was still struggling, barely maintaining the endgame in western Liao.

However, a large number of generals and commanders who had fought fiercely against the Qing army on both sides of the Liao River and in this corridor and withstood its attack, such as Yang Hao, Jun Song, Yuan Yingtai, Xiong Tingbi, Wang Huazhen, Yuan Chonghuan, Sun Chengzong, Man Gui, Zhao Shujiao, He Kegang, Mao Wenlong, etc., disappeared in an instant like meteors in the night sky. They either died in battle, or they were frustrated by officialdom and ostracized, and most of them died in party struggles, becoming victims of the dark political struggle in the late Ming Dynasty. Wu Sangui was bound by fate, supported the endgame, and suffered the same hardships, and his political and military position in the ruling group of the Ming Dynasty became increasingly prominent, and finally he played the main role in the last scene of Liaoxi.

In the twelfth year of Chongzhen, the opportunity for promotion came to him again, and the good news came that he was appointed as the chief soldier of the Ningyuan regiment. In the five years he was still in Chongzhen, he was only a guerrilla, and in the following six years, he was quickly promoted from guerrilla to general, then to deputy general, and from deputy general to general soldier, with only four years apart. This promotion speed should be quite fast.

Since the war of the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially after the war developed to Liaoxi, Ningyuan has become a major military town of the Ming Dynasty to defend against the Qing soldiers, and it is an important part of the Ningjin defense line with Jinzhou. First, Yuan Chonghuan and Sun Chengzong led to build Ningyuan, and won great victories twice, inflicting heavy losses on the Qing soldiers. Yuan Chonghuan died unjustly, and Zu Dashou succeeded him to guard here, and then transferred to Jinzhou to garrison. Wu Sangui followed Yuan Chonghuan and Zu Dashou and stationed in Ningyuan, which has shown the court's reliance on Wu Sangui. The eight cities outside the Guan, with Jinzhou and Ningyuan are the most important, and the officials of the supervising army, the governor, and the Taoist are all set up in this city, and Wu Sangui is stationed here as a general military officer, which also improves his political status.

Wu Sangui was promoted to the important post of chief military officer and began to rank among the feudal officials and prominent officials of the imperial court, which laid a political foundation for his future prosperity. Wu Sangui was talented, which was widely praised among his contemporaries and appreciated in the imperial court. People say that he is talented, handsome, intelligent and natural, brave champion of the three armies, unmatched by the side marshal, his courage makes Yixia intimidating, can be called a general with both wisdom and bravery.

Even the people of the Qing Dynasty admitted that among the Ming border generals, only Wu Sangui dared to fight, and Wu Sangui was really a general, not comparable to mediocre people. He relied on his personal talent to gain more and more fame and fortune for himself, so no matter who praised him, it was not all groundless praise.