Half a year ago, when Yang Sichang, the first assistant of the cabinet, was supervising the Central Plains, he adopted the encirclement and suppression plan of "four squares and six corners, and ten sides of the net", and mobilized the army of the nine sides to Luoyang, Henan, in an attempt to eliminate Li Zicheng in one fell swoop.

He was accompanied by Wang Wannian, the chief soldier of Shanxi, the general soldier of Datong, the general soldier of Xuanfu, Hu Dawei, the governor of Baoding, Chen Yongfu, the chief soldier of Henan, Fang Guoan, Yang Dezheng, and other 180,000 officers and soldiers of the Central Plains, known as 400,000, who rushed to the aid of Luoyang.

After Yang Sichang arrived at the camp in Luoyang, Henan, he actively launched deployments to implement the great plan of encircling and suppressing Li Zicheng.

Li Zicheng's army fought against it several times, all of which were defeated by officers and soldiers, and in the face of the Xuanda people who fought with the Eight Banners Army many times, the army was defeated and retreated.

Yang Sichang reported the victory: 3,620 (guó) were beheaded, the dead who fell into the rock valley were not counted, and Li Zicheng's military advisor Gu Junen was captured and taken to Luoyang.

Emperor Chongzhen was overjoyed when he heard the news, not only personally condoled Yang Sichang, but also crowned him as the crown prince and teacher, so that he could continue to work hard and wipe out the Li thief in one fell swoop! (The Third Division of the East Palace and the Third Young Master of the East Palace are honorary positions, and they have simply become high-level virtual titles, and they are not responsible for teaching the prince.) ）

In order to prevent being served by the army of officers and soldiers, Li Zicheng ordered the soldiers to divide the way, wanting to consume and drag Yang Sichang to death.

Li Zicheng calculated in his heart that Zong Long, the superintendent of the imperial court more than half a year ago, was consumed to death in this way, and hundreds of thousands of troops from the imperial court were gathered in Henan, and the grain and grass consumed must be huge.

Now Shandong, Henan, North Zhili and other places are in drought, locusts cover the sun, and there is a great hunger in winter, where do you get so much grain and grass?

Yang Sichang's purpose is to completely exterminate the righteous army, and he will definitely chase and fight hard and will not retreat easily, and he can drag it out day by day, until he drags them to death!

After careful consideration, he decided to take a risk and use the general Liu Zongmin to lead an army of 50,000 to the west to attract officers and soldiers in Shaanxi, while he himself led the army west to attack Fengyang Mansion.

After several years of development, Fengyang Mansion has become very prosperous, there are more and more businessmen coming and going to Fengyang, and the lives of the people are becoming more and more stable, solving the problem of food and clothing, and its prosperity is second only to Nanzhili Ying Tianfu.

The most important thing is that Li Zicheng heard that a large amount of grain has been hoarded in various official warehouses in Fengyang Mansion, and if he can take it down and burn the imperial tomb of the old Zhu family again, it will definitely play a great role in the development of the righteous army.

Liu Zongmin marched and demonstrated in Shaanxi under the banner of King Chuang, and after sweeping a few cities, he slipped away and disappeared again, which made Yang Sichang furious.

As soon as he reported the good news, he was slapped in the face by the thieves, and Yang Sichang was deeply humiliated, so he used this matter to remove the trilateral governor Sun Chuanting from his post and take the right to the imperial history of Wang Qiao of Shaanxi.

Sun Chuanting's ruthless killing of the gentry and generals who occupied the military camp in Shaanxi aroused a strong backlash from the gentry class, and they all threw money at the Beijing division to support their relations, hoping that the imperial court would get rid of Sun Chuanting.

Sun Chuanting was unexpectedly implicated, but no one in the court spoke for him, in order to worry about Sun Chuanting's defection to Li Zicheng, an official actually proposed to put Sun Chuanting in prison and lock him up, and in the end, it was Feng Ying, the secretary of the Criminal Department, who guaranteed his life, and Sun Chuanting would not defect to the enemy, so he was spared from prison.

After Wang Qiaonian, the new governor of the three sides, took office, the first major thing he did in Shaanxi was to dig up Li Zicheng's ancestral grave and break his feng shui, and then ordered He Renlong to lead more than 30,000 soldiers in Shaanxi to join the army to fight for the army.

However, the main force of the Chuang army suddenly appeared near Xincai County in southern Henan, and Li Zicheng attacked Yingzhou in Fengyang Prefecture with all his elite, and attacked the city for five days and nights before conquering Yingzhou.

When Li Zicheng was preparing to expand the results of the battle and attack Shouzhou, the Tianwu soldiers stationed in Fengyang rushed in, blocked the pace of the intruding army, and drove them back.

Zhu Cihong felt very helpless about Li Zicheng's stupid behavior, but he had no intention of sending troops into Henan to quell the rebellion, but only mobilized a large army to change defenses, and took turns to go to Fengyang Mansion to find Li Zicheng to practice and polish the army through actual combat.

Except for the Tianwu Army and half of the Jingwu Army, the other parties basically have no actual combat experience, and the opportunity is rare.

Of course, wars will kill people, but these are inevitable, and if you don't practice your killing skills, when the real Northern Expedition comes, more people will die.

Zhu Cihong also wanted to borrow Li Zicheng's hand to clean up the provinces north of the Yangtze River, and it was best to clear all the gentry officials, landlords, Fu Wang, Zhou Wang, Yi Wang and other clans that were waiting for death with one vote.

The arable land in Henan Province alone accounted for more than 10% of the imperial family, and the rest of the land was 80% in the hands of gentry officials and large landlords.

It is inconvenient for the imperial court to rob openly, Li Zicheng can!

Li Zicheng robbed the landlord, and Zhu Cihong robbed Li Zicheng again, which is much simpler than laundering money.

Zhu Cihong was not worried about Li Zicheng, he was most worried about the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which had already occupied the entire territory of Korea, and heard that the Manchu Tartars had been equipped with universal firearms on a large scale.

Dolgon ordered the newly expanded Eight Banners Army to be proficient in the use of firearms, and in order to show his resolve, he killed two Eight Banners Belle on the spot who could not be turned into disobedience by the laws of their ancestors.

Dolgon directly copied the model of the Tianwu Army, trained the firearms army hard, and even the line array was organized.

When Dolgon went to Korea, he used a newly formed firearms army, and went all the way to Seoul, the capital of Korea, which was faster than the last time Huang Taiji went to Korea, and the Korean king Li Liang did not even have a chance to escape.

The Manchus made some of their own firearms, some of them were bought from the Dutch and Portuguese, and Dolgon sent envoys to Taiwan and Macao to place orders, and the Dutch and Portuguese shipped the firearms to Liaodong through Japan.

Although a few years ago, the Tokugawa shogunate imposed a policy of seclusion, explicitly prohibiting Japanese from leaving the country and prohibiting them from returning to China, but also stipulated that trade relations with foreign countries were only allowed in Nagasaki, and only to China and the Netherlands.

In addition, certain local feudal lords traded with specific countries, including the Tsushima clan's clan and Korea, and the Satsuma clan's Shimazu clan and the Ryukyu kingdom, making it difficult for the Manchus to buy flintlock firearms.

However, this trade route was soon discovered by overseas Jinyiwei and immediately reported to Nanjing.

Zhu Cihong sent a letter of state to Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, asking his government to cut off the trade routes with the Dutch and the Manchus.

Since the Korean War of the Wanli Dynasty, the Japanese were still afraid of the Ming Dynasty, and Tokugawa Iemitsu, who had just experienced the Shimabara Rebellion, did not accept the attitude in Zhu Cihong's letter, but still complied.

The Tokugawa family took advantage of the small advantage, and while cutting off trade, they also deducted the last order of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and took thousands of fresh firecrackers for nothing.

Tokugawa Iemitsu also wrote a letter to send an envoy to Nanjing, saying that he wanted the Ming Dynasty to give 108,000 yuan of silver, which was regarded as a benefit fee.

Zhu Cihong wanted to ignore this bastard, and after thinking for a while, he also asked people to prepare a gift for the Japanese envoy to take back, the gift was very ordinary, but full of commemorative significance, it was a delicate small box, which contained a whole shape of Mini bomb.

Zhu Cihong was worried that Tokugawa Iemitsu's bastard would not understand the meaning of the gift, so he asked the ministers and even the whole of Japan to guess that it would not be good if a set of Wading rifles (Mini guns) were copied by a Japanese who had a good life with real Mini bullets.

Dolgon was furious when he learned that Japan had not only cut off the trade routes of Zhongxing in the Qing Dynasty, but also detained the goods without permission.

After moving the capital to Seoul and stabilizing, Dolgon prepared to lead the Eight Banners Army to start a new round of conquest, targeting Japan!