Just when Zhu Lunkui and Ma Shiying were shocked by Ma Cheng's amazing record, Ma Cheng outside the city was leading the soldiers to fight to the death.

This final battle was later called the Battle of Yingtian, and Ma Cheng's descendants listed this battle as one of the three major examples of winning more with less in ancient and modern China with the Battle of Chibi and the Battle of Weishui.

Although the descendants of later generations are a little exaggerated in order to boast about their ancestors, the Battle of Yingtian commanded by Ma Cheng does have the ability to compete with the Battle of Chibi and the Battle of Weishui. The Battle of Chibi defeated the invincible Cao Cao, allowing Sun Quan's Jiangdong group and Liu Bei's Dongzhou group to survive. The Eastern Jin Dynasty defeated the Former Qin Dynasty in the Battle of Weishui, and also effectively curbed the southward invasion of the northern ethnic minorities, allowing the Eastern Jin Dynasty to settle in the south of the Yangtze River for a hundred years.

Similarly, the Battle of Yingtian was similar, Ma Cheng defeated the Manchu army that went south, defeated the myth of the invincibility of the Manchus, and stopped the spearhead of the Manchu attack on the south bank of the Yangtze River for the first time. In this way, the Taihu Lake Basin, the richest in China, did not fall into the hands of the Manchus, and at the same time prepared the economic conditions for the future Northern Expedition.

No matter how the future generations blow, but Ma Cheng, as the party concerned, is helpless in his heart. By this time, the battle had been completely out of his control, and he had only brought out 15,000 men, but he had to face an army of 400,000 from the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

Therefore, Ma Cheng's strategy when he went out of the city was chaos, and the Ming army had complete grassroots officers and ordinary soldiers had received basic education, so they knew exactly what they should do. Even if the formation is broken up in battle, it can quickly form small teams ranging from hundreds to thousands of people under the organization of grassroots officers.

On the other hand, the Manchu Qing Dynasty was different, in this era the scholars were still a scarce resource, and the army was illiterate except for a few bookstores, and they did not know why they were fighting. If the war went well, it would have been fine, but in the face of such an unclear melee, the Manchu army completely lost its organizational power.

An unorganized army is a scattered sand, and although it outnumbered the Ming army by twenty times, it did not pose any threat. The Qing army is now at the end of its strength, but the problem encountered by Ma Cheng is not from the Qing army, but from the physical strength of the soldiers in his own army.

Ma Cheng's Ming army has been fighting for 12 hours in a row since last night in Taipingmen last night, and after a whole day of high-intensity combat today, it has no time to rest at all, and it is completely supported by its strong will. However, people's energy is limited, and if they do not rest, it will cause irreparable losses to the human body.

Just when Ma Cheng felt that he couldn't support it, the lifesaver came. The 35,000 reinforcements led by Ma Bao and Zhang Guozhu came.

Seeing the arrival of reinforcements in the city, Ma Cheng was very happy, leaned up and asked, "How many people have you brought?" ”

Ma Bao and Zhang Guozhu clasped their fists and replied: "Lord Junmen, 15,000 people are here from Jubaomen, and 20,000 people are here from Zhengyangmen!" It's all a new force! ”

Ma Cheng was very happy to hear this good news, although the army in Nancheng had also gone through yesterday's hard fighting, but after all, today was a day off during the day, and having them join could better ensure the victory of his side.

"Good! Ma Bao, you take your people to follow Lao Tzu, and now there is the last one of the four camps left in Beiyu, you follow Lao Tzu to Dasheng Pass! Zhang Guozhu, you take your people to turn around and clear the organized Beiyu, remember to let them mess up, don't let them turn around! ”

Ma Cheng knew that his number was small, and the reinforcements brought by Ma Bao were less than 50,000, but although the Qing army suffered heavy losses, there were still hundreds of thousands of people, and it would be difficult to let the sober Qing army generals react. So Ma Cheng asked Zhang Guozhu to lead his troops to continue to disrupt the battlefield and defeat themselves with the Qing army.

Zhang Guozhu hugged his fists and left after hearing it clearly, Ma Cheng looked at the sky, at this time the sun was slanting westward, and it was almost dark. Ma Cheng said to Xu Dahu and Gu Changwei beside him: "You two have made great contributions today, now that the reinforcements are coming, you can lead your subordinates into the city to rest!" ”

There are still more than 8,000 of the 15,000 people brought out by Ma Cheng, these people have been fighting all day and are sleepy and tired, and they will be injured if they continue to fight, these people can survive such a tragic battle, and they will be a rare strength in Ma Cheng's hands in the future. Ma Cheng didn't want his men to suffer any more losses, so he wanted to let them go back to the city to rest.

Gu Changwei asked worriedly, "My lord, what about you when we enter the city?" ”

Ma Cheng smiled and said, "Don't worry, the governor still insists!" It's saying that there is still Ma Bao here, don't worry! Go into the city and have a good rest, there are still many battles waiting for you in the future! ”

Gu Changwei and the others saw that Ma Cheng had made up his mind, so they had no choice but to take the remaining more than 8,000 people into the city to rest.

Ma Cheng's personal soldiers were originally five hundred, but after this whole day of bloody fighting, there were less than three hundred left, and these people would never enter the city, so Ma Cheng had no choice but to take them to continue fighting.

Dashengguan is twenty miles away from Nanjing and is the last large camp of the Qing army on the south bank of the Yangtze River. Dasheng Pass was formerly known as Dacheng Port. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the warlords were fighting, and Zhu Yuanzhang set up an ambush here to defeat the attack of Chen Youliang's hundreds of thousands of troops, so he changed the name to Dashenggang and set up a pass here, which was later Dashengguan. The terrain here is very dangerous, and it has been Nanjing's river defense fortress and transit port since ancient times.

Nikan, the temporary commander of the Qing army, came here with the last few hundred taels of white flags to escort Duoduo's body, and saw the fire of the camp on General Mountain in the distance, the Qing army did not dare to delay, and quickly found more than a dozen boats to prepare to cross the river.

There is the Zuo Liangyu fleet brought by Azig from Wuchang in Dasheng Pass, although the Qing army on the shore was defeated, but the Qing army's Yangtze River Naval Division did not have any losses.

This fleet was under the management of the commander-in-chief Tian Xiong, who saw the Qing army retreating to the Great Victory Pass in disarray, and knew that it must be the defeat of the front. Tian Xiong is different from other generals who surrendered, when Zhu Yousong absconded to Wuhu, it was Tian Xiong and Ma Degong who captured Zhu Yousong and handed him over to the Qing army to receive a reward.

Tian Xiong also knew that he would not end well in the hands of the Ming army, and now he was very anxious to see the defeat of the Qing army, and asked Nikan: "Lord Baylor, what should I do now?" ”

Nikan and the others are now in a hurry to flee for their lives, and they can take care of these new annexes, Nikan said impatiently: "You can do it yourself, you really can't go back to Wuchang!" After Nikan finished speaking, regardless of Tian Xiong and other Han army generals, he got on the boat to escort Duoduo's body across the river and returned to Pukou to the north.

Tian Xiong looked at Nikan and the others who were far away and sighed, there was no way, it seemed that he could only go back to Wuchang. At this time, Wuchang was still in the hands of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and it was one of the few strongholds on the south bank of the Yangtze River.

As soon as Tian Xiong's Yangtze River Naval Division left, the Ming army led by Ma Cheng on the shore was killed. The Qing army was already infected by the atmosphere of defeat, although it won a great victory

There were more than 30,000 troops in the camp, but more than 10,000 people in the face of the Ming army did not dare to resist and retreated to the Yangtze River.

However, at this time, the water division was withdrawn, and the rout troops who retreated from other battalions, plus the 30,000 troops of the Dashengguan battalion, a total of nearly 100,000 people were blocked to the edge of the Yangtze River.

Originally, according to Ma Bao's intentions, these guys were driven into the Yangtze River to drown them, but Ma Cheng disagreed with Ma Bao's point of view, because Ma Cheng wanted to recruit them.

Now the defeat of the Manchu Qing in Jiangnan is a foregone conclusion, but now Jiujiang and Wuchang and other provinces along the Yangtze River are still in the hands of the Qing army. If Ma Cheng wanted to cross the river and go on a northern expedition, he had to eradicate these strongholds on the south bank of the Yangtze River one by one. Now the army that Ma Cheng can use in his hands is less than 200,000, and this still includes those people, which is of course enough to defend Nanjing, but if you want to deal with the Manchu Qing, there are some insufficient troops.

Now most of the 100,000 people on the shore are the new annexed troops of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, although the combat effectiveness is not very good, but after the selection of Azig and Duoduo, most of them are strong men, these guys are trained to be a good army, and they also save Ma Cheng the hard work of recruiting troops.

Therefore, Ma Cheng did not agree with Ma Bao's opinion of killing them all, but sent a hundred households to let him recruit these lost and depressed Qing troops.

At this time, the 100,000 Qing army had been driven to a narrow strip of land on the bank of the Yangtze River that was five miles long and only two miles wide.

The hundred households who were sent to surrender tidied up their clothes, swaggered in front of the Qing army, and shouted in an official dialect with a Yungui accent: "You guys, if you want to live, call out an official!" ”

This hundred households are Ma Cheng's personal soldiers, from Anshun, Guizhou, and no one can understand a mouthful of Guizhou official dialect. Most of the Qing troops on the opposite side were Wuchang people, and if it was the official language of Nanzhili, they could still hear seven or eight points, but Guizhou was too far away from Wuchang, and no one understood.

The hundred households saw that no one echoed their words, so he angrily asked the Ming army behind him to pull a cannon and scolded: "If you don't speak, you will open the cannon!" ”

The Qing army had seen the power of the Ming army's artillery, and although they couldn't understand what the other side was saying, they could still understand the actual actions. A Qing guerrilla stood up and asked tremblingly: "This official, we don't understand what you say!" ”

At this time, the hundred households knew that the problem was themselves, and they had no choice but to turn around and find a Ming soldier from Nanzhili and ask him to be the translator.

After translating the guerrillas, they learned that the Ming army wanted to recruit them, and when they learned that they didn't have to die, the Qing army breathed a sigh of relief, and they knelt on the ground and begged for their lives.

Seeing that the Qing army was kneeling and surrendering to the hundred households, he was very satisfied, and said to the Qing army guerrillas: "Surrender is simple, but my military lord has one condition, that is, to hand over the northern captives and Tartars in your army!" ”

This condition was easy, and soon the few remaining Manchurians and Mongols in the Qing army were arrested, and even those Han military banners who spoke the official dialect of Liaodong were also arrested.

The hundred households looked at the thousands of Tartars kneeling on the ground, nodded with satisfaction, and then asked the soldiers behind him to come out and tie up these guys. Originally, according to Ma Bao's intention, these guys were killed, but Ma Cheng wanted to keep these genuine Tartars, maybe it would have a greater role in the future.