In the morning light, several carrier pigeons flew out of the city. A brief intel was brought from the besieged city.

"Food is running out, cannibalism is manibal!"

The simple six words reveal Jingnan's embarrassment. It also speaks to the state of the people in the city today.

But where the defenders hold on to the city, people cannibalism is always unavoidable. And cannibalism is often the beginning of the fall of a city. It is a symbol of the desperate situation of people in the city.

However, all this did not have any effect on the Ming army outside the city. Compared to the starving defenders in the city, they had enough food to carry out the siege for a long time.

In the morning, in the one-man deep trench, when the soldiers were smoking cigarettes and laughing, Li Dingguo slowly walked along the trench to the front line, and was in the trench, his eyes staring at Jingnan City.

In front of him to his left is the fortress of the Qing army, the stone fortress is still intact, it seems that in the past few months, the artillery of the Ming army has suddenly run out of ammunition, and it can no longer destroy the fortress as in the past.

In fact, all this is because of Li Dingguo's order - the troops are forbidden to take the initiative to attack the Qing army, unless the Qing army counterattacks, the departments are not allowed to attack.

Violators, military law!

Why was this order given?

As a commander, Li Dingguo certainly knew that as long as he wanted, he could capture Jingnan at any time, but then what?

"Father, the brothers have been waiting for months, and they are getting a little impatient!"

Thinking about what he saw along the way, Li Sixing looked at his father and reminded.

"It's taken so long, staying in the trenches all day, they can't see how to rush out now, father, the child dares to guarantee that as long as you give an order, they can take Jingnan with just one charge,"

For the siege of the Ming army, Li Sixing can be said to be very confident, after all, no matter how strong the fortress is, it can't resist the siege artillery, as long as the siege cannon is used to collapse the city wall, the rest is nothing more than a bayonet charge.

No big deal!

The city in front of you is already ripe peaches, waiting to be picked.

However, because there was no order, everyone could only look at the ripe peach, and could not act rashly.

"Now the big guy can think about taking this place down all day long, and if he waits like this, I'm afraid the big guy will be impatient."

It's not just impatience. It can even be said that there are many complaints. After all, everyone knows that this may be their last chance to achieve military merit in their lives.

If you want to get military merits, you must besiege the city, and if you don't besiege the city, everything is utopian. For the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty, the most important thing is military merit, which can not only glorify the ancestors, but more importantly, it can bring real benefits.

But now that they are besieging but not attacking, they feel that the chances of obtaining military merit are becoming more and more slim. That's why they complain about it. even expressed his dissatisfaction with King Jin through various channels.

Of course, Li Dingguo is very clear about all this. It's just that he's always turned a blind eye. He didn't care what the outside world judged him, nor did he care what the outside world thought about the siege, he was just there stubbornly carrying out the battle according to his own ideas.

Of course, this stubbornness is due to the support of His Majesty the Emperor. The code is just the pressure of the Governor's Office of the Five Armies, and I am afraid that it is not something he can bear, not to mention that the current pressure is from all walks of life.

"The city is running out of food!"

Li Dingguo did not give any answer to his son's suggestion, just like in the past. The whole person seemed very calm. Just said silently.

"Many people have run out of food, do you know what "cannibalism" is? ”

Father's rhetorical question made Li Sixing stunned, and he thought of a place.

"Xinhui ......"

When he heard the place "Xinhui" from Li Sixing's mouth, Li Dingguo said silently.

When his father attacked Xinhui, the Qing prisoners repeatedly expelled the people as "cannon fodder", and his father couldn't bear to hurt the people, so he had to give up the attack again and again. Moreover, the Xinhui Qing army trumpeted the consequences of the loss of the city - once it was lost, the Qing court would definitely send troops to counterattack, and there would be an extinctional massacre on the day the city was recaptured, because it was not uncommon for the Qing soldiers to slaughter the city at every turn, so the people who didn't care about who was the emperor naturally stood on the side of the Qing army and fully supported them to defend the city, so they were willing to be driven ......"

Recalling the battle of Xinhui that year, Li Dingguo's heart was full of helplessness, the "battle of Xinhui" was the thing he regretted the most in his life, if he could have been more decisive at that time, regardless of the casualties of the people, how could there have been a fiasco later?

"The Qing captives are tyrannical, the people and gods are angry, and the people are afraid of their slaughter and help them defend the city, it is really very ignorant, and the people know that the father has the people in his heart, and even if the city is broken, he will not kill them, so that the father's benevolence is used by the captives, not the father's "woman's benevolence", but the tyranny of the Qing, and the people are ignorant......"

Li Sixing hurriedly explained.

For more than 20 years, in the Ming army's Lu Shi School, the deduction and research of the "Battle of Xinhui" have never stopped, after all, it was before the "Northern Expedition of King Fujian", which was the moment when the Ming Dynasty was closest to Zhongxing, but for various reasons, not only failed to recover the southeast, but made Li Dingguo exhaust his vitality and almost led to the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

"The people are foolish ......"

Nodding silently, Li Dingguo stared at Jingnan City in front of him, and the fields leading to Jingnan were full of corn. When the corn matures, it will become the ration of the Qing army.

There are so many people in the city, and it is certainly not enough to withhold such a small amount of food. This food is just a drop in the bucket.

"Isn't it the people who are ignorant,"

Li Sixing said indignantly.

"After my father besieged Xinhui City for three months, there was no more food and grass in Xinhui City. If it weren't for the willingness of the people to drive him, how could my father have besieged him for a long time, causing his troops to suffer a massive plague......"

Of course, even Li Sixing would not say that Li Dingguo wanted to expect Zheng Chenggong's army to join him in Xinhui as agreed, but Zheng Chenggong repeatedly delayed the time to send troops, and the Qing court had already sent the Eight Banners army south, united with the Han army of Shang Kexi, the king of Pingnan, and Geng Jimao, the king of Jingnan, to lie dormant in Sanshui, Guangdong, waiting for an opportunity to support Xinhui.

After all, Zheng Chenggong is dead, but his achievements are high. Therefore, although people mention Xinhui and have a lot of criticism about its performance in the battle of Xinhui, it is often only a passing mention, and no one wants to delve into it.

At that time, there was no food in the city, and the Xinhui Qing army decided to let the people in the city, each family contribute one person as "human rations". In the process of implementation, many so-called martyrs' women emerged to voluntarily climb into the oil pot for their husbands and families. According to the record of "Xinhui County Chronicle", there is a daughter-in-law surnamed Mo who depends on her mother-in-law, and the guard is about to kill her mother-in-law, and Mo kowtows to ask for her mother-in-law to die, and the guard will say: "What a good daughter-in-law who is filial!" He agreed to her request and cooked Mohs and ate it. Another woman surnamed Li, whose husband was captured by the guards and was about to be killed, Li cried and said, "My husband has no son, and if I kill him, I will have no descendants of his family, and even if I live, what is the use of me?" Please eat me! The guard also agreed, cooked Lee, and gave her bones to her husband to take home for burial. There was also a poor scholar surnamed Liang who was to be cooked, and his ten-year-old daughter asked to be replaced, and the guard was moved and released the father and daughter together. In the past few months, the Qing army in Xinhui has eaten more than 10,000 people. However, after the siege of the city was lifted in December of that year, the remaining people felt "safe", so not many people hated the "cannibalism" of the Qing army. ”

When mentioning the "Battle of Xinhui", the "righteous deeds" of the martyrs' women, Li Sixing's face was full of ridicule.

In fact, after the Xingqian, the attitude of the imperial court in Xinhui was also this attitude, and the Ming Dynasty either set up a "traitor monument" or a "martyr's fang", but only set up a "foolish monument" in Xinhui, which recorded the "foolish deeds" of the people of Xinhui that year, and recorded the ugliness of those who sacrificed their families to the Qing army as rations and relieved the siege at that time......

Even for this reason, no new member has received the title of "Justice of the Peace" so far. The current Ming Dynasty will not only remember the loyalty and righteousness of the people, but also will not forget the traitors, let alone how ignorant those "foolish people" are.

"The people are suffering, and the people are suffering!"

Compared with his son's indignation against the people of Xinhui, Li Dingguo, who lost most of the main force in Xinhui due to the epidemic of the plague, seemed very calm. He was able to understand what the people of the city were doing.

"Actually, for so many years, sometimes, as a father, I always think of Xinhui."

Staring at Jingnan City in the distance, Li Dingguo said slowly.

"The Father's Association thinks that if the Father ignores the people and storms the Xinhui, what will be the result? Will fewer people die? In fact, after besieging the city for three months, there were not a few people who died indirectly at the hands of their fathers, and tens of thousands of people either starved to death or were eaten by the Qing army......

As he grew older, Li Dingguo became more and more fond of reminiscing about the past, perhaps because he was old, or because Jingnan reminded him of the past.

"Father, in fact, back then, even if he won Xinhui, King Zheng did not send troops, I am afraid that my father would not be able to support it alone......"

Looking at his father who was in deep thought, Li Sixing said truthfully.

"Even when King Zheng went on the Northern Expedition, it was because the main force of the Qing army was in the southwest, so King Zheng was able to directly smash Huanglong and seize Jiangnan, and later His Majesty annihilated 100,000 troops in Jiangbei, and since then, the power of the Qing captives has taken a sharp turn ......"

The success of King Zheng's Northern Expedition was both inevitable and accidental, it must be because of the emptiness in the south of the Yangtze River, the main force of the Qing army in the southwest, and as for the accident, I am afraid that in the Battle of Suqian, His Majesty led the Xinlian Loyal Army to turn the tide and annihilate the 100,000 troops of Dasu.

Since then, the Qing army can no longer form an advantage over the Ming army, and the Qing army, which was once unstoppable, was under the containment and attack of the Ming army from all walks of life, but the rivers are declining.

"You see, the situation here now is actually similar to that of the past."

Turning his head to look at his son, Li Dingguo said.

"Now our main force is staring at the Qingyu chieftain, there are more than 200,000 defenders in Jingnan, if we want to eat it in one bite, we will definitely be supported, and when our main force is staring here, in the mountains in the south, there are still more than 100,000 garrisons in the Qingyu, Si Xing, you look at the situation, is it similar to that year, if the two Qingyu converge, I am afraid our life will not be easy......"

History is always like this, it will always repeat the past inadvertently, and now, history is staged here again, but the role has changed, the Ming Dynasty, which was almost at the end of the road, after the "reversal", forced the Manchu Qing to the point of exhaustion, but, compared to the Ming Dynasty, the Manchu Qing Dynasty now does not even have a chance to turn around.

After all, their hearts are in ...... In Jingnan!

Suddenly, as if he had figured out everything, Li Sixing looked at his father in surprise, he knew why his father wanted to besiege Jingnan for a long time, and why his father wanted to besiege but not attack.

Because of the human heart!

Where is the human heart?

The heart of man is in the heart of man!

Without people, everything would be gone.

Just like when the Qing captives entered the Western Regions, they learned the lessons of the Ming Dynasty, and treated the locals, they did not surrender or accept surrender, and directly killed them, perhaps the massacre of the local people made them unable to collect taxes and grain, but they fundamentally avoided the possibility of rebellion among the local people.

If everyone has been killed, how can they make trouble again?

Li Sixing thought of the natives he met along the way, there used to be millions of natives living here, but now, there were only tens of thousands of natives here at most, and those natives were either killed, plundered into slavery, or fled to a foreign land. Of course, even if the Ming army is here now, it is impossible for those fugitives to come back, and the imperial court will not agree to their return, after all, the land, mountains and rivers here will be distributed to the immigrants of the Ming Dynasty, and as for the local people, no one will care about their life or death.

Sometimes, the Ming also needs to learn from the Qing Dynasty, of course, this kind of learning cannot be direct learning, it should be indirect.

Now, Father is emulating them.

"Food is running out, cannibalism is manibal!"

The simple six words reveal Jingnan's embarrassment. It also made Li Sixing understand that maybe in a few months, at most, when winter comes, these six words will become another four words.

"When the food is exhausted, the people are gone."

When the food is exhausted, the city will naturally not be conquered.

Call!

With a sigh of relief, Li Sixing looked at his thoughtful father, he didn't ask any more questions related to Jingnan, there was no need to ask anymore, from the day his father chose to besiege, the fate of Jingnan and the people in the city was already doomed.

"Father, are you worried that the Qing captives in the south will go north?"

Li Sixing looked at his father and asked rhetorically.

"Worried?"

Li Dingguo smiled, and then said,

"What's there to worry about?"