Gao Mingheng, the temporary governor of Henan Province of Kaifeng Mansion, was very sad during this time, the counties outside the city of Kaifeng Mansion were basically eaten away by the Xingtian Army at present, even if the county town was not conquered by the Xingtian Army, but most of the villages and forts around the county were also voted by the Xingtian Army, and the remaining county towns have become lonely cities, and they can no longer provide any food relief to Kaifeng Mansion, only the range of twenty or thirty miles outside the city is still the jurisdiction of Kaifeng Mansion, and the people in the city are not able to get enough food supply, Many people fled out of the city with their families, leaving behind a large number of wealthy people who fled to Kaifeng Mansion from all over Henan, and food became a scarce item, and the price soared to the price of one or two silver for a bucket of grain, or even higher.

Kaifeng is one of the most populous cities in the north of the Ming Dynasty, the population inside and outside the city reaches one million, there is a great reproduction of the prosperous atmosphere of Bianjing in the Northern Song Dynasty, but after years of war, the number of people outside the city has fallen sharply and now there are less than 300,000 people left, and among them, there are 20,000 or 30,000 people who fled from outside, and the number of people in the city has also dropped sharply to less than 100,000 people, and now the soldiers alone have raised nearly 10,000 people, but these soldiers can only rob the people's food under the lack of food, Outside the city, there are secret posts of the Xingtian Army monitoring them, and there is a combat battalion and three reserve battalions of the Xingtian Army stationed around Kaifeng Mansion, which are always monitoring the movements of the officials and soldiers in Kaifeng City.

At the beginning, the officers and soldiers of Kaifeng Mansion dared to go out of the city for twenty or thirty miles or even forty or fifty miles to grab grain, but after being ambushed by the Xingtian Army several times recently, they could only move within a dozen miles around Kaifeng City, and the people around Kaifeng City were afraid of being robbed of grain by the officers and soldiers, so almost all of them went farther into the jurisdiction of the Xingtian Army to make a living, so that it became extremely difficult for these officers and soldiers to even grab grain at the end of last year.

The method of encircling the city with the countryside greatly limited the ability of the officials and soldiers of Kaifeng Prefecture to move, and caused a huge food shortage to Kaifeng Prefecture, and Kaifeng Mansion can only rely on a small amount of grain transported into Kaifeng City every day on the canal to maintain, so that the price of rice and grain has soared, and it has reached the point that the people can absolutely not bear it.

But what he didn't expect was that the imperial court, even during the period of the Tartars, still thought of taking the opportunity to recover the lost territory in Henan, and sent several armies to attack Henan after the year, which made Gao Mingheng kindle a glimmer of hope.

However, it is very different from history that the Xingtian Army at this time is not better than Li Zicheng's army in history, the number of soldiers and horses in the Xingtian Army is small, the combat effectiveness is strong, and the military discipline is strict, although they also loot, but their looting targets are mostly concentrated on those local tycoons and magnates, and for the ordinary people are almost no crime, for this reason they have also repeatedly beheaded a lot of soldiers who violated military discipline and harmed the people. And sent a large number of fine works to carry out propaganda in Henan and even the surrounding areas, so that the vast majority of the people in the people knew that the Xingtian Army was a teacher of benevolence and righteousness, so most of the people not only did not want to help the government deal with the Xingtian Army, but also secretly reported to the Xingtian Army, and even simply helped the Xingtian Army.

So at present, in Kaifeng Mansion, it is not like when Li Zicheng surrounded Kaifeng Mansion in history, the army and the people insisted on resisting to the end, but the common people all looked forward to the Xingtian Army coming over, and they were killed by the officials and soldiers in the city, but the King of Zhou in the city was obviously much smarter than the Fu King of Luoyang, after learning that the Xingtian Army was going to attack on a large scale, when even if he took out the 200,000 taels of silver in the palace and the food of the palace, and sent them to the officers and soldiers in the city to resist desperately, at this point, On the contrary, it has really aroused the fighting spirit of many officers and men.

With the king of Zhou taking the lead, the gentry and magnates in the city are no longer stingy, Gao Mingheng has warned them many times that after the city is broken, they will end up with a broken family, so these rich people hate the Xingtian Army so much that they grit their teeth, and at this time they also know that there is no way to retreat.

Even the magnates and tycoons from all over Henan who fled into Kaifeng knew that they would not be spared if the city was broken, and there was no way out here, so they all took their relatives Zhuang Ding and their servants to the city to defend it, and scattered their wealth to fight to the death with the Xingtian Army in Kaifeng.

The entire counterattack of the Xingtian Army against the imperial court came very quickly, and when Xiao Tianjian led his troops back to Henan for half a month, Zhao Erdonkey led nearly 10,000 Xingtian Army to besiege Runing Mansion for the third time and launched the last strong attack on Runing Mansion.

Although Runing Mansion has recovered after several months of rest, its vitality has recovered, but most of the officers and troops in the city are composed of ruffians, and if they do bad things, they are all experts, but if they really fight, then there is no need to think about it, they have not undergone any serious training at all, and the equipment is also put together, not to mention that Runing Mansion has been attacked by the Xingtian Army several times in recent years, and the garrison in the city is very consumed, so don't look at the number of soldiers and horses in Runing Mansion, but the combat effectiveness is not strong.

On the other hand, the strength of the Xingtian Army under the command of Zhao Erdon, although Xiao Tianjian only gave him two battalions, but he was given three reserve battalions, plus the people who came to help the war temporarily, the strength of the army was also more than 10,000 people, and there was a reserve artillery team sent to him by Xiao Tianjian, which brought several Hongyi cannons that captured the officers and soldiers in Jingfu, and set them up on the high hill built outside the city of Runing Mansion far away, and more than a dozen large Franc machine guns to help in the battle, plus the artillery teams directly under the two battalions, the firepower was very fierce.

And Zhao Erdon is arrogant and personally sit outside the west gate of Ruzhou City to command the siege, this time Zhao Erdon inspected Runing Mansion, and finally chose the location of the main attack in the west gate of Runing Mansion, the city wall here was soaked by floods for a long time in the early years, although the flood receded and repaired, but there is still no other direction of the city wall is solid.

So Zhao Erdonkey on the day of February 23, after the final persuasion to surrender to no avail, began the strong attack on Runing Mansion, several large-caliber Hongyi cannons took turns to fire, and the heavy cannonballs concentrated on a section of the city wall of Ruzhou City, the power of the Hongyi cannon is indeed extraordinary, every cannonball falls on the city wall, can make a big pit, the city bricks on the surface of the city wall to smash a large piece, exposing the rammed earth covered under the city bricks.

And those big Franc machines are not idle, were approached to the outside of the city wall, the same concentrated firepower on this section of the city wall repeated shelling, at present, the ability of the Xingtian Army to attack the fortification has even exceeded the Ming army a lot, the firepower is also very high, plus in the past six months, as they control more and more territory, collected a large amount of nitrate, boiled into nitrate, accumulated a lot of gunpowder, after the beginning of spring is also a good time to collect nitrate, so gunpowder is not scarce, gunpowder workshops have been opened in various places, A steady stream of gunpowder was provided to the Xingtian Army, making them very powerful.

The small three-pounder guns of each battalion's artillery team were responsible for suppressing the artillery and soldiers of the officers and soldiers on the city wall, aiming the muzzles of the guns at the head of the city and repeatedly shelling, and the officers and soldiers tried to set up artillery counterattacks several times to suppress the artillery fire of the Xingtian Army, but after a short time, they were pressed down by the battalion artillery team of the Xingtian Army, so they could only watch the Xingtian Army repeatedly bombard this section of the city wall, and felt the vibration from under their feet.

Although the defender is not a mediocre talent, he knows that sooner or later the city wall will collapse if he continues to fight like this, and the Xingtian army will attack the city, so he sent a thousand officers and soldiers out of the city to counterattack, hoping to break into the Xingtian army's artillery array to destroy the cannons of the Xingtian army, but Zhao Erdonkey is now an experienced general, how can he let the officers and soldiers succeed, when he began to attack the city, he had already left a war battalion as a reserve, responsible for protecting his artillery, as soon as the officers and soldiers went out of the city, they were attacked head-on by this war battalion, Under the volley of firearms, they were immediately beaten to pieces, and many people were captured by the Xingtian Army on the spot without even fleeing back into the city, and many people were killed outside the city.

As a result, the defenders in the city no longer dared to go out of the city to fight against each other, so they could only lie in the city and wait for the city to break down, and engage in street battles with the Xingtian army.

After two consecutive days of shelling, this section of the city wall finally could not withstand it, and collapsed violently, and then Zhao Erdonkey waved his division to send troops from this gap into Ruzhou City, and the Ruzhou defenders also made fierce resistance under the command of Fu Ruwei, but after several assaults, the official army finally collapsed, and after more than a day of fierce street fighting, Runing Mansion was finally conquered by Zhao Erdonkey.

Fu Ru, the prefect of Runing, died in the chaos after the city was broken, and was loyal to the Ming Dynasty to the end, and finally ended up with a dead body, and the king of Chongwang Zhu Youqiao Heyang in the city Zhu Youcai was captured by Zhao Erdonkey, after consulting Xiao Tianjian, Xiao Tianjian was angry that these two guys were stubborn to the end, so he ordered Zhao Erdonkey to immediately cut the two of them outside the city of Runing Mansion, and this battle completely included Runing Mansion into the hands of the Xingtian Army.

In addition to killing the two kings in the city, this battle also killed more than 2,000 officers and soldiers, captured nearly 3,000 officers and soldiers, after screening, Zhao Erdonkey ordered the city to capture the 3,000 officers and soldiers among the nearly 1,000 people who were very powerful in the place of disaster immediately beheaded outside the city, killing a person's head rolling, but also saved a lot of trouble, these soldiers and ruffians in the province were later returned to the Xingtian Army, and there were unstable factors at the same time. In this way, it also greatly deterred the local armed forces such as the squires who were ready to resist and tried to resist, so that they could only bow down to the rule of the Xingtian Army.

And Zhao Erdonkey captured Runing Mansion, after counting, leaving a small number of reserve troops to garrison, and then waved his division to Nanzhao, and Luo Rucai's division, immediately strengthened the strength of Luo Rucai and Li Xuanzhu, and after they joined forces, they immediately began to launch a fierce attack on Zuo Liangyu's department in Nanyang at the end of February.

Although Zuo Liangyu's command has gathered a lot of soldiers and horses this year, he is also a lot of outlaws in the local area, although when dealing with ordinary rebels, he also has some combat effectiveness, otherwise he can't beat Nanyang Mansion, but when he encounters the regular army of the Xingtian Army, when he conducts a field battle, Zuo Liangyu's soldiers and horses are much more unbearable.

Several times Zuo Liangyu and Luo Rucai fought, were sent by Luo Rucai to fight to the ground, by this time Zuo Liangyu boasted that he would recover Henan in two months, and deceive the imperial court.

This time Luo Rucai was furious, although he also knew that his status in the Xingtian Army might not be as good as Luo Li, Li Xuanzhu, Liu Bao, these old brothers who followed Xiao Tianjian all the way, but after all, Xiao Tianjian gave him the title of deputy marshal of the Xingtian Army, and the Xingtian Army also respected him quite a lot, after Xiao Tianjian went north, he nominally handed over Henan to him to be in charge of the house, but Zuo Liangyu brazenly sent troops to defeat Nanyang Mansion, and killed many soldiers and generals in the reserve camp of the Xingtian Army, creating the Nanyang Massacre Bloody Case.

This is undoubtedly like a slap in the face for Luo Rucai, the angry Luo Rucai was a little annoyed and angry, and immediately led the soldiers and horses to Nanyang Mansion with Li Xuanzhu, trying to find Luo Rucai desperately, this time Xiao Tianjian came back He didn't go back to Luoyang to meet Xiao Tianjian, holding his breath to recover Nanyang Mansion and get back the lost face.

However, because of the disparity in troops, although he and Li Xuanzhu resisted Zuo Liangyu's troops in Nanzhao and continued to attack and plunder the area controlled by the Xingtian Army, but because they had to hold on to several directions, his troops were insufficient, and the war was in a stalemate for more than a month, and there was never the strength to recover Nanyang Mansion.

This time, after Zhao Erdon conquered Runing Mansion and rushed to join them, Luo Rucai and Li Xuanzhu had enough troops to launch a counterattack on Nanyang Mansion.

On the fourth day of the first month of March, after several battles, the soldiers and horses under the command of Zuo Liangyu lost several battles in a row, and were overwhelmed by the Xingtian Army.

Zuo Liangyu's slippery head is a guy who meets the wind and rudder, and he will catch it if it is cheap, and run away if it is not cheap, as a result, Nanyang was recovered by the Xingtian Army again in early March, but after this battle, Nanyang was also completely broken, almost becoming an empty city, and the tragedy of the Nanyang Massacre in history was finally staged here, but the protagonist of the murder was replaced by Zuo Liangyu.

After Luo Rucai and Li Xuanzhu recovered Nanyang, they took a short rest and got Xiao Tianjian's order, ordering them to immediately wave their troops and start attacking Xiangyang.

(Today's two chapters are more than 8,000 words, which is interesting enough!) From tomorrow, seven watches a day, a super explosion! Three days in a row! ）