In Nanjing, there have been many recent turmoil in the imperial court, which has made Chongzhen and the entire court tired to deal with.

The defeat of the Northern Expedition made the good situation of defeating the Qing army on both routes lost, and the pacification of the defeated troops and the resettlement of the Jianghuai refugees were all pressed on the court.

In this case, Xiong Rulin's impeachment of Chen Yue, the Duke of Qi, for attacking Dongfan Island without authorization and trying to stand on his own feet overseas did not set off much of a storm at all.

One is that Chen Yue has already taken the first step to send the song of Dongfan Island to the imperial court, although Chongzhen has seen it, although Chen Yue does not stop, but because Chen Yue used his own private army, he did not mobilize a single soldier of the imperial court, nor did he spend a tael of silver in the imperial court, even Chongzhen has nothing to say.

As for what kind of scholar to stand on his own feet overseas, not only Chongzhen is the Manchu Dynasty civil and military also sneered, in everyone's opinion, Dongfan is just an overseas desert island, far away from the Ming Dynasty's wilderness, the whole island is ignorant and ignorant savage aborigines, the Ming Dynasty has been established for more than 200 years on such a place He has ever looked at it. Not to mention the east, even when Brunei took the initiative to ask for annexation, the Ming court did not look at it. For overseas territories, the Ming court did not have any ambitions at all!

In this era, the Ming Dynasty had no energy to look overseas, and he didn't know the value of Dongfan and overseas islands. Therefore, Chongzhen did not pay attention to Xiong Rulin's impeachment of Chen Yue at all.

The Northern Expedition failed, if there was another war, it was necessary to consider using Chen Yue, and at this time Chongzhen was unwilling to reprimand Chen Yue for this trivial matter.

Fortunately, after defeating the Northern Expeditionary Army, the Manchu Eight Banners did not wave their troops south, but retreated back to Beijing, which made Chongzhen and the imperial court breathe a sigh of relief.

In this case, they did not dare to provoke the Manchus too much, and in fact there were not many troops to send, so Nanjing could not send troops to support the actions of the people in Shandong, and could only send Wang Yongji as the governor of Shandong to coordinate the rebel armies in various places. As for the Northern Expedition again, Chongzhen didn't dare to think about it.

It takes time to recruit soldiers to train the army, and it takes a lot of food. The taxes collected in the autumn had been exhausted in the failed Northern Expedition, and now the imperial court was in a situation where there was no money to spare. Chongzhen's heart is as cold as this winter.

In this case, the Shunxi coalition army went out of Kuizhou to conquer Jingzhou, the Huguang army was defeated, and the news of the martyrdom of He Tengjiao, the governor of Huguang, reached Nanjing, and the entire imperial court was shaken, and Chongzhen fell into deep despair!

"He Tengjiao, the minister who misled the country, deserves death! Hao Yongzhong is even more of a rice bucket, a waste, I trust him so much, I don't dislike his background, the thief Feng Hou Bai will hand over Jingzhou to him to guard, this is how he repays me! ”

Chongzhen roared hoarsely, Shi Kefa, Qian Qianyi and others had sad faces, and their hearts were also in despair.

Confluence in the west, out of the river to attack, for the Ming Dynasty who had just failed the Northern Expedition, it was tantamount to adding insult to injury! The Huguang army was completely annihilated, and at present, only the Zhengsen Department of Xiangyang in the entire Huguang could be able to fight. Yu Feng, Jin Shenghuan and other troops are now stationed in Fengyang, Luzhou, Runing and other places, to guard against the Manchu Tartar in the north, which is really far away from Huguang.

He Tengjiao has been martyred, no matter how useless he scolds, although Hao Shaoqi is defeated, he still has tens of thousands of troops in his hands, if he is held responsible, I am afraid that he will not be able to investigate deeply, and it seems that he can't find anyone who wants to take responsibility at this time.

No, it's not nothing, the Ministry of War is nominally in charge of the army, and it is most appropriate for the Ministry of War to bear the responsibility for the crime, but Gao Hongtu, the secretary of the Ministry of War, is already facing ashes at the moment.

Sure enough, after a temper tantrum, Chongzhen issued an order to remove Gao Hongtu, the secretary of the military department, and transferred Wang Yin, the governor of Zhejiang, to the secretary of the military department, so everyone knew Chongzhen's intentions, which was to seize the rhythm of Chen Yue, the prince of Qi.

The Northern Expedition failed, the thieves in the west merged out of Sichuan, and the Ming Dynasty once again fell into a desperate situation. And at this time, even if the courtiers no longer disliked Chen Yue, no matter how jealous everyone was of Chen Yue's merits and power, they had to put aside all the festivals.

Immediately, Qian Qianyi asked Chongzhen for an edict to regain the affection of Chen Yue, the prince of Qi, and took him as the commander to join forces with the Shunxi thieves who paid Sichuan.

As soon as Qian Qianyi moved, other officials of his faction also followed suit, and after being silent for a day, Shoufu Shi Kefa also expressed his support for Chen Yue's revenge.

So, Chongzhen officially issued an order to restore Chen Yue, the prince of Qi, and sent someone to Zhoushan to deliver the decree, ordering Chen Yue to return to Nanjing as soon as possible!

......

Jingzhou, a continuous repair for 10 days, the Shun army can be considered to be relieved, the long march and fighting, the cold and freezing brought them great damage, from Kuizhou when the whole army was as many as 150,000, now the whole army adds up to more than 120,000, in less than a month, the loss of as many as 30,000 people. And most of them were frozen to death and starved to death.

Fortunately, Jingzhou was captured and a large amount of food supplies were captured, which allowed the Shun army to breathe a sigh of relief. Now that it has reached the end of the month, some generals proposed to celebrate the New Year in Jingzhou and wait until the spring of the next year to send troops to attack.

Li Guo decisively rejected this proposal, and for the current Shun army, he couldn't afford to wait at all. It is necessary to quickly attack the city and seize the land to expand its strength before the Ming court reacts, so that it is possible to confront the Ming army.

Although there are still 120,000 troops under his command, most of them are old, weak, sick and disabled and their families, and less than half of the elites who can fight, and although the Ming Dynasty has failed repeatedly, it is still a behemoth for the remnants of the Shun army.

For the Shun army, there is still a reason to go, that is, Zhang Xianzhong is about to lead the follow-up army out of Sichuan to Huguang.

For the current Shunxi and Western armies, the strength has long been out of balance. The Shun army was defeated one after another, and the emperor Li Zicheng and a group of important ministers and generals were all killed, while the western army was at its peak with Sichuan.

Li Guo and other main generals of the Shun army were afraid that once Zhang Xianzhong came to Jingzhou with a large army out of Sichuan, he would definitely have thoughts about this Shun army, so in order to maintain the independence of the army, he had to leave Jingzhou as soon as possible.

According to the agreement signed during the negotiation with Zhang Dingguo, the Shun army will go north from Jingzhou, attack Xiangyang into Henan, develop north, and mainly attack the north of the Yangtze River. And Huguang and even Jiangxi and Nanzhi are the territory of the Western Army's strategy.

The land of Daming is the south of the Yangtze River, and the Western Army does not want to be touched by the Shun army, and the Shun army is weak, so it can only reluctantly accept this condition.

However, for the Shun army, the north used to be their territory and had a good mass base, and now that the Qing army has retreated to the north, it is not a good choice to return to the north!

In the Spring Festival of the nineteenth year of Chongzhen, Li Guo and other generals left Jingzhou with a large army and drove to the north in the heavy snow. On the same day, Zhang Xianzhong led an army of 250,000 to Yiling. A war that will stretch across the South is about to begin.