At dawn on May 23, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, a team of thousands of people died down and went southeast along the vortex embankment.

Another large contingent of tens of thousands of men, for unknown reasons, stopped about twenty miles west of the Vortex River. After learning that the main force of Zhuxian Town's official army had collapsed southward, this army seemed to have found its direction. They turned straight south and headed in the direction of Fugou, Chenzhou (present-day Huaiyang County, Zhoukou City, Henan Province), and Xiangcheng.

And earlier, the main force of the official army on the outskirts of Zhuxian Town began a general retreat without warning.

I saw countless officers and soldiers as if they had suddenly been infected and lost their minds, clamoring to abandon their positions, and rushed south along the avenue from Zhuxian Town to Yuncheng via Wei's family.

The soldiers stripped off their obstructive armor, threw away their heavy shield carts, and robbed all the mules and horses that could carry them. They have no organization, no command, no banner, and they don't have all the discipline that an army should have. All they have is a desperate desire to escape.

It is often said that the defeat of the army is like a mountain.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled for their lives, how could that road that was in disrepair and not wide be accommodated?

Fortunately, the plain of central Henan is endless, and walking on two legs does not depend on the road.

When the official road was overcrowded, the defeated soldiers quickly moved to the wilderness on both sides of the official road, and in the blink of an eye, a tide several miles wide was formed.

The tide surged forward, swallowing everything in front of it. Anyone who tries to stop the tide will not escape the tragic end of being trampled on and trampled on.

The officers could control the most they could control was the small group of generals he had personally raised.

The practice of controlling the army through the family has completely failed in this moment of crisis.

The greatest role that these generals can play is to flee with their generals. And the general, under the clamor of his own soldiers, was half-pushed and half-hugged on the battlefield and ran into the distance. Because the generals know that as long as their families and relatives are still there, rebuilding the army and keeping the rich and noble is nothing more than an old problem of insufficient food and salary. After all, food is rare, and there are many people who serve as soldiers to eat food in troubled times!

The minions ran away, but what about their commanders?

……

Zuo Liangyu, the chief military officer of the crown prince Taibao, Zuo Dudu, and the general officer with the seal of the thief general, personally led the elite of his front battalion, and walked in the forefront of the entire rout team with a neat and orderly marching army.

Because they tried their best to collect the horses and mules of each battalion before setting off, coupled with the fact that they were well prepared, well organized, and had Zuo Liangyu personally in charge, the 7,000-foot cavalry quickly opened up the distance from the rout behind them.

At dawn, the 7,000-foot cavalry had already passed through the county seat of Weishi, about eighty miles away from Zhuxian Town.

Not far ahead, there is a dry river ditch that he once waded through during the march, the tributary of the Jialu River. As long as they pass through Weishui, then they can carry out a short repair and replenishment in Yanling City according to the plan, and then rely on Yanling City to meet the retreating main force and carry out mobile strikes against the thieves who are trying to intercept the main force.

However, just when Zuo Liangyu was complacent, the horse in front of him suddenly lit the horn cannon.

Soon someone came to report: the thieves had built fortifications on the riverbed of Weishui, and were waiting for the famous Zuo Ping thief to send them to the door by himself (Note 1)!

The thieves are besieging the city to help!

With years of experience on the battlefield, Zuo Liangyu quickly made the first correct judgment.

The thieves surrounded Kaifeng and secretly tried to reinforce the army. As soon as the reinforcements are destroyed, Kaifeng City will inevitably fall.

Taking advantage of the confrontation between the two armies in Zhuxian Town, the thieves carried forward their numerical superiority and drew a hundred-mile-long arc with a trench from north to west. This arc starts from Zhuxian Town in the north, blocking the road for the official army to enter Kaifeng in the north; As far south as Weishui, it cut off the connection between the official army and the rear bases Yuncheng, Runing, and even Xiangyang and De'an.

As a result, the officers and troops who had cut off the grain and pay routes were left with only three routes, either to attack desperately on the thieves' defense line, open up the connection with Kaifeng, and pass through the north of the Yellow River for supplies;

Either sit back and wait to die, be trapped and die of thirst in Zhuxian Town, or wait for an even more terrible mutiny;

Either retreat southeast to Nanzhi and completely open up Runing Mansion and the entire Huguang behind him!

Rush out in spite of everything!

Zuo Liangyu quickly made the second correct judgment.

In the art of war, it is said that if troops are deployed everywhere, there will be loopholes everywhere.

The main force of the thief army must be deployed north of Zhuxian Town to prevent the official army from rushing into Kaifeng City; It is also necessary to deploy troops on the 100-mile defense line to prevent the officers and troops from breaking through to the southwest.

Even if 500,000 thieves go into battle together, this hundred-mile defense line is just as thin. As long as you concentrate on attacking a little, you will definitely be able to fight a bloody way!

The follow-up troops are more auspicious!

Zuo Liangyu quickly made the third correct judgment.

It is not difficult to open a bloody road, and it is not difficult for one's own cavalry to break through, but it is difficult for the follow-up troops to break through. Those foot soldiers who had marched eighty miles to reach this place were already exhausted. Isn't the thief a sheep in a wolf's den when he waits for his work?

Only the right judgment can form the right decision.

At this critical moment, no one knows what the tall Shandong man on horseback is thinking.

Soon, the soldiers clearly heard the commander's calm military order:

Accelerate forward and resolutely rush through the water! After passing through the water, go directly to Xinyang!

If Zuo Liangyu's order was only that, then the final outcome of the Battle of Zhuxian Town would be not much different from the original history.

But after a short hesitation, Zuo Liangyu blurted out a sentence that changed the course of history again: "Fast horse told the battalions behind that the marshal would personally open the way for them!" If you can't rush out, leave the official road and retreat to the southeast! ”

Later people revisited history and interpreted Zuo Liangyu's order in an all-round way.

From the analysis of subjective motives, some people believe that Zuo Liangyu has a good conscience and hopes that his subordinates who have followed him for many years can escape;

Some people think that Zuo Liangyu is in trouble and leads to the east, hoping to introduce the main force of the thieves into the direction of Nanzhili and reduce the military pressure on his old nest Xiangyang Mansion;

Some people think that Zuo Liangyu has ill intentions and hopes to kill Ding Qirui and Yang Wenyue and let them bear the responsibility of the imperial court;

Some people, such as Zhu Pingjin, the prince of Shu, believe that Zuo Liangyu finally woke up at the last moment and realized that no matter how much he calculated, as long as he followed the decaying and declining Chongzhen court, he was doomed to be hopeless.

Zuo Liangyu, as well as other old ministers and old generals of the Ming Dynasty, can only follow the common interests of all strata of the gentry and common people of the Ming Dynasty, represent the common interests of all industries of the Ming Dynasty, represent the orthodoxy of the Ming Dynasty and the orthodoxy of Chinese Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, Emperor Taizu Gao, the legal representative of the Shu Palace, and the great savior of the world descended from heaven, that is, Zhu Pingjin himself, can he gain a place in the political situation of the Ming Dynasty in the future, and can he make a modest contribution to the great cause of "protecting the country and the people, and the world is peaceful". Therefore, Zuo Liangyu's order should be interpreted as his active consciousness, that is, those troops who had no hope of escaping were given to him as a letter of surrender to the new Ming Dynasty.

Compared with the subjective motivation analysis, the objective effect analysis conclusion is much more consistent.

Later people generally believed that there were three important reasons why the official army fled from Zhuxian Town and unexpectedly lost less than 20,000 men and 5,000 mules and horses, rather than the most likely total annihilation at that time:

First, Zuo Liangyu's elite infantry fought bravely regardless of losses and casualties, not only tearing a gap about several miles wide in the thieves' Weishui defense line, but also greatly killing and injuring the thieves' pursuers, winning valuable time for the follow-up infantry to break through;

The second is to let the 20,000 or 30,000 officers and soldiers of the Ministry of State Security, who fell behind, throw away their ideological baggage, and at the dangerous moment when the thieves cut off the front road and have formed a three-sided encirclement, they carried out a thorough light equipment without any concern, turned around and crossed the Jialu River to the east, and fled along the west bank of the Vortex River to the lower reaches of the Vortex River, the lower reaches of the Yinghe River, Chenzhou, and Macheng;

The third is Zuo Liangyu's fierce attack, which produced an unexpected chain reaction, and finally exposed the contradiction between the two major thief chiefs Luo Rucai and Li Zicheng.

It is said that the sudden appearance of a large number of official and military iron cavalry caught the thief general Tian Jianxiu, who was in charge of defending the Weishui defense line, off guard, and the battle immediately fell into passivity.

When the war was unfavorable, Tian Jianxiu sent his own soldiers to ask for reinforcements from the neighboring Luo Rucai many times. But Luo Ru didn't make a move for a long time, and it wasn't until noon that he symbolically sent 3,000 weak soldiers to Tian Jianxiu. And these 3,000 weak soldiers did not rush to the breakthrough of the defensive line until the evening of the same day, and Tian Jianxiu, who was so angry that he had always been good-tempered, scolded him.

There is also a legend in the thief camp that after receiving Tian Jianxiu's letter for help, Cao Shuai has been hiding in the military tent with his dog-headed military advisor Shanxi Juren Ji Jue (GUI). As for the content of the conspiracy, it has not been revealed to the world after many years.

……

Zuo Liangyu ran away by himself and did not tell Ding Qirui and Yang Wenyue.

When the rout army north of Zhuxian Town rushed into the town in a panic, Yang Wenyue, who had already been abandoned once, immediately understood: history repeats itself again! Your own efforts don't help!

Yang Wenyue grabbed the sword next to the pillow, tied his own seal, called his own guard, and rushed to the Yuewang Temple in the town.

Yang Wenyue knew that the emperor held a grudge against him, and the main reason was that Fu Chonglong died in the defeat of Xiangcheng, and he survived. If Ding Qirui is thrown to the thief again this time, the emperor will definitely kill him. So no matter what, he must take Ding Qirui alive and away from this sad place.

However, when Yang Wenyue found the Supervisor in the crowd of the rebel army outside the town, Ding Qirui's appearance still startled him:

disheveled and disheveled; Lost in despair, running around. The seal letter, the letter of pardon, and the Shang Fang sword that represented the authority of the Son of Heaven, everything that could prove Ding Qirui's identity was left in the Yuewang Temple in Zhuxian Town!

Now the plan can only be to escape with Ding Qirui. As for the direction of escape, Yang Wenyue had no choice.

There are thousands of soldiers left by Yang Wenyue to defend the city and Tuntian in Runing Mansion, and there are also Chongwang Zhu Youqiao (GUI) family in Runing Mansion. If he loses Zhu Youqiao, it will be worse than losing Ding Qirui.

At dawn on May 23, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the 180,000 elites of the Ming Dynasty each made a bird's nest.

However, this was not the last scene of the Battle of Zhu Xianzhen.

Jiang Mingwu, the chief soldier of Yang Wenyue's supervision, did not escape.

Jiang Mingwu led his 800 regiments to train troops and hastily gathered more than 1,000 defeated soldiers, and stuck to Zhuxian Town to the death, breaking the rear of the army.

An hour passed, two hours passed, and Jiang Mingwu and his sons fought hard for a whole day in the encirclement of hundreds of thousands of thieves.

Jiang Mingwu and his sons never knew how many enemies they had dragged down and how many comrades they had saved. All they know is that they have fulfilled their oath of loyalty with their lives and blood. Even if the enemies they fought for their lives were mostly hungry people who were desperate to take risks.

Not long after Jiang Mingwu and his sons were wiped out in Zhuxian Town, a group of people who fled in panic finally rushed into Runing Mansion.

It is said that Ding Qirui, the superintendent who has lost all his face, has lost his mind. Whether it was on the desolate and frightened escape road or in the Futai Yamen of Runing Mansion, whether it was seeing his subordinates or kneeling in front of Zhu Youjiao, the king of the feudal Runing, Ding Qirui always said a mixed sentence over and over:

I didn't expect it, I never expected that everyone was fucking hidden in the court!

Note 1: Some historical books describe that Tian Jianxiu dug a trench more than two zhang wide on Zuo Liangyu's withdrawal road, and it was "letting go of the front army and fighting the rear army".

Hibiki was skeptical.

Because the left army retreated south, it would have passed through the Weishui and other big rivers. The peasant army relied on the tall river embankment to defend, and it was not more troublesome than digging a trench dozens of miles long? Could it be that the panicked deserters secretly used the wadi ditch as a trench at night, so that it was falsely spread in the historical materials?