"Shangzhou Chronicles" recorded: "The year of Yiyou is the first year of Hongguang, the battle of Tongguan, self-contained, led the people to the east. ”

"Dengzhou Chronicles" recorded: "In the first year of Hongguang, in the spring and February, the Qing soldiers entered Tongguan, and they ran to Dengzhou from success or failure, covering thousands of miles. ”

After Li Zicheng withdrew from Shaanxi, he was caught up by Azig in Dengzhou, Henan, and lost the battle, and the army retreated to the area of Xiangyang, Hubei in March.

At this time, although Li Zicheng was defeated again and again, he still had 130,000 people in his hands, plus the 70,000 elites of the Baiwang Department originally deployed in Xiangyang, Chengtian, De'an, and Jingzhou by the Dashun Dynasty, a total of 200,000 people.

Since the defeat of a stone, Dashun fought against the Qing court, defeated again and again, and lost half of the northern country, which can be said to have lost morale, and did not dare to engage with the Qing soldiers again.

Li Zicheng deeply understands that persimmons should be pinched softly, and the Hongguang Dynasty, which is shrinking in the south of the Yangtze River, has naturally become the soft persimmon in his eyes.

Although Li Zicheng had 200,000 people, he did not dare to face the Qing army, so he decided to advance by land and water, and directly take Nanjing, and wanted to start a war with Wuchang Zuo Liangyu.

At this time, the four provinces of Xiang and Jing were the only areas controlled by the Dashun army, and Bai Wang, who was guarding the place, told Li Zicheng that the four mansions had been operating for more than a year, and the foundation was stable and could be defended, but Li Zicheng did not listen, and let him transfer all his troops and horses to prepare to go east.

At the beginning of March, Li Zicheng led 200,000 people to advance from Xiangyang to Hanchuan and Chuyang, and approached Zuoliangyu in Wuchang, but as the main force of the Dashun army advanced eastward, the four prefectures of Xiang and Jing became empty.

Li Zicheng's army marched eastward, the Qing soldiers followed, the important towns of Xiangyang, De'an and other places in Hubei fell into the hands of the Qing army, Jingzhou City also fell into the siege of the Qing army, Zheng Siwei, the general of Dashun, saw that the lonely city could not be defended, so he killed Meng Changgeng, the defense envoy of Jingzhou in Dashun, and opened the city to surrender to the Qing.

The land of Sifu easily fell into the hands of the Qing court, and failed to hinder the speed of the Qing army's pursuit, and the rear defense of the Dashun army should also be opened.

At this point, since the fifteenth year of Li Zicheng's Chongzhen (1642), all the local regimes at all levels established have collapsed, and the Dashun army has returned to its original state of mobile warfare, and its identity has also changed from the Dashun official army fighting for the world with the Ming Dynasty to a thief again.

The situation has changed surprisingly quickly since the beginning of the Kashen period.

First of all, Li Zicheng swept the north, and seemed to have the tendency to dominate the world, and then Wu Sangui descended to the Qing Dynasty, and the Manchu Eight Banners entered the customs, and then the newly established Dashun Dynasty was defeated again.

A month ago, Li Zicheng and the Qing soldiers were inseparable from Tongguan, and the next month Shaanxi had been in the hands of the Qing court, and now Wang Yan heard that the Dashun army was moving down the east of the river, and he suddenly felt nervous.

The disaster is not a single line, the Ming Dynasty is the house leak was rained overnight, the matter in Jiangbei has not been solved, and Dashun attacked again, which is really worse.

"The commander of Ningnan Hou Zuogong has 800,000 troops, known as one million." Chen Zilong frowned slightly and said: "Li Chuang has been defeated in several battles and the Qing army, and his morale will definitely be low, and Zuo Gong's command has spent millions of dollars, so he should be able to defeat him." ”

Zuo Liangyu has fought with the Dashun army many times, although there are many defeats and few victories, but this time it is Li Chuang's defeated army after all, so everyone still has some confidence in him.

"What Brother Otaru said is reasonable." Seeing that Wang Yan's face was full of worry, Zuo Maodi nodded and comforted: "Shiheng doesn't have to worry too much, but he can talk about what is in his heart first." ”

Wang Yan was not worried about Li Zicheng's army, but the Qing army that followed the Shun army, but it was useless for him to worry, he only had 2,000 men under his command, and it was impossible to affect the situation in Huguang at all.

At this time, Wang Yan could only put this aside in advance, and first talk about the affairs of Jiangbei, "The Manchu Prince Yu Duoduo soldiers entered Henan, recruited Li Chuang's Pingnan Bo Liu Zhong, and had tens of thousands of soldiers, and had already suppressed the Xu and Si lines, but the Shi Pavilion Department supervised Jiangbei, but there was no way to deal with it, and the late life was anxious. ”

Listening to Wang Yan's words, Zuo Maodi couldn't help but feel helpless for a while, "Alas~ Shiheng doesn't know, since I returned to the dynasty, one book a day, all say that the whole army is a strategy to resist the Qing Dynasty, but it has not been paid attention to so far." ”

Hongguang Emperor Zhu Yousong is the son of the old Fu King Zhu Changxun, when the country's dispute, the Donglin Party to "establish the long not the virtuous", in the name of maintaining the Taizu law, and the Shenzong Emperor fought for more than ten years, and finally forced the Emperor Shenzong to put the beloved Lao Fu Wang in Luoyang to become a vassal, and set up the eldest son Zhu Changluo he did not like as the crown prince.

The Donglin Party forced the old Fu King to Luoyang, and was finally killed by Li Zicheng, cooked with venison, called Fu Lu soup, and ate it with others.

After Luoyang was attacked by Li Chuang, Zhu Yousong, the king of Xiaofu, and his mother-in-law, Zou Shi, took advantage of the chaos to escape, and lived without a life, begging for mercy everywhere.

After the martyrdom of the first emperor, according to the order of the blood cycle, it was reasonable to set up Zhu Yousong, the king of Xiaofu, as the emperor, but the people of Donglin were worried that after Zhu Yousong ascended the throne, he liquidated the Donglin party and forced his father Zhu Changxun to take charge of Luoyang.

The Donglin Party members were worried that the accession of the Fu Fan to the throne would harm their interests, so they ignored the "establishment of the chief but not the virtuous" that they insisted on in the Shenzong Dynasty, and changed it to "establish the virtuous but not the chief", and wanted to use the Lu domain to prevent the Fu King from ascending the throne.

At this time, Shi Kefa, who was the supreme governor of Jiangnan, should have made a decision and supported Zhu Yousong as the emperor in accordance with the order of the national ****, but he was indecisive and hesitated between Fu and Lu.

Under the influence of Donglin, Shi Kefa finally preferred Lilu, but after all, the bloodline of Lu Fan was too far behind that of Fu Domain, in order to be able to compete with Fu Domain, he pulled King Gui who was far away in Guangxi into the battle for the throne, and wrote "Seven Unliable", wanting to completely kick Fu Fan out of the battle for the throne.

King Fu was forced to have no choice but to turn to the warlords, causing the four towns in Jiangbei to sit on the merits of making decisions, and from then on he was arrogant and did not listen to the orders of the imperial court.

Hongguang's ascension to the throne was regarded by the Donglin Party as the biggest defeat in the party struggle since the Shenzong Dynasty.

As a result, some of the Donglin Party members went to the extreme, and they were willing to give up only if they wanted to push the Fu Domain to set up a new monarch, and then the Great Tragedy Case, the Tong Concubine Case, and the Pseudo Prince Case broke out in the DPRK and China, and there was no shortage of Donglin Party members.

The three major cases are linked, and it is not difficult to see that Donglin wants to use the Tong Concubine case as a breakthrough to completely deny the legal identity of Emperor Hongguang, and then use the pseudo-prince case to overthrow Hongguang and achieve their goal of establishing a new monarch.

The contradiction between Donglin and the emperor was almost irreconcilable, and Hongguang had to rely on Ma Shiying in order to fight against Donglin, so the party struggle became more and more intense. The emperor and Donglin were in the same situation, and the court was not at peace, resulting in the abandonment of government affairs, the failure of government decrees, and the officials who were willing to do things were all disheartened.

The situation in the DPRK and China is like this, otherwise Chen Zilong would not have resigned, and Zuo Maodi is as Xia Wanchun said, it is difficult to support alone, only full of helplessness.

Wang Yan is not in the court, I don't know what is dirty, and I don't know that the party struggle has developed to such a point, and now in the face of Zuo Maodi's helplessness, Wang Yan was at a loss for a while, he rushed to Nanjing, just hoping to let the imperial court go south for the Qing soldiers, and make a response as soon as possible, but now it seems that he comes or not, the result is the same.

The situation of the court was so corrupt that Wang Yan suddenly felt powerless, but he still didn't give up, "Jiangshan Sheji, the foundation of the ancestors, the courtiers don't care, don't Your Majesty care?" ”

"Your Majesty also invited people to discuss the strategy of preparing for the Qing court, but he didn't get a result, and in the end he had to give up." Zuo Maodi said in a deep voice.

"Why is that?" Wang Yan asked.

"The imperial court's annual income is five million taels, three million taels are given to Jiangbei, and more than one million taels are given to Wuchang, the treasury has long been empty, and the four towns in Jiangbei are arrogant, and there is no money and grain to transfer him at all, so how to set a strategy?" Zuo Maodi sighed.

The mountains and rivers were broken, half of the walls were lost, the imperial court was newly established, and there was a great shortage of materials and money and food, but after all, the land in the south of the Yangtze River was in hand, and Wang Yan did not expect that the treasury would reach the point of no money.

"Shi Gong has been supervising Jiangbei for nearly a year, and he has spent countless manpower, material and financial resources, is there really no way to deal with it?" Chen Zilong had already resigned because he saw through the court situation, but now after listening to Zuo Maodi's words, he knew that it was very difficult to start from the court, so he asked Wang Yandao instead.

"Shi Gong is not the minister who saves the time!" Wang Yan thought of the scene in Xuzhou, and he later counted Shi Kefa, but Shi Kefa didn't listen, so he said helplessly.

Chen Zilong listened, and he didn't ask more.

Regarding Wang Yan's evaluation of Shi Kefa, Zuo Maodi and Chen Zilong did not show displeasure, on the contrary, they also had a lot of resentment towards Shi Kefa like Wang Yan.

Speaking of this time, Wang Yan also knew that the trip to Nanjing would be fruitless, and he couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable.

The three of them discussed for a while, but there was still no good countermeasure, Wang Yan and Chen Zilong had to say goodbye and leave, before leaving, Zuo Maodi said that he was willing to try once, according to Wang Yan's words, contact the minister to write to the emperor together.

Regardless of whether it is successful or not, as the minister of the country, he must do his best.

Leaving Zuofu, Chen Zilong went to connect with the courtiers who knew each other.

Wang Yan walked in the bustling streets of Nanjing, but his thoughts were blank, his qualifications were just mediocre, otherwise he would not have been admitted to the student at the age of eighteen, and the reason why he is behaving quite differently now is mostly because of strange dreams.

He got instructions in his dream, so he can see the general trend of the world faster than ordinary people, but the instructions of the dream are limited after all, just some scattered pictures, which are not much help to save the situation.

He knew that the Qing army was going south to the south of the Yangtze River, but how to block the Qing army and how to circulate the situation required him to think about strategies, influence, and change by himself.

Walking out of Zuo Maodi's mansion, he found that he had no way to change the current situation, and he couldn't help but feel discouraged.

Wang Yan walked aimlessly, and before he knew it, he and Xu Yanyan had made an appointment to meet at night, but since he came, Wang Yan decided to go in and sit in advance.

Xu Yanyan was practicing the song Wang Yan made last night, and when she heard the little maid's report, Wang Gongzi came over, and she immediately welcomed him in happily.

Seeing this, Wang Yan had to temporarily put aside the national affairs in his mind and focus on Xu Yanyan, but the careful Xu Yanyan still found the melancholy in his heart.

Under Xu Yanyan's inquiry, Wang Yan told the bitterness in her heart one by one, and Xu Yanyan listened to Wang Yan's words of worrying about the country and the people, and liked Wang Yan even more.

Her sweetheart is not only a great talent with excellent poetry, but also a national soldier who worries about the country and the people and aims to frame the world.