Changan.

"King Qin, please accept the order!"

Zhang Tong, who came to announce the decree, said with the holy decree in his hand.

Li Zicheng sat on his throne and looked at him with deep eyes, King Qin had the privilege of not having to salute, which was still given to him by Chongzhen at the beginning......

Anyway, even if you don't give it, it's the same.

"Why did the Son of Longxing abandon?"

Li Zicheng said.

"The Zhu Shu people colluded with Jiannu to depose the Four Peoples Assembly for treason."

Zhang Tongchang said with an ominous premonition.

"Since ancient times, how can there be an emperor who has been a traitor, not to mention that even if he is guilty and deposed, and has no heirs to inherit, he should be a brother and a brother, and there are many sons of the first emperor, how can the princess inherit the right? Since ancient times, has there been a sister who inherits the throne of his brother? The succession to the throne of the Ming Dynasty has its own rules, and it is not ridiculous for you to take a woman as the emperor? ”

Li Zicheng sneered.

He looked bad.

In fact, in the past year, this former hero has become a medicine jar, completely dependent on various medicines and supplements.

It's not that he was squeezed dry by Gu Hengbo.

In fact, he is infatuated with Gu Hengbo mainly because the latter is sensible and can coax people, and the rough and heroic king who has been born and died all his life can't resist it at all in front of a leader who has been honed on the Qinhuai River. But to say that he and Gu Hengbo are going through the clouds and rain every day, this is a bit exaggerated, because of the hidden physical disease, he is not very keen on this kind of thing. The reason why his body collapsed quickly was, to put it bluntly, just like those who had worked all their lives without taking medicine, but their bodies were quickly under guardianship when they were idle, but their bodies had been consumed to the limit before, and they were all supported by a willpower.

He is not Zhang Xianzhong.

The latter can raise himself as a pig, and he can really be said to have worked hard all these years.

Anyway, he went to dig the channel himself!

When the drought in Guanzhong began to ease, the promotion of sweet potatoes was truly completed, potatoes, corn, sorghum and the like began to be planted on a large scale, and everything began to show prosperity again in this originally empty land, as if he had completed his historical mission, his body, which had been maintained by will, collapsed all of a sudden.

"King Qin, this is the people's choice."

Zhang Tongchang replied.

He knew that Li Zicheng would not accept the order.

"Isn't the Qin clan the people of the Ming Dynasty? This king was entrusted by the first emperor to guard the Western Domain, defend the imperial family, and also have the responsibility of supervising the dereliction of duty of the imperial court. This king will personally lead 300,000 tigers, and go to the south to ask the blame for the government! ”

Li Zicheng said.

"King Qin, if King Qin is like this, then we can only greet each other with guns!"

Zhang Tongchang said solemnly.

"Then you go back and tell Yang Qing that this king is looking forward to meeting him on the battlefield again, and this king wants to see if he is still as beautiful as he was back then!"

Li Zicheng said.

After saying that, he waved his hand, and those guards immediately stepped forward, Zhang Tongchang glanced at him, and then left very simply, he didn't notice, just when he went out, Li Zicheng in the back had already hurriedly picked up a pill, and the maid next to him hurriedly picked up a wine glass for him......

"Don't be a mountain brother!"

Gong Dingyu waited outside the main hall.

"Brother Xiaosheng!"

Zhang Tongchang returned the salute and said.

Immediately afterwards, Gong Dingyu waved his hand to the guards, and the latter turned to leave, and Gong Dingyu took Zhang Tongchang to board the carriage and leave the Qin Palace.

"King Qin really wants to go to war?"

Zhang Tongchang said suspiciously in the carriage.

In his opinion, this is indeed a bit unexpected, as far as Li Zicheng's physical state is concerned, he is terminally ill at all, is there any ambition in this? In other words, Li Zicheng should not be unable to understand the comparison of the strength of the two sides, this is not the time for him to go down to the south of the Yangtze River with 800,000 troops. At that time, the Ming army was nothing more than two new armies, and now the army alone has eighteen infantry corps and one cavalry corps! The actual combat troops exceeded 400,000, not counting the millions of militiamen, even if the Qin Domain was also militia, the strength of the two sides was not at the same level.

Not to mention the gap in national strength between the two sides.

In other words, a large part of Li Zicheng's equipment was purchased from the south?

Where did he get this faith?

"He can't do it if he doesn't want to! He's on the verge of death, but what about his subordinates? Could it be just waiting for Yang Qing's knife to fall? These people are not convinced by each other at all, and Li Guo is about to die, maybe he is still walking in front of Li Zicheng, then Li Zicheng will inevitably have civil strife once he dies, and once there is civil strife, it will be even more useless. It's better to take advantage of Li Zicheng's ability to hold on, and start first to fight for a glimmer of life, they will do it first, and Dolgon will definitely take the opportunity to do it, even if the two families do not cooperate, they will form a de facto union.

As for the rest......

Do your best and let God do your best!

It's better than being broken by Yang Qing.

Maybe there will be a glimmer of life, if they can win the advantage, Zhang Xianzhong and King Gui can still endure it? At that time, not to mention anything else, the partnership forced Yang Qing to sign a thing, try to maintain the current situation, and delay it for as long as it could be.

If not, will you be tied? ”

Gong Dingxiao said.

"Why not tie your hands?"

Zhang Tongchang said: "The protector of the country is not killed, the life of this generation can be saved, why not be a rich man for the rest of his life?" They have disturbed the world and killed countless people, which one is not innocent? Remembering their efforts in building Guanzhong over the years, are they not satisfied with giving them a rich and noble old age? ”

"Will they be satisfied?"

Gong Dingxiao said: "They are all thieves who have been rampant in the world for nearly 20 years, will they be willing to accept such a disposition?" ”

Zhang Tongchang was also speechless.

Indeed, none of them are good at stubble, they all have heavy troops, and they are all killed by the autocratic side, even if they all know that Yang Qing will not kill them all, but who will honestly give up the power of the turf army, and then go to be a law-abiding rich man? In other words, like Yuan Zongdi, he killed Yang Qing once back then, would such a person honestly give up power? For example, Gao Yigong almost came to Nanjing back then, so that Nanjing City felt the smoke of war for the first time, will he find a small courtyard to live in and live in it from now on?

They do have the strength to fight.

Although Li Zicheng had only 70,000 standing troops, all the communes were trained according to the Spanish phalanx, and as long as he needed, Guanzhong could pull out 700,000 combatable soldiers.

Not to mention the three knots of Hanzhong.

Bai Guangen, Tang Tong, and Ma Ke Sanjiedu in Hanzhong did not dare to surrender, because they were all old generals who sold Chongzhen back then, and they still had more than 100,000 soldiers under them. Even if you don't count Liu Zongmin and other troops who can't come back, Li Zicheng can still muster an army of 800,000, but the most that can actually maintain the battle is 300,000. Because his logistics and transportation force also has to come out of these 800,000 people, whether he takes Wuguan Road or Cuihan Road, if he wants to maintain 300,000 people fighting, more than double the transportation force is indispensable.

In other words, he has to fight the country.

The consequence is that the hard-won good days in Guanzhong are completely ruined.

"It's a pity that as soon as the battle starts, the peace in this pass will be ruined again!"

Zhang Tongchang looked out the window and sighed.

Saying that, he also admitted that these old bandits have actually done a good job over the years, and it can be seen from the faces of the passers-by outside that they have truly bid farewell to hunger, and in the winter there is not a single unclothed person, all wearing warm cotton clothes, and there is not a single beggar on the street......

This is even more than Nanjing.

There are also beggars in Nanjing, although these beggars are not so poor that they are desperate, but regard it as a profession, and their income from begging is not lower than that of a normal laborer, but after all, it cannot be said that there are no beggars.

But Chang'an really didn't.

There is not a single beggar in the city.

Of course, Zhang Tongchang didn't know, he was too lazy to take begging as a profession, and he was simply arrested and mined, Li Zicheng was not so hypocritical at this point, and his commune was not disabled. If you don't have a disability but don't want to work, you want to rely on pretending to be pitiful to cheat money, and you will be treated as a liar, and throw it directly to mining, on the contrary, Yang Qing is not ruthless enough in this regard. After all, there is a big gap between the Protector and this kind of guy who crawled out of the sea of corpses and blood, and there is a big gap in ruthlessness.

But Chang'an's wealth is still obvious to all.

The city is regaining its former prosperity as a center of overland trade, with caravans departing from here as far as Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

Especially after the defeat of Turpan.

The city, which Yang Qing had forcibly named Dihua, had become the center of the Western Regions, from where Li Zicheng's caravan headed north into the allied Dzungaria-controlled territory, where it continued under the protection of the latter's nomads to modern-day Burzin, and then sailed down the Irtysh River to Tyumen for the Russians.

It was the largest fortress of the Russians.

Then the Russians would protect them and continue their way to Moscow, or trade with the Russian merchants in Tyumen, who would take care of the rest of the route.

The Dzungar and Russian borders on the line between Omsk and Tomsk, and to the south are the nomadic areas of the Dzungaria, which is the result of decades of fighting between the two sides.

In fact, there is still a constant fighting.

Last year, Baturu Hunteiji annihilated the Russian army in Tomsk, and before he even took the initiative to attack the Tyumen fortress, in fact, the Russians could not defeat the Dzungars on this battlefield, at least for now, but the nomadic nature of the latter made them unable to completely solve the Russians. Because they were nomadic, not fixed in one place, and as soon as they moved away, the Russians would come and build forts along the Irtysh and Ob rivers, even if the Dzungars still breached them again, and as soon as they left, the Russians would build them again. The Russians are like this and scoundrels continue to expand, they are really not as powerful as later generations imagined, the strength crushes the steppe nomads, they are actually not as good as the nomads, after the death of Ge Erdan in 17 another year, his nephew plotted to annihilate 3,000 Russian troops in a war with Alabutan.

But the Russians are just playing rogue tactics.

Build a fortress based on the river, food can be solved by fishing and hunting, nomads can run away if they can't attack and fight, and they can board a raft and drift to the downstream stronghold by relying on the river, anyway, these fortresses are like the Yaksa of Ma Geda.

Earthen walls with wooden fences.

There is a log fence outside, and a fortress-like wall is built with earth inside, but don't expect them to have a strong shell like a fortress, which is essentially a mound of earth, and even if the Russians can build a fortress, they don't have that much manpower. It is even more impossible to burn red bricks in Batavia and use expensive cane sugar and glutinous rice as a binder, as the Dutch man-made city of Geranza, and the lives of those gray animals are not worth the sugar of the Dutch!

Their fortress was easily rebuilt.

When the nomads are gone, they come back to rebuild, and as long as the nomads don't drive them away once, or don't have time to drive them out, they're basically down the roots, and then they'll build another one along the river.

When the banks of the great rivers of Siberia were full of their fortresses, large and small, Siberia was theirs.

This is how the Russians expanded to the east.

Their advantage lies in the fact that there are countless impoverished people behind them, who are constantly embarking on the road to the East in search of wealth, and the population of the nomads cannot make up for the consumption of such a tug-of-war with them. The Russian tsar didn't care how many gray cattle died, and the gray cattle themselves didn't care how much they died, they wanted land and wealth, and they kept moving forward, and in this way they walked out of a huge empire of more than 20 million square kilometers.

It's all about human life.

However, at this time, both the Russians and the Dzungars provided protection for Li Zicheng's caravan.

The former is trading with them.

The black tea and sugar that the Moscow dignitaries drank and the silk they used for porcelain all came from these caravans, and rock sugar was better than coins on Russian soil. At this time, it was difficult for Russia to enjoy the oriental goods of maritime trade, and the first Swedish merchant ship to sail to China was the Gothenburg a hundred years later, and the ports of the Black Sea were still in the hands of the Ottomans. No matter what oriental goods Russia bought, they had to go through layers of exploitation by merchants from various countries, but Li Zicheng's caravans traded directly with them, which is why until the nineteenth century, trade between Jin merchants and Russia was still booming.

Because this line costs the least for the Russians.

And the Dzungars need Li Zicheng's arms.

The Dzungars and Russians, Kazakhs, and Yarkand people killed each other chaotically on the steppe by relying on the weapons provided by Li Zicheng, who continued to encroach on the Ili River Valley of the Yarkand people and the grasslands at the northern foot of the South Tianshan Mountains, and crossed the South Tianshan Mountains to loot the Yarkands, capture slaves and sell them to Liu Zongmin. The latter sometimes moved forward along the edge of the Taklamakan Desert to capture the Yakand Khanate, and this cooperation brought the Yarkand Khanate to the brink of extinction, and the original strongest force in the Western Regions could not hold these two hungry wolves at all.

This same trade route also made Chang'an, the starting point, a prosperous capital, where countless southern goods set off for the west, and a large number of female slaves also set off here to enrich the entertainment venues in the south of the Yangtze River and the backhouses of wealthy families.

But now......

"Since this is the case, then fulfill them, and the 400,000 tigers of the Ming Dynasty will wait for the King of Qin!"

Zhang Tongchang said.

Gong Dingyu didn't speak again, and the carriage drove quietly in Chang'an City, where the snow fell, and the pedestrians on both sides kept walking by, not knowing that the war had arrived......

(One chapter today, one chapter in the next few days, Happy Chinese New Year!) ）