Finally survived the arrival of the first heavy snow of winter, fortunately, now the north is just in the Xiaoice period, just October in the northern Liaodong has entered the cold winter season.

The sudden outbreak of smallpox plague spread in all corners of the Qing Dynasty, and the hardest hit was Shengjing, which was supposed to be in the safe zone.

For example, when they coerced hundreds of thousands of North Koreans to return to the land outside the Guanwai, there were some typhoid fever cases on a small scale, but under the effective control of the doctors, they had suppressed the epidemic to a minimum before the epidemic spread.

The interval between the smallpox plague, from the initial intelligence reaction in the southwest border pass to the appearance of patients in Shengjing, was only about ten days, and finally spread to the entire Qing Dynasty, but it did not take more than a month.

The smallpox virus is not resistant to cold, which makes the Qing Dynasty in the first few decades of the founding of the country, there will be almost no trace of them, and now this outbreak has come out, the Qing people who do not have certain virus antibodies, especially the Jurchens and Mongols who are the main body of the kingdom, when they first faced this smallpox virus and other ravages, they suffered from the symptoms of illness far more serious than the people of the Ming Dynasty.

More than half of the three or four million members of the population who have developed with great difficulty are threatened by the smallpox virus, and about six or seven hundred thousand of them have been infected with the virus and have become victims of the plague.

Mongolians are okay, after all, people are mainly nomadic herders, they have raised countless cattle, horses and livestock throughout their lives, and it is inevitable that there will be sick cattle with cowpox, and there is a certain chance of being infected with cowpox and becoming natural pox breeders; However, as a predominantly nomadic Jurchen, they were not so fortunate to have frequent contact with a large number of cattle, horses, and livestock, and they were extremely lucky enough to be infected with the smallpox virus, which requires oral droplet transmission, but this situation was the most devastating.

Even in the most serious places, when the entire tribal village was infected, there was no effective treatment, and the virus could not be allowed to spread, the Qing government was ruthless and directly humane the destruction of these tribes, and in just a few months, more than 300,000 people died because of the plague.

As the hardest-hit area in Kyoto City, smallpox appeared in the palace of the Qing Dynasty, and among the important people who were infected, there were many concubines and children of Huang Taiji.

Among the important ministers of Shengjing, dozens of people were also infected with smallpox, and after the onset of the disease, they were directly isolated in a separate courtyard to recuperate.

These princes and ministers, concubines and concubines are lucky, after all, they can still send maids to serve well, and at the same time, there are professional doctors and doctors to treat and consult, and among the people of Shengjing, four or five out of ten households have smallpox epidemic patients, at this time, it can be said that everyone is in danger, in order to prevent the spread of this discolored epidemic, the Jurchens, as the masters, drove the sick people directly out of Shengjing, and concentrated them in captivity, so that they can fend for themselves.

The only hope for these people was that Huang Taiji, the great lord of talent, had not yet driven them out of the capital and placed them in a closed camp outside the city, but he also asked the doctor to prescribe some prescriptions and medicines, as well as the necessary food to give them, so that they could survive, and perhaps luckily, they were one of the lucky ones who were killed by smallpox blight.

After the temperature dropped, the infection and spread of the smallpox virus became sluggish, but God finally opened his eyes and did not let the epidemic spread outward, and the number of infected patients gradually decreased, and the patients who were infected before gradually began to recover due to differences in their physical conditions and temperature changes.

It can be seen that in many cases, the destructive power brought by one epidemic is even far more powerful than the destructive power and losses caused by several, dozens of life-and-death battles.

The border passes of the Ming Dynasty were extremely fortunate not to be affected by the epidemic that ravaged the entire Qing Dynasty, and some smallpox patients appeared sporadically, and with the concerted efforts of the officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty, they had a rich epidemic control system, but they quickly controlled the disease and did not let the virus spread outward.

Subsequently, they closed the city defenses and stepped up the deployment and control of the smuggling caravans, but they did not let the smallpox virus spread to the Ming court.

Even Hong Chengchou and they were still looking forward to the epidemic that occurred in the Qing Dynasty, if it weren't for the artificial change of the smallpox plague patients, it would be impossible to say that a cadre of generals led by Cao Bianjiao and others would lead the troops to attack, taking advantage of the opportunity of everyone in the Qing Dynasty to expand the land and city defense outward and recover the territory that had been encroached upon by the Jurchens for many years.

As for Shang Kexi and them in Dongjiang Town, which is in the heart of the Jurchens, it goes without saying that the last surviving Hongtang dead soldiers escaped the search and interrogation of the Jurchens, and there were nearly ten people who came to Phi Dao, in addition to informing Shang Kexi of the goods they had hidden before, they also brought back the ashes of many of their companions.

As early as when they began to implement the plan, Shang Kexi had already received information that the smallpox epidemic might be raging, so they did not sit idly by and wait for the island to be sealed early, and at the same time quietly searched for cowpox cattle among the surrounding tribes and their own cattle herds, and quietly planted the people under their command.

Therefore, when everyone in the Qing Dynasty was panicking, the Phi Dao and other places controlled by Dongjiang Town were not panicked at all, except for the people who did not know the details and heard about the crazy spread of the epidemic in the territory of the Qing Dynasty, scared into a cold sweat, the rest of the Hongtang soldiers carried out their actions as usual.

Even, Shang Kexi and Geng Zhongming took advantage of the opportunity of the Jurchens to mess up their positions, and led the army under their command that had long been immune to the smallpox virus, to wander around and harass the Qing Dynasty, giving the Qing people a headache, but there was nothing they could do.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the soldiers of Dongjiang Town smashed several weak Jurchen tribes, and at the same time, they seized a lot of cattle, horses, and livestock, as well as Jurchen and Mongolian barbarian prisoners.

Anyway, the Jurchen army at this time was shocked that the remnants of their uninfected army appeared in the epidemic disaster area, and they would also be infected, even if they sent troops to suppress and drive away the soldiers of Dongjiang Town, they were also afraid to shrink, completely lacking the speed and courage of before, which made the soldiers of Dongjiang Town feel very relaxed.

(End of chapter)