In the middle of the night of May 22, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, several officers and soldiers gathered in Zhuxian Town, south of Kaifeng City, could not wait to start the operation.

Wen Ruzhen, the general army of Sichuan aid and suppression, took Mo Chongwen's department as the vanguard, Yang Guodong's department as the rearguard, and led his headquarters as the Chinese army, starting from the Zhailou area south of Zhuxian Town, and sneaking westward.

The walled building is at least sixty miles away from Yan Li Village, and it is necessary to wade across the vortex river on the way, so the plan reported is to travel day and night. On the night of the 22nd, the army marched on the night of the 22nd, waited for concealment during the day on the 23rd, crossed the river on the evening of the 23rd, and officially launched the attack in the early morning of the 24th.

Wang Shicong, the sub-inspector of Runan Province, as the leader of Wenchen and Ding Qirui and Yang Wenyue, acted together with the warrior Wen Ruzhen.

Ma Jinzhong, the deputy general of the outer battalion of the left army, led his troops and horses from the Xiema camp area further south and sneaked northwest. After joining up with the Wen Ministry, he marched after Yang Guodong's Ministry, under the command of Wang Shicong and Wen Ruzhen.

Because Fang Guoan, the general army of Huguang Aid and Suppression, had many subordinates, and some of the troops were still on the trench defense line of the confrontation, he hurried to collect the troops after the military discussion ended in the evening. Even so, it is estimated that he and Ma Jinzhongbu will be separated by half a day.

As for Zuo Liangyu, the governor of Zuo Du and the general of the thief general, Zuo Liangyu, his task is to command the soldiers and horses of the headquarters to cooperate with the three general soldiers of the Baoding Army, and make a big show to attract the attention of the thieves. At the same time, scouts were sent to keep in touch with the attacking units. When the old camp of the thieves caught fire, he led the remaining soldiers and horses to attack in an all-round way, fought a decisive battle with the thieves, and lifted the siege of Feng.

……

A decisive battle with a thief is not as light as picking up a lamp grass.

When the military discussion was over, the generals returned to the camp, some of them were in Lima, and some were dejected. More people sent all kinds of spies to Zuo Shuai's camp to find out the news. But the people who came back reported one after another: Zuo Shuai locked himself in the tent and saw no one.

Zuo Shuai is not a guest, but it does not mean that there is no gain.

Soon, a sensational conspiracy theory that could not be verified passed through the mouths of these spies and spread throughout the battalions of the officers and troops:

In today's military discussion, the plan of attacking the old camp of thieves Yan Lizhai at night with several battalions of dead soldiers was originally planned by Ding Qirui, and the purpose was naturally to curry favor with the emperor and make him an official and a knight.

In order to climb the high branch of Ding Qirui, Wang Shicong, a sub-patrol of Yang Wenyue's sub-patrol in Dazhou, Sichuan, and the son of the Shu Domain, Zhu Pingjian, a native of Nanchong, Sichuan, secretly visited Ding Qirui at noon, and presented Ding Qirui with ironclad evidence of the collusion and rebellion between Yang Wenyue, a native of Nanchong, Sichuan, and Zhu Pingjin, the son of the Shu domain.

Ding Qirui used this to blackmail Yang Wenyue, and Yang Wenyue was forced to make a compromise in order to save his head and betrayed Yang Dezheng's department to Ding Qirui.

But the number of Yang troops was too small, and the combat effectiveness was too poor, and Ding Qirui was not satisfied. And Yang Wenyue was unwilling to sacrifice his main force of the Baoding Army, Hu Dawei.

Therefore, Yang Wenyue, under Ding Qirui's step-by-step pressure, had to use his collusion with Zhu Pingjian, the son of Shu, to intimidate the three small battalions from Sichuan: if they were unwilling to fight, the families of the soldiers of the three battalions would suffer a little.

According to reliable sources, the main force of the Sichuan army, Mo Chongwen's successor, Li and his only son, Mo Yundi, as well as the families of most of the soldiers in Jia Ying, were in Yiling, and they were completely controlled by the Shu army out of Sichuan. As for Wen Ruzhen, a native of Banzhou, and Yang Guodong, a native of Chengdu, their families and clansmen fell into the big quagmire of Sichuan early.

Therefore, the soldiers of the third battalion had to be forced to go to battle and accept the errand of sending their lives without returning.

As for Ma Jinzhong's ungrateful anti-bone boy, he turned to Ding Qirui and Yang Wenyue, naturally because Ding Qirui and Yang Wenyue gave him a rotten bone that he couldn't chew and swallow. Zuo Shuai had long been suspicious of Ma Jinzhong, so he had previously arranged for Fang Guoan, the deputy marshal of the Chu army, to ask Ying to supervise the formation in the military discussion. If Ma Jinzhong retreats from the battle, the general army of that side will punish him with military law......

The reason why a rumor is a rumor is not necessarily false is not that what is in the rumor is false, but that all parties involved in the rumor will firmly deny it.

But as the saying goes: no wind, no waves.

Now that the rumors have come out, the timing and content of the rumors are very worth pondering.

Many generals in the left army have been thieves for several years, and they are familiar with the "Great Chuxing and Chen Shengwang". What they are most worried about is not rumors, but that Zuo Shuai forced them to go into battle to fight for life and death with the thieves, and lost all the money they had to make a living.

When they hear the rumors, they immediately put their minds at ease

put it in his stomach and began to sit and wait for Zuo Shuai's further orders. Some generals who can't hold their breath have secretly ordered their subordinates to pack. In that way, even if they are forced to the battlefield by the damned Ding Qirui and Yang Wenyue, they can smear oil on the soles of their feet at any time and slip away.

However, things on the battlefield cannot be settled.

Most of the generals of the Left Army were still waiting for the commander's order, and things took a major turn.

Around dawn, it is the time when people are most sleepy.

Before dawn on the 23rd day of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, when many people were still sleeping soundly in the wilderness, an explosive news was secretly transmitted to the outer camps of those left armies through a certain channel, like a thunderbolt, sweeping away their remaining sleepiness - Yang Dezheng, the general of the Baoding Army, was very dissatisfied with the blind command of Ding Qirui and Yang Wenyue, so he coerced the general Zuo Liangyu to take decisive measures to immediately withdraw his troops and fight again with the whole army.

Whether Zuo Ping's thief withdrew his troops under the pretext of Yang Dezheng's move, or whether Yang Dezheng was really bold, these generals who heard the news had no time to argue.

Because in the darkness before dawn, the neighing of people and horses suddenly became a loud one.

The thieves on the opposite side lost no time in joining the chorus with the roar of cannons. The constant flickering muzzle fire, like an accent mark in the death movement, plunged the officers and soldiers into a collective panic.

More than 100,000 officers and troops abandoned their positions without care and fled frantically to the southwest.

That's where they set off more than ten days ago.

……

A nightly march of sixty miles plus a river that was expected to be traversed was quite achievable for a high-morale, well-trained, and well-prepared army.

However, this was impossible for the four battalions of tired troops who participated in the night attack.

In the middle of the night on the day of the waning moon, the dark figures of the comrades-in-arms were faintly in the dim silver light.

From time to time, a ghostly fire sprang up in the wilderness between the tombs, flickering and floating in the scorching night wind, making those who saw it creep.

No soldier knew where the team was going, and no one knew if he would be alive tomorrow. The lack of food, the lack of water, and the fear of the unknown future made the soldiers unable to lift their lead-filled legs and move their feet.

I don't know how long it took until the eastern skyline showed a faint light, and finally a military order came from the front of the team:

The army was disbanded on the spot! Go down to the river to drink water, rest and cook, but you are not allowed to disarm, let alone make noise! By the time dawn comes, it may take a longer route!

There's a big river ahead!

For those soldiers who are so dry that their mouths are cracked, it is simply great news.

Without an order, thousands of people invariably quickened their pace and rushed towards the dark gray line in front of them. Many veterans have already guessed that the thick line must be the embankment of the great river!

The Vortex River, a major tributary of the Huai River.

The upper reaches of the Whirlpool River is the Jialu River (Grain River), but the source of the water body of the Whirlpool River comes from the diversion of the Yellow River.

The channel of the Whirlpool River is located on the left bank of the middle reaches of the Huai River, and flows in a northwest-southeast inclined direction. Because the terrain on both sides of the river is high, and the middle river channel is wide and deep, there is a saying that "water does not exceed the vortex" since ancient times.

During the hundreds of years when the Yellow River was seized into the sea (Note 1), the Whirlpool River and the Yinghe River to the south became the main channel of the Yellow River, so the Whirlpool River also has the familiar landscape of "hanging river on the ground" that later generations are familiar with.

During the Wanli period, Pan Jitao, the minister in charge of river defense, tried to remove the sediment in the Yellow River by "restraining the water and flushing the sand", that is, raising and reinforcing the embankment, bringing in the clear water of the Huai River, forcing the main stream of the Yellow River to speed up, so that the river sand could be smoothly brought into the sea.

It should be said that Pan Jitao's idea is very novel, and the short-term effect is also better.

The direct effect of the implementation of the policy of "harnessing water and attacking sand" was to turn the situation in which many branches of the Yellow River flowed into the Huai River since the Jin and Yuan dynasties into a single flow into the sea (Note 2). The main channel of the Yellow River has changed from south to east, the water volume of the Yellow River through the vortex river and the Yinghe River has been greatly reduced, and the flooded areas have shifted from the middle reaches of the Yellow River such as Henan and Anhui to the lower reaches of the Yellow River such as southern Shandong and northern Jiangsu.

Time is the litmus test of everything.

THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF PAN JITAO AND HIS SUCCESSOR JIN (JIN) FU CAN BE SEEN AT A GLANCE AFTER YEARS OF TIME, DECADES, OR EVEN ONE OR TWO HUNDRED YEARS.

The Yellow River brings billions of tons of sediment downstream every year, and the water volume and flow rate of the Yellow River and the Huai River are simply not enough to wash away such a huge amount of river sand.

Reverence for the heavens and harmony with nature is one of the essences of Chinese civilization.

"Following the trend" and "going against the trend" are the criteria that distinguish between making a difference and messing around.

Detached from the ability to reality, wanton alteration of nature will inevitably lead to more severe punishment from God.

"Rushing the water and sand" is essentially a fantasy that "man will conquer the sky", but the final result is that "the sky will win over the man".

Pan Jitao and his successor Jin Fu forcibly restricts the river, causing the embankments to be built higher and higher, consuming more and more manpower and material resources, and breaking more and more places. When this vicious circle reaches a certain tipping point, a torrential rain and a wave of floods will wipe out all the efforts of tens of millions of people for hundreds of years.

Finally, one day, the Yellow River, the mother river of the Chinese nation, once again revealed her unique personal hobby - she likes to dance square dances, and she does not move her upper body and lower body square dance (Note 3).

With the collapse of the north bank of the Yellow River in a certain place in Henan, the surging Yellow River broke away from the shackles of the old road, all the way to the north, through Jinan, Shandong Province into the Bohai Sea, thus ending the history of hundreds of years, after the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties of the Yellow River to seize the Huai into the sea.

Since then, the people of Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu have been singing and dancing to celebrate their good days of recuperation. The people of Hebei collapsed and collapsed to the ground, sweating (CEN) with a smile of relief on their faces. The people of Shandong wept bitterly and complained that their luck was too bad, and they lived a bitter life of not being able to sleep at night during the rainy season.

……

At dawn on May 23, the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the turbid water of the Yellow River continued to flow in the whirlpool with a towering river bank and a wide valley.

A weary army rushed headlong into her arms, and the water, rich in sediment and not sweet, became their sweetest wine. The water of the Yellow River in the vortex river started from their feet, headed southeast, passed through Tongxu, Taikang, Luyi, Bozhou, Mengcheng and other prefectures and counties, and finally flowed into the Huai River in Huaiyuan County, west of Fengyang Prefecture.

The soldiers soaked in the warm water and savored the coolness of the river.

Watching more and more follow-up troops silently rush into the river, the pleasure of the first to arrive suddenly exploded.

Unfortunately, people are never satisfied.

Hey, such a big river, if you can sail down the river, you don't have to continue to shake your tired and sore feet! The soldiers were longing, fantasizing, and even more disappointed. Going down the river, that is not to go to the front to fight, but to withdraw to the rear to rest. Hundreds of thousands of people in Zhuxian Town are facing each other, and the big war is imminent, so don't dream at this time!

The sky is already bright, and the sun has once again enveloped the Central Plains in a heat wave.

The soldiers, barely wrapped in cold wheat rice, were regrouped by the officers and hidden behind the embankment on the west bank of the Whirlpool River.

The soldiers did not know the next course of action, nor did they know the next goal of the operation. They just sat on the ground blankly, waiting for the military order from the Shangguan to come or the banner of the Chinese army to move.

At this time, a puff of smoke and dust came from the southeast without any scruples. When the men and horses approached, the sharp-eyed soldiers recognized the leading general.

"That's not Yao Guerrilla!"

"Why didn't Brother Long see him?"

"They're heading for the Chinese army!"

"I heard that they went out a few days ago, why did they come from the south at this time?"

The soldiers speculated. But before they could come up with a universally accepted conclusion, the Chinese army's general order was handed down:

A rapid march south along the embankment!

Board the boat at the pier outside the city of Tongxu, twenty miles away!

Oh yes! Withdrawn!

You really don't have to work hard!

If there was no strict order to march covertly, the soldiers could sing all the way.

Note 1: Baidu by yourself.

Note 2: That is, the old course of the Yellow River marked on the map.

Note 3: The Yellow River below Zhengzhou will fan-shape, which is the historical state. Historically, the bursting of the Yellow River was both a natural and a man-made disaster. The northernmost point of the fan-shaped oscillation once reached the Haihe River (yes, the Yellow River once flowed into the sea in Tianjin), and the southernmost point emptied into the Yangtze River via the Huai River.

。 m.