First, while Li Zicheng and Liu Zongmin led the main force of the Dashun Army, passing through Taiyuan, Ningwu, Datong, and Jinju Yongguan, sweeping all the way to the border troops of various towns along the border of Xuanda, and marching to Beijing from the north, Liu Fangliang led the left battalion of the Shun Army, and also launched a southern front operation according to the deployment.

Liu Fangliang crossed the Yellow River from Puban in February, marched eastward along the north bank of the Yellow River, and arrived at Huaiqing in Henan Province in late February, where Chen De, the deputy general guarding Huaiqing, surrendered.

Zhu Changshu, the king of Lu who was sealed in Weihui, was so frightened that his soul was not possessed, and under the protection of the chief soldier Bu Congshan, he crossed the river with his belongings and his family, and the nearby prefectures and counties followed suit, and the officials fled away.

Liu Fangliang sent his generals to each lead a small number of troops to sweep the Hebei provinces, and no one resisted wherever he passed.

On March 10, the Dashun army entered Quang Binh Province, and then set out from Quang Binh and continued north to collect Xingtai Hejian and other places. On March 21, they arrived at Baoding, an important town in Gyeonggi, and encountered resistance from an army led by Li Jiantai, the governor of the Ming Dynasty.

On the 26th day of the first lunar month, Li Jiantai led 20,000 patchwork soldiers and horses to set off to Shanxi to resist the thieves, preparing to break the family for the country, use his own family property as military salary, and recruit more dead soldiers to defend Shanxi. Who knew that before entering Shanxi, his hometown Quwo had fallen into the hands of thieves, and it was no longer meaningful to go to Shanxi, so Li Jiantai led the army to the south, preparing to garrison Baoding.

Although Li Jiantai does not know military affairs, he may not be a scholar or a rice bucket, he has analyzed that if the Dashun army wants to attack Beijing, it is nothing more than the north and south roads, and the north road is through Xuanfu Datong, where there are several towns and Ming border troops, the number of which is enough to tens of thousands, and there should be no problem in resisting the Shun army. Then there is the South Road, south of Beijing, Pingchuan, which is a plain area, if the thieves choose to enter Hebei from Shanxi, and then attack north, it is easier than from the Datong area. And Baoding is an important town in the south of Beijing, and thieves must pass through to attack Beijing.

Therefore, Li Jiantai analyzed that the worries of the imperial court were in Baoding and not in Xuanda, so he sent his troops to Baoding.

Li Jiantai commanded a patchwork army, with low combat effectiveness and extremely low morale, and along the way, soldiers fled from time to time. The local officials of the Ming Dynasty were well aware of the temperament of the imperial army, and in order to avoid harassment of the people in the city, they adopted a closed-door attitude towards Li Jiantai's army that passed by.

According to the system of the Ming Dynasty, the army marched in the territory, and the local government provided grain and grass, but Li Jiantai brought so many people, where did the local government have the ability to supply, which was also an important reason why the counties closed the city gates.

Along the way, the soldiers of the Ming army lacked clothes and salaries, the soldiers kept fleeing, when they arrived in Dingxing County, the army was extremely tired, the officials of Dingxing County closed the door, Li Jiantai was furious, and even ordered the siege of the city, where can the small Dingxing County block the attack of the soldiers, it was quickly broken, the soldiers swarmed in, and looted wildly, and the military discipline has been extremely corrupt since then.

Although Li Jiantai was the superintendent, he could not control the army with scattered military discipline and no fighting spirit, and by the time Baoding came, only half of the army had fled. At this time, Liu Fangliang commanded the army and was attacking the city in the south.

......

When the news of the fall of Taiyuan reached Jingshi, the Chongzhen court fell into a state of panic.

Because no minister was willing to take the initiative to propose a move to the south, and Guang Shiheng and others were stirring up the situation, Chongzhen's plan to give up Beijing and move the capital to Nanjing could not be carried out.

With some of the soldiers of the Beijing battalion being taken away by Li Jiantai, Beijing's troops are extremely weak, and at this moment, there are not many troops that can be mobilized around Beijing. Xuanda's army had to resist the thieves, and several southern troops had to resist the attack from the south of the thieves. At this moment, the only ones who can be transferred are Tang Tong, who was transferred to Jizhen, and Wu Sangui, who is stationed in Ningyuan, and Wu Sangui, the general soldier of Liaodong, who is stationed in Ningyuan, oh, and there is also the department of Chen Yue, the governor of Tianjin, but Chen Yue's department is only a few thousand people, and the troops are weak, and they have not yet entered the eyes of the courtiers.

At this moment, the thieves are pouring into the nest to attack, and it will definitely not work without mobilizing the army. When mobilizing Wu Sangui, the imperial court had different opinions, because Ningyuan was the only remaining city of the Ming Dynasty outside the Guan, directly facing the Manchu Tartars in Liaodong.

And in Ningyuan, although there are tens of thousands of troops, but the real elite is Wu Sangui's five thousand Guanning iron cavalry, Wu Sangui retreated, the remaining Ming army could not resist the attack of the Manchurians, which means that all the land outside the pass will be completely abandoned, and from then on there will be only one mountain customs pass in the Ming Dynasty to guard.

Chongzhen's reluctance to take responsibility for himself once again manifested itself, and he hoped that the ministers would take the initiative to give up Ning Yuan and transfer Wu Sangui to Beijing. With the killing of Yuan Chonghuan and Chen Xinjia, the ministers have long been proficient, and no one is willing to bear the charge of losing the land, lest Chongzhen settle accounts in the future and cause death. Therefore, after surrendering to Wei Zaode, they all opposed the transfer of Wu Sangui.

Zhang Jinyan, the secretary of the Ministry of War, even made the problem clear, "The tone of Sangui is not in tune, depending on whether Ning Yuan abandons or not, and the two words are decided." ”

Chongzhen's abacus of absolving himself failed, so he had to decide to give up Ning Yuan by himself. However, the problem that the Chongzhen court was accustomed to ripping off the skin reappeared. In order to shirk the responsibility, the first assistant Wei Zaode once again convened the ministers to discuss the meeting, with the intention of sharing the responsibility, and after the court passed it, he was still doing everything possible to delay time. In this way, the matter was delayed for a month, and until the end of February, Wu Sangui's proposal to enter the customs was still not implemented.

Tang Tong was transferred to Beijing, and it didn't take long for the news that Ningwu had fallen and the Datong defenders had surrendered. So the imperial court hurriedly sent him to Juyong Pass, hoping that he could hold this last line of defense.

However, on March 15, the Dashun army entered Juyong Pass, but Tang Tong and Du Zhizhi, the eunuch of the supervising army, led the army to surrender, and Xiongguan, known as the "North Gate Lock Key" of the Beijing Division, fell in this way.

When the news reached Jingshi, the entire city had fallen into despair.

The ministers discussed countermeasures in the court, one by one but did not talk about each other, everyone knew that the number of Ming Qi had been exhausted, and it was irreversible!

Chongzhen sat on the throne in a daze, although his expression was calm as usual, but in fact, his heart was like numbness, and at this moment he once again had the idea of fleeing to Nanjing.

However, the news of the southern thieves attacking all parts of Hebei has already arrived, and it is unlikely that they will go south by land. It seems that he can only take the sea route, but fortunately, he sent Chen Yue to Tianjin and is ready.

So, Chongzhen secretly ordered Wu Mengming, the commander of Jinyiwei, to send people to Tianjin as soon as possible, and transferred Chen Yue to Beijing as soon as possible. Chen Yue still has thousands of troops there, all of them are elite soldiers who can resist the Manchurians, and with the protection of this army, Chongzhen can escape with peace of mind.