In the city of Jiujiang, the five provinces are slightly traveling.

Chen Yue's eyes were red, his face was full of scum, these days, he was paying attention to the battle situation all the time, and the daily rest time was no more than two hours.

Chen Yue was very tired, and Lu Zhenfei, Shan Minglei and other counselors were no less tired than him.

Hundreds of thousands of thieves outside the city, under the siege of the city for days, the attack and defense of the city, arrows and ammunition, food supplies, and the morale of the army and civilians, all of this has to be worried, and all the burdens are pressed on these people.

The cruelty of the war and the pressure of the defenders were no less than when Yangzhou Duoduo 100,000 Qing soldiers besieged the city in the past.

When he was in Yangzhou, Chen Yue had been in business for nearly a year after all, with 70,000 well-trained elites in his hands, the soldiers and civilians in the city were united, and there was no shortage of food and weapons.

And now, although he has 100,000 troops in his hands, most of them are fish belly troops, and there are no more than 20,000 people who can really be called elite soldiers.

Therefore, knowing that the Western Army outside the city was much weaker than the Eight Banners of the Qing Army, Chen Yue did not dare to go out of the city to fight the enemy.

It's not that he doesn't dare, it's that he can't afford the consequences of failure.

Once this battle is lost, there will be no obstacle from Jiujiang to Nanjing, and the Western Army can go down the river to Nanjing, which may really die.

The Western Army was not the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the war was a civil war between the Han people, not an invasion of foreign races. When the Qing army invaded, many people would resist under the banner of resisting the captives, and for the Western army, I am afraid that there would be more of a scramble to surrender, just like when the Dashun army entered Beijing.

Whether it is the gentry or ordinary people, who sits in the world does not have much pressure on them. For ordinary people, no matter who sits in the court, they have to pay taxes. As for the gentry, as long as Zhang Xianzhong gives them a little sweetness, they are afraid that they will rush to abandon Daming to serve.

For the backbone of the Ming gentry, Chen Yue didn't hold out any hope!

Because this battle is too important, there is no room for any adventure. If you can rely on the strong city walls to consume the strength of the thief army, there is naturally no need to risk a field battle. I have to say that after so many years of fighting, Chen Yue's tactics have become more and more conservative and safe. As the saying goes, the older the rivers and lakes, the less courageous they are.

At present, it seems that the effect of defending the city is still relatively obvious, and the thief army has attacked the city for more than a month, but Jiujiang and Hukou are safe and sound. It is estimated that the thieves left more than 10,000 corpses under Jiujiang City alone, and the siege losses of the thieves should be as much as 30,000 or 40,000 in addition to Hukou.

Although the loss was less than one-tenth compared to the 500,000 thief army, Chen Yue could guess how low the morale of the thief army outside the city would be if the repeated siege of the city could not be stopped.

Of course, the losses of the Ming army in the city were not small, and together with the mouth of the lake, nearly 10,000 soldiers were killed and wounded. Faced with the siege of hundreds of thousands of troops, the morale of the Ming army was equally low.

However, because of the firm control of the Yangtze River, the arrows and weapons consumed by food supply can be continuously transported to the city, because the back road is still there, and for the Ming army, it is far from the time of despair.

Maybe in another half a month, the thief army will be almost short of food, and then it will be the time for a decisive battle, Chen Yue secretly calculated in his heart.

However, at this moment, a clipper suddenly came from upstream, bringing news that surprised Chen Yue.

The battle situation in Wuchang changed abruptly, and Zhang Dingguo led an army of 100,000 to break through the containment of the Ming army and was killing Jiujiang.

"How so, how so? The number of Hanyang Ming troops is not under the Wuchang thief army, and the Zheng family's fleet is amazing, and it is not comparable to the thief army. With the Zheng family's sailors here, how can the thief army go down the river? ”

Lu Zhenfei lost his usual calm and screamed in shock.

Shan Minglei and his staff were also surprised. Jiujiang was in full swing during the war, and the defenders struggled to maintain under the attack of hundreds of thousands of thief troops, if the thief army in Wuchang went down the river to cut off the Yangtze River, it would inevitably make the supplies downstream unable to be transported into the city, and suffered from the attack of the thief army on both sides, and the consequences could be imagined.

Chen Yue was also shocked, but he remained calm, and immediately ordered to go down and order the news to be temporarily blocked. At the same time, he ordered Lü Tai to lead most of the fleet upstream, facing the thief army downstream.

"What the hell is going on?" Lu Zhenfei interrogated the messenger who delivered the letter, a thousand-household officer of Hao Shaoqi's army.

"Master Jingluo, ladies and gentlemen, the Zheng family's army is reversed!" Qianhu's words shocked everyone, "Our army and Zheng Jun jointly sent troops to attack the Wuchang thief army water camp, who knew that the Zheng family water division suddenly retreated and threw us to the thief army."

There were not as many ships as the thieves in our army, and the losses were not small after a fierce battle, so General Hao had to take us to withdraw from the battlefield. When we returned to Hanyang, we found that the Zheng family army was about to evacuate Hanyang, and General Hao sent people to interrogate in shock, but the people sent were killed by the Zheng soldiers, and the Zheng family ships brazenly fired arrows at our army.

Annoyed, General Hao ordered us to resist, and the two armies fought each other with arrows across the Han River. The thief army in Wuchang saw that our army was in internal strife, so they raised troops and went down the river. Our army was alone and couldn't resist it at all, so General Hao sent a villain to report the news by speedboat. ”

"Zheng Sen, what does he want to do? Don't he know the key to officially fighting the thief army at this time, and there is infighting at this time, and he wants the Ming Dynasty to lose the country? Lu Zhenfei said angrily.

"When something happens suddenly, there must be a reason, and when there is a national disaster, any charm will come out. If my estimate is correct, the envoys of the Zheng family will soon arrive in Jiujiang. Chen Yue sneered.

Zheng Sen, although Chen Yue has a good impression of this national surname in another time and space, but thinking about the Zheng family's actions in the late Ming Dynasty, thinking about Zheng Zhilong's surrender to the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the loss of the good situation of the Longwu Imperial Court against the Qing Dynasty, Chen Yue is very cold.

Zheng Sen may be a loyal man, but now the Zheng family is Zheng Zhilong in charge, and it is Zheng Zhilong's younger brother Zheng Hongkui who is really in charge of Zheng Sen's army. A pirate like Zheng Zhilong was not surprised that Chen Yue would do something that had no limit, and now Chen Yue was interested in what the envoy of the Zheng family would say?

Sure enough, on the same day, the Zheng family's clipper arrived in Jiujiang, and the Zheng family's envoy complained to Chen Yue, accusing Hao Shaoqi of colluding with the western thieves and suspected of surrendering to the western thieves.

"Hao Shaoqi was born in the thief army, like this kind of chaotic ministers and thieves are not enough to trust, after the governor of my family and the general soldier discussed, he thought that with the Zheng family's more than 30,000 troops, it was impossible to resist the attack of Hao thieves and Western thieves at the same time, in order to retain strength, our army has withdrawn from Hanyang and temporarily withdrew to Huangzhou. As long as Lord Liu's order is given, the 30,000 troops of my Zheng family will be thrown into the battlefield at any time and fight to the death with the thief army. The envoy of the Zheng family said.