Li Zicheng suffered heavy losses after the battle of Tongguan, defeated all the way, and led the remnants to drill the Shangluo ravine, Azig's army has followed and pursued, and some time is wasted with them, with Li Zicheng's remaining strength, it is impossible to make a comeback, and Dolgon's henchmen have been eliminated.

In May of the first year of Hongguang, after the Qing army captured Shaanxi, Dolgon immediately shifted the military center of gravity to the east and ordered Duoduo to move to the south. At this time, there was a fierce party struggle within the Hongguang regime, after Ma Shiying squeezed out Cao Bianjiao, he squeezed Shi Kefa out of the cabinet, but above the court, outside the government and the opposition, there were still many upright people, and Ma Shiying resolutely resisted, Zuo Liangyu, who was stationed in Henan, was unwilling to fight with the Qing army after being invited by the Donglin forces, so in the name of 'Qing Jun's side', he went south to fight for the Nanming regime. Ma Shiying hurriedly transferred Fengyang Huang Degong to meet Zuo Liangyu's army, causing the Jianghuai defense line facing the Qing army to fall into emptiness.

The northwest and the Central Plains have no worries, and Zhang Xianzhong in the southwest can ignore it for the time being, and let him make trouble for a few years. Instigated and aided by a group of traitorous ministers, Dolgon re-planned a big plan aimed at completely destroying the Hongguang regime. Compared with the previous tentative attack, the Qing army was obviously much more abundant and more carefully arranged, and Dolgon actually pursued a set of "three-pronged" southward combat plans from the center, west, and east.

The middle route was commanded by Yu Wang Duoduo, starting from Henan Mansion, after seizing Guide Mansion and Sizhou, he crossed the Huai River to the south, captured Yangzhou garrisoned by Shi Kefa, and then crossed the river with his army, pointing directly at Nanjing, and then divided his troops to capture Taiping Mansion and Wuhu, and swept away the enemy on the periphery of Nanjing. The Hongguang army defended this line mainly by Huang Degong, Shi Kefa and other departments.

The western route was commanded by the British king Azig, starting from Xi'an, following the remnants of Li Zicheng in pursuit, taking advantage of the situation to capture Xiangyang, advancing to Wuchang and Jiujiang, and joining forces with Duoduo's middle route army in the west of Nanzhili. The Hongguang army defending this line was mainly Cao Bianjiao's generals.

The eastern route had fewer troops, led by Gushan Ezhen Zhun Tower, who had just replaced Suwang Haoge in Shandong garrison, first occupied Xuzhou, and then advanced along the Grand Canal by land and water, seized Suqian, Huai'an, and Tongzhou, and approached the area north of the Yangtze River, covering the attack of Duoduo's army on the flank. The Hongguang army defended this line by Li Benshen, the Gao family army led by Xing, and Caoyun's troops and horses.

Among the three route armies, Azig's Western Route Army also encircled and suppressed Li Zicheng's remnants in the border areas of Henan and Hubei, and the advance speed was relatively slow along the way; Zhunta's Eastern Route Army was restrained by Qi Biaojia, the governor of Denglai, and there were only thirty or forty thousand soldiers and horses in his hands, and the slower his actions were; Only Duoduo's middle route army was the strongest, the fastest attack, and the greatest threat to Nanjing. 100,000 troops, more than a month, with the cooperation of Zuo Liangyu, the Qing army broke through Xuzhou, crossed the Huai River, and approached the city of Yangzhou.

Previously, Zuo Liangyu was stationed in Ruzhou, Henan, not close to Nanjing, Zuo Liangyu was blocked by Huang Degong in Huaiyuan on the north bank of Huaishui, and the imperial court also sent Yuan Jixian, who was kind to Zuo Liangyu, to dissuade him.

When Yuan Jixian went to Huaiyuan to negotiate, Zuo Liangyu burst into tears, claiming that he was acting on the secret edict, Zuo Liangyu acted like this, and took the "prince's secret edict" to swagger and deceive, of course, he couldn't hide Yuan Jixian, who had long been wary of him, Yuan Jixian scolded Zuo Liangyu in person: "Where did the secret edict come from?" The old virtues of the first emperor cannot be forgotten, and the new grace of the present cannot be negative! ”

Zuo Liangyu's subordinate Hao Xiaozhong secretly entered Fengyang City, set fire to the city and left, Zuo Liangyu looked at the fire in the city and said, "I'm sorry Yuan Gong!" "He vomited a few liters of blood on the spot and died that night.

As soon as Zuo Liangyu died, Hui Dengxiang, the commander of the rear battalion, held high the banner, organized the generals to fight for an alliance, supported Zuo Liangyu's son Zuo Mengeng as the commander, and swore allegiance! Zuo Mengeng expressed his attitude to the soldiers on the spot: inherit the will and kill Nanjing!

Fengyang City was destroyed, can no longer defend, Huang Degong had to take the initiative to attack, taking advantage of the unstable heart of the left army to launch an offensive, Zuo Mengeng's troops were caught off guard, defeated and fled, Zuo Mengeng then led the army to retreat to Suzhou, when the Qing soldiers had already laid down Xuzhou, approaching Yizhen, Zuo Mengeng then sent people to the Qing army camp to surrender, and was approved.

The "Gao Army", which lost Gao Jie, was already a plate of scattered sand, and it broke up before there was much firefight, and Li Benshen surrendered in Xuzhou. The army of Duoduo sang and laughed all the way, captured Sizhou on June 13, crossed the Huai River at night of the same day, and the vanguard encamped 20 miles away from Yangzhou City on the 17th, and the troops approached Yangzhou City on the 18th.

Ma Shiying's perverse behavior was unanimously opposed by the ministers, and Yao Sixiao, the secretary of Dali Temple, Li Zhichun, the secretary of Shangbao, Wu Xizhe, and Qiao Kepin, who were in charge of engineering, played one after another, and frankly said that the situation of Huai and Yang was very critical, and the safety of the Beijing division could not be guaranteed.

Hongguang Emperor Zhu Cijiong ordered on the spot: "Huang Degong's department is transferred to Guazhou to defend it." As a result, the Huainan defensive line was completely abandoned.

Although Shi Kefa, who was stationed in Yangzhou, had no foresight and strategy, he was not as shameless as Ma Shiying. Shi Kefa repeatedly sent distress signals to various places, but there was no response, he had to admit and sigh: "It has not yet been attacked, but the people's hearts have gone, and they can't be cleaned up." Even so, as a supervisor, Shi Kefa is still determined to live and die with Yangzhou City!

After Duoduo led a large army to the city of Yangzhou, he did not rush to attack because the rear army had not arrived. Liu Zhaoji, the commander-in-chief, suggested that while the Qing army had not yet been fully assembled, he simply sent troops to attack in a sneak attack, which not only found out the enemy's situation, boosted morale, but also disrupted the enemy's disposition. However, Shi Kefa believed that "the sharp spirit should not be tested lightly, and it is advisable to raise the whole front and wait for it to be killed", and resolutely did not agree to send troops to meet the enemy.

Shi Kefa is determined to die, but there are many people who are greedy for life and afraid of death. Li Qifeng, the general soldier of Gansu stationed in Yangzhou together, and Gao Qifeng, the supervising army, conspired to coerce Shi Kefa into surrendering to the Qing army. Shi Kefa "refused", and the two did not dare to rashly commit public anger, so they only took the Sichuan generals Hu Shangyou and Han Shangliang out of the city to surrender.

When his subordinates defected to the enemy at a critical juncture, Shi Kefa did not stop and severely punish them, in order to set an example, but generously let them out of the city on the grounds of "preventing chaos". As a result, Yangzhou's defensive forces were weaker and morale was even lower.

On June 24, the artillery of the Qing army was in place and began to attack the city, but the weak Hongguang defenders were not able to hold out for long, Yangzhou was captured by the Qing army the next day, and Shi Kefa, Liu Zhaoji and others were martyred. In order to deter the resistance forces in Jiangnan and completely disintegrate the fighting spirit of the Hongguang regime, Duoduo ordered a terrible massacre of Yangzhou!

Shi Yangzhou: All women have long ropes around their necks, tired like beads, step by step, covered in mud; The ground is full of babies, or lined with horses' hooves, or by human feet, the liver and brain are smeared on the ground, and the crying is full of wilderness. Walking through a ditch and a pond, piling up corpses and accumulating them, pillowing hands and feet, blood entering the water and blue ochre, turning into five colors, and the pond is flat.

Upon learning that Duoduo's army had arrived in Yangzhou, Nanjing, which was about to lose its barrier, fell into a panic. On 26 June, some people in the Hongguang court put forward a motion to "move the capital", following the example of the Southern Song Dynasty to move the capital to Hangzhou, and some even proposed to move the capital to Guiyang, but they were strongly opposed by Qian Qianyi, then the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, and had to give up.

On June 25, on the occasion of the court meeting, the Nanjing court at this time was not much different from the scene after learning of the fall of Beijing last year, and there was no word from top to bottom. In less than three days after that, the military headquarters officially received the battle report of the fall of Yangzhou, and the government and the opposition were shaken and uneasy, the people of Nanjing were panicked, and there were countless people who fled south with their families.