In February of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, a conflict broke out between the Shandong army and the Anping Zheng clan in Suzhou.

This is a trivial matter, but now on the bodies of these two behemoths, the meaning is different, behind a trivial matter, but the fight between Wang Zheng and Zheng Zhilong.

The Shandong army then rose in the poor countryside, but the combat power can be called the strongest in the world, the Zheng navy dominated the southeast sea for more than ten years, the merchant ships are all flying the Zheng flag, and the warships are often thousands, which is not to be underestimated.

One of these two parties is on land and the other is at sea, and after all, they fought because of this trivial matter.

Zheng Zhilong once released a bold statement that he wanted to gather the power of Zheng's land and water to crush the Shandong army, and Zheng's wealth was rival the country, which was true, and people in Zhejiang and Fujian did not feel that there was any factor in saying big things.

But Jiangbei and those people in the areas occupied by the Shandong army have different ideas, they have no impression of the Zheng family, they just listen to it as a joke, because anyone who sees the face of this army will not think that they can lose.

It turns out that Zheng is like an egg in front of a stone in front of the Shandong army, which will break when touched.

The Shandong army continued the style of the previous blitzkrieg, and the three-way army went south in batches, gathering more than 300,000 land and water soldiers and horses and ships suddenly appeared at the foot of Anping City, and only one day, Anping announced that it had changed hands.

The news came out to surprise the people with ulterior motives who pinned their hopes on the Zheng family in the whole of Jiangnan, and the Shandong army searched in Anping City for two days, and sent foreign soldiers and horses to garrison here to continue the search.

According to the rumors of the people of Quanzhou, the Shandong army almost killed all the people surnamed Zheng in this area, and no matter whether they had anything to do with the Zheng family or not, they could not escape the fate of a person with a different head.

No one will say anything, catering to the general trend and saving the life of the family is the most important thing.

The meeting between the Shandong army and the Zheng clan in Suzhou broke down, and the two sides fought, and the Zheng infantry army did not perform much better than the thieves in front of the Shandong army, and it was almost a scene of collapse at the touch of a button.

Everywhere in Suzhou, you can see the internal and external soldiers and horses of the Shandong army going door to door to search for the remnants of the Zheng family, and among these people there is often a scribe appointed by the staff office, who holds the document book and checks the number of people one by one.

If there is a sudden appearance of someone whose identity is unknown, and it is still someone who has come suddenly, they will all be arrested indiscriminately and beheaded, and they would rather kill the wrong person than let it go.

From March to the end of April, in addition to dispatching a large number of urban management bureau personnel to the south of the Yangtze River to arrest the remnants of the Zheng family, the Shandong army also sent troops from all walks of life to take over Fujian, Zhejiang and other provinces.

The fall of the Zheng clan announced that there was no longer any force in the entire Jiangnan that could restrain Wang Zheng's Shandong army.

For a long time, the Shandong army has maintained good military discipline, and there have been almost no reports of generals bullying and oppressing the people.

What they saw and heard made the people of Jiangnan eagerly look forward to the arrival of the Shandong army.

In fact, having said that, there is still a big reason why the Shandong Army is invincible in the south of the Yangtze River, that is, the actions of Dashun in the northwest.

Li Zicheng hesitated for a long time, and finally couldn't stand it and waited for death, and gathered the Dashun army in mid-March to swear north, looking at the direction of the Ming Dynasty's Beijing City.

This time is more than two months away from Li Zicheng's northward journey in history, but the result does not seem to have changed in any way.

It is an indisputable fact that today's imperial court is unable to protect itself, and the civil and military officials of the Ming court up and down the country are panicked and anxious to find a new backer.

If the one who can compete with Li Zicheng today is Anton Houwang, and the other people who are loyal to the imperial court have no choice, either go up to martyrdom or come down to join the Shandong army.

The Dashun army is claimed to be one million, but no one knows how many people were actually dispatched, but according to rumors, the number is actually not a lot, and there will be at least 300,000 troops.

Li Zicheng's march was crowded with people, and the Dashun army encountered almost exactly the same scene as the Shandong army experienced in the south of the Yangtze River, and the generals of the Ming court rushed to surrender, and there was almost no resistance along the way.

But in late March, when Li Zicheng arrived at Ningwu Pass, he was met with unimaginably stubborn resistance.

Zhou Yuji, who succeeded Xu Dingguo as the commander-in-chief of Shanxi, personally led 30,000 Shanxi soldiers to arrange defenses along the Daizhou line, and successively told the imperial court that he was gone, but at this time Beijing had no troops to adjust, and only symbolically dispatched about 2,000 soldiers in Baoding to help in the war.

On April 7, Taiyuan fell, and Cai Maode, the governor of Shanxi, committed suicide.

Li Zicheng rested in Taiyuan for three days, Gao Yi power division took over Xinzhou, and then rushed to attack Daizhou, Zhou Yuji held on to Daizhou for several days, the food was exhausted, and he had to lead the remnants of the army to break through and retreat to Baoning Wuguan.

Ningwu Pass is located in the middle of Shanxi, there is a folk legend that it is changed by the phoenix, so the locals also call it "Phoenix City", Ningwu is the traffic artery from Taiyuan to Datong in the north.

During the Jingtai period, the city of Wuguan in Ningning, together with the partial pass and Yanmen Pass, became one of the three major passes in Shanxi to defend against Tatar, and its strategic position was extremely important.

Niu Jinxing, the commander of the Dashun Army, suggested that Li Zicheng immediately besiege Ningwu Pass without stopping, and then go north after repairing for a few days, because the Shandong Army at this time had already begun to reform and rectify the original official army in the entire south of the Yangtze River, and it was urgent to go north.

If the Dashun army delays any longer, the Shandong army will free up its hands to go north to support, and it will be completely defeated.

However, Li Zicheng and Niu Jinxing didn't know that at the moment, Wang Zheng was already busy with his feet on the ground, and the Shandong army was full of joy inside and out, and no one was worried about the safety of Beijing at all.

No matter how Zhou Yuji prepared for the war, the lonely brigade in Shanxi would not be able to compete with Li Zicheng's hundreds of thousands of troops after all, and Zhou Yuji also understood that the loss of Daizhou was actually only a matter of time.

The terrain of Ningwuguan is dangerous, and Li Zicheng is afraid that Wang Zhengqin will attack day and night, so this battle is even more tragic than in history.

Although the Dashun army was outnumbered, it suffered heavy casualties due to the fierce bombardment of the artillery of the Ming army guarding the pass, and Li Zicheng even said that "if he does not surrender in five days, he will slaughter his city", hoping to force Zhou Yuji to open the city.

Although Zhou Yuji resisted wholeheartedly, the Shanxi generals were not optimistic about the future of the Ming Dynasty, and they continued to suppress the Shandong army despite such a strong combat power, which has chilled many people.

When the gunpowder was about to run out, some generals kept persuading Zhou Yuji to change his strategy and not to blindly fight hard.

But Zhou Yuji categorically refused, but he had a plan - to surrender.

He set up an ambush in the city, lured the enemy into the city with weak pawns, and when the advance of the Dashun army entered the urn city, he suddenly rushed down the front and rear gates, and the bows and arrows were placed indiscriminately on the city, and the guns and cannons rang out in unison, and he actually killed thousands of soldiers and horses of the Dashun army in one fell swoop.

Due to Zhou Yuji's stubborn resistance, Li Zicheng was discouraged, and even prepared to give up the capture of Ningwu Pass for a time.

However, Niu Jinxing, Song Xiance, He Jin and other Dashun generals all wanted to become heroes of the founding of the country, and did not approve of retreating to Shaanxi, and repeatedly insisted that the city of Beijing must be captured.

In fact, in history, Li Zicheng's northward journey was just a tentative thought, because no one could threaten the Dashun army at that time, but now it is different.

The Shandong army led by Wang Zheng has already taken half of the Ming Dynasty, and even the Zheng family, which is rich and invincible, has been annihilated in one fell swoop.

Therefore, the Dashun army launched a fierce attack on Ningwu Pass again, and Li Zicheng mobilized dozens of large and small artillery pieces to continuously bombard the city.

The Dashun army can be described as a backwater battle this time, so it is extremely brave, the front team of the charge was killed, the rear team immediately followed up and replaced, the dead bodies were piled up into a hill, and finally broke through the Ningwu Pass at sunset.

As usual, once the Dashun army entered the city, the battle was actually over, but after they attacked the city this time, Zhou Yuji still did not surrender and led the remnants of the Shanxi soldiers to fight in the streets.

Zhou Yuji fell off the war horse and fought on foot, and after several arrows in his body, he fought to exhaustion, and finally the Dashun army rushed up to capture him alive, but Zhou Yuji still scolded.

Li Zicheng ordered Zhou Yuji to be hung on a high pole and shot to death with arrows, especially resentful, and ordered his five horses to be thrown into the field to feed the wild dogs.

Zhou Yuji's wife, Liu, was always brave and healthy, and when she learned the news of her husband's martyrdom, she was so grief-stricken that she led dozens of women to refuse to defend the public house, and angrily climbed to the roof to shoot arrows at the Dashun army's foot soldiers.

It is a bit ridiculous to say that the various units of the Dashun army were competing to loot and burn in the city, and for a time they could not mobilize enough archers to shoot at them, and suffered a lot of casualties, and finally set fire to these women and burned them alive.

After that, the Dashun army slaughtered Ningwu Chengguan, leaving no babies and young, and many people were killed.