Since Emperor Chongzhen succeeded to the throne, the Ming Dynasty was shrouded in bloody wind and rain, and the ship that had sailed on the sea for more than 200 years began to decay to the point that it was difficult to resist the stormy waves on the sea, and it was about to tilt in the wind and rain.

If it is said that the first half of the second year of Chongzhen to the third year of Chongzhen is the stage between the Ming court and the Houjin Tartar, then the second half of the third year of Chongzhen to the fourth year is the Ming court and the Shaanxi rebel army tower singing.

The horror of the Houjin entry into the customs and the siege of the Beijing division has not yet gone away, and the beacon fire of the Shaanxi rebel army has been burning all over the Shaanxi Mountains, pressing towards the core area of the Ming Dynasty - the surrounding area of the Beijing Division.

But obviously, there is a great difference between one who can reach the Beijing division and the other who has not yet reached the Beijing division, and the pressure on the Ming court between the two.

After the Houjin soldiers were in their prime, after the soldiers besieged the Beijing division, Emperor Chongzhen was terrified, not only killed the frontier general Yuan Chonghuan, but also threw his whole body and mind on the border defense of Liaodong, changed the commander and increased the troops, and levied food and wages.

And the Shaanxi rebel army, in the eyes of the officials and lords of Beijing, is just a group of Ming people who can't live and make trouble for two days.

You can't see in your eyes, and you can't sit idly by.

So, as soon as the old men discussed, they put the heavy responsibility on Yang He and Hong Chengchou, one singing white-faced main caressing, and the other singing black-faced main killing.

But no one would offer relief for the famine.

Masters of the Jingshi, the emperor is far away, and he can't see the general trend of the rebel army, nor can he imagine the situation in the northwest that has been corrupted.

In the fourth year of Chongzhen, the two places in Shaanxi and Shanxi have been full of rebel beacons, and the number of people and horses of the rebel army is increasing every day.

At this time, the Daming Guard Army and the border army had not yet been defeated without a fight and scattered in battle as they were more than ten years later.

Even if the Houjin murderous and unblinking Tartars entered the pass to loot and besiege the Beijing Division, there were still officers and soldiers from all over the country to help King Qin. There is still Man Gui who led the army to fight and fought to the death with Houjin; There is a chariot battalion on the Lugou Bridge that blocks the enemy without a single person; There are Weixian troops who took the initiative to attack the general army of Zunhua and killed several people; There was Liu Zhilun, who recruited 10,000 people to fight all the way to Zunhua and was finally besieged and sworn to death, and the eight battalions of the righteous army died until only one battalion remained; There is Jin Riguan to defend the city of Malan; There is a frontal hard resistance to the back of the golden Tartar Ning Yuan iron horse; There are also Hong Chengchou, Cao Wenzhao, and so on, who killed the rebel army.

It's just that at this time, there are soldiers who dare to fight, but there is no enough finance to support food and salary, Emperor Chongzhen saved by himself was exhausted by the Manchu Dynasty's civil and military greed, no food and no salary, the army mutinied, with the passage of time, the motivation and fighting spirit of the officers and soldiers slowly exhausted.

The Shaanxi rebel army, the drought in the next two years, coerced the displaced people to succeed, these rebel armies did not have the concept of food and salary, as long as everyone could grab something and eat, they dared to sacrifice their lives to do it.

The most fundamental difference between the Ming officers and soldiers and the Shaanxi rebel army was revealed, one had the financial support of the imperial court, and the other was self-sufficient.

The financial supply is not enough, and if you can't change your thinking, you will slowly lose your combat power, and the rebel army will attack the city and plunder the rich households, but the snowball will get bigger and bigger.

In the fourth year of Chongzhen, the Shaanxi rebel army, under the deterrence of Hong Chengchou, gradually advanced eastward and transferred the main force to Shanxi, where the officers and soldiers were weak.

At this moment, Tang Xidong, who was in Pingyang Mansion, didn't know anything about what was coming, he knew the chaotic times at the end of the Ming Dynasty, but he didn't know the details.

Tang Xidong only knew that he had seized the city of the Ming Dynasty and was bent on defending against the Ming officers and soldiers, but he didn't know that he was about to face the tide of hundreds of thousands of rebel troops.

But Tang Xidong has never slackened.

Chongzhen four years, spring.

Tang Xidong finally got out of the craftsman's workshop and went to the banks of the Fen River to inspect the expansion of farmland.

The Fen River is the flow of the Yellow River, Tang Xidong since last September to Daming, it is true that only a light rain has been seen, but after all, the Yellow River is the mother river of China, as a tributary, although the water level of the Fen River has declined, but still has sufficient water.

Within two miles of both sides of the strait, a piece of greenhouses has been built, stretching for dozens of miles, although some are out of season, but still planted a large area of grain.

Although spring has begun, the severe cold of winter is still not far away, and the temperature in Tangxi East is still hovering between zero and ten degrees.

Cement paths, ditches are crisscrossed, and waterwheels are scattered along the coast.

He had never done all this construction, but it was clear that the people on Luoliang Mountain had enough management and planning capabilities.

As long as he grows grain, he can guarantee that there will be no food shortage in Luoliang Mountain and the entire Binh Duong Province this year.

On the periphery of the greenhouse, a cement wall made of cement mixed stone is used to prevent outsiders from destroying it.

In addition to the farmland, there are also fish ponds that have been dug into ponds, and the farms have also been relocated here, and there is water and aquatic grass, enough for livestock.

At the training ground outside Pingyang City, 10,000 new troops were practicing day and night, plus the defenders of Luoliang Mountain and Pingyang City, 15,000 troops had been recruited under the command of Tang Xidong.

Although the manufacturing and research and development of flintlock pistols has overcome difficulties and officially started manufacturing, it is obvious that it is not so easy to build standardized parts, and it will be impossible to create enough weapons to equip all armies for a while and a half.

The cement arch bridge of Luoliang Mountain and the rebuilt cement city wall have also been built, and Tang Xidong is considering whether to strengthen Pingyang City as well.

In Tang Xidong's concept from later generations, the appearance of artillery was more suitable for field warfare than for defending the city like the current Ming Dynasty.

The artillery now developed by Luoliangshan has field combat capabilities, one is to have time-lapse ammunition for mass destruction, the other is equipped with a gun carriage that can be moved and split, and the third is to make a spiral rifling inside the barrel to improve the range and stability of the ammunition.

The current artillery has unified specifications of 35 mm caliber, 55 mm caliber, 75 mm caliber, and 105 mm caliber.

The excitation powder was also pre-loaded in advance, and the firing range was between 200 and 500 meters depending on the size of the dose of the excitation powder and the length of the shell's delay lead.

At a distance of 500 meters, the dose of excitation powder does not guarantee the stability of the artillery and the accuracy of the shell fire, while within 200 meters, it is already within the control range of flintlock guns and grenades.

With artillery, Tang Xidong has added field combat capability to the army, and the current problem is still that flintlock pistols cannot be mass-produced.

In the case that the flintlock pistol could not be loaded, Tang Xidong wanted the army to fight a field battle, and still needed to rely on the chariot formation, bows, arrows, swords and shields to arm the army.

The newly recruited 10,000 people were divided into the First Volunteer Regiment and the Second Volunteer Regiment, and the Luoliangshan Company still had the same title, except for an additional 500 artillery companies. The 2,000 defenders in Pingyang City, known as the Pingyang Company, were still formed by the young men of Luoliang Mountain.

After the caravan bought back 3,000 war horses, Tang Xidong asked Li Shangquan to pull out 1,000 people from each righteous regiment to form a cavalry company.

Tang Xidong is not prepared to carry out ideological education for the time being, and he needs to survive the fittest after the new army has really taken shape and has been trained in bloody battles, and then slowly inculcate the idea of reform.