Whenever he saw that the internal exercises he had put his heart and soul into had become an army, although there were only 1,500 people, Wang Chengen always felt a sense of accomplishment.

Every time he came to inspect, he had to give a lecture to encourage the internal exercise army to train hard, and this time was no exception.

He said loudly with a sharp voice: "Inner army robes, our family sees that you are making progress every day, and we are happy in our eyes, we are all people in the palace, and the Holy Son of Heaven is our only support, we must be as loyal to the country as Yue Wumu." ”

These preferred eunuchs are not bad, and they shouted loudly together: "Loyal to the country, after death, loyal to the country, after death has ......." ”

The eighteen female instructors looked at these eunuchs with enthusiasm on their faces, and they felt that their efforts were not in vain.

Originally, Wang Chengen planned to train 8,000 to 10,000 internal exercises, but unfortunately the internal funds were exhausted, and it was necessary to maintain the food, equipment, salary, and training expenses of this 1,500 internal army no less than 80,000 silver coins per year, and there was really no silver for the expansion of the army.

After practice, Wang Chengen finally knew that training elite soldiers was too expensive work, and understood why many Ming troops had no combat effectiveness at all, and even more admired the southern king, who often launched tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of horses, and threw himself to the ground.

In the first month of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng was in high spirits when he took Luoyang, but the harvest was far from expectations, and the robbers felt unhappy if they robbed too little.

The leaders of the bandit department sit down and discuss where to grab next?

The thieves all thought that most of the local tyrants and squires in the prefectures and counties of Henan should flee to Kaifeng with their treasures, and then they would take down this big city to have a good harvest.

Song Xiance, who looked like a dwarf, shook his head and told the history of Kaifeng to many illiterate leaders of the thief department, and the thieves finally knew that it was once the Beijing division of the Northern Song Dynasty, Tokyo Bianliang City, and they were all excited.

The leaders began to launch propaganda, and the minions were tricked into going to Tokyo Bianliang to grab gold and silver treasures, sleeping with delicate beauties, and maybe if they were lucky, they might sleep with the princess and the county lord.

Many old bandits who opened their mouths and showed their yellow teeth, and their bodies exuded a foul smell, left behind them, and the temptation of sleeping until such beautiful girls as the princess and the county lord made their lower bodies hot.

Soon the thieves who were in a state of excitement spread all over the mountains and fields to Kaifeng, they spread like locusts, and all the families in their place lost their ability to survive, and the people who lost their rations could only survive by following the raids of the rogues.

Headed by the king of Zhou, the nobles and the landlords and gentry of course and good at robbery thieves are incompatible, Kaifeng is not only the location of the Zhou king's mansion, but also one of the few remaining heavy cities and giant towns in Henan, Kaifeng's trade-offs are related to the general trend of Zhongzhou.

The king of Zhou knew that the imperial court had no money and grain to allocate money, so he funded the construction of Kaifeng City to defend against the Liukou and seize the city.

In February of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng led the army to surround Kaifeng, claiming to have 100,000 men and horses, and besieged the city for seven days and seven nights. In fact, the elite thieves were only about 20,000 horses, and the rest were mostly ordinary people who were coerced.

Li Xianfeng, the governor of Kaifeng, has a border army that can fight, and Hu Dawei, the chief military officer of Shanxi, is also a fierce man, with thousands of Yulin soldiers under his command.

Li Zicheng used Song Xian's trick to attack the east and the west, and led out Li Xianfeng's Fubiao battalion and the main barracks of the chief military officer Hu Dawei with more than 10,000 men.

However, Kaifeng is difficult to attack, and the thieves fought fiercely for seven days and seven nights without getting any cheap, and the defenders in the city were extremely tenacious but still bombarded the rogue with firepower.

Chen Yongfu, the deputy general of the Kaifeng City garrison, found that Li Zicheng personally led his troops to charge and kill, and led his nephews and pro-soldiers to concentrate strong bows and arrows to shoot long-range.

The unlucky thief was injured in the left eye by a stray arrow, but fortunately the distance was too far, and the arrow's strength had been exhausted, and the thief only lost one eye and became a one-eyed plum, which was fine.

The one-eyed Li who was frustrated in the attack was reported, Xiong Wencan led the three general troops with a total of more than 20,000 reinforcements to arrive, and learned that Li Xianfeng and Hu Dawei also began to quickly return to defense, and they were not far from the blockade.

The one-eyed Li of the thief's heart has always been thinking about Kaifeng, and a few months after he conquered the city in the Central Plains, his men and horses doubled again.

The thieves thought that their strength was enough, and in December of the same year, they besieged Kaifeng again, this time doubling the number to 200,000.

After a year and a half of wandering career, many simple peasants have gradually turned into old bandits, and the elite of thieves has increased a lot, and now there are 40,000 or 50,000.

Li Duyan learned the lesson of the last siege and strengthened the coordination of troops and firepower.

It was also because he conquered many state capitals and county towns in the Central Plains, eliminated many local armed forces in vain to protect themselves, and obtained a lot of artillery, guns, and gunpowder.

The thieves department captured a lot of gunners and gunners armed by the Ming army and landlords, and it became possible to bombard the city and cover the common people who were surrounded by the three stages of firearms.

The defenders of Kaifeng resisted desperately, and the civil and military officials urgently mobilized the young and strong men in the city to participate in the battle, and the king of Zhou took out money and food to drive the old and young in the city to repair the gaps in the city wall, day and night.

This time, the main general of Kaifeng was Li Zhongzheng, and in order to motivate the army and the people not to surrender, he imitated the method of Tiandan sticking to Jimo during the Warring States Period, and fabricated Liukou leaflets to be widely spread among the soldiers and civilians in Kaifeng.

Soon rumors spread, and the soldiers and civilians defending the city learned that the thieves were cruel and prepared to "attack Kaifeng and break it, leaving no one behind, even if they answer the broom, they will have to cut it three times." ”

Knowing that everyone in the city would die, the soldiers and civilians did not care about their lives, and Zhu Gongfang, the virtuous king of Zhou, was not a miser, and personally took out 200,000 taels of silver from the treasury to pay the soldiers of the defenders, and offered a reward to kill a thief and give ten taels of silver.

The siege of the thieves belongs to the naval warfare, the equipment and troop dispatch are not in order, the artillery is also blind, the quality of the guns is too poor, and the range and accuracy are unreliable.

The defending army and civilians sprayed fierce fire oil from the fire oil tank and then threw torches, the thieves were burned to death, and the people were incalculable, no way, Li Duyan tossed outside the city for nearly a month, and gave up Kaifeng again to find a soft persimmon and pinched it.

The second thief opened the seal and declared it a failure, but although the siege of Kaifeng City was lifted, it was already broken.

It's not that precious metals such as silver are gone, these things are always there, but they keep changing owners.

Instead, there was a shortage of food, and there were hundreds of thousands of people fleeing into the city to escape the military disaster.

Li Zhongzheng and Zhang Xiushen and other civil and military scholars learned from the "God of War" to make rations to supply food, and they set an example by eating bran with the army and civilians, so as to barely let the people starve to death.

In the first month of the following year, Kaifeng did not wait for the relief grain from the imperial court, and waited for Chongzhen to issue an edict to praise King Zhou.

Such as "...... This high emperor has mercy on the descendants of the clan, Weicheng Mogu, and the blessing of enlightening the king's heart. ……。 Such a statement is already highly praised.

But at this time, the common people don't need beautiful words, just a bowl of hot porridge .......