In August of the seventh year of Yongli, in the reeds of the Jiangkou of Liuzhou Prefecture, Guangxi, Li Dingguo and a southwest Ming army under his command lurked here, observing the movements of the Jiangkou. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

After abandoning Yongzhou, Li Dingguo quickly crossed the Longhu Pass, recovered Wuzhou through He County, and then went out of Guangdong. On 14 March, Li Dingguo captured Kaijian and Deqing Prefecture through Fengchuan County, and arrived at the city of Zhaoqing on the 25th. The next day, Dingguo personally came to the outside of Zhaoqing City, commanded the troops to attack from the east, west, and north, and at the same time divided troops to occupy Sihui and Guangning.

Once the army entered Guangdong, the anti-Qing forces in the two regions were all deeply encouraged, and they rose up one after another to respond and cooperate in the battle.

For a time, Song Guoxiang and Wei Yingdeng of Cenxi, Guangxi, attacked Luoding Prefecture in Guangdong and its two counties of Dong'an and Xining; Zhou Jintang, Ye Biao, Shi Shangyi, Xiong Chaozuo, Wang Han, Deng Yao and other anti-Qing righteous divisions along the coast of Guangdong sent more than 200 warships from the rivers in Xinhui and Shunde to the mouth of the Jiujiang River; Even the anti-Qing forces in the Qingyuan Mountains of Shaozhou sent envoys to contact Li Dingguo, preparing to attack Guangzhou from Conghua County to the south.

It can be said that throughout March and April, except for Hao Shangjiu, the general soldier of Chaozhou who originally started to fight against the Qing Dynasty in this year, the Liangguang Anti-Qing Righteous Army that raised troops in response to Li Dingguo in this battle of Zhaoqing in history was all dispatched!

"Gongcheng reads Jun De Konghou, and the father hates deeply, then the five sheep and the red sea, see the sail, half of the Great Wall, and the center is Zhen. Otherwise, Zhongxing will be completed, Jingguan Shengji, and Yuntai incense words, thousands of years of circulation, the national surname is not predicted, why should it look up to the deputy special family and comfort this can be the situation? To the sun, hurriedly, fortunately. ”

This is a letter written by Li Dingguo to Zheng Chenggong during the Battle of Zhaoqing, which can be said to be full of confidence in this attack on Guangdong, and invited Zheng Chenggong to lead the army to come with him. The situation in western Guangdong is very good, and Li Dingguo is also full of confidence, but who knows that he has touched a nose under the Jiancheng of Zhaoqing.

On March 26, the siege battle began, Li Dingguo first attacked with a large army, but was stubbornly resisted by Xu Erxian, the general soldier of Zhaoqing, while resisting stubbornly at the head of the city, he raided the city with elite soldiers, resulting in a large number of losses of the ladder; When the assault failed, Li Dingguo turned to the strategy of excavation and raid, and as a result, Xu Erxian dug a trench under the city on the inner side of the city wall, so that the raid failed and became an oil consummation.

Li Dingguo's army is tens of thousands, and for a long time, Xu Erxian will not be able to last. Although the Jingnan Domain moved to Fujian, which led to a sharp reduction in the number of troops in Shang Kexi's hands, the situation in southern Fujian deteriorated greatly last year, which also made the Manchu Qing Dynasty not rush to pull out the time bomb of Hao Shangjiu, the general soldier of Chaozhou, so that this Chaozhou emperor was still in the capital city of Gaole. There was no threat in eastern Guangdong, and Shang Kexi decided to pour out the Southern Domain to help Zhaoqing, the western gate of Guangzhou, and only part of the green battalion soldiers were left behind in Guangzhou.

After Shang Kexi arrived in Zhaoqing, he first broke the wall of the fort and forcibly seized the tunnels of the Ming army and set them on fire. Then, when the Ming army retreated and had a stable foothold, it sent a large army to attack the Ming army camp, and it was specially made that a large number of hook spears with a length of five feet long broke the "armor" of the southwest Ming army with a long cloth wrapped around the head and covered by a quilt, and captured the Longdinggang camp in one fell swoop.

Pingnan Domain came to help, Li Dingguo's military advantage was greatly reduced, after this defeat, although the loss of each time was only a few hundred, in the 40,000 or 50,000 army is just a surface, but after leaving Huguang, Sun Kewang cut off the supply of Li Dingguo's army. The soldiers were short of food, which was beneficial to a quick battle but not for a long time, and suffered a new defeat, Li Dingguo had to give up continuing to besiege Zhaoqing and return to Guangxi to eat.

However, although it is said that it is called the two Guangzhou, the tax of Guangxi Province, which is full of toast, is actually less than one-tenth of that of Guangdong at the end of the Ming Dynasty, especially in terms of cultural governance and education. After returning to Guangxi, Li Dingguo had to accumulate grain and grass for another battle, and at the same time tried to regain the entire territory of Guangxi in order to strengthen his strength.

Last year, when Li Dingguo was summoned by Sun Kewang to go north to Huguang to face Nikan, Shang Kexi took the opportunity to order the military generals of the Dingnan Domain, Xian Guoan, Ma Xiong, and Quanjie, who had fled to Guangdong, to send troops to Guangxi together with Qiang Shijue, the deputy general of the Guangdong Naval Division. Due to Li Dingguo's army moving north, the Ming army left behind in Guangxi was all miscellaneous and weak, and within a few months, the Qing army captured Wuzhou, Pingle and Guilin.

When Li Dingguo left Huguang, he passed through He County in the eastern part of Pingle Province and recovered Wuzhou in the eastern gate of Guangxi. It's a pity that in April, Hu Yiqing, the Duke of Weiguo, failed to attack Guilin, and last month, Li Dingguo came to unify the army, but he was also frustrated by the Manchu Qing Dynasty's Guangxi Admiral Line Guoan, so he had to return to Liuzhou to rest.

Zhaoqing and Guilin could not fight twice, but Li Dingguo received another news, saying that Sun Kewang sent Feng Shuangli to raid Liuzhou. The Ming army raided the city occupied by the Ming army, which is absurd to say, but it is not uncommon in the entire history of the Southern Ming Dynasty. Moreover, between Sun and Li, it is now like fire and water, and Sun Kewang naturally does not need any moral lower limit when he fights internally.

At this moment, in the reeds, watching Feng Shuangli lead the army to land on the shore and fight with the small army that Li Dingguo specially left there, he immediately gave an order and ambushed the troops in all directions. Feng Shuangli saw that the situation was not good, so he had to jump into the water, but was captured by Li Dingguo's subordinates.

"Brother Feng, why bother?"

"If you want to kill, you will kill, and it is useless to talk too much."

"I know that Sun Kewang treats you very well, but in this world, the dog Tartar who killed the big man is still there, if I don't have the banner of the Ming Dynasty, I will immediately become a rogue, do you remember the dilemma when we followed the big to make a living?"

The dry big thing in Li Dingguo's mouth is Zhang Xianzhong, not only him and Sun Kewang, Liu Wenxiu, and Ai Nengqi, Feng Shuangli is also Zhang Xianzhong's righteous son, but his status and fame are far inferior to these four people, but he is also the number one general in the Great Western Army.

Hearing this, Feng Shuangli, who was still resolute, couldn't help but show a little sadness, as if he remembered the precarious embarrassment of the past, after all, Yungui's good days have been too long, and no one wants to go back to the days when they didn't know whether they would live or die tomorrow today.

"I avoided Guangxi in order to avoid Sun Kewang and prevent our Western Army from infighting. You see, this time you and my brother use this sword, we can only make the relatives and enemies happy, let the Tartars laugh at us, the joke is gone, we are just a plate of loose sand! ”

"Hey."

Zhang Xianzhong was brutal and suspicious, but in the troubled times of the late Ming Dynasty, he supported his group of godsons, and they had the grace to live. When Zhang Xianzhong was mentioned here, not only Li Dingguo, but even Feng Shuangli was in tears. It's just that Sun Kewang treats Feng Shuangli very well, and this time he took Li Dingguo's army and handed it over to Feng Shuangli, so even so, he didn't say that Sun Kewang was not. Li Dingguo knew this very well, but he did not kill Feng Shuangli because of his anger at this moment, and seeing that he also had some remorse, he let Feng Shuangli leave.

After returning to Liuzhou, within a few days, the Confucius Zhou officer of the Hanlin Academy arrived in the army. Anlong Qianhu went to Liuzhou, all the way to the east, and there were only a few mansions in between, and Zhou Guan sneaked all the way and quickly arrived here.

After reading the edict of "words and sorrows", Li Dingguo turned to the west and bowed down, and after a few knocks, there was blood spilled all over the ground.

Fuming and self-reliance are not only manifested in the contradiction between Li Dingguo and Sun Kewang, but it can even be said that this itself is the source of the contradiction between the two of them.

Over the years, Yang Weizhi first instigated the two ends. Subsequently, Sun Kewang's Ren Shu, Ma Zhaoxi, Fang Yuxuan and others wantonly instigated him, and created a Zen position for Sun Kewang. On Li Dingguo's side, civil officials from the Yongli court, such as Jin Gongdi, constantly instilled in him the traditional moral concept of loyalty to the monarch and serving the country. For example, every time the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is annotated, Liu Bei and Guan Yu are praised every time, and Dong Zhuo, Cao Cao and the like are lashed. Over time, Li Dingguo formed a deep-rooted concept of the monarch's subordinates.

"The minister has not died for a day, and he would rather let His Majesty be humiliated for a long time, and fortunately endure it for a while. The ministers and brothers are expected to have years, and they would rather lose their friends than live up to the king. ”

After writing this reply, Li Dingguo wrote in his heart to Wu Zhenyu, a scholar of the first auxiliary university of the cabinet: "Guangdong is undecided, it is difficult to advance and retreat, everything must be secret, and the responsibility lies with the old gentleman. ”

Chen Wen defeated the Eight Banners of the Han Army, and the news of the defeat of Shi Tingzhu, a veteran general of the Eight Banners of the Han Army, had already been conveyed to Li Dingguo's army. Originally, Li Dingguo was not unmotivated to attack Jiangxi together, but according to the reports of Zhang Sheng and Gao Bigui, Jiangxi was very damaged, and there was no supply from Yunnan and Guizhou provinces behind it, and it would even be isolated by the Qing army, and it would not be easy to feed the army under his command, not to mention trying to expand the army east into Nanjing.

In contrast, Guangxi was recovered by Li Dingguo in one fell swoop last year, and it is said that Guangdong's Shang Kexi is not as good as Kong Youde, and the taxes in that province are even more gratifying. In addition, Zheng Chenggong, who can achieve an alliance through marriage, is in southern Fujian, no matter how you look at it, it is more beneficial to attack Guangdong in the overall situation.

Of course, these military considerations were not the biggest factor in Li Dingguo's rejection of joining forces to march into Jiangxi. Sun Kewang, the domineering behavior that his righteous brother has shown in the past few years is no longer what a minister should have, the small actions of Sun Kewang's cronies, as well as the thoughts of Sun Kewang's cronies, Li Dingguo is also one of the leaders of the Great Western Army, how can you not see what is in the mind of his righteous brother?

"The army is in Liangguang, Sun can hope but there is something unfavorable to the emperor, and the army can be raised in the rest of the month. If you are in Jiangxi, half of the lake has been taken by the Tartars, and they are both from the Great Western Army, Chen Wen and Zheng Chenggong will be suspicious of me, and if the emperor is unlucky, it will be difficult to wash away the thief's name. ”

Thinking of this, especially looking at the gist, Li Dingguo only felt that the burden on his shoulders was heavier. However, he was not discouraged by this attack on Zhaoqing - this defeat is nothing more than lack of food and grass, and this year is like this, when the soldiers are well fed in the coming year, and then the alliance friends, it is best to lead Zheng Chenggong's army to the west, and Guangdong will always be recovered in one fell swoop! (To be continued.) )