Chapter 475: The Peak Loop Turns Desperate Situation Has Been Achieved

Before the advent of cement concrete, roads in the east and west were compacted land, and in some places this was not possible, and only a few wealthy cities could guarantee that they would be paved with stone slabs or stone bars in a few areas.

When it rains, the traffic on land becomes a disaster, and the main means of transporting materials on the road is of course the same is the big cart, which can pull a lot of materials on a hard road surface, and can ensure the speed of travel.

But if it rains, the land becomes muddy under the soak of the rain, it becomes very troublesome, that day Zhang Kun led the team to take the large convoy all the way to the north, is to catch up with this continuous rainy day, the result of the road walking very slowly, every day to follow the cart soldiers, are in the work of carrying and pushing the cart, the whole body physical consumption is clean, the speed of travel has not improved at all.

This Ming army in Henan after the victory from Tongguan, has been lucky, the past few years have been recovered, but this year's Henan is drought, two months did not rain a little, the road is naturally dry and solid, the Ming army's car camp is quite convenient.

The so-called favorable time and place, this kind of arid weather should also be said to be the time of day for the Ming army, which is also one of the important conditions for victory.

Because of the pursuit of the two cavalry of He Renlong and Xu Dingguo, Li Zicheng, the king of Chuang, has never had the opportunity to stand and gather the team, so he can only retreat again and again.

The supervisor Hou Sui who followed behind urged the army to move forward immediately, Baofeng and Jiaxian, although they had built an offensive in advance and were preparing to launch the battlefield here, but the matter was now, and they could only evacuate the soldiers and horses from all departments, and the supervisor Hou Sui was still seeking stability.

He led a large army into the land of Baofeng and Jiaxian, modeled after the area of Ruzhou and Yiyang, and stationed the army in these two cities. Each other is horns, take care of each other, the current strength of the two sides, although the Shun army is numerous, but it can not attack and besiege the two cities at the same time, it is still oppressed by the Ming army.

Niu Chenghu, the general soldier of Luoyang, led the cavalry to attack, took out the place where the women, children, old and weak of the Shun army lived in Tang County, and beheaded nearly 30,000. After coming back, the supervisor Hou Sui wrote a document to expedite the meritorious service, and sent it to the Beijing division quickly, but did not say to the Beijing division how many family members of the Shun army were killed, but said that he had killed more than 30,000 thieves.

More than 30,000, what a great achievement, Emperor Chongzhen is naturally a wanton reward, and Niu Chenghu, the chief soldier of Luoyang, was originally a late official in the army. This time, he was knighted first and named Nanbo.

He Renlong, Xu Dingguo, Gao Jie and Bai Guangen were either born in a family of border soldiers, or they were generals after the exile army was recruited by the official army, and their seniority was much higher than that of Niu Chenghu, but this time they were preempted by Niu Chenghu. Everyone has grievances.

30,000 women and children, almost more than eighty percent of the families of the middle and high-level generals of the Shun army, thought that King Chuang had set the situation in the world, and everyone married wives. Raising children, you can enjoy happiness together, who would have thought that there would be such a catastrophe.

The atmosphere of the Shun army became extremely depressing after the Mid-Autumn Festival, and on the one hand, the garrisons in various parts of the territory controlled by the Shun army were ordered to strengthen their defenses, and on the other hand, they sent people to Tang County to check.

Of the officers who were dispatched, two of them were already mentally disturbed when they returned, and they had seen a scene that was too bloody and cruel, and their families were among them. It is already beyond his psychological capacity, and the remaining few are crazy drunken every day, wiping weapons all the time.

The Shun army is a poor man who can't survive, from Shaanxi to Henan for many years, he has not seen anything miserable, and his heart has long been exercised as if he is iron, but they still can't stand the scene they see in Tang County. You can see how cruel it is over there.

Supervisor Hou Sui is already majestic now. The five general soldiers below, even if they hold the power of the army. But the slightest mistake is still to be severely reprimanded by Hou Sui, the five general soldiers also dare not speak, this series of victories can increase people's prestige and power, Hou Sui is already extremely self-conscious, he felt that Lu Xiangsheng, Sun Chuanting, Hong Chengchou and others claimed to be good at using soldiers, but compared to themselves is still too far behind.

When the thieves are destroyed, from the founding of the country to the present, there is another minister who can compare with his own merits, and then it will be Zhang Juzheng's magnificence back then.

The chief soldier Niu Chenghu is already Ping Nanbo, with such a title and great merit, he is already a figure in the heart of Jane in the emperor, this drudgery of cleaning up and escorting the retreat of the grain road, naturally he can't do it, and he has defeated the thieves several times at present, but the thieves have always been unharmed, and they can collect the soldiers and horses again.

A decisive battle was necessary to ensure the complete destruction of the thieves, and the governor and governor of the five provinces, Hou Sui, prepared to concentrate all the forces at his disposal to fight a big battle.

Niu Chenghu led the militia of the prefecture and township, after experiencing several battles, it can be regarded as a useful force, which can be embraced in the big war, but also sent to the front, as for the grain road and the back road, it will be handed over to the landlord militia who rushed over from all over the place.

After Li Zicheng led the army to retreat to Xiangcheng, then to the north is Kaifeng City, and then to the east is to Guide Fu, if you want to retreat into Runing, it is in the face of the threat of the Jiaozhou battalion and the two Huai forces, he can no longer retreat, and the next thing is to prepare for a decisive battle.

On the day of August 18, although the weather became cooler again, but it rained lightly, the Tuntian households in the Tuntian Tianzhuang in Kaifeng and Guide were ecstatic, and after the drought for more than half a year, they all needed to use the Yellow River water to irrigate, which was very laborious and laborious, and finally it rained God.

But for a few general soldiers, they felt that something was wrong, and the supervisor Hou Sui was now reciting poems against his staff members every day, and his elegance was abnormal.

Now the thing that the superintendent Hou Sui wants to do is to let these staff members write poems that praise their own merits, and when the great work is done, the day when they return to their hometowns, they will be collected and printed, and distributed all over the world, so that their reputation will be more glorious to the world when the time comes.

Hou Sui, who is extremely beautiful, now has a hidden danger in his heart, that is, when he was hesitant on the north bank of the Yellow River, he wrote a few letters to Shandong, and at that time he suggested that the imperial court transfer Shandong soldiers and horses to rescue the situation in the north and south.

Hou Sui didn't know how to redeem himself. I had to secretly send people to do activities, so that people could help me talk about it, or do a little foreshadowing in the court.

Supervisor Hou Sui is completely thinking about the future scenery and how to avoid things that will cause damage to his future, but the following general soldiers, no matter how straw they are, also understand the impact of the rain outside.

Field hedging, the Ming army was never the opponent of the Shun army. The reason why we can win now is that we can rely on the big carts, which can be used as a cover when attacking, and can be used as a position when retreating, and there is no good way for the Shun army to destroy these vehicles.

The Ming army's own Shanshan cavalry cooperated with the chariot formation to advance and retreat, which was often the effect of twice the result with half the effort, and the Shun army had no way to take this, so it was the source of victory.

It's raining now. There is no hope that the weather will be clear, the roads and the ground are constantly softening and muddy, and the movement of vehicles must be very inconvenient, not to mention that these large vehicles are still responsible for transporting heavy armor in peacetime, which is very troublesome for both combat and marching.

For the sake of the present. Maybe it's just to take advantage of the fact that the rain hasn't yet fallen and the ground hasn't become very muddy, so he will attack as soon as possible, anyway, the current bandit leader Li Zicheng has almost entered a desperate situation. After the sortie, he had to fight,

Gao Jie, the chief soldier of Yansui, and Bai Guangen, the chief soldier of Yulin, have not been given any chance to fight, watching Niu Chenghu, whose qualifications are far inferior to them, be promoted to the knighthood, and their hearts are very uncomfortable.

Supervisor Hou Sui had no specific combat experience. Hearing that several of his generals stated their interests, saying that if this weather was like this, the army would not be able to dispatch, and in the field battle, the advantages of the car battalion could not be revealed, and it was likely to fail, and he suddenly became a little anxious.

At present, the successive victories of this army of thieves are everything that the Inspector Hou Sui has, only victory. He has glory and wealth. Only then will there be a future, but if it is defeated. Yang Sichang was so favored that he committed suicide, and Sun Chuanting was ordered to be arrested and imprisoned for such a great achievement, so what reason could he have to save it.

What's more, in a series of victories, from the supervisor Hou Sui to the general manager and general manager below, there is an increasingly contemptuous attitude towards the combat effectiveness of this thief soldier and horse, and it seems that it is nothing more than that, and there is really nothing to be afraid of.

In this case, Hou Sui asked the other three general soldiers, He Renlong and Xu Dingguo's thoughts were similar to Gao Jie and Bai Guangen, Niu Chenghu was also thinking about making new contributions, of course he would not have any opinions on this matter, the Ming army could be said to have quickly unified their opinions, and immediately set off, and the soldiers and horses stationed in Baofeng gathered around Jiaxian, merged one, and went south to Xiangcheng to force Li Chuang to fight a decisive battle.

Everything is prudent first, Hou Sui has already written this sentence into a banner and hung it in his camp tent, this time too, the soldiers of Jiaxian County did not move, and the soldiers and horses of Baofeng County slowly marched eastward and went to the round.

This march was very different from the previous ones, although the distance between the two counties was not more than 100 miles, but it was somewhat difficult to move, the carts got stuck in the mud, or slid down the road, and the soldiers and men had to take great pains to carry the carts back again.

What's more, in such a situation, they also have to worry about whether they will be attacked or harassed by the thieves' army because of the slow march, and they also have to deploy forces to defend, this short road actually took three days.

The three days of continuous rain and rain have always been intermittent, but the ground is becoming more and more unsuitable for the march of the car battalion, and the confident Hou Sui also began to gradually become anxious, the only thing he feels is that it is appropriate, that is, the army is gradually hugging together, and there is no need to worry about any mistakes.

But so many soldiers and horses gathered here, the daily consumption of grain and grass is huge, all the officials who are involved in this food supply are very rich, but all the good people who are involved in this food supply are miserable, and their families are ruined.

On August 23, the general Tian Jianxiu personally led 8,000 light horsemen, walked through the areas of Yuzhou and Dengfeng, and entered Henan Mansion, which was far away from the main battlefield, and it was a big circle.

The way here is a place where the landlord militia swarms, and there will be a lot of trouble when marching, but no matter how big the trouble is, it can't compete with the 8,000 cavalry led by Tian Jianxiu, and it is much faster to go here.

The line from Tongguan to Ruzhou is the grain route where more than 200,000 thieves and soldiers led by the governor Hou Sui are located, but at present, only some local militia groups are maintaining it.

The armament of these gentry and high-ranking men was either hundreds or thousands, combined into a team. Hou Sui chose the most powerful people among them to confer various official positions from the guerrilla attack downwards, and chose the most powerful people as their commanders, but these people came from all over the world, and they did not subordinate each other, not to mention each other, and there were all kinds of contradictions, and they wanted to annex and collude with each other.

This kind of armed mess is not organized, and there is no combat effectiveness at all, after learning that nearly 10,000 troops led by Tian Jianxiu, the general of the Shun military system, came over. Many people fled in despair, and some forces directly threw aside the loyalty and patriotism that they had said about kneeling on the ground and kowtowing to the oath more than ten days ago, and bowed their heads directly to Tian Jianxiu's side.

In such a chaotic situation, the few landlords' militias that still had the heart to resist were all wiped out under the attack of the elite soldiers led by Tian Jianxiu.

Thousands of soldiers of the Shun army, who have always been in the area of Lushi County, Henan Province, also started to move at this time. With Tian Jianxiu's nearly 10,000 soldiers, they began to sweep away the militia forces in various places in Henan Prefecture, and soon approached near Tongguan.

Most of the border soldiers on the Shaanxi side were looted out of the customs, and their own garrisons were very problematic. He was already in a panic, closed the Tongguan Gate, did not dare to send troops to resist, and there was no way to send troops out to inform the Governor Hou Sui in Jiaxian.

The rear grain road of the army of the Governor Hou Sui was choked. Guoyi's generals Liu Fangliang and Liu Tichun led 20,000 soldiers and horses from Yexian to the north, broke the small number of defenders in Baofeng, occupied Baofeng, and rushed to Ruzhou and Yiyang by leading the army again.

For the Governor Hou Sui, he has always wanted to gather soldiers and horses to make his headquarters strong enough. Avoid being defeated by the army of thieves with superior forces.

Under such circumstances, there was no way for the Governor Hou Sui to divide too many soldiers to garrison the cities he occupied, and the defense of these cities was the same as the grain road, which was garrisoned by those armed militias, so as to make a wish for the official and win over the local gentry.

What can these militia groups do, they can be used when they are fighting for power and showing their loyalty, and they can see this big soldier attacking. Suddenly, the soul was scattered. Not to mention that the organization could not properly resist, there were also those who turned around and defected on the spot. It's really lively, there used to be such a joke.

When the Governor Hou Sui led the army to come, the bandit leader would look at the direction of the wind and pretend to be a loyal minister and go to the past.

After taking the official position, he did mischief in the county, and the local gentry and common people all had the intention of dying with him, but the bandits were extremely vicious, and they couldn't do anything for a while. A month or two later, when the Shun army returned to slaughter, the people of the city cheered, thinking that this savior had finally come and could punish the wicked.

Who would have thought that as soon as the army came, the bandits led their troops out of the city, they should have fled when the situation was not good, the city was very happy, firecrackers were set off, and the gentry organized the people to welcome the Shun army into the city.

As a result, as soon as the Shun army entered the city, the new generals of the Shun army were familiar to everyone, and it was the bandit leader who had already transformed into a loyal man who returned to the Shun army, and the city fell into dire straits.

Only in troubled times will there be such a bastard situation, which makes people cry and laugh, of course, it is always those unarmed and obedient people who cry.

In the territory of Henan Mansion and Ruzhou Prefecture, in addition to the follow-up grain and grass baggage, the supervisor Hou Sui also looted a large number of military materials stored by the Shun army in various places, so it can still support for a period of time, and he does not know anything about the cutting off of his own grain road in Henan Prefecture, and he is still looking forward to the arrival of the army.

On August 28, the weather that continued to rain finally cleared, and the officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty stationed in Jiaxian County cheered and rejoiced, and the supervisor Hou Sui even burned incense in his courtyard to congratulate him, hoping that his ancestors would bless him.

But this sunny weather proved to be an accident, and on August 29, the rain began to fall again, which made the Ming officers and soldiers who had only been invigorated for a day fall into low morale.

On the second day of the ninth lunar month, the rain still did not listen, and the news of the fall of Ruzhou, Yiyang, and Baofeng spread to Jiaxian in turn, and these peripheral strongholds, which were considered to be retreats and dependents, were uprooted one by one, what did it mean, everyone's hearts were clear, and the low morale gradually turned into panic.

On the morning of the third day of the ninth lunar month, when the superintendent Hou Sui and the five general soldiers were deliberating. The quartermaster reported the situation for the next few days, and no matter how much he saved, it could only last for five days. But the follow-up supplies still did not come, could it be because of the heavy rain that delayed the trip.

The army has no supplies and rations, and the soldiers have no strength to fight without anything, not to mention the collapse and despair of the morale of the army that ensues, which is catastrophic.

Until this time. Supervisor Hou Sui made up his mind, divided his troops to Ruzhou and Yiyang, and divided his troops to open up the grain road, and Niu Chenghu, the chief soldier of Luoyang, was naturally awarded a heavy task.

But this time the guards in Yiyang and Ruzhou are the two fierce generals of the Shun army, Liu Tichun and Liu Fangliang, these two people are eighteen cavalry figures, follow Li Zicheng's veterans, they are also led by the elite men and horses of the Shun army, this time Niu Chenghu led his soldiers to attack. It's not as good luck as it used to be.

His men were nothing more than a group of landlords and militias, and the carts had no way to move on the muddy roads, so they had to be lightly armed.

In the field battle, the backbone of the Ming army was not the opponent of the Shun army, let alone such a rabble. When the more than 8,000 cavalry horses led by Niu Chenghu reached the halfway point, they encountered the soldiers and horses led by Liu Fangliang, and the two sides fought in the rain. When marching in the rain, the troops under his command were exhausted, and this engagement had already lost the opportunity.

On the same day, Niu Chenghu led the soldiers to the old camp in Tang County to sneak attack, slaughtering the women, children, and children of the Shun army over there, and Liu Fangliang's wife and concubines and children were also among them.

The hatred in the hearts of Liu Fangliang's subordinates is not much less than that of his own master. In addition, before the march, Liu Fangliang's camping and marching scheduling preserved the strength and spirit of the soldiers to the greatest extent, and at the beginning of this battle, there was no suspense.

The hatred between the Shun army and the landlords' militias is bitter, and it does not take much mobilization to fight each other, but an army with discipline and a sense of community is much stronger than a group of thugs who only know how to fight with red eyes. The battle between the forward team of the Shun army and the front team of Niu Chenghu was very short. Then Niu Chenghu's troops completely collapsed, and his soldiers and horses were all divided. And then annihilated by each.

The only thing Niu Chenghu could do was to turn around and run away, he and more than 1,000 cavalry from his cronies rushed towards the direction of Jiaxian, the heavy rain was pouring, the ground was muddy and slippery, and the horses made a slight mistake, that is, they fell and broke bones, but they thought that the casualties of this were a large number, not only the Niu Chenghu Department of the fleeing place suffered heavy losses, but even the pursuing troops were also killed and wounded, but Liu Fangliang still ignored it and led the crowd to chase.

It has been chased to fifteen miles away from Jiaxian, Yulin general Bai Guangen led the crowd out to respond, this battle suffered heavy losses, when Niu Chenghu came out of Jiaxian, led nearly 10,000 people, but when he returned to Jiaxian, there were only more than 100 horsemen, morale was low, At this time in Jiaxian, the available military rations were less than two days.

Since leading the crowd from Tongguan into Henan, the Governor Hou Sui has been victorious, the prestige has shaken the world, and he has become more and more ambitious, and when he arrived in the Jiaxian area, he has already forced the King Li Zicheng into a desperate situation, and then further can lay the full achievement, but suddenly, the situation suddenly took a sharp turn, and the desperate situation became the Ming army led by the Governor Hou Sui.

The grain road was cut off, the back road was blocked, and the nearly 200,000 Ming troops were now Shun troops in all directions, and they were already under siege.

What to do, the supervisor Hou Sui suddenly found that he had nothing to do......

After the Mid-Autumn Festival in Shandong, martial law was implemented everywhere, and economic activities can be carried out, but the most severe blockade has been implemented around the various military camps and military facilities, and anyone who snoops on them will be sentenced heavily, and the people are used to such a situation.

Therefore, up and down Shandong, almost no one knows that Li Meng left Jinan, and now he is out of Shandong......