After receiving Dolgon's stern orders from the front, Azig had no choice but to start a protracted decisive battle with the Shun army in the Yan'an area.

From the beginning of the engagement, both sides of Qingshun did their best.

After the defeat of a stone, Li Zicheng's men and horses suffered great losses, and the key was the loss of tens of thousands of elite soldiers, and this loss could not be made up for in a moment or two.

Fortunately, Luo Hu and Li Shuangxi brought back thousands of imperial battalion soldiers and child soldiers, as well as some men and horses who stayed in Beijing, adding up to less than 20,000 people, and then the troops stationed along the way were shrunk, and the men and horses brought to Hebei by Liu Fangliang were also all shrunk.

In this way, when the Qing army was about to fight a decisive battle with the Shun army, Li Zicheng gathered more than 100,000 horses.

Originally, according to Li Zicheng's plan, it was to fight a few battles in Henan to improve morale, and by the way, encourage the people of Henan to join the army in large numbers.

However, his lack of food and wages, coupled with years of war, did not exercise effective rule over Henan, and the people's hearts were far less trusting of him than they had been a few years ago.

A few years ago, everyone in the world thought that King Li Chuang was a person who could win the world.

The eighteen sons, the main artifact, make a large number of talents into the army, willing to become a member of the dragon to conquer the world, and the future will be good for the descendants of the shadow.

After entering Beijing, he was beaten out again, and the main force suffered great losses, which is still secondary, but the important thing is that Li Zicheng really lacks strategic vision, and he does not understand how to really rein in and win over the local people, so his ruling foundation is too weak.

At this time, after the end of the battle of Huaiqing, Henan was actually no longer owned by him, or the Shun army was no longer qualified to pass through Henan.

This is also a very shocking thing for Li Zicheng, now the Shun army in the Yulin area is not bad because of the large number of people, but the battle with the outpost of the Qing army, ten times to lose nine times, the elite soldiers, only the elite with the generals can still fight, the general soldiers can send up to one or two thousand people at a time to meet the enemy a few times, if it does not go well, it will retreat.

In the past, when the Ming army was fighting, the Ming army could also run away as soon as it was fought, so the Shun army rarely fought hard.

When he was in Henan, the battle of Zhuxian Town was a big battle that decided the fate of the Ming Dynasty, that is, there were a few battles at the beginning of the fight, and then the waterway of the Ming army was cut off, and the result was won without a fight, and there was no chance of bloody battle at all.

There are not many elite soldiers who broke into the camp, and the training is not enough, this is a very deadly place, and now if it is not for the combination of troops to make the number of soldiers to about 200,000, and the battle-hardened soldiers have also returned 100,000, I am afraid that there is no capital to confront the Qing army.

Several outpost battles were failures, and the Shun army could only retreat along the way, giving up the fortress and county seat to the east of Yulin, and only defending the line from Yulin to Mizhi and Yan'an. The rest of the dozens of cities were occupied by the Qing army.

The battle did not go well, but fortunately, all the main forces of the Shun army were here, and all the generals were also gathered together, although Liu Zongmin was seriously injured in a stone, and he has not recovered until now, but as long as the soldiers of the former enemy saw him riding a horse and patrolling in front of the formation, their morale was naturally high.

In addition, almost all the officers of the Shun army are from northern Shaanxi, especially in the Mizhi area of Yan'an, which is close to the township and the soil, even if they are afraid in their hearts, they don't want to fight too much to make the township party look down on them.

In this way, the battle line was always fixed on the Yulin line, the Qing army had no intention of fighting a decisive battle to attack the city, and the Shun army was thinking about its strength, and there was no large-scale attack, and the two sides were stalemate on the front, and each other had a year of worry.

By February, both sides understood that the decisive battle could not be delayed for too long, and that the Qing army was on the side because the situation had changed dramatically after the Battle of Dezhou, and the last bit of the Qing army left in the north and Liaodong had been pieced together and placed along the eastern line, led by Prince Zheng Jierharang to confront the Ming army.

Despite this arrangement, everyone understood that Zilharang's strength was not enough to resist the Ming army and block its northward advance.

There were so many battalions of soldiers in the two towns of Shandong and Xuzhen alone, which was enough to go north, and coupled with the terrible enemy of the Pingyu army, the weak defense line of the Qing army was not its opponent at all.

On the Henan side, because the front moved to Luoyang and Kaifeng, the troops reached Shangqiu and Guide, and actually joined forces with Haoge, and the Qing side greatly increased its strength in Henan, so it was a standoff with the Ming army for the time being.

On the battlefield of Henan, the terrible long-range strike ability and melee combat ability of the cavalry of the Pinglu Army left a very deep impression on the generals of the Qing army, and the cavalry was a joke in front of the opponent's fire commander, and the reaction was not comparable at all, as for the spear and halberd, it was not the opponent of the opponent's light and fast chopping knife, and the frontal cavalry battle, the Qing army fought and lost, and even all the Qing generals who participated in the battle in the sī army had asserted that the cavalry battle, the Qing army had at least 300 people, in order to win the Pinglu army of 100 people.

Of course, this conclusion is to make these generals who have experienced a hundred battles and have a hundred battles against the people of the Ming army very shameless, and even feel very humiliated, but the equipment and combat effectiveness of the Pingyu army are in front of them, and no matter how hard-mouthed the generals are, there is no way to ignore this fact.

At present, the main force of the Qing army is divided into several large parts, and the most important and strongest place is still in northern Shaanxi, and the longer it drags on, the greater the pressure on the supply of grain and salary in the north.

In order to win the hearts of the people, Dolgon announced last year that the tax would be levied on the basis of the taxes in the Wanli period, and at that time, in order to find a basis, it was only found that it was found out after a long time in the household department of the Ming Dynasty.

At this time, I'm afraid that Dolgon can understand Chongzhen's difficulties back then, the bigger the stall, the more difficult it is to make up for the politicians and repair the west, which is really much more difficult than when the original territory was small!

Because he understands this, Li Zicheng is also stepping up preparations during this period of time, Xi'an keeps sending food and salary, and he is also very caring for the soldiers, he is patrolling the camp almost every day, except for a yellow umbrella behind him and more than 100 imperial cavalry guards, basically he does not put the shelf of the lord of Dashun.

At the beginning, the pomp and circumstance of hundreds of followers and thousands of cavalry came out is really impossible to put on now.

This day is the solar term, the peaceful season, the village has to dance the dragon race, hold the village banquet, the whole village is lively together, and then each family has its own celebrations, or some folk rules are exquisite, the old people also take the opportunity to teach the juniors, so that the generation after generation is passed down.

When patrolling on a high ground, Li Zicheng remembered that when he was young more than 20 years ago, it was just the New Year, and it was about this time that he made up for the post guard, there were two buckets of rice to receive every month, and the things were done well, and there were some rewards of scattered silver taels and copper coins, and being able to be a post soldier was also a very good way out in northern Shaanxi, because there was a fixed salary, and he would save some extra money from the horse's food, and the work was not tiring, anyway, it was much easier to ride a horse than doing farm work in the field.

When the border army still has to fight, there is a danger of dying in battle, the treatment of being a post soldier is not bad, he goes south and north to see the long knowledge, and the income is also good, when he made up for the post soldier, the whole family is very happy, and his father is leading the horse for him, all the way to the village, and tells him to do things well, do not contradict the official, and work together with colleagues...... It's been almost twenty years since I thought about that!

Now my father's body has become a dry bone, and the direct family is almost dead, and he has rebelled for more than ten years, and he is about to succeed, but he has fallen short!

Thinking of this, Li Zicheng, who was originally a little sad, tightly tightened the reins of the horse, although there were hundreds of soldiers practicing in front of him, shouting and killing to the sky, but he didn't have the heart to watch at all.

"Your Majesty, General Wu is back."

At this time, Li Shuangxi came to report, Li Zicheng looked behind him, and sure enough, a small group of cavalry galloped on the high slope of the loess.

"Sure enough, Zizhi is back!"

At first sight, Li Zicheng was very happy. Since the rebellion, the rebels have been wandering and fighting, and the long-term flow has caused a great loss of people's physical strength, and of course more war horses are needed.

Every time the officers and soldiers were defeated, the most difficult weapon to distinguish between them was the captured mules and horses, and no matter how good the generals were, they had to make a few noises, trying to make more cavalry under their command.

Of course, Li Zicheng is the same, intervening in the north and south, and his favorite is naturally cavalry. After several setbacks, the Chuang army finally amassed a strong cavalry team a few years ago, with tens of thousands of horses and more than 30,000 qualified cavalry, but these were almost all lost after a stone battle.

The loss of war horses was very huge, resulting in a serious shortage of cavalry in the Shun army, and some cavalry were barely trained, but there were no horses to ride at all.

Wu Ruyi is Li Zicheng secretly sent to the north to secretly contact the ancient people to see if they can buy some suitable war horses to come back in preparation for the big war that is being prepared in front of them.

"Minister Wu Ruyi, knock on the emperor."

"Zizhi, get up quickly!"

After this period of setbacks, Li Zicheng's arrogance after becoming the emperor has also weakened a lot for a while. After entering Xi'an last year, he talked about pomp and circumstance, and he also talked about the courtesy of monarchs and ministers to these old guys, no longer calling each other's names, but calling each other directly by title or name, in order to distinguish between respect and inferiority.

At this time, of course, he couldn't talk about this, so he hurried forward, picked up Wu Ruyi, who was covered with weather, and asked in an eager tone: "How about it, how many horses did you buy?" ”

"The Emperor's ......"

Looking at Li Zicheng, Wu Ruyi's voice was choked.

"How?"

Li Zicheng's heart sank straight down, and kept sinking, as if he had fallen into a bottomless abyss, and he would never see a trace of light again.

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