On the afternoon of June 22, the 10th year of Longwu, the Northern Route Army of the Zuofu Army led by Pang Yue personally arrived at the city of Nanjing. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 The Dongting Battalion and Poyang Battalion of the Naval Divisions who accompanied the army broke out the first battle with the Jiangnan Naval Division of the Qing Army in the waters near Jiangpu, and after half a fierce battle, they broke their army and seized control of the waters around Nanjing.

Pang Yue sent the 2nd Guards Battalion to set up camp and establish a stronghold near Jiangpu on the north bank of the Yangtze River, and sent the green battalions of the original four towns of Anqing and Chizhou to Hangzhou to cooperate with the Youfu Army to attack the rear of the Qing army in Zhejiang, and sent the 3rd and 8th battalions of the 3rd town and the Poyang battalion of the sailor division to cross the river to attack Yangzhou. The rest of the troops camped on the south bank of the Yangtze River from the west, south, and east around the city of Nanjing. For a time, the Yangtze River was connected with each other, and there was no head or tail, and the red flags outside Nanjing were covered with air, and the camps were continuous. Since the first year of Hongguang, the city of Nanjing, which had been quiet for ten years, was once again surrounded by a large army, and the war was about to break out.

On the night of the camp, Pang Yue and a group of senior generals of the Zuofu Army came to the south foot of the Purple Mountain in the northeast of the city to play under Mount Everest to worship the filial piety tomb.

Xiaoling is the tomb of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, and Queen Ma. However, since the first year of Hongguang, Nanjing fell into the hands of the Tartars, and the people who guarded the tomb and sacrificed the tomb for ten years were all dressed in horse coats and beards, and the money rat tail, which was undoubtedly a great irony for the Emperor Taizu who expelled the Yuan captives to restore the Han family, and it was very emotional to think about it.

After the soldiers came to the city of Nanjing, they first worshiped the filial piety tomb, which was also decided by Pang Yue before he set out on the expedition. Not only to comfort the soul of Emperor Taizu in the sky, but also to unite the morale of all the soldiers and civilians who resisted the Qing Dynasty.

At present, it is wartime, and it is in the army, so all the ceremonies are simple. The soldiers who participated in the worship were all dressed plainly, and they looked solemn and solemn. Many people remembered the ups and downs of the years of conquest, and saw that the tomb of Emperor Taizu was in front of them, and the surging emotions in their chests could no longer be suppressed, and they cried bitterly.

After the worship, Pang Yue wrote a poem in front of the filial piety tomb "Leaving the teacher to ask for Manyi to Jinling":

Su Linjiang swore to destroy the captives, and the soldiers surrounded the city and swallowed Wu.

Thousands of miles of the Yangtze River were thrown into the whip, and 100,000 tigers returned to the old capital.

Subsequently, the poem was circulated throughout the army to inspire the officers and men of the three armies. The chorus of shouts of "recovering the old capital" sounded one after another in the river lined with warships and the various camps covered by flags, and the surging waves like the tide soared into the sky.

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The cheers of the soldiers of the Zuofu Army outside the city were thunderous, but there was a dead silence in the city.

Since the four towns and green battalions stationed in the western part of Jiangnan Province have returned to the Ming Dynasty one after another, the total strength of the Qing army in Jiangnan has only been less than 50,000, in addition to the part of the troops stationed in Zhenjiang and Yangzhou and guarding the back road, there are more than 30,000 Qing troops in Nanjing. In terms of troops, it was already at a disadvantage, and the morale and combat effectiveness of the army were far inferior to those of the Zuofu Army, and the only thing that could be relied on was the strong city wall of Nanjing.

Compared with ordinary cities, Nanjing's city defense system is indeed strong and magnificent. But the strong walls no longer seem to be able to give the Manchu civil and military in the city enough security. Prince Nikan almost never said a word after finishing the military discussion on the evening of the 21st and completing the final deployment of the Ming army before the siege. Local officials such as Hong Chengchou, the governor of Jiangnan, and Lin Qilong, the governor of Caoyun, were even more worried and even panicked.

Especially Hong Chengchou, the failure experience of "Jinglu" from Huguang to Nanjing in the past few years has already made him lose the trust of the Qing court, but because of his "horse bone" status, the Qing court saved some face and did not let his political career completely end. In the past two years, the situation has finally stabilized, and Hong Chengchou is about to give full play to his residual heat to contribute to his master, so that the Han people in the world can wear braids like him, but the Ming army is approaching Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Nanjing. The tense atmosphere of the army made Hong Chengchou think of the Battle of Songjin that year, when he was surrounded in the city by the slave chief Hong Tai, and this was almost the same feeling.

That night, dozens of letters were shot from outside the city, and the content of the letters also gave Hong Chengchou a surprise. The author of the letter was none other than his eldest son, Hong Shiming.

Dozens of letters were written by Hong Shiming himself. In the letter, Hong Shiming first briefly introduced the situation of himself and his family, saying that he now has the trust and respect of Pang Dudu in the Zuojun Governor's Mansion, and his grandmother and other family members are also living well in their hometown in Quanzhou, and they can often be taken care of by the Ming Governor's Mansion. Subsequently, Hong Shiming's words changed sharply, and his words fiercely criticized Hong Chengchou's despicable behavior of selling himself and forgetting his ancestors, and all kinds of quotations and classics, almost completely ignoring the love of father and son, scolded Hong Chengchou to the end. In the end, he solemnly said that Hong Chengchou can only get the only way out by completely changing his mind and repenting.

The whole letter is sonorous and awe-inspiring, full of a loyal minister's son's lament for the traitor's father's misfortune and anger, and one sentence is even more resounding: If the father is not a loyal minister, the son is not a filial son!

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The day after arriving at the city of Nanjing, Pang Yue began his first tentative siege. In the face of the seemingly solid and magnificent city defense of Nanjing City, he did not take it seriously. He remembered that in the time and space where he was originally located, the Taiping Army, which had been in Xianfeng for three years in the Qing Dynasty and had only been established for two years, had conquered Nanjing. Not to mention the Zuofu Army, which has now been tested in actual combat for nearly ten years and has various siege weapons and means.

In the early morning of the next day, the artillery of the Agni Battalion directly under the Central Military Department test-fired 24-pounder siege mortars outside the Chaoyang Gate in the north of the city, opening the prelude to the siege battle. The deafening sound of artillery continued to reach the former imperial city near Chaoyangmen, which is now the location of the Yamen, the governor of Jiangnan in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the faces of Lang Tingzuo and other Manchu officials turned pale.

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After the battle of Nanjing began, the 3rd and 8th battalions of the 3rd town and the Poyang battalion of the sailors also began to march towards Yangzhou, and arrived at the city of Yangzhou a day later. The leader of the troops was Cui Shoucheng, the chief officer of the third town.

Yangzhou is an important town in the north of Nanjing, guarding the water and land arteries connecting the north with Nanjing. If Zilharang's reinforcements want to rush to Nanjing, Yangzhou is a battleground. As soon as Pang Yue arrived at the city of Nanjing, he began to arrange the capture of Yangzhou, in order to block the way for the Qing army to send reinforcements south, and completely cut off the retreat of the Qing army in Nanjing.

And Yangzhou City also carries a painful memory for the Han people. Nine years ago in the first year of Hongguang in May, the Qing army broke through Yangzhou after the slaughter and looting in the city, ten days do not seal the knife, several generations of prosperous Yangzhou city is when "pile up corpses and store, hands and feet pillow, blood into the water and blue ochre, turn into five colors, the pond is flat", "front and back, left and right, burning everywhere", "the corpses in the city are like chaos". Except for a few residents of Yangzhou who escaped before the city was broken and a few who survived after the Qing army entered the city, almost all of them were slaughtered, and more than 800,000 corpses were collected by monks alone.

Cui Shoucheng is a native of Yangzhou, and his family members all died in that human tragedy.

Therefore, the soldiers of the Zuofu Army who attacked Yangzhou this time were also vegetarians of the whole army from Cui Shoucheng, and many soldiers also used their own blood to draw blood flags, vowing to repay the blood debt for the soldiers and civilians of Yangzhou who died nine years ago.

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Three days later, the news came that the army of Zilharang in the north had passed Gaoyou Prefecture and was approaching Yangzhou.

At this time, the Southern Route Army of the Zuofu Army led by Shi Lang sailed into the Yangtze River through the waters near Chongming Island and had reached the river north of Zhenjiang. Here, Shi Lang received an order from Pang Yue to land the Marine Battalion of the Nanyang Fleet on the south bank and attack Zhenjiang with the support of the fleet's artillery, and the fifth town to land on Guazhou on the north bank to block Jierharang's army north of Yangzhou. In addition, Pang Yue reassigned the Fifth Cavalry Battalion, which was directly under the jurisdiction of the Central Military Department before the expedition, to the Fifth Town.

At the same time, there was good news from the south. After more than 20 days of fighting, the Youfu army led by Wang Dongri regained the provinces of northern Zhejiang, and Hangzhou, where the Qing army was stationed in northern Zhejiang, was breached, and the stubborn banner soldiers in the city were completely annihilated, and most of the green battalion surrendered. In the battle of Hangzhou, the Green Battalion of the Four Towns sent by Pang Yue also played a big role anyway, not only catching the Qing army in Hangzhou by surprise from behind, but also contributing to the final collapse of the Qing army's will to resist with his appearance.

After the end of the war in northern Zhejiang, Wang Dongri led the army to Nanjing day and night, and has now arrived in Guangdezhou, south of Yingtianfu, and it is estimated that it will be able to reach the city of Nanjing in three days.

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"Hahaha, Brother Xu, I finally looked forward to you!" On the evening of June 29, 50,000 troops of the Youfu Army arrived at the foot of Nanjing and completed the rendezvous with the Zuofu Army. Pang Yue breathed a long sigh of relief, at this time, the soldiers and horses besieging the city had reached more than 100,000, and the reinforcements of Jierharang had also been blocked by the fifth town in the north of Yangzhou. At this point, even if it is a shaman manifestation, the defeat of the Qing army is inevitable.

"Brother Mu Yuan, you have been besieging the city for seven or eight days, but you haven't conquered it yet? This was a big surprise to me. After Wang Dongri arranged for the Youfu army to camp, accompanied by Pang Yue, he observed the city walls on the east and south sides of Nanjing from a distance, and felt that "I thought that when our Youfu army arrived, we could only catch up with the aftermath after the city was broken." ”

"After all, Nanjing is the former capital of the Ming Dynasty and the first male city in the south of the Yangtze River. Without the help of Brother Xu, this city is not so easy to attack. Pang Yue said with a smile, "Now that Brother Xu has arrived, the day of breaking the city should not be far away!" ”

Pang Yue said this in a joking tone, and in fact, since the fifth town blocked the army of Jierharang north of Yangzhou and stabilized the situation in Jiangbei, he deliberately slowed down the pace of the siege, and the Qing army in the city also broke out a lot of ferocity, so Nanjing City is still in the hands of the Qing army. Zhang Yunli once asked Pang Yue in private why he made such an arrangement, but Pang Yue only said that it was not a good thing for the Zuofu army to monopolize the great achievement of recovering Nanjing.

After knowing each other for many years, Wang Dongri has long been accustomed to Pang Yue's ridiculous and joking tone, smiled and didn't delve into it, but just sighed: "When we were chased south by the Tartars from Jiangbei, how embarrassed and unwilling, at that time we also vowed to come back one day to ask the Tartars for blood debts. Now that this day has really come, I always feel a little unreal, as if all this is in a dream. ”

"It's easy to do. When we entered the city of Nanjing, Brother Xu bit himself or cut himself hard, and he knew if he was in a dream. ”

Wang Dongri was stunned, and then he and Pang Yue looked at each other and laughed.

The hearty laughter spread to the sky, and under the sky were the red flags like clouds and the Han family tigers that were shining in the hundreds of thousands of horses.