Chapter 482: The Plague

Li Zicheng returned to Beijing only to find that the originally lively city of Beijing had become depressed and lifeless, and there were lying corpses on the streets. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Li Zicheng urgently summoned people to inquire, but it turned out that after the righteous army entered Beijing, some people began to get sick, earlier just coughing, fever and chills, and finally developed to cough up blood, and the person died within a few days, and the whole body was black and purple when he died. Moreover, the disease is very contagious, and often a person who gets sick and people who have been in contact with him are infected one after another, and when they die, a large number of people die.

Many of the city's residents and Li Zicheng's team have fallen ill and died, and the Lang Zhong people are helpless to do anything about it, and they have used various methods to treat the sick and stop the spread of the epidemic.

The epidemic is getting more and more serious, and the people who have died of illness lying on the ground cannot be cleaned up in time. When Li Zicheng returned to Beijing, most of the soldiers in the barracks in the city were sick, let alone organized to fight Wu Xiang's army, and he didn't know when he would die.

Li Zicheng understood that he could no longer stay in Beijing, so he prepared overnight, proclaimed himself emperor in Beijing the next day, and then fled Beijing in a hurry.

Wu Xiang and Zu Dashou led the troops to defeat Li Zicheng in a stone, all the way to Beijing, originally thought that the attack on Beijing would take a lot of effort, but did not expect the thieves to abandon the city and flee, such a big advantage of course to take advantage, Wu Xiang led people to happily stationed in Beijing City, the corpses of the city did not attract their attention, they were still cursing the cruelty of the thieves in their hearts, and they actually killed so many people in Beijing City.

Wu Xiang and Zu Dashou brought the crown prince into Beijing and re-lived in the Forbidden City, and asked the prince to give the Ming generals who had soldiers in various places to attack Li Zicheng's men. Many former ministers of the Ming Dynasty saw hope again, and sent troops to block Li Zicheng's withdrawal along the way.

After Li Zicheng evacuated Beijing, he found that the epidemic had not weakened, but more and more people had died. Many people were abandoned, but many more were still infected, and what was more serious was that not only did the soldiers who entered Beijing get sick, but with Li Zicheng's retreat south, even the troops who had been left behind showed signs of illness, and Li Zicheng had no choice but to flee further south.

Wu Xiang did not stay in Beijing for two days, and many of the people he brought with him showed symptoms of infection, and after a few days, a large number of people began to die.

Wu Xiang sensed that something was wrong, and they judged that the epidemic might be caused by the thieves who had committed too much murder in Beijing, and that a large number of decomposing corpses had not been cleaned up. When more and more people died in Wu Xiang's ranks, they could no longer stay in the city of Beijing. Wu Xiang thought that he could escape the plague by leaving Beijing, so he led his troops to leave Beijing in the name of pursuing Li Zicheng, and Beijing literally became a dead city.

Zhang Chu also paid close attention to the battle in Jingshi in Liaodong, and the outcome of the matter made him dumbfounded. When there was information that a large number of people in Beijing had died of illness and described the symptoms of death, Zhang Chu believed that some people in later generations speculated that the plague had occurred at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were signs of plague outbreak in Shanxi, Henan and other places, Li Zicheng's army passed through the epidemic area and some people were infected with plague, when hundreds of thousands of people poured into Beijing, the population density in the city increased greatly, Li Zicheng's team burned and looted in the city, not only made a large number of corpses to abandon in the market, but also made the health of the capital more bad, the plague broke out, and defeated Li Zicheng and Wu Xiang's two armies at once.

At this time, Beijing must not be visited. The security army also had to seize the time to make a difference at this time, Zhang Chu decided to gnaw hard bones this time, and he aimed at Houjin.

Zhang Chu took advantage of the great opportunity when the world was in turmoil and there was no force to have the energy to attack the territory of the security army, so he mobilized all the security forces and launched a general attack on the Houjin people, and the attack came from many directions.

Li Yi and the eldest princess Uliangha led a large number of cavalry to attack from the direction of Guihua City. He Jin's troops began to advance north from Lushun. The main battlefield is the Dongjiang region.

In Dongjiang, Zhang Chu was facing off against Huang Taiji, Zhang Chu transferred soldiers and horses from Shandong, and requisitioned all the horses from North Korea, and recruited a large number of new soldiers in Liaodong. The strength of the security army has increased greatly, and it has the ability to counterattack Houjin.

The whole battle was extremely brutal, and Huang Taiji had learned very cleverly in the battle with the security army. In the face of the provocation of the security army, they no longer attacked blindly, so that the muskets and artillery of the security army could not play their power.

The two sides could only use cavalry to rush back and forth on the grassland, engaged in a battle that was almost life-for-life.

Zhang Chu was shocked to see the reported casualties, the security army had never fought such a tragic battle since its establishment. Now all Zhang Chu could do was provide better armor protection for the cavalry, and ordered the musketeers and artillery to try to keep up with the cavalry and provide them with fire support. And constantly recruiting troops in the rear to put the new forces into battle.

Huang Taiji's current position is very awkward, if he hadn't believed that Hou Jin would be in this situation a year ago.

Most of the Ming army in Shanhaiguan was transferred to the Guannei to fight Li Zicheng for a decisive battle, and at this time it was a great opportunity for the Later Jin to advance into Shanhaiguan to fight for the Central Plains. But not long ago, Zhang Chu attacked Shenyang City, and after a battle, he cleaned up the forty or fifty thousand people left behind by Houjin, and also plundered all the population of Shenyang to the Dongjiang River.

Huang Taiji also wanted to subdue the Mongolian Chahar Department and form the Mongolian Eight Banners to increase the population and ensure the supply of soldiers, but he did not expect that the Mongolian princess Wuliangha married Zhang Chu of the security army, and Zhang Chu supported the Mongols with a large number of weapons and armor, forming tens of thousands of Mongolian and Han mixed security forces. Not only withstood the attack of the Houjin people, but also began to counterattack the territory of the Houjin, and Huang Taiji had to mobilize tens of thousands of horses to deal with it.

With the increase in the time of the battle between the security army and the Houjin, the shortcomings of the sparse population of the Houjin were further exposed, and the successive battles made the Houjin troops reduce a large number of personnel, but they could not be replenished in time, on the other hand, the security army was fighting more and more, Zhang Chu not only recruited a large number of recruits from Shandong, Tianjin and other places to transport to the battlefield, but also many Han people in the northeast and the slaves rescued by the security army from the hands of the Houjin joined the ranks of the security army. These people could become a qualified warrior with a simple training and a musket. Even Houjin's bravest white-armored warriors didn't know who was dead or alive when faced with ordinary security soldiers who wielded muskets.

Both sides are gritting their teeth and persevering, Zhang Chu understands that this is a critical moment for the two sides to fight, and they can't relax at all, so they can only watch with an iron heart as fresh lives are consumed on the battlefield.

Huang Taiji has no way out, and once the Houjin people fail, they will be expelled to a bitter cold place with more difficult living conditions, and it is not so easy to turn over.

In order to achieve victory, Huang Taiji decided to take advantage of the strong mobility of the Houjin cavalry to carry out a military adventure. (To be continued.) )