Time passed quickly, and it was the end of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen in a blink of an eye. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

This winter was the time when the strength of Daishan Island was rapidly expanding, and tens of thousands of people who migrated from Shandong completely adapted to the life of Daishan.

Daishan is not as good as the north, it is located on an island, and the climate is much warmer and wetter than that of Shandong. All the people who have migrated have built their houses and cultivated a large amount of land in the past few months, waiting for spring to be planted.

The fleet that returned from the Wa Kingdom brought back more than three million taels of silver, which was a very huge amount, and the funds in Ren Siqi's hands were suddenly sufficient.

Countless fleets were sent out to various parts of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to purchase materials. Grain, oil, salt, needles, threads, brains, cloth, charcoal, armor and weapons, the current Daishan Island lacks everything. This kind of frenzied procurement directly led to the soaring prices in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the price of rice soared from three taels of silver to five taels of silver.

Although when he returned from the Wa Kingdom, he purchased hundreds of thousands of catties of copper and iron, and the weapon workshop on Daishan Island was working overtime to build weapons under the leadership of Liang Jiu, but after all, there were only dozens of craftsmen in the Daishan Workshop, and the production capacity was too poor. The weapons produced simply do not supply more than 20,000 troops.

Except for muskets and cannons, which are made by Daishan's firearms workshop, other military weapons are all purchased outside.

This winter, various workshops in Hangzhou are much busier than usual, and the huge orders from Daishan have made many workshop owners happy.

25,000 sets of mandarin duck battle jackets, 15,000 spears and the same number of shields, a large number of firearms such as 10,000 enemies, a swarm of bees, cluster rockets, and divine fire crows, the order for weapons alone cost Ren Siqi 1 million taels of silver.

The craftsmen in Hangzhou worked hard to work overtime for the Daishan Army. Every day, sailing ships travel between Daishan and the mainland, bringing back large quantities of weapons and materials.

The equipment of the Daishan Army is becoming more and more perfect, and each soldier is issued with a new set of mandarin duck jackets and corresponding pockets. Spears, shields, muskets, bows, and crossbows, the entire Daishan army is well-equipped, and it is not inferior to any Ming army.

In fact, if only in terms of soldiers' equipment, the current Daishan Army can be said to be the most well-equipped army in the entire Ming Dynasty. Because the corruption of the Ming army at the end of the Ming Dynasty has been terminally ill, the vast majority of the Ming army wore no better than calling Huazi, and the vast majority of soldiers were issued with a mandarin duck battle jacket in their lives, which were sewn and mended for more than ten years, and the tattered ones could not see their original appearance clearly.

As for weapons, in addition to the commander's own soldiers, it is good that the other Ming troops can have a rusty spear, and many soldiers have nothing to live on, so they will sell their weapons for some silver to live, and then find a wooden stick and go to the battlefield......

Therefore, after a large amount of procurement, the equipment of the Daishan Army is second to none in the entire Ming Army.

In the past few months, the firearms workshop on Daishan Island has produced more than 2,000 muskets in the past few months because of its machine tools, which can produce 15 barrels per day. The barrel drilled by the machine tool is extremely sophisticated, and the musket made by Daishan is far better than that made by the craftsmen in Hangzhou, and the probability of exploding is very small, so the musket in the army is basically produced by Daishan's workshop.

For several months, the artillery workshop was constantly making cannons, but because ordinary sea ships could not install the redcoat cannons, because they could not withstand the recoil of the artillery. Ren Siqi ordered to reduce the caliber of the artillery and develop small-caliber guns to be installed on the main sailing ships.

It is now the winter of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, and it is not far from the day when the Qing soldiers will go south, and it will not be long before the Daishan army will fight against the Qing soldiers. Although the Daishan army is powerful, most of the ships it has are pointed bottom sea boats suitable for driving in the sea, and the power is basically based on sails, and it cannot be driven on inland rivers.

The river network in the south of the Yangtze River is dense, and the current sailing ships of Daishan cannot travel on the inland river at all. In view of this, Ren Siqi discussed with Mao 18 and other naval generals to send people to shipbuilding workshops in various coastal areas to purchase flat-bottomed warships suitable for inland river driving. However, shipbuilding is no better than others, and the speed is very slow, and after one winter, more than 50 flat-bottomed slurry sail dual-purpose warships were purchased.

Fifty boats may seem like a lot, but each of them can carry thirty or forty soldiers, adding up to more than two thousand sailors.

There was no way, Ren Siqi could only send Liang Jiu to be in charge of transforming the ships under his hands, and incomparably transforming the warships suitable for inland river driving.

The whole winter passed in this busy regular military war, and in the blink of an eye, it was the wax moon.

News suddenly came from the north, and the Manchus who occupied Beijing threw away their faces of peace talks with the Nanjing court and brazenly sent troops to attack Ming.

The Manchu regent Dolgon sent Duoduo, the general of Dingguo, the prince of Yu, to lead the Manchu and Han armies to attack the Ming. In October, Duoduo led Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming and others out of Beijing to the south, and before they reached Jiangsu, they suddenly heard that more than 20,000 people of the Dashun army crossed the Yellow River eastward, connected Jiyuan, Mengxian and other places, and besieged Qinyang, the city of Huaiqing Mansion in Henan.

Dorgon then ordered Dodor to attack the Shun army first. Duoduo led the army to attack Tongguan in December, and the Shun army failed one after another, and the generals Liu Zongmin and Liu Fangliang were defeated by the Manchu army one after another. Although the Shun army defended Tongguan and occupied the advantage of the terrain, the Manchu army transported a large number of red-coated artillery to attack the city.

Under the artillery bombardment of the Manchu army, Tongguan was crumbling. At this time, the Manchu Northern Route Army, under the leadership of the Manchu Ying Prince Azig, crossed the Yellow River from Baode Prefecture, Shanxi, entered northern Shaanxi, and besieged Yulin.

Under the attack of the two Manchu Qing soldiers, the fall of Shaanxi was a foregone conclusion. Li Zicheng decided to abandon Shaanxi, enter Henan through Lantian and Shangzhou, and transfer to the Xiangyang generation, where there are more than 100,000 troops in the four prefectures of Xiangyang.

In the first year of Ming Hongguang, the second year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty, on the eighteenth day of the first month. The Manchu army occupied Xi'an.

In February, Dolgon ordered Azig to lead an army to pursue the Shun army, while Dolgon led his army out of Tongguan and through Guide (present-day Shangqiu) to defeat Ming.

The Manchu dispatch broke the illusion of peace at the last of the Southern Ming court. The University Soldiers' Department Shangshu Shi Kefa hurriedly went north and deployed the Huai River defense line. and sent Xingping Bo Gaojie to lead his headquarters to Henan to try the northern expedition.

Gao Jie was born as a thief, and was named Xingpingbo for his meritorious service, and became one of the warlords of the four towns in Jiangbei. He was greedy and brutal, but in terms of courage, he was far superior to other warlords such as Liu Zeqing and Liu Liangzuo. He himself admires Shi Kefa very much.

After receiving Shi Kefa's order, Gao Jie led his army to the north and arrived in Guide in January. At this time, Xu Dingguo, the commander-in-chief of Ming Henan stationed in Suizhou, had decided to surrender to the Qing Dynasty, invited Gao Jie to Suizhou, laid an ambush during the banquet, killed Gao Jie, and then led the army across the Yellow River.

As soon as Gao Jie died, the last glimmer of hope for the Northern Expedition was dashed, and Shi Kefa could only flee back to Yangzhou in a hurry.

The Manchu army was about to go south, and the Nanjing court was in a panic, and urgently issued an order to mobilize troops from all over the country to King Qin in Nanjing. (To be continued.) )