Yunyang.

This city on the edge of the Han River, because it is located at the intersection of Hubei, Henan, Sichuan, and Shaanxi provinces, and since the two million-scale rebellions of displaced people broke out in Jingxiang Mountain during the Chenghua period, the imperial court set up a special Yunyang Mansion here, and since then it has been permanently set up in Futai to supervise military affairs and govern the place.

More than a hundred years later, Sunrise City has long since leapt from a deserted town to a giant town in the world.

Yunyang was not just a prefecture at this time, in fact he was one of the four special districts of the Ming Dynasty.

From the Ming Dynasty to the Jiajing period, governors have been institutionalized and localized, but there are four specific types. One of them is to take charge of one place, as the highest authority at the provincial level, to control the three divisions, and to lead all provinces, such as the governor of Huguang and other places and praise military affairs, that is, the commonly known governor of Huguang is like this. The thirteen political envoys of the Ming Dynasty have two direct subordinates, and they all have such governors.

The other is to strengthen border management and create new control areas, such as in the nine borders, there are several governors under the major governors, such as the governor of Jiliao, which is equivalent to the commander of a large war zone, and he controls the three towns of Shuntian, Baoding, and Liaodong, and the four towns of Jizhou, Changping, Liaodong, and Baoding. The three governors are also quite military commanders, and the four towns such as Liaodong can be regarded as field commanders, and the Shuntian governors also have five military preparation roads: Jizhou military garrison, Changping military garrison, Yongping military garrison, Miyun military garrison, and Bazhou military garrison, which are equivalent to military division commanders.

The third type is to strengthen the border theater, the fourth is the special setting of special affairs, Xunyang Governor belongs to this example, there are only four special zones like Daming, the governor of Southern Jiangxi, the governor of Yunyang, the governor of Biyuan, and the governor of Songfan, all of which are set up in the mountainous areas at the junction of several provinces, which are difficult to manage and where bandits are frequent.

The full name of the governor of Yunyang is the commander of Yunyang and the governor of Yunyang and other places, and the jurisdiction under the jurisdiction of the new Fuzhi Li Changgeng is by no means a small Yunyang Mansion. It has jurisdiction over more than 60 counties in eight prefectures and Kyushu at the junction of Huguang, Henan, Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces.

In the city of Yunyang on the edge of the Han River, it is not only the county government station, but also the government office, the Futai yamen, and even there is a Huguang Xingdu Yamen, which is slightly lower than the Huguang Command Embassy, and there are only five Xingdu Divisions in the Ming Dynasty.

Up to now, Yunyang Mansion has been established for more than 100 years, and Yunyang is also controlled by the Han River, which is even Qinba. The geographical advantages of adjacent to the four provinces of Hubei, Henan, Sichuan and Shaanxi have attracted countless businessmen to gather, and it has become a commodity distribution center at the intersection of the four provinces, as well as an economic and cultural center.

At this time, it has also become a battleground for soldiers.

It's just that the walls of Yunyang City are high, and all kinds of bandits who have been rampant in the world since the Chongzhen Dynasty have never captured Yunyang. After Zhang Xianzhong and Luo Rucai rebelled again, they also thought about capturing the city, but they could only look at the high city walls and sigh.

Right now. Supervisor Yang Sichang led his troops into Yunyang City and set up his own supervisor in Yunyang City.

Yang Sichang came from afar, but Li Changgeng, the governor of Yunyang, the owner of the city, did not come to greet him, and Li Changgeng followed Mei Zhihuan to Sichuan. As soon as he thought of this, Yang Sichang was secretly annoyed.

After entering the city, Yang Sichang directly stayed in the yamen of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, which belonged to Li Changgeng, and he thought hatefully in his heart. After he captures Zhang Xianzhong this time, he will have to see how Li Changgeng reacts. He will surely regret his choice today, and he should come and see himself. instead of following Mei Zhihuan to Sichuan and singing against himself.

Thinking of Mei Zhihuan, Yang Sichang was even more angry, he sent several urgent letters to Mei Zhihuan in a row, asking him to lead his troops to meet him, but there has been no movement back until now.

In a fit of anger, in the past two days, he wrote several letters of impeachment against Mei Zhihuan and sent them to Jingshi. It's just that the music is sent to the capital division like a mud cow into the sea, and there is no movement.

There was also no movement on Zuo Liangyu's side, Zuo Liangyu and other soldiers and horses intercepted on the border between Hubei and Shaanxi, and no trace of Zhang Xianzhong and other bandits has been found so far.

This situation made Yang Sichang very dissatisfied, and he was anxious and uncomfortable. He has even begun to doubt his own judgment, maybe the situation is really right by Mei Zhihuan, the thief wants to enter Sichuan instead of Shaanxi?

He successively sent multiple detachments to search for the traces of Zhang Xianzhong and other bandits, while sitting in Yunyang City and waiting for the emperor's reply.

He believed that the emperor would definitely support him, if he didn't replace Mei Zhihuan, how would he still preside over the overall situation of this banditry.

In this anxious waiting, Yang Sichang finally waited for good news on this day.

In the mountains between Huguang Zhuxi County at the junction of Hubei and Shaanxi and Pingli City in Xing'an Prefecture, Shaanxi Province, clues of bandits were found, and it seemed that it was Zhang Xianzhong and others. Hearing this news, Yang Sichang's heart that he had been carrying for many days finally let go of a little, Zhuxi is just west of Zhushan County, Zhang Thief and the others must have continued to move west after ambushing Zuo Liangyu, and now they are hiding in the mountains, ready to find a loophole to break into Shaanxi.

In addition to being happy, Yang Sichang hurriedly issued several military orders to Zuo Liangyu, Zheng Chongjian, He Renlong and other generals, telling them to be on guard, be careful and vigilant, and carefully guard against the breakthrough of the thieves.

After sending the letter, Yang Sichang wrote another letter to Mei Zhihuan, urging him to come immediately after the order, and also wrote a letter to Li Changgeng, urging him to come to see him. In the end, he wrote another memo to the emperor, explaining to the emperor what Mei Zhihuan had ordered without keeping pace with the times.

Soon after the letter was sent, the emperor's decree was delivered from Beijing.

The emperor crowned Yang Sichang as the crown prince, which was a top official, which was quite glorious. But Yang Sichang was not very happy, because he was not the only one with the title, Mei Zhihuan was also added to the title of Prince Taibao, and he also added the title of Shangshu of the Ministry of War and the title of Imperial Governor of the Left. Li Changgeng added the left squire of the military department, the right deputy capital Yushi and Dali Siqing, and also had the title of prince and young master.

In addition, Zuo Liangyu got the title of prince and young prince and hung the title of the right attendant of the military department, and the general of the thief he asked for for Zuo Liangyu was also sealed, and the seal of the general of the thief was awarded. And Liu Jun, who had just been promoted from the commander of the training department to a guerrilla not long ago, was actually promoted to an officer, was promoted to a general, and took up the post of a Chinese military officer under the prime minister's standard.

After a long time, the emperor came to a and thin mud, and everyone was rewarded. Yang Sichang was very dissatisfied in his heart, and it was difficult to accept the emperor's approach.

"Let you be proud for a while, and then when so-and-so takes the thief. Let's see if you're still laughing. Yang Sichang muttered, as if he had seen Mei Zhihuan, Li Changgeng, Liu Jun and others waiting in Sichuan for a long time, but Zhang Xianzhong did not go to Sichuan at all, but was defeated and captured by him and Zuo Liangyu and others on the border of Hubei and Shaanxi.

Just when Yang Sichang thought that Zhang Xianzhong and other thieves were really going to Shaanxi, Zhang Xianzhong had already stepped into the land of Sichuan and stood at the head of Dachang, the first city in eastern Sichuan.

Zhang Xianzhong took the city almost effortlessly, and the 5,000 men and horses of Zhang Zhuokai, the deputy general of Sichuan who Yang Sichang sent to take charge of the garrison, were defeated quite ugly.

Although Zhang Zuokai was ordered to lead his headquarters into Dachang City, he thought in his heart, like Yang Sichang, that it was impossible for bandits to enter Sichuan, so he arrived in Dachang City. There was no caution at all. And his subordinates are not 5,000, only 3,000. Among them, the real elite are only his five hundred family members, and the rest have not received a salary for more than a year, and even the uniforms and weapons are almost classic, and they are almost empty-handed.

After entering Dachang City, Zhang Zuokai did not immediately build fortifications and strengthen the city defense, but sent his subordinates to find merchants and large households in the city to ask for money. Zhang Xianzhong just used the most common trick of the thieves. He took Dachang City. He sent a group of elite men to infiltrate the city disguised as merchants and civilians.

The guards of Dachang City did not check these people sent by Zhang Xianzhong at all, as long as they handed over the ingots and silver, the guards immediately let them go. Wait until it gets dark. Zhang Xianzhong led his troops to touch the unsuspecting city of Dachang, and then opened the city gate in the lurking fine work and led Zhang Xianzhong into the city.

Zhang Zuokai was still asleep and was woken up by his subordinates. After discovering that the Eight Kings and Cao Cao had entered the city, Zhang Zuokai did not organize soldiers and horses to defend and counterattack, and he quickly changed into the clothes of ordinary people. Then he took advantage of the chaos and escaped from Dachang under the escort of his family.

Zhang Zuokai, the deputy commander-in-chief of Sichuan, who claimed to command 5,000 troops stationed in Dachang, was defeated in this way and lost Dachang City. Thousands of his soldiers and horses remained in the city, but they did not put up any resistance, and almost all of them surrendered at the first time. Almost all of Zhang Zuokai's 500 family members surrendered to the bandits, and only a dozen people escaped from Dachang with Zhang Zuokai.

Zhang Xianzhong and Luo Rucai's two troops easily took Dachang, captured more than 2,000 officers and soldiers, and copied tens of thousands of stones of grain and countless cloths from the big households and shops in the city, and interrogated those rich people at the first time, and then dug out tens of thousands of taels of silver from various silver vaults and cellars.

This wealthy city surprised Zhang Xianzhong and Luo Rucai and other thieves and harvested a huge harvest.

"Damn, all the official warehouses in the official yamen are empty, and I can't find a single grain of mouse shit. But these gentry and local tyrants in the city have silver buried in the ground. Zhang Xianzhong's adopted son was a wall, and Zhang Kewang excitedly reported to his father-in-law. Zhang Kewang's surname is Sun, he is Zhang Xianzhong's fellow villager, when Zhang rebelled, he followed, and was later adopted by Zhang Xianzhong as an adopted son. Because he is brave and cunning when fighting, he can always respond calmly whenever he encounters an enemy, so he is called a wall by his subordinates.

In the eleventh year, Zhang Xianzhong was defeated by Zuo Liangyu, and that time Zhang Xianzhong was shot by Zuo Liangyu several arrows, and he was slashed in the face, and he almost died, but Zhang Kewang desperately saved Zhang Xianzhong. Therefore, now he is more and more valued by Zhang Xianzhong, and even specially grasped Xiucai to teach Zhang Kewang to read and write, among Zhang Xianzhong's large group of righteous sons, Zhang Kewang and Zhang Dingguo and other three young people are the most trusting and valuable.

Zhang Xianzhong couldn't help but be excited when he heard Zhang Kewang's harvest, and finally smiled, "Actually, this is not a rare thing, haven't we seen such things in recent years?" The dog court is poor to death, and it keeps leviing and expropriating, but it still has no money to pay the officials and provide disaster relief to the people. But those local gentry, landlords, salt merchants, and maritime merchants, which one is not wealthy. In the south of the Yangtze River, casually under a county seat, the local gentry who have a little bit of face can dig out tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of silver, and this Dachang City has only now tried out tens of thousands of taels of silver, which is not enough to make a family rich. There must be a lot of people who are not honest, give them some color and see if they are sacrificing their wealth or their lives. ”

Zhang Xianzhong and the others are all old thieves, and as soon as they entered Dachang City, they decided that they could at least squeeze out two or three hundred thousand taels of silver from the city. Now that tens of thousands of taels have been tried, how can he believe it.

"I'll give you another day to interrogate." Zhang Xianzhong said.

"It's too urgent, give me a few more days, and I will definitely be able to dig out all the silver that these landlords and old treasures have hidden in the ground."

"I'll only give you one day, you can get as much as you can, you don't have to be a pity, now that we have entered Sichuan, are you still afraid that you won't be able to get silver?" Saying that, he said to another adopted son, Zhang Dingguo, "The most important thing at the moment is not to get silver, this silver can't be eaten or drunk, the key is to collect more grain and grass, and recruit more people, and I will hand over the recruitment to Dingguo, whoever is willing to come to us will reward him with five taels of silver." ”

"So much silver?" Zhang Dingguo, who has followed Zhang Xianzhong since he was ten years old, was a little surprised.

"What is there to be reluctant to, when we take other cities, the silver will not be endless. We won't be reluctant to give up money, what we lack now is people, as long as we bring the team bigger, the whole world is ours. Zhang Xianzhong said with an ambitious smile.

"Where are we going to fight next? Wushan or Daning, or Fengjie? Zhang Kewang asked.

"First attack Daning, then attack Wushan, then attack Fengjie, and then fight along the river to Chongqing and Chengdu." Zhang Xianzhong said, in his opinion, this time Yang Sichang stupidly deployed heavy troops on the Shaanxi side, but he didn't expect that they didn't have to go back to Shaanxi, Sichuan was empty and richer than Shaanxi, why did he want to go back to Shaanxi, wouldn't it be better to go directly to Sichuan.

In the past two years, he has been defeated many times, and his strength has dropped greatly. In fact, the success of this breakthrough made him a little hard to believe. Previously, he knew that the imperial court was planning to send troops to besiege and kill them, and he had no choice but to raise troops in advance.

At that time, he was still very worried about the prospects, after two years of encirclement and suppression by the official army, although Zhang Xianzhong took advantage of the fraud to get a respite, but his strength was still greatly weakened. faced his old opponent Zuo Liangyu and other generals, but who knew that Xiong Wencan was really a person, and when he was suppressed and couldn't stand it, he accepted his invitation to surrender without saying a word. And this time, he kept urging Zuo Liangyu and others to march into the army, and did not raise food and salary, which led to Zuo Liangyu's defeat in the middle of the ambush.

After Xiong Wencan was dismissed and arrested, he still had some pity and worry, for fear that the successor Yang Sichang would not be easy to deal with, but he didn't expect this Yang Pavilion Department to be more famous. actually made a network of loopholes everywhere and wanted to block him, and the Sichuan direction actually sent Zhang Zuokai such a rice bucket to defend, isn't this obviously sending him into Sichuan.

And as soon as Zhang Zuokai was defeated, there were no more decent officers and soldiers in Sichuan, Zhang Xianzhong was now extremely optimistic about their prospects, who could stop him! (To be continued......)