In the original history, the peasant rebel army gradually grew and developed in the continuous battle against the government army of the Ming Dynasty, and finally became unified.

In other words, the original peasant rebel army was scattered and fought on its own.

In fact, historically, even in the later stages, there were very serious divisions in the peasant rebel army. The forces of Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng are opposed to each other.

However, in this time and space, because the Baath Party occupied Huguang and infiltrated its sphere of influence into Shaanxi and Henan, it established a large number of military bases and farms of the Production and Construction Corps in the local area, so that the peasant rebels, who had encountered several walls in front of the Baxing Army, chose the strategy of picking soft persimmons.

On the one hand, they traded military supplies and food with the Baath Party through the coerced population, and on the other hand, they controlled the scope of their activities in the northern region, and did not dare to touch the Baath Party's sphere of influence in the slightest.

Under these circumstances, the regularization of the peasant rebel army, which on the one hand was supported by the Baath Party's arms and grain trade, was achieved, and the combat effectiveness was comprehensively enhanced, while at the same time a large amount of labor was channeled into the hands of the Baath Party. On the other hand, due to the limitation of the scope of activities, the peasant rebel forces of all walks of life completed the process of annexation ahead of schedule, and formed three major forces with Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, and Gao Yingxiang as the main forces.

Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, and Gao Yingxiang obtained a considerable amount of weapons and food through the Baath Party. In the process of growth, they merged and integrated the peasant rebel armies from all walks of life, and their power continued to grow and develop.

At the same time, Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng generally obeyed the leadership of Gao Yingxiang, the "king of Chuang". As a result, the peasant rebel army, which was weak in the original history, was unprecedentedly strong because of the level of weaponry and the relatively scattered strength.

On the one hand, the Ming Dynasty government army was constrained by the increasingly sluggish financial situation of the Ming Dynasty government, and on the other hand, it was affected by the party struggle that was more fierce than in history because Wei Zhongxian did not step down.

Originally, He Renlong, the chief general of the Shaanxi army, and Hu Dawei, the chief general of the Baoding army, who had won many victories against the peasant rebel army in the early stage of history, did not have a correct understanding of the strength of the peasant rebel army, which was already fully equipped with plate armor and smoothbore guns, as well as a large number of high-quality regular cold weapons, so they were defeated and died at the beginning of accepting the order of the imperial court to transfer troops to fight against the peasant rebel army.

And Zuo Liangyu, who was originally the chief general of the Huguang Army, was not able to become the chief general of the Huguang Army at all because of the operation of the Baath Party's staff in Beijing in this time and space. Huguang refused to send troops on the grounds of local instability, so that the imperial court could not get a single soldier from Huguang.

Zuo Liangyu, who was transferred to Henan, did not develop at all as in history. At this stage, as a guerrilla general, he is very sad to defend the city in Kaifeng with Yang Sichang, the secretary of the military department and the so-called governor of the six provinces.

Just when there was an undercurrent in the city of Beijing because of the robbery of Zhou Guozhang's grain store. Zhang Xianzhong led 30,000 elite soldiers (2,000 were armed with flintlock muskets, and 28,000 were equipped with light steel plate armor and were equipped with crossbows and spears. Attack Taiyuan, an important northern town of the Ming Dynasty.

He adopted the method of besieging the city and sending reinforcements, and successively defeated and annihilated the Ming Dynasty government troops who came to the aid from Xuanfu and Datong.

As the most powerful armed force of the Ming Dynasty, these border armies were basically in a state of collapse in the battle with Zhang Xianzhong's army. After the multiple reinforcements sent by Xuanfu and Datong were lost, the two places could no longer send any reinforcements. The city of Taiyuan, which had been besieged for three months, was depleted and crumbling, and this important northern town of the Ming Dynasty was about to fall into the hands of Zhang Xianzhong.

At the same time, Li Zicheng led 30,000 regular troops (all equipped with standard weapons and armor produced by the Baath Party) and 20,000 auxiliary soldiers (exiles who served as cannon fodder and people's husbands) to surprise the city of Xi'an, where Hong Chengchou was stationed.

Unlike in history, Hong Chengchou, the governor of Shaanxi, did not surrender to Li Zicheng and committed suicide by hanging himself in the governor's palace. Zhu Yiluo, the king of Qin, and more than 2,000 of the following Ming clans were slaughtered by Li Zicheng. The entire city of Xi'an, the gentry and the wealthy landlords, were killed by Li Zicheng's torture (which he had to do, otherwise he would not have the funds to procure supplies from the Baath Party).

However, what was more unfortunate for Li Zicheng was that the Second Northwest Army of the Fuxing Army, which was already stationed in the Tongguan area, and the First Northwest Army of the Fuxing Army, which was stationed in the Shangluo area, issued an ultimatum to Li Zicheng after Li Zicheng attacked Xi'an City, ordering him to immediately withdraw from the Xi'an area and hand over the Xi'an area and the entire southern Shaanxi region to the Fuxing Army.

As a generation of heroes, Li Zicheng, who has great ambitions deep in his heart, is naturally unwilling to accept such a cruel reality. Annoyed and angry, Li Zicheng forgot Gao Yingxiang's warning and launched a full-scale attack on a reorganized brigade of the First Army Corps of the Northwest of the Renaissance Army, which had miraculously appeared outside Xi'an.

Although Li Zicheng thought that he had fully considered the strength of the Fuxing Army, he did not leave behind in the battle and staked all 50,000 troops. But the reality is very cruel.

The integrated brigade of the Fuxing Army, consisting of eight infantry battalions, four cavalry battalions, four chariot battalions, and two artillery battalions, easily defeated Li Zicheng's 50,000-strong army in battle. Nearly 40,000 enemies were killed and wounded on the spot, and less than 10,000 of the remaining were captured by the brigade. Li Ziben himself was captured after being shot in the thigh by a sniper during the battle. Later, under the order of Wang Shuhui, he was sent to Gao Yingxiang outside Kaifeng City.

At this point, from Xi'an in Shaanxi Province to the south of Xiangcheng in Henan, all the areas that had been completely destroyed by the peasant rebels against the existing feudal social relations of production were all turned into the sphere of influence of the Baath Party.

Wang Shuhui himself took the train along the newly completed Wunan Railway (Wuchang to Nanyang) all the way north and sat in Nanyang. He personally commanded the military work of the three Northwest Army Corps and the three Central Plains Army Corps of the Baxing Army, and began to preside over the construction of a new stage of the Baath Party's Northern Railway Production and Construction Corps.

After Gao Yingxiang and the Baath Party reached an agreement, various weapons and supplies that could arm 50,000 soldiers were transported to Xiangcheng by the Baath Party through the railway under construction.

Gao Yingxiang, who received a large amount of materials and food, was really good to his nephew. Without hesitation, he allocated half of the supplies and weapons to Li Zicheng to rebuild the troops.

Li Zicheng is also more competitive. In less than a month, he raised another army of 60,000 or 70,000 men.

Li Zicheng, who had built the new army, accepted Gao Yingxiang's order, took the troops and a large amount of military rations obtained by exchanging the population with the Baath Party (substandard products produced by the Baath Party Food Factory, inferior grain bricks that did not meet the standards), attacked the city, all the way north, and began to attack the Zhending Mansion of Beizhili, which was guarded by Lu Xiangsheng, the military star of the Ming Dynasty, two months later.

After Li Zicheng went north, Gao Yingxiang, who was sitting outside Kaifeng, gritted his teeth and exchanged nearly 100,000 laborers for 20 large-caliber smoothbore "heavy artillery" from the Baath Party. After all the high-priced "flowering shells" provided by the Baath Party were destroyed and all the 20 cannons were broken, Gao Yingxiang's "100,000" army finally broke through Kaifeng City, which had been held for two years.

Yang Sichang, the secretary of the military department and the governor of the six provinces, who was deeply respected by the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youzhen, died in a shell explosion. Zhu Suqin, the king of Zhou, very shamelessly surrendered to Gao Yingxiang, who was about to be the emperor, and was given the title of Shunde Hou by him. The other Ming clans who refused to surrender were all executed by Gao Yingxiang.

Because of years of war and turmoil, and because of more than two years of siege, the central region of Henan, where agricultural production activities have completely stagnated, has no way to provide military supplies for Gao Yingxiang's army, which has swelled to 150,000.

Just like Li Zicheng's helplessness, in order to maintain the troops under his command, Gao Yingxiang had to take action against the gentry and landlords in major cities in Henan such as Kaifeng and Luoyang. After a very thorough raid on their homes, Gao Yingxiang used the huge amount of money he received to buy about half of the food and supplies he needed from the Baath Party.

In the end, Gao Yingxiang had to hand over the 120,000 displaced people who were going to be used as reserve troops (cannon fodder and people's husbands) to the Baath Party, and only then did he reluctantly obtain about a month's military rations and corresponding equipment from the 150,000 troops under his command.

It has to be said that Gao Yingxiang was very efficient and helped the Baath Party complete the work of forming a new railway production and construction corps and a state-owned farm production and construction corps along the line.

Gao Yingxiang is a very self-aware person. He had a good estimate of the military strength of the Baath Army.

In his opinion, the level of combat effectiveness of the Baath Army against the peasant rebels reached and exceeded the level of about one to twenty (in fact, more than that). Therefore, although he had accumulated a real 150,000 waterless troops that were higher than the combat effectiveness of the Ming Dynasty government army, he was still very wise and did not target the Baaxing Party that he hated to death.

After looting Kaifeng and Luoyang and other major cities in Henan, leaving 10,000 troops to garrison Luoyang and Kaifeng respectively, Gao Yingxiang left the devastated central region of Henan and led the army north. Prepare to join Zhang Xianzhong of Taiyuan and Li Zicheng of Zhending to launch an attack on the city of Beijing, the ruling center of the Ming Dynasty, and realize his ultimate dream of becoming emperor in life.

The current high-level of the Ming Dynasty has fallen into chaos.

The Liaodong Army in the northeast region, the imperial court not only could not move, but also did not dare to move at will. Complementing the actions of the peasant army, the Houjin Jurchen armed forces in the northeast are moving frequently.

In Shaanxi, the imperial forces in most areas have been wiped out. The southern Shaanxi region has lost contact, and the northern Shaanxi region has ten rooms and nine empty rooms. In order to guard against the increasingly active Mongol forces, the few remaining Shaanxi border troops were trembling and guarding the line of the Great Wall.

In Shanxi, nearly half of the Xuanda border army, which was wiped out by Zhang Xianzhong by besieging the city and sending reinforcements, now does not dare to go out at will. Taiyuan City had already fallen half a month ago. Zhang Xianzhong's troops were approaching the city of Beijing.

Now the only ones who can undertake the defense of Beijing City are the 20,000 Tianxiong Army under the command of Lu Xiangsheng, who is stationed in Zhending, and the 30,000 Shandong New Army of Sun Yuanhua, who has just arrived at the King of Beijing Outer Service.

The Beijing camp, which claims to be 250,000, can currently transfer less than 10,000 people at most. And Emperor Chongzhen, relying on the face of Wei Zhongxian and Sun Chengzong, reluctantly transferred from the Liaodong Army, which had been completely warlordized, to less than 20,000 troops.

In other words, under the huge crisis of the collapse of the country, Emperor Chongzhen and the Ming court tried their best, and they could only rely on 60,000 troops to defend the huge city of Beijing.

(Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong Army is facing off against Li Zicheng in Zhending, and cannot be drawn back from the front.) ）

However, with this meagre army of 60,000 people, the Ming Dynasty, which is known as the dying Ming Dynasty, cannot afford to supply them with food.

Unlike in history, the Ming Dynasty, which had just completed the increase in salaries and factions in the Jiangnan region, was really not short of cash. More than four million taels of silver were in the treasury of the household.

The crux of the problem is that the city of Beijing, with a total population of nearly one million, is still dependent on transportation through the Grand Canal, but it still has a serious shortage of food supply. For the current Ming court, squeezing out the military rations of the 60,000 soldiers from the mouths of the millions of Beijing citizens who were in severe starvation was simply an impossible task.

That is to say, even if all the 60,000 soldiers were paid enough silver and bounty silver, they would not actually be able to buy any food. Even if the imperial court came forward, don't think about getting a little bit of grain from the Jingshi grain store that was controlled by officials and nobles.

The strange scenes in history were staged in a different form in advance.

In the original history, the financially bankrupt Emperor Chongzhen hoped that the ministers and nobles of the Jingshi would donate money to the imperial court. But it took him a great deal of effort to get less than 10,000 taels of silver. After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, he obtained a huge sum of several million taels of silver from the former Ming ministers and nobles who surrendered to Dashun through torture.

Among them, the more famous ones are Emperor Chongzhen's father-in-law, Empress Zhou's father, and Jiading Bo Zhou Kui. The old man was very reluctant to donate two thousand taels of silver to his son-in-law. After the fall of Beijing, Zhou Kui and his entire family were arrested by the Dashun regime. After his wife and daughter-in-law were forced to hang themselves, his eldest son was beaten to death, and he and his second son and nephew were tortured and almost died, he had to hand over 700,000 taels of money and all his family property.

The feudal ruling class, which has entered a state of decay and degeneration, is so strange. This was true of the officials and nobles in the capital, as well as of the local landlords and gentry.

To a certain extent, both the people and the feudal ruling class had actually abandoned the Ming Dynasty in the last years of the Ming Dynasty.

Looking at the historical facts of those literati and doctors who later sang and danced and became obedient citizens under the rule of the Manchu court, and still obediently served as slaves of exile under the rule of a foreign race even though their fellow clans were wantonly slaughtered, we can see that the reactionary reaction of the feudal ruling class completely transcended such a fundamental contradiction as ********.

Just when the peasant rebel army group and the few tens of thousands of government troops left in the Ming Dynasty began to enter the stage of confrontation around Beijing, the Baath Party Yangtze River Fleet sailed into the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

The huge Baath Party Yangtze River Fleet will launch a blockade operation in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River to completely cut off the traffic between the north and south of the Yangtze River.

A river flotilla under the Yangtze River Fleet was ready. As long as the order of the Central Military Commission of the Central Military Commission of the Restoration Party is given, this river fleet will go north along the Grand Canal. The Baath Party's navy and army would then take over the entire Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal north of the Yangtze River.

At this time, no one, including Wang Shuhui, thought that the end of the Ming Dynasty's rule in the area north of the Yangtze River would be kicked off by a sudden civil uprising in Beijing. Space-Time Gate 1619

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Chapter 430: The Ming Dynasty at the time of its death