On May 11, the 4th year of Xiande (957), Zhao Kuangyin was reappointed from the envoy of the Dingguo Army Festival in Tongzhou to the envoy of the Yicheng Army Festival in Huazhou. On October 16, Wang Pu was left behind in Tokyo. On the 19th, Chai Rong left Daliang City and embarked on the journey of three expeditions to Huainan. On the night of November 4, he crossed the Huai River and came to the city of Haozhou on the 5th.

Shouzhou has been defeated, Liu Renzhan is dead, who else in the Southern Tang Dynasty can resist Chai Rong's army? It should be said that there are still 2. Haozhou guard Guo Tingwei is one of them. Just half a year ago, Guo Tingwei won two battles in a row. The pontoon bridge at the vortex mouth was burned by him, and there was a sneak attack in Dingyuan, and the Zhou soldiers were annihilated, and Wu Xingde was only spared. On July 2, Chai Rong, who was in Daliang City at that time, disposed of the two generals of the defeated army, deprived them of the Jiedu envoy, and made Wu Xingde the general of the left guard, and Li Jixun (the general who was defeated by Liu Renzhan in the south of Shouzhou City) as the general of the right guard.

On November 6, the fourth year of Zhou Xiande (957), Chai Rong personally came to meet Guo Ting. Haozhou City was painstakingly fortified by Guo Ting, and it was really not so easy to be breached. In addition to the main city, there are still two villages outside the city that are horns of each other, echoing each other. The pioneer Kang Bao and hundreds of Zhou soldiers were estimated to be treated as monsters by the Tang soldiers: they actually waded through the water on camels (can the desert boat really be a water boat?). Seeing this record in Tongjian, I can only say: Chai Rong, you are a monster), captured a corner in the northeast of Haozhou City. On the 11th, Wang Xianqi broke through the other corner in the north of Haozhou City. Today, Haozhou has become an isolated city. Guo Ting's half a year's hard work was in vain. At this time, Guo Tingwei thought of the last plan. On the night of the 14th, he wrote a letter to Chai Rong, expressing his willingness to surrender. just put forward a condition to Chai Rong, saying that the family members are all in Jiangnan, and please ask Chai Rong to let himself take his family out first, and then open the city to surrender. Chai Rong understood. It's not about picking up family members, it's about asking for reinforcements, right? Very good! Then take your Haozhou as the second Shouzhou, and see how many reinforcements you have left?

Chai Rong ordered the Haozhou envoy to go back to Jinling. I don't attack it myself. It was only ordered that Li Chongjin surrounded Haozhou, and he went down the east along Huai to send reinforcements. On the 21st, in the battle at the entrance of the cave, 5,000 Tang soldiers died, 2,000 were dropped, and 300 warships returned to the Zhou camp. Reinforcements along the way were annihilated.

On November 23, Chai Rong came to the city of Sizhou, Zhao Kuangyin took the lead, the gate of Sizhou was burned, and the water village and the moon city were broken. On December 3, the Sizhou defender Fan Zaiyu surrendered. Chai Rong obtained 1 state.

After taking Sizhou, Chai Rong and Zhao Kuangyin played a competition to attack the enemy on the shore again. He was on the north bank of the Huai River, Zhao was on the south bank of the Huai River, and the navy went down the Huai River and chased all the way down. On the 9th, he chased to the northwest of Chuzhou and met Chen Chengzhao, who was the most powerful of the Tang Dynasty, and reinforced all the way. All right! You are the envoy of Haosi Chuhai. Now that Sizhou has fallen, you don't have to help. But your main force should be to help! What is the reason why you are not moving forward in Chuzhou? Chen Chengzhao, who didn't go to help, immediately tasted the taste of no one coming to help. In the last battle, all the reinforcements of the Southern Tang Dynasty were annihilated, but Chai Rong still captured more than 300 warships and more than 7,000 surrendered troops. Chen Chengzhao has such a strong army, and he doesn't dare to fight Chai Rong head-on, which is really regrettable.

Guo Ting, who was in Haozhou City, said that his hope had been extinguished, so he had to order Li Yanzou to surrender to the table. "The eldest husband will never live up to the country and make a table for the traitors" is Li Yanzou's last sentence before being beheaded by Guo Tingwei. On December 9th, Haozhou Guo Ting surrendered, and Chai Rong obtained 2 states! On the 18th, Chai Rong summoned Guo Tingwei in the Chuzhou Palace and enlightened him, "Since the southern expedition, among the generals in the south of the Yangtze River, you are the only one who can break my vortex pontoon bridge and break my Dingyuan military village." You are enough to repay Li Jing. And the small city of Haozhou, the gas has been exhausted. Even if Li Jing came to guard it in person, it would be nothing more than that" (Chai Rong couldn't predict that after 395 years would be the time when Haozhou's real qi was booming.) That year, another Haozhou man surnamed Guo would raise troops here. One of his sons-in-law surnamed Zhu will write a legend in Chinese history from herding cows, monks, beggars to founding emperors)

On December 10, Chai Rong personally marched to Chuzhou. Chai Rong would not have expected that Zhang Yanqing, the defender of Chuzhou, would be the two nightmares of his three expeditions to Huainan alongside Liu Renzhen of Shouzhou...... Chai Rong confronted Zhang Yanqing in Chuzhou and assigned other Zhou generals to go around. On December 21, Wu Shouqi came to report the acquisition of Yangzhou. On the 25th, Taizhou was conquered. On the 5th day of the first month of the second year (958), Wang Hanzhang captured Haizhou. Chai Rong has won 5 states!

In the second half of the first month of the 5th year of Zhou Xiande (958), Chai Rong had been surrounded outside the city of Chuzhou for 40 days. On this day, Zhang Yanqing led the crowd to go upstairs to take a look at the situation. One of them advised on the side, it was nothing more than that the Zhou army was strong and the Tang army was weak. The lonely city has no help, it is better to fall early and so on. Zhang Yanqing turned back to the generals and said: Look at me. The generals are puzzled, there are no flowers on the general's face, what is there to look at? Immediately, a blood flower splattered!

With just one sword, Zhang Yanqing cut off the head of this persuader. Next, look around at the generals, "This is my son Zhang Guangzuo, he persuaded me to come down to Zhou." I have received the grace of the Li family, and I will never descend! The city of Chuzhou is here, and I will die if the city is broken! If any of you want to persuade me, let me end up like my son," and all the generals wept. But I don't know whether to cry for the young master of the Zhang family who lost his head, or for his dark future.

The worst moment has finally arrived. On the 25th of the first month, the city of Chuzhou was broken. The main general Zhang Yanqing and the superintendent Zheng Zhaoye fought a street battle in Chuzhou City with more than 1,000 people. Zhang Yanqing, who had used up all the blades and bows and arrows in the last round, actually lifted the rope bed (I don't understand what it was, it is estimated to be similar to today's folding stool) and fought, and died of exhaustion. More than 1,000 people were all killed in the battle, and none of them surrendered!

Chai Rong was furious! This 'First Hero of the Five Generations' made one of the most unforgivable mistakes of his life: he ordered the slaughter of the city! For a while, the whole city cried wolves, all the residents of the city were slaughtered, and all the houses were burned to ashes...

Although in the long history of China, the examples of slaughtering cities after siege are not new. Xiang Yu and Cao Cao have done it. Genghis Khan was a must-slaughter in every city. The later Qing soldiers did not do less. But this incident happened to Chai Rong, and it still makes people feel extremely regretful... After all, Chai Rong has established a military discipline of not disturbing the people and not plundering the people since the beginning of his expedition to Huainan. After all, Chai Rong, we call Mingjun...

All right! Let the Battle of Huainan end at this tragic apex. If we continue to fight, you heroes will be happy, and we people will suffer.

On February 6, the 5th year of Zhou Xiande (958), Chai Rong left Chuzhou and came to Yangzhou on the 15th. On the 23rd, he received a battle report from Si Chao, saying that he attacked Shuzhou with Wang Xianqi and captured Shuzhou assassin Shi Renwang. On the first day of March, Chai Rong came to Taizhou. After the most reckoning, I took stock of the results of Chai Rong's third personal expedition in the past 4 months: he got 6 prefectures of Si, Hao, Yang, Tai, Hai, and Chu. In addition, the Gwangju obtained during the first expedition, the Shouzhou obtained during the second expedition, and Chu, and the two states were also the results of the first campaign, which were later recovered by the Tang army (I can't find out when these two states fell into the hands of the Zhou Dynasty in the history books), Chai Rong now has the land of 10 states in Huainan, and it is time to have a good talk with Li Jing.

But Li Jing thinks that he still has the Yangtze River in his hands and is unwilling to admit defeat. But as early as the beginning of the first month, Chai Rong personally surveyed, drew a map in person, and dug up a stork water in the northwest of Chuzhou (fortunately, it was before the slaughter of the city in Chuzhou, otherwise I am afraid that Chai Rong would have to dig the river himself.) It's just that Chai Rong came a bit of crossing the river and demolishing the bridge, unloading the mill and killing the donkey) dug a canal in the shortest ten days. It showed the strength of Chai Rong's engineering design (he had also presided over the expansion of Kaifeng City before), so hundreds of warships were moored on the north bank of the Yangtze River, and the Tang people were shocked when they saw it, thinking that they were gods. On March 13, the last straw that crushed Li Jing's psychological defense finally came. Murong Yanzhao and Song Yanwu advanced by land and water, and destroyed the Tang warships in Dongbu Prefecture at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and the Yangtze River defense line was in danger.

Li Jing was completely convinced, and he didn't want to sit on the throne anymore, so he wanted to pass on to the emperor's younger brother Li Jingsui. Li Jingsui is not a stupid person, he knew that Li Jing wanted to buckle the hat of the king of the dead country on his head, and hurriedly said, "Brother, you still have to do it for me." I'm not the emperor, even the emperor's younger brother, I'm not the emperor's brother" Li Jing had no choice but to let Li Jingsui be the king of Jin, and let him go out together with Li Jingda, the king of Qi who was defeated in Liuhe, and then set up his eldest son, Li Hongji, the king of Yan, as the crown prince.

After settling down his family, on March 15, Li Jing sent Chen Jue, one of the five ghosts, to Yingluan Town to see Chai Rong, and was willing to offer the remaining 4 prefectures of Lu, Shu, Qi and Huang in Jiangbei and the 2 counties of Hanyang and Yiyang in Ezhou, and offered 100,000 taels of silver, 100,000 horses of silk, 100,000 pieces of money, 500,000 catties of tea, and 200,000 stones of rice and wheat. Go to the emperor and change his name to the lord of Jiangnan. And to avoid the first emperor Guo Wei's grandfather Guo Jing, changed his name to Li Jing, and used the name of Zhou Xiande. and asked to pass on to the crown prince. Chai Rong accepted it when he saw it, and readily agreed. It's just that Li Jing doesn't have to pass on the crown prince (otherwise Li Yu won't have a chance.) Hehe) got 60 counties in 14 prefectures in Huainan, and let Wu Yue Qianyu, Jingnan Gao Baorong, and Hunan Zhou Xingfeng bow down to the three families, and the complacent Chai Rong returned to Yangzhou from Yingluan Town on March 21. On April 4, the army returned north. On the 21st, he returned to Daliang City. The two-and-a-half-year-long Battle of Huainan has officially come to an end! On May 11, Zhao Kuangyin was reappointed from the envoy of the Yicheng Army in Huazhou to the envoy of the Xuzhou Zhongwu Army. It's just that Zhao Kuangyin probably can't be happy. Because his wife, Zhao Dezhao's mother, Miss He Jinchan, died this year.