However, Fengyang's state of empty defense did not attract the attention of some knowledgeable Ming Dynasty officials in the past, but after these important opinions were reported to the imperial court, they were ignored by the Ming Dynasty imperial court!

Since the peasant rebels first entered Henan, in fact, the safety of Fengyang has attracted the attention of some officials. Lu Weiqi, the secretary of the Nanjing Military Department, had a premonition of a bad prospect, and asked the imperial court to increase troops to fortify Fengyang. He said: Nanjing, Fengyang, and Chengtian are all the locations of the emperor's mausoleum, and he begs the imperial edict to Huaifu Yang Yipeng to be on guard against thieves from committing crimes.

Zhang Fengyi, the secretary of the military department, also realized this, and asked Emperor Chongzhen to order the governor of Fengyang and the east of the Caojiang River to strengthen the defense of the key areas.

But at this time, the Ming Dynasty has also reached the point of treating headaches and foot pain, and it is not an imminent matter, so it is difficult to get the absolute attention of Emperor Chongzhen and the six ministries of the imperial cabinet. So after issuing an official document asking Fengyang to strengthen its defenses, the Ming Dynasty court did nothing.

But even if the imperial court doesn't pay attention to it, if Fengyang pays attention to it and does what it can on its own! Let's take a look at how Fengyang is doing here.

The eunuch Yang Ze and the commander of the guards, Hou Dingguo, were cruel and cruel and mistreated the soldiers, which caused strong dissatisfaction among the soldiers. In December of the seventh year of Chongzhen, that is, when Wu Shigong led the Runing Army to extinguish fires everywhere in southern Henan, the defenders here actually staged a mutiny. And the soldiers who rose up to rebel killed their boss Hou Dingguo in one fell swoop. For a time, the Fengyang Army had no main general, and the soldiers were discouraged, and they had no intention of defending at all.

On the sixteenth day of the first month of the eighth year of Chongzhen, Zhang Xianzhong, King Sweeping the Ground, and King Taiping led their troops to appear outside Yingzhou City unexpectedly. Caught off guard, Yingzhou was lost. Yin Menghua, the governor of Yingzhou, was seriously injured in the battle and fell into the water and died.

In this battle to defend the city, Zhang Heming, an eighty-five-year-old native of Yingzhou, and his second brother Zhang Heteng and third brother Zhang Heling organized the squire. Recruited soldiers, desperately resisted, and finally was outnumbered and captured.

So the peasant rebels hung Zhang Heming upside down on a tree and shot him to death with random arrows, Zhang Heming's son Zhang Datong could not bear to see his father die tragically, so he was killed on Zhang Heming's corpse, and Zhang Heteng, Zhang Heling and more than 100 squires were killed at the same time.

This was the first high-ranking official of the six ministries of the Ming Dynasty killed after the peasant rebel army rebelled. Zhang Heming was also a man of the year in the early years of the Apocalypse, when Xiong and Wang were in dispute, he supported Wang Huazhen and suspected that Xiong Tingbi was suspected of collaborating with the enemy. and Xiong Tingbi were inextricably linked, and was later impeached and removed from office due to the defeat of Quang Ninh.

When Wei Zhongxian was in power, Zhang Heming returned as the secretary of the Nanjing Military Department. In Chongzhen's early years when dealing with the eunuchs, Zhang Heming was regarded as a member of the Wei Zhongxian group and was cleared out. So I forced the queue from the political faction. Wu Shigong and Zhang Heming should be members of the same party. Even now, of course. Wu Shigong still doesn't understand what the eunuch party and the Donglin party are. Otherwise, he would not have fought with the backbone of the Donglin Party, Hou Sui's family.

But although Zhang Heming was liquidated by Emperor Chongzhen, he was still very loyal to the Ming Dynasty. It was this former military secretary who organized the people to defend the city for a long time, which is a suspicion of talking on paper.

The fall of Yingzhou caused a strong shock in northern Anhui. Neighboring states and counties have taken measures to strengthen their garrisons. You must know that it is now the Yuanxiao Festival, and the joy of the festival still has aftermath. Therefore, in order to prevent the spies of the peasant rebel army from infiltrating the city, Taihe and other counties made a decision: it is strictly forbidden to travel in the city again. A city-wide curfew was reinstated.

But what about Fengyang's situation? Because Fengyang is four hundred and forty miles away from Yingzhou. Yang Ze, the eunuch stationed in Fengyang, thought that the peasant rebels were still far away. As in previous years, he celebrated the Lantern Festival as usual, and the streets were still full of singing. And the left-behind Prime Minister Zhu and the prefect Yan Ronghuo are also the same, busy with festivals and entertainment. There is no defense of Fengyang at all.

And what is the local sentiment in Fengyang? Although Fengyang is the hometown of the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, there is a Fengyang flower drum that has been passed down to the present, which is the song "Say Fengyang, Dao Fengyang, Fengyang is a good place, since Emperor Zhu, there have been nine years of famine in ten years." ”

This was indeed true at the time. In addition to the reason for the Yellow River, the main reason is that it is the hometown of the Ming Dynasty emperor and many nobles.

Needless to say, those imperial villages and noble villages annexed land. Also because of the need to repair the royal buildings and work for those nobles, the local people in Fengyang had to serve several times more than in other regions. Of course, the local government of Fengyang also took the opportunity to collect money, and levied several times the amount of forced labor to levy silver, so that the local people were really living in dire straits. It can also be seen from here that those emperors of the Ming Dynasty were indeed not very good to their hometowns.

Therefore, in November of the fourth year of Chongzhen, Qian Shisheng, the right attendant of the Nanjing Ministry of Rites, was ordered to pay tribute to the Fengyang Emperor's Mausoleum, and wrote a report on the decay of the Fengyang area. Zuihou Qian Shisheng's request was not high, asking for some tax reductions in Fengyang.

However, Emperor Chongzhen was afraid that Fengyang would set a precedent and follow suit, so he did not give a positive reply, but only criticized the sentence "His Zhou has been compassionate to the people for many times", so he prevaricated with empty words.

Therefore, when Zhang Xianzhong's troops besieged Yingzhou, the poor people of Fengyang invited the peasant rebel army to enter Fengyang. And they are all familiar with the local situation. Draw a picture and make a book to those leaders, where is there a Ming army? Which one is rich? They were all clearly explained to Zhang Xianzhong and others.

It's even better to have an internal response! Therefore, after capturing Yingzhou, Zhang Xianzhong and other leaders prepared to adopt the combat method of long-range surprise attack to take Fengyang. After that, it also became a common trick of Zhang Xianzhong's troops to attack the city.

These leaders secretly sent 300 strong men, disguised as merchants, coachmen, monks, Taoist priests, beggars, etc., and under the cover of those internal responses, they entered Fengyang City and stayed in each place. He also ordered the troops to march rapidly in a very covert way, day and night, bypassing Fuzhou and counties along the way, and driving directly to Fengyang, the central capital.

And the basis for this decision was that the peasant rebel army had fully understood the strength of Fengyang. Knowing that the Fengyang defenders Liliang were weak, the left-behind division only had the strength of four guards. At the same time, it was the central capital of the Ming Dynasty and had a great influence on politics.

On the nineteenth day of the first month of the eighth year of Chongzhen, under the stunned eyes of Fengyang officials and defenders, 30,000 elite peasant rebels suddenly appeared under Fengyang City. Fengyang, the central capital of the Ming Dynasty, was in an emergency.

It was only at this time that the Fengyang officials and defenders began to prepare for battle, and sent messengers for help everywhere. (To be continued......)