"What a noise!" Huang Peng, the governor of Kaifeng Mansion, suddenly broke out, he patted the back of his chair, gritted his teeth and said, "It's nothing more than a dead ear, since a city is dead, then the jade will be burned." The lower officials led people to dig up the embankment and drowned all the thieves outside the city. ”

"Exactly! Be loyal to the country, and the lower officials will not be left behind. Lord Huang! Let's get together. Yan Jingyun also agreed. It seems that in these days, Huang Peng has found another ally in the city.

And this time, no official thought that it was just Huang Peng and they were venting, and the officials really began to consider the motion. The hall fell silent all of a sudden, and everyone looked at Gao Mingheng, waiting for his final decision.

Gao Mingheng pondered for a while, and then asked the prefect of Kaifeng: "How many days is there enough grain and grass in the city?" ”

"More than ten days."

Of course, the Kaifeng prefect replied that it was not the days used by all the soldiers and civilians in the city, but only the necessary garrison troops and officials and their families.

"Then how many days does Wu Runing have to leave the seal?" Gao Mingheng asked Chen Yongfu again.

"Runing is here, more than 400 miles away. Every day the march is fifty miles, that is, seven or eight days. However, I don't know how long it will take for General Wu to assemble, how long it will take to fight with the people and thieves on the way, and I don't know if he will set off, so the last general will not dare to say anything. Chen Yongfu replied very conservatively and carefully.

Gao Mingheng thought about it for a while, and then resolutely decided: "That's good! Then wait another twenty days. Mr. Chen! You immediately send the dead soldier to Wu Runing's place again, and let him step up. After 20 days, if there is no news, then do what Lord Huang said. Lord Huang! You also pick one or two hundred dead men, ready to dig the levees at any time. ”

"Obey!"

"Yes! My lord! ”

Gao Mingheng finally figured it out, even if he gave Kaifeng City to the Dragon Prince, he, the governor of Henan, could always escape to the boat on the Yellow River. At this time, it was impossible to take care of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians in Kaifeng City. As long as the besieging troops of the Li and Luo coalition forces can be buried in Kaifeng City. Maybe the imperial court will still be able to open up the net. As for the rescue of the Runing Army, Gao Mingheng also had the last glimmer of hope.

"General! Please save the city! Please save your father! Chen De wept bitterly and took a few soldiers who rushed out of the city again, knelt on the ground and kowtowed to Wu Shigong "bang", and after a few strokes, blood was seen on the foreheads of these people.

Wu Shigong, who was sitting on the handsome chair, was quite embarrassed. He was unwilling to deceive Chen De, but he was also unwilling to change his battle plan without authorization. So he could only make a gesture to the soldiers to stop Chen De's "self-harm" behavior first.

"Major General, don't worry. As soon as he knew that Kaifeng City was in an emergency, the official raised troops and came to Yuzhong. But the Shaanxi bandits are cunning and afraid of falling into an ambush, so the official is extremely careful with his troops. I don't know that Kaifeng City is so short of food. The official is also anxious now. So be it! Help the young general down to heal his wounds first, and then tell you when the officer comes up with a strategy. What do you think? Wu Shigong said with concern.

"Thank you, General. I hope the general will send troops soon! Hurry up! ”

When Chen De was helped out, Wu Shigong kept tapping the big case with the pencil in his hand, and the officers in the big tent kept quiet, and they all knew that Wu Shigong had fallen into contemplation again.

In the original plan. The Runing Army will not care about the life or death of Kaifeng City and the Black Cloud Army. After all, the worst outcome was that both official armies were wiped out by the peasant army. But hundreds of thousands of people in Kaifeng City will never worry about their lives.

But now the situation is completely different. When Wu Shigong learned that officials in Kaifeng were preparing to dig the Yellow River embankment. After dying together with the peasant army, Wu Shigong could no longer be calm. The lives of hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people were just a thought of Wu Shigong, which made him feel as if he had a thousand burdens on his shoulders.

To tell the truth, before the war, the Runing army did not consider the possibility of the official army or the peasant army digging the Yellow River embankment. Because it's just crazy. The complete destruction of Kaifeng City will create an extremely large Yellow Flood area in northern Henan, displacing more people, not to mention that the flood alone can cause more than a million casualties and homelessness.

But Wu Shigong didn't know what to do. In the history of the original plane, such crazy things did happen. At that time, the Kaifeng defenders had been besieged by the Li and Luo coalition forces for four months, they had no food and grass inside, and no rescuers outside.

So under the order of Gao Mingheng, Huang Peng, the governor of Kaifeng Prefecture, and Yan Jingyun, the governor of the imperial history, organized manpower to dig the embankment at the mouth of Zhujiazhai. When the peasant army learned of this, they immediately moved to Gaofu, and in turn sent people to dig the Majiakou embankment to fill the Kaifeng defenders. The peasant army also simply made things bigger.

At that time, the autumn was high and the water was urgent, the turbulent Yellow River burst out of the embankment, the entire Kaifeng City was submerged, countless residents inside and outside the city were drowned, and more than 10,000 people of the peasant army were killed in the flood. In Kaifeng City, only a group of high-ranking officials such as Gao Mingheng and the family members of King Zhou escaped by boat.

In this man-made disaster, the total number of people who drowned and died from post-flood diseases exceeded one million, a large number of land was destroyed, and the damage to property was simply incalculable. It was not until decades later that the destroyed Kaifeng City and the farmland in the Yellow Flood Area were finally rebuilt, and this incident was also a catastrophe in the late Ming Dynasty.

In that time and space, the inundation of Kaifeng City also made the Ming Dynasty lose an important stronghold in the Central Plains, and from then on, the peasant army completely occupied the initiative in the Central Plains until the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by the Shun army.

Of course, in a short period of time, the destruction of Kaifeng City also made the Li and Luo coalition forces lose a large number of captures in the city, and they also lost a large number of replenishment of troops. Especially on the issue of "Dingdu", the Li and Luo coalition forces had to give up Kaifeng and go south to Huguang to occupy Xiangyang. Therefore, it did delay the time for the peasant army to launch a general offensive.

Therefore, the result of this levee burst was a lose-lose situation.

Another note: After the incident, although some officials in the court and the central government were negligent and demanded to investigate the responsibility of the Kaifeng city defenders to break the embankment and flood the city on their own, Emperor Chongzhen believed that they had always resisted to the end when the peasant army attacked Kaifeng three times, showing loyalty and integrity, so not only did not punish them, but instead remembered their hard work and rewarded them with high names.

Although Wu Shigong didn't know about this history, he had a premonition of this catastrophe. Now, if we want to save the hundreds of thousands of people in Kaifeng, the Runing army will have to change its plan and change the phase of attrition to a rush to rescue. In other words, it is to exchange the lives of Runing soldiers for the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Kaifeng City.

Moreover, this will also disrupt the overall strategic deployment of the Runing Army. There will be quite a lot of variables in the battle with the Li and Luo combined forces, and it is possible that the plan drawn up before the war to drive the Li and Luo combined forces to Huguang will not be realized, and the general strategy of the Runing army will have to be overturned and restarted.

It was a tough choice. Wu Shigong laughed self-deprecatingly, he couldn't help but think: "The only role that this military plan can play is that it was really overthrown on the first day of the war!" ”

After thinking about it for a long time, a sense of responsibility still prevailed. There is a famous saying: with great power comes great responsibility. Now Wu Shigong has tasted the pain of this famous saying.

"Hey——!" Wu Shigong let out a long sigh, and then he said to the officers who all looked at him, "We have always said: Runing Army is the guardian of Huaxia and the elite of the Chinese nation, but when the time comes, we really want to use our own lives and the lives of our brothers to rescue the people, I still hesitate for so long." Let's make a new plan! Attack Kaifeng city within five days. ”

"No!" The officers' reply was unusually loud. The sense of honor of the Runing Army made these officers quite proud. In their hearts, these officers wanted to save those people, and their eyes when they looked at Wu Shigong were full of admiration.

……

On the eighth day of the ninth month, the Runing Army, which had changed its operational plan, suddenly turned from defense to attack and began to rescue Kaifeng City with all its might.

In the early hours of the morning, a personal soldier hurriedly rushed into the big tent, and he shouted to Hexiao Banner and Tian Jianxiu, who had just been fully draped: "Two generals, the official dog on the opposite side has crossed the river." ”

"Let's go!" He Shaoqi and Tian Jianxiu didn't care that they hadn't had breakfast at all, so they rushed out of the big tent, got on their war horses, and ran towards the front line. And the officers who broke into the camp also urged the troops to hurry up and get out of the camp and go to the fortifications for reserve battle.

After running to the fortifications on the bank of the Huiji River, He Shaoqi and Tian Jianxiu gasped. After a few days of silence, the south bank of the Huiji River was now full of dense Runing troops, looking like the whole army was dispatched.

"Lao He! What do these official dogs want to do? Tian Mixiu asked strangely.

"No matter what he's going to do! We can't let them break through to us. He replied.

To be honest, He Shaoqi was also a little confused by the second monk. The Wu Butcher's troops did not cross the river before the camp arrived and were defeated, but chose the time to cross the river when the construction had already been completed. This really made He Shaoqi puzzled.

Seeing that the auxiliary soldiers of the Runing Army were orderly and lined up in a long line and threw sacks full of sand and gravel to the Huiji River, approaching the north bank of the Huiji River step by step, He Shaoqi shouted: "Let the horse team come first." If the official dog has just crossed the river, find an opportunity to hit them halfway. Then let the sons and daughters speed up and spread out the formation behind the earthen wall. ”

Fortunately, the actions of the Runing army were very dogmatic, and they did not launch an attack when they filled the river, and it seemed that they would wait until the dirt road in the river was paved before crossing the river with the whole army. Therefore, the soldiers who broke into the camp also ran to the back of the earthen wall and stood in a rough formation.

Seeing that their soldiers were ready, He Shaoqi and Tian Jianxiu were also a little relieved. They took the dry food handed over by their own soldiers, and dealt with it first and used breakfast. (To be continued......)