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Chapter 168: The Funeral of the Second Emperor (II)

Late at night on the ninth day of the second month of the seventh year of Chongzhen, Nanzhili, the capital city of Chizhou on the bank of the Yangtze River

In the main house of the back house of the Yamen of the Chizhou Governor's Mansion, several white-bearded old doctors gathered around a stepping bed with a bright yellow curtain, tossed around with various gadgets for a long time, and discussed with each other, and finally had to sigh, turned around and knelt down in front of a noble lady with a haggard face, and reported in a deep voice, "...... Please forgive the queen, Your Majesty is now terminally ill, and the medicine is useless. Please also ...... Take care of the aftermath as soon as possible! ”

After listening to the diagnosis of these local famous doctors, Zhou Yufeng, Empress Tian Guifei, who was under the oil lamp, and the ladies of the court, as well as several princes and princesses who were held in their arms, immediately cried in unison. And the several courtiers and generals who stood outside the door and waited also had sad expressions and heavy hearts.

The Battle of Nanjing, which lasted for more than a month in late autumn last year, was a frightening gamble for both warring sides. not only made the Qing Emperor Huang Taiji exhausted, but also boiled the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youzhen to the end.

Especially when Emperor Chongzhen was still a loser.

After more than a year of hard work, it suddenly came to naught, and the elite soldiers and good generals who were finally raised all lost such a heavy psychological blow, coupled with the injuries and rain when fleeing from the battlefield, made Emperor Chongzhen's already unhealthy body collapse immediately.

Because of the excessive pressure, this time-traveling version of Emperor Chongzhen has already exhausted his time.

You must know that this time-traveling version of Emperor Chongzhen, at the beginning of the Forbidden City in Beijing, woke up from a serious illness, and his body and bones were naturally very weak. Then, before he could recuperate, the rapidly deteriorating battle situation forced him to stand up, and under the pressure of the Manchu civil and military forces, he tried to arrange the escape. Along the way, the time-traveling version of Emperor Chongzhen not only did not eat and sleep well, but also had to face all kinds of open guns and hidden arrows, beware of the long-distance pursuit of the scheming local officials and the Tartar Liukou, and his physical strength and energy were all overdrawn.

Therefore, in this short period of more than a year, he has fallen ill once in Luoyang, Taiyuan and Wuchang, and has been seriously ill for three consecutive times, and his health is already very bad. In the later stage of the Nanjing War, His Majesty was already lingering on the sickbed, and there were some minor problems in the throat, stomach, heart, legs and feet. After that, the Ming army was defeated in Nanjing, and the emperor fled in a hurry, he was first wounded on the road, bleeding profusely, and then caught a cold in the rain, coupled with the psychological blow brought by this huge defeat, he retreated to Chizhou with a strong illness, and finally fell headlong.

Fortunately, after the Qing army pursued to Wuhu in Taiping Mansion and defeated Lu Xiangsheng's broken soldiers and horses, they collected their troops and returned, concentrated on slaughtering the Jiangnan gentry, and looted the wealth of Jiangnan.

However, there is a steady stream of bad news from all sides. First of all, Lu Xiangsheng died in Wuhu, which not only made Emperor Chongzhen lose his loyal ministers, but also left him with no more available soldiers. Then, the various rogues who poured into Huguang began to break out small-scale infighting at the end of the year because of the uneven distribution of the spoils. Zhang Xianzhong, who was entrenched in Wuchang, because he laid down the Huguang Provincial Government, the gold and silver women gained the most abundantly, but the ability to fight was not as good as Li Zicheng, Luo Rucai, Lao Huihui and others, so he was worried that he would become the target of the public, so he set fire to Wuchang, and went down the river to the east, straight into Jiangxi, and the Ming army could not stop him along the way. The families of the royal ministers who were originally stranded in Jiujiang had to board the ship and flee en masse again under the leadership of the cabinet assistant Wen Tiren, and came to Chizhou Mansion to meet Emperor Chongzhen. Zhang Xianzhong took Jiujiang lightly, and then besieged Nanchang on a large scale, seeing that Jiangxi Province was about to fall.

This series of heavy mental blows made Emperor Chongzhen's body no longer overwhelmed, and finally collapsed completely, and he didn't even have the strength to get out of bed. Even the reunion with Empress Zhou and Tian Guifei and other family members did not make his extremely weak body recover. By the beginning of February, Emperor Chongzhen's condition had deteriorated further and dramatically, and he was already in a coma and could not eat water. Even if you look for a famous doctor, it still doesn't work.

There is no way, the medical technology of this era is only at such an unreliable level, and even a cold can kill people.

At this moment, perhaps because of the return to light, the consciousness of this time-traveling version of Emperor Chongzhen has awakened a little.

Looking back on my experience in this time and space for more than a year, it is really embarrassing.

Traveling back to ancient times to be an emperor, the seemingly beautiful opening treatment of the protagonist is actually a situation of nine deaths and a life of death from the beginning!

When he took over this hot throne, the city of Beijing was already doomed, and the loyalty of the civil and military officials was also very suspicious. He finally escaped from Beijing and was about to move to Nanjing to clean up the mess, when the Donglin Party's rebellion against the deposed emperor dealt him a fatal blow.

At this point, the collapse of the Ming Empire has become a crisis close at hand. And the emergence of various traversal forces, as well as the drastic changes they have caused to the course of history. It also made this aging and decaying Ming Empire face a great change that has not been seen for thousands of years.

This is no longer a burden that requires a meritocracy, but a person to bear.

No matter how good the traverser is, when he encounters such a situation where the demons are dancing and the monsters are 6 away, I am afraid that he will also be numb.

But he still didn't give up, but worked hard to solve such a crisis, wanting to save this old empire of his own For a modern young man who was just an ordinary citizen before the crossing, the exhaustion, confusion and hardship are really indescribable.

Sadly, he failed in the end, and was crushed by the defeat at the same time, both mentally and physically.

The dream of reviving the empire has been completely shattered, leaving only a desperate crisis that is stormy and besieged.

Before dying, Empress Zhou Yufeng came to ask how to arrange the funeral in tears, but Emperor Chongzhen, who was lying on the bed and was sick and broken, just stared at the curtain at the head of the bed, and left the last sentence in a weak voice: "...... What have I done when I came into this world? ”

None of the people present could hear the words of the words.

After saying these last words, Emperor Chongzhen collapsed and fell unconscious again. Even if you wake up for a moment by chance, you can't speak. Relying on the treatment and rescue of a famous local doctor, he barely survived for another two days, and finally died of exhaustion in the early morning of February 11.

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The successive deaths of Emperor Taiji of the Chongzhen Emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty and Zhu Youzhen of the Chongzhen Emperor of the Great Ming Dynasty heralded the end of an era.

Since then, the unified Chinese Empire no longer exists, and the vast Central Plains has completely entered the turbulent and chaotic times.

Therefore, all kinds of bad news did not end with the death of Emperor Chongzhen.

On February 11, on the day of Emperor Chongzhen's death, Zhang Xianzhong's "thief army" conquered Nanchang, and the whole province of Jiangxi basically collapsed. The next day, another group of rogues captured Anqing Mansion in Jiangbei. And the Chizhou Mansion, where the imperial driver was stationed, was also a group of thieves at this time, and the remnants of the officers and troops scattered and fled one after another.

After the death of Emperor Chongzhen, Empress Zhou and the cabinet assisted Wen Tiren, and immediately led hundreds of civil and military officials to support the six-year-old crown prince Zhu Cihong to ascend the throne as emperor in Chizhou. Empress Zhou was naturally promoted to the empress dowager, and Wen Tiren took advantage of the situation to become the minister who assisted the young emperor. In order to show the filial piety of the new emperor to his deceased father, Zhu Cihong imitated the old practice when the Emperor of the Apocalypse died, and continued to use the Chongzhen era name this year, and waited until next year to discuss the matter of changing the yuan.

However, despite the accession of the new emperor, he did not see the slightest hint of the new emperor and the new atmosphere, but was full of a haze of impending catastrophe.

At this moment, Emperor Chongzhen's small court in exile had lost control of Huguang and Jiangxi, and was trapped in a corner of Chizhou. The once mighty army of tens of thousands, after many defeats, only less than 2,000 remained, and from top to bottom it was like a frightened bird. Even Chizhou, where the imperial driver is stationed at the moment, is wrapped between the sphere of influence of the Qing army and the Liukou, and the terrain is flat, there is no danger to defend, it is really not a place to stay for a long time.

Therefore, Fu Wen Tiren, who actually presided over this small court in exile, soon reported to the Empress Dowager Zhou that they had to move again.

“…… Your Majesty the Empress Dowager, at present, Huguangjiangxi and Jiangxi have fallen, Chizhou is surrounded by enemies, not only there is no danger to defend, but there is no way to raise money and food, and the imperial court continues to stay here, which is tantamount to sitting and waiting to die. Although the Ming Dynasty still has several provinces in the southwest, but it is blocked by the Liukou to go west, if we are forced to go west with the current people, it is tantamount to throwing ourselves into the net and sending you to the hands of those brutal Liukou. ”

Wen Tiren, whose face was also extremely haggard, said to the panicked Empress Dowager Zhou and the little emperor, "...... For now, the only way to do this is to let the imperial court move to Huizhou, where there are thousands of elite soldiers from the general army of western Zhejiang to escort it, and Huizhou is surrounded by mountains and far away from the Yangtze River waterway, which is easier to defend than Chizhou. In addition, the wealth of the Hui merchants is famous all over the world, and the tax money and grain are easy to raise...... In addition, the minister is from Huzhou, and the clan still has some connections in Zhejiang, and Huizhou is close to Zhejiang, so maybe the minister can try to get some support from his hometown to ensure the peace of the court for a while......"

“…… Can you only ensure the peace of the court for a while? Zhou Yufeng, who had just been promoted from queen to queen mother, wiped her tears and asked, "...... Although the mourning family does not know the geography, but recently also seen the map, although Huizhou is good, but still surrounded by enemies, how should the imperial court spread in the future? ”

“…… Sometime? Who knows? Lao Chen can't think about it so much! Let's take care of the present for now, and count it as a day! ”

Wen Tiren smiled sadly, "...... Queen Mother, with all due respect, now that the world is falling apart, we don't know if there is a future to speak of! ”

On February 15 of the seventh year of Chongzhen, at the insistence of Fu Wen Tiren, the young emperor Zhu Cihong and the Empress Dowager Zhou took the Zigong (that is, the coffin) of Emperor Chongzhen and left Chizhou and moved to Huizhou (Huangshan City in later generations) located in the deep mountains of southern Anhui, preparing to join Wang Dou, the general army of western Zhejiang, who was stationed here.

At the same time, because of the internal division of the Qing army, the Jiangnan Donglin Party, who had temporarily breathed a sigh of relief, also began to operate again......