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Chapter 160 Nanjing! Nanking! (Medium)

The overwhelming flames of war are burning in Jinling, the world's largest metropolis!

In the past, the Qinhuai River, where drunken golden warblers sang and danced, was full of mutilated corpses; The Guozijian, who was supposed to be a loud book, was burned into a white ground by the sky-high fire, and the rumbling and vibrating cannon roared instead of the melodious bells of the Great Bao'en Temple.

In the face of blood-drenched swords and guns and the raging fire, millions of Nanjing citizens who realized it later were shocked to find themselves on the battlefield all of a sudden.

And more and more troops are still marching into this largest city in China, turning all the prosperity into ashes.

At the beginning of the battle, both the Ming and Qing armies each controlled half of the city of Nanjing, and fought both inside and outside the city.

Judging from the comparison of troops, Emperor Chongzhen brought over 50,000 soldiers and horses from Dasheng Pass, plus the cronies and armed tenants of the Ming Dynasty in Nanjing, a total of more than 60,000 people. And the Qing army around Huang Taiji only had 5,000 people, plus his allies, that is, the few remnants of the Donglin gentlemen who could still control, a total of no more than 6,000 people, which was equivalent to one to ten on the battlefield.

However, although Emperor Chongzhen's Ming army had 60,000 people, it contained a lot of water. Because there are not only many elite generals who can fight the rabble temporarily mobilized by Wei Guogong and other Nanjing nobles, after all, there are only a few, but also the 20,000 soldiers of the original Nanjing Imperial Court who were contained in the Battle of Wuhu, and their combat effectiveness and loyalty are very worrying. In other words, nearly half of the 60,000 Ming troops were made up.

Even among the remaining more than 30,000 Ming troops, not all of them were soldiers who could go into battle, but they included coolies and miscellaneous labor.

On the other hand, although Huang Taiji originally only had 6,000 people, there were 5,000 people in it who were the elite of the Eight Banners who were used to fighting hard battles. Moreover, his follow-up troops continued to rush over from the Zhenjiang ferry in the east to reinforce them. In addition, Huang Taiji also took control of the Imperial City of Nanjing, which stood in the city of Nanjing, before Emperor Chongzhen sent troops into the city, thus grabbing the geographical advantage of the battlefield to a certain extent.

But despite this, the superiority of the Ming army in terms of strength was still obvious. Moreover, whether it is the rice fields of the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River or the narrow streets and alleys of Jinling Metropolis, they are extremely unsuitable places for the northern cavalry to gallop, and even the more complex infantry phalanxes cannot be arranged, so they can only fight like street hooligans. The Qing army, which was accustomed to breaking the enemy's iron cavalry galloping in field battles, was obviously not very suitable for such low-tech battles.

In order to boost morale, Emperor Chongzhen erected a Huangluo umbrella cover on the Zhengyang Gate, and personally held a hammer and beat the drum to motivate the soldiers to fight bravely to kill the enemy. Commander Lu Xiangsheng set up the few heavy artillery pieces he had on the site of Stone Town, a historic military fortress in the Nanjing area, and violently bombarded the neighborhood where the Qing army gathered. The citizens of Nanjing, although they were deeply resentful of the Ming and Qing armies that caused this flying disaster, but compared with the familiar Ming official army, the Jurchen Tartars with ugly braids were more annoying, so once they found an opportunity, they attacked these Tartars in groups.

And in the extremely chaotic street fighting, even women and children with bricks and sticks in their hands have a place to play. No matter how high your kung fu is, you can knock down a brick thrown over, and seemingly inconspicuous bricks and sticks are quite powerful when you sneak up on them in the alley.

As a result, with the 6 successive entry of a large number of Ming troops into the city, as well as the siege of Nanjing citizens, the 4,000 Qing troops under the command of Huang Taiji were squeezed out of Nanjing little by little, despite their best efforts. The various Nanjing city gates that were originally controlled by the Qing army also changed hands one after another.

Although Huang Taiji disregarded his dignity as an emperor, he sacrificed his life to lead the team to fight in the streets and alleys of Nanjing, even the war horses under his crotch were knocked over, and his head and back were successively hit by two flower pots, a brick and a slap stick, plus a small half pot of boiling water, and finally he was beaten to the point that his head was broken and he fell unconscious, but this heroic performance of the pioneers still could not restore the decline of the Qing army and its Donglin Party allies. After a day and a night of melee, the Ming army first bombarded the Hongwu Gate with artillery, attacked the imperial city, and recaptured the key stronghold of the imperial palace. Then he continued to compress the activity space of the remnants of the Qing army, and once besieged Huang Taiji near the Shence Gate. When the situation of the Qing army was at its most critical, Huang Taiji himself was unconscious, with less than a hundred guards around him, and the left and right attendants had already shaved his head, changed into monk's clothes, and were ready to try to escort him into a monk and abscond.

However, due to the relatively weak strength of Emperor Chongzhen's sailors, they could not cut off the route of the Yangtze River, so the Qing army, which had been assembled in Yangzhou, Jiangbei, had been continuously crossing the river to help. And Huang Taiji was also ruthless in order to seize Jiangnan, and bet almost all of the Qing Empire's gambling capital in one go. In addition to the soldiers and horses of the three Dolgon brothers, who were responsible for staying in the rear base camp of Xuzhou and Lunan, the remaining six banners of Manchurian soldiers, as well as the remaining Han army banners and Mongolian military flags, etc., as well as the obedient Han troops from all walks of life, were all pulled to the south of the Yangtze River by him!

In this way, because the Ming army failed to annihilate the vanguard of the Qing army of Huang Taiji in a short period of time, as one Qing army after another arrived from Zhenjiang, the battlefield situation in Nanjing gradually began to reverse again. The encirclement of Shence Gate, which was once formed, was rushed away by the Qing army, and Huang Taiji also turned the corner. Next, from the Xuanwu Lake Shogunate Mountain to the Ming Tomb in Zhongshan, it has become a battlefield of fierce tug-of-war between the two armies.

As the delusional battle of the decisive battle went bankrupt, the chaotic battles continued day after day, one exquisite temple or mansion after another was burned to the ground, and although the Ming army still had the upper hand, it was never able to achieve a complete victory, and even could not control the entire city of Nanjing.

Because the Nanjing Imperial Palace was too close to the front line of the battlefield that the two sides had repeatedly contested, and it had become dilapidated in the flames of war, Emperor Chongzhen had no choice but to set up an imperial camp at the Ming Tomb in Zhongshan and pray for Zhu Yuanzhang's spirit in heaven to bless him while continuing to command the long and arduous battle. And Huang Taiji set up a large camp at the foot of the Shogunate Mountain, and swore to the soldiers of the Eight Banners that he would never give up if he didn't take Nanjing this time!

It should be noted that although Huang Taiji's Qing army was a foreign guest army, it was not without supporters in this part of Jiangnan, just like a person seeking death, if one suicide failed, he usually did not have the courage to immediately start a second suicide. The Donglin Party, who had already been discouraged and desperate about the situation, saw that the Qing army was moving south, and Emperor Chongzhen, who came to settle accounts with them, did not seem to be able to sit in the Jinluan Palace, so their minds floated again.

Among them, the two masterminds of this "borrowing teachers to help suppress" this time, assisted by Zhou Yanru and his student Zhang Pu, one was in the Nanjing battlefield to guide the Qing army to raise grain, and the other was at the Zhenjiang ferry to supervise the ships of the navy division to transfer the Qing army's soldiers and horses from Yangzhou in the north of the Yangtze River. Although the regular army under the Nanjing court had collapsed, these people, with their local influence, quickly organized a rabble to come to Nanjing to help the "Qing Friends" on the battlefield and grab something in Nanjing by the way.

However, although the Donglin Party is the head snake in the south of the Yangtze River, the current Chongzhen Emperor is also not an outsider.

After these Donglin gentlemen, who are full of moral articles, actually refreshed their lower limit again, so that they did not hesitate to take refuge in the Tartars, but also to fight against themselves, the orthodox son of heaven, His Majesty the Chongzhen Emperor of the time-traveling version suddenly jumped like thunder, so while urging reinforcements to the rear of Huguang and Jiangxi, he immediately summoned the Nanjing nobles who had already taken refuge in him, as well as the local officials who had defected to him, and asked them to mobilize the villagers and crusade against the Donglin rebel party, and the wealth obtained by the women could take it for themselves. As a result, it quickly led to a drastic expansion of the scale and scope of the war.

In recent years, the Donglin Party in Jiangnan has certainly been fatherless, monarchic, and ungovernmental, and even advocated the liberalization of the landlord class like the Polish peasant owners of the same period. But the two-hundred-year-old orthodox authority of the Ming court, represented by Emperor Chongzhen, is not so easy to wear down after all. In the final analysis, the Donglin Party is not a revolutionary party with a tight structure like an arm commanding the modern party, but just a loose organization similar to the political club of the landlords and gentry, and it is commonplace to join the party and leave the party. However, it is impossible for the gentry and big families in any place to be monolithic, so as many supporters of the Donglin Party in the local area, there are also as many rivals.

What's more, friends who have studied zoology know that even the most primitive paramecium has the biological instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm, let alone human beings with rich thinking ability? At present, the Yonghe puppet emperor supported by the Donglin Party has fled without a trace, if he doesn't set things right and returns to His Majesty Chongzhen's camp, how else can he choose? Do you want to be a slave to these stinking Jurchen Tartars?

As a result, under the tearing of these two major political forces, first around Nanjing, and then in the whole of Jiangnan, a large-scale group fight between the landlords' regimental training broke out. Many large landlords held their own banners and used knives and guns to settle new and old grudges with each other. In addition, the various rice-grabbing riots among the people have not subsided before, and the chaotic party organized by the martial arts heroes from all walks of life is still jumping, and in addition, there are branch forces of the Wenxiang Sect, which also followed the Qing army that crossed the river, and entered the Jiangnan folk together, provoking all kinds of riots...... The Ming Army, the Qing Army, the cult landlords, the water bandits, the bandits, the hungry people, and all kinds of forces appeared at the same time, turning this piece of water town in the south of the Yangtze River, which is known as quiet and rich, into a pot of porridge.

By the time of November 19 in the sixth year of Chongzhen, the two armies of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which had been deadlocked for many days, finally formed a general showdown on the battlefield of Nanjing. Among them, after many reinforcements and days of attrition, the Qing army still had about 30,000 people left, entrenched in the area of the Shogunate Mountain on the bank of the Yangtze River, and at the same time controlled a small urban area near the Shence Gate in the north of Nanjing. The total strength of the Ming army reached 90,000 people, entrenched in Zhongshan Lizhai where the Ming Xiaoling Tomb was located, and at the same time controlled most of the city of Nanjing, but not only the cavalry was scarce, but also the water division on the Yangtze River did not have an advantage.

At this point, a general battle to determine the future fate of the south is about to start between the Shogunate Mountain and Zhongshan Mountain, on the narrow plain on the east bank of Xuanwu Lake, both sides are taking out the army of the country as a bet this time, whether Emperor Chongzhen sits on the Jinluan Palace in Nanjing and re-kneades the divided Ming Empire, or the Eight Banners Iron Cavalry conquers the south of the Yangtze River and makes the revival of the short-lived Qing Empire, the result must be drawn in this decisive battle.

However, at this time when the decisive battle of the Ming and Qing dynasties was about to touch, Emperor Chongzhen, who had been exhausted from a long battle in Nanjing, and was just gritting his teeth with a spirit, learned the bad news of a fire in his backyard from the mouth of a dusty messenger.

“…… What the? Has Huguang changed? Wuchang Xiangyang fell?! Wen Ti Rensuke fled with the queen and the crown prince?!! ”

Just when Emperor Chongzhen and Huang Taiji were fighting in Nanjing, the Liukou, who had been dormant in the Central Plains for a long time, took the opportunity to launch a big operation and smashed his rear: Li Zicheng entered Xiangyang from Henan and swept the upper reaches of the Han River; Zhang Xianzhong crossed the Dabie Mountains from Huaixi to attack Hanyang, and then crossed the river to capture Wuchang. Wen Ti Rensuke, who stayed in Wuchang, was unable to resist at all, so he had to escort the royal family members to board the ship and flee in a hurried direction downstream.

What's even worse is that before Emperor Chongzhen ordered the news to be blocked, the bad news had already spread among the army......