Chapter 142: The Confrontation of the Three Emperors (I)

Nanzhili, Xuzhou Prefecture, Pei County

With a few loud "booms" and flames spewed out from the muzzles, the ground seemed to tremble.

After the smoke cleared, the city wall of Peixian County, which had been in disrepair for a long time, had collapsed into a huge gap.

Seeing this, a Qing army leader straightened up from his horse and waved the flag in his hand repeatedly. Next, the soldiers of the Eight Banners, who had been waiting for a long time, immediately brandished all kinds of weapons and rushed towards the gap with a shout.

If it is in the face of a real strong enemy, it is definitely not a wise move to attack so hastily, but the Wenxiang Sect demon people stationed in Pei County are obviously not a strong enemy Since these Hongyi cannons were placed under the city, there has not been a single defender on the head of the city.

This kind of chicken-like wreckage and dog-like waste does not seem to be worth dealing with with by the brave and warlike Eight Banners masters.

Also out of extreme contempt for the defenders of Pei County, in the home of this Qing army, several generals on horseback did not pay much attention to the soldiers of the Eight Banners who were storming the county seat, but went straight to the side of the cannon. Seeing these nobles coming, dozens of soldiers of the Eight Banners guarding around the artillery array hurriedly drove away the Ming Dynasty soldiers who were responsible for firing the artillery, and made room for their nobles to stop and stop their horses.

Several Qing army generals came to the Hongyi cannon, all turned back and dismounted, watched carefully, and a veteran also stretched out his hand and slapped the cannon body and said with a smile:

“…… Hey, Heshuo Baylor, this stupid thing of the Han dog is still really useful, and when I went out to fight in the past, I was afraid of these cannons! The dog cubs of the Ming army fled quickly as soon as they fought, but this cannon was really powerful, and even the iron man couldn't stop it. ”

After hearing the veteran's joke, Heshuo Belezir Harang frowned slightly, and said softly: "...... Be careful! You can't say that. If it weren't for the cannon smiths and Western missionaries collected by those Han officials, where would we have come from such militaristic weapons? ”

was reprimanded by Zierharang, and the veteran suddenly blushed, but he also knew that now that Huang Taiji was bent on leading the Jurchen Eight Banners into the Central Plains, it was precisely when he wanted to recruit rebels and reuse Hanchen, and no one could be allowed to deliberately provoke contradictions between the two races. So he hurriedly bowed down and agreed, "...... The lesson of Peshuo Baylor is. It's true that I lost my word, and I will remember to change my ...... in the future."

Looking up at the groups of soldiers constantly pouring into Pei County along the gap, Zilharang knew that the big thing had been decided, and then he indifferently commanded: "...... These soldiers who operate the cannon are all meritorious men of my Qing Dynasty, and I ordered them to go down, and these soldiers who operate the cannon tonight will be rewarded with wine and meat! Credit!

There were soldiers over there who passed the word to the Han artillerymen who had just been driven away. Immediately, there was a burst of cheers, kneeling on the ground and kowtowing in thanks. Zilharang, on the other hand, raised his horsewhip and triumphantly said to the veteran beside him, "...... You see, as long as you give these minions a little benefit, they will be grateful, and they will operate the cannon. With them charging in front, our Eight Banners athletes can sacrifice a few less. ”

“…… What Heshuo Baylor said is, but after our Eight Banners entered the Central Plains, the benefits distributed to those Han officials were inevitably too much! ”

The veteran nodded at first, but then continued to grumble, "...... And nothing else. Just the fiefs allocated to Wu Xiang and Zu Dashou and several of their defeated generals are more than any of our bannermen! I just don't understand! Why did the Great Khan have to reward Shanxi to Zu Dashou, even the imperial capital such as Luoyang was also rewarded to Wu Xiang, so that one of them would be the king of Jin and the other would be the king of Zhou!

Hmph, I'm not convinced anyway. The Eight Banners warriors who captured them in the Daling River have not yet been crowned kings. But the two captives of Zu Dashou and Wu Xiang were crowned kings first! The Great Khan led us all the way into the Central Plains, who is it for?! ”

Hearing this complaint, Zilharang couldn't help but open his mouth, but in the end, he still didn't speak carefully, and he didn't offend anyone easily, which is Shulhaqi's consistent principle of life. You must know that his father Shulhaqi was imprisoned to death by Nurhachi, and his brother Amin is still imprisoned by Huang Taiji, but Shulhaqi has not suffered, but has risen step by step, and the difficulty of this is naturally imaginable.

As for the Jurchen veteran who seems to be open-mouthed and always complains, his name is Aixin Jueluo. Abatai is the seventh son of Nurhachi, and the elder brother of Huang Taiji, Huang Taiji is the eighth son of Nurhachi.

However, the Jurchen clan has always had a tradition of the son being valued by the mother, and Abatai has a very low status because he is a concubine and the mother is relatively lowly. When Huang Taiji first ascended the throne, he thought that he would be named Heshuo Baylor, who would have thought that he would only be given an ordinary Baylor title, which caused Abatai to be very dissatisfied, and there were a lot of complaints in the open and in secret, and after reaching Huang Taiji's ears, it naturally made the Great Khan feel very unhappy.

However, Abatai has the identity of the royal family, and because of his low status, he does not pose a threat to the throne of Huang Taiji. So although Huang Taiji knew that this guy was constantly complaining about himself, he still pinched his nose and appointed him. This time, he went south to test the combat power of the demons of the Wenxiang Sect, and also let Abatai and Zilharang be responsible for leading the troops, so as not to let the three Dolgon brothers of the two white flags make new contributions and make the power of the Eight Banners unbalanced.

On the other side, in the face of the wolf-like soldiers of the Eight Banners, the unguarded Wenxiang Sect members in Peixian County did not hold on for long at all, and they died and descended...... After a few moments, the shouts of killing had subsided. And a string of grizzled captives were taken out by the flowers.

Seeing the prisoners of war being escorted out, the Qing soldiers inside and outside the city cheered in unison, and Zilharang and Abatai naturally nodded and smiled again and again when they looked at this momentum...... In the midst of the rejoicing of this faction, Zilharang suddenly turned around and said:

“…… Abatai, don't always treat Eight Banners as your own! Look at those minions of the Han army, aren't they also cheering together! ”

Hearing this, Abatai hurriedly turned his head to take a look, and found that the Han soldiers who were operating the cannon were also cheering, and the joy was even more enthusiastic than the real Eight Banner soldiers. He immediately spat at the ground with disdain, showing a look of disdain, but after thinking about it carefully, he still didn't say anything unpleasant, after all, the current situation. It's really different from when I was in Liaodong.

Then, the victorious Qing troops poured into Peixian and began to plunder the city according to the previous practice.

On the issue of dividing up the scope of robbery, all the Han soldiers were very self-conscious, knowing that the gold and silver treasures and silk and satin in the city belonged to the Eight Banners, so they targeted the kitchen from the beginning, although the situation in the entire Central Plains is not very good now. But in the kitchen of the mansion of the master of the incense sect, I still found a lot of salted fish and ham, wind chicken and bacon hanging on the beams of the house.

This harvest made the poor soldiers who had been suffering from hunger for too long overjoyed. The kitchen was swept away in an instant, and not a single minced meat was spared. Many people swaggered through the market with their spears carrying bacon and salted fish, swaying and seducing the attention of everyone nearby. Someone else was desperately stuffing hard-boiled eggs from nowhere into their mouths, and the crumbs were staining the beards on his mouths a ridiculously yellow-white.

However, as the commander of this Qing army, the two Belle Lords, Zilharang and Abatai, naturally did not care about the little pleasures of the low-level soldiers, and even the gold, silver, treasures, and wine women offered to the coated servants under them were also disdainful.

Because, a piece of information that was recently obtained from the torture of the prisoners of the Smelling Fragrance Sect. It completely captured their attention.

“…… The army of the Wenxiang Sect has now poured south to Yangzhou, and the garrison of Xuzhou's nest is very empty, but there is a lot of gold, silver, grain and rice accumulated in the city? ”

Zilharang and Abatai exchanged glances with each other, although their faces were quite flat, but their hearts were all hot, and they were even a little eager to try the miraculous feats that Dolgon had just made in Henan not long ago, they might be able to do it in Nanzhili?

But. As a loyal minister of the Qing Dynasty, of course, this kind of thing cannot be done on its own"...... Such a major military event must be reported quickly and the Great Khan! ”

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In late May of the sixth year of Chongzhen, after sweeping away the remnants of the Ming army in Shandong, a vanguard of the Qing army continued south along the canal and entered the Wenxiangjiao sphere of influence in Nanzhili. and attacked Pei County, and then went down with a drum, and the demons who were entrenched in the county town died or surrendered.

After careful interrogation of the captives, it was learned that due to the recent abandonment of the land north of the Yangtze River by the Ming army and the retreat to the south of the Yangtze River, Wang Ke, the leader of the Wenxiang Sect, was overjoyed, and now he has led a large army to the nest. Go south to Yangzhou. And the old camp in Xuzhou, which hoarded countless grains, rice, gold and silver, became very empty.

In view of the above-mentioned major military situation, the vanguard generals of the Qing army, Jierharang and Abatai, did not dare to be self-conscious, and immediately sent envoys to Jinan to report to Huang Taiji. At this time, Huang Taiji was anxious to win a more brilliant victory, in order to overshadow the limelight of the three brothers of the two white flags Dolgon, so after hearing the news, he ordered Jierharang and Abatai to march quickly to seize Xuzhou, and personally led the army of the Eight Banners to the south as their backup.

On June 11, 30,000 Qing troops surrounded Xuzhou, and after a fierce battle for one day and one night, they completely smashed the resistance of the Wenxiang sect in the city, seizing millions of taels of gold and silver, and nearly one million stones of rice and wheat of various colors. Even the children of Wang Ke, the leader of the Wenxiang Sect, failed to escape, and were all captured by the Qing army.

After a short rest, Huang Taiji led the elite soldiers of the Eight Banners and continued to move south along the canal non-stop, all the way like a bamboo, invincible.

At this time, the "royal car" of Wang Ke, the leader of the Wenxiang Sect, had just entered the city of Yangzhou abandoned by the Ming army, and was busy looting and showing off his might, but he learned that there was a fire in the backyard, and he panicked for a while, so he had to quickly gather all kinds of soldiers and horses, turn around and go north along the canal, in an attempt to rescue Xuzhou.

However, although the Wenxiang Sect under Wang Ke's command seems to have a large number of soldiers, claiming to have an army of 500,000, in fact there are only more than 100,000 people, among which there are only more than 10,000 elite soldiers and veterans who can really fight. What's even worse is that because the nest was captured and all the savings of the family fell into the hands of the enemy, the morale of this counteroffensive force was extremely scattered, and the morale was even more depressed, and many soldiers fled along the way.

On June 25, the main force of the Wenxiang Sect met with the Eight Banners, and the two armies fought at Qingjiangpu. As a result, on the battlefield of Qingjiangpu, the Wenxiang sect fully demonstrated their essence as a rabble, and almost fell into a state of command failure from the beginning of the campaign, and then they fled one after another, defeated, and finally were killed by Huang Taiji to collapse and bleed and drifted. Even the sect leader Wang Ke himself became a prisoner of the Eight Banners.

At the same time, the Eight Banners Division led by Dolgon also entered Fengyang from Guide Mansion in Henan, and easily annihilated the other main force of the Wenxiang Sect.

Next, with the prestige of the three victories in Xuzhou, Qingjiangpu and Fengyang, the remnants of the Wenxiang Sect forces in various places were all frightened by the Eight Banners Iron Cavalry. After getting the letter of surrender written by Wang Ke, the leader of the Wenxiang Sect, after being captured and surrendered, and having a decent step to go down, he rushed to surrender to Huang Taiji. The two Huai and more than 20 counties, which were originally entrenched by the Wenxiang Sect, went down without a fight in half a month.

However, there are also a small number of Wenxiang sect members who refuse to surrender, but support the young daughter of the former sect leader Xu Hongru, "Holy Aunt" Xu Xin'er, and gather thousands of remnants to continue to defend Haizhou. When Chen Xinshuai, who was entrenched in Dengzhou, heard the news, he also sent people to send several boats of ordnance to this holy aunt to encourage them to stick to Haizhou to the end.

However, in Huang Taiji's opinion, these guys are weak after all, and they can't pose a real threat, and the Qing army from all walks of life is busy taking over the large territory and countless wealth scattered in Lianghuai by the Wenxiang Sect at this time, so they don't care about sending troops to crusade against the remnants of these stubborn resistance in Haizhou for a while.

On the fourth day of the seventh month, Abatai led thousands of Qing army vanguards to Yangzhou, and the entire Yangzhou capital was surrendered. Zhenjiang and other places on the other side of the Yangtze River were suddenly panicked, and although the local government ordered martial law one after another, rumors were still spreading among the people, and the official eunuchs and gentry were even more shocked overnight.

So far, the Jurchen Eight Banners, which originally lived between the white mountains and black waters, have realized their grand ambition of dominating the Central Plains and drinking the Yangtze River just one year after attacking Shanhaiguan. For a while, it shook the world, and the limelight was incomparable, as if it already had the momentum of the world's hegemon!

And as the king of the Jurchens and the co-owner of the Eight Banners, Aixin Jueluo. Huang Taiji is also about to usher in the peak of his most glorious life......

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PS: Spoiler: Comparing the history of Rome and the Byzantine Empire, I always feel that the Chinese are too reserved about the emperor. Those Roman generals often only had a territory equivalent to a few counties in China, and they dared to claim the title of emperor in a big way, and even went down in history. So I imagined that it would be interesting to have an era of "20 emperors" or "30 emperors" in China. (To be continued.) If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for recommendation and monthly passes, and your support is my biggest motivation. )