Chapter 136: The Clouds Rise in All Directions (I)

In April of the sixth year of Chongzhen, Huguang, on the outskirts of Wuchang City

“…… Kill! Kill! Kill! ”

“…… Raise the barrel of the gun! Are you pricking a mouse? ”

“…… Be mental! Have you not eaten in a few days? ”

With a roar and shouts of killing, on a dusty school field on the outskirts of Wuchang, hundreds of Ming soldiers were wearing red battle jackets, sweating and practicing spear stabbing under the reprimand of several Tianxiong Army veterans.

And now the most relied on by Emperor Chongzhen's cronies and loved generals, Lu Xiangsheng, the commander of the Tianxiong Army, and Wang Dou, the young general of Xuanfu who was unusually promoted because of his rescue, were standing on the side, looking at these seemingly sturdy Huguang military households with a bad expression, and the two pairs of sword eyebrows were always locked.

On the other hand, the soldiers of the Tianxiong Army and the Xuanfu Border Army who fled all the way to Wuchang from the north have completed their regular training, and are squatting or sitting on the side of the school field one by one, sweating and chewing brown rice, or pouring a few mouthfuls of clear soup to eat The hot soup served in the Daming military camp is indeed as pure as water, at least it has never been polluted by any grease, and only a few pickles that can occasionally be fished out of the soup bucket prove that it is slightly different from salt water...... But even with such a diet, because the rice is full, Daming at this time is already considered a luxury!

Since the Chongzhen Emperor of the cross-sectional version, completely disregarding the dignity of the heavenly family and the affection of flesh and blood, copied the Fuwang Mansion in Luoyang, the exiled court that escaped from Beijing finally has a huge amount of military expenditure, although the money of the Fuwang Mansion has also been divided into a lot by the officials of the exiled court, but because the scale of the imperial court has shrunk by nearly ninety percent, and the people who are qualified to embezzle it are also a lot less, so the money that finally fell into the hands of the emperor is still very considerable, the cash alone is as much as three million taels, and the rice wheat has 150,000 stones, As for real estate such as fields and estates, there are countless of them.

However, the treasures and grain and rice copied from the Fuwang Mansion in Luoyang. Although it gave the court-in-exile on the verge of desperation a breather. However, Luoyang, the hub of the Central Plains, is not an ideal place to settle in the Han and Tang dynasties, and Luoyang, which was once an imperial capital with a population of hundreds of thousands. However, Luoyang at the end of the Ming Dynasty was only a medium-sized city with a population of tens of thousands, and its products and wealth were not enough to support the long-term operation of a large number of troops.

What's even worse is that Emperor Chongzhen had just moved the imperial court from Taiyuan to Luoyang in February. The Guanning army led by the rebel general Zu Dashou and the defective Ming army crossed the Taihang Mountain. Invaded Shanxi in a big way, broke through the provincial capital Taiyuan at the end of February, and then broke the important town of Datong, seeing that the whole province of Shanxi was about to fall. And the Tatar thief chief Huang Taiji (Huang Taiji) marched south from Beijing, breaking the Daimyo and Dezhou in a row, and is now besieging Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province.

In addition, the Smelling Fragrance Sect demons and rogues are also rampant on the Great Plain of eastern Henan, and wherever the chaotic army passes, there are thousands of hungry people who have been forced to die by the drought. The Henan Ming army had few reliable areas of control east of Hugao Pass (except for the isolated city of Kaifeng. The rest of the place is full of guerrilla areas of the rebel army), and Shaanxi behind Luoyang is the birthplace of the Liukou, and its chaos will only be worse than in Henan!

To make matters worse, until now, the Shaanxi government still held a vague position on the dispute between the two emperors of the Ming Dynasty, and did not have a clear allegiance to Emperor Chongzhen.

In this case, Emperor Chongzhen, who has become a time-traveling version of the frightened bird. Where do you dare to continue to stay in Luoyang, a dead place?

So, in March, after initially receiving the inheritance of King Fu, on the one hand, in order to avoid the war in the north, and on the other hand, he was eager to attack Nanjing to regain the throne, and the time-traveling version of Emperor Chongzhen went south to Huguang non-stop. A camp was established in Wuchang and a battle flag of rebellion was erected.

Fortunately, I don't know whether it was out of sincere loyalty to the royal family or out of the officialdom inertia of many years of evolution, the local government of Huguang Province cooperated with Emperor Chongzhen's edict and did not rebel like the Donglin Party in Nanjing. Moreover, compared with Henan, which was displaced by war, drought for many years, and had no harvest. Huguang Province is the granary of the world, and it is much easier to raise military rations.

But the problem is that when Lu Xiangsheng was worshiped as the commander by Emperor Chongzhen, and took Wang Dou to inspect all the guards in Huguang, preparing to gather the troops of Huguang Province and crusade against the rebels in Nanjing, he was stunned to find that there were almost no available troops in this huge Huguang Province!!

According to the imperial court system of Zhu Yuanzhang's era, under normal circumstances, there were 31 guards in Huguang Province in the Ming Dynasty, with a rated army of 173,600 soldiers. If you count the Tusi soldiers and horses in Xiangxi, there are more than 200,000 registered soldiers in the entire Huguang Province.

But the problem is that all the military and political systems of the Ming Empire have nothing to do with the word "normal".

During the Chongzhen period, the average escape rate of hereditary military households in the Ming Empire was about 80 percent, and the escape rate of military households was even higher because the border guards often had to fight and the officers kept a close eye on them. In other words, if there are five soldiers on paper in the inland provincial capital, then it would be nice to have one person actually exist. And even these soldiers who did not flee have basically become farmers who can only farm and not fight, and it is impossible to expect to pull them out and go into battle.

According to Lu Xiangsheng's estimate, the 173,600 guards that should exist on paper in Huguang Province can actually find three or four thousand strong men after deducting those who have made false reports and fled and eliminated those who are old, weak, sick and disabled. And not soldiers! Because these so-called hereditary military families have not received any military training at all since they were born!

Not only did these 200,000 soldiers only exist on paper, but the various weapons and equipment in the inventory of Huguang Province also only exist on paper, which is different from the southeast coast where the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression was waged, and there are still some firearms that Qi Jiguang used in the past. Huguang Province has been basically peaceful since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, so Lu Xiangsheng searched the arsenals in Xiangyang and Wuchang for a long time, but he didn't get a single working artillery, only found some rusted and rotten swords, saddles and iron spear heads, as well as a number of ultra-inferior bird guns that no one dared to use: the barrel was actually put together with iron pieces, not to mention the charge fired, as long as he swung it in the air a few times, it would crack like glass......

In general, the only troops in the entire Huguang Province that really have a little combat effectiveness are those Tusi soldiers on the border of Xiangxi and Hunan, Guizhou and Sichuan. Among them, the white pole soldiers of Qin Liangyu, the female general of the stone pillar, are the most famous. But the problem is. In the previous disaster of the fall of Beijing, the imperial court left a full 9,000 white pole soldiers in Beizhili, and even the current commander of the white pole soldiers, Qin Liangyu's nephew Qin Yiming, was unknown in the war......

Not to mention whether Qin Liangyu will be angry with the imperial court because of this, even if she is still loyal, Shizhu is only a small place with barren land and limited population after all. After killing so many young men in battle, how many soldiers and horses can Qin Liangyu take out to come to King Qin? As for the rest of the toast. has always been in rebellion, and their loyalty to the imperial court is very suspicious, far less reliable than Qin Liangyu's white pole soldiers, even if they are willing to send troops to help in the war, Lu Xiangsheng doesn't dare to use it in case this gang of unscrupulous bastards secretly contacts the Nanjing rebels in private, and then defects to the battle.

Therefore, after coming to Wuchang, Emperor Chongzhen and Lu Xiangsheng found that they had to start from scratch because there were only three or four thousand available strong men in the military households of Huguang Province. So there is still a shortage of at least tens of thousands of soldiers to be re-recruited and trained; In order to equip this force, all ordnance needed to be rebuilt; It was too late to build warships, so they had to requisition merchant ships and passenger ships for renovation...... The civil and military forces of the Manchu Dynasty all knew how the capital of Nanjing was to stay in the dragon pan and the high city to fortify the fortress, and it was absolutely impossible to gnaw down by relying on Lu Xiangsheng's more than 10,000 Tianxiong army and Wang Dou's thousands of Xuanfu border troops. Therefore, this exiled court was also rare to be generous, and invested the treasures of the Fuwang Mansion confiscated in Luoyang before, as well as the "donations" extorted from the official eunuchs and gentry of Huguang Province, into the war of armament. Anyway, as long as it enters Nanjing. Copy those Donglin Party homes, and you will have everything!

But even with such abundant military spending, it is not easy to train a combatable army. With the backward productive forces of the handicraft era, it would take a long time just to make weapons and armor for an army of tens of thousands of people...... In addition to being busy all day, Lu Xiangsheng and Wang Dou occasionally felt a little lucky: thanks to the Nanjing puppet emperor's reaction, he was also sluggish. If that side takes advantage of the extreme emptiness of Huguang Province and sends an elite army from Nanjing to attack Wuchang, the situation in the entire Huguang Province is likely to fall apart!

Fortunately, the worst scenario was not expected......

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At the same time, in the palace of Emperor Chongzhen in Wuchang City, there was also spittle. Drinking and scolding......

“…… It's the other way around! It's the other way around! Drag this crazy creature out of the eyes quickly! ”

With another shout from Emperor Chongzhen on the throne, the old scholar who was making a lot of nonsense in the hall was immediately put out by the two Jinyi guards who were already impatient, but there were still a few scoldings like "insulting Sven" from outside the door.

Since Emperor Chongzhen's imperial drive was stationed in Wuchang City, all kinds of undesirable poor and talented sour masters suddenly appeared in front of the palace gate like mushrooms after the rain, including a few Sven scum who had been soaking in the courtyard and writing small songs, all of them clamoring to meet the emperor. A small percentage of these people are sincere in their quest for an errand, but the vast majority are daydreaming of one step to the top.

China's imperial court system developed to the Ming Dynasty, and the procedures on how to meet the emperor have been very perfect, if it is placed at other times, it is probably very difficult for ordinary people to meet the emperor, and it is not a small risk, according to the probability, the probability of these sour ding can appear in front of the emperor, usually less than 0.1 percent. Unfortunately, the current imperial court is in exile, and God knows how many provinces it can manage. In order to show his closeness to the people and win the hearts of the people, Emperor Chongzhen had to pinch his nose to meet some people...... Then I almost broke my belly with anger.

In general, the purpose of these people's interviews can basically be classified as self-recommendation, and a very small number of them are judicial appeals, that is, lawsuits. As for the specific content, there are many kinds of things, most of which are very absurd in the eyes of the emperor. What's even worse is that if this group of sour people who are full of mouths can seriously put forward some reasonable suggestions on national affairs such as counterinsurgency strategy and political reform, then no matter how unscientific these suggestions are, His Majesty the Emperor will at least not be very angry Before he crossed, he had read all kinds of brain-dead posts on the online forum, and it was just a pleasure. By the way, you can also learn about the average degree of brain damage of intellectuals in the Ming Dynasty.

But the problem is that in many cases, these guys are bragging about themselves, flaunting themselves as "Zaifu talents", and at least asking for an official position from the county order as soon as they open their mouths. Then he used the most encouraging words to criticize the ministers of Emperor Chongzhen's exiled court, from Wen Tiren to Lu Xiangsheng to Wang Dou, all of whom were accused of being overpowered. There was even the old student who directly scolded the emperor himself, who came to see him just now, and he didn't know what kind of illness he had committed, and he actually scolded the emperor in front of him for killing King Fu, a self-owned parent, who was mad and rebellious to human morality......

In short, His Majesty the Emperor really never dreamed that there were so many outlaws among Chinese intellectuals in the late Ming Dynasty, in the impression of this traverser, the readers of the feudal dynasty era should be very regular in front of the imperial power, but unfortunately a series of recent encounters have completely overturned his above concepts, giving him the illusion of being in the House of Commons of England and even the French National Convention.

What exactly should this strange situation be? Feudalism Liberalization Thought Enlightenment?

In addition, there are some more crazy guys, who are full of dumbfounded bizarre theories, such as a sick and crooked sloppy student before, who mysteriously claimed that he had studied the "Book of Changes" thoroughly, and also found Heluotu in the stream in the mountain behind his home, after a long period of cultivation, he has now reached the level of the Jindan stage, if nothing else, he can cross the tribulation and soar to the age of about eighty. But in line with the loyalty of being a subject of the Ming Dynasty, he still went down the mountain to sincerely invite the emperor to join the ranks of cultivators and share immortality In addition, at this critical moment, his own cultivation activities encountered some difficulties, mainly because of the supply of raw materials for alchemy and magic weapons, so if the emperor is interested in giving him the title of national teacher, he himself is willing to temporarily abandon the life of "idle clouds and wild cranes", and follow the emperor for a long time to discuss issues such as "the unity of heaven and man" and "yin and yang double cultivation". ……

For such a situation, His Majesty the Emperor didn't know what to say except for suggesting that he write fantasy novels to earn manuscript fees.

Finally threw out the last ghost who pretended to be crazy today, and the tired Emperor Chongzhen summoned Lu Xiangsheng to ask about the progress of the training as usual, and after learning that the newly recruited troops still needed to train for at least three months before they could go on the expedition, he had to rub his temples and sigh.

The longer he stayed in Wuchang, the more he realized how arrogant and wasteful the officials and gentry in these years were...... Thanks to the fact that there are still a few capable ministers around who can do things, and before that, they decisively copied the Fuwang Mansion and got the first start-up capital as quickly as possible. Otherwise, if you need to slowly prepare military salaries and collect teams in Huguang Province, then God knows that it will take the year of the monkey to pull the army up!

Hey, I don't know what the "Yonghe Emperor" in Nanjing is doing now? (To be continued.) If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for recommendations, monthly passes, and your support is my biggest motivation. )