Chapter Ninety-Four, The Death Knell of the Ming Empire (I)

On September 25, the fifth year of Chongzhen, Beizhili, Shuntianfu, Jizhou

In the mottled and barren wilderness, rolling sandstorms filled the heavens and the earth, hiding the shade of autumn. Whether it is heaven or earth, it is a blurry gray-yellow. Withered thatch and dead trees stripped of their bark were crooked between the ruins. All kinds of scenery twisted into broken and swaying shadows like a mirage, floating limply. The north wind blew away the dust, revealing corpses and dry bones.

“…… Knock knock knock ......"

“…… Woo-"

The fierce sound of war drums and the desolate sound of horns played together, and two armies in similar costumes were fighting each other in the heart of the capital of the Ming Empire. The sergeants on both sides wore the same red jackets, used basically the same banners, held similar weapons, and shouted almost the same accent - just over a month ago, they were both officials of the Ming Empire, and they were the most famous elite soldiers in the official army. But by this moment, the team in the east had shaved off their hair and took refuge in Liaodong Jiannu.

On this windy autumn afternoon, the 20,000 Tianxiong army of King Qin's Beishang and the 12,000 Guanning army who defected to the Tartars were thus beaten into a pot of porridge in the suburbs of Gyeonggi, which had already suffered from the scourge of war. The dull sound of cannon fire shook the ground and trembled, and the cannonballs that broke through the air screamed and plowed blood gullies in the phalanx; Flying arrows pierced through the dust, splashing patches of bright blood and a terrible scream in the crowd; The sound of gunfire, the clash of metal and limbs, and the hysterical shouting and scolding mingle are intertwined to create a chaotic death song.

With the passage of time, although the Tianxiong Army had the advantage of troops, it gradually began to break up under the repeated assaults of the Guanning Army - after all, the so-called "Tianxiong Army" that entered King Qinwang in Beijing this time was just a ragtag local army recruited by Lu Xiangsheng in the last two or three years with the wealth of the three prefectures of Daimyo, Guangping, and Shunde; The Guan Ning Army, which defected and rebelled, was a luxury descendant elite soldier created by the Ming Dynasty from the beginning of the Apocalypse period, and the Ming Dynasty spent all the world's financial resources and spent four or five million taels of silver every year...... Whether it is the soldiers, ordnance or combat experience, the two are not on the same level.

So, after the infantry on both sides fought with white blades for about a stick of incense, the Tianxiong army began to slowly retreat, while the Guanning army was pressing step by step, and finally the Tianxiong army could no longer maintain the array, and evolved from defeat to rout, and finally rushed to the rear camp out of control.

“…… Resist! Resist! Serve the court! Kill the traitor! ”

On a chariot in the main formation of the Tianxiong Army, Lu Xiangsheng, who was wearing a white scarf and looking tired, forcibly raised his spirits, shouted slogans hoarsely, and at the same time stretched his bow and pulled the string again and again.

“…… Bang bang bang! ”

Several rows of three-eyed guns of smoke and fire gushed out, and the blood-drenched corpses of the soldiers of the Guanning Army twisted and rolled in the rain of bullets, and for a while the cries were everywhere, and the flying blood mist stained the wind and sand even more dirty. The aggressive offensive wave suddenly stopped.

After the firearms were fired, several heavy war drums sounded in the large formation of the Tianxiong Army, and Lu Xiangsheng personally pulled out his long knife, jumped out of the chariot, and took the lead in slashing at the enemy and fighting to the death. Hundreds of horsemen from the military standard battalion of the Tianxiong Army also came out with swords and guns, galloped past the firearms soldiers in the defending position, and rushed towards the scattered Guanning army on the opposite side, and in an instant, the infantry of the Guanning army who had begun to turn around and flee were scattered.

But only ten minutes later, the sound of rolling horses' hooves sounded on the other side of the battlefield - in terms of the number and combat effectiveness of the cavalry, the Tianxiong army was definitely not the opponent of the Guanning Iron Cavalry. After the outpost battle to test each other was over, the Guanning army finally released their killer weapon: after retreating for a while and successfully opening the distance, nearly a thousand Guanning iron cavalry were assembled and launched a powerful assault on the already scattered Tianxiong army array.

With the dust splashed by thousands of horses' hooves, the cavalry of the Guanning Army, who could not see the edge at a glance, detoured in a circle on the battlefield, as if destroying the withering and decaying, and lightly tore open the sides of the Tianxiong Army's large array, and the horses' collision and trampling made the Tianxiong Army, which had just stabilized its decline, dead and wounded.

In the face of the approaching Guanning Iron Cavalry, the Tianxiong army fired a salvo of bows and crossbows on the position, and all the artillery also roared. Sharp crossbow bolts and deadly projectiles buzzed in the ears of the cavalrymen, and there were screams as people rolled over and fell off their horses, or their horses were trampled into mud by the robes as they fell to the ground wounded. However, cannonballs and arrows could not stop all the cavalry, and the Tianxiong army did not have heavy infantry with large shields to resist the cavalry head-on.

As a result, like a sharp blade cutting into butter, the large array of the Tianxiong Army, which had already been crumbling, finally pierced and tore through the left flank of the Guanning Iron Cavalry, and the whole army collapsed in an instant. And the cavalry of the Tianxiong Army, which had launched a counter-charge before, was overwhelmed by the enemy cavalry several times their own in an instant.

Next, the Guanning Iron Cavalry was even more vigorous, and directly entered the Tianxiong military camp with empty troops, wantonly setting fire and slashing!

“…… Kill! Kill! Kill! Our army wins! ”

“…… Resist! Don't go back! If there is a retreat, kill it! ”

“…… Where can you still withstand it...... Defeated! Defeated! Run! ”

The Tianxiong army did not expect that the enemy would be able to break into the camp so quickly, and the soldiers who had retreated before had not had time to rest, and the soldiers and auxiliaries were mixed together, and there was no army formation at all. In the face of the sudden attack of the Guanning army, the Tianxiong army, which had been tired and demoralized for a long time, was in chaos in a blink of an eye. A few brave soldiers were busy piercing armor and getting guns, and many more scattered backwards with a shout.

By the time the Guanning army set fire to the baggage, the Tianxiong army was completely in chaos, some officers wanted to counterattack, some officers wanted to form a formation to defend, and some wanted to retreat and regroup. In this great chaos, the entire army was completely disintegrated from top to bottom, and the soldiers could not find the generals, and they would not be able to find the soldiers. Eventually, it fell apart. And the crowd of people who fled in chaos also washed away the pro-soldiers brought by the coach Lu Xiangsheng to try to reinforce them......

“…… My lord! The front and left armies were scattered, and the cavalry was defeated! The camp and the baggage are finished! We can't get enough of it here! ”

An officer with a disheveled hair and a bleeding face ran out of the chaos, almost rolled off his horse and knelt down in front of Lu Xiangsheng, buried his head deep in the ground, and cried out in despair, "...... Let's withdraw it! If you don't retreat, the back road back to Beijing will be broken! ”

“…… No refund...... Can't go back...... If you retreat at this time, the whole army will inevitably collapse! What other face does this official have to meet the Holy ......?"

Faced with an irreparable defeat, as well as the Tianxiong army that was being defeated and fleeing, a muddy tear quietly flowed from the corner of Lu Xiangsheng's eyes, but the sword in his hand still stubbornly pointed to the battlefield in front of him - at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Lu Xiangsheng was famous for his good management of the army, but the Tianxiong army he trained still could not change the bad habit of bullying the weak and fearing the hard, and it would collapse at every turn. In the face of such a problem, Lu Xiangsheng could only infect his subordinates with his personality charm, taking the lead again and again, sharing weal and woe with his subordinates, and always arousing loyalty......

In general, although Lu Xiangsheng is a scholar, he is a berserker of the type of Xiang Yu, the overlord of Western Chu, on the battlefield, and he personally assaults with a knife every time he is in battle, fights bloodily, and wins the support and appreciation of the soldiers of the whole army with amazing courage and superb martial arts...... But this "leadership takes the lead" incentive effect. After all, there is still a limit, and now after suffering repeated setbacks, the morale of the Tianxiong army is about to fall - in addition to crusading against the hungry people and the rogues, the Tianxiong army, which has not experienced several battles, is finally difficult to defeat the Guanning Iron Cavalry that has been trained on the battlefield in Liaodong.

Next, the last straw that broke the camel's back was finally thrown away.

“…… Oh no! Politics Minister! Reinforcements from the traitors are coming! ”

On the wilderness not far from the battlefield, a silver dragon suddenly appeared, which was an ironclad torrent that could be called ultra-luxurious in this era. Thousands of soldiers of the Guanning Army, possibly mixed with a small number of Houjin and white armor soldiers, wearing dazzling iron armor, slowly pressed towards the Tianxiong Army, which was still resisting. Under the sunlight, the cold light flowed on the rebel battle array on the opposite side, like a silver snake writhing its body.

Seeing such a scene, Lu Xiangsheng finally had to admit that his defeat this time was decided," ...... Retreat! Go to Tongzhou! ”

“…… Order! Take the adults away! The general who came to report gritted his teeth, turned around and jumped on his horse, waved fiercely at the officers and soldiers of the Supervisory Battalion, and then led his own soldiers and rushed towards the east in the direction of the battlefield.

At the same time, the commander-in-chief banner of the official army began to slowly move towards the Beijing division in the west......

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After the Guanning army defected and Liaodong Jiannu invaded Shanhaiguan, Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong army was the first to respond to the edict of King Qinqin of the world - at that time, he had just cleared out the Liukou in Gyeonggi and was leading troops to reinforce the Shandong battlefield. At this time, the Guanning army had already conquered the entire Yongping Mansion, but the canal was still relatively smooth for the time being, so the Tianxiong army quickly returned to Beijing by water.

Who knew that after arriving in Beijing, the imperial court neither provided grain nor military salaries, but only urged Lu Xiangsheng to go out to defeat the enemy. At the same time, he sent the eunuch Gao Qiqian to serve as the supervisor, and took away Lu Xiangsheng's 10,000 soldiers and horses, saying that he wanted to defend the Beijing division and resist the remnants of the Shaanxi Liukou stranded in Jifu.

Lu Xiangsheng knew that with the remaining 20,000 troops at hand, he was not at all the opponent of the more than 100,000 Houjin army and the Guanning army, and originally wanted to set up camp outside the city, and the defenders of the Beijing division were at a wrestle, relying on the fortified city and the camp to resist the enemy soldiers. Helplessly, a group of scholars in the military department who talked about the army on paper persecuted them in every possible way, and also mobilized the imperial historians to set off a tide of public opinion, attacking Lu Xiangsheng and fearing the enemy...... In desperation, Lu Xiangsheng had no choice but to pull out the camp to the east, planning to defeat a vanguard of traitors or Jiannu, give an explanation to the inside and outside, and then retreat to the side of the Jingshi. As a result, as soon as his Tianxiong army was launched, Zu Dashou had already led a Guanning army into Shuntianfu. The two armies met in Jizhou, about 100 kilometers from Beijing, and a battle broke out.

On the battlefield of Jizhou, the Tianxiong army, which had only fought a few grass bandits since its formation, and lacked hard combat experience, was obviously not the opponent of the Guanning Iron Cavalry, and soon the whole line collapsed, and even the old battalion was copied, and finally less than 3,000 people fled to Tongzhou with Lu Xiangsheng, and all the artillery and baggage were lost.

At the same time, Wu Xiang led another Guanning army to Tianjin Wei, cutting off the canal to Beijing.

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The eastern suburbs of Beijing, outside the city of Tongzhou

After running wildly for three days and three nights, the exhausted Lu Xiangsheng finally got rid of the pursuit of the Guanning Iron Cavalry and led the remnants of the Tianxiong army to the city of Tongzhou. Then I learned a bad news: the 10,000 Tianxiong troops who were stationed in Beijing before, under the indiscriminate tossing and turning of the ambassador of the supervising army, Gao Qiqian, unfortunately fell into the ambush of the Shaanxi peasant army, and was defeated in Xishan.

But in this way, even if the troops who escaped from the Jizhou battlefield were united, the entire Tianxiong army would only have 5,000 people left.

And the even more terrifying news is not that the morale of the army has been weakened due to repeated defeats. But it was a terrifying plague that quietly struck -- when the Tianxiong army was fighting Jizhou in blood, the people in the suburbs of Beijing generally suffered from coughing up blood, vomiting, diarrhea, high fever and other symptoms and died in large numbers, and officers and soldiers from all walks of life were also covered with corpses in the plague. When Lu Xiangsheng arrived at Tongzhou, the terminal of Caoyun, the officials and people in the city actually closed the city gate tightly and did not let the Tianxiong army enter the city.

Fortunately, when the enemy had already approached the city, the corrupt officials in the court finally remembered that they had to feed the Tianxiong army before they could fight, so they reluctantly squeezed out a little old grain from the Tongzhou official warehouse, so that the Tianxiong army who escaped from the battlefield could be fed.

In the camp of the Tianxiong army at night, the rice and wheat that had just been received were thrown into a large cauldron, and then they were surrounded by hungry Ming officers and soldiers, waiting for the rice to be cooked and competing with each other -- although the grain allocated by the imperial court had gone through a lot of deductions, and the real hands were very limited, but there were not many Tianxiong officers and soldiers left, so if they were thrifty and spending, they could still let these soldiers who had survived the catastrophe eat a full meal for seven or eight days.

In the humble tents, the lightly wounded who had escaped were sighing, and what was even more terrifying was that from time to time someone would be found showing symptoms of the plague, making the whole army camp shrouded in an eerie atmosphere of despair.

In the main tent of the Chinese army, a lamp is like a bean, although the "wide lantern" (kerosene lamp) sold from the south has been widely popular among the wealthy families in Beijing in recent years because it is cleaner and brighter. But Lu Xiangsheng, who has always lived a simple life, still only uses a dim and dim old-fashioned oil lamp.

Under the oil lamp, Lu Xiangsheng, who was hit by an arrow in the forehead in the Battle of Jizhou and had to be wrapped in a white cloth, was lying on the couch sickly, looking at the map of Gyeonggi and the latest military newspapers, he couldn't help but sigh, raised his head, looked at the top of the tent with empty eyes, and had a sad and helpless look on his face: "...... Alas, tens of thousands of children of southern Hebei lost their troops in Jizhou, and retreated in defeat, which is a negative grace...... Nowadays, Shaanxi Liukou is based on Xishan (Shijingshan) and peeps into Shenjing; The Guanning traitors captured Jizhou and Sanhe, and the soldiers and horses were only more than 30 miles away from the Beijing division. How can this be born? ”

-- With the defection of the Guanning army and the entry of Jiannu into the Kou, the situation in Beizhili collapsed in an instant, and the Shaanxi Liukou, who had already been driven into the Taihang Mountains, took the opportunity to once again rush into the city of Qifu in a big way, wandering everywhere and plundering, and even touched the city of Beijing for a time -- According to the description of the Tang Bao of the Ministry of War, "the number of Liukou in the Qifu has reached tens of thousands. The area of the West Mountain is full of valleys, and Liangxiang, Changping, and Zhuozhou are also burned by it from time to time. ”

Wen Tiren, the head of the cabinet in charge of the government, had to dispatch troops to meet the invading enemy on the one hand, and on the other hand, he had to deal with the "non-violent non-cooperation" of the Lin Party members in the east of the DPRK. The rogue in the west is slippery, and the officers and soldiers can't catch up with it for a while, and they can't clean it up for a while, and they often suffer a few losses in ambushes.

By this time at the end of September, with the fall of the cities of Shuntianfu one after another, the encirclement of Beijing City was further compressed under the pressure of enemies from all walks of life, especially after the collapse of the Tianxiong army, the imperial court had completely lost the ability to meet the enemy in the field, and could only be trapped in the isolated city.

At this time, inside and outside the Beijing Division, from all over the place, about 40,000 officers and soldiers can be gathered, which seems to be a lot, but if it is used to defend Beijing, a city with a million people, it is just barely enough to stand on the city wall. As for combat effectiveness, it can only be described as tofu dregs. To this end, Wen Tiren, the first assistant of the cabinet, ordered all the ministers to guard the capital gate, and at the same time issued a series of official documents, urging Zhu Dadian, who was in Shandong and Xuzhou to suppress the Wenxiangjiao uprising, and Hong Chengchou, who was leading 50,000 Qin troops from Shandong to return to Beijing, as well as the border troops of Xuanfu and Datong in the northwest to come to help. Seeing that the situation of the Jingshi was so critical, Zhu Dadian could only give up the Wenxiang Sect and the thieves, and quickly mobilized 30,000 officers and soldiers, known as 100,000, to rush to Gyeonggi along the canal in the starry night.

But even so, on the Gyeonggi battlefield, the total strength of the Ming army was still at a disadvantage, and its combat effectiveness was far from being comparable with the elite soldiers of the Eight Banners.

The most terrible thing is that the military command ability of those civilian officials in the Ming Dynasty is not even worthy of carrying shoes in front of Huang Taiji and the chiefs of the Eight Banners.

In addition, the plague that is now spreading in Gyeonggi has further weakened the combat effectiveness of the Ming official army.

For such a passive battle situation, Lu Xiangsheng was naturally very unwilling, but after thinking about it, he didn't come up with any tricks to break the situation - he hadn't had a decent contest with the Jurchens before, but he had won many battles against the Liukou, so he thought that the Tianxiong army he pulled out was not bad. Unexpectedly, now in a battle with the Guanning Army, he found that the Tianxiong Army was really as powerless as a drooping child fighting a strong man in front of the Guanning Army.

And it is such a Guanning army that the imperial court has built with all its treasury and can be called brave and strong, but in recent years, it has been beaten by the Jurchen Eight Banners to the point of losing its armor and making a lot of noise...... At first, he didn't dare to fight in the field in the face of Jiannu, but in the battle of Dalinghe last year, the Guanning army couldn't even defend the city.

In view of the above-mentioned poor performance, many military generals in the mainland were quite disdainful of the Guan Ning army, feeling that these people had nothing to show for themselves and were purely showy. But I didn't expect that at this moment, when Guan Ningjun turned around and attacked the tiger and launched an attack on the imperial court, it was so fierce and sharp.

The 30,000 Tianxiong Army that he personally organized and trained was already one of the best fighting divisions in the current Beizhili official army, but on the Jizhou battlefield, in front of the defeated generals of the Guanning Army, Jiannu, they were still powerless. And at present, not only do they have to fight with the Guanning army again under the city of Beijing, but there are at least forty or fifty thousand elite soldiers of the Eight Banners who are known as "Jurchen is less than 10,000 and invincible" to deal with......

Such a desperate situation is no longer something that can be described by the words "mantis arm as a car". No matter how capable Lu Xiangsheng is, he has no power to return to heaven.

“…… Zhu Dadian was still in Jinan, and it was difficult to save the fire from far away for a while. The Beijing camp has been abandoned for a long time and is not vulnerable at all. I heard that the two towns of Xuanda have also been attacked by rogues recently, and I am afraid that I will not be able to enter the king of Jingqin...... Now that the safety of the Jingshi is in danger, it seems that the Qin army can only be counted on by Hong Hengjiu (Hong Chengchou). ”

Lu Xiangsheng frowned and pondered, "...... It's just that in this way, Shandong will be drained of troops, not only will the Wenxiang Sect most likely resurrect, but the Chen thief (Chen Xin) in Dengzhou may also be ready to move...... Alas, no matter what, now that the safety of the Jingshi is the top priority, the rest can't be taken care of......

Similar to Lu Xiangsheng's thoughts in Tongzhou, the civil and military officials in the Beijing court now also regard Hong Chengchou's Qin Army as the last straw. However, after waiting for several days in an unbearable way, Lu Xiangsheng and the Manchu Dynasty Wenwu in Beijing received such bad news that the sky was falling apart:

“…… Tianjin Mutiny! Hong Chengchou's 50,000 Qin troops mutinied on the way to King Qin's north! ”R1148