Facing Wang Qiaonian, who refused to bow his head, Li Zicheng obviously didn't have much patience, but ordered Wang Qiaonian's knees to be smashed, and then sentenced to five horses.

After the peasant army captured Xuzhou, it captured more than 30,000 stones, grains, grass, and more than 430,000 taels of silver that Wang Qiaonian painstakingly requisitioned, and about 300 intact artillery, 1,700 pairs of armor, more than 2,000 firearms, and countless swords, guns, swords, and halberds.

Although this batch of seizures alleviated the food crisis of the peasant army, it was only a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of troops under Li Zicheng's command, and the grain and straw carried by the Chuang army from Xinyang to Xuzhou could only last for three months.

"King Chuang, the last general thinks that our army should break through Wang Qiaonian's remaining power, go straight to Zhuxian Town, and take Luoyang and Kaifeng controlled by Li Xingzhi in Shandong, it is reported that the Shandong army is now in Henan but more than 10,000 military horses, and it is the right time for our army to take Henan in one fell swoop."

Wang Qiaonian, the former governor of the five provinces of Xuzhou, and Liu Zongmin, the former battalion commander of the peasant army, took the lead in putting forward his own suggestions to Li Zicheng on the current situation.

"General Liu, you mean that we are going to war with the Shandong army, but we heard that Li Xingzhi's Shandong army is very capable of fighting, before the eight kings Zhang Xianzhong was defeated in his hands, and the Manchurian soldiers, who are known as invincible in the world, have also been defeated repeatedly under their troops, our army and the Shandong army have no grudges, and they started a war rashly, didn't it give Li Xingzhi a reason to go to war."

Dang Shousu is also Li Zicheng rebel army general, he is a native of Lingquan Village, Fangzhen Township, Heyang County, Shaanxi, is a local smuggler of salt, in the Ming Dynasty, selling illicit salt is a serious crime, because the government inspection is very strict, the party Shou Su is a living donkey, salt was confiscated by the salt officials, he was detained, after being released from prison, had to defect to the righteous army.

"Brother Dang, if you don't advance Heluo, our army will not have enough food and grass, once there is a change, these hundreds of thousands of soldiers will not be able to last long!"

Because Dang Shousu was brave and good at fighting, and was incorporated into the "Old Eighth Team" by Li Zicheng, who was a general at the time, it can be said that it is not an exaggeration for Dang Shousu to be a veteran of the rebel army, so his opinion, Li Guo and other Li Zicheng's confidants and generals still have to think about it.

Liu Zongmin said angrily: "Why should the party brothers raise the morale of others, the Shandong army is strong, but our righteous army may not be weaker than him, Fu Zonglong and Wang Qiaonian do not have tens of thousands of troops under their hands, and they are not cut down by us, and now the Shandong army is deployed under our noses, if we don't fight him, won't he fight us?" ”

"General Liu, the party general does not have to fight, the old man thinks that since the Shandong army has laid out the defense line in Luoyang and Kaifeng, we don't need to fight to the death with them, now our righteous army only controls the northern part of Huguang and the southern part of Henan, but the natural disasters in the jurisdiction have been many years, and the soldiers are continuous, if there is a long-term confrontation, our army is difficult to supply, and it is easy to be defeated by the Shandong army, it is better to withdraw from Xuzhou and go to Nanyang to enter Huguang, at that time, whether we go east to Jiangnan or west to Sichuan, we can always find a stable base place."

Since Song Xiance assisted Li Zicheng, he strongly advocated that the peasant army should establish a stable base area and set up officials to defend the territory, which is fundamental.

"Alas...... Mr. Song didn't know, when the king was alive, he intended to capture Jiangnan, emulating Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, according to Jiangdong, in order to watch the provocation of the world, but after the army arrived in Huaiyang, all the states and counties that passed, all rose up to resist, so the plan to go down to Jiangnan is not advisable. ”

Li Zicheng is also helpless, everyone knows that Jiangnan is a rich land in the world, if you can control it, it is really to have food and money, why bother to fight in the ruined north.

In the first month of the eighth year of Chongzhen, the peasant rebel army in various places decided to throw off the pursuing Ming army after the Xingyang Conference, and attacked the Huainan area north of the Yangtze River.

In the ninth year of Chongzhen, Gao Yingxiang, the then king of Chuang, took Li Zicheng and others to march into Huainan along the road that Zhang Xianzhong had beaten, but was met with stubborn resistance, and was broken in Luzhou, Shouzhou, Chuzhou and other places that were broken by Zhang Xianzhong the year before.

The reason is that the gentry class in these places was scared by Zhang Xianzhong, when Zhang Xianzhong first killed, the gentry of Huaiyang were unprepared, after receiving the news that Gao Yingxiang's army was marching into Huaiyang, they were willing to spend money to organize local militias, and took out money and grain to hand over to the imperial army to resist desperately, as a result, Gao Yingxiang, who was stronger than Zhang Xianzhong, could only evacuate Huaiyang in disgrace.

It can be seen from this that when the gentry in the Jiangnan region are united, wanting to take Jiangnan, which has the natural danger of the Yangtze River, is tantamount to a fool's dream for the peasant army, because the policy of the righteous army hating the gentry makes the gentry in Jiangnan have to fight hard, and the righteous army has no sailors to use at all.

Moreover, the gentry clique in Jiangnan has money, resources, and the ability to public opinion, and the people in Jiangnan are willing to believe them, and the peasant rebel army cannot stand in the Huainan area, let alone the core area of Jiangnan south of the Yangtze River? After several attempts, the rebel army knew that fighting Jiangnan was a desperate fight and not worth it.

The reason why Li Zicheng and other peasant rebels later became stronger and stronger in the northern region was because they had a deep mass base, and this mass base was brought about by a long period of famine and excessive taxes.

The peasants in the north could not pay taxes because of the famine, and because they could not pay the taxes, they lost their land, and most of them became refugees, and the Ming Dynasty could not support them, so they preferred to join the rebel army called thieves by the imperial court for a bite to eat.

On this basis, Li Zicheng fought local tyrants, divided money or grain (because it was a mobile war, he did not give the land to the common people), and it can be said that he was able to get the support of the ordinary people in the north in order to survive.

But in the south, Li Zicheng does not have this mass base, because the south is too rich and the business is more prosperous, especially the people in the Jiangnan area, they are not short of people who have food and clothing, and have a way to live, who the hell is willing to follow Li Zicheng to rebel?

Li Zicheng can recruit soldiers at any time in the north and become stronger and stronger, but when they arrive in the south of the Yangtze River, it is impossible to replenish the troops anytime and anywhere, and without the support of the common people, they will only become weaker and weaker.

The most important thing is that for the Jiangnan gentry, Li Zicheng is much more terrible than Chongzhen, who urged them to pay taxes, and the Qing Dynasty, which made them shave their hair but was willing to accept the interests of the gentry, the Jiangnan gentry may not be happy to pay taxes to Chongzhen, but if Li Zicheng calls, they will spend a lot of money desperately.

What's more, there is a powerful maritime group in the south of the Yangtze River, the Zheng family in Fujian has more than 3,000 large and small warships, and the rest of the merchant ships are even more innumerable, at that time in the Philippines in the Spanish governor wrote a letter to the king of Spain, once wrote that if the emperor of the Ming Dynasty is willing, their naval warships can be lined up from Quanzhou port to Manila, such a behemoth, China's military power in the Far East is absolutely unable to compete with it.

Therefore, when Song Xiance put forward the proposal to take Jiangdong as a base area, Li Zicheng categorically rejected it.