"Ge Lao, as expected by Governor Shen, the thief was provoked by the law and became angry, and he had already marched eastward from Luoyang and Zhengzhou to besiege Kaifeng. It didn't take a few days of preparation to start attacking the city with all its might. Maybe the siege has already begun. ”

"Kaifeng is in an emergency, which is bad news, but it has also relieved the pressure of the thieves to go west and return to Shaanxi, and Governor Sun, who has just taken office, may be able to breathe a sigh of relief, reorganize the trilateral people, and consolidate Tongguan."

Only three days after Li Zicheng was pulled, Yang Sichang, who was in Nanyang, learned the news, and his henchman Wan Yuanji passed on the information he had found out as soon as possible.

Yang Sichang's health is worse than a month ago, and his hair has turned white, apparently due to worry. Hearing that Li Zicheng was so desperate, Rao had a plan originally, and he still couldn't help but be afraid:

"Can Kaifeng be held, do you want to go north for reinforcements...... If Kaifeng is really lost, I am afraid that His Majesty will inevitably be guilty, and not only the old man. The old man is nearly sixty years old, and it is not a pity to die, but you are still young, and it is a pity that you are implicated and unable to contribute to the country. ”

Wan Yuan Ji was shocked, and thought that Ge Lao had been in a trance recently, so he hurriedly reminded: "Don't be alarmed!" Isn't this the plan we agreed with Governor Shen?

The thief is now a crowd, what we are afraid of is that he goes out of the field, picks soft persimmons and pinchs, and seeks to sweep away from the poor town, although each city can't grab much food, but if he wants to accumulate a lot, he is afraid that he can erode the entire Henan and Hebei, and then we have to fight a decisive battle with it. Now he is attracted by Kaifeng Jiancheng, which is a good thing! ”

Yang Sichang was stunned for a moment and sighed: "I'm old, the older I get, the less courageous I am, I've always had accidents in the past two years, and I'm already scared." Well, let's do it, what should we have done? ”

Wan Yuan Ji reminded: "According to the plan, although we are not afraid of Li Zicheng's attack on Kaifeng, we must be false and true, and declare to the outside world that we are afraid of Li Zicheng's attack, so let Zuo Liangyu go out to Tongbai Mountain's dangerous Ye County,

Then let Liu Guoneng's troops go north from Xinyang in Huainan along the Rushui River and advance to Runing, and both armies advanced to the junction of Nanyang Mansion, Xinyang Mansion and Kaifeng Mansion respectively, and put on a posture of going north at any time to fight a decisive battle with Li Zicheng.

Then pretend that Shen Shuren's department was also urged by you, and followed Liu Guoneng to the north, from Xinyang to Runing, and waited to move - and the above plan, to even lie to our own people, Zuo Liangyu must really be dispatched, and whether Liu Guoneng and Shen Shuren have been dispatched, at least tell the high-level of our army here in Nanyang, so that they think that Liu and Shen have moved. ”

Yang Sichang patted his head and said with a wry smile: "Indeed, the old man has a lot of work around him, so he had to lie to his own people." In this way, Li Zicheng also divided his troops to guard against us, and he didn't dare to be too thorough in attacking and opening the seal, so you should act according to the plan. ”

Yang Sichang's layout is still quite flexible and safe, and he can attack and retreat and defend, and he will not be forced to fight in the field by Li Zicheng.

Because between the Nanyang Basin and Kaifeng, there is the geographical danger of Tongbai Mountain, and Li Zicheng needs at least several times the strength of the troops to take the initiative to attack in Yexian County to defend the pass over Tongbai Mountain.

Historically, whether before or after, the Ming army and Li Zicheng lost in the Henan field battle, and it was the Ming army that took the initiative to attack the dangerous defense line of Tongbai Mountain and Huairutian, and was defeated.

From this point of view, it has to be said that Chongzhen's pit - he often has zero tolerance for losing land, forcing the governor and generals to take the initiative to attack. There is no problem in not wanting to lose the stored land, but blindly forcing an attack without understanding the situation and not knowing the strength of the enemy is undoubtedly the same nature as Li Longji forcing Ge Shuhan to go out of Tong and Guanbai.

In history, Wang Qiaonian's downfall was because he went out to Xiangcheng, which was dangerous to leave Tongbai Mountain and Funiu Mountain-and those who knew a little bit about the geography of Henan knew that there were two counties under the jurisdiction of Pingdingshan City in the later generations, Ye County in the south and Xiangcheng County in the north, which were only sixty miles apart.

The biggest difference is that Yexian County to Xiangcheng has to go north to turn over two small hills, the Great Wall Mountain and the First Mountain, it is these two small hills that have been overturned, resulting in the Xiangcheng area is already the hinterland of the Henan Plain, there is no danger to defend, and when it arrives, it will be annihilated by Li Zicheng, who has superior forces.

Yang Sichang's current deployment has not yet taken this dangerous step, and he has always defended the danger, so for the time being, he can be as stable as Ge Shuhan hiding in Tongguan.

……

After Yang Sichang carried out the plan agreed with Shen Shuren, another three or five days soon passed. The various departments that need to be dispatched in the plan have also been moved in place one after another.

Zuo Liangyu, who has now moved to Nanyang and directly garrisoned under Yang Sichang's nose, does not know the overall situation of this plan. Zuo Liangyu's performance in preserving his strength in the past two years has also made him far less trusted by Yang Sichang than Shen Shuren, so he is only worthy of being a pawn in this plan, and he is only responsible for executing orders, and nothing else is for Zuo Liangyu to ask.

At the beginning, when he heard that he was going north to fight Li Zicheng, Zuo Liangyu was still very angry and almost had an accident, but fortunately, when he heard that Yang Sichang allowed him to just go out to Ye County, and did not need to leave the dangerous area of Tongbai Mountain to enter the plain, Zuo Liangyu endured it and obediently mobilized his troops.

He also knew that he was as stable as Ge Shuhan in Tongguan now, and his safety was guaranteed for the time being, so there was no need to take risks and disobey his orders-

Even if you want to disobey in the future, you will have to wait for the chaotic order equivalent to "Li Longji forced Ge Shuhan to go out of Tongguan", and he has to resist when he has to resist.

Zuo Liangyu obeyed his orders, and of course Liu Guoneng would also obey his orders, and Liu Guoneng was greeted by Shen Shuren in advance, so he not only had to deploy his troops north, but also played the banner of Shen Shuren a few days later.

Pretending to be part of the main force under the command of Shen Shuren, they also went north through Xinyang Road and joined forces with Liu Guineng.

At the same time that Zuo and Liu were actually dispatching troops, all kinds of news were of course leaking to Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong like a leaky sieve.

There are too many two or five boys around Yang Sichang, and there are indeed too many mongrels who are corrupt officials and corrupt officials who accept the benefits of thieves and bet on both sides, and this situation is inevitable.

All this, like the plan of Admiral Schell, the commander of the German Navy in World War I, will be spying on by the Yin people at will, and only the detachment of Admiral Hipper, who often adapts to the situation alone, can be kept secret by surprise.

Yang Sichang is like the Scheer of later generations, and Shen Shuren is similar to Hippert of later generations. (When they were in Liaodong, Chongzhen and Chen Xinjia were Sher, Shen Shuren was Hipper, and Huang Taiji was from Yin.) When he arrived in Henan, the identity of Shen Shuren remained unchanged, Li Zicheng replaced Huang Taiji's positioning, and Yang Sichang replaced Chongzhen's positioning, the nature is the same)

On May 19, the sixth day after Li Zicheng's troops were deployed, and the third day after he arrived at Kaifeng, just after preparing a batch of siege weapons and preparing to officially start the siege, Zuo Liangyu and Liu Guoneng were sent to Li Zicheng's head on the north.

After Li Zicheng heard this, he was also angry and disdainful, and after thinking for a while, he recruited Gao Yigong and Li Guo, and asked these two henchmen to divide their troops to the south to monitor Zuo Liangyu and Liu Guoneng respectively.

As for Liu Zongmin, the first general under his command, of course, he must continue to stay in Kaifeng City, lead the elite of the Chuang army as a strategic reserve and supervision team, and urge Luo Rucai and Ma Shouying to accept the new annexed army there as cannon fodder, so that the cannon fodder can fight in the front first and carry out the most tragic assault mission.

……

It was almost the same as late May, that is, after Li Zicheng got the news, four or five days at most.

In the area of Zigui and Wuxian on the border between Sichuan and Huguang, an army of thieves who had been oppressed by the official army and dormant for nearly a year and a half finally waited for the same good news.

Good-looking romance

In Zigui County, the people's livelihood had withered at that time, and there were no people for a long time, only the troops of the thieves were stationed. Ordinary innocent and good people have been robbed and killed for a long time.

A rugged and fierce general with a beard as Guan Yu, with several scars on his face and fierce eyes, drank and drowned his sorrows in the county office, waiting for news from ahead, and there were game meat and unknown meat in front of him.

This beautiful bearded man with a scar is the thief chieftain with the highest frequency of repeated deception and repetition in the late Ming Dynasty, Zhang Xianzhong.

The history books say that he slaughtered Sichuan, which is of course false, because in history, the Qing army also slaughtered wildly when it entered Sichuan, and both sides were the main factors in the slaughter of the population.

But Zhang Xianzhong's crazy killing, which is not false in itself, is not to mention that he is brutal by nature and likes to kill, many times he just lacks supplies, so he kills indiscriminately.

Today's Zhang Xianzhong is even worse than the same period in history, he failed to break through to Huguang and was driven back to the mountains on the border of Huguang and Sichuan.

Zhang Xianzhong's strength was at least equal to the sum of the three or four battalions of the five battalions of the Revolution. Historically, in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, he entered the Dabie Mountains to join several battalions of the Fifth Battalion of Gezuo, and after annexing some of the men, the total strength swelled to more than 100,000.

Now that all this has been blocked, there is no fresh blood to join, and there is also the loss caused by insufficient supplies, but Zhang Xianzhong's young and strong men are still at least fifty or sixty thousand. The three battalions of the Fifth Battalion of Gezuo, which were directly exterminated by the Shen Shu people, add up, and they are just that.

Moreover, this is not counting Zhang Xianzhong's re-arrest of strong men and forcibly recruited recruits in the Three Gorges area, if these rabble are counted, it is not too much to say that he has 100,000 people.

In order to feed so many people, the food in several counties is definitely not enough to eat, and it is impossible to go out suddenly, so we have to completely exterminate these counties, rob all the people's food, and then use all other proteins.

Rao is like this, when Zhang Xianzhong's troops lasted until last winter, the newly attached rabble soldiers had already begun to starve to death, just because of the cold winter and heavy snow covering the mountains, it was impossible to go out to find food and attack other places to search for supplies, so they could only carry it.

The ice and snow freeze in the mountainous areas ended late, and basically the freeze had not been lifted in February this year, so it was impossible for the army to march out. Therefore, Zhang Xianzhong's department carried the hunger until mid-to-late February.

Last year, in the lunar month, it was only the newly attached rabble who starved to death, and by February, there were already veterans from Shaanxi and Henan who had been coerced for many years to starve to death.

Since then, Zhang Xianzhong has had to send troops to solve the food problem.