Fang Kongzhi and Fang Ziling chose to stay in the capital temporarily as eyeliner, and also took Zhou Yanru's line.

Zhou Yanru would naturally regard them as allies of the Shen Shu people, and occasionally inquire with them about the military progress of the Henan and Huguang fronts, and the Shen Shu people and Li Zicheng.

Of course, the Fang family is also very measured, and they definitely can't say anything about military secrets, after all, who knows what kind of sieve the magnates in Beijing have been infiltrated, and if the tactical strategy is leaked to Li Zicheng, it will be a big deal.

However, the part that does not involve the strategy of military aircraft can still be said. Moreover, after some words passed through the bottom, Zhou Yanru and Chen Xinjia could rest assured that Kaifeng City could still hold on, so as not to induce Chongzhen to force the front-line governor to seek a quick decisive battle.

In the imperial court at the end of the Ming Dynasty, for the governor in front, the most pitiful thing was to force you to fight quickly. Whether it is Yang Sichang, Zuo Liangyu, Sun Chuanting, Hong Chengchou, it can be said that they are all deeply affected.

Before the Battle of Songshan, Hong Chengchou was forced to fight quickly by the logistical pressure of the military department, and there are many other examples like this.

It seems that Chongzhen is calculating how to fight on the front line every day with abacus beads, why did he fight for one more day and spend Lao Tzu's money for one more day? Is it supporting the army and raising self-respect? Can you finish the fight quickly so that Lao Tzu doesn't have to spend money?

In the end, Hong Chengchou gave more than 100,000 people in vain, and there was no need for Chongzhen to pay wages and transport military rations, which completely saved money from the root.

After Zhou Yanru and Chen Xinjia stabilized, the Shen Shuren on the front line could finally solve the problem of Kaifeng and unencircled at their own pace without being forced.

……

The words are divided into two ends.

At the same time as the capital was rewarding, exonerating, and mediating, in the past month, the front lines of Huguang and Xinyang Mansion in Henan Province were also gradually prepared for the big battle with Li Zicheng under the rectification of Shen Shuren.

Don't be afraid that Shen Shuren is procrastinating, it involves fighting hundreds of thousands of enemy troops, and it is completely appropriate to spend a month to prepare. In particular, a considerable part of his troops had just returned from the front line in Hengzhou in the south.

Fighting in the subtropical jungle area of Hengzhou in June and July, the troops were already in a bad state and had a large number of infected people, but when they returned to the Central Plains in August, they should have rested and recuperated.

It would be very good for the soldiers to re-adapt to the climate, water and soil environment of northern Hubei and southern Henan in a month. If you go out in a hurry, you will definitely lose your combat effectiveness because the weather and environment change too quickly.

Therefore, after fully reconnoitring and finding out the enemy's movements, Shen Shuren set the schedule for the decisive battle in mid-September.

During the preparation period from mid-August to mid-September, he was not idle. First of all, it is necessary to further rectify and check the military production capacity during this period.

After all, when he fought with Zhang Xianzhong before, the firearms he was equipped with were all produced by the Daye Military Factory as of the end of April. Now, of course, it is possible to clear out the five, six, seven, eight, and four months' production capacity inventory and allocate it to the combat units in different categories.

After more than a year of upgrading and construction, the production capacity of Daye Military Factory has also been further expanded.

When he was in Huangzhou, Shen Jiajun could only produce more than 300 firearms a month, and when he first arrived in Daye, it increased to 800 to 1,000. Now Daye has also been under construction for a year, and this number has further swelled to about two thousand-

Of course, this two thousand is the number of Lumi guns and high-precision bird guns produced. If the production of other heavy firearms is switched, it will be reduced proportionately.

For example, there can only be four or five hundred turtledove guns, and about eight hundred double-barreled after-loading trolls can be made. Revolvers are the most complex, and all production capacities are full of revolvers, and they can't make 400 previews per month.

Of course, in fact, it is impossible to change all production, because the craftsmanship of a considerable number of low-end craftsmen cannot reach the level of the production runner at all, and the production is either stuck when rotating, or the gap is too large, and the leakage is serious.

Only about the best craftsmen can reach the level of making runners. This is already the result of Song Yingxing and Song Mingde's uncle and nephew repeatedly helping to improve the process, decompose the process, train craftsmen, and improve the standardization of measuring tools, but this matter is very long, and it cannot be done in a year and a half.

In a word, after equipping the newly produced muskets from May to August to the troops of the Sinking Tree People, the number of high-quality firearms in the officers and troops also increased from just over 10,000 to 15,600 -

Mainly because of the fierce battle with Zhang Xianzhong for more than two months, the intensity was also very high, and the firearms were also lost, and a considerable part of the weapons and barrels were scrapped, so the six or seven thousand muskets newly produced were not a net increase, and a considerable part, about one or two thousand, should be used to offset the previous losses.

However, in addition to the newly created firearms, the Shen family army also had a source of equipment, that is, directly receiving the equipment of the newly annexed friendly forces.

As mentioned earlier, before Shen Shuren fought against Zhang Xianzhong, he already claimed to have 80,000 soldiers and horses, and his command also nominally included Liu Guoneng and Huang Degong.

But at that time, he was only in Anhui after all, so the armies of other state capitals in Huguang were not under his control.

Now that Chongzhen finally received Yang Sichang's testament at the beginning of September, after discussion, he was officially reappointed as the governor of Huguang, so of course the officials and troops in the Huguang area belonged to him.

Shen Shuren spent about ten days visiting and taking inventory, meeting with new subordinates from all over the country, contacting and listening to the situation.

In this process, the 10,000 or 20,000 troops that Fang Kongzhi originally left in Jiangling, Yiling and other places were most thoroughly received by the Shenshu people, and after a little money, welfare, and military supplies, loyalty was immediately guaranteed.

Because these troops were originally loyal to Fang Kongzhi after all, after Fang Kongzhi was killed, there was Fang Kongzhi who left a message, and the relevant generals of course directly switched to the new master without any cognitive obstacles.

Moreover, under Shen Shuren, there are also a considerable number of civilian officials and military generals, who have a good personal relationship with the old department of the Jiangling Army, and they are very familiar with each other.

For example, Fang Yizhi, he was originally the eldest son of the original leader of the Jiangling Army, and the old Futai is gone, and it is also appropriate to serve the new boss of the eldest prince.

Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren, these Jianglings, were also originally seconded by Shen Shuren from Fang Kongzhi, and now, of course, let them each bring a battalion of the backbone of the Shen family army back, and use these two battalions to take the lead to completely master the nearly 20,000 Jiangling army, and then train and run in, and strive to form combat effectiveness as soon as possible and keep up with the training rhythm of the Shen family army.

And as a greeting gift, or as evidence that Xinfutai attaches importance to them, Shen Shuren gave these 20,000 people a thousand rods of newly produced Lu Mi guns from Daye Military Factory, plus some armor stomachs.

The morale of these officers and men was immediately raised, and they were more confident that Futai would use them equally in the future.

In addition to the nearly 20,000 people left behind by Fang Kongzhi, a larger force recruited by the Shen Shuren came from the official army in the original southern Hunan region, as well as the prisoners who were recruited after the annihilation of Zhang Xianzhong's new annexed army.

In the previous decisive battle, Zhang Xianzhong's newly captured strong men in the Huguang area in the past few years were basically wiped out, but only about half of them were killed or seriously injured and abolished, and 20,000 or 30,000 were captured alive.

Of course, these people can't be used all, and they have to be screened, and those who are particularly rigid and have bad deeds should be put to death.

Of course, only a small number of people were executed, and generally not more than 10% of the prisoners, basically like the "eleventh law of killing" of the Romans, which played a role in deterring and rectifying military discipline and allowing the rest to reform themselves.

After fighting Zhang Xianzhong, Jiang Shoude, Lu Datou and others, who were left in southern Hunan by Shen Shuren, continued to screen and arrest the fleeing and scattered soldiers, and killed about 3,000 crimes in total.

Of the remaining 26,000 people, about 6,000 were put into the hard labor camps, and the remaining 20,000 were born innocent and were only coerced, and were gradually incorporated into the official army.

However, in order to better control, these troops will now be left in the rear, and they will be mixed with sand, supervised by reliable veterans, and will not be immediately dispatched to participate in the Kaifeng siege battle with Li Zicheng.

In addition to these people, the original Ming military officers and troops in Changsha, Hengzhou and other places, after temporarily surrendering to Zhang Xianzhong, finally tied up Yin Xianmin and He Yide to abandon the dark and surrender to the Ming again, of course, they must also be absorbed.

However, this kind of co-optation also has to screen and eliminate a few particularly slippery veterans and capricious people, and in the end, nearly 10,000 people were reluctantly collected.

These people, together with the prisoners of Zhang Xianzhong's newly attached army after the transformation, totaled 26,700, and all of them were incorporated into the Huguang official army.

After Shen Shuren became the governor of Huguang, the last army he received was the personal soldiers left behind after the death of Yang Sichang, the elder of the pavilion - Yang Sichang and Zuo Liangyu fled all the way south to Xiangyang and Nanyang respectively after the defeat of Zhuxian Town. Of course, Zuo Liangyu's troops, Shen Shuren, couldn't control it, but Yang Sichang also brought the last force of nearly 15,000 people, and fled directly into Xiangyang City in defeat.

Yang Sichang's testament was sent to the capital in early September, and when Chongzhen gave the order to reply, he was not dead.

But just a few days later, on September 12, Yang Sichang's life finally came to an end. The messenger in the capital walked quite fast, almost three or four hundred miles a day to deliver letters.

When the will arrived in Xiangyang that day, Yang Sichang learned that he himself was not finally held accountable by Chongzhen, and Chongzhen did not lose his family because of Zhu Xianzhen's defeat, Yang Sichang finally breathed a sigh of relief, and then the spirit of the whole person was completely unable to hold on, and he swallowed his breath in the second half of the night.

As soon as Yang Sichang died, there was no longer a "supervisor" in the Huguang area, and Shen Shuren was ordered to assist Sun Chuanting to try to relieve Kaifeng again, and the 13,400 pro-troops left by Yang Sichang were of course justifiably returned to him.

Although this force has the smallest number in the three parts of the people recruited by the Shenshu people, its combat effectiveness and equipment are the strongest.

After all, they are the henchmen and descendants of Yang Sichang who have been fighting in the south and the north for several years, and they are covered by the elders, and the military salary, food, weapons, and armor have not treated them badly. Moreover, they have also fought bloody battles with Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng repeatedly, and they all survived after years of fighting.

As a result, the total strength of the Shen Shuren has also swelled from 80,000 before dealing with Zhang Xianzhong to 140,000.

Moreover, the quality of the new recruits is also good, there are almost no new recruits, all of whom have been in the army for more than two or three years. Those troops who followed Yang Sichang have more than five years of combat experience, and have also experienced many major battles, and their elite level is definitely higher than that of Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng's old camp in Henan, and they can almost trace the old camp in Shaanxi.

The troops left behind by Fang Kongzhi and Yang Sichang also provided the Shenshu people with a total of about three or four thousand usable firearms, but they were basically mainly birds, and the accuracy and reliability were not as good as those made by Shenshu, so they were barely usable. The rest of the old-fashioned firecrackers that can only defend the city are not counted.

Zhang Xianzhong's troops who were annihilated and captured, the number of firearms was much smaller, although the number of prisoners was as high as 30,000, and there were no less than this number of annihilation and casualties, and the officers and soldiers could still clean up the battlefield after the war. However, the cumulative seizure of the battle against Zhang Xianzhong was only one or two thousand firearms.

These figures, combined with the 15,600 originally owned by the Shen Family's army, brought the total number of firearms soldiers to 20,000.

Destroying Zhang Xianzhong's troops, the only thing that has a huge impact on Shen Shuren is the size of the cavalry.

Before the final decisive battle of Hengzhou, the cavalry of the Shenshu people was about 3,500 people, all of which were led by Zhu Wenzhen, who returned from Liaodong. In the end, after the decisive battle completely destroyed Zhang Xianzhong's Huguang army, thousands of horses were obtained, and the total number of cavalry of the Shenshu people finally reached five or six thousand.

140,000 soldiers, 6,000 cavalry, 20,000 muskets, this is all the strength that Shen Shuren and Li Zicheng had before the battle.

Of course, it is impossible for this force to bet on all points. Because in that case, Zhang Xianzhong, Sun Kewang, and Liu Wenxiu may bite back at any time, and see that Huguang is empty and come to get another vote.

Therefore, in the decisive battle of Hengzhou, Jiang Shoude's troops, who suffered the heaviest losses, will remain in Changsha, Hengzhou and other southern parts this year to carry out public security clearance operations and garrisons, and some of the prisoners of Zhang Xianzhong's army and the official army of Changsha will also stay there.

In the entire Hunan region in later generations, more than 10,000 veterans of the Shenshu people and 20,000 new attached troops will be responsible for dealing with Zhang Xianzhong in an all-round way.

The Fangkongzhi troops in Jiangling, Yiling and other places can be transferred about half, and it is enough to leave 10,000 people. Because Sun Kewang is also gradually moving to the southwest, the pressure in the direction of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River is getting smaller and smaller.

In addition, the officers and troops in Hunan have also established a garrison support point in Baling, at the mouth of Dongting Lake, and can support Changsha or Yiling at any time, so there is no need to put so many front-line troops.

The defenders in the Xiangyang and Suizhou areas left 10,000 men to monitor whether Li Zicheng could infiltrate Zuo Liangyu's defense area, and it was enough.

Shen Shuren felt that there was no future for keeping more troops in this direction, and if Li Zicheng really wanted to come, he might not be able to hold it at least a few times more people. It's better to think about it, in terms of strategy and run, use the method of writing to trick Li Zicheng into scattering his troops, of course, these are all later words, and I have to take a step to watch one.

And Jiujiang and Anlu are now completely stable rear, and the troops can be transferred as much as possible.

After all the calculations are made, the Shenshu people can gather 90,000 troops, 15,000 firearms, and 5,000 cavalry to the frontal battlefield of Xinyang Mansion. And all these preparations, halfway through September, were completely completed and assembled in place.

At the same time, as the time came to mid-September, the autumn harvest season of Chongzhen's fifteenth year was finally over, and the military rations of the Shenshu army were also very sufficient, the pressure of transportation was also small, and the logistics situation was much better than that of Li Zicheng's army opposite.

Because of the natural disasters for many years, it is impossible for the Huguang area to have a bumper harvest this year, but the strong promotion and popularization of high-yield crops such as potatoes and corn has ensured that the people in every prefecture and county can have enough food and clothing.

The production damage in Hunan was very serious, but the killing of the population was also extremely tragic, many lands became ternullius, and the rich gentry were even killed by Zhang Xianzhong. These ownerless properties are naturally cheaper than the Shenshu people.

From mid-August to mid-September, he took advantage of the fact that the troops did not have to fight, and even organized military cantonments to temporarily help with farm work, harvest ownerless crops, and directly use them as military rations after harvesting.

According to his preliminary estimates, Zhang Xianzhong has directly slaughtered more than 500,000 people in Hunan at least in the past few months this year.

After all, the family surnamed Yang in Changde Mansion alone has killed tens of thousands of people, and there are other clever names, and the total number of people killed in Changde Mansion under all the pretexts adds up to hundreds of thousands.

These places in Changsha are much more densely populated than Changde, a total of four prefectures were heavily killed, and two or three remote mountainous prefectures were killed casually across the border, and 500,000 was definitely only a lot more.

Even if the destruction of the productive forces is equivalent to the complete abandonment of the fields planted by 200,000 or 300,000 people, and the crops of 200,000 people have become ownerless food that can be eaten by direct harvesting, of course, the people of Shenshu will not lack the military rations needed to expand the army.

In contrast, Li Zicheng on the opposite side claimed to have more and more troops, and before the decisive battle with Yang Sichang and Sun Chuanting, there were already 340,000.

Zhu Xianzhen collapsed and killed tens of thousands and captured tens of thousands, and after the war, Li Zicheng's total strength was actually claimed to have swelled to 370,000.

It's just that this so-called 370,000 men and horses, how much water and how many are rabble, it's hard to say, I can only ensure that there are so many young and strong men.

Henan and Shaanxi have been completely destroyed this year, and after half a year of bloody slaughter in Henan, Kaifeng, Guide, Huaiqing, and Weihui, agricultural production has stagnated by at least more than half, and it is impossible for Li Zicheng's army to get military rations.

To put it bluntly, Li Zicheng has actually been using corpses to solve the problem of eating the troops, at least for those newly captured cannon fodder and surrendered soldiers, there is a lot of unknown dried meat. Only the old camp can ensure that they eat coarse grains mixed with weeds to make porridge.

On September 17, the 90,000 people of Shen Shuren were all collected in Xinyang Mansion and advanced to the first line of the Huai River, with Ruyin at the confluence of the Huai River and Rushui as the pivot node, which could be attacked, retreated and defended.

Li Zicheng learned about the gathering of the Shen family's army, but he didn't take it too seriously, and continued to prepare to besiege Kaifeng City and wait and see what happened.

Li Zicheng also didn't want his grain route to be stretched too long, so he took the initiative to march hundreds of miles to fight with the Shenshu people.

If the Sinking Tree Man really wanted to come, he would wait in place, and he would be able to make the soldiers consume less physical strength and eat a few fewer bites of food. As long as Shen Shuren dares to cross Yuncheng and even approach Zhuxian Town, then Li Zicheng will have another great victory in Zhuxian Town!

——

ps: The review server still hasn't been restored, continue to have 5,000 words a day.

It's not that I'm lazy, it's mainly that I haven't been able to see other people's comments recently, everyone has to be raised, and the number of people chasing more in 24 hours has actually dropped to more than 100 people......

I also understand that many book friends don't like to read books without comments, if the fattened book friends come back in the future, they see more than a dozen chapters in a row without barrage, maybe they feel that the main board is not interesting, so they abandon the text or even go to see the theft board.

So we can only survive this period of time in the days when there is no barrage.