"You are Yuan Shizhong? I've heard that I've been a thief for more than two years. Since you have been wandering between Gui and Bo, you should have heard the name of this general. ”

In the Ya of Zhecheng County, Huang Degong saw Yuan Shizhong for the first time, of course, he would not put on the posture of Corporal Lixian, but had a tough face and spoke arrogantly.

This is also very in line with his personality, he is a martial artist who is just and reckless, and he is not good at figuring out people's hearts.

The ghost knows if this Yuan Shizhong is really surrendering; Or because Zhecheng County was broken and the way back was cut off, it had to be desperate for the time being; Or is it just a deception!

Therefore, when Yuan Shizhong just sent someone to contact, Huang Degong didn't believe it at all, and even made a condition, asking Yuan Shizhong to personally bring a small group of pro-troops to Zhecheng County to talk if he wanted to surrender.

Unexpectedly, Yuan Shizhong only hesitated a little for a long time, but he still gritted his teeth and came, and sure enough, he only brought about a hundred cavalry guards, and the remaining more than 10,000 thieves stayed in Luyi County and did not move.

After showing such sincerity, Huang Degong was willing to see him, and there was this scene just now.

In Huang Degong's view, there were so many thieves and chieftains who had surrendered before, and few of them dared to come to the door in person to be controlled by the officials and soldiers. Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, and Luo Rucai repeatedly surrendered several times, all of which demanded to retain the establishment and demarcate the land for self-defense.

Yuan Shizhong was not afraid of being booby-trapped by the official army, and it seemed that he was a little sincere.

And Yuan Shizhong is under the low eaves at the moment, of course, he has to grovel a little more, even if he doesn't think so in his heart, he has to pretend to be out. In the face of Huang Degong's arrogance, he also accompanied him carefully:

"General Huang's prestige, how can the guilty general not know. At that time, the sin was in Puyang, and it was also a poor rebellion, and what gathered was nothing more than a group of hungry people who could not eat enough. Because he couldn't bear to kill and slaughter the villagers of this county and his house to raise food, and Puyang had no danger to defend, he fled south to Gui and Bo. In the past two years or so, all our battalions in Henan have also been afraid of General Huang, and they have not dared to enter the south and directly subordinate, and they have not dared to underestimate Fengyang. ”

Yuan Shizhong is also a person with a rough appearance, but he is so cautious and tries to speak in a crepe manner, which looks quite weird.

However, Huang Degong is very accustomed to such an attitude, although he does not read, he can still observe the basic words and feelings, and under observation, he feels that Yuan Shizhong's surrender should be sincere, but those excuses to justify his previous crimes may not be credible.

But believe it or not, none of that matters anymore. In the future, how to place and use Zhao'an is something that Shen Futai has to worry about, and he just cares that the other party is not in danger at the moment.

Huang Degong paused for a moment, and then ordered: "In this case, you first lead the cavalry under your command, follow me, and act together." As for the rest of your army, let a lieutenant general you trust take it south to Ruyang.

This general will give you a letter as a token, and when you meet the defenders of General Liu Guoneng Liu of Xinyang Mansion, you will listen to his arrangement and accept the placement.

General Liu is also a general who renounces darkness and surrenders to the light, and he will accept your surrender for the time being, you should be able to trust it, right? As long as you accept this condition, General Ben promises to hold you a guerrilla position in front of Shen Futai. The rest depends on your meritorious performance in the future. ”

Huang Degong didn't want to bring more than 10,000 people with him, on the one hand, it was difficult to control, if his army was incorporated into a new annex army with more troops than his current strength, what if there was a mutiny, the damage would be more troublesome than facing more than 10,000 enemy troops on the frontal battlefield.

Second, Huang Degong was surrounded by cavalry, and Yuan Shizhong stayed, and if he wanted to act in unison, it would slow down the speed.

Therefore, the best choice is to divide and conquer, and let Yuan Shizhong follow with all the cavalry forces, which can not only control, but also keep hostages.

And Yuan Shizhong wants to prevent himself from being betrayed by his subordinates, and the generals who are selected to lead the remaining troops south to vote for Liu Guoneng must also be absolute henchmen. Otherwise, if there is a little bit of a mistake, the selected general will lead the troops to re-join Li Zicheng or Yuan Zongdi, then he Yuan Shizhong will not be able to cry.

When he heard this stern request, Yuan Shizhong was also bitter in his heart.

But he knew that it was the original bandit leaders who had ruined the credibility of the market, and he could only accept such a test if he wanted to surrender sincerely.

Fortunately, the recipient selected by Huang Degong is Liu Guoneng, who also used to be a thief, so it should be easy for each other to understand each other.

He also hurriedly lowered his posture: "The last general, thank you General Huang for your recommendation." ”

Then he said that his troops did not have many cavalry, at most nearly 1,000 people, and they could all follow Huang Degong's actions, and the remaining 12,000 people could be taken to Ruyang by his younger brother.

Huang Degong saw that he was done, and a stone in his heart fell to the ground, so he simply put a wine in the Zhecheng County Ya, appeased Yuan Shizhong, and asked him to transfer all the cavalry from Luyuan County as soon as possible.

……

Because of the relationship between receiving the surrendered army, Huang Degong did not immediately go to Shangqiu to find trouble with Yuan Zongdi, and stayed in Zhecheng for half a day, preparing to leave the next day.

Taking the opportunity to win people's hearts, he also took the opportunity to learn more about the deeper reasons for the other party's surrender from Yuan Shizhong, plus the military deployment of the Chuang army in the area of Guide Mansion, including letting Yuan Shizhong figure out why Yuan Zongdi had not withdrawn his troops to Chen County at this time, seeking to join the main force of the Chuang army.

Of course, Yuan Shizhong has answered all these questions one by one.

In the initial motive for surrender, he just emphasized Li Zicheng's brutality in Henan again, favoring the Shaanxi people more than letting the Henan people be cannon fodder, and robbing the local people.

Their Henan natives naturally have some festivals with Li Zicheng, and he also voted for Luo Rucai first, which is even more unpopular.

When he was drunk, he was a little bolder, suggesting that Huang Degong should not have killed Li Jiyu a few days ago, Li Jiyu was also a native of Henan, and he had been a thief for less than three years, and he also voted for Luo Rucai first, and now he was excluded and used as cannon fodder.

If Huang Degong had been a little patient at that time, maybe Li Jiyu could have surrendered directly, but now he was killed directly by Huang Degong's sneak attack when he stole Chen County.

For this, of course, Huang Degong will not regret it, so he said with a big grin that the sword has no eyes, and there is no way to make a surprise attack on the battlefield.

In order to appease, the only thing he could say was that if Yuan Shizhong behaved well, he would persuade Shen Futai in the follow-up and consider assigning the two or three thousand Li Jiyu prisoners who had been appeased by the official army to Yuan Shizhong's leadership.

In addition, Huang Degong also had an in-depth understanding of the "contradictions between some local bandit leaders in Henan and Li Zicheng" mentioned by Yuan Shizhong, and learned that it was the local leaders in Henan who were quite dissatisfied with Li Zicheng's indiscriminate killing and robbery, and felt that they had killed too many local villagers.

This statement surprised Huang Degong a little, but he didn't feel inappropriate. He knew about the thief's endowment, and after inquiring deeply, he knew what was going on.

In the "History of the Ming Dynasty" in later generations, Yuan Shizhong was written as "a more enlightened and benevolent among thieves", not killing the people and not robbing, which of course does not match the facts, but it is only because Yuan Shizhong finally wanted to rejoin the imperial court, and was killed by Li Zicheng, and the scholar wrote him as a good person.

After the death of the Ming Dynasty, the Han doctors hoped to create an aura of "the leaders of the peasant army who abandoned the darkness and turned to the light, and the leaders of the peasant army who harmed the Han people were the most vicious", so it is not surprising that there is a filter bonus.

But the problem has to be looked at from both sides, the real world is complicated, whether it is Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong or Yuan Shizhong, they all have a murderous side, and they also have a cautious killing side.

It's just that the ancients killed cautiously, often only against the villagers, and the farther away from their hometown, the less scruples there were, and the more they were afraid to trample on human life at will with brutal hands.

The illiterate people at the end of the Ming Dynasty rarely had family and country feelings, only their fathers and fellow villagers.

Even if it is Li Zicheng, in Mizhi County, in addition to killing enemies, he rarely kills his father and fellow villagers.

But out of Mizhi County, when he is short of food, he can start slaughtering.

Out of Yan'an Mansion, you can slaughter two percent.

Out of Shaanxi Province, even half of it can be slaughtered.

When Zhang Xianzhong arrived in Sichuan, there was no need to set a bottom line.

Each rogue chieftain is very flexible in keeping the lower limit of brutality in different regions.

A person cannot be simply characterized by the degree of brutality of a person in a particular place.

It is an ironclad fact that Li Jiyu in Yuan Shizhong did slaughter much less than Li Zicheng in Henan, and plundered much less.

But what the motive is, future generations do not know, maybe they themselves are Henan people, which will also play a considerable role.

Specific to Yuan Shizhong, he swore that when he raised troops in his hometown of Puyang, he would only kill the enemies of the government and not harm the villagers. But there were many disasters that year, and after killing the government, it was still not enough to eat if you didn't pay taxes, so you had to rob it.

I want to eat,

The world is big, and there is no limit to ethics, morality, and law, and there is no survival instinct.

When the Malthusian trap came, the essence was that this land could not support so many people, and half of them had to die, and no one was right or wrong, and everyone was shot one by one by lot.

According to the laws of nature on the prairie, there is a growth and decline curve in the number of wolves and sheep, and there can be moral right and wrong?

Yuan Shizhong had no choice but to cross Jishui south to kill and plunder in the territory of Guide Mansion, so that he would not kill his fellow villagers in the same prefecture and county.

Beggar-thy-neighbor, killing outsiders, the degree of softness suddenly dropped a step.

As for later generations, it was said that Li Zicheng "came to the king and did not pay for food...... Please, that was after March of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen in history, he had already taken Kaifeng Mansion, and he started to do this after he had the consciousness of the base.

Before that, there was no sense of base at all (and it was impossible to stand firm if you wanted to have this kind of awareness, because you couldn't defeat the official army), how could there be anything that wasn't brutal.

Since ancient times, thieves have been more brutal than thieves, this is an iron law.

Thieves need base areas, and they can't slaughter base areas and things that belong to them. If you don't have a sense of base, killing is not killing your own people, so why don't you kill them.

After Huang Degong roughly figured out the reason why Yuan Shizhong was not so brutal locally, and he couldn't get used to the essence and core of Li Zicheng's brutality, he also had a little more confidence in reusing these local thieves and chieftains in Henan.

And these considerations, the paraphrasing of the confession, of course, he will also ask his staff to write into the future letters to Shen Futai and Liu Guoneng, so that they can understand more when receiving people and horses, and reduce the risk of conflict during the run-in process.

After thinking about this truth, it seems that all the local thieves and generals in Henan who first voted for Luo Rucai before and were used as cannon fodder by Li Zicheng, and at the same time were dissatisfied with Li Zicheng's massacre of their fellow countrymen, have the possibility of disintegration and disintegration.

This piece of information is very important, and it will also have a considerable impact on the subsequent decisive battle with Li Zicheng. If it is used well, even if it can't attract more people, it can at least make Li Zicheng's internal suspicion and suspicion deeper.

He didn't dare to use the Henan people to fight against the Shenshu people, for fear of local defections.

……

After thoroughly figuring out the relevant situation, the last part of the value that Huang Degong tried to squeeze out of Yuan Shizhong was the recent military deployment intelligence of the Chuang army.

After all, Yuan Shizhong had just arrived, and he must have known a lot of secrets about friendly forces.

After Huang Degong asked about some surrounding elements, he concentrated on a key point: "Yuan Guerrilla, you said that this Yuan Zongdi was sent by thieves to return to Defu for food, and it has been two days since our army took Chen County and entered Zhecheng.

Li Zicheng should have sent the news that Shen Futai had arrived in Chen County and needed Yuan Zongdi to concentrate his troops to participate in the decisive battle in Chen County, why was Yuan Zongdi still besieging the city under Shangqiu City? Could it be that he wanted to betray Li Zicheng? ”

Yuan Shizhong wanted to take the opportunity to show loyalty and answer in detail about this question, but he was not capable of it, and he couldn't say too profound truths, so he could only speculate:

"This is not clear to the general, but before he returned, he had also received the last piece of information from the thief messenger, which said that all the generals in Guide Mansion had gone all out to help attack Shangqiu.

There is information that King Lu, King Heifu, and King Zhao who fled from Huaiqing, Weihui and other places two months ago may all be in Shangqiu City. asked Yuan Zongdi to try to kill the above-mentioned kings, and then give Shen Shuren a crime of trapping. ”

Huang Degong was shocked when he heard this: "What? King Lu, King Fu, King Zhao, is actually in Shangqiu City? How did I not know? How could Li Zicheng find out about something that the imperial court hadn't heard of? ”

Yuan Shizhong couldn't explain either: "This point, the last general is not clear, the last general can only say what the thief conveyed, General Huang doesn't believe it, the thief messenger was also tied up by the last general, and sent it together, General Huang can personally torture him." ”

Huang Degong's mind was racing, and several motives had flashed: regardless of whether King Fu Lu was in Shangqiu City or not, he had already made a plan to drag Yuan Zongdi. Therefore, whether the kings are present or not, it does not affect their own decision-making.

If it is here, then the credit for relieving the siege of Shangqiu will be even greater, and it can also save the people of Shen Shu from being convicted, killing multiple birds with one stone. Therefore, in any case, Shangqiu's siege is decided.

The effect of finding out the truth is nothing more than strengthening one's own decision-making and determination.

——

ps: There will be two shifts today, and there will be a second shift before five o'clock in the afternoon, so the first shift doesn't need to be too many words.

I also feel that this chapter doesn't advance the plot much, and I'm really embarrassed to stop with only four or five thousand words a day. But if a new character is forced to appear in a hurry at the end of the previous chapter, it is still necessary to retrace the cause and effect.

In addition, some do not explain or analyze, so as not to be said by Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong that I am the leader of the black peasant army. Because as long as it is written that "a certain peasant army leader is not as brutal as Li Zicheng", even if it is a historical fact, that kind of remark will definitely pop up.

We just have to have a bowl of water - I didn't say that the morality of the leaders of the peasant army who surrendered to the imperial court was higher than that of the peasant army who did not descend, I think that just the ancient illiterate people left their hometowns, and the level of brutality would increase.

You can also assume that if Yuan Shizhong went to Shaanxi, he would kill people more ruthlessly than when Li Zicheng came to Henan. But didn't Yuan Shizhong fail to go to Shaanxi in his life, so this hypothesis could not be verified.