Gu Yanwu is not a person who is good at intrigue and trickery, he only knows how to do things in a dignified manner, and tries his best to help his lord occupy the position of righteousness.

Zhang Huangyan's brain is more flexible than him, after all, he is a hero who can lead the anti-Qing team to fight for nearly 20 years in history.

Now that he has been cooperating with Zhu Shuren for many years, he also has a very deep understanding of this eloquent cousin.

So after listening to Gu Yanwu's relay, although Zhang Huangyan didn't think about it that day, a day or two later, he slowly realized the subtext of Zhu Shuren.

"Cousin, this is a little bit of a desire to raise Kou's self-respect, and keep a chip in his hand. To prevent His Majesty's chaotic life, take him around to put out fires? ”

When he first thought of this possibility, Zhang Huangyan was also taken aback by his own thoughts, trying to drive this terrible thought out of his mind.

But once the thought is this kind of thing, once it germinates, it is the most difficult to eliminate and expel - there is no "Inception" or "Persona" in the real world, so it is better to save it if you want to change your mind and brainwash.

After calming down, Zhang Huangyan felt that this kind of thinking could be understood-now that he had been Chongzhen for sixteen years, there was actually far more than one military general and governor who had such thoughts.

Loyalty to the emperor is not absolute, and it is not that he wants to replace him, there is still a big gap in this.

Especially Chongzhen, who loves face, lacks flexibility in policies, and the slightest mistake of local governors and military generals is easy to be questioned and cut off from their posts. Therefore, many officials who have given birth to the idea of preserving their strength and raising their own self-respect are just trying to protect themselves.

They didn't want to replace Chongzhen, they just thought that Chongzhen couldn't remove them.

Zhang Huangyan pondered repeatedly, and felt that his cousin was at most in this state of mind.

Considering that Chongzhen did not let him be promoted to governor and concurrently pacify Sichuan, he wanted to install Fang Kongzhi to divide it, and did not let him marry Fang Ziling......

After so many operations, it can be regarded as the king's suspicion of the ministers first, and the ministers leave some back hands for their own safety, which is understandable.

After the heart disease went away, Zhang Huangyan finally knew what to do. And he not only has to do it himself, but also imperceptibly instills it in his fellow travelers Liu Guoneng, Yuan Shizhong, and Zhu Wenzhen, so that they don't think too much about the rights and wrongs between Lord Futai and His Majesty, just carry out the orders and fight the battle in front of them.

Zhang Huangyan also had to appropriately borrow the theoretical weapons provided by Zhu Shuren and Gu Yanwu in previous years, and then emphasize the difference between "ruining the country" and "dying the world".

A little instillation of nationalism further implanted in the hearts of these generals the idea that "at present, the Han people are in danger, and the honor and disgrace of one family are far less important than driving out the Tartars and ensuring that the Han people are not enslaved".

This kind of rhetoric is still a little early to come up with now, after all, the Tartars have not yet entered Beijing, but everyone can understand it, and it is not wrong to instill it in advance.

After a few days, after being fully prepared in terms of spiritual and ideological preparations and material preparations for the siege, Zhang Huangyan led his troops to attack Leshan County.

On this day, it was already February 24th.

……

Sun Kewang arrived around Leshan and blocked the waterway officials and troops from going north for more than ten days.

During this time, his mood was also complicated.

Among Zhang Xianzhong's righteous sons, Sun Kewang is the most trusted one so far, who let more than half a year ago, he advised Zhang Xianzhong not to go to Xiangxi, not to Changsha and Hengzhou to entangle with the officials and soldiers, this advice was finally proved to be very correct by history.

In contrast, Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu were both deducted a lot of impression points by Zhang Xianzhong in that decision-making. Later, Li Dingguo was suspected of a series of ineffective combat and preservation of strength, and was further refrigerated by Zhang Xianzhong.

However, Sun Kewang's trust, after the success of entering Sichuan, tore the first crack - when Chongqing was conquered, Sun Kewang also worked with Li Dingguo to persuade Zhang Xianzhong not to engage in massacres, and to win over the people's hearts as soon as possible, instead of "slaughtering a city and using the money obtained to win over the poor people in the surrounding cities that were not slaughtered".

As for the money needed to win the hearts of the people and the strong men at that time, Sun Kewang also felt that there was no need to rob, because when Zhang Xianzhong fled from Xiangxi before, he still had a large amount of gold and silver obtained through the slaughter in Hunan.

At the beginning of the battle of Hengzhou, Zhu Shuren asked Zhu Wenzhen to pursue with cavalry, but he also recovered millions of taels worth of property, but after all, he couldn't recover all of them.

When Zhang Xianzhong was in Hunan, he slaughtered the city and plundered, and at his peak, he earned more than 10 million taels? Even if Zhu Shuren was later intercepted and recovered half of it, when Zhang Xianzhong arrived in Qianzhong Road, there were still at least a few million taels of gold and silver.

If all the surplus money from the massacre in Hunan is used to buy off the Sichuan people, maybe it will be able to gain a firm foothold in Chongqing.

But Zhang Xianzhong is obviously poor and afraid, and always feels that if he doesn't even have more than three or five million taels of wealth around him, it is easy to have the situation that "after losing all the army, the capital to make a comeback at any time next time is gone".

His miser mentality made him have to make sure that the wealth in his army snowballed and he couldn't completely spend his money. This mentality eventually led to the massacre of more than 200,000 people in Chongqing.

Sun Kewang left some rifts with his father-in-law in that exhortation, and sighed: How can we win the hearts of the people for a long time if we finally arrived in a place where the people were closed and simple and did not know our bad deeds in other places, and did not take the opportunity to pretend to be benevolent and virtuous to buy people's hearts, or slaughtered them in the same way as before?

(Note: This is a historical fact, Zhang Xianzhong's massacre after entering Sichuan at the beginning, Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo have complained.) Of course, it is not excluded that it is because they finally reconciled with Nanming and recognized Yongli as Zhengshuo, so "History of the Ming Dynasty" gave them face and said good things)

Of course, this kind of rift is shared by Zhang Xianzhong and his three righteous sons, and it is not only aimed at Sun Kewang. But in the following month or so, some new contradictions appeared within Zhang Xianzhong's army, and there was an undercurrent surging for a while, and people were panicked.

When Zhang Xianzhongjun slaughtered the city in Chongqing, he said that "more than 200,000 were empty", but in practice, not everyone was killed, mainly men, old people, and boys.

For those young girls, the slaughter of the city in any era will not be killed, because people are beastly, and tens of thousands of old battalion soldiers under Zhang Xianzhong's command have followed for many years, basically singles, and those who have had wives and children have also been separated in the years of tossing and turning.

Now that I have lived so hard for so long, I finally entered the country of abundance, where can I be willing to kill all the women when I see them? Of course, he was slightly served as a soldier and concubine, and he was taken with the army.

However, because of several massacres after Zhang Xianzhong's army entered Sichuan, many of these young women were slaughtered by their families, and they also had a bitter hatred for Zhang Xianzhong.

After following the ordinary soldiers for a month or two, some of these women also accepted their fate, and those who served as soldiers also began to loosen their will, and some of them fell in love with each other for a long time, and they no longer regarded them as slaves and maids, because they really wanted these women to have children and live a good life.

As a result, in this case, the official army entered Chongqing and began a counteroffensive, and the news came, and these old battalion soldiers in the army, who married Bashu women, also began to become internally unstable.

There are many female rolls who have begun to blow the wind on the pillow, and it is privately rumored that Qin Liangyu and Qin's general soldiers have been reinforced by foreign soldiers, and they will be able to recover soon, and these women have a grudge against Zhang Xianzhong that their whole family was killed, how could they not take the opportunity to encourage men to find another way out, and not to go to the dark with the butcher?

However, Sun Kewang's troops, because they had advised Zhang Xianzhong not to massacre the most, so the proportion of officers and soldiers in his army who privately accepted Sichuan women was also the highest.

After Zhang Xianzhong noticed the instability of the army's heart, he hurriedly issued a strict order: it is strictly forbidden for soldiers to marry local women in Sichuan, and those who violate the order will be engaged in military law! (This order is also a historical fact)

At most, it is only allowed to recognize the existing fait accompli, and these robbed women are used as slaves and maids to vent their humiliation, but they are absolutely not allowed to marry wives and have children.

This order has been strictly enforced for the time being, but the fluctuation of people's hearts is certainly inevitable. Those old thieves who have been wandering around the region for more than ten years have found that they can live in peace with relatively eye-catching beauties in the land of abundance, who wants to be forbidden to marry a wife?

On the contrary, the newly attached Zhuangding in Sichuan are not restricted by this ban, they are originally locals, and it is natural for them to marry local women. In this way, instead of suffering from widowhood and unevenness, the fluctuation of people's hearts in Shaanxi and Henan Laoying has become more and more obvious.

In history, after Zhang Xianzhong entered Sichuan, he resented "Sichuan people are more against me", so he relied more and more on slaughter, and finally lost the hearts of the people, most of which are also due to this reason.

He may never have dreamed that when he arrived in an area where there were many beautiful women, he would rely on this kind of blunt knife to disintegrate people's hearts and give his troops whose hearts have been as cold as knives for many years.

Under this series of commotion operations, Sun Kewang's fear became more and more obvious, and he deeply felt that after Zhu Shuren's army pressed the border, the future of Zhang Xianzhong's department was really uncertain.

But after all, he is Zhang Xianzhong's most trusted son, and it is impossible to say that he will directly surrender to the enemy, so he thought of a compromise to protect himself. He led the first army and asked for orders to intercept the officers and waterway troops on the southern front.

Zhang Xianzhong considered that he could indeed divide the military strength of the official army and reduce the pressure on Chengdu, and Liu Wenxiu and Li Dingguo were even more unavailable, so he agreed to this plan.

At the same time, Zhang Xianzhong was also inspired by Sun Kewang's suggestion, drawing inferences from one case to another, not only sending Sun Kewang to the southern line, but also sending Liu Wenxiu to Mianzhu and Jiangyou on the northern line.

However, Liu Wenxiu did not take many troops, and what Zhang Xianzhong wanted was for Liu Wenxiu to guard the retreat route of Chengdu to the north to Jianmen Pass and enter the Jinniu Road, so that if Chengdu was really lost, he could also lead a small number of descendants to flee incognito on multiple roads.

Zhang Xianzhong himself took Feng Shuangli and Li Dingguo to hold Chengdu, and temporarily went to Jianyang with a part of his troops, becoming a corner.

Thinking that if the official army is strong and difficult to fight in the field, it can only cage the city to defend to the death, then take back Jianyang's troops, and if there is hope in the field, then directly fight the official army in Jianyang.

……

Sun Kewang was in such a situation and held Zhang Huangyan in Leshan.

At the beginning of the standoff, he also pondered several responses and deductions - at the beginning, Sun Kewang was still whimsical, thinking that in case the people of Huangyan were not strong in battle, or they were frustrated and suffered heavy losses after attacking the city first, he could try to counterattack and counterattack, all the way from Leshan to Yibin!

If you can reach Yibin, of course, it is the best, because it is a transportation hub where the Minjiang River and the Jinsha River converge, which can not only further cut off the supply line of the official army, so that the official army does not dare to advance. You can also go directly upriver along the Jinsha River and escape to Yunnan when there is an accident on your side.

Sun Kewang also understood the geographical situation of the Sichuan-Yunnan border, and knew that the Jinsha River could be navigated smoothly all the way to Laojuntan. After arriving at Laojuntan, with the broken warship level of Zhang Xianzhong's army, it is estimated that he had to abandon the ship and take the land route, and take the land route to Wumengfu (Zhaotong) into Yunnan.

But the idea was good, and in fact he didn't have the slightest chance to carry out the plan from the beginning to the end. In the early days of holding Zhang Huangyan, the two also fought a few times on a small scale, the scale was not large, but the intensity was not low.

Zhang Huangyan led Liu Guoneng's troops, as well as Zhu Wenzhen's cavalry, and Sun Kewang all field attempts ended in failure, and it was a crushing failure.

Sun Kewang was surprised, but also realized that the combat effectiveness of this officer army was definitely at least a few percent stronger than when he encountered it more than half a year ago!

It seems that the troops that can defeat Li Zicheng in Kaifeng have really grown very significantly! The weapons and equipment of the troops have also been improved under the careful supervision of Zhu Shuren, and he is not an opponent at all!

After giving up the idea of pushing back to Yibin, Sun Kewang retreated, and the new way of retreat that he had thought of with all his might in the past few days was to take the Tsing Yi Shui (Dadu River) after encountering disadvantages, from western Sichuan through Jianchang Road, along the Dachong River (Yalong River) to the south, and from Huichuanwei (Panzhihua) to seek south to escape into Yunnan.

It would certainly be a harder path, but in extreme cases he had no choice.

People who don't know much about geography can roughly understand this road as "going backwards to Yunnan", after all, the Dadu River and the Jinsha River are involved, and it is still a roundabout southward journey from the mountainous areas of western Sichuan.

The only thing Sun Kewang is not worried about is that if he really gets to that point and gives up his father-in-law and runs away alone, will the officials and soldiers chase him like they hate his father-in-law?

Maybe when the father-in-law is still alive, the officials and soldiers will not be too concerned about him, but if the father-in-law is really dead, and the officials and soldiers of Bashu have no target, will they do their best to set up a new target?

In such apprehension, Sun Kewang ushered in Zhang Huangyan's all-out siege.

On 25 February, the officers and troops had been preparing for more than ten days in Leshan, and the siege weapons that should be prepared were of course completely complete.

Even because there was too much time, the officers and soldiers didn't bother to let the 42-pounder bow guns still be used on the warships on the river, but took great pains to unload the cannons and set up siege artillery positions on land-

After all, the terrain of Leshan County is steep, the height of the city is relatively high, although the city wall and the city gate in the west of the city can barely be bombarded on the surface of the famous general river, but there is a hillside near the river on that side, and it is difficult to attack on the back.

In contrast, the slope in the east of Leshan City is much gentler, and it is easy to attack this mountain city. In addition, putting the cannon on the temporary battery on land also avoids the loss of accuracy caused by the shaking of the launch platform, and can better aim at the city gate.

After the battle began, the offensive of the official army was very fierce, and Sun Kewang tried to let the elite of the old battalion lead by example to defend the wall at the beginning.

It's a pity that Leshan is a small city, the city wall gate and city tower are very simple, and the only defense depends on the steepness of the mountain, which belongs to the existence that at least eighty percent of the defense power is maintained by the natural terrain.

Under the bombardment of the officers and soldiers, the city gate and city wall in the east of the city did not hold up for half a day, and in the afternoon, Liu Guoneng's troops rushed into the city with their teeth and claws. Sun Kewang's thousands of old battalion soldiers and more than 10,000 newly coerced strong men were annihilated in Leshan City.

There are also countless die-hard officers with henchmen and old thieves, seeing that the city is irretrievably broken, and they also tried to seize the boat to cross the Min River and flee to the west bank.

However, the officers and troops already had the advantage of warships on the Minjiang River, and this attempt was obviously futile. This place is located at the confluence of the Min River and the Dadu River, the undercurrent is surging, the water is turbulent, there are whirlpools, countless northern thieves with poor water quality, and the level of boat operation is not good, and the boat is directly capsized and buried in the belly of the fish in the chaotic battle-

As an aside, the reason why there will be a Leshan Giant Buddha in Leshan is because before the Tang Dynasty, at the confluence of the Dadu River and the Minjiang River, the water potential was too dangerous, and the undercurrent whirlpool was too terrible.

(Note: In fact, when the Leshan Giant Buddha was built, a piece of the nearby mountain was chiseled off by the way, and the original acute angle hedged confluence changed the flow direction to form an obtuse angle downstream, so the whirlpool undercurrent was reduced later.) This is in accordance with the laws of physics and has nothing to do with the Buddha. Before the construction of the Leshan Giant Buddha, the water of the Min River and the Dadu River was flushed, so the undercurrent was particularly large)

The locals of Sichuan have to be cautious when passing through this area, and the landlubbers of the outsiders under Sun Kewang still expect to control the Dadu River, so they are not killing themselves.

Leshan County was quickly attacked, and more than 10,000 partial divisions were directly destroyed, which made Sun Kewang suffer a solid blow to the head, and also made his heart more and more shaken and timid.

He cowered in Emei County on the other side, panicking all day long, not knowing when Zhang Huangyan would kill him.