At this point in time, the courtiers who can still survive in Beijing are, of course, more likely to avoid taking responsibility.

Otherwise, if Dan Fan is a little bit responsible, he will be pushed out by Chongzhen and beheaded like Chen Xinjia.

So Chongzhen asked them to take ideas to fight against the plague, and these people would only prevaricate with the law of their ancestors.

Fortunately, the people of the Ming Dynasty already had a bit of simple medical knowledge, and they could more or less realize the help of burning corpses to block the plague. In the end, under the trade-off of "ancestral system", "filial piety" and anti-drug, they came up with a plan to dilute the mud:

For the corpses that no one has collected, they can be burned by the government. It is clear that they died of the plague, and ordinary people who have no fame also turn a blind eye to carry it out.

But for the official gentry, the Wucheng Soldiers and Horses Division or other yamen can't control so much, and they don't have that energy, so they can only turn a blind eye.

There are hidden dragons and crouching tigers in the city of Beijing, and there are a bunch of dignitaries and relatives of the emperor, who dares to really enforce the law seriously, almost bullying and bullying those who have no background.

In the end, when it came to the implementation stage, not all the plague victims in the merchants' homes were cremated.

Even at this moment, the soldiers and officers who handled it did not forget to use the power in their hands to be more greedy: if there was a rich family with no background, it was obviously highly suspected of plague, but as long as enough money was given, they were allowed to be buried directly, and the death was reported as if it was not plague.

And those families with no background who obviously did not die of the plague, the relevant law enforcement officers will also come to the door to make a false accusation, asking for some money to be regarded as a normal burial without plague, otherwise as long as there is no money, they will all be burned. Fully squeeze out the last bit of surplus value that ordinary ignorant people want to bury because of feudal superstition and filial piety.

Chongzhen wanted to fight the plague, but in the end, it made the city of Beijing more and more chaotic, and the people were complaining about their lives.

It can only be said that the ruling model of the Ming Dynasty has rotted to the bones, and the unspoken rules have been rampant for a hundred years.

The chaos in Beijing continued for more than ten days, the plague got worse and worse, the dignitaries and nobles were frequently infected, and the soldiers defending the city also lost their combat effectiveness in batches.

And at this juncture, the time came to an end in early October, and the imperial court in the capital was once again shocked by a series of news of defeat, and was shocked overnight - the news that Taiyuan and Shangqiu were lost, and that the thieves had killed the border of Henan and entered Shandong, finally reached the capital.

When Chongzhen heard it at first glance, he was simply shocked and angry: "Liu Zeqing, this waste! Isn't he the chief soldier of Shandong! When the thief arrived in Shandong, he didn't go to Yanzhou to fight the enemy, and he retreated in Jining, and he was embarrassed to report to the imperial court!

Look at what Zhou Yuji did! I swear not to retreat and defend Ningwu Pass! Who recommended Liu Zeqing to stay in office! ”

It turned out that the reason why Chongzhen was so angry was also because at the end of the 14th year of Chongzhen, when Chen Xinjia took over the military department, he selected a group of local general soldiers and wanted to eliminate some incompetent generals.

This Shandong Liu Zeqing was questioned by Chen Xinjia at that time.

But within a few months, Zhou Yanru was recalled from his hometown in Changzhou and once again served as the secretary of the ministry and the first assistant of the cabinet.

Zhou Yanru took the Grand Canal all the way to collect money, and when he passed through Linqing, Shandong, he accepted 40,000 taels of gold from Liu Zeqing to ensure that he had been guarding in Shandong, so that he could continue to be stuck in the Grand Canal and eat the filial piety of the business travelers along the way.

In peacetime, there was nothing about the dereliction of duty of Liu Zeqing, the chief soldier of the non-front-line defense area, and Zhou Yanru could accept his golden filial piety with peace of mind. Who knew that now Liu Zeqing finally needed to fight the main force of the thieves on a large scale for the first time, but he directly admitted that he had instigated the thieves to cross the border and poked the basket wide.

And Wu Changshi, one of Zhou Yanru's confidants and Wen Xuan Shilang, was originally imprisoned for embezzlement, but the crime was not asked clearly and has not been dealt with.

This time, Liu Zeqing set up thieves, so that Chongzhen was sick and went to the doctor, and finally Zhou Yanru's political enemies jumped out, saying that it was rumored that Liu Zeqing had given Zhou Yanru tens of thousands of taels of gold in order to keep his position. Chongzhen was furious, and finally lost trust in Zhou Yanru.

Zhou Yanru desperately defended himself in order to save his life, but Chongzhen did not immediately cut him, but just said that he would be given a chance to atone for his crimes, and let Zhou Yanru and Zhang Guowei immediately discuss a strategy on how to retreat from the enemy.

Zhang Guowei is not guilty, he is just because he is still in the military department, this is his duty, and he should not give it up. After being forced by the emperor, Zhang Guowei could only try to recruit on official business:

"Your Majesty, it is better to let Xiong Tong, who is stationed in Changshan, immediately reinforce Zhou Yuji from the southern front, and let Bai Guangen, who is stationed in Daidi, and Gao Jie, lead his subordinates to go south together, and reinforce Zhou Yuji from the northern line to divide the thief army.

Although Bai Guangen was guilty of demotion in the battle of Songjin, he had a lot of hard work in fighting with thieves in northern Jin, although Gao Jie under his command surrendered under the command of the thieves, but he had a hatred for taking his wife with the thieves, so he never dared to surrender the thieves again, so they let them detour behind the enemy lines on the north side, and they would not be swallowed up by the thieves.

As for the direction of Liu Zeqing in Shandong, Liu Liang could be transferred from Bozhou and Fengyang to the left to the north, and joined forces with Liu Zeqing to resist the battle. Finally, considering that the thieves have the risk of passing through Shandong and threatening Gyeonggi, Tangtong and Mako in Jimen, Miyun and other places can be transferred to help. If the thieves are further rampant, you can call Shanhaiguan Wu Sangui and Li Fuming to help! ”

Zhang Guowei was like a treasure, and soon reported the numbers of at least six general soldiers and two deputy generals, which shows that even at this moment in the Ming Dynasty, there are at least seven general soldiers in the territory of Beizhili and even in several provinces directly bordering Beizhili.

This is not counting the three battalions of the Beijing Division and other local garrisons in Beijing, if these troops can really be fully equipped and morale is high, even if Li Zicheng is wrapped in more than 400,000 rabble, the Ming Dynasty is not unable to resist.

It's a pity that the number of these seven general soldiers, how many soldiers can actually be left, and how many people will die for the Ming Dynasty, is not optimistic.

Chongzhen anxiously went through what Zhang Guowei said in his mind, and finally smoothed out his thoughts, and then asked: "What about Zhu Shuren!" Why didn't Hu Guangjun see Zhang Qing move?! ”

Zhang Guowei was stunned: "Your Majesty, far water can't quench your thirst!" Of course, the armies of Huguang and Sichuan and Shu must also be mobilized, but the most urgent blocking personnel at the moment are still the armies around Beizhili. His Majesty agreed to the above arrangement, and the minister would naturally go to plan for the deployment of troops farther away. ”

After Zhang Guowei finished speaking, Zhou Yanru also hurriedly wanted to find an opportunity to remedy his lost trust, and hurriedly helped Chongzhen come up with ideas:

"Your Majesty, the matter of transferring Huguang and Sichuan soldiers and horses really needs to be done urgently, but Your Majesty can't expect Zhu Shuren to come quickly-the road from Yunyang to Hanzhong has not been completely opened so far, if the angels expect this road to go against the Han River and send an edict, maybe they will be harmed by scattered thieves and miss a major event.

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And to go to Jiangling and Chongqing to Sichuan, even if it is urgent, it will take at least half a month to arrive. Now the troops and horses are not fast, when Huang Taiji entered the Kou before, His Majesty recruited Bai Guangen, Tang Tong, and Wu Sangui to guard the Beijing Division, but how long did it take for them to arrive that time?

Zhu Shuren had just reported more than 10 days ago that his soldiers and horses had been infected with the plague by Cao Bianjiao's Shanxi army, and that if the troops had to be screened, treated, and reorganized before they were mobilized, they would be even more protracted.

Therefore, the will to recruit Zhu Shuren can be issued as soon as possible, but the imperial court can't just count on him, it has to rely on other soldiers and horses, at least drag it out for a few months! ”

Chongzhen was stunned for a moment, and then remembered that Zhu Shuren had indeed just sent a piece of music more than ten days ago, saying that the Hanzhong garrison had broken out of the plague brought by the Shanxi army.

When Zhu Shuren wrote this recital, Li Zicheng had not yet left Henan, and of course he could not have ulterior motives, so it was that the Sichuan officials and soldiers happened to encounter something at this juncture.

Daming's national fortune is really a backdrop!

But something has happened, what else can Chongzhen do? He could only go to the doctor when he was sick, and listened to the arrangements of Zhang Guowei and Zhou Yanru, and asked them to dispatch various departments to resist. First of all, we should arrange the troops in front of us, and then find a way to send the will of the troops of Huguang and Sichuan to be requisitioned.

……

Chongzhen's will to requisition the surrounding towns was issued within two or three days after the 10th day of October, and the conscription decree to Zhu Shuren was issued on 15 October.

It still takes time for the will to be on the road, and after arriving at the locality, it is also necessary to set aside time for the troops to dispatch, prepare, and deploy.

Of all the troops, the quickest response was Xiong Tong of Changshan, who marched in late October and arrived at Zhou Yuji's defense area within seven or eight days.

(Note: Historically, the Ming army fought with the Chuang army in Pingyang Mansion for a while on the battlefield in Shanxi, before the fall of Taiyuan.) Now because of the butterfly effect, Pingyang does not need to fight, and the army will soon arrive in Taiyuan as soon as it is difficult, so Xiong Tong, Bai Guangen, and Gao Jie did not participate in the battle of Pingyang, and only now go to reinforcements. The specific butterfly effect will not be expanded much, after all, it has nothing to do with the protagonist)

However, just as Xiong Tong was unreliable on the battlefield of Pingyang Mansion in history, now that he has changed places, his unreliability has not changed, after fighting side by side with Zhou Yuji, but seven or eight days later, with the news from all sides, the military spirit became more and more unstable,

Many soldiers of Xiongtongbu have heard that Liu Fangliang's Shun army behind them has also penetrated Shandong and entered Beizhili, so even if they defend Ningwu Pass, they have little hope, but may be outflanked by another way of the army and cut off the back road.

And Liu Zeqing and Liu Liangzuo didn't make any effort to stop Liu Fangliang at all, and the two prefectures in Shandong were basically passed by the Shun army!

In such a bad situation, coupled with the foil of more pig teammates, Xiong Tong's defense area was finally the first to be attacked and broken through by Li Zicheng at any cost, Ning Wuguan Ming army added up to more than 10,000 people, most of Zhou Yuji's descendants were annihilated, and Xiong Tong's troops surrendered-

This can't blame Zhou Yuji for not being able to fight, because the Battle of Ningwuguan in history lasted about ten days at most. Now Xiongtong's reinforcements have only lasted three or five days longer than the same period in history.

However, the losses of Li Zicheng's army at Ningwuguan were also very considerable, and the number of people who were directly killed in battle and seriously injured reached more than 20,000, which was more than the same period in history. It is also a loss that the lives of Li Zicheng's subordinates are worthless, and they are completely piled up to fill in the human lives, digging up the wall and blowing up the wall, stepping on the corpses to attack the city, all the operations are on the same page, and finally the lives are piled down.

On the sixth day of November, Li Zicheng finally entered the Hebei Plain.

On November 12, the east and west roads of the Shun army met at Zhending Mansion. The total number of troops was less than 400,000 when the troops were dispatched, and in the past few months, the number of war dead has exceeded at least 50,000 or 60,000, but the total number of troops has increased, because there are more hungry and homeless people along the way.

Zhou Yuji died in battle, Xiong Tong surrendered, Liu Zeqing and Liu Liangzuo only shouted but in fact they did not dare to stop the attacking thieves, and several bad news in a row reached Beijing, Chongzhen was also shocked and inexplicable, and couldn't figure out why the situation could deteriorate so quickly in just over 20 days.

He hurriedly solicited Zhang Guowei and Zhou Yanru to be held accountable, scolded him with a slap in his face, and beheaded Zhou Yanru's right-hand man Wu Changshi, who was suspected of corruption, and killed a group of other responsible officials, and instructed the Criminal Department to investigate the problems of Zhou Yanru and Zhang Guowei.

It's just that because of the danger of the soldiers, these two people can only wear the suspicion of being investigated, and they are investigated while handling military affairs, which can be regarded as a strange scene when the situation is extremely difficult.

However, the investigation did not even last half a month.

As the time entered the late November, the Shun army further killed from Zhending Mansion to the territory of Baoding Mansion, and only the last mansion was left from the capital. Bai Guangen and Gao Jie on the North Road were ineffective in containing Li Zicheng, and Bai Guangen actually surrendered directly after losing thousands of descendant troops-

Zhang Guowei previously felt that Bai Guangen was one of the eight general soldiers of the Songjin War, and when he followed Hong Chengchou, Hong Chengchou didn't vote for him, so he should be reliable enough. And Gao Jie and Li Zicheng hated to take their wives, and they must not dare to vote for fear of being killed.

In the end, it was Bai Guangen who voted, Gao Jie really didn't dare to vote, and a deputy general pulled out alone and fled all the way around.

This time he looked away, and it became the last straw for Chongzhen's distrust of Zhou Yanru and Zhang Guowei: After all, the generals you recommended to block the enemy have all defected to the enemy, which shows that you are a few elders who don't know people!

Zhou Yanru previously accepted 40,000 taels of gold from Liu Zeqing, although he has never been able to catch the real evidence, but at this moment, the ironclad evidence is not important, and the new and old accounts are directly counted together.

Chongzhen directly determined that these people had received money from military generals and deceived the king, so they chose these people to fight the enemy.

Chongzhen sent his intentions to Xu Shiqi, the secretary of the Criminal Department, and Xu Shiqi felt that these reasons for conviction were too unbelievable, so he wrote to defend himself. In the end, Chongzhen was like a madman before he died, and it was delayed for more than ten days, and the last nest disposed of all three Shangshu:

Xu Shiqi, the secretary of the Criminal Department, was not guilty, but because of his "unfavorable affairs", he refused to help the emperor convict other cabinet elders and ministers, and directly dismissed the officials for the people and ordered him to return to his hometown to live idle.

Zhang Guowei, the secretary of the Ministry of War, sat on the crime of "negligence", and used non-people to transfer troops and send generals, and he was indeed guilty, but he really did not find out that he had the problem of embezzling bribes and accepting benefits from military generals, so he was just not allowed to look at people.

Considering his previous work in controlling the water in Wuzhong (this is a historical reason), and his years as a household servant in Nanjing, he promoted the policy of lijin, which has a certain credit for promoting the southern provinces to raise their own funds to suppress thieves and pacify the south (this is an additional credit brought by the butterfly effect)

Chongzhen finally decided to deprive Zhang Guowei of the post of secretary of the military department, and was demoted to the right capital of the imperial history, the governor of Zhejiang, and the supervision of Jiangnan military training and salary matters.

The reason why Chongzhen is so determined is also to take into account that Zhang Guowei has been a household attendant in Nanjing for many years, and he is afraid that the situation is now so crisis, and there is a tendency in the south to not obey the dispatch. If Zhang Guowei is killed, maybe the three salaries of Nanzhili and Zhejiang will not be able to be collected, and no one will be willing to transport them to Beijing.

So give him a chance to make meritorious contributions, and let him go to be the governor of Zhejiang to collect money - although even if he goes, I don't know if Chongzhen has time to spend this silver.

Zhou Yanru, the last cabinet chief assistant and secretary of the ministry, because he was found to have received tens of thousands of taels of gold from Liu Zeqing (in fact, the evidence is not sufficient, but Chongzhen determined it so), then his problem must be much more serious than Zhang Guowei, and he was given a self-punishment in prison.

Zhou Yanru was forced to be helpless and kept wanting to delay, and finally the Jinyi guard sent by Chongzhen to supervise the commander Luo Yangxing, and asked his subordinates to "help" Zhou Yanru to "hang himself", but in fact, he was hanged directly, and lied to the outside that he was hanged.

Three books, one hanged himself, one demoted, and one dismissed.

After doing all this, Chongzhen replaced the champion and Wei Zaode, who was in the same term as Zhu Shuren three and a half years ago, to replace the dead Zhou Yanru as the first assistant of the cabinet and the secretary of the ministry.

A newcomer who has only been in the company for three and a half years can be the first assistant, and it can be regarded as the fastest promotion in the Ming Dynasty.

Although Wei Zaode knew that he was behind the blame, he was not nervous at all, and he was even a little happy: although Chongzhen's first assistant was no longer valuable. But when the time comes, he surrenders to Li Zicheng, but he can surrender as the "first assistant of the cabinet of the former dynasty", and he can also lead the ministers to surrender, so the gold content will be different!

Li Zicheng will definitely pay extra attention to himself, a literary and opera star, several times because of this! In this way, I still earned it!

In addition to Wei Zaode, because the position of the secretary of the military department also needed to be replaced, Chongzhen replaced Zhang Guowei with a replacement named Zhang Jinyan.

And Zhang Jinyan's attitude is similar to Wei Zaode, they all made up their minds that as soon as they took office, they would not do anything or make any decisions, so that they would not be killed, and they could survive until Chongzhen died first.

And when all these personnel transfers were completed, the time was only mid-December of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen.

On the fourth day of December, Xu Shiqi was dismissed and returned to his hometown, on the sixth day of December, Zhou Yanru hanged himself, and on the eighth day of December, Zhang Guowei was demoted to the south to become the governor of Zhejiang.

Only three days after Zhang Guowei left Beijing, on December 11, the Dashun army had penetrated the entire Baoding Prefecture, and four days later, it successively passed through Zhuoxian and Fangshan in Shuntian Prefecture, and arrived outside Beijing on the 15th.

Zhang Guowei is lucky, the day the Dashun army hit Fangshan County, he has already rushed to Tianjin Wei, when the Dashun army came to the city of Beijing, he just took a boat at the mouth of Dagu, on a sinking family daily business of the Yellow Sea sand ship of the north and south goods.

The ship was originally going to Suzhou to sell goods, but after listening to Zhang Guowei's self-declaration of identity, the captain and shopkeeper of the Shen family also knew about the friendship between this old Shangshu and his master, so they sold their personal favor and went to Hangzhou instead, sending Zhang Guowei directly to serve as the governor of Zhejiang.

The captain and the shopkeeper didn't have much knowledge, and when they heard the former Zhang Butang and the current governor Zhang say that the thieves had arrived in Beijing, they couldn't help but ask while driving the boat:

"Lord Futai, since the thief is so arrogant, you can run out, why doesn't Your Majesty stay away for the time being?"

Zhang Guowei was also speechless for a while, yes, why did Chongzhen try to defend the city of Beijing? Maybe the city of Beijing is strong enough to hold on for a few months, right?

But he could only reply in a businesslike manner: "How can the country be moved lightly!" You know what! This officer is not running away! was demoted by His Majesty to be the governor of Zhejiang! This is the emperor's order!

Beijing is strong, Your Majesty will definitely be able to boost morale and hold on until General Wu of Shanhaiguan, or the reinforcements of Governor Zhu of Sichuan arrive! ”

——

(ps: Zhang Guowei was also lucky in history, after he was demoted by Chongzhen to be the governor of Zhejiang, just ten days after leaving Beijing, Beijing was broken by the breaking army)