Li Zicheng self-judged, Zuo Liangyu was assassinated by his subordinates who abandoned the secret on the sickbed, and most of the wandering armed forces in the Nanyang area of Xiangyang were also pocketed by Zhu Shuren.

This harvest seems to be very huge, and it is really a great achievement.

Not only did it save tens of thousands of troops who would have been traitors in history, but it also made the situation of military confrontation in the Ming and Qing dynasties quite better. also avenged the revenge of the first emperor Chongzhen, which cannot be overstated.

It's a pity that in the final analysis, the world is still a whole game of chess that cannot be viewed separately, and Zhu Shuren delayed at least twenty days before and after in order to achieve all this. By the time he had completed this step, it was already October of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen.

As early as twenty days ago, King Fu surrendered Duoduo one after another with the territory of Fengyang Mansion and Guide Mansion, and during this period of time, the official documents of the imperial court on the eastern front for help also flew like snowflakes.

They all discussed and asked Zhu Shuren to stop the military operations between Huguang and Henan, and send more main forces to Nanjing for reinforcements. Judging from the content of those letters, Duoduo only took about ten days to receive and pass through the territory of the Puppet Fu King, and then began to attack the counties of Yangzhou Prefecture.

Shi Kefa also organized troops to defend, but the counties on the outskirts of Yangzhou Prefecture could only hold on for a few days. The last urgent reminder document received by Zhu Shuren has already shown that the offensive and defensive battle of Yangzhou City is about to begin.

If it weren't for the fact that Zhu Shuren was His Majesty's son-in-law, it would be impossible to betray His Majesty, then the will to summon Zhu Shuren's army might be as eager as Zhao Gou's twelve gold medals to recruit Yue Fei's class.

Zhu Shuren also knew that he would not be able to catch up with the battle of Yangzhou to defend the city no matter what, because even if he went down the east of the Yangtze River before Li Zicheng's death, it would take at least ten days for the army to arrive in Nanjing without delay.

And his understanding of the Qing army was far deeper than that of other Southern Ming officials—most of the other Southern Ming civil officials always regarded the Qing people as barbarians with little military technology, but only skilled in bows and horses.

Even in history, when Shi Kefa himself was defending Yangzhou, he actually didn't expect that Duoduo could organize so many Hongyi cannons to collapse the city wall, so the Battle of Yangzhou became like that.

In this life, it can be regarded as a sharp-eyed colleague like Zhu Shuren to help remind Shi Kefa: In the face of the Qing army of Duoduo, the thick walls of the fortified city are not to be feared, and in the case of the army's comprehensive combat strength, it is better to count on the city wall to temporarily resist the enemy, and it is better to count on the natural water systems such as the Yangtze River, Huai River, and Han River to delay the enemy.

After all, the Qing army's sailors were really not good, and they couldn't easily cross the river to fight if the Ming army blocked it.

In addition, because of the butterfly effect brought by Zhu Shuren, Shi Kefa sat in the center in this life, and it was impossible to go to Yangzhou to supervise the division in person, so Yangzhou's city defense naturally had other generals stationed there.

Shi Kefa was warned so repeatedly in advance, and naturally he was mentally prepared for the possibility of Yangzhou being temporarily lost, and asked the troops to organize the transfer of money, food, materials and people, and temporarily move to Jiangnan.

In the end, in the case that Zhu Shuren did not get the news in time, Yangzhou was attacked by Duoduo for several days, and the city was broken, but fortunately, the military and civilian materials that could be withdrawn in the city and the heart of the Ming Dynasty were not lost, and they could be evacuated by crossing the river in advance.

This kind of temporary retreat and forbearance is still acceptable.

After all, if there are people who have lost land, people and land will survive. If the land is lost, the people and the land are lost. Daming has lost a lot of land, and if he temporarily loses Yangzhou for a few months, Zhu Shuren naturally vows to repay Duoduo twice in the future.

Such a large-scale retreat must have been inevitably mixed in by the camouflage sent by the Qing army in advance before the arrival of the army. However, across the river, these fine works cannot have an immediate effect.

Shi Kefa also knows this, he also weighs the pros and cons, and knows that he has to endure this disadvantage for the time being, so he can only hope to continue to stabilize the river defense, isolate the news, and try to be as stable as possible.

All of a sudden, the city of Nanjing was ordered by Shi Kefa to be under martial law, the city gate was closed, except for the materials escorted by the imperial army, as well as the soldiers and horses, messengers, and scouts who were deployed to defend, other ordinary people were not allowed to enter or leave the city.

There are those who complain about this in Nanjing, and there are those who are wavering, but Shi Kefa is in charge of the military department, and with the assistance of Shen Tingyang, they can completely control the army south of the Yangtze River, and the opponents will not be able to make waves for a while.

In addition, in the temporarily occupied Yangzhou City, not everyone has withdrawn, and some of the rich and salt merchants who have a lot of local granges and are intertwined are afraid that after they run away with the imperial court, the Qing army of Duoduo will enter the city, and they will liquidate and confiscate their properties, and their fields will not be recognized in the future.

Therefore, a considerable number of these people chose to secretly contact Duoduo and stay in Yangzhou, wanting to lead the way in exchange for the Qing State to recognize their legitimate property-

But it's not surprising that these people think this way. Because the Qing army was previously in the Huangtaiji period, although it burned and plundered in the north, but after Dolgon took power this time, in the first few months, in order to put on a posture of fighting for the world, he once let his subordinates rein in.

It is not surprising that these Yangzhou tycoons, salt merchants, and large landowners in Lianghuai were deceived by this illusion and felt that they could keep their property by surrendering to the enemy.

Of course, this kind of restraint is by no means a change of temperament, it is completely pretended to be temporarily forbearing, in order to weaken the Han people's resistance and fighting spirit.

Therefore, when the Qing army took North China and the Central Plains in history, the resistance of the people and local armies was very weak. It wasn't until Duoduo crossed the Yangtze River that he felt that the world was decided, and it was impossible for Nanming to turn the tables, that the fangs of Dorgon and Duoduo were completely and unabashedly revealed.

The famous order of "keep your head without hair, keep your hair without your head", and the subsequent purges and slaughters, were only promulgated in the Jiangnan region after Duoduo entered the city of Nanjing. On the one hand, it is to completely destroy the will of the Han doctor class to resist, and on the other hand, it is purely necessary to find a reason for large-scale massacres and looting.

Otherwise, the people have directly become the people of the Qing Dynasty, and what excuse do they have to frantically plunder the obedient people under their rule?

forced the people to be reluctant to shave their heads, and it happened to be the richest place in the south of the Yangtze River to carry out a massacre. If you kill the least people, you will grab the most wealth, money, and food, and the efficiency is extremely high.

Therefore, according to the conscience, after the Qing army entered the customs in history, the Han people in the north did not resist much, and the people in the south of the Yangtze River resisted extremely fiercely, and later engaged in the massacre tragedy in Jiangyin, Kunshan, and Jiading. The forbearance and cunning of the Qing people also played a considerable role in it.

When they attacked the north, they did not show the side of forcing people to shave their heads and indiscriminately provoking and slaughtering the city, and the people in the north did not know their despicability and shamelessness, thinking that Dolgon was different from Huang Taiji, and had the "potential to be a Ming Jun", and was temporarily softened to resist and fight, and could only be regarded as deceived.

At this moment, Duoduo didn't feel that the big picture was decided. Although he entered Yangzhou City, he still knew that the Yangtze River defense line in front of him was very difficult to cross.

He needs the rich merchants, people, and sailors of Jiangbei to work together for him to make up for the shortcomings and disadvantages of his navy in the Qing Dynasty, so that he has a chance to become immortal, so for the huge rich who are willing to stay in Yangzhou City and secretly serve in advance, he chooses to keep the contract to protect his family's small industry, as long as they donate ships to help the army and help recruit sailors.

Of course, killing people must also be killed, after all, they have all arrived in a rich land, and the Duoduo army has traveled all the way, except for ordnance, other supplies are actually very lacking, if it is not allowed to grab a handful, the troops will not have the morale to carry out the later river crossing operations.

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Therefore, as long as he did not follow Shi Kefa to cross the river with the people, nor did he greet him in advance to lead the way, the rest of the people were still frantically killed by Duoduo, and all the industries were looted for military funds.

In history, it is said that 800,000 people died in the "Yangzhou Ten Days", but this life only lasted three days, and at least tens of thousands of people died. It was claimed to the public that it was because "these soldiers and civilians resisted the Qing army under the deployment of Shi Kefa, so they were slaughtered." In the follow-up, as long as the cities in the south of the Yangtze River surrender without a fight and open the city without blood, they can all be exempted from slaughter."

This argument is quite deceptive for a while, because as early as the beginning of Chongzhen's sixteenth year, when Li Zicheng had just established his account, he had already announced a similar policy. This time, Duoduo is just picking up people's teeth and wisdom, and drawing scoops in the same way.

……

Duoduo made good progress in Huaiyang, and the lone army went deep into Guazhoudu, which reached Yangzhou, and even the east of the main city of Yangzhou and other counties under Yangzhou (Taizhou, Nantong and other places in later generations, all belonged to Yangzhou in the late Ming Dynasty), Duoduo did not have the energy to completely master it for the time being. He just wanted to quickly chisel through the Nanming Defense Area and cross the river as soon as possible.

In order to achieve his strategic goals, Duoduo will of course make full use of resources, so when he was preparing to attack the main city of Yangzhou, he sent a six-hundred-mile expedited Pegasus messenger to Kaifeng to contact Azig.

I hope that Azig's Western Route Army, regardless of the Guanzhong area, will go south directly from Heluo and Kaifeng to help him contain Zhu Shuren, and don't let Zhu Shuren's troops return to defend Nanjing too quickly. In this way, he could create a time gap for Duoduo to storm and cross the river to take Nanjing.

When Azig received Dord's letter asking for help, he didn't dare to prevaricate too much. On the one hand, history has now seen a huge butterfly effect -

In the original history, Azig was going to attack Xi'an with the main force in person, and then found an opportunity to break through the Qinling Mountains all the way into Hanzhong, and finally fought with Zhang Xianzhong's regime.

With the difficulty of the Shu Road, the Qinling defense line was originally impossible to be easily broken, the reason why Azig was able to succeed in history, the key is that at that time there were Zhang Xianzhong and the Ming Dynasty Sichuan guards in Shu to fight each other, Hanzhong also fell into the hands of Li Zicheng alone, Shu is not a monolith, no one is wary of entering the Sichuan mountain road, so Azig was given a chance.

And today's Sichuan, which Zhu Shuren had just spent a year and a half years ago to pacify, from Chengdu to Hanzhong, were all unified under a military flag, monolithic, and Azig naturally knew that it was impossible to have the opportunity to enter Sichuan.

The change in Wu Sangui's status, the deal he reached with the Qing army to "give up Guanning in exchange for the Qing army to allow him to pursue Li Zicheng Guanzhongqu on his own", all kinds of factors have made Azig's westward expansion mission basically completed, and there is no other direction to work in the follow-up for the time being.

In this way, the task to the west came to an end ahead of schedule, and Azig, who had freed his hands, was already going to find some new troubles and provocations, and it was logical for his troops to be stationed in Heluo and Kaifeng, and to go south to Nanyang and Xiangyang.

This is not only for Azig himself, but also for his Qing Dynasty, and also to give Dordor, Dorgon's half-brother, a little face, and ease the relationship between Azig and his highest decision-making level in the Qing Dynasty.

Zhu Shuren originally thought that after finally killing Li Zicheng, assassinating Zuo Liangyu, and absorbing most of his subordinates, he would be able to completely free up his hands to deal with Duoduo.

But this sudden butterfly effect actually plunged him into a new quagmire - he took back the territory of Nanyang Mansion from Zuo Liangyu, but this territory became a new hot potato.

At the same time that he had just occupied Nanyang, Azig's Manchurian cavalry had already taken advantage of the chaos to seize Yinque Pass, Taigu Pass and Fangcheng Gukou, and controlled all the mountains on the periphery of the Nanyang Basin.

For a time, Azig could attack and retreat.

And if Zhu Shuren wants to hold Nanyang, which has been extremely poor and has been scraped by Zuo Liangyu for several years, he has to invest a huge amount of troops, and even have to prepare for a decisive field battle with the main force of the Qing army on the Western Road!

And once Zhu Shuren invested too many troops, he would have to transport a large amount of grain from Xiangyang to the Nanyang front. Because the Nanyang area has been looted by Zuo Liangyu, the population is getting smaller and smaller year by year, and it is impossible to feed more troops. Zuo Liangyu's tens of thousands of people have been supported by the money and food of this government in the past few years, and they have not been able to squeeze out all their bone marrow.