The impact of Azig's violent death was, of course, immediate.

However, because this happened so suddenly, its effects will take on two diametrically opposed forms in a short period of time.

Azig's henchmen, the closest troops, showed consternation, anger, and then an instant burst of vengeful rage. But the ordinary soldiers who were farther away were at a loss, and even slightly frightened.

Because of the loss of unified command, and no one could immediately have enough authority to take over the command of the whole army from Azig, the red flag entered into a brief inconsistency of orders.

The two Khala, who were commanded by Zhuo Butai and Shaerhu during their lifetimes, were originally ready to attack under the orders of Azig.

Moreover, Zhuo Butai and Shaerhu were only shot two and three respectively, unlike Azig, who was shot five times in his body, and did not have time to leave a last word. Zhuo Butai and Shaerhu either burped or fell unconscious after giving the order to charge, and their troops rushed towards the eight hundred dragoons led by Li Yu like crazy.

The other Jiala, who were inlaid with red flags, were sluggish and confused, and they hesitated for a long time before catching up, and there was a disconnect within the Qing army on the issue of pursuit.

Li Yu ran fast, and his 300 rifled snipers didn't have time to reload on the battlefield, so of course he got on his horse and ran away immediately after firing a shot.

At this time, if you don't run, you are still waiting for the Qing army to treat you!

The remaining 500 Wuchang-made smoothbore riflemen were ordered to cover the rifled gun comrades to withdraw first. This is also to ensure that not even a single shot of the new weapon falls into the hands of the enemy, and they have to make sure that the battlefield is cleaned.

Therefore, they calmly waited for the Qing cavalry to rush a little closer and enter the effective range of the smoothbore guns, and then fired in batches one by one, and then mounted their horses and retreated.

Both sides were cavalry, and the Ming army came with one man and two horses, and the horsepower rested for a long time before the battle, and the sprint speed at this moment was naturally faster than that of the Qing army. After releasing the guns and then running, the Qing army had no chance to catch up at all, at most they just fired arrows indiscriminately with a bow and a mane forward, and scattered shot and wounded more than a dozen Ming cavalry riflemen, and only two or three people were killed.

However, the Ming army's rifle resistance caused more than ten times the casualties of the Qing army, at least seventy or eighty people were shot off their horses, and the musket bullets were more powerful, at least half of them were directly killed.

After the two sides disengaged, Li Yu quickly walked in the opposite direction with Zhu Wenzhen, achieved a rendezvous, and also lured Zhuo Butai and the two Jiala, who were commanded by Sha Erhu before his death, to a close place.

Zhu Wenzhen held 3,000 musketeers in his hand, of course, he would not be polite to the cavalry of the Qing army, which was not much different in number, and a classic breech double-barreled troll was output close to his face, and he charged bravely to attack, which immediately calmed down those enemies who came in anger.

The specific method of calming down, of course, is to let them drop hundreds of more corpses!

The elite short-barreled musket cavalry of the Ming army, hedged against the cavalry of the Qing army, who is strong and who is weak under this tactic has been repeatedly verified by several classic battles over the years, and there is really no need to repeat it.

The hope of the cavalry of the Qing army was only to keep a distance, fight cavalry shooting, and take advantage of the shortcomings of the Ming cavalry's short-barreled firearms, which had a weak effective range compared to the cavalry bow, and slowly depleted. But this tactic will be restrained by the Ming army's long-range rifles, although today the Ming army has very few long-range rifles, only 800 shots, but unfortunately the Qing army has long been in chaos, where can you play that exquisite tactic?

After the two Jiala were stunned and disabled by the Ming army, the remaining three Jiala's decisions were uncertain, and the breath of revenge for Azig was vented, and the Qing army could only choose to temporarily retreat and rebuild the command system to fight again at a later date.

Zhu Wenzhen was also very calm, knowing that he couldn't chase deeply at this time - most of the muskets of his troops did not have a long range, and the enemy wanted to escape and chase him, and it was easy to be caught in a kite. The two armies were then separated.

……

However, the Manchurian cavalry of the Red Banner was easy to withdraw, and the nightmare of the Qing army in the entire Xinyang Mansion and even the Huaixi battlefield had just begun.

Because the upper reaches of the Huai River are frozen on a snowy day, since Zhu Wenzhen was able to step on the ice last night to burn and destroy, he can safely return to Xinyang by crossing the ice south at this moment.

When he returned to the outside of Xinyang City, it was already late in the afternoon, and it was about half an hour before it was dark.

The Qing army's besieging troops outside Xinyang County had not received the news of Azig's accident at the moment, and seeing that Zhu Wenzhen dared to come back, they were also full of fighting spirit and planned to divide their troops to meet it.

Zhu Wenzhen gave full play to the speed advantage of one man and two horse cavalry, and made a detour at the beginning, opening up a little distance, so that the Qing army could not catch up with him too quickly.

At the same time, Zhang Huangyan, who was always paying attention in the city, saw that Zhu Wenzhen had returned safely, although he didn't know how much he had achieved, but he also firmly believed that he must have more or less won a vote, and firmly asked the defending troops to go out of the city gate to line up to respond.

Of course, Zhang Huangyan would not let the defenders go too far out of the city, at least within the cover range of the city's head Franc machine and the Hongyi cannon, so that the combination of high and low crossfire would be completely worthy of the Qing army.

The Qing army was responsible for the generals who surrounded Xinyang County, mainly Hilgen, Haninga and others under Azig, who were not famous generals, mainly during this time Azig originally did not plan to storm Xinyang, but to besiege it, and the Qing army often changed defenses in the cold.

In the face of the Ming army's "provocative" behavior of daring to send troops out of the city to meet Zhu Wenzhen, of course, Hilgen and Haninga couldn't bear this breath, and immediately organized troops to rush up to try a decisive battle in the field.

Zhang Huangyan didn't have time to send someone to learn about the results of the battle from Zhu Wenzhen, so he had to bite the bullet and carry it head-on, which was still a bit risky.

Seeing this, Zhu Wenzhen didn't have time to go back to the city to report, so he made a decisive decision:

"All rifled snipers, detour back to the flank of the enemy's left flank and shoot a volley! No need to hide your firepower! ”

The Ming army used rifled guns before, but they were all hidden and tucked, lest they lose the suddenness of the first sneak attack by exposing their strength. But today, since they are all openly sniping Azig, it won't be long before the Qing army will know the terrifying range and high accuracy of this artifact.

Therefore, it is worthless to hide again, it is better to take advantage of the time required for the transmission of information, and quickly give full play to the suddenness of the sneak attack, and get two more votes by the way.

Even if you can only snipe a few Jia La Ezhen and Niu Lu Ezhen, it is just an addition, anyway, the capital has been earned back by sniping Azig.

The snipers of the Ming army, who had already completed reloading on the way back, immediately followed the order, specially rounded the flank, and fired a wave intensively at a certain point in the enemy's second line that could not be hit by friendly muskets.

For a time, dozens of officers and guards of the Qing army were caught off guard and were shot and killed and fell from their horses.

Zhu Wenzhen chose this purely for deterrence and to tell the enemy: Our army now has the ability to kill rear officers, don't mistake those smoothbore infantry who did it!

After a round of shooting, Zhu Wenzhen immediately took advantage of the stunned Qing army to launch a charge, and made the whole army shout: "The Great Tomorrow soldiers have broken through Zhenyang County!" Snipe Azig! ”

"The spear pierces Yang in a thousand steps! Every shot is sure to hit! God punish the dog Tartar! ”

The soldiers shouted in a chaotic manner, some lines were not unified, in short, it was a temporary idea of how to hit morale.

The Qing army on the opposite side was sniped at the beginning of dozens of officers and guards, and they were only stunned by the sharpness of the new weapons of the Ming army, and then they were hit by such a bad news that it was difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and finally gradually panicked.

Especially Zhang Huangyan, who has been fighting for more than two months, suddenly became bold and dared to go out of the city to fight back, which is too abnormal. The morale of the Qing army could not help but become more and more shaken, and many soldiers gradually began to be suspicious, believing in the propaganda of the Ming army.

When the brave met on the narrow road, the Qing army was bold, so they had to retreat slowly, first seeking a steady fight back to the camp.

In the next day or two, the news of Azig's death obviously spread to more and more Qing troops, and even if some troops were temporarily concealed, they would at least receive orders from above to reduce their forces.

After receiving Zhu Wenzhen back to the city and officially confirming the results of the battle, Zhang Huangyan was also in great spirits, and hurriedly ordered to write several good news, as well as documents to the defenders everywhere, trying to ask for reinforcements to expand the results of the battle, and at the same time try to boost the morale of the Ming army in the Xinyang Theater and turn to the counteroffensive.

……

In the next five days, the Ming army finally gradually turned to a counteroffensive, and Zhu Shuren, who was far away in Fengyang, as mentioned earlier, received this good news from his cousin in an unexpected surprise.

Zhu Shuren really didn't expect that Huaixi would be able to fight back so quickly.

And since he originally planned to hold each other on the middle and east roads to digest the results of the battle, use the bait of Pizhou Kong Youde to bleed the Qing army, and by the way, rely on the sea route to reinforce Liu Zeqing and Gong Wencai to cause trouble for the Qing army.

Therefore, Zhu Shuren's surplus of troops was still very sufficient, and he immediately made a decision, and transferred many reserves in the middle to reinforce his cousin, and went against Huai and Ruying, interspersed and outflanked on a large scale, and strived to expand the results of the battle.

The morale of the Qing army and the collapse of the command system brought about by the death of Azig were also really terrible, and some of the Qing troops wavered and contracted, resulting in the exposure of the flanks and backs of the friendly troops, which were interspersed by the Ming army.

The Ming army pursued the dead and chased the north, and it took more than half a month to intersperse and recover the land south of the two important rivers of Rushui and Yingchuan, not only recovering the entire territory of Xinyang Prefecture, but also advancing part of the forward to the territory of Kaifeng Prefecture.

The Ming army on the boundary of Nanyang Mansion was originally blocked by the Qing army in the south of the Tongbai Mountain Pass in Fangcheng, but now as the local Qing army defenders were worried about being attacked by the enemy and gave up the danger and retreated, the Nanyang Ming army also flocked out to recover Ruzhou Mansion.

The northern part of Xinyang Prefecture, the entire Ruzhou Prefecture, and the southern part of Kaifeng Prefecture (the part south of Yingchuan) were all recovered within a month.

After a few years, the Ming army once again advanced to the areas of Xuchang, Yuncheng, and Chenxian - this is basically the extent to which Zhu Shuren did when he succeeded in counterattacking Li Zicheng.

Compared with the Qing army on the middle and east routes, the Azig division lost a lot of land at all, and the only luck was that the loss of the army's vital forces was relatively small.

After all, they had to retreat because of the unexpected change that Prince Ying was sniped at. Most of the troops retreated out of fear that their teammates would be shaken and their flanks would be sold, not because they would be broken down on the battlefield, and at least seventy or eighty percent of their combat strength was retained.

Azig also had a total of more than 100,000 horses on this road, and in several consecutive battles, the total battle losses were more than 20,000 or 30,000, which was a good performance compared to the other two roads.

At this point, the whole period of four or five months of bloody battles from the early autumn of the third year of Longwu to the month of Layue, the Qing army completely lost the only small piece of land in Huainan. On the west road, the additional land in Yingnan of Huaibei was lost, and in the east, the land of Sinan in Huaibei was additionally lost (to the first line of Xuzhou, except for Pizhou, which was still besieging the city and bleeding)

In terms of troop losses, the Middle Route Army was the worst, with a total of 1340,000 horses annihilated before and after, and 80,000 in a single battle of Weishui.

The losses of the Eastern Route Army are not much, and so far they have lost more than 10,000 and less than 20,000. But considering that Kong Youde still had a considerable number of troops in that cage, he had already pronounced death in advance. When the Ming army withdraws money, the total loss of the Qing army on the East Road will exceed 40,000.

And after the death of Azig on the West Road, he also lost a total of 30,000 horses.

The Qing army's three fronts were all combined, and in these five months of tug-of-war and the Ming army's defensive counterattack, a total of 210,000 soldiers and horses were wiped out.

The Manchu cavalry accounted for more than 24,000, the Mongol soldiers were about 17,000, the Han army banners were 60,000 (including the 20,000 that Kong Youde had recorded on the account and had not died), and the green battalion was 110,000.

In terms of generals, a total of one prince, one county king, two Baylors, a number of Beizi, and auxiliary generals have died. plus two of the traitors Sanshun King (Kong Youde is waiting to die).

The combat strength of the Qing army has been completely broken by now, and it has been beaten and unable to get up.

Before the war, the combat strength of the Qing court in the whole country was only about 80,000 regular troops of the Manchurian Eighth Banner, 50,000 or 60,000 Mongolian military flags, 100,000 Han military flags, 200,000 first-line green battalions, and 400,000 second-line reserve green battalions, plus 1230,000 full-age people who were not soldiers, and less than 100,000 Mongolian-age regulars.

To put it bluntly, there are 400,000 troops that can be pulled directly into the battlefield. 200,000 Manchu and Mongolian men who can be conscripted, 400,000 Han Chinese who can be conscripted (no matter how much is conscripted, morale and loyalty cannot be guaranteed, these 400,000 are found from the traitor group who are promoted to be "assistants of the ruling class", and the others are pure oppressed Han Chinese)

Now the loss of 210,000 soldiers is equivalent to directly cutting off half of the front-line troops in the country!

Even if Dolgon found that the situation was not right in the five months after the start of the war, he increased a wave of mobilization, such as temporarily recruiting another 20,000 or 30,000 from the reserve men of the Eight Banners, and also turning some of the second-line green battalion reserves with a training period of less than one year into regular ones in advance,

It is only barely enough to replenish the number of people who can be mobilized back to less than 300,000. Considering that the recruits could not guarantee their combat effectiveness at all and could not participate in offensive battles, the 100,000 people in Xinla just filled and stabilized the defense lines.

Regardless of whether the losses can be replenished in the future, at least Dorgon's third-line offense is completely bankrupt. Dolgon's personal political prestige within the Qing court was also completely collapsed.

As soon as his only half-brother Azig died, and with the death of Dordor three years ago, Dolgon completely lost the layout of "himself presiding over the center and leading troops with his own mother's and brother's brothers".

From then on, Dolgon was bound to fall into the embarrassment of "looking inside and ignoring the outside", or "looking outside and ignoring the inside", and there was no way to break the game.

……

With the successive defeats of the Qing court, the internal contradictions gradually became acute.

On the side of the Ming army, it is naturally thriving, and the atmosphere of Zhongxing is thriving.

In the month of Layue, the Ming army continued to hold each other at a slow pace, and finally did not leave Kong Youde through the New Year, which can be regarded as a matter of the year, and it was the end of the year.

After several months of siege, there was not much food and grass in Pizhou City. The Ming army also released a word: Kong Youde will never be forgiven, but other ordinary soldiers who have been thieves for a short time can be pardoned.

As the military rations ran out, they didn't see the Qing court's intention to save them at all, and if they went down, they would have to eat each other.

Of course, those who were soldiers were unwilling to work for Kong Youde, so finally one day in the middle of the month, a mutiny broke out in Pizhou City, and several junior generals, with thousands of soldiers who wanted to make a comeback, launched a wave of sneak attacks on Kong Youde's descendants, and also opened a city gate.

Listening to the shouts and killings in the city, it was confirmed that there was really internal strife, and of course the besieging Ming army would not follow them, and soon swarmed in.

Kong Youde originally thought that he could suppress the anti-justice army, but as the Ming army entered the city through the north gate, all hope was dashed.

At that time, Kong Youde was personally supervising the battle on the tower of the south gate of Pizhou, that is, the White Gate Tower, to prevent the rebels from approaching the city gate. Seeing the Ming army swarming from the north, he knew that with his crime of being a hardcore traitor, he would definitely die a miserable death if he was captured alive.

Therefore, Kong Youde was determined that he could not be captured alive by the Ming army, nor could he be found by the Ming army to prevent him from being brutalized again, so he asked his henchmen to get a few torches and some firewood, hid directly in the city tower, and set fire to the wooden pavilion on the upper floor of the city tower.

He counted on the roof of the castle tower to collapse and bury him, and then slowly scorched the body, so that it was difficult to distinguish. It's a pity that the lower part of the castle tower is still a stone structure, so it can't burn at all, and the fire doesn't spread quickly.

The slogan of "capture Kong Youde alive and escort him back to Nanjing Lingchi" roared by the Ming army was getting closer and closer, and several rafters on the roof of the city tower finally burned off one after another and fell to the ground.

The rafters were smashed on the back, which seemed to break the spine bones, which was equivalent to a paraplegia of the lower body.

However, just when he thought that he was finally free, several junior officers next to him glanced at each other, discussed a few words with the soldiers below, and then made up their minds to come over and work together to move away from the rafters.

Kong Youde was stunned for a while, vomiting blood intermittently and hoarsely: "What are you saving me for?" That's hurting me! Let me suffer more! ”

However, in the next second, those officers took out hemp rope and tied up Kong Youde, who was seriously injured and broken.

"Lord Wang, I'm sorry! If you are burned to death, we will also be treated as a dead rebel and die! Handed you over to the court like this, let's not seek meritorious service and get rid of the crime! Give your brothers a few lives! ”

Kong Youde is also a fierce general, and his weapons and armor are also very sophisticated, if his martial arts are still there, these junior colonels in the army will not be able to take him.

But now he is a high paraplegic and has become a broken crest dog, where do others still need to be afraid of him?

Kong Youde wanted to bite his tongue and commit suicide, but the other party directly smashed him on the mouth with an armor-piercing hammer, smashing his jawbone and his teeth falling to the ground, and he suddenly lost the ability to bite his tongue and passed out directly.

A group of spineless soldiers who begged to get rid of their crimes carried the tied Kong Youde down, shouting surrender slogans all the way, and finally let the Ming army contain the butcher's knife.

The White Gate Tower behind him collapsed in the gradually blazing fire.