Hauge knew that the ownership of Hebei was ultimately only determined by a decisive battle.

So at this point, of course, he can also figure out that concentrating superior forces and making a desperate bet is the most important thing.

And we must no longer care about the gains and losses of one city and one place, and we want to hold on to the fertile and anointed places everywhere, which will only disperse the troops and give the Ming army a chance to divide and encircle and break through.

Moreover, on the Hebei Plain, except for Beijing, other cities are really not strong, and during the reign of the Qing army, they did not pay attention to the construction of city defenses.

After all, he won the world with bows and horses in the Qing Dynasty, and the money and food were in financial difficulties, who was impatient to build the city wall like the Han people.

Under Haoge's shrinking forces, the southernmost prefecture in the territory of Beizhili, the Daimyo's Mansion, was directly abandoned by the Qing army because it was too deep into the south geographically, and it had become a surplus.

From the Daimyo Prefecture, the Daimyo Prefecture, and the neighboring Wei County as the boundary, from this line to the south, Qingfeng County, Neihuang County, Jun County, Hua County, Puyang, Dongming and other six large counties, all abandoned.

All the troops shrank to the vicinity of Daimyo and Wei County. The troops originally deployed along the Taihang Mountains in the north also went south to assemble on the front line of Daming, Weixian, and Handan, and the northernmost flank covered the deployment, which did not exceed Shahe and Xingtai.

This is tantamount to giving up the blockade of Taihang Mountain, allowing the Ming army to enter and exit the southern part of the Taihang Eight Mountains and enter the Hebei Plain - because Haoge knows very well that if the Ming army wants to enter the Hebei Plain for a decisive battle, there is no need to go far, and it is not good to advance directly along the plain from the Weihui-Daimyo's line? Why do you have to go around from Shanxi, which has rugged terrain, and it is still troublesome to transport grain in logistics?

As a result, the core strength of the Qing army's more than 200,000 troops was assembled in a small predetermined theater within three or five counties, spanning the junction of the three prefectures of Beizhili Daimyo Mansion, Guangping Prefecture and Dongchang Prefecture in Shandong Province.

Haoge had already made a plan, and he also had a hunch in his heart, knowing that the final decisive battle between the Ming and Qing dynasties would happen here. At this point, the site doesn't matter anymore.

Wei County, Daming, Handan, etc., have been the heart of Hebei since ancient times. During the Warring States Period, Yandu Jicheng was the Beijing of later generations, and it was also the seat of Youzhou later. And Wei County, Daming, Handan area, the Warring States period was the capital of Zhao State, but also the location of the later Jizhou Zhizhi Yecheng, the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Yecheng around many times also became the capital of the Northern Dynasties.

It can be said that in the Hebei region, except for the city of Beijing, this area is the most worthy of a decisive battle. Whoever owns this area owns the entire fertile and flat Zhao Land.

For the Qing army, the decisive battle in this season is not unacceptable, after all, Jiang Huang was afraid of lack of food, and he only started to pull the flag in the middle of September.

And everything has advantages and disadvantages, the world is not perfect, Jiang Hao got the convenience of autumn grain storage, and the Qing army can naturally get it.

At the beginning of the rekindling of the war in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the autumn grain in Hebei had been harvested and put into storage, but the tax collection work in various places had not yet begun, let alone the transportation.

Now the Qing army knows that it is unable to defend everywhere, and it must shrink and concentrate its forces, with the brutality of the Qing army, of course, it will not be polite to the people-

In Haoge's view, the people of Neihuang, Huaxian, Dongming, Puyang and other places are no longer the people of his Qing Dynasty, and as this land is lost to the Ming Dynasty, the people above will of course become his enemies of the Qing Dynasty!

What does it matter if you haven't had time to collect taxes slowly? Grab it directly! Much faster than collecting taxes!

Therefore, when the Qing army retreated, in order to solve the military rations needed for the assembly of hundreds of thousands of troops by the way, Haoge actually directly ordered to carry out complete burning, killing and looting among the six counties mentioned above, especially the two or three counties that the southernmost section would definitely not be able to keep!

Originally, the tax collection may be a few percent, and if you rob it directly, you can rob it all, and you don't have to leave a grain of grain for the people, and you can take away as much as you can.

Dongming County and Huaxian County, in the process of the Qing army's retreat, even directly suffered the treatment of not sealing the knife for three days, robbed everything that could be robbed as quickly as possible, and then quickly transported away and escaped.

There are a few counties left a little north, but there is no direct massacre, but it is definitely necessary to snatch away the folk autumn grain that can be robbed, and when there are people who do not want to be robbed of their life food, they come out to resist, and they will be ruthlessly cleaned by butcher knives.

The Qing army was so tyrannical, of course, it was not without sequelae, first of all, even some of the green battalions in the Qing army mutinied, after all, some of the soldiers in the green battalion were from the local daimyo's mansion, and the Qing army burned and plundered their hometowns when they gathered their forces, which would inevitably arouse resistance.

So although food was raised for hundreds of thousands of troops, the Qing army's internal friction also lost at least thousands of troops-

About more than 2,000 green battalion soldiers from the famous mansions rebelled one after another and merged with the Qing army, and if they couldn't fight, they fled and went south to join the Ming Dynasty. In order to suppress these scattered mutinies, the Qing army also killed about hundreds of people. The sum of one positive and one negative also lost 3,000 troops.

And the southern rebellion of the mutinous green battalion soldiers will also bring the movements of the Qing army to the Ming official army as soon as possible.

The conscience of heaven and earth, Zhu Shuren is in Kaifeng to supervise the battle remotely, and he does not directly sit on the front line to command, after all, he is already the governor and prince of the capital, and he still has to do less risky things. And when he was in Kaifeng, he didn't expect Haoge to be so perverted at first, and directly carried out scorched earth looting and resistance.

Therefore, the initial advance of the Ming army was relatively cautious, lest the Qing army retreat in great strides in order to pull the Ming army out of touch, and then carry out some large-scale roundabout outflanking tricks on the Hebei Plain.

Until this moment, hearing that the Qing army was so strong that it was obviously impossible to set up an ambush along the way, and the people of Hebei were also surging, and they rose up to respond to the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Shucai ordered Cao Bianjiao, Huang Degong and Liu Guoneng to all rush north.

At the same time, he didn't have time to ask the imperial court, so he asked Zhang Huangyan to go north from Kaifeng to be in charge of the front-line supervisor. He privately said that he would slowly follow the procedures of the Nanjing Cabinet and temporarily confer the title of Governor of Beizhili and Secretary of the Military Department to Zhang Huangyan, which is equivalent to the duties of the governor of Henan and Hebei at the same time.

As for Zhu Shuren himself, he will definitely cross the Yellow River and go north in danger after the decisive battle is determined - not because he is instigated, but because he is now in danger of the world, if there is a mistake, it may make the rule of the Han people in Chinese civilization fall into civil strife again, so we have to be cautious.

He knew very well that his current life was worth more than the life of the emperor in peacetime. The emperor is dead, so that the crown prince can succeed to the throne smoothly and not threaten the survival of the world.

His life as Zhu Shuren must live longer than his father-in-law, and his father-in-law, Emperor Zhu Changshu, will die first, and the imperial grandson will ascend the throne smoothly, so that no one will do anything. Otherwise, if he has an accident, maybe there will be a way for the Ming side branch clan to find a way to be Zhu Changshu's godson, and everything is possible after a long time.

As for the civil and local governors, the Ming Dynasty did not originally have a permanent governor of the North Zhili region, after all, it was where the Gyeonggi region was located. That is, at present, Beijing is still in the occupied area, and the imperial court is in Nanjing, so it can be temporarily set up. Therefore, this position is naturally very valuable, and it is impossible for Zhu Shuren to let others go with confidence.

After all, Zhang Huangyan is a loyal and righteous person who will go down in history, and he will be alongside Yue Fei Yuqian in later generations, and he is his cousin, who has been the governor of Henan for many years, and his military merits in repelling the Tartars are high enough, so he can suppress this field and don't have to worry about changes.

So this decision was quickly implemented. The generals below really didn't disagree, to be honest, just because Zhang Huangyan commanded Zhu Wenzhen and Li Yu to sneak attack and shoot Azig two years ago, everyone felt that he deserved it.

Zhang Huangyan also lived up to his mission, and soon gathered all the armies, raised troops to the north, and organized a decisive battle. At the same time, he also ordered the Ming army in Shandong to also take the opportunity to go north, maintain oppression, and prepare to take over the territory that was about to be abandoned by the Qing army.

Zhang Huangyan was very clear: Hauge gathered troops like this, not only would the six counties in the southern part of the Daimyo Mansion give up, but there would also be changes in some corners and corners in Shandong.

And even if Haoge doesn't take the initiative to give up, with the Qing army's current posture of fishing for the sake of the decisive battle and striving for a lasting grain store, the people in Shandong who don't look at the looting will rise up and make things happen on their own.

Let the Ming army along the border be ready at any time, and once it is found that there is chaos in the pseudo-clear territory on the opposite side, it is convenient to attack and receive the territory as soon as possible to save the people from fire and water.

His operation was not in vain, allowing the Ming army to take several formerly fallen counties in the mountainous areas of Mount Tai and Mengshan in Shandong without blood.

……

After more than half a month of see-sawing, the main forces of both sides were finally assembled in the middle of the Daimyo Mansion and deployed along the Zhangshui confrontation.

The Qing army was in Handan, Wei County, and Daimyo in northern Zhangbei. The Ming army was stationed in Neihuang and Puyang in Zhangnan.

The troops on both sides are stretching for several counties, with hundreds of miles of companies and camps, and each has hundreds of thousands, which can be called the largest main decisive battle since the start of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

When the two sides faced off across the Yangtze River and the Huai River in the Ming and Qing dynasties, although the total number of troops mobilized was twice as much as it is now, they were still on the thousand-mile defense line, and the eastern and western troops were divided into three or four routes, and each theater fought its own battle.

Now that the Qing army has shrunk and concentrated in Hebei, where can it be divided into war zones, and the remaining main forces are all desperate to one war zone.

After Zhang Huangyan arrived in Puyang, he also continuously inspected various armies and inspected defense. He asked Cao Bianjiao to be stationed in Puyang in the center, Liu Guoneng to be stationed in Neihuang on the left, and Huang Degong to be stationed in Qingfeng on the right.

And the Qing army on the opposite side, the main force of the Qing army from Beijing under the personal command of Prince Su Haoge, was stationed in Wei County in the center.

Man Dahai, who had just inherited Prince Li, led his old subordinates who had withdrawn from Shandong, and stationed in Daimyo County, which was located on the east side of the battlefield, to confront his old rival Huang Degong.

Wang Yuele of Raoyu County and Wang Boluo of Duanzhong County led the rest of the Qing army on the original West Road and stationed in Linzhang, west of Wei County, to confront Liu Guineng.

Zhang Huangyan inspected for several days, and saw that the battle line was stable and entered the stage of mutual probing, so he had no choice but to think in the long run.

One day in mid-October, he held a military meeting to convene all the generals in Puyang City, and he couldn't help but sigh at the meeting:

"I didn't expect the Tartars to be defeated repeatedly, and finally exhausted and fished, and still able to gather so many soldiers and horses, although our army has a comprehensive advantage in strength and ordnance in this battle, but after all, from afar, the logistics of grain and grass are relatively unfavorable, and the enemy cannot be underestimated.

The Tatars abandoned Shufu County in Yanbian, Shandong, and the remnants of the southern part of the Daimyo, and retreated in great strides with the momentum of clearing the wilderness with strong walls until the Zhangshui stopped, and also collected all the ships along the way, and the boats that could not be taken away were burned. Since the Yellow River was diverted to the south, the Zhangshui River no longer communicates with the southern water system, but connects with the Haihe River in the north.

Our army's grain and grass had to be disembarked from Caozhou (now Cao County, Heze) and transported by cart and horse to the front of the army. Or after crossing the Yellow River from Kaifeng to the north, it was transported to Jixian by land in Yanjin, and then collected the Zhangshui inland river fleet for transshipment. If we hold each other for a long time, it will be extremely detrimental to our Daming. ”

The generals also have a little understanding of this overall situation, and when Zhang Huangyan broke it down, they further unified their views. Among them, the most reckless Huang Degong couldn't help but admonish:

"Your Excellency the Governor, since the Tartar wall is clear, resulting in the high cost of our army to raise food, then our army should be in a quick battle, take advantage of our army's heavy artillery, and choose the opportunity to cross the Zhangshui on the same day and find the Tartar decisive battle!

If the Tartars avoid the battle, we will surround Wei County or the Daimyo, and then lure the Tartar reinforcements from the other two places to come to the rescue, and we will fight a general decisive battle with the enemy army under the city! ”

Zhang Huangyan didn't hit Huang Degong's desire to fight, but just smiled and shook his head gently: "General Huang's bravery, this official knows it, and he will naturally give you a chance at that time."

However, what we have to worry about is not only to defeat Hauge, but also to consider how to make Hauge unable to swallow, vomit and be reluctant, so as to bleed as much as possible to the Tartar by the Zhangshui to pave the way for my Ming Dynasty's subsequent victory. ”

As soon as Zhang Huangyan said this, most of the generals were still a little confused, and they didn't know how far he was thinking. Cao Bianjiao was the most daring to think, and he thought that Zhang Huangyan was referring to the follow-up offensive and defensive battles in Beijing, so he asked tentatively:

"Your Excellency the Governor thinks that the city of Beijing is strong, so I hope that in the future, when I recover Beijing in the Ming Dynasty, the Tartar garrison can be as weak as possible? Therefore, we must strive to annihilate more enemy forces on this Zhangshui battlefield today? ”

Zhang Huangyan nodded: "General Cao can see clearly, but it's still not far enough - before this official came to the all-powerful superintendent this time, the Metropolitan Governor once explained to me that I will not only recover Hebei in the future, take the old capital, and kill all the way back to Shanhaiguan, but also completely subdue the Liao Land and cut the grass and eradicate the roots!"

Therefore, the Tartars come and go like the wind, and now this final battle in the pass can send more Tartars to our eyes for us to kill, if we don't take the opportunity to kill a little more, wouldn't it be a blessing from heaven? In the future, if you want to chase out of the Liaoxi Corridor and chase all the way to the thousands of miles outside the Guan, it will be much more difficult than now?

Therefore, in this battle, we should not blindly seek speed and defeat the enemy, if we rout but not encircle and annihilate, it will be a waste of God-given opportunity. For this reason, show a little weakness, stick to the enemy, and slowly look for more advantageous fighters, even if you pay a little more and spend more money and food, you can only endure it. ”

When the generals heard this, they were silent. However, the enemy also has hundreds of thousands of people, and they are desperate, and it is really impossible to encircle and annihilate them.

Zhang Huangyan's gaze swept over the generals, and then asked: "In the past few days, have you investigated and understood the reality of the enemy army?" What is the actual strength of each department? ”

When asked about this kind of operational question, the generals became enthusiastic again, and they all summarized the intelligence they had detected and roughly sorted out the enemy's troop strength.

As early as two years ago, when Azig and Abatai died, after the last round of large-scale encirclement and annihilation, four banners had already been rebuilt, and two of the white flags had been rebuilt twice.

According to the scale of the 80,000 regular army and 200,000 men of school-age in the rear of the Eight Banners, plus the population that has been replenished in recent years. Before the Hauge infighting, there were a total of 2,230,000 men over the age of 15 in Manchuria.

In the Hauge infighting, both sides died of a full population, and 20,000 people died, including about five or six thousand men who served as soldiers.

Later, Jiang Huang anyway, Jiang Huang killed a small number of Manchu soldiers and Manchu non-active men stationed in Shanxi, and in this part, the loss of the Manchu regular army was thousands, but the key is that the non-active population was slaughtered and injured, and it also reached more than 10,000 people.

In the process of responding to Jiang Hao and going north to subdue Huaiqing, Weihui, Luzhou, and Zezhou, the Ming army also annihilated more than 10,000 Qing troops and killed thousands of family members of appropriate age. In the end, before the southern Ming army entered Taiyuan, Haoge also tried to counterattack the Taihang Mountain defense line, but several battles failed, and the full army population was lost by thousands.

Therefore, after a series of changes in the infighting of Haug Dolgon and Jiang Huang anyway, the Qing people have further dropped from 2.23 million men two years ago to 1780,000.

This number is already the number of people over the age of 15 who have no upper limit on age, and the male population has dropped by more than 40% compared to when they were at their peak.

Moreover, considering that most of the more than 40 percent of the decline is an elite population between the ages of 20 and 40, the proportion of the remaining 1780,000 people who are old, weak, sick and disabled has been further raised.

According to the Ming army's strict investigation and comparison, combined with historical data, it is estimated that among the 1780,000 people, only 780,000 are between 20 and 40 years old, and the remaining 100,000 are between 15 and 20, or even over 40 years old.

Among them, the number of people who have undergone the baptism of actual combat and served for a long time is 50,000 or 60,000, and the rest are old people who are pulled back after the reserve is retired, or young people who have just reached adulthood, and even if they are pulled into the battlefield, their combat effectiveness is worrying.

Not to mention, a considerable number of Manchurian teenagers who grew up in the city of Beijing, because they have a good life and do not have to work hard, have long been corrupted and degenerate, those who have carried cages and birds when they were young, where do they have the will to fight?

After careful intelligence integration and combing, Zhang Huangyan finally came to a rough conclusion:

"It seems that Hauge had assembled at least all the forces of the six banners of the Eight Banners on the front, for the scouts had found all the banners of the said six banners in the various garrisons of Daimyo, Wei County, and Linzhang. It is estimated that the remaining two should be deployed in the rear of the side towards Taihang Mountain, or in the city of Beijing.

After Dolgon's death, Hauge also expanded the active service of the Eight Banners, and I heard that now one Kala is 2,500 men, and one Banner is 12,005. Those six banners also had a regular army of 75,000 men. The Manchurian regular army remaining in the rear should be 25,000, and there are 70,000 or 80,000 non-active men.

In terms of the Mongolian army, the banners of the five banners have been found so far, but the number should not be much, and the Mongolian Eight Banners did not support the expansion of Haoge, especially the tense relationship between Haoge and the traitor Bumu Butai, if he didn't start a war with my Daming again, he might have started to deal with Bumu Butai.

Bumu Butai was born in Horqin Mongolia, and now the Horqin tribes must be waiting. As for the Karaqin Mongols, it was after the death of Lin Dan Khan that year, his son Ezhe was incapable of surrendering, and the Mongols were destroyed. Now the Manchu Tartars can't get mixed up, and the Mongols definitely don't want to die together on a boat, so they leave a back hand, and it is estimated that the total strength of these five flags will not exceed 40,000 people.

So in the end, the Tartars still relied on the traitor troops to provide the main number. Most of the Han Eight Banners are Han people outside the Guan, especially the Han people in Liaodi, as well as the Bao Yi who have been carried the flag, and the fighting spirit of following the Tartars is still good, and it is estimated that 350,000 people participated in today's battle.

The last green camp, but it can be fought for, they are all mainly Han people in Guannei, and they have not been carried the flag, and now most of their homeland has been recovered by my Ming Dynasty, they should wake up in time. Dolgon planned to have 200,000 first green battalions and 400,000 reservists that year. But most of Dolgon's first 200,000 have been wiped out in years of bloody battles, or with Jiang Jiu and others anyway.

The follow-up is claimed to be 400,000, in fact, more than half of it has been received by my Ming Dynasty, and when Henan, Huaibei, Shanxi and other places were recovered, the Tartars did not have time to withdraw the reserve population, so the current population of the green camp at hand of the Tartars is less than 200,000 at most, and those who can be pulled to the front line are at most 100,000, and the rest can only rely on temporary arrest of strong men.

Therefore, we have to face 780,000 Manchu cavalry, 40,000 Mongolian soldiers, 340,000 Han and 8 banners, and more than 100,000 green battalions. The total strength of the Tartars should be more than 250,000, less than 300,000, and no matter how detailed and accurate the number is, it cannot be estimated for the time being.

My Ming Dynasty has 300,000 main forces of the Northern Expedition on the front, and the number is no less than that of the Tartars.

In the west, Wu Sangui and Jiang Hao did not rush to the main battlefield and maintained pressure on the flanks, and in the east, Li Fuming from Shandong, and Zhang Mingzhen from the sea route, who could also deal with harassment.

The total number of troops in these four directions is no less than 150,000, and there are reserves available in the rear. I will destroy the Qing Dynasty for this time, and a total of 500,000 people can be used, so you don't have to worry about confidence, the imperial court will fully support it. ”