With the advent of Zheng Chenggong's fleet on the southern sea route, the Burmese people's will to resist finally collapsed completely.

When Mang Bai was trying to lead the only remaining main force to retreat south to Bagu, Li Dingguo seemed to know in advance that he was leaving, and sent an envoy into Ava City to negotiate terms with Mang Bai.

Mang Bai didn't want to see it at first, but he wanted to know what else Li Dingguo could say, so he finally did.

The messenger was also very simple, and only put down a few words: "Surrender now, cut the land and confess your guilt, and the Ming Dynasty can spare you from destroying the country." If you have to resist to the end, then don't try to set fire to the treasury when you withdraw.

General Li said in advance, if you don't burn the treasury and don't destroy the city where the grain is stored, after I enter the city in the Ming Dynasty, I will not commit any offense against the people, and I will never slaughter the city, but only seal the treasury.

If you dare to set fire to the wall, you want to clear the wilderness. Then the city of the self-destruction treasury will be slaughtered, and the chickens and dogs will not be left - our great army is a division of benevolence and righteousness, and will never kill innocent people indiscriminately.

But the people also need the government to stock grain to feed, where the Burmese army burns grain and retreats, it is regarded as the Burmese army slaughtering the people and driving the people to compete with our army for food! If the Burmese people see the Burmese army burning grain and do not stop it, they will be regarded as willing to join the army and refuse to fight with the heavenly soldiers, and no longer enjoy the treatment of civilians! ”

When Mang Bai heard this, he was so angry that he wanted to kill the envoy, but he finally held back.

Because he heard that 20 years ago, when the Manchu Qing Dynasty finally drew Hebei to stand on its own, it originally negotiated a truce with the Ming army for several years, and finally started the war again, and was seized by the Ming army to hate the enemy, because the generals under the command of Hao Ge killed the Ming envoy Huang Daozhou and completely gave away the name of righteousness in vain.

If you kill the Ming envoy now, I am afraid that if you are defeated in the future, you will only lose the country, what conditions are there to negotiate?

Mang Bai finally chose to lead the main force of the Burmese royal family, broke through the starry night and went south, leaving behind those miscellaneous troops to carry Li Dingguo.

And as the heavy artillery of the Ming army gradually smashed the city wall of Ava, the final unilateral slaughter and attack was finally completely launched. There were still tens of thousands of defenders in Ava City, and the number was still more than twice that of Li Dingguo's troops, but they were completely ineffective. Street fighting with the Ming army's musket team was almost for nothing.

In this desperate situation, there was nowhere to run, they themselves were in the capital of Burma, and the Burmese army, whose morale collapsed, could only surrender in despair, and the Ming army captured more than 40,000 prisoners of war before and after.

At this point, the Battle of Ava finally came to an end, and Li Dingguo finally defeated an enemy equivalent to six to seven times his strength with only 40,000 Ming troops.

After the city was broken, the Ming army immediately entered the city to receive the treasury of various places, and after combing, it was found that there were a few military grain warehouses and supply warehouses in Ava City, which were still burned by the rebels.

Although some of those rebels eventually surrendered, they were completely surrounded by the Ming army and forced to surrender. After screening by the Ming army, it was confirmed that some of them were carrying out sabotage work until the moment before the surrender.

Since this is the case, the Ming army has nothing to discuss, and immediately pulled out the part of the troops that insisted on sabotaging until the last moment, and lined up to shoot them to show the public-

Of course, before the killing, all the crimes were clearly explained, and the Ming army's envoy's previous request to negotiate with Mang Bai was also shown to show that the Ming army was not punished for not teaching, but "don't say anything unpredictable".

For other ordinary prisoners of war who did not engage in sabotage work before surrendering, the Ming army fully carried out the treatment of prisoners of war, and gave them at least a bite to eat.

At most, the quality of the grain and rice is poor, and the old rice with more impurities and about to deteriorate is given priority as food for prisoners of war.

Such a combination of grace and power, as he said, also temporarily stabilized the situation around Ava.

Later, Li Dingguo stook his land again, and quickly attacked the city in the fertile valley plains on both sides of the Irrawaddy River, because Awadu had fallen, and the other small cities had almost no defense, and they were also taken by overwhelming bamboos.

The civilizations of South and Southeast Asia rarely built strong and tall walls, and Ava only served as a companion capital and the former capital of the former dynasties, so it had a strong defense. The defense of other surrounding small cities is not as good as that of some county towns in the Central Plains.

After gaining a firm foothold in the grain-producing areas of the valley plains and driving the remnants of the Burmese army to the distant mountains on both sides, Li Dingguo's military food problem was completely solved. During this whole process, he did not forget to further implement the Ming army's strategy of "keeping its word".

If you say that you will let it go if you surrender directly, then you must let it go, and you will not kill an innocent person. said that if you dare to burn the granary before breaking the city, you will kill all the defenders, and you must do it-

Moreover, the Ming army even directly released a word, saying that if the city where the grain was stored was burned, the defenders would not have to surrender, and they would be killed if they surrendered. If they had to burn the granary and die, the Ming army would not be able to stop them, so they would be fulfilled.

In this way, Qiu pardoned more than 20 small cities without committing any crimes, and slaughtered six of them, and the credibility of the Ming army was completely established.

……

At the same time, on the Bago battlefield, nearly a thousand miles to the south, the Burmese army also failed to curry favor.

Because the main force was annihilated by the Ming army in a series of formations, Bago's troops could only barely defend the city, and there was no spare strength to attack and push Zheng Chenggong into the sea, so that Zheng Chenggong successfully established a camp in Dagong Port outside Bago City.

Dagon Port is the future Yangon, located at the mouth of the Irrawaddy River. It's just that in ancient times, because of the low-lying terrain and easy to attack, it was difficult to defend, so although the economy was developed and it was the most important river and sea transshipment port in Myanmar, it still could not be built as a national capital.

The capital, Bago, was built on a hillside across the port of Dagon, and was fortified by the terrain. Now encountering Zheng Chenggong's attack, it is equivalent to the fall of the economic zone and port area outside the capital.

Although Zheng Chenggong came from the sea and did not have many troops, the total number of his troops, including the crew, was only more than 20,000, which was less than half of the number of troops used by Li Dingguo, so Zheng Chenggong could not launch a general attack on Bago.

However, after occupying the estuary harbor, taking advantage of the Burmese's previous defenselessness and lack of time to destroy the shipping lane, Zheng Chenggong directly let the small and medium-sized boats in the sailors go deep into the inland river and go upstream, all the way wild.

Although the boat was relatively slow against the current, and the daily journey was only a few dozen miles, after half a month of fighting and advancing, it still successfully made contact with Li Dingguo, and completely opened up the channel of the Irrawaddy River from Bago to Awa.

The Burmese army organized many counterattacks on both sides of the river were defeated by Zheng Chenggong's Jianchuan artillery. In the face of each river and sea dual-purpose warship equipped with more than a dozen Hongyi cannons, the Burmese gave their little force for nothing, and the right to control the river was held by the Ming army.

The Burmese army was only near Pyinmana, Myanmar's third-largest city, at the halfway point between Ava and Bago, posing a slight threat to Zheng Chenggong. But after Li Dingguo heard the news, he rushed down the river with the main force, and also quickly pulled out the nail.

It can also be seen that the vast majority of Myanmar is rotten land, and only a small delta plain at the mouth of the Nu River and the alluvial plain of the middle and lower reaches of the Irrawaddy River can feed millions of people.

As a result, the top three cities in Myanmar, Bago, Awa, and Pyinmana, are evenly distributed along the middle and lower reaches of the Ayeyarwady River, with a very standard average of 500 miles of a large city, and only a small remote county in the middle.

After Zheng Chenggong and Li Dingguo merged, the Burma campaign completely entered garbage time.

With a sufficient number of ships shipping on the Irrawaddy River, Li Dingguo was able to completely open up the logistical supply routes from the southern section of the Nu River to Lashio in Burma, from Lashio over Kyaukshan to Ava, and finally from Ava down the river to the Indian Ocean.

In previous battles, the Burmese army's more than 400,000 combat troops had lost nearly two-thirds of the total, and the remaining remnants could not be said to have organized resistance at all. No matter how much you want to harass the logistics route of the Ming army, it is nothing more than being annihilated by counterattacks again and again.

The war lasted until the spring of the sixth year of Xiaokang, and in the late spring of March, with the breach of the city of Bago and the killing of the Burmese king Mang Bai in the midst of the rebellion, the Burmese resistance finally collapsed completely.

Only a few reckless sons were left to fight on their own, begging the Ming army for peace talks, and they were willing to cede the land and agree to other conditions, only to avoid destroying the country.

……

In military matters, Li Dingguo and Zheng Chenggong can decide, and how the final negotiations will end will definitely require the imperial court to make a direct decision.

Therefore, after Mang Bai died, Li Dingguo could only let people pass on the respective peace and contact intentions of his sons as soon as possible.

Rao is able to use six hundred miles of expedited plains to use expedited areas, but considering those areas that cross mountains and mountains, the messenger can travel at most one or two hundred miles a day. In the end, it took a lot of time to get the sum paperwork delivered.

Fortunately, the Nanjing court also predicted this situation in advance, so as early as the end of the first month of the New Year, the regent Zhu Shuren suggested that the Son of Heaven should tour south to boost morale during the war.

Regarding the request of the Son of Heaven to tour the south, the Confucian scholars and doctors were of course strongly opposed. Since Zhu Di in the Ming Dynasty, there has also been a royal expedition of the Baozong.

In the nearly two hundred years since Baozong was arrested, Confucian scholars and doctors have gone crazy to find excuses to prevent the emperor from going out, and every time they mention it, they will use Baozong's negative teaching materials as an example.

Historically, after the Qing Dynasty, the ancestors and grandchildren of Kangxi and Qianlong, relying on the tradition of winning the world with bows and horses, could suppress the rebellious civil officials.

Those civil officials are also typical bullies and fears of the hard, and when they meet the Han emperors who reason with them, they shout louder than anyone else, and when they meet the Tartar emperors who reason with knives to them, they become turtles with shrunken heads.

However, Zhu Shuren is also reasonable, and he also knows in his heart that civil officials do not let the emperor go out of Beijing, and there are also good considerations, mainly to reduce the financial burden, after all, the emperor needs to take the entire court to patrol the office together.

The patrol of Kangxi and Qianlong in parallel time and space, the money spent was the sea, and the two Huai salt merchants and the four weaving mansions in the south of the Yangtze River all scavenged how much money was scavenged, all because the Qing Dynasty had one more internal affairs system than the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, when the government was in the game, Zhu Shuren also put forward a number of conditions to persuade the public opinion of the civil and official group.

First of all, he stressed that if he went on patrol this time, the purpose was only to deal with the border troubles as soon as possible, and once the enemy country in southern Xinjiang had the intention of making peace, the imperial court could respond as soon as possible, so that if the war could be fought for two months less, the military expenses saved would definitely be worth the emperor's patrol.

Secondly, he also said that if he went on patrol, he could spend the money of the internal affairs government system, which would be borne by the balance of the imperial merchant state-owned enterprises of the Shen family and the Zhu family, and he would not need to spend the money from the treasury tax.

As soon as these two points are clear, the obstruction of the civilian clique under the pretext of saving money has been completely blocked. Even Shi Kefa, who has aged and recuperated, rarely stands up and says that this matter is extenuating and can be made an exception.

After the principle was approved, Zhu Shuren made up for the deployment of the people, that is, to discuss with his son Zhu Ciyu the composition of the personnel for this patrol, and to reduce the establishment as much as possible.

On the day that Erlong raised his head in early February, Zhu Shuren was in the Nanjing Imperial Palace and had a showdown with his son.

"Nearly 200 years before the Ming Dynasty, because Yingzong was captured at the hands of Wara, the Son of Heaven was not allowed to go out of Beijing to patrol the Quartet. My father is now seeking this opportunity, which is a grace unseen in a hundred years, breaking through the law of the ancestors.

But since it is necessary to go out on patrol, it is still necessary to save money and rest with the people, so when going out on patrol, you can't bring hundreds of officials from the imperial court, so that the entourage can be reduced by at least eighty percent, and the escort pro-army can also be reduced by eighty percent, and the expenses will be greatly saved. ”

After hearing this, Zhu Ciyu also thought it was true, and felt that his father's concerns were very right: "Even so, I don't know how to do it to the child?" ”

Zhu Shuren didn't go around the bend with his son: "There are two ways now, that is, either you lead a few important ministers from the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of War, plus 10,000 escorts, to tour Guangzhou in the south." Personally cut off the peace talks with the Burmese and the possible subsequent conflict with Vietnam.

And since the other civil officials of the imperial court will not be taken away, then the daily government affairs will still be left in Nanjing to deal with, and the father will compare the regency stories of the previous four years, and help you supervise the country for another year and a half.

Another way, that is, you personally stay in the capital, take full authority to handle the daily government affairs of other ministries, help your father 'patrol the heavens' for you, and go to Guangzhou to deal with the aftermath of the border affairs in Myanmar and Vietnam. ”

Zhu Shuren said very clearly: The Ming Dynasty's Son of Heaven patrol can save costs, because now the Ming Dynasty still has a potential dual power center, so the regent and the emperor's father and son can handle internal affairs and foreign affairs, temporarily decentralizing the division of labor. In this way, the cost of patrolling and the scale of personnel are saved by most of them compared with other dynasties and other periods.

As for whether he wanted to go out of Beijing to deal with diplomacy or stay in Beijing to deal with internal affairs, he gave his son a choice.

"The child is willing to go out of Beijing in person and go to Guangzhou to patrol and deal with diplomacy! Leave all internal affairs to your father and continue to supervise the country! Zhu Ciyu didn't think about it, of course, he directly chose to go out of Beijing to handle diplomacy without any nostalgia.

Isn't this nonsense? He was born as the emperor's grandson, raised in Chunhe Palace, and never left Nanjing City until he was twenty-one years old.

Although he is now the emperor, his knowledge is only the things in front of him, at most, he can go to the museum in Jiangning Town when he was a child, and see the rare birds, beasts, flowers and grass species all over the world, but he has never seen the real scene of famous mountains and rivers, only the Purple Mountain and the Yangtze River.

In contrast, his father, Zhu Shuren, was the world that Tiannan and Haibei themselves had beaten down, and he had been in Huguang for many years, and he had also entered Sichuan, received Liangguang, and cut down in the north. Wouldn't it be unfilial and wasteful to let my father work hard again?

Zhu Shuren's choice of son was not surprised at all. But he still had to teach his son the conditions of the three chapters of the covenant:

"You choose to go out of Beijing in person, and your father will not stop you. But you have never dealt with diplomacy before, you can't blindly pursue reckless military force, you must know how to accept what you see, if you can agree, your father will naturally let you go on a southern tour. Otherwise, you can go to the Chinese official on your own. ”

Zhu Ciyu also knew that his father was for his good, and as long as he could go out, he should accept it when he saw it, so he hurriedly asked for details.

Zhu Shuren pointed out several important points: "For Burma, we cannot pursue the destruction of the Donghu Kingdom, the final goal is to make Mangbai or Mangbai's sons admit defeat and surrender, and cede land and become vassals." At the same time, all the land of Sanxuan and Liuwei must be completely returned to the Ming Dynasty.

Because Myanmar is too vast and has too many mountains and dense forests, it is far more complicated than Vietnam. If the banner of Mangbai is pulled out, we don't know who to deal with, and when the time comes, all the Tusi tribes in the mountainous areas will be in chaos, and it will be difficult to judge who will fight and pull whom.

Leave the signboard of the Mang family, then as long as they admit it, they have to be responsible for restraining their subordinates, and the Tusi below can't rebel on their own.

In contrast, in the future, it will not be so complicated to deal with Vietnam, Vietnam now has two dynasties and four surnames in their own affairs, we can pull one faction to fight the other, no more than Myanmar was a unified and powerful country before, any faction in Vietnam can be completely wiped out by us, as long as we reach a contract with the other faction, let the other party be vassal.

Specifically, the father will explain to the ministers of the Ministry of Rites who accompany him, and when the time comes, he must listen to it and be clear, and he will not be arbitrary. ”

Zhu Ciyu is still a little self-aware, knowing that he has no experience in handling diplomacy at all, and this time he should be regarded as learning, and he can't mess around.

He sincerely agreed to all his father's requests, and finally confessed to Zhu Shuren: "Also, this southern tour, you are not allowed to touch women outside the palace!" Don't lose the dignity of the royal family and the court.

Guangzhou has many business Hongyi, and is located in a hot and barren land, the people may have a dirty and sick person from Hongyi, you are the Son of Heaven, what do you want a woman to get in the palace? Do not try to be fresh, otherwise...... Don't think about leaving the palace in the future. ”

For his father's request, Zhu Ciyu could only accept it in its entirety, in exchange for a smooth tour.

In the end, under the repeated games and full preparation of the imperial court, Zhu Ciyu still chose to set off from Nanjing to the south on February 15.

Because this time the Son of Heaven went out on patrol with a mission, so on the way to the toss, it was not possible to toss and delay, the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of War finally helped the emperor choose the sea route to go south, and sailed along the coast of the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

There is no navigation risk at all on this road, after all, the navigation of the Ming Dynasty is now very developed, so Zheng Chenggong allocated some sea vessels for trial voyages in the South China Sea, and Zhang Mingzhen personally led the naval personnel to escort them.

Zhu Ciyu only stayed in Changzhou, Suzhou, and Songjiang for a few days, but from Nanjing to Songjiang to the sea, a total of half a month, especially in Suzhou, Zhu Ciyu had a good time to visit the well-known Suzhou gardens, and also played on Taihu Lake for three days.

Since the first day of March, Shanghai has not said anything for half a month, anyway, it is all at sea.

And Zhu Ciyu lived to be twenty-one years old, and it was the first time he saw the sea, so he was also excited, and he didn't feel that seeing the sea and sky every day would be boring, but he was magnificent.

In particular, the high-speed sailing ship that Zhu Ciyu himself took is the only five-masted sail warship in the Ming Dynasty today, with a length of more than 40 zhang, which is very stable to sail on, and can also climb high to look, with a very broad field of vision.

The sea ship drove for half a month, and finally docked at the port of Guangzhou, and with the arrival of the fleet, the letter of surrender submitted by Li Dingguo was about to be sent to Guangzhou.

(End of chapter)