The night breeze became more and more intense, and the flames in the illuminated brazier were constantly swaying under the blowing of the night wind.

The crackling sound of the firewood burning, accompanied by the sound of insects, came to Chen Wang's ears.

Chen Wang was dressed in a red arrow suit, holding a wooden stick and fiddling with the bonfire that had already been extinguished in front of him.

There was still the terrible smell of blood in the air, and there were thousands of dead and wounded outside the town, and the blood was almost stained red.

Fragments of daytime strife and gore still flashed in Chen Wang's mind from time to time.

For so long, he had deliberately ignored some of them, so that he didn't think much about them.

But what he saw during the day today made it difficult for him to calm down, and there was no way to think about it.

It is said that the end of the Qing Dynasty was a great change that had not been seen for thousands of years, but at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming court needed to face many difficulties.

There are disasters in the north outside, natural disasters and civil changes inside, and although the rebellion of the coastal pirates has disappeared, there are still pirates in many places.

Recalling the Ming Dynasty in memory, there is never a topic that can be avoided.

This topic is natural disasters.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was the coldest and most influential period of the Xiaoice River period.

During this period, the average annual temperature is low, with severe droughts and floods in the summer, and extremely cold in the winter, even in Guangdong and other places close to the tropics.

The precursors of the cataclysm can be traced back to the early Jiajing period, which gradually became obvious from the thirteenth year of Wanli, and suddenly began to intensify around the twenty-eighth year of Wanli.

In the 48 years of Wanli, there were records of famine for 25 years, and the further back it was, the more frequent and violent the famine became.

And after Chongzhen ascended the throne, the catastrophe reached its peak.

Chongzhen has a total of 17 years, and during the 17 years, there have been many years of famine, and there has not been a moment to stop.

The ensuing natural disasters, the continuous increase in allocation, the raging rogue, and the rotten bureaucracy finally completely destroyed the already fragile finances of the Ming Dynasty.

Even in the later generations with advanced science and technology, natural disasters can still cause great damage, not to mention this world when even communication has to be transmitted quickly.

It is precisely because of natural disasters that the rebel army at the end of the Ming Dynasty is different from the rebel army of other dynasties.

Whether it was Chen Sheng and Wu Guang at the end of the Qin Dynasty, or the green forest and red eyebrows in the Western Han Dynasty, and the Yellow Turban Black Mountain in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

It was still Du Fuwei Wagang at the end of the Sui Dynasty, Pang Xun Wang Xianzhi at the end of the Tang Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, Chen Youliang and others at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty.

After they had accumulated a certain amount of strength after launching the uprising, they would immediately divide one side at the first time, and then oppose the government and the imperial court.

However, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, because of the continuous natural and man-made disasters for many years, Shaanxi, Shanxi and other places were already full of holes.

What's more serious is that at this time, although the Ming Dynasty was weak and decaying, its strength was still strong.

Although Zhang Juzheng's reform had many shortcomings in the eyes of later generations, it caused many other problems.

But no one can deny that it is precisely because of Zhang Juzheng's reform that the empire of the Ming Dynasty has renewed its fresh blood and made it strong again.

The three major campaigns of Wanli consumed a large amount of money and grain in the Ming Dynasty's treasury, although it made the Ming court weak.

But at the same time, it has also raised a group of famous generals and a large number of elite soldiers who dare to fight.

The combat power of the Ming army is not bad, and many times, it is because of the incompetence of one general and exhausting the three armies.

For example, Yang Hao, who first led the victorious army of the Ming Dynasty to besiege Ulsan in Korea, was the first to flee because of the arrival of enemy reinforcements.

Later, he served as the commander in Salhu, burying more than 40,000 elites and hundreds of generals and colonels of the Ming army in the north, and the offensive and defensive situation between the Ming Dynasty and the Later Jin Dynasty changed.

But even after successive defeats and constant attrition, Daming is still a behemoth and a towering building.

The Ming army still has a large number of elites, and although the Ming army on the nine sides has gone downhill, it still has a certain combat effectiveness.

Although Shaanxi and Shanxi are chaotic, Yansui Town, Datong Town, Ningxia Town, Guyuan Town, and Shanxi Town are all in two places.

The Ming army was at its peak, and compared with the righteous army that lacked armor, its combat power was not strong.

Secession is a dead end, not only is there no danger to defend, but Shanxi and Shaanxi have long been eroded, and it is useless to occupy them.

Therefore, in order to survive and forage, in order to avoid officers and soldiers, the peasant rebel army at the end of the Ming Dynasty could only continue to fight, constantly wandering around and plundering places.

In order to confront the officers and soldiers, they can only constantly coerce the local people, use crowd tactics to confront, and train soldiers by raising Gu.

And it is precisely because of such a vicious circle that after their power gradually became stronger, and even after the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, they still did not change from the old thinking of wandering and fighting, and laid the root of their subsequent downfall.

In the beginning, the so-called rogues were just hungry people who didn't want to eat tree bark, grass roots, hunger, and a full meal, and they didn't even think about eating rice and noodles.

But those high-ranking and pampered lords above those temples didn't care about their lives or deaths at all.

When the civil uprising broke out, they gathered together, opened the official warehouse and ate rice and noodles, fighting against the officers and soldiers all the way, just for a way to survive.

There's no way you can condemn them, and they're not wrong in the first place, because they're just trying to get a way out.

It's just that the situation gradually gets out of control and keeps changing, and some people not only eat rice, but also meat, and they taste flesh and blood.

The taste of flesh and blood was so delicious that they forgot why it was in the first place, and forgot the promise they had made.

They don't want to eat rice, they don't want to eat noodles again, they don't want to eat the roots and the bark of the trees.

The law-abiding Ming troops who were mobilized to quell the rebellion were not wrong at the beginning, they just obeyed the orders of the state and the military orders of the Shangguan, and came to quell the robbers who were plundering everywhere and maintain the stability and order of the country.

They were at the bottom of society, and many of the battalion soldiers were starving, and their lives were worse than those of the rogues.

Originally, they were just a group of small people, they had no control over their own destiny, and all they wanted was to live.

Living is the easiest thing to do, but it's also the hardest......

Chen Wang put down the wooden stick in his hand, looked at the extinguished bonfire in front of him, and stared at the charcoal that was about to burn out in the fire.

The survival of Cao Wenzhao has brought about a lot of changes in the situation in Shaanxi, and many things behind it have been covered with a layer of fog.