Time flies like a white horse, and it is July in a flash, and the whole July is a boring July and a chaotic July for Li Zhaoji.

Throughout July, the battlefield in Guannai remained stable, and with Tian Jianxiu bringing reinforcements from Shaanxi and Gansu, Dashun and the Qing army once again formed a balance of power, and they also had a slight advantage in terms of troops.

Li Zicheng also tried several counterattacks, but in the end they all failed, after the attempt was fruitless, Li Zicheng was not in a hurry, while maintaining the front with as few casualties as possible, while dividing his troops to attack and harass, he once again opened his arms to the gentry of Zhili, who had betrayed him.

In terms of open-mindedness, Li Zicheng is not lacking, and even Chen Yongfu, who once shot him blind in one eye, can still be reused after surrendering, which can be proven. His personality charm also allowed Guo Sheng and a large number of generals who did nothing in the Ming system to show their talents and integrity under Dashun.

When Lee became blindly defensive, Dolgon was at a loss.

Unlike Dashun, which owned the entire north, the Manchu Eight Banners could not withstand the drastic attrition, and the Eight Banners soldiers all brought their own weapons and worked hard for the Qing Dynasty without salary, and most of the motivation came from the looting of the Guannei, which was contrary to Dorgon's strategy.

Thinking that with the support of the gentry in the Guannai, they could not loot, and if they were not allowed to loot, the Eight Banners had no desperate motivation.

More importantly, the Manchu Qing Dynasty claimed to be a country, but the population was only about 1 million, and Manchuria was only about 200,000 men, women, and children, so it was impossible to fight a war of attrition.

But there was no way out for Dorgon, and even if he could not win, he had to persevere.

The Manchu Qing Dynasty was mobilized at the end of March, and troops were dispatched at the beginning of April, and the winter wheat was not harvested to come out to fight, and now it is July, and the sowing is also missed, and the rear is a mess by Li Zhaoji's Eastern Brigade.

Therefore, Dolgon had no choice but to change his strategy, and from June, the propaganda tone of the Manchus changed from 'occupying Jizhen, capturing the capital, and then plotting the world' to the sixth raid, that is, 'grabbing the west'.

It's just that these strategic transformations are limited to high-level knowing, and the reality is already very clear, Dashun is not Daming, and Dashun is not so easy to grab.

From 1629 to 1643, the Manchu Qing Dynasty had five times to enter the customs and loot, each time larger than the other, the largest was 1642 and 1643 Abatai led the army into the Kou, stayed in the Central Plains for eight months, until the robbery to Haizhou, that is, Lianyungang, Jiangsu in later generations, breaking more than 100 cities.

Five times into the pass looting, only the first two or three times, there are formed Ming army to carry out effective resistance, behind, the Qing army is almost like no one, the Ming army often avoid the Qing army, let it plunder.

But now the Dashun soldiers are strong and strong, the horses are strong, and they can fight and dare to fight, if the Qing army lets go of looting, the whole army must be destroyed. Therefore, Dolgon showed no signs of plundering, and continued to appease in the name of Emperor Chongzhen, dividing his troops to attack those cities that he did not want to suffer, and looting in this name.

If the decisive battle in the wilderness, the probability of victory of the Qing army is extremely high, and if the Shun army can be annihilated on a large scale, then it is nothing to change from grabbing the west to entering the Central Plains.

At the beginning, Li Zicheng was only a strong wall and cleared the field, and did not take the initiative to fight, so he maintained the security of the line of Tongzhou, Beijing, Xuanda, and Shanxi.

But as the Qing army broke more and more cities, and even happened that Zhu Ming's surrender took the initiative to surrender, the Dashun high-level realized that passive response was not possible after all, so they sent Li Guo and Zhang Nai, led the main cavalry of the Shun army, around Xuanda, into Shanxi, guarding the Taihang Bashan, taking advantage of the pass, rushing out from Shanxi, attacking the Qing army besieging the city with cavalry, waiting for the Qing army to react, gather the main force, and then choose one of the eight to retreat into Shanxi to avoid the war.

The Qing army Azig on the southern road took looting as its duty and could not be consumed in the confrontation, so it could only turn elsewhere, and the Shun army concocted the same method, and then randomly chose one of Taihang to attack the Qing army. or harassing the besieging Qing army, or ambushing and transporting the team that captured the north, because it was all cavalry, and took the initiative to avoid the battle, so it came and went like the wind, and found a lot of trouble for Azig.

As a result, the war in Kannai expanded from a corner of Gyeonggi to the entire area of Zhili and northern Shandong, with both sides being cavalry, galloping across the vast North China Plain, playing a game of cat and mouse, winning and losing each other.

The fight in the north is in full swing, and the south does not stop.

Wu Xiang led 10,000 elites from Liaozhen to Nanjing, and united Shi Kefa, the leader of Jiangnan scholars such as Shangshu of the Nanjing Military Department and Qian Qianyi, as well as Liu Kongzhao and other lords, without waiting for the reaction of other parties, he supported the establishment of King Lu and the state of supervision, according to the plan, as long as the governors of the provinces and the general soldiers of each town agreed, then King Lu would become the emperor from the prison state.

It can be said that this caught the four towns of Jiangbei and Huguang Zuo Town by surprise, and in Huguang, Zuo Liangyu had just been defeated by the Shun army and lost a large piece of territory. And the four towns of Jiangbei are also at the end of the road, neither know the depth of the Shun army, a little-known Dong Xueli with thousands of soldiers stationed in Xuzhou, stunned so that the four towns of Jiangbei tens of thousands of soldiers and horses dare not move, the strongest of the four towns Gao Jie has even begun to contact Dashun, ready to surrender.

A prison state suddenly appeared in Nanjing, which made the governors of various towns and places a little overwhelmed.

But the support went very smoothly at the beginning, and Qian Qianyi and others announced the news of King Fu's death at the beginning, so that there was no opponent in the battle for the throne.

It's just that when the court of the Lujian State really divided the interests, everything changed.

Fujian Zheng Zhilong is still safe, according to the agreement with Qian Qianyi, he watched from the wall, did not support or object, but when there were interests, he also took the initiative to come up. In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the book reported that there were 22,000 soldiers in the town, but the actual number of soldiers and horses far exceeded this number, but it would not let the court pay.

But when the court of Lujian State needed support, Zheng Zhilong immediately sent an elite army led by Zheng Hongkui to go out of Zhenjiang and set up his own door.

It's just that Zheng Zhilong is just a special case, and the rest of the political forces are not so easy to deal with.

First of all, Ma Shiying, the governor of Lufeng, and Lu Jiude, the superintendent of the army, Ma Shiying was not allowed by Donglin's eunuchs, and Lu Jiude was afraid that he would be questioned for the Huai'an matter, so the two quickly united together, Ma Shiying used Lu Jiude to unite the four towns in Jiangbei, and sent people to Huguang to contact Zuo Liangyu, and the five towns united together to ask for a price to the Nanjing court.

And Wu Sangui didn't expect that the imperial court established by Jiangnan, which is famous for its wealth, would also end up in a situation where there were too many monks and little porridge, and the little financial revenue of the Nanjing court was not enough for the towns to consume.

After King Lu was in charge of the country, the Wu family father and son knew that even if all the provinces that were not occupied by the two forces of Dashun and Daxi were loyal to the Ming Dynasty and paid taxes, then the Nanjing court would only have an annual income of six million.

At the beginning, Wu Xiang negotiated with Qian Qianyi and others on behalf of Liao Town, and after King Lu supervised the country, Liao Zhen would not be withdrawn, but it needed to provide an annual salary of 2 million taels and 800,000 stones.

But the problem is that after King Lu was imprisoned, the forces of all parties came to ask for silver, and under the alliance of Ma Shiying and Lu Jiude, the salaries and silver of each town were inflated.

The request put forward by the five towns is that no matter what title Wu Sangui adds, Zuo Liangyu must be on the same level as him, after all, there are 50,000 people in your Liao Town, and there are more than 50,000 people in Zuo Liangyu's Chu Town. And the four towns in Jiangbei are only one level lower.

In addition to this, Chu Town claims to be 50,000 people, and needs 1.8 million taels of silver a year, and the four towns claim to be 30,000 taels each, asking for 2.4 million taels of silver, and 1 million in nature.

And the Ming Dynasty of the Lujian State is not only these soldiers, the Beijing camp is called 60,000, and it costs 1.2 million taels. Lock the Yangtze River, control the north of the Yangtze River, there are Jiangdu, Anfu, Wufu, Wenwu Caojiang, Zheng Hongkui and other eight towns, a total of 120,000 soldiers and horses, 2.4 million taels.

The total is more than 7 million, and the small court in Nanjing is 6 million a year, and the imperial court spends more than 1 million yuan to go to everything that can go, and the actual annual shortage is 2.25 million taels, which is not counting Liaozhen, after counting, Ben has a shortage of 5 million.

Because of the uneven distribution of interests and the inability to reach an agreement, King Lu has never been able to be the emperor.

The problem lies in the fact that many military towns have falsely reported their posts, especially in the four towns of Jiangbei, and there are indeed more than 30,000 people in Gao Jie's department, while the other three towns are all 20,000 soldiers, or even less than 20,000, but they are all according to 30,000.

Although there were bumps in the matter of supporting King Lu as the prison country, Wu Sangui was in his chest, and in his opinion, as long as the north wind season arrived and the 50,000 soldiers of Liaozhen arrived in the south of the Yangtze River, everything would be fine.

The strategy he formulated was to unite the north and limit the south, and the four towns in Jiangbei and Chu Town needed to be united, after all, they would rely on these soldiers to deal with Dashun in the future, and Wu Sangui thought that they could agree to their requirements, but for other forces, they would be restricted or even annexed.

The first is Fujian Town, which was agreed with Li Zhaoji and will be destroyed. If the town of Fujian is destroyed, there will be at least 22,000 more people, or even more salaries.

In Wu Sangui's eyes, the Yangtze River and Nanjing are his Wu family's, and Liaozhen is Jingying, and Liaozhen is Nanjing, and Nanjing and Jiangfang are all handed over to Liaozhen, and the original towns are either annexed or abolished or exterminated.

And Huang Binqing and other military towns on the southeast coast don't need it, there is no threat from the sea, so what do you want coastal defense for?

In Wu Sangui's view, in the future, all the resources of the Southern Ming Dynasty should be invested in raising Liao Town and fighting Dashun, and the rest should be reduced.

Therefore, the Wu family is simply not in a hurry in the distribution of interests, and has been pressuring Qian Qianyi and Shi Kefa not to give any military town silver, just to wait for the elite of Liao Town to arrive, and then join forces vertically and horizontally.

While the Central Plains and Jiangnan were bustling, Liaodong was in a state of tranquility.

Throughout July, Chen Ping's troops swept along the eastern coastline of eastern Liaodong towards the mouth of the Yalu River, while the Shen Youlong division of the Guangdong army confronted the Qing army in western Liaoning.

The Qing army also disappeared without a trace, at the beginning, Abatai led the integration of more than 4,000 Qing troops, disappeared on the plain of the Liaohetao, hoping to give Li Zhaoji a fatal blow when the Eastern Brigade divided the troops to sweep, but then, Dolgon made peace in the name of the Han Domain, and the Eastern Brigade no longer swept and rested in the Liaohetao.

The only battle in the whole of July was when Li Zhaoji sent troops to capture Haicheng, the feudal city of Shang Domain.

This battle was lackluster, the eighteen-pounder cannon bombarded a gap of more than 30 meters in the wall of Haicheng, Haicheng surrendered, and the defenders of Haicheng guarded some of their families to 'break out of the encirclement', but in fact, this battle was a private cooperation between Li Zhaoji and Shang Kexi, and it was fought for the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

The Eastern Brigade occupied Haicheng, and the army did not enter the city to sweep and plunder, and even the main force still lived outside the city, with only one infantry battalion and the guards entering the city, but it only maintained order. The Eastern Brigade did not move a single brick or tile of Shang Domain, and the fall of Haicheng put pressure on the Manchus, and the 200,000 taels of silver granted by Dolgon were sent directly to Li Zhaoji's camp without any further delay.

This July, Li Zhaoji was hunting, writing letters, and reading letters, calculating others and preventing them from being calculated by others.

He also watched a lot of excitement, and saw that Li Xiangjun and Bian Yujing's obedience and admiration for Zhu Yousong from the beginning turned into dislike and contempt.

saw Zhu Yousong's low-level and tooth-wracking love poems, and saw Zhu Yousong's embarrassment of being chased all over the yard because he peeked at others taking a bath.

Until the end of July, when all the reinforcements of the Shun army arrived on Changxing Island, and Li Laiheng sent several letters to urge the army, Li Zhaoji took his personal entourage and arrived all the way to Fuzhou City.

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