Niu Chenghu sat in the study uneasily, with several henchmen around him, one of whom had just come from the front line of Qingzhou Mansion at night. A few days ago, this gentleman took eight battalions of troops (more than 4,000 people) to Yidu County to obey the order, and then suffered heavy losses in the battle to stop the yellow thieves, only three battalions of men and horses escaped, and also lost most of the weapons, it can be said that the wolf bèi has been extremely wolf.

These three battalions of men and horses are all old battalions brought by Niu Chenghu and others from Shaanxi, and the five battalions of men and horses lost in Yidu, except for a few newly recruited in Henan, most of them are strong men in Shandong, and the loss is also lost, there is no pity. It's just that the news they brought back made the cadres stationed in Zhangqiu County uneasy: the combat power of this yellow-clothed thief is really too strong!

That Tong is an old man from Liaodong, and his ability to govern the army is not bad. Although nearly half of the 18,000 troops who intercepted the yellow-clothed thieves in Qingzhou this time were newly recruited, there was no shortage of equipment and food, and the city was desperately fortified for several months. But it only blocked the yellow-clothed thief for eleven days, which made the generals of the green battalion who were hurriedly preparing to adjust and deploy to resist the yellow-clothed thief in the rear suddenly felt a little frightened.

Erlang Zhenjun has been transferred to Shanxi, and now with these shrimp soldiers and crabs will stay in Shandong, how will they resist the Sun Monkey who has become a fine?

"Dashuai, after the last general broke through the siege, he found many thieves and rangers in the wild, scattered everywhere, distributing cards, recruiting surrender and rebellion, which was very rampant. Well, this is a pass card that the last general has taken down. After speaking, the general handed over a blank piece of paper full of words in his hand.

Niu Chenghu was born in northern Shaanxi and was mixed in the peasant army in his early years. He also made it all the way to the leader. The mixed number "a scale of gold" is. Therefore, he and many of his henchmen will be born with mud legs. I didn't know a single big character, and after the general handed over the card, he handed it to the master behind him and asked him to recite it in public.

The master cleared his throat, picked up the card and swept it slightly, and immediately his face changed greatly: "...... The army of benevolence, the army of might, the army of victory. He did not commit adultery with women, nor killed innocents, nor plundered property, nor committed any offences. However, when the soldiers are in the city, they are not allowed to disobey. The first gun wanted the seal officials to go out, the second gun wanted the gentry to surrender, and the third gun wanted the whole army to disarm. If the city gate is closed, those who defend the city will be killed on the day the city is broken, and the nine tribes will be killed; If the whole city refuses to defend it, it will be slaughtered on the day it is broken. Not an inch of grass is left. Cards to know! ”

Such a murderous handbook made the generals in the room break out in a cold sweat. In Shanxi and Henan, as a member of the Shun army, they did not issue similar signs. But when this kind of card spy is sent to one's head, it always feels so frustrating.

"Let's discuss it, what kind of charter should be in this situation." Niu Chenghu slapped the table and said to everyone.

"Can't be lowered. This yellow-clothed military thief-like character, I waited for him to be nameless and scoreless, it's not appropriate. Someone shouted for the first time, "Besides, our army is numbered in Zhangqiu, and it is on the periphery of Jinan." Now the food and salary are all dependent on the supply of Jinan Zhang Futai, if you vote for the thief in yellow clothes, I am afraid that there will be many inconveniences when it is urgent, and I hope that the handsome man will think twice. ”

"The yellow-clothed thief has a sharp gun, known as the elite, and now tens of thousands of people are coming to the west, and its momentum is like Mount Tai. In the small county of Zhangqiu, there are no more than 10,000 soldiers in our army, and blocking it is tantamount to self-destruction. How can such a loss-making business be done? Immediately, another objection was raised. Indeed, everyone has been fighting for so many years, is it easy to save some capital, if it is all smashed in Zhangqiu at once, even if he has to get rid of his life, he will have no soldiers and no power in the future, and he is afraid that life will be difficult.

"It's not going to work, it's not going to work, it's better to wait and see for the time being, and then make plans when the yellow-clothed thief comes west." Someone stands up and dilutes the mud, in fact, this is also the safest thing to do. Wait a minute, take a look, what if the yellow-clothed thief doesn't go west?

Niu Chenghu listened to the gossip of his subordinates in his ears, and his right hand shrunk in his sleeve was still rubbing a letter. This is a letter of persuasion written by Chen Zhilong, who is now working for the Yellow Thief, to himself, he was originally going to burn it and ignore it, but at that time, he didn't know what to think about it, so he kept this letter like a ghost. Listening to his subordinates discussing the situation at this moment, he suddenly found that these people were not very enthusiastic about resisting the yellow-clothed thief, which couldn't help but shake his heart a little.

He was originally a thief, and later descended to the Ming Dynasty as the chief soldier of Lintao. In 1644, after Li Zicheng entered Beijing, Niu Chenghu was named the general of general power because he was born in Shaanxi, and he was stationed in Ningxia Mansion. After the Battle of One Stone, Dong Xueli, the former deputy general of Huamachi in Ningxia, who surrendered to the Qing army in Huaiqing, secretly sent a letter to Chen Zhilong, the envoy of the Ningxia Festival in Dashun, asking him to surrender to the Qing Dynasty in his army. As a result, the letter was intercepted by Niu Chenghu, and Dong Xueli's only son and his younger brother were ordered to be executed.

By 1645, Niu Chenghu was still loyal to Dashun. When Azig led the army into Shaanxi and sent the Shun army general Kang Yuanxun to recruit him, Niu Chenghu even killed this person. When Li Zicheng led his troops to retreat to Henan and Hubei, Chen Zhilong gathered a considerable part of the Shun army and threatened Niu Chenghu to surrender together, and Niu Chenghu reluctantly surrendered at the end of the month.

In other words, he himself has a grudge with Chen Zhilong and Dong Xueli! Now these two people are getting along with the yellow-clothed thief, which makes Niu Chenghu dare to surrender! How can it be lowered!

And just when Niu Chenghu and his generals were very entangled in what to do next, on March 12, 1649, Mao Desheng rode a pure-blooded Turkmen horse and embarked on the road to the west. With him marched west, there was also the East Coast Army that had just won a fierce battle in Qingzhou City. Except for Ding Mingwu's department, which suffered heavy casualties (most of the casualties in this battle came from this department, and there are currently less than 10,000 troops), who stayed in Qingzhou City to rest and transfer supplies, the rest of the main forces were almost all dispatched, advancing at an unhurried rate along the official road between Jinan and Qingzhou.

The heralds set out with the main force first, and they took a large number of copied billboards to the prefectures and counties under the rule of the Qing court along the way to distribute them. After the defeat of Tong Yangliang in Qingzhou, the front line was successively routed, and more than ten counties in the west, including Linzi, Le'an, Boxing, Gaoyuan, Xincheng, Changshan, Zouping, and Zichuan, immediately fell into a panic. In particular, the gentry fled westward with gold and silver, lest they stay in the county and be poisoned by the yellow-clothed thieves.

And those who have some strong points simply ask the state and county officials for a name, and together they pay for a group training to prepare for self-protection. It is not the first time that the yellow-clothed thief has marched into Qingzhou and Jinan Mansions, and the last time he came, he was still a soldier led by a thief surnamed Mo (this person claimed according to the imperial court newspaper that he had been killed in Yanzhou Mansion by Melle Zhangjinglai), at that time, the gentry of these provinces were all subjected to big seedlings, not only were they sent grain and donations, but a few gentry who had some connections with the Qing court were actually killed by the yellow-clothed thief. But isn't it, but who dares to treat the gentry harshly if they have the ambition to fight for the world? A thief is a thief, and he will never be on the stage, so I still follow the Qing Dynasty and fight with the yellow-clothed thief to the end.

Therefore, when the army on the east bank marched westward, there were still a large number of gentry regiments in the countryside along the way who practiced and defended forts to openly resist. These bold regimental training forces actually killed all the envoys sent by the east coast to urge food, and at the same time slandered Mo Dashuai for being crushed by the soldiers of "My Great Qing Dynasty". This is unreasonable!

So, after firing three shots at the forts and still refusing to surrender, the East Bank army finally began to use force to force them to surrender. The process of the battle was naturally lackluster, because how the hastily drawn regimental training and armament could be compared with the battle-hardened soldiers, so it didn't take long for these forts to be conquered one after another. Brutal retribution ensued, in which the disobedient gentry were beheaded, and the female dependents were either given meritorious service or joined the women's detachment, and all their property was confiscated. Some of the recalcitrant fortresses were slaughtered by Mao Desheng's order to help the defenders of the city, and the rest were reduced to slaves and assigned to Sakhalin Island State Farm as slaves.

After using such a thunderous tactic, the place where the army on the east coast passed suddenly looked at the wind and fell. Linzi, Gaoyuan, Xincheng, Changshan and other counties are even more cards to surrender, even if the local magistrate is unwilling to surrender, the soldiers in the city must also force it to surrender, otherwise everyone is a dead word. Anyway, it is not very likely that the yellow-clothed thieves will send troops to garrison them, and everyone's so-called surrender is just a formality, and the city is still in charge of itself? Even, some nimble green-skinned hooligans even wantonly extorted and gathered in the city in the name of surrendering the yellow-clothed army, so unhappy.

In this way, the ruling order of the Qing court, which had just been restored in Qingzhou and Jinan for less than half a year, collapsed again. Encouraged by the East Coast Army, a large number of spontaneous rebel armies began to emerge in various places, which further weakened the power of the Qing court and also shook the confidence of the Qing officials.

On March 18, after seven or eight county towns in Liankeqing Prefecture and Jinan Prefecture (basically all of them went down without a fight), the army on the east coast approached Zhangqiu County, Jinan Prefecture, and directly pressed its sharp knife against the soft abdomen of the Qing court. Zhang Ruxiu, the governor of Shandong Province in the Qing Dynasty, hurriedly appealed to Beijing, and Luck Dehun, who was in charge of Shandong's military affairs, also dispatched troops and generals one after another, preparing to wait for work near Jinan and have a big battle with the yellow-clothed thieves to decide the ownership of Shandong -- he really had no way to retreat!

In order to prepare for this big war, Luck Dehun has completely given up the idea of exterminating the bandits of the Yuyuan Army in Dongchang Mansion and Yanzhou Mansion, and began to gather troops to prepare for the big war. Kong Xigui, Li Shutai, Tong Yangliang, and Niu Chenghu gathered troops in Jinan, preparing to fight to the death with the yellow-clothed thieves. As for the more than 40,000 people in the two divisions of Lu Guonan, the chief soldier of Baoding, and Yi Yonggui, the general soldier of Linqing, they have already followed Tan Tai north to Shanxi to quell the rebellion, and the troops left in Shandong at this time plus the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners are only 60,000 or 70,000 people. Moreover, the yellow-clothed thieves can now contact those Yuyuan troops who have just escaped to act together, so that my chances of winning the Qing Dynasty will be even smaller.

On March 24, the army on the east bank continued to advance westward after a short rest, and the forward Du Chong had a skirmish with Niu Chenghu, the general soldier of Qingyi Prefecture, east of Zhangqiu County, with no winner or loser. (To be continued......)