The heroic Xiying and the rest of the camp insisted on resisting the Qing Dynasty in Sichuan for more than ten years, and the Qing court entered Sichuan from 1646, and it has been 17 years now.

The location of Yucheng is very important, and if you control Yucheng, you will cut off the throat into Sichuan. The Ming army attacked Yucheng several times, but was unsuccessful, but was counterattacked by Li Guoying and suffered heavy losses.

But Li Guoying didn't know that the more than 2,000 people he sent to find the Tusi of Western Sichuan to collect grain all sent food to the Western Expeditionary Army in vain. When more than 2,000 Qing troops entered the mountainous areas of western Sichuan, they fell into an ambush by the Western Expeditionary Army and killed more than 500 people on the spot. The remaining more than 1,500 Qing soldiers heard the shouts of surrender and not killing, and they were too hungry to hold their weapons, and they immediately laid down their weapons and surrendered to the Ming army. The first thing I did after surrendering was to ask, "Is there anything to eat?" ”

Wang Jinzhong ordered to boil a few large pots of porridge for the surrendered Qing army captives and let them drink them, so that those captives could be regarded as recovering a little strength.

"What did Li Guoying do when he asked you to come to western Sichuan?" Wang Jinzhong interrogated the captured Qing garrison.

The Qing army garrison replied honestly: "My lord, the villain's grain route has been cut off, and Lord Li asked the villain to come to western Sichuan to find the local Tusi to collect grain." ”

"Hahaha!" Listening to the words of the Qing army garrison, Wang Jinzhong looked up to the sky and laughed: "I can let you go back, you go back and tell you Li Guoying and Master Li, just say that those Tusi who are loyal to your Qing court have been defeated by our local tyrants!" Their land and possessions were divided among the slave children! The rest of the toasts are all toasts loyal to our Ming army! Hahaha! By the way, if you tell you Lord Li Guoying, let's say that we are the people of King Jin! ”

Wang Jinzhong did not report to his family, but reported the banner of Li Dingguo.

"Your Excellency!" Yamawazi asked softly on the side, "Are we really going to put the tartar back?" ”

Wang Jinzhong replied: "Just let him go." And his own soldiers, we can't keep them, let him take them back, of course we can't let the others go! ”

A few days later, the Qing garrison fled back to Yucheng and reported the incident to Li Guoying.

"What? Kawanishi Toast has surrendered to the thieves? "Li Guoying is really dumbfounded now." Is what you say true? ”

The guard replied: "Lord Hui, I don't know about my humble position, but there are indeed thieves in western Sichuan. Those thieves are not the thieves opposite us, but the men and horses of the puppet Jin king Li Yi who came from Burma! ”

Li Guoying was very surprised: "Li rebelled against the country? How could his men and horses come to the west of Sichuan? What is Wu Sangui, the king of Pingxi, doing? Didn't it mean that Li Dingguo was defeated and went into exile in embarrassment, not daring to come back? ”

Zhao Liangdong next to him stepped forward and whispered in Li Guoying's ear: "Lord Hui, the last time Wu Sangui went out to capture the puppet Ming Emperor, he suffered a big defeat, and even General Pingxi and Bei Ziye were killed!" ”

"Such a fiasco. Wu Sangui actually reported a great victory to the imperial court? And you, Zhao Liangdong, actually helped Wu Sangui hide it and not report it? What are you guilty of? Li Guoying's face changed greatly.

"The last general deserves death!" Zhao Liangdong hurriedly knelt down and put all the responsibility on Wang Jinbao, who had served Hong Chengchou with him, "At the end of that battle, the general lost his troops and lost his generals, and the defeat was too bad." originally wanted to report truthfully to the imperial court, but General Wang Jinbao was afraid of being punished by the imperial court, so he agreed to collude with Wu Sangui and jointly conceal the imperial court. The last general is also powerless. I didn't dare to offend King Pingxi and General Wang, so I didn't report it. I hope that the Lord will punish the crime! ”

"Get up!" Li Guoying sighed helplessly, "This lying about the military situation is not your business alone, the matter has come to this, it is useless to blame you!" Even the flag man can lie about the military situation, don't talk about us minions! That's it. We can only give up Yucheng and follow your proposal to build a raft and go down the river to Hubei. ”

All the surrounding grain roads were cut off, Li Guoying had always thought. The sneak attack on Chengdu and the surprise attack on Guangyuan were all done by the Kuidong Righteous Army, but I didn't expect it to be Li Dingguo's men and horses who came to Sichuan. In this way, it is impossible for Wu Sangui to reinforce it. At this point, Li Guoying had no choice but to give up Yucheng.

There are other ways to go through the breakthrough route, such as going upriver to Guangyuan, or going to Dazhou and going out of the mountains. However, those mountain roads were extremely difficult to walk, and the Qing army, which had been starved for many days, could not walk at all. Therefore, the Qing army only had one way left, which was to build a raft down the river according to Zhao Liangdong's proposal, which not only saved physical strength, but also broke through the Three Gorges and entered Hubei at the fastest speed.

Beginning in the afternoon of the same day, the Qing army, which had filled their stomachs with wild vegetable bark, went up the mountain to cut down wood, preparing to build a large number of rafts and sail down the river to escape from Chongqing, which had become a lonely city.

I heard that the raft was built to leave this ghost place, and all the Qing soldiers worked very hard. Although it was a cold day, everyone was sweating, and the towering trees fell one after another, and the Qing soldiers carried the cut wood to the river, tied it up with hemp rope, and made it into a large raft.

Li Guoying is still very cautious in doing things, on the one hand, he flew pigeons to pass the book, and sent a distress letter to Zhang Changgeng downstream, on the other hand, Li Guoying arranged a suspicious array and made the illusion that he wanted to retreat from the Dazhou area.

The Qing army cut down the forest to build a raft, of course, it could not hide the Western Expeditionary Army that was ambushed nearby and did not collect it overnight. Finding that the Qing army wanted to run away, the Ming army scouts divided into two routes, one went to report to Wang Jinzhong in western Sichuan, and the other went to Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun to report that the Qing army was going to run away.

"Hahaha! Li Guoying, the old fox, is finally running away! Hearing the news, Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun laughed from ear to ear.

Previously, Li Laiheng and others also intercepted the carrier pigeons of the Qing army, and the archers of the righteous army shot down many carrier pigeons. Most of the Qing army's carrier pigeons became Chinese food on the plate of the rebels, and the secret letters in the small bamboo tubes also fell into the hands of the rebels. Although Li Guoying's letter was ciphered, it was still cracked by the rebels. It's just that Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun intercepted Li Guoying's letter to Hubei, and at the same time, they also intercepted a batch of secret letters sent by Li Guoying to Shaanxi.

At the same time, Li Guoying also sent a messenger to Yunnan, deliberately allowing the messenger to be intercepted by the Ming army on the way. The messenger sent was dead, and he only knew that Li Guoying was going to Yunnan, and the so-called eastward and northward movements were all suspicious tactics. The messenger had no idea what was going on, and was tortured by the Ming army, and the messenger finally confessed. The Qing army in Yucheng prepared to retreat to Yungui.

Because Li Guoying released true and false information, the judgment of the righteous army was unclear, and it was difficult to organize troops to intercept it.

It's a pity that Li Guoying also underestimated the energy of the spies of the Western Expeditionary Army, the elite spies of the Western Expeditionary Army can be in the worst situation without food. Surviving in the wild for two or three months is not a problem! Moreover, the spies of the Western Expeditionary Army are good at concealment, as long as they hide, the Qing army will not be able to detect them at all.

After careful observation, the spies determined that Li Guoying was going down the river and fled from the Yangtze River to Hubei!

After determining the accuracy of the information, Li Laiheng, Liu Tichun and others decided to keep Li Guoying and his Qing army in the Three Gorges as much as possible. You must know that Li Guoying's Qing army is one of the most capable green battalion armies in the Qing court, and most of these Qing troops are from Gansu, Shaanxi, and belong to the soldiers and horses of Qin. Since ancient times, Sanqin has produced elite soldiers. Since Li Guoying is going to run. Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun will definitely not let Li Guoying get their wish, no matter what they say, they will intercept most of the Qing army! It is best to kill Li Guoying, Zhao Liangdong, Wang Jinbao, Tuhai and others, so as to eliminate the henchmen of the righteous army.

"Immediately go to the middle of the river to arrange a barrage, arrange underwater piles, and create artificial reefs! Build a lot of rafts and tie them to chains! Completely seal the river! Also, move all our guns to the river! Let people build a large number of trebuchets, and Li Guoying must be left in Wushan Canyon! Liu Tichun gave the order without hesitation.

There was a deep hatred between the rebels and Li Guoying. It was because of Li Guoying's suppression, after Liu Wenxiu's death. The territory of the rebels was constantly compressed, and they almost fell into a desperate situation. If it weren't for Wang Xinyu's Western Expeditionary Army appearing in time, the righteous army would have been wiped out by the Qing army sooner or later.

"You must not let Li Guoying go! He must die! Li Laiheng said hatefully.

But for the elite night group of the Western Expeditionary Army, it seems that they are more interested in Zhao Liangdong and Wang Jinbao, the two generals of the Qing Army, and Tuhai, which is also the target that the Western Expeditionary Army wants to eliminate the most. The importance of Li Guoying. Instead, it took a back seat. That's because before the Western Expeditionary Army set off, Wang Xinyu had explained that he must kill Zhao Liangdong and Wang Jinbao as much as possible, and if he has the opportunity, he will also kill Tuhai by the way! As for Li Guoying. It doesn't matter if he can get rid of it or not, anyway, he's so old, and he doesn't have a few years to live! As long as there is no Zhao Liangdong, the old and steady Li Guoying will not pose a threat.

On the riverbank, the rebel soldiers nervously cut down wood to build rafts and trebuchets. On the riverside, some righteous soldiers with good water quality carried the wood that had just been cut, first sharpened the two ends, and then carried the wood onto the boat, and when they arrived in the river, they erected the wood, plunged it into the river, and nailed it into it, forming an artificial hidden pile.

Due to the shortage of artillery in the hands of the rebels, the lack of firepower to block the river, so the rebels built a primitive projectile weapon called trebuchet to enhance the blockade ability of the river.

The accuracy of the trebuchet is too poor, and it shoots at moving targets on the water surface a hundred steps away, and the average trebuchet doesn't want to hit the target at all, and occasionally it is a blind cat that touches a dead mouse. In response to this situation, the Western Expeditionary Army's Sectarian Army made a seven-pronged cannon that could fire a large amount of gravel, and this trebuchet could shoot broken stones like a goddess scattered flowers, and compensated for the extremely low hit rate with the number and density of the projection.

Because the Qing army went down the river on a raft, the trebuchet that fired the fire bomb was not effective, and the raft was not easy to ignite. But the seven-pronged cannon fired a large amount of broken stones, which was a nightmare for the Qing soldiers who were exposed on the raft.

The water flow of the Three Gorges was very fast, and the rebels could not build pontoon bridges on the river to stop the Qing army, but they tied up the rafts with iron chains, formed a large number of raft formations, blocked the Yangtze River, and sent soldiers to stand on the rafts and prepare for hand-to-hand combat with the Qing army. If there is a Qing army raft that is lucky enough to rush through the raft array, the rebel sailors can row the raft and warship to chase after it, and annihilate as many Qing troops as possible.

Abandoning Yucheng was a big project for the Qing army, not only the more than 100,000 Qing troops in Yucheng had to retreat, but also the 5,000 Qing troops stationed in Chengdu, the 10,000 Qing troops in Wanxian and the 20,000 Qing troops in Fengjie all had to retreat together. Otherwise, as soon as the main force of Yucheng retreats, the Qing army in these places will be left alone and will eventually be eaten by the Ming army.

Garrisoned in Fengjie is Tan Hong's soldiers and horses, originally he was also the Ming army, four years ago the Southern Ming army attacked heavy [Qing, just when the Ming army was determined to win, Tan Hong and Tan Yi, who knew the time for Junjie, suddenly rebelled, killed Tan Wen, surrendered to the Qing army, resulting in a good situation for the Ming army immediately reversed.

Tan Yi has been killed in Chengdu, and the remaining Tan Hong is in fear every day, he is worried that one day when the rebels conquer Fengjie, he will definitely not be able to live.

When he learned that Li Guoying was going to give up Chong Qing and prepare to flee downstream, Tan Hong's movements were faster than Li Guoying, and he was the most anxious person to flee for his life, because he knew very well that once he fell into the hands of the rebels, the rebels would definitely take revenge for the year.

"Hurry up! If someone grinds and doesn't build a good raft, then don't rob others, stay here and deal with Minggou! Tan Hong stood on the side of the mountain, shouting loudly, and commanded his soldiers to cut wood.

At this time, Fengjie was basically an undefended city, and the people who could move came out to cut down wood to build rafts, and those who remained in the city were so hungry that they couldn't even walk, and they were waiting for death. The grain of the Qing army in Fengjie came from Yucheng in the upper reaches, and now even Yucheng has run out of food, and the Qing army in Fengjie has naturally been out of food for many days.

As the main general, Tan Hong is better, he asked his soldiers to go fishing in the river, dig some wild vegetables in the mountains, hunt some game, dig some bamboo shoots, pick some mushrooms, and live a good life. But the soldiers under his command were miserable. There are more than 25,000 Qing soldiers, and more than 25,000 mouths want to eat, and not everyone can go down to the river to fish, and there are not so many fish and shrimp for them to eat in this section of the river, so the Qing soldiers can only dig grass roots and earthworms to eat. After a long time, many people were so hungry that they couldn't even walk.

Just as Tan Hong was commanding the Qing soldiers to cut down wood and build a raft, someone suddenly exclaimed: "Ming dog! Ming Dog is coming! ”

On the downstream river, there were black and oppressive rebel warships and rafts, heading upstream, heading in the direction of Fengjie.

In fact, the number of rebels who came was not large, only 3,000 people. However, Tan Hong's Qing army had no fighting spirit, and when he saw the arrival of the Kuidong Righteous Army, he immediately threw down the cutting tools at hand and fled back to the city in embarrassment. By the time the 3,000 rebels arrived at Fengjie City, the Qing army had all fled into the city, the city gate was closed, and no one in the city, more than eight times the number of Qing troops, dared to fight. Tan Hong, who had long been frightened, did not dare to lead his troops to attack, and allowed the rebels to become unscrupulous activities.

The soldiers of the righteous army were not in a hurry, and calmly threw all the wood that the Qing army had just cut down into the river, and let the wood float down the river to the area of Wushan. Tan Hongqing's army spent a lot of hard work to cut down the wood, and all of it was cheapened by the Kuidong Righteous Army. (To be continued.) )