Chapter 179: Soldiers Descend on the City
Since November 22, the fourth year of Chongzhen, the rebel army has driven straight in, through more than a dozen prefectures and counties, and has come straight to Dengzhou, and the soldiers are under the city, and it has been more than half a month since the four gates of Dengzhou were closed. Pen | fun | pavilion www. biquge。 info
During this period, both the garrison in Dengzhou City and the rebels outside the city maintained relative calm. With a peculiar tacit understanding, the two sides launched a stalemate under the city of Dengzhou.
Sun Yuanhua tried his best to appease the rebels and maintain his power and status in Denglai, while Li Jiucheng and Kong Youde tried to walk a tightrope between "being appeased" and "self-reliance", in order to win more concessions from the imperial court and obtain the greatest benefits for themselves. In such a state, the hostilities between the two sides have not escalated.
Although the people outside the city were unlucky, and some clashes between the rangers broke out intermittently, the two sides did not really start a big battle from beginning to end, and the rebels did not launch a direct attack on Dengzhou. Li Jiucheng, Kong Youde's "begging for care" and Sun Yuanhua's "main caressing" are not secrets inside and outside Dengzhou City.
However, due to the deliberate delay of Li and Kong, Sun Yuanhua's efforts to appease the rebels were slow, and he was worried that he would not be able to explain to the emperor if this stalemate continued.
The two sides met at the east gate of Dengzhou and a battle began. Zhang Tao, the general of the standard battalion, guarded outside the city, and Zhang Keda led his headquarters to resist and form a two-way offensive against the rebels. Zhang Ke's subordinates were quite strong in order to aid the Liao and Zhejiang soldiers, and they fought fiercely with the rebels and achieved partial victories.
Zhang Tao's subordinates were all Liao people from Phi Dao, and after coming into contact with the rebels, they withdrew from the battlefield on their own regardless of military orders, and some people directly joined the rebels and attacked Zhang Ke most of them. Zhang Keda did not expect this situation, he was caught off guard and suffered heavy losses, and less than 30% of the people in the headquarters remained. The barracks set up by Zhang Keda and Zhang Tao outside the city to protect the city were all abandoned, and all the weapons and baggage in the camp fell into the hands of the rebels. The rebels were suddenly gaining momentum.
What's worse is that Zhang Tao's troops are all Liao, and they are of the same origin as the rebels. They all hated the people, officials and soldiers in the Denglai area, and the internal cohesion was extremely strong, and after meeting with the rebels, they all held back their strength to enter Dengzhou to "take revenge".
The contradiction between the Liao people and the local soldiers and civilians in Dengzhou is very deep, and the seeds of hatred have been planted long after the Dongjiang soldiers and civilians crossed in large numbers.
Since the first year of Chongzhen, there have been a large number of Liao people who could not bear the oppression of the Houjin Tartars, crossed the sea from Phi Island to Dengzhou, and were resettled by local officials, no less than hundreds of thousands of people. Unexpectedly, these hundreds of thousands of Liao people were exploited and abused by the local bureaucrats from the very beginning of their arrival on the land of Dengzhou, and many Liao people who crossed the sea and returned to the country had to flee back to the Dongjiang River because they could not bear the torture and exploitation. So much so that in the first year of Chongzhen, Yang Guodong, the general soldier of Denglai, went to Phi Island on a business trip, and the resentful Liao people gathered together to try to kill him to vent their anger.
Historical records record that "Liao Ding is strong, and the people of Denglai are unbearable", "The two counties of Denglai have been lost since Liaoyang, and the Liao people have avoided the chaos and run for more than 100,000 people, and the natives have been humiliated or killed each other, and the Liao people are resentful", "The Liao people have migrated to avoid disasters, and the natives have been with each other every day, and the precepts are not broken".
In order to suppress the Liao people in the city, starting from the arrival of the rebel soldiers in the city, the governor's yamen, the general army's yamen, and the superintendent army road all sent patrols, holding arrows to patrol the city of Dengzhou and Shuicheng, and it was strictly forbidden to "gather crowds to make noise" and "spread rumors", and every few days there were unlucky people who were beheaded to show the public. The relationship between the Liao people in the city and the military and civilians in Dengzhou became increasingly tense.
Dengzhou seems to be a strong city, the grain, grass and silver in it are piled up, there are hundreds of artillery, and there are six or seven thousand people in the old and new armies, most of whom have been trained by the Portuguese, and the firearms drill is the best in the Ming army. However, many of the generals and soldiers in these armies were Liao, and there were a large number of disgruntled Liao people living in Dengzhou City.
For all this, Xia Nan knows something about it, not so much that the rebels captured Dengzhou City, but that the rebels took advantage of the contradiction between the Liao people and the locals of Dengzhou, and cooperated with the Liao soldiers and Liao people in the city, so that the seemingly solid Dengzhou was self-defeating, and the rebels fought with Zhang Tao of the standard camp and Zhang Keda, the general soldier of Denglai, which was an important turning point.
Before smoothly blending into the rebels, Xia Nanyuan's plan was to incite the rebels to disperse and attack the prefectures and counties of Shandong as much as possible after the destruction of Dengzhou City, so as to avoid a premature decisive battle with the officers and soldiers who had quelled the rebellion, so that the rebels would be mired in the quagmire of war in Shandong and could not get out. The reason for this is because in the original historical time and space, after the rebels captured Dengzhou, they were quite high-spirited and wanted to capture Laizhou in one fell swoop, but they couldn't attack it for a long time, and retreated to Dengzhou after losing the decisive battle with the official army outside Laizhou, and then ran out of ammunition and food under the long-term siege, abandoned the city and went north across the sea, and defected to Houjin.
Kong Youde's submission allowed Huang Taiji not only to get a unit with rich combat experience, but also to obtain valuable Hongyi cannons, craftsmen and casting technology, which changed the invincibility of the Later Jin army in the field and the lack of ability to attack fortifications, and changed the contrast of firearms power between the Ming and Qing dynasties, and accelerated the demise of the Ming Dynasty.
But the plan can't keep up with the changes. With the help of the channels of the White Lotus Sect, Xia Nan blended into the rebels more smoothly than expected. After hearing the news that Zhang Tao's troops were scattered and Zhang Keda's southern troops were almost wiped out, he knew that the opportunity had come, and instead of waiting for Dengzhou City to break and then incite the rebels, it was better to find a reason to sneak into Dengzhou City and ask to see Sun Yuanhua, prevent the rebels from joining forces inside and outside to break through Dengzhou, and completely cut off Kong Youde's road to Jin.
After thinking about it, he asked Kong Youde and Li Jiucheng to meet him, saying that he had a plan to break the city.
Tempted by the money, the soldiers who guarded them reported it. At this time, Kong, Li and other rebel generals were arguing fiercely about accepting the appeasement or capturing Dengzhou City in one fell swoop, and when they heard that the people of the White Lotus Sect had a clever plan to break the city, they let Xia Nan and others directly enter the Chinese army camp.
The three of them passed through the rebel soldiers who came and went and came to the main camp. After entering the camp, he found that it was full of generals in armor, Li Jiucheng was sitting in the first place, next to a general of the same age and dressed as him, who looked more honest and less rebellious. To be continued.
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