The Ming army in the south of the Yangtze River retreated to Yangzhou to celebrate the New Year, and on the fifteenth day of the first month, Deng Ming also returned to Yangzhou through Chongming and other places, and he and his guards spent the New Year at sea. After entering the Yangtze River, Qing court officials from Suzhou and other places swarmed up, and there were so many envoys that they almost sank Deng Ming's flagship.

After seeing Deng Ming, Zhao Tianba immediately complained: "Master Gong not only did not allow us to pursue the fleeing Qing army, but also persuaded Hu Shuai that they would not pursue. ”

It's not surprising to defeat Jieshu, the information that Jieshu got is basically not right, the simplest thing is that the map indicates that it is a moat that leads to water, and the green camp has worked hard to drag a raft here, but finds that the bottom of the river is dry and cracked; When he was carrying a ladder and planning to climb over the trench, he found that it was full of water from the Yangtze River. As for the height of the camp wall, the number of Ming troops, and the direction of the road, all the information obtained by relying on the Liangjiang and Caobiao meticulous work is full of errors.

On the other hand, the Ming army knew the Qing army's arrangements well, and many of the messengers who sent Jieshu confidential military information were actually mappers of the Ming army. The whole tentative attack of Jieshu was to command the inferior Qing army to pass through the most rugged and complicated terrain, braving crossfire, and ramming into the key defensive areas of the superior Sichuan army, which was waiting for the battle. And when the Ming army launched a counterattack, every heavy punch hit the defenseless section of the Qing army, and even many of the passage entrances of the defense line were taken over by the Sichuan army disguised as the Qing army after the Qing army launched an offensive.

However, after the Qing army began to rout, Gong Yan resolutely stopped the pursuit of the Ming army, and did a very sloppy job of clearing the surrounding routs, otherwise Zhao Tianba estimated that the number of prisoners could easily exceed 60,000. Although Zhao Tianba was the commander appointed by Deng Ming, he did not think much about strategy, and his relationship with Kui Dongjun was not as good as Gong Yan.

"Now do we have the ability to annex the two rivers and lakes in one fell swoop?" Gong Yan explained to Deng Ming unhurriedly, in fact, Zhao Tianba himself was basically persuaded by Gong Ming's strategic concept, and he complained to Deng Ming just to show that his ability was not limited to the existing results.

In order to achieve this goal, Gong Yan has been complaining to the Yamen of the Governor of Liangjiang and the Yamen of Caoyun, saying that the factions within the Ming army are complicated, and the central army from Beijing should not be underestimated. Because Gong Yan had always hinted that the Ming army was very likely to be defeated, Jiang Guozhu and Lin Qilong both tried their best to assist the Ming army in the battle, and needless to say, both of them sent death squads to sabotage Jieshu during the war, and even burned the barracks to create chaos.

"If we completely annihilate Jieshu's army, or beat Jieshu to the point that he can't breathe at all, Zhang Changgeng and Jiang Guozhu, who want to stand on their own, will regard us as the primary enemy. Now they may not be without this thought. And now is not the time to fight them hard in the land of these serpents. In a few more years, we will be able to gain an overwhelming advantage over them, and we may even directly order Zhang Changgeng to surrender. Gong Yan believed that the correct way was to accept it when it was good, and retain the Qing court's certain threat to Jiangnan, so that the Qing court's governors would continue to rely on the Sichuan army: "The loss of Jieshu this time was not large, mainly because of the loss of morale. After this defeat, he must have known that the yamen in Jiangnan had been infiltrated by us, otherwise the information he got would not have been so wrong. Not to mention that just after noon, dozens of places in the rear were on fire at the same time, and our assault troops were like no one in a no-man's land, and they were not discovered until they touched his tent - he would not dare to fight us again in a decisive battle with us in the south of the Yangtze River in the short term. ”

Deng Ming also understood Gong Yan's assumption, Jieshu was very unconvinced by the defeat of this battle, and most of them suspected that the governor of the southeast came, which means that if the governor of the southeast continued to rely on the Sichuan army, most of the Qing court would not dare to come to death recklessly, and if the southeast governor expelled the Sichuan army, Jieshu was likely to come again, he still had the strength, and he would no longer trust the "friendly army" of Liangjiang, without the assistance of the Sichuan army, Jiang Guozhu would probably not be able to withstand him.

Now Deng Ming has made another peace in Shandong, which also gives the Qing court a chance to step down and transfer the army back to the north for reorganization. As for what happened to the Fuqing army in Shandong, Gong Yan, the generals of the Sichuan army and the generals of the Kuidong army did not understand, and they did not care too much, Deng Ming's attack was to attract the main force of the Qing army, and finally contained tens of thousands of Qing army backups, forcing the main force of the Qing army to attack recklessly without carefully verifying the information, in the eyes of the Ming army, the Jiaodong battlefield has completely achieved its goal.

"The most beneficial thing for us is to let Zhou Pei go to the public to make trouble in secret, so that the Qing court's Zhao'an in Jiaodong will fail, so that this year the Qing court will not have to do anything else, and it will be mired in the quagmire of Shandong, and we can also provide weapons to let the Jiaodong army and the Qing army fight for a long time. Zu Zepu will most likely be held accountable by the Qing court, which is another officialdom turmoil, and it is also beneficial and harmless to us. Gong Yan's view is to let Jiaodong continue to stir up, as long as the peace is broken, it is absolutely impossible for the Qing court to let the main force go to Jiangnan when there are rebels in Shandong.

This idea is slightly different from Deng Ming's, after seeing the suffering of those Jiaodong refugees, Deng Ming can't bear to let the war spread in Jiaodong for a long time. However, Gong Yan's views clearly represented the mainstream opinion of the Ming army, and both Zhang Huangyan and Li Laiheng supported this idea. After seeing that Deng Ming seemed a little unbearable, Zhang Huangyan also said that he could accept some refugees to Chongming.

After the meeting ended and Zhang Huangyan left, Gong Yan turned around and pulled Li Laiheng and them back: "In addition, there is one more thing, Jiang Guozhu and Zhao Guozuo plan to build a prison in their province. ”

After learning of the results of the First Battle of Huaiyang, Nanjing and Hangzhou sent congratulatory envoys to Yangzhou at the first moment, and they hinted to Li Laiheng and Gong Yan at the same time that they had almost raised the "Ming History" and "Sales" cases in Jiangnan and Zhejiang.

"The Huzhou Ming History case is extremely implicated, and there will be many subsidiary small cases, and Beijing means that Hangzhou will behead dozens of people, exile 100 people, and confiscate their millions of family properties." Zhao Guozuo's secret envoy told Gong Yan that Hangzhou must carry out this instruction, repair relations with Beijing, and send half of the income from the seizure (on the books) to Beijing. Last year, Caoyun was lost, and Hangzhou could provide Beijing with millions of taels of cash through this case, which would definitely make Sony happy; What Zhao Guozuo planned to use to buy Deng Ming was to buy 1.5 million taels of silver Ming treasury bonds.

"But compared to Jiang Guozhu's sales case, this is really nothing. A few years ago, there was also a case of crying temples, which was obviously decided by Jiang Guozhu himself, and he also used this to add another crime to Zhu Guozhi, but he actually wanted to overturn the case. Taken together, these cases will probably exempt more than 13,000 people from their fame, more than 700 people will be killed or exiled, and more than 10 million taels of stolen goods will be confiscated and recovered. In addition to filling the treasury of the Qing court, the Daxing Literary Prison can also deter Han intellectuals, and the Qing court must be happy to see it. However, this time, Jiang Guozhu only planned to pay a symbolic amount of one million taels of silver to Beijing, and he had to detain the rest himself.

"Jiang Guozhu promised to take out five million taels of silver to buy our bonds," Gong Yan said with a smile: "And he also plans to kill not a single scholar, and give them to us along with their families, probably he also heard that Guogong needs a large number of scholars to run a academy in Sichuan, these people are originally gentlemen with family and property, so they are naturally reluctant to go to Sichuan, but now they have to choose one of the two ways to go to Sichuan or Ningguta as slaves." ”

"What does Mr. Gong mean to support Jiang Guozhu's case?" Deng Ming asked in some surprise.

"Why not? The two cases of Ming Shi and Wai Miao are just that, many people are not wronged in this case, these people have indeed evaded taxes. Gong Yan sneered, the Qing court punished these gentry for evading the taxes of the Ming Dynasty as the crime, and Dashun did the same thing in Beijing, but Li Zicheng was in a hurry, and the Qing court obviously accepted the lesson and waited until the world was settled before starting to recover the stolen goods.

In Deng Ming's previous life, the Qing court waited until Yongli was driven to Burma before planning the literary prison, and in this era, because of Deng Ming's threat, the Qing court has always hesitated, if it is not for the growing financial problems, it may still be able to bear it. When Deng Ming threatened the southeast, the Qing court immediately gave up the idea of recovering the stolen goods.

"Jiang Guozhu and Zhao Guozuo's pursuit of stolen goods is entirely for themselves, but as long as they are still officials of the Qing court for one day, this account must be counted on the head of the Qing court." The First Battle of Huaiyang had just ended, and the Qing court had temporarily slowed down the idea of recovering stolen goods, but Gong Yan was determined to add fuel to the fire and make sure that the Qing court could complete this matter: "So as long as Jiang Guozhu is willing to do it, we should fully support him and let him do it under the banner of the Qing court, so that we will not have to do it ourselves in the future." ”

"Mr. Gong still wants to recover the stolen goods?" Deng Mingleng paused.

"Of course, why not chase?" Gong Yan asked in surprise: "These people are all white-eyed wolves who can't be raised, Da Ming is so good to them and they are turned over and over, why don't we seek justice for Da Ming?" Even if the Tartars don't chase it, the old man will also persuade the Guogong to recover the stolen goods after the Guogong obtains Jiangnan in the future. It's better now, the Tartars will recover the stolen goods from those who support the Ming Dynasty, and in the future, we will recover the stolen goods from Jiang Guozhu's people, two pieces of silver, haha, haha. ”

But Deng Ming unexpectedly objected on this issue, he did not agree with the Ming army to support Jiang Guozhu - now Jiang Guozhu and Zhao Guozuo did not dare to build a literary prison without the permission of the Ming army, they were afraid that the Ming army would support the gentry to resist and seize their foundation at once.

"Can we raise these gentlemen? Use Sichuan Tongxiucai's taxes to protect them from paying taxes? Don't look at Gong Yan, who has only been in Sichuan for a long time, but he is very good at using Deng Ming's rules and principles to oppose him: "Let Tongxiucai shed blood to protect the gentry and give them a chance to be capricious?" Guogong, the old man dares to ask, if this situation is put to a vote in the Yuan, do you think the senators and imperial parliamentarians will refuse the 6.5 million taels of silver and hundreds of thousands of teachers given by Jiang Guozhu and Zhao Guozuobai? ”