Wanli's move really caught the Donglin Party off guard, although this group of people had always been known to be shameless in the court.
But in front of a bunch of common people, it is really embarrassing to have your pants stripped off and have a court battle.
The key is just to hit him. This is just disgusting. His mother opens the door to disgusting. It’s so disgusting!
Although the censors and officials of the Ming Dynasty all had the tradition of winning court battles to gain fame for themselves.
But those were all maimed or even killed because of their "dead remonstrance" to the emperor.
For example, Zou Yuanbiao, who originally opposed Zhang Juzheng's love affair and was crippled in court battles, was the target of Donglin Party members' efforts to imitate.
This time Wanli issued an order, the Li family expressed support, and the nobles stood up for Li Xianzhong. The members of the three parties of "Qi, Chu, and Zhejiang" chose to watch indifferently, and the Ministry of Rites was not under the control of the Donglin Party.
In the end, this farce had to end hastily.
Although the Donglin Party frantically filed a letter to impeach Li Xianzhong and listed dozens of crimes against Li Xianzhong, Wanli just said "stay in the middle but not make any accusations."
After a while of commotion, they also stopped.
However, Li Xianzhong did not live in the former Ning Yuanbo Mansion. Although that house was luxurious, the feng shui was really bad.
Now that Hazia is pregnant, he is even more afraid to let them live in that hellish place.
Li Xianzhong directly renovated the door of his current residence and added a new plaque.
As for Li Chengliang's old house, he gave it directly to Li Xingzhong.
At this time, the Heaven and Earth Room in Beijing has officially opened for business after several months of interior decoration.
Its unique dishes and high-end positioning have quickly become the entertainment benchmark in Beijing.
However, because it adopts a membership system, ordinary wealthy people and even officials and gentry can only have a delicious meal in the lobby on the first floor.
Services on the second floor and above require membership cards.
For a time, the membership card of Heaven and Earth became a symbol of status. Without the gold medal membership of Heaven and Earth, you would be embarrassed to say that you were in the elite circle of the capital.
Some of the original silver members took the initiative to upgrade themselves to gold members, so Mao Yuanyi quickly made a batch of gold memberships.
Coupled with the rise of mahjong in the capital, the mahjong private room on the fourth floor of Tiantianrenjian has become a place where the powerful must check in every day, and even make reservations in advance.
A large amount of intelligence information was also gathered into Li Xianzhong's hands here.
The Duke of the State, Zhu Chunchen, is almost always stationed on the fifth floor, hanging around the place of fireworks every day.
In desperation, Mao Yuanyi had no choice but to agree to his request to redeem the life of Zi Yan, the top girl in the world, and sent the undercover agent of the Intelligence Department to the Chengguo Palace.
However, the development of the Intelligence Department within the palace has not made much progress.
These adult eunuchs are really not trustworthy. If the incident comes to light and Wanli learns about it, it will definitely be more costly than gain.
Although the Intelligence Department has built several "orphanages" across the country, some children are selected and trained from childhood to become spies of the Intelligence Department, including some young eunuchs.
Then through the relationship of the Intelligence Department, these young eunuchs were sent to the palace.
But it's just starting now, and it will take at least ten or eight years for these little eunuchs to get ahead.
So the Intelligence Department targeted Cui Wensheng, the eunuch in charge of Yikun Palace.
Chang Yun, the eunuch beside Wanli, could not be bribed, but Wanli would go to Yikun Palace to soak his feet every day. Cui Wensheng was Concubine Zheng's most favored chamberlain, so the role he could play was really not small.
Of course, given Eunuch Cui's status, the relationship with the Intelligence Department is only a cooperative relationship, and cannot be a subordinate relationship.
In the footbath room on the third floor, Cui Wensheng was enjoying the massage service from the female technician.
Among all the chamberlains today, he is the only one with a gold medal membership in Heaven and Earth.
Although he had to give Wanli a foot bath every day, this was the first time that he had his feet soaked by someone.
Cui Wensheng said with a smile: "Our family would like to congratulate Shopkeeper Mao on his promotion to the commanding officer of Nanzhen Fusi."
Although Li Xianzhong could not directly control the Nanzhen Fusi of Jinyiwei, he still arranged for Mao Yuanyi to be a fourth-level command official, second only to the commander and commander in Jinyiwei.
Mao Yuanyi said with a smile: "This is all under the care of Uncle Ning Yuan. The noble concubine must be very happy that Eunuch Cui has proposed a plan to fight against the Donglin Party."
Naturally, Wanli couldn't think of such a damaging move of taking off his pants in public for an hour. It was Mao Yuanyi who asked Cui Wensheng to give Concubine Zheng the idea, and then told Wanli through "pillow talk".
Cui Wensheng said: "The emperor and the empress are happy this time. They finally let out a bad breath. It's all thanks to Mao Qianshi's ingenious plan."
"His Majesty has re-appointed the mine supervisor in Liaodong. He is Superintendent Shangshan, Guanglu Eunuch Ma Yun. He is a good brother of our family. Please take care of him, Uncle Ning Yuan."
The position of mine supervisor in Liaodong was a lucrative job, but since Mr. Liu's "accidental death", the palace servants had some concerns. Cui Wensheng relied on his good relationship with Li Xianzhong and quickly asked his best friend Ma Yuntong to take over the job.
Mao Yuanyi said: "Since he is a friend of Eunuch Cui, Uncle Ning Yuan will naturally take special care of him. Is my uncle the kind of person who doesn't want others to get rich?"
Soon the news that eunuch Ma Yun was appointed as the mine supervisor in Liaodong spread back to Liaodong.
Li Xianzhong was very satisfied with this result. As long as it did not affect his private mines and the freight channel from Liaohe to Yingkou established in the name of transporting copper to the capital, he did not care about those eunuchs' greed for money.
He never expected that this business in heaven and earth would be so popular, and he could actually earn 20,000 taels of silver every month. After excluding the dividends given to nobles, the remaining 10,000 taels could almost support the expenses of the Intelligence Department.
My expenses have indeed been quite high in the past few months, and with Mongolia's trade income declining, I currently have less than 400,000 taels of silver in hand.
It looked like a lot, but next he planned to send people to Macau to buy ships and cannons, hire Portuguese gunners and shipwrights, and also plan to build a shipyard in Yingkou and a large artillery factory in Pinglubao.
This little money is simply not enough to spend.
After the completion of Yingkou Port, it will be much more convenient for grain from the south of the Yangtze River to go north. However, currently, they do not have warships. Merchants smuggling grain need to pay "protection fees" to the navy along the way.
It seems that I have to find a way to build a navy.
While Li Xianzhong continued to repair the side wall of Hongtuo Mountain, tensions were already rising near Kuandian Fort on the southern line.
Kuandian Liubao, which Xiong Tingbi calls the "Eight Hundred Miles New Territory", is an area composed of six forts: Kuandian Fort, Changdiian Fort, Yongdiian Fort, Damian Fort, Xindiian Fort and Sumian Fort. .
They were proposed by Li Chengliang from the first year of Wanli to the fourth year of Wanli. They were an expansion of the Jurchen-controlled area in Jianzhou by the Ming Dynasty in the early Wanli period.
Therefore, Kuandian Liubao is outside the Liaodong border wall of the Ming Dynasty.
In the thirty-fourth year of Wanli, Li Chengliang abandoned Kuandian Liubao and forcibly moved more than 64,000 households there to the interior on the grounds that it was isolated and difficult to defend.
This triggered the impeachment of many ministers in the DPRK, including Xiong Tingbi at the time.
Afterwards, the Kuandian area was gradually encroached upon by Jianzhou Jurchens.
It also changed hands several times.
Before Yang Gao's expedition to Hetuala this year, the Kuandian area was still in the hands of the Ming army; but when Liu Wei's East Route Army withdrew to Qinghe, Kuandian was empty of troops and Jianzhou took the opportunity to occupy it.
Later, Xiong Tingbi took advantage of the main offensive in Jianzhou and sent 3,000 white pole soldiers to break out of the Liaodong border wall and took advantage of the situation to regain Kuandian Fort.
However, after Yuan Yingtai succeeded the Liaodong Manager, in order to show his political achievements, he continued to increase troops to the Kuandian area.
At present, the Six Forts of Kuandian are all garrisoned by Ming troops, with a total of 12,000 troops stationed.
In fact, among the six forts, only Kuandian Fort is more suitable for heavy garrisoning. Kuandian Fort has a circumference of 4 kilometers and a city height of more than 8 meters. It is wide in the north and narrow in the south, in the shape of a trapezoid. There is no city gate on the mountain in the north.
The other castles are either too small or have short walls, generally only over 3 meters, with average defensive effects.
This is why Xiong Tingbi did not all garrison the Six Forts in the first place.
The reason why Yuan Yingtai dared to fully enter Kuandian Sixth Fort was because he had two elite troops in his hands.
One group consists of three thousand soldiers and horses from the Shili Xuanfu Division, led by Ma Xianglin and led by Zunyi General Tong Zhongkui, which is also known as the White Pole Soldier.
The other one is the famous Qi family army, also with 3,000 troops.
After the emergency in Liaodong, Qi Jin, the former Jiangnan Wusong general soldier who was recovering at home, was urgently recruited by the Ministry of War and appointed as the general military officer in aid of Liao.
Although the Qi family army had gone through a series of battles at this time, there were not many elites left. But after all, it was an army that frightened the enemy, so Yuan Yingtai asked Qi's army to come to help.
After several months of trekking, they finally arrived in Liaodong.
It should be said that the combat effectiveness of these two armies is very strong. If they are stationed in two places respectively, the situation around Kuandian can be stabilized.
However, Yuan Yingtai, with the idea of joining forces, arranged for all two elites to be stationed at Kuandian Fort.
This is when there is a problem.
People from all walks of life in the Ming Dynasty army have always been dissatisfied with everyone, which is mainly reflected in the "North-South Contradiction" and the "East-West Contradiction".
The contradiction between the East and the West is the contradiction between the Liaodong Army and the Shanxi and Shaanxi frontier armies.
On the Korean battlefield, Ma Gui directly refused to save Li Ning, a general of the Liaodong Army, and even beheaded Yang Yuan.
Including Du Song, who was from Shaanxi, many generals in Liao Town were not convinced by him.
The conflict between the north and the south is the conflict between the Ming army in the south and the Northern army, which is dominated by Liao Town.
For example, in the Battle of Pyongyang, the Southern Army led by Luo Shangzhi and Wu Weizhong competed with the Northern Army led by Yang Yuan, Zhang Shijue, and Li Rubai.
In the end, it caused conflicts between the two armies, which also affected subsequent coordinated operations.
Even Li Rusong couldn't handle the relationship between the North and South armies well.
Yang Hao was still self-aware and knew that the various Ming armies were constantly in conflict and that he would not be able to command them if they were put together, so he simply divided his troops into four groups.
Yuan Yingtai is naturally aware of these contradictions, but he believes that the Baigan soldiers and Qi's army belong to the category of the Southern Army, so there is no big problem.
Although the Baigan soldiers also made outstanding achievements in pacifying Bozhou, how could the Qi army, which always prided itself on being the strongest army of the Ming Dynasty, take these southwestern barbarian chieftain soldiers in their eyes.
The two sides usually quarrel over trivial matters.
This time, Qi Jin directly fought with Ma Xianglin because of the issue of supply distribution.
Qi Jin had just recovered from his illness and suffered some losses under the young and strong Ma Xianglin.
When Qi Jiajun saw that his general was at a disadvantage, how could he endure this?
After picking up the guy, they started fighting, which eventually turned into an armed fight.
Soldiers on both sides were injured a hundred or so, and 13 people even died in this battle.
What's worse is that the granary was accidentally ignited during the fight. As a result, a fire caused most of the food stored in Kuandian Fort to be burned.
After learning of this situation, Nurhaci quickly seized the opportunity to send troops to surround Kuandian Fort.
Except for Qilhalang's blue-inlaid flag and Dudu's inlaid-white flag, they stayed in Jiefan City on the line with Hetuala to contain Li Xianzhong and He Shixian's troops.
The remaining 29,000 Manchurian Eight Banners and the 32,000 Han army soldiers have all appeared in the Kuandian area.
Since the Eight Banners currently have a serious shortage of troops, the status of these Han army soldiers has been improved and they are no longer purely auxiliary soldiers.
Rather, as a combat unit, each Man Ba Banner was equipped with almost the same number of Han army coats.
Nurhachi even said that if the Han army coat performs well, it may be upgraded to the Han army flag and enjoy the treatment of a bannerman.
This makes the current morale of these Han troops unprecedentedly high!
The reason why the Han army flag was not directly established as in later generations was because at this time there were almost no senior Ming army generals who surrendered to Lao Nu, and only one Li Yongfang was captured and beheaded by the Ming army.
Among these Han army soldiers, there were not many soldiers from the Ming army, and their combat power could not be compared with that of the regular Ming army that surrendered in an organized form in later generations.
Therefore, it is impossible to form an independent army.
The so-called shadow of a person is the name of a tree.
Although the Eight Banners of Jianzhou have not fought against the Qi Jiajun, they have heard of its name.
Facing Kuandian Fort at this time, Nurhaci did not plan to attack by force, but used their best tactic of encirclement and reinforcements.
On the one hand, they lured the Ming army inside the Liaodong border wall to come to relieve the siege of Kuandian; on the other hand, they also lured the Ming army inside Kuandian Fort to come out so that they could eat these Qi troops in the wild.
At this time, many Han soldiers were digging deep trenches under the supervision of the Eight Banners, preparing to besiege Kuandian.
Qi Jin in the city looked at the Bao Yi who was wielding a shovel and thought to himself that it was not good.
Jianlu probably knew that there was not much food and grass left in Kuandian Fort, so he gave up the attack and instead conducted a siege.
Originally, the food and grass in Kuandian Fort was enough for the army for three months, but now everyone burned most of it in one battle, and it could only last for a month at most.
Thinking of this, he still felt a little regretful. He should not have gotten angry with these southwest barbarians, which resulted in the current predicament.
However, when he saw the arrogant Ma Xianglin in the distance, he became furious. He would not take the initiative to lower his attitude and seek cooperation from the white-pole soldiers.
When Yuan Yingtai, who was based in Liaoyang, learned that the Eight Banners of Jianzhou had surrounded Kuandian Fort, he panicked instantly.
There are a total of 12,000 Ming troops in Kuandian, but half of them are in Kuandian Fort.
There were only one or two thousand Ming troops in other forts.
Moreover, the Ming army in Kuandian had just experienced a battle with weapons, and the current food and grass could only last for a month, which made him confused.
Veteran Liu Wei said: "Now that Kuandian is besieged, the main force of our army on the southern front has been trapped by the enemy. The current plan is to ask Uncle Ning Yuan to send troops quickly to relieve the siege of Kuandian."
Now that the Donglin Party and Uncle Ning Yuan are incompatible with each other, how could Yuan Yingtai give Li Xianzhong another chance to gain military merit?
He glanced at Liu Wei and said angrily: "Uncle Ning Yuan wants to guard Kaiyuan, and the copper mines in Hongtuoshan are also very important now. What if our army mobilizes all its main forces to go south and Jianlu takes the opportunity to seize the copper mines? "
Nowadays, the Ming army also has a lot of troops on the southern front, excluding Liu Wei's 5,000 troops guarding Liaoyang and the 5,000 Xuanfu border troops guarding Crow Falcon Pass.
There are still 8,000 Xuanwei troops in Yongshun, Huguang, under the personal command of Peng Yuanjin, the commander of the capital; 5,000 Xuanwei troops in Baojing, personally controlled by Xuanwei and Peng Xiangqian; and 4,000 Xuanwei troops in Youyang, under the personal command of Xuanwei Ran Yuelong. Receive it personally.
In addition, his crony He Shixian's five thousand Ming army at Fushun Pass.
Even if Li Xianzhong and Li Rubai's troops are not mobilized, Yuan Yingtai can still use 34,000 Ming troops.
Naturally, he would give this opportunity to his cronies, He Shixian, to make meritorious deeds.
So he decided to mobilize He Shixian, the commander-in-chief of Fushun Pass, to lead his troops southward and command 17,000 men and horses under the Southwest Sanxuanwei Division, a total of 22,000 people, out of Crow Falcon Pass to break the siege of Kuandian.
As for Fushun Pass, Li Rubai was asked to mobilize troops from Shenyang to defend it.
The veteran Liu Wei continued to be in charge of Liaoyang, and the 5,000 Xuanfu troops at Crow Falcon Pass were temporarily stationary as backup.
Liu Wei was helpless about this. Originally, rescuing troops was like putting out a fire.
But He Shixian was delayed for most of the day waiting for the replacement of defense troops in Shenyang, and more than a day was delayed from Fushun Pass to Crow Falcon Pass.
By the time he arrived at Qinghe Fort, he had already been delayed for more than two days.
During this period, the Qi Jiajun and Baigan soldiers from Kuandian Fort also attempted a tentative breakout at night. As a result, they were ambushed by the Han army's coated firecrackers and the Eight Banners soldiers. They lost more than a hundred people and had to return without success. .
Originally, Jianzhou did not attach much importance to firearms, but after the Battle of Nanguan, the Ming army's firearms left a deep impression on Nurhachi and others.
Although Houjin could not manufacture firearms, many Ming army bird guns and three-eyed guns were captured from the two northwest armies of the Ming Dynasty in the previous Liaodong War and at Qinghe Fort.
Including the attack on Fushun Qinghe the previous year, and Li Yongfang also brought a lot of firecrackers.
Soon these Han soldiers were equipped with firecrackers.
In more than two days, the Eight Banners of Jianzhou successively captured the four forts of Changdian, Yongdian, Damian and Sudian south of Kuandian Fort, and wiped out more than 4,000 Ming troops.
Now four of the six Kuandian forts have been lost, and only Kuandian Fort and Xin Dien Fort have not yet been lost.
Xin Dien Fort is located between Kuandian Fort and Crow Falcon Pass, and its location is extremely important.
He Shixian immediately decided to move out with the entire army and leave Crow Falcon Pass to first relieve the siege of Xin Dien Fort.
The Xindian Fort was built in the early years of Wanli. It has a circumference of about 1,200 meters, surrounded by turrets, and a wall height of about 3 meters. There is only one south gate in the whole city.
At this time, the Ming army on the city was throwing stones and rolling logs all over the city. Nearly a thousand wrapped corpses of Han soldiers were already lying under the south gate.
Due to the suppression of the arrows from the Eight Banners at the rear, the Ming army in the fort suffered heavy casualties. Only one-third of the original 1,500 defenders were left.
At this time, Shi Shan was watching the battle situation of Xin Dian Fort on a hillside not far away.
Yue Tuo said: "Amma, the combat power of these Han soldiers is still too weak. Although they are covered with armor, they are only about 50-50 against the Ming army."
"If it were my warriors with two red flags, they would be able to capture Xin Dian Fort with at most one stick of incense."
Dai Shan said: "Now that we in Dajin have insufficient flag men, these Han army coats must be used with caution. After all, they are also wearing cloth armor. Don't say this again in the future, otherwise the Great Khan will be unhappy when he hears it. of."
It was only a small town, so it would be easy for Daishan to capture it. Naturally, he was doing this for fishing.
He Shixian's 5,000 troops can be considered an elite force that has experienced many battles. Especially after joining Yuan Yingtai, they received hundreds of pairs of armor, 500 muskets, and many cloth armors.
The more than a thousand servants under his command are particularly powerful!
This time he was entrusted with an important task by Yuan Yingtai, so he naturally wanted to go all out to rebuild the captives to repay Yuan Jinglue's kindness.
There are indeed many soldiers and horses under his command, a total of 22,000 people. However, although the chieftain soldiers in the southwest are not weak in combat power, they are almost all infantry.
Reinforcement was like putting out a fire, so He Shixian had no choice but to lead his two thousand cavalry to support them first.
At this time, the Han army flags under the city were fighting inextricably with the Ming army, and they were completely helpless against the sudden appearance of He Shixian.
He Shixian took the lead, and the Ming army behind him was like a whirlwind, smashing the Han troops into pieces.
These Han army coats of arms were affiliated with the Two Red Banners, so naturally they wore red armor. In order to show their loyalty, these coats of arms also had their heads shaved and had rat tails.
These gave the Ming army the illusion that they were not facing any coat of arms but the main force of the two red flags.
He Shixian kept waving the long knife in his hand, and almost every Eight Banners soldier was killed by him. In a short time, his cavalry troops had killed seven to eight hundred "two red flags".
The deputy general said: "Commander He, these Tatars are too weak in combat, and something seems wrong!"
He Shixian had a habit of having a few sips before a battle, even though he had been coaxed and frightened into quitting drinking by Li Xianzhong before.
But during this battle, he couldn't help but drink again.
Now the head level of the Jianzhou Tatars has been raised to 25 taels. In just a short while, he has obtained 20,000 taels of silver. How can he bear it?
Said: "The Tatars have fought successively, and most of the main force has been killed or injured. Now it is normal for the combat power to decline. Besides, our army's equipment is not what it used to be. It is our combat power that is stronger!"
He shouted: "Brothers, follow me and catch up, kill the Tatars and get the reward!"
Soon he was chasing after him with two thousand cavalry.
This scene made Daishan dumbfounded. Where did this idiot come from?
The Ming army actually chose this kind of thing as its main general.
Originally, he was planning to let the real soldiers and horses of the two red flags go up and fight for a while to lure the enemy.
As a result, this guy got in by himself.
At this time, he had entered the Eight Banners' ambush circle, and arrows rained down like rain for a while.
Although his men and horses were all wearing heavy armor at this time, some were still wearing armor.
However, the Eight Banners' armor-piercing arrows still knocked many people to the ground. A large number of ambush soldiers were seen coming out from all directions, and for a while the battlefield was filled with shouts of killing.
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