Chapter 213 Hell
As the most respected governor of a province, in normal times, two mere warriors would never dare to play with each other so openly - all governors in the Ming Dynasty had Shang Fangjian! Although under normal circumstances Shang Fang's sword cannot cut down the second-grade general officer*, it is not a problem to capture him on the spot and cut down a bunch of generals and other guerrillas, not to mention that the censor representing the Holy Emperor himself is there. on site!
However, at this moment, Guiyang's defense was entirely in the hands of Generals Zhang and Huang. Li Jingwu, Shi Yong'an and others could do nothing for them except to return angrily.
Back at the Yamen, Li and Shi looked at each other and sighed. A fool can also see that expecting these two thieves to break through the siege is just wishful thinking. Their presence can only deter An Bangyan from attacking the city rashly. However, defending the city always consumes food and grass, and at this moment, the food bank has bottomed out!
The whole city has long issued a "food restriction order": the civil servants of Zhang and Huang, who have received half of the grain in the storehouse, can only talk about it and have no control over it. The original garrison in Guiyang is only given grain and rice every day. One liter - and this is only in theory. In actual operation, the officers and soldiers only distributed five halves of miscellaneous rice every day, and the other half was converted into seven and a half millimeters of silver, which is called "both silver and rice." I got a bowl of wild vegetable porridge that was so thin that I could see people in it!
What else?
"Master Li, Master Shi, in these extraordinary times, I have a desperate idea..." It was Liu Xixuan who spoke.
"Yu Shou (Liu Xixuan, also known as Yu Shou), please tell me, as long as we can get food, that's a good idea!" Li Jingwu immediately replied.
"Yushou, just tell me. It's time. As long as you can relieve the current difficulties, even if there is anything that attracts criticism, I will tell you, the Holy One!" Shi Yong'an said anxiously.
"Alas!" Liu Xixuan sighed heavily, "It's not a rare method, just selling an official position and getting a title. Liu is an academic official, so he can only think of using his fame in the court in exchange for some food to meet emergencies. However, the city has been besieged for nearly half a year. , I guess I can’t get much in exchange for it, it’s better than nothing.”
Li Jingwu's eyes lit up: "No matter how much it is, it's better than nothing! But if we just rely on persuading donations, I'm afraid not many households will be able to respond. Let's just buy them at a high price! Those who sell more will be rewarded with fame, so maybe the effect will be better Better. Brother Panshi, what do you think?"
"Of course Shi Mou agrees with both hands. At this critical moment, we are working together to relieve the national crisis, and the matter of saving lives cannot be regarded as selling one's official position, so let's do it! By the way, when Brother Yushou said this, Shi Mou suddenly thought of a very terrible thing... food and food. After all, what else can we eat? The next step is cannibalism, right? The most worrying ones are the women and children who were driven into the city by thieves! The old and helpless ones cannot be saved, and the orphans and young ones must find some way. Let’s all put it together and issue a proclamation.”
Notices with the three bright red official seals of the governor, censor and academic officer were posted all over the city of Guiyang. The government officials beat the gongs and shouted at the top of their lungs: One stone of "Shili rice" will be given, five taels of silver will be given, and ten stones will be given. Those who adopt orphan children will be given three taels of silver each. Those who adopt children who are still alive on the day when Guiyang is relieved of the siege will also be given one member of the community*.
There must be a brave man under a heavy reward. Not only can you get five times the usual market price by selling grain, but you can also get an additional merit from the court for selling ten shi of rice - this means that the whole family will no longer have to pay land tax and will be exempted from corvee labor in this life! Many wealthy households who had grain stored in their homes were tempted, "Then they got more than 600 shi in the market bucket, and a thousand shi in the warehouse bucket." (As for why there is such a big difference between the market bucket and the warehouse bucket...you can think about it yourself, haha ).
As for the effect, it is recorded in history that "the death of Qiancheng has been slowed down for another month. This is the power of accepting the case!"
It has to be said that the three-person wartime leadership group headed by Li Jingwu really racked their brains to support it. The most commendable thing is that they not only focused on the people, but also the officials in the city: in response to the behavior of many officials who secretly informed Anbangyan to leave a way out for themselves, they He also implemented the "method of sending rice to support troops" and ordered officials suspected of "collaborating with traitors" to provide rice to support soldiers "in order to eliminate the suspicion of treason": Everyone said that you were having an affair with An's traitor, so what? One hundred kilograms of rice can feed 600 soldiers for a month. The suspicion is cleared and the matter will not be pursued!
In July, generals Zhang Fang and Huang Yunqing were almost out of their rations, so they went to the governor's office again to ask for more. Of course, Li Jingwu and the others will only give them another grain of food unless they are crazy. No matter how you threaten them, just say: Either you kill the thieves, or simply kill us rebels and surrender to An Bangyan. It's up to you!
These two men would not dare to attack An Bangyan under any circumstances. The consequences of killing an official and rebelling would be execution of the clan, and they would not even dare to do so. So Zhang and Huang chose the third way: to rob the people.
Li Jingwu was dumbfounded.
The officials came up with these two theories of disaster over and over again. At first they patted their chests and said they would conduct a thorough investigation, then they tried to make excuses, and in the end they simply showed their cards: Give them food and money, otherwise we will restrain the hungry rebels. No!
In desperation, the Guiyang government issued an unprecedented proclamation: Xu Jiefang, Linyou and other people, under the leadership of the Baochang and Lichang, can defend themselves and the rebels who "rip off the blood of our soldiers and civilians and cause trouble to the people" can be killed on the spot. Moreover, "If the victim calls the local authorities, if the local authorities do not rush to rescue the officers and soldiers who kill the officers and soldiers, they will be executed immediately"!
Soldiers and civilians killed each other, and Guiyang was completely in chaos. Now the biggest enemy of the people is no longer An Bangyan who besieged the city, but the Ming Dynasty's own officers and soldiers in the city.
However, this chaos in which the local defenders helped the residents resist the "incoming guest troops" only lasted less than a month - the situation became worse: until August, the local defenders also ran out of food.
Helpless, Li Jingwu cried and issued a notice of "Paimifa". To put it bluntly, it means searching every house and robbing them! "The amount of food recovered is more than 600 dan, and then there are thousands of dan in the warehouse."
September.
Demolish the official warehouse.
In order to prevent insects, rats and flooding, the grain in the official warehouse was stacked on wooden boards two or three feet above the ground. They removed all the wooden boards and collected the fragments that fell on the ground and were embedded in the cracks of the bricks. They also collected nearly a hundred stones that were old and old. This was the last and only thing in the city that could extend life. Li Jingwu ordered: All supplies should be provided to the North Gate defenders, and the others... should settle for their own destiny.
October.
"Snakes, birds, rats, insects, chaff, seeds, grass, wood, spoiled leather...all that can fill the stomach are eaten." Finally, "human cannibalism" appeared - "first simmer the dead body, then cook it." "Living people", Guiyang City became a hell on earth.
As for Generals Zhang and Huang, they had already begun cannibalism. Since they controlled the defense of the city gate, it was easy to exploit and extort the people fleeing from the city: each person was allowed to leave after paying one tael of gold. Those who had no money took their luggage and returned to the city to die. There was really nothing to rob. Then kill people and eat meat - "Order the soldiers to kill and eat their meat, and each soldier to export human flesh every day to feed the servants and concubines of the capital!" Order the soldiers under his command to pay a certain amount of human flesh every day as a task - regardless of the victims or the original Most of the residents and some pretty female relatives were seized by the second generals and officers at all levels. The soldiers kept prostitutes in exchange for human flesh! Liu Xixuan called Huang Yunqing the "greedy and evil general" and cursed in front of him: "Half of the Guizhou people died from thieves, but all died from the evil generals' ears!"
There was a poem written by people at that time: The lonely city is struggling to keep up with the clouds, and the tears are about to dry up when looking at the rescuers. The sky was darkened by flames of war, and the zombies were covered in blood.
Guiyang was besieged for nearly a year. There were more than 400,000 soldiers and civilians in the city. When the siege was lifted, there were only 2,000 survivors (some say 20,000, more details later). Of course, some died in battle, starved to death, or died of illness, but more were eaten by the defenders. In the end, it turned into officers and soldiers directly entering the house, arresting people, killing them and eating them. This group of officers and soldiers not only eat people, but also sell human flesh for money: one pound of human flesh is one tael of silver, with a clearly marked price - in comparison, rice is much more expensive, one liter of rice is actually worth twenty taels of silver! Every night when night falls, fires for cooking human flesh are lit everywhere in the city. There is no place in Guiyang that is not lit up with flames all night long.
When the siege was finally lifted, there were indeed not many people left alive in the city. Based on various historical records, my personal guess is that the total number of soldiers and civilians is 2,000, which seems to be more accurate. The 20,000 may be the statistics after the return of those who fled.
There are three reasons for making such an inference.
1. There is a record at that time: "Killing a horse can provide food for a day." In the final stage, dozens of stagecoach horses were all killed and eaten. Each horse with its skin and bones weighed about 500 kilograms. To maintain the minimum supply, the limit was probably a thousand defenders.
2. Guiyang's academic officials and students also actively participated in defending the city, using Xuedao as supervisors to climb the wall and fight, and another five to six hundred people were on duty at night - based on this estimate, there were at least a thousand participants. However, from November 11th to December 7th, the last month of the siege, the number of Confucian scholars recruited was only a few, and the survival rate was only a few thousandths. Even if the subordinate officials were given 2 meters a day, Only three people could barely climb the city to guard it. There were only a handful of Confucian scholars (families that could support scholars in that era) and subordinate officials, so the survival rate of the common people could not be much higher than them.
3. According to other records, there were originally 100,000 households in Guiyang, with more than 400,000 men and women. After Wang Sanshan rescued the siege, only about 200 people remained. "Xizong Shilu" records: "Suiyang is not enough to compare with Lie"! The cruel truth is often hidden between the lines - where are "Suiyang" and "lie"? Zhang patrolled Suiyang and ate more than 30,000 people! More than 30,000 people being eaten are "incomparable" to the "violence"... You can think about it yourself.
Despite this, there are still forty or fifty horses in the second general's camp - they are all cannibals, so why not kill the horses for meat?
joke! If the city is destroyed, how can the two generals escape? !
Guiyang has become like this, why doesn't An Bangyan come to attack?
It has been almost a year, where is the new Fu Wang Ershan?
*Yuan Chonghuan’s killing of Mao Wenlong was an exception and completely illegal. However, Chongzhen, who was eager for quick success and unkind, did not pursue the matter at first because he believed Yuan Hua's "Five Years of Ping Liao" pie - in his heart, as long as he could achieve this great achievement of Ping Liao, the death of a few warriors was not a big deal. What! This move completely chilled the hearts of the Liaodong soldiers. In the end, Kong Youde, Shang Kexi and others under Mao Wenlong all defected to their former mortal enemy Huang Taiji, which sounded the death knell for the destruction of this dynasty.
Of course, when Huang Taiji attacked the city of Beijing, the extremely disappointed Chongzhen put Yuan Chonghuan in prison, and "scheming money to kill the commander" finally became one of his capital crimes - at this time, Zhu Youjian thought of it again!
*These three people (the prototypes of Li Jingwu are called Li Lu, Shi Yongan, and Liu Xixuan) did issue the "Adoption of Children" during the siege of Guiyang, which was a great kindness. I couldn't find the original article, but I made up the last one - because I felt that there should be such a guarantee to prevent orphans from being killed and eaten in the name of adoption... In the end, the achievements of these three people were fully recognized.
"History of the Ming Dynasty": "The death of the isolated city was related to Yong'an and Xiyuan. (In ancient times, there were no Chinese pinyin and Mandarin, and the two pronunciations of "Yuan" and "Xuan" were similar. It should be a clerical error after oral transmission. This kind of error appears in historical records Very common) merit. Xizong used the title of Zou Yuan, the imperial censor of the capital, to serve as the right assistant minister of the Ministry of War, Yong'an Taiservant Shaoqing, and Xi Yuanyou to participate in politics." The merits of the three people were "discussed at the time as being together with Zhu Xieyuan's defense of Chengdu."
