After leaving Gulang Gorge and entering Zhuanglang Valley, Liu Chengzong was a little absent-minded during the half-hour march.
When he was in Hehuang, he could still get first-hand Di reports from Gansu officials, but after the start of the Gansu Campaign, this line was broken. Jiubian's Tang and Di reports could only be sent as far as Ningxia Zhongwei. No new information is available.
In the earlier Gansu Di newspaper, there was basically no news about the Central Plains rebels. At most, there was a little movement from the Outer Mongolian tribes. Therefore, the Marshal's Office had a great lag in the intelligence of the Shaanxi rebels.
In his impression, Zhang Xianzhong and his group should all be in Shanxi at the moment.
After occupying Ganzhou, the correspondence with his father Liu Xiangyu mentioned that 100,000 peasant troops gathered in the western section of the Qinling Mountains, but even so, Liu Shishi never thought that Zhang Xianzhong would appear here.
Liu Chengzong carefully thought about his relationship with the peasant army, and finally came to an embarrassing conclusion.
If they are far away, they are good friends who attack and defend each other. Even if they have never met, they are absolutely trustworthy; if they are close, Liu Chengzong is also a strong backing who can provide military support to others.
Only, in an environment where you are among me and you are among me, the relationship between the two parties will deteriorate sharply.
After all, time has passed and the war has reached this stage. Hundreds of leaders have died in the rebellion that broke out in Shaanxi. The minions from back then are still leaders today. They are all ruthless characters who rebelled with their heads. How many people are willing to Being inferior to others?
However, although Liu Shishi had thought about the possibility of this situation, the characters he expected would be Gao Yingxiang from the older generation, or the less powerful sweeper Zhang Yichuan and the general Li Zicheng, who had more or less interacted with each other.
And Zhang Xianzhong was a figure that Liu Chengzong had never thought of.
It's just that their first encounter left a bad impression on Liu Shizi.
Liu Shizi counted the time, and Zhang Xianzhong captured Zhuanglang Acropolis while Zhang Tianlin defeated Bai Guangen, which meant that he knew that he was about to go south.
Now that I know, it’s okay not to come to Gulang Gorge to pay a visit, but to talk nonsense about being exempted from tax for three years in Zhuanglang Valley.
The three-year tax exemption actually didn't matter to Liu Chengzong. The small amount of tax food could not support his huge army. The food for the Marshal's Mansion was purchased through internal trade after monopolizing the market.
But Zhang Xianzhong has the final say whether the farmland in the Zhuanglang Valley is exempted from taxes or not?
Liu Chengzong's reaction was simple.
At noon on the ninth day of July, Zhang Xianzhong, who was working in the office of Zhuanglang Acropolis, heard from his troops that the vanguard of the Marshal's Army thirty miles away had moved. No one was sent to inform the city, and the five thousand troops were heading south.
Zhang Xianzhong knew that Liu Chengzong was unhappy.
But Zhigui knew that for him, this section of steel wire was the only way to station soldiers in Hehuang in Xiying.
Zhang Xianzhong is different from Liu Chengzong. From the very beginning, Liu Chengzong's family established its own small stronghold in Yan'an Prefecture. They needed to store food and have space to spend money. Building an army cost a lot, leaving few rewards for the soldiers. At the same time, Rarely plundered places.
However, Zhang Xianzhong has never had a stronghold, and he has no place to spend valuable materials. He also knows that this army's clear rewards and punishments are his capital in troubled times, so he is particularly generous with rewards for soldiers.
But the army cannot be full. Of course, generals are not mentioned, but there are many generals. For ordinary soldiers, if you can become a rich man in a stable place, who will raise your head to serve as a soldier for you?
In the past, Xiying was stable because although the soldiers had a lot of money, they had no place to stay and had no choice but to follow Zhang Xianzhong and run west. Now that they have arrived in Hehuang, many people's minds have changed.
Fortunately, the long-term cohesion is still there, and the impact of the different military laws of the two armies has not been bridged. However, this also brought a huge sense of crisis to Zhang Xianzhong - he could not do without the army.
Therefore, showing disrespect or even challenging Liu Chengzong has two benefits for him. The first is to strengthen his internal prestige, and the second is to bring tension to the army.
Of course, this is all based on one premise. Zhang Xianzhong judged that because of the 100,000 rebels in the Qinling Mountains, Liu Chengzong would have a strong tolerance and tolerance for him.
Zhang Xianzhong has always had a trap-and-run style of getting along with the more powerful leaders, because these leaders would not send troops to beat him immediately in order to show their tolerance.
To be honest, Zhang Xianzhong's level of fighting is almost meaningless. He knows the meaning of it, so he has been trying his best to learn. If you don't learn, you won't know. Once you learn, you will realize that I am really damn smart!
Lao Zhang is sober in the world and has long wanted to understand a problem. The Ming Dynasty is about to die. Don't look at the leaders of all walks of life who are having fun with the coalition forces. In the end, they will have to face each other with swords.
Everyone is rebelling with their heads raised, but there can only be one emperor in the world.
If this emperor is me, I will definitely kill you in the end. So what’s the point of having a good relationship with a dead person?
If this emperor is not me, then I am the dead man. If the dead ball pulls him down, what use do you idiots have?
What I should do is to make my generals and soldiers feel involved in the process of deceiving people, and to gain benefits while enhancing internal cohesion.
However, even though he had already calculated it in his mind, Wei Qian'er led the camp to go south silently without saying hello, which still put a lot of pressure on Zhang Xianzhong.
He felt in his heart that Liu Chengzong would not attack the city, so he should scare him, so he also frightened the soldiers.
He said: "It's bad. You must have made Liu Chengzong unhappy by robbing the horse. He is coming to kill you. Come to the city and defend me!"
Wei Qian'er got Liu Chengzong's order and walked very slowly. It took him three hours to walk more than 20 miles. He slowly arrived three miles north of the city and then stopped. Without saying hello to Zhang Xianzhong's troops in the city, he set up camp on the spot and went down to the village. Dig a trench.
Zhang Xianzhong, who was on the city, saw that Liu Chengzong did not attack the city, and thought that Liu Chengzong didn't have much courage. In the evening, smoke rose from the camp outside the city. This marshal's army wanted to go down to camp to rest, so he had a precautionary mentality and dug a trench outside the camp. There's nothing surprising about it, it's just to show off one's power.
Zhang Xianzhong felt relieved, and he wasn't too afraid of a real fight.
In fact, the elite forces of the various rebel armies during this period were all the old Ming armies. Some were strong and some were weak. They all knew what cards the opponent had in their hands. Their marching speeds were quite different, and their equipment and tactics were basically the same. No one was afraid of the other in a fight. It depends on who has a strong organization, stable military morale, and high strategy.
Although there are many people in the Marshal's Mansion, no one can move 20,000 to 30,000 troops on the battlefield of Zhuang Langwei. At worst, I will run east. Anyway, I will have enough to eat and drink in the river valley.
But Liu Chengzong's army was really different from the rebels.
He is more like the king's division than the official army. The rebel experience has made the marshal's army good at mobile warfare. After the establishment of the marshal's palace, the support force on the battlefield is no less than that of the official army, and they are equally accustomed to positional warfare.
The marshal's army had many tools and excellent earthwork. Zhang Xianzhong just had a meal in the city and didn't pay attention for a while. Then he looked outside the city with his binoculars and was immediately shocked.
They had dug a three-mile-long trench in the north of the city that connected to Zhuanglang River in the west and Qinglong Mountain in the east. The marshal's army was not building a camp trench, but a siege trench.
The most outrageous thing is that a cannon has been set up behind the trench!
Only then did Zhang Xianzhong realize why Wei Qian'er's troops were marching so slowly - Liu Chengzong's main force also arrived at Zhuanglang Acropolis in the evening.
A large number of mixed infantry and cavalry troops were marching rapidly along the west bank of the Zhuanglang River, crossing the Zhuanglang Acropolis, making some repairs southwest of the Acropolis, and then crossing the river on horseback. The soldiers were either on horseback or holding their manes tightly. After swimming, the horse teams crossing the river soon formed two impact formations, and the follow-up troops began to dig trenches directly along the river bank.
Zhang Xianzhong's troops in Zhuanglang Guard City were also panicked. Generals Wang Ziqi, Liu Tichun and others from the Western Camp gathered together urgently, with disbelief written all over their faces.
They thought: The things we do, whether big or small, are all from the Shaanxi Township Party. No matter what we say, we won't besiege the city and kill them directly, right?
Zhang Xianzhong was also confused by Liu Chengzong's silent operation to surround the city, and he was unsure of Liu Chengzong's intentions. This seemed to have gone beyond the scope of intimidation and show of force.
Zhang Xianzhong wanted to throw a bowl. Why did Liu Chengzong intend to overturn the table?
The arrow cannot be stringed, and must be released before being stringed. The same goes for mobilizing the army. Now more than 10,000 troops are surrounded on three sides outside the city, and trenches have been dug. It is equivalent to Liu Chengzong holding himself first.
With such a posture, if Zhang Xianzhong did not bow his head, Liu Chengzong would probably have no choice but to attack the city.
Zhang Xianzhong's sworn brother Liu Tichun has a gentle temperament. He saw that Zhang Xianzhong was unable to get off the stage due to the situation, so he stepped forward and said: "Brother, should I send someone to make contact in the north? There must be an explanation for whether it is war or peace. We cannot just be surrounded. .”
With the steps in hand, Zhang Xianzhong cursed to save face, and then agreed to let Liu Tichun send people to contact the Marshal's Army.
Although it appeared that he was borrowing money from others, Zhang Xianzhong actually paid special attention to this matter, and the envoy he finally selected was his sworn brother Liu Tichun.
Because the relationship was close enough, Zhang Xianzhong's people came from different places than other leaders. Others relied more or less on their fellow villagers for rebellion, but Zhang Xianzhong was born in Liushujian under the border wall, which belongs to the Anbian Guards Qianhu Station. He didn't have many fellow countrymen in his army.
When he was young, he worked as a police officer in Yan'an Prefecture, but there were not many people from Fushi and Ansai in the army. His main troops came from the Wubao and Jiazhou areas in the northern part of the Shanxi-Shaanxi border. They were border soldiers, and in Jiazhou, the clansmen surnamed Wang were the main ones.
Because Zhang Xianzhong was not an independent leader when he started, but was a member of Wang Jiayin.
This is also the reason why Zhang Xianzhong believed that Liu Chengzong would not attack him directly.
Liu Chengzong felt that he had nothing to do with Zhang Xianzhong, but Zhang Xianzhong didn't think so, so he didn't say that the two brothers were soldiers. Lao Zhang also went to Heilong Mountain to drink heavily.
It is said that when the four groups entered the Jin Dynasty, Wang Jiayin, the king of Hengtian, gave Liu Chengzong, the fourth in the throne, a gold seal of Marshal Hengtian during the Qingjian meeting.
Although the time was different, after that, Zhang Xianzhong also received a silver seal from Wang Jiayin. After all, you are also the leader of other departments. There are some conflicts of temperament, so you won't hurt the harmony by wielding swords and guns.
To be honest, Zhang Xianzhong himself doesn't take Wang Jiayin who stayed in Shanxi to fight with the Ming army seriously, but Lao Zhang is uneducated. Liu Chengzong came to attack Gansu when he came, and no one in the army or civilians of Hehuang mentioned anything about the Marshal's Mansion in Qinghai. .
Therefore, he always believed that the Marshal's Mansion of Liu Chengzong was the Marshal's Mansion of Marshal Hengtian.
We need to find someone to contact us, and the most suitable candidate in Xiying is Liu Tichun, who was born in Yan'an, surnamed Liu, and has a gentle temperament.
However, Zhang Xianzhong's preparations were all over. Liu Tichun led his guards across the ditch in the north of the city, and soon after entering the Wei Qian'er camp, Zhang Xianzhong saw people from the northern camp running on the city wall, heading towards the other side of the Zhuanglang River in the west of the city.
At the same time, the Tangqi team of the Marshal's Army in the south of Zhuanglang Valley also began to shrink, and also led several cavalry into the camp in the west of the city. This allowed Zhang Xianzhong on the city to confirm Liu Chengzong's location.
The messengers from the south and the north all ran to the camp in the west. Liu Chengzong must be there, but it is useless to know this. Across the river, there is no chance even if he wants to make a surprise attack... What's more, Zhang Xianzhong's original intention was not to fight Liu Chengzong .
After a while, a commotion broke out in the camp in the west of the city, and then several small groups of horses galloped across the river. Zhang Xianzhong was relieved when he saw Liu Tichun in the lead, but when he looked at the young man on horseback behind Liu Tichun, he couldn't help but feel a little strange.
The man was not wearing armor and looked to be in his early twenties. He looked around and looked trembling, which made him feel strange. Why did Liu Chengzong send such a coward?
Not long after, Liu Tichun called people to open the city. He saluted Zhang Xianzhong with a somewhat embarrassed expression and reported: "Brother, this is the magistrate of Zhuanglang County appointed by the general marshal. He is holding the letter of appointment given to us by the general marshal."
"A letter of appointment?"
The young man did not have enough momentum to enter the city alone. He stood among the generals in Xiying, fighting with each other. However, he still took out the silk cloth from his arms and read out with an uncontrollable trembling voice: "Proclamation of the Grand Marshal's Order" , awarded to Zhang Xianzhong, commander of the Western Brigade, second-class general Dingguo; Liu Tichun, commander of the front camp of the Western Brigade, third-class general Zhaoyi; general Wang Ziyu of the rear camp, third-class general Zhaoyong; Bai Wenxuan, commander of the left camp, third-class general Zhaoyi; right The battalion commander, Feng Shuangli, and other general Zhaoyong, as well as the officers above the commander-in-chief of each battalion, immediately left the city to meet the marshal."
Now, generals, you look at me and I look at you, looking at a loss.
Of course, Wang Ziyu, Bai Wenxuan, Feng Shuangli, and the generals who were not awarded the rank of general all looked at Liu Tichun... They were wondering, why are you, Liu Tichun, the third-class General Zhaoyi, and we are all General Zhaoyong?
What Zhang Xianzhong was looking at was that young man. He thought that I only had two battalions of soldiers, and you gave me the title of general of four battalions. You still made me a blind man. The army itself consisted of one battalion led by him and another battalion led by Liu Tichun.
Now among the four battalion generals, Bai Wenxuan was the commander-in-chief earlier, Feng Shuangli was the commander-in-chief, not to mention Wang Ziyu, who had always been his brother Wang Ziqi's deputy. Joined the general.
He looked at the young man: "You kid, are you really not afraid of death in order to get the official position of county magistrate?"
Unexpectedly, the young man who had been very nervous suddenly grinned and shook his head: "I'm afraid, but General Zhang, my sister-in-law has given birth to a baby, a boy."
Zhang Xianzhong is confused. I am just having a family affair with you. What does it have to do with your sister-in-law?
But Liu Tichun advised: "Brother, take it..."
Before he finished speaking, the young man said: "My name is Feng Shilin. On the twenty-fourth day of the first lunar month of the seventh year of Chongzhen, the Ming general Ding Shaoyin attacked Zhuanglang Guard City. The Marshal's Mansion guard Jing Xiaoliu led the Dongguan Town troops to defend the city. Cai Guan Feng Shishuang was killed by artillery fire, and the chief officer Feng Shicong was burned by the fire and died in the lower city. The general sent me back to Dongguan to work with the three generals."
"Today I am sending a message to the Generalissimo on behalf of the three generals. It is a time when the Marshal is recruiting officers in the army. He is a villain and has two letters of appointment. You will go out of the city to have an audience. All of you are brigade marshals and generals from the Generalissimo's Mansion. I He is just the first Qipin County Grand Master of Zhuanglang County."
As Feng Shilin spoke, goosebumps arose on his cheeks that had yet to grow a beard, and his vibrato became even worse when he spoke. However, it seemed that he was no longer afraid, but rather a little excited. He swallowed and continued with some difficulty. Said: "After a moment, no one left the city."
Feng Shilin licked his nervous and excited lips, raised his hand and pointed rudely at Zhang Xianzhong and Liu Tichun: "You are a bull head, you are a horse face, you are patrolling day and night, black and white, and six thousand Yin soldiers will be buried with me. , I am the Fourth Grade City God of Zhuanglang County!"
Good evening!
(End of chapter)
