The cold wind is biting, and there is deathly silence under Dengzhou City.
Today is the second day of the first lunar month in the fifth year of Renshen Chongzhen’s reign
Today is the second day of the Lunar New Year. It is a time when every household is enjoying themselves. In the peaceful years of previous years, even the poorest families, as long as they are not in a position where they can't open the pot, must post couplets, hang door gods, and set off a few firecrackers.
However, at this moment, the outside of Dengzhou City is already a piece of scorched earth, the village has turned into ruins, and the black smoke is rising from the charred wood.
In the field, among the broken bricks and tiles, stiff corpses were lying everywhere. The blood had solidified and turned black in the severe cold.
Snowflakes slowly began to drift in the dusk sky, and gowns, armors, rags, and silks were gradually buried under the snowflakes.
The people who were wandering around among the corpses looking for trophies couldn't bear the cold, and they all left one after another. The land was vast and vast.
In this desolate and chilly snowfield, four or five people are hiding among the common local graves.
They were dressed very thickly and in white camouflage uniforms, and they were hidden in the cleverly built snow fortifications. Even if someone walked up to them, they might not be able to find their traces. These people were the special reconnaissance team under the command of Chen Sigen. the team members
Luofenggangzi is a forest of mixed trees. The terrain inside is complex and it is easy to hide. Moreover, going out from the side of Luofenggangzi is a river that dries up in winter. Both sides of the river are covered with woods, so it is easy to escape.
And here, less than one kilometer away from the Mi Shen Mountain where Kong Youde and Li Jiucheng's rebel camp is outside the city, every move of the rebels can be clearly seen. Similarly, you can also see it clearly at the south gate of Dengzhou, north of Shen Mi Mountain. clearly
It has been more than a month since the rebels marched straight into Dengzhou City on November 22nd of the fourth year of Chongzhen. The four gates of Dengzhou have been closed for more than a month.
During this period, both the garrison inside Dengzhou City and the rebels outside the city maintained relative calm. In fact, the rebels did not attack Qingzhou and Laizhou but drove straight to Dengzhou.
During this period, neither Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Denglai nor Yu Dacheng, the governor of Shandong, intercepted or blocked the rebels. The rebels did not touch any state or county except for the villages and towns along the road, and they all bypassed the city.
With a strange tacit understanding, the two sides started a stalemate at the foot of Dengzhou City.
For the Shandong Front Committee, which was silently collecting refugees on Qimu Island in Longkou, it was not surprising that the situation of the Dengzhou Rebellion was very complicated. The large library consulted many historical books and research materials before giving a detailed report. Generally speaking, the two sides are not at odds with each other, but have their own agendas in this incident. Sun Yuanhua has been trying to appease the rebels and maintain his power and status in the Denglai area, while Li Jiucheng and Kong Youde have been trying to balance between "appeasement" and "independence". "Walking a tightrope between the Ming Dynasty and the Liao Dynasty, in order to win concessions from the Ming court and obtain maximum benefits for themselves and the Liao people group.
In a state where one is trying his best to "appease" and the other is trying to use "appeasement" to gain benefits, the hostilities between the two sides have never escalated.
Although the people outside the city were unlucky, and some conflicts between the two sides broke out intermittently, from beginning to end, the two sides had not really started a battle, and the rebels had not launched a direct attack on Dengzhou.
Although the Dengzhou battlefield fell into calm for a while, the forces of all parties were surging under the surface of calm. The Foreign Intelligence Bureau used Lu Wenyuan's relationship with the church to deploy "relationships" and intelligence personnel in Dengzhou City and the governor's office. Although his status was low and he had no access to any secrets, what he saw and heard was enough to prove that ever since Kong raised the rebel flag in Hebei, the two sides had been in secret contact. Kong Youde "asked for care" and Sun Yuanhua "mainly care", in Dengzhou City It’s no secret outside the city
Sun Yuanhua had an unclear relationship with the old people in Liaodong. According to the accusations of some of his political opponents: Sun Yuanhua's ability to serve as governor of Denglai was related to Kong Youde's use of gold, silver and jewelry to bribe officials in the court. Therefore, Sun Yuanhua became the governor of Denglai. Kong Youde paid special attention to Chen Shi, an old man from Pidao, and sometimes bribed Sun Yuanhua, so that Kong Youde and other old men from Pidao could develop in Denglai.
As for Yu Dacheng, the governor of Shandong, he stopped advancing after the mutiny and also advocated for appeasement. It is said that this was the result of Kong Youde gifting him a cart of gold and silver treasures through Sun Yuanhua.
Regardless of whether these things are true or just political "spoiling", it is a fact that Sun Yuanhua has an ambiguous attitude towards the rebels and blindly tries to appease the rebels. The Dengzhou Front Committee believes that even if political and economic entanglements are put aside, Sun Yuanhua has always tried to The old people from Liaodong who were born in Pidao were taken back to their own use and reorganized and trained as an important military force against the Hou Jin Dynasty. Therefore, they tried to recruit Kong Youde and other rebels everywhere.
But his efforts were doomed to fail, and even this appeasement ultimately led to his own destruction.
Both the old man from Liaodong and the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty where he lives are rotten fruits. His personal efforts and those of a few bureaucrats will not bring much results.
Not long ago, in the east of the city, Fubiao general Zhang Tao and Denglai general Zhang Keda, who were stationed outside the city to guard the city gate, had a fierce battle with the rebels. The southern soldiers led by Zhang Keda fought A battle was won, but Zhang Tao's troops were all Liao people from Pi Island. When the battlefield situation was very smooth, they suddenly retreated from the battlefield regardless of Zhang Tao's command. The southern troops commanded by Zhang Keda were counterattacked by the rebels. Most of Zhang Tao's men were exhausted and surrendered to the rebels.
Zhang Keda and Zhang Tao set up outside the city, and all the barracks used to protect the city were abandoned, and all the weapons and baggage in the camp fell into the hands of the rebels. The rebels suddenly became stronger. They were originally led by Li Jiucheng and Kong Youde. , only more than a thousand people, now joined the thousands of surrendered troops under Zhang Tao, and the military power was greatly boosted.
What's worse is that Zhang Tao's troops are all Liao people, and they have the same origin as the rebels. They all hate the people, officials and soldiers in the Denglai area. They have strong internal cohesion and are holding back their efforts to invade Dengzhou." Revenge"
Dengzhou looks like a fortified city. Inside, there are mountains of grain, grass, wages and silver, hundreds of artillery, and six to seven thousand old soldiers. Many of them were trained by the Portuguese, but many of the generals and soldiers among them are Liao people. Dengzhou There are also a large number of dissatisfied Liao people living in the city. The city has long been divided, and it is as if it is made of paper.
The sergeant leading the team in the woods raised his telescope and once again observed the surrounding desolate land. The snow was getting thicker and thicker, but the military thermal clothing on his body from another time and space completely isolated the cold. He carefully rotated the Russian telescope in his hand. The focus knob looks like a common "special warrior" from another time and space. In fact, the sergeant was just an out-and-out Shandong farmer two years ago.
"Everything is normal, there is nothing abnormal," the sergeant said, looking at his watch - the special reconnaissance team is one of the few naturalized civilian sergeants and officers who are uniformly issued Chinese online newspapers.
A radio operator turned on the 2w radio station and started another scheduled broadcast. Chen Sigen's task for the observation team was to report the situation on the Dengzhou battlefield every hour. The special reconnaissance team members knew that a sudden order from the headquarters to increase the frequency of daily reports was often about to happen. Signs of major events
At the same time, in Dengzhou City, Huang Ande was lying in a room of Sun Yuan's house with his eyes closed, two loaded 1630 revolvers hidden under his waist, and a grenade hidden under the pillow.
Such vigilance is by no means unnecessary - Sun Yuan is not at home, because today Zhang Keda and Zhang Tao were defeated outside the city, and the air in the city suddenly became tense. As Sun Yuanhua's servant, Sun Yuan has been gathered to the governor's office. At the same time as they were "waiting for safety", the Liao people in the city also began to commotion.
Since the rebels arrived at Dengzhou City in November, more than 100,000 people from Dongjiang who had moved from Pidao, Lushun and other places in the city have become a worry for the officials in the city.
The conflict between the Liao people and the local soldiers and civilians in Dengzhou became very acute after a large number of soldiers and civilians from Dongjiang migrated inland. Starting from the first year of Chongzhen, a large number of Liao people crossed the sea from Pidao to Dengzhou, and there were no less than hundreds of thousands of them resettled by local officials. people
These hundreds of thousands of Liao people were exploited and abused by local officials from the very beginning when they landed in Dengzhou. Many Liao people who crossed the sea and returned home had no choice but to flee back to Dongjiang because they could not bear the torture and exploitation. General Yang Guodong went to Pi Island for business, and the resentful Liao people gathered together and tried to kill him to vent their anger.
In addition, many Liao people who crossed the sea to Dengzhou in the early years of Chongzhen were given titles by Mao Wenlong, so that "there are countless people with yellow covers and gold waists in the streets." After Mao Wenlong was killed in the second year of Chongzhen, the governor of Shandong Therefore, Wang Congyi asked to strengthen defense and suggested: "If there are ships sailing westward on the sea, they will set up artillery to attack as a plan before the rain." This shows how much the image of Mao Wenlong and the Dongjiang Liao people in the hearts of Shandong people and the degree of tension in the relationship between the two parties have reached. kind of situation
Documents describing the tense relationship between the two sides say: "Liao and Ding are always strong, and the Den people cannot tolerate it." It is also said: "The two counties of Den and Lai were lost from Liaoyang. The Liao people fled and fled, with more than 100,000 people fleeing, and the natives were humiliated." As a result, they may kill each other, and the Liao people are resentful." It is also said that "the Liao people moved inward to avoid disasters, and the natives were in trouble, and the warnings were not unreasonable." In addition, the supervisor Xie Sanbin once said, "The Liao people are quite unruly in the local area. When the rebels returned to Dengzhou, they said: "Dengren tortured the Liao people, and when the troops came to the city, they continued to kill the Liao people." Therefore, in a letter to the governor Liu Yulie, Ai Rong said, He tried to sum up the reasons for the mutiny as follows: "Confucius and Li Xiaozhan were accustomed to it, which is the first rebellion; they accumulated hatred for the local people's contempt, the second rebellion; they did not want to go far to defend Ningyuan, the third rebellion."
In order to suppress the Liao people in the city, patrols were dispatched from the governor's Yamen, the General Military Yamen, and the Supervisory Army Road from the moment the rebels arrived at the city. They patrolled Dengzhou City and Shuicheng with arrows in hand. "Gathering people to make noise" and "walking" were strictly prohibited. Rumor: Every few days, unlucky people are beheaded in public (to be continued)
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