On August 18, Quanzhou gentry Guo Xian planned to kill the remnants of the Zheng family and came to Fengmen to welcome the king's troops into the city.
Zeng Guozuo found out in advance and sent troops to burn Guo's mansion and kill more than a hundred members of Guo Xian's family.
On August 19, the Ming army began to search and destroy the Jin gentry people in Quanzhou City.
The city was filled with blood, and the mouth of the Jinjiang River was dyed red with blood.
At the same time, the Francois who surrendered to the Qi army informed Wang Zengbin of the strength and artillery positions of the Ming army in the city.
Seeing that Zeng Guozuo and Zhu Yujian were massacring the city frantically, Wang Zengbin decisively ordered to abandon the siege strategy and immediately attack.
On August 20, the Seventh Corps concentrated all its artillery fire to attack Laifengmen.
On the same day, the ships of the Sixth Fleet on the Jinjiang River also joined in the bombardment of Laifengmen.
The chief trainer of the Seventh Corps was worried that rockets and naval guns would cause serious damage to the port.
After all, the Supreme Emperor repeatedly ordered that Quanzhou must be preserved.
Wang Zengbin said disapprovingly:
"The Supreme Emperor said he wanted to protect the people of Quanzhou. Now the people are suffering. How can we sit back and do nothing? The port is damaged and can be repaired. How can the people be resurrected after they die?"
On the 21st, two hot air balloons rose over Laifengmen, guiding naval gunfire to bombard the Ming army camp.
The Ming army was defeated.
On the same day, the Qi army broke into the capital of Quanzhou from Laifengmen, killed Zeng Guodong, captured the puppet Ming Emperor Zhu Yujian, and annihilated the remnants of the Zheng family.
At the end of August, all seven counties in Quanzhou were pacified.
On September 9th, the puppet emperor Zhu Yujian was escorted back to Nanjing and handed over to the Coin Yiwei and the Sanfa Division for interrogation.
On September 15, the puppet emperor Zhu Yujian was executed by Ling Chi in front of the Ming Xiaoling Tomb (Zhu Yuanzhang's Queen Ma Mausoleum) at the southern foot of Purple Mountain for 1,808 crimes including "treason, disrespect, trespass, city massacre, and collusion with Japanese pirates" .
Zhang Yunxiu, an economic strategist of Fujian and Zhejiang, went to Quanzhou without stopping to take charge of the work of clearing his father-in-law.
Xie Yang also sent officials from the Chamber of Commerce to Quanzhou to receive the Zheng family's land assets, shops and ships, and to repair the port.
As for restoring commercial order in Quanzhou, appeasing Fujian merchants, and dividing the land, there is no need to go into details.
In early September, led by the Chamber of Commerce and jointly funded by the imperial court and Fujian merchants, the first phase of the Quanzhou Port Dredging Project was fully launched. The first phase planned to invest 3 million taels of silver, recruit 100,000 people, repair port facilities, clean up the silt in Jinjiang River, and gradually restore Quanzhou Port International Shipping.
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In early September, the Qi army continued to advance westward to pursue the Ming army. On September 8, the Sixth Fleet occupied Xiamen without any blood.
The remnants of the Ming army, together with the Japanese pirates entrenched in Xiamen, fled to Zhangzhou in a hurry.
The passage from Zhangzhou to the west into Meizhou and Chaozhou has long been cut off by mountain bandits in eastern Guangdong.
It was no longer possible to continue turning westward.
In this way, Zhangzhou became the last stronghold of anti-Qi forces in the southeast.
On September 15th, the Qi army pressed forward and pushed towards Zhangzhou. The Sixth Fleet entered the sea off Xiamen and blocked the Ming army's retreat.
On the same day, Wang Zengbin sent envoys to Fucheng to negotiate, demanding that the Zhangzhou garrison abandon the city and surrender immediately.
The Supreme Emperor only killed Chen Jin, the culprit, and all his followers were spared death.
Chen Jin, courtesy name Lufang, was born in Quanzhou. His family was poor when he was young, but he had the strength to practice martial arts. He was supported by the pirate Zheng Zhilong, and he passed the martial arts examination in the second year of Tianqi.
In the eighth year of Hongguang's reign, he worked as a guerrilla in Quanzhou. In the tenth year of Hongguang's reign, he was dismissed due to the unfavorable results of the encirclement and suppression of the Tatar Qi pirates.
In the twelfth year of Hongguang's reign, he took refuge with Zheng Sen and became Zheng Chenggong's confidant.
During the Liaonan naval battle, the Zheng family was defeated by the Japanese. Chen Jin was ordered to stay in Zhangzhou and organize a rebellion against the Tatars.
Chen Jin planned "one year to prepare, two years to counterattack, three years to mop up, and five years to succeed."
In the early years of Guangde, he planned several raids on Zhejiang and Shandong, "killing many Tartars."
Unfortunately, it is difficult to support a single tree. Since the Tartar Qi Southern Expedition in the third year of Guangde, the Ming army has suffered repeated defeats and turned all the way to Zhangzhou.
Six months ago, Chen Jin was appointed governor of Fujian and Zhejiang by Emperor Longwu, controlling military affairs in the southeast (to be precise, the three prefectures of Fujian).
When Quanzhou fell, Chen Jin's family was killed by rebel soldiers in Quanzhou.
Emperor Longwu was executed by Tatar Lingchi.
The hatred of the country and the family did not allow the Fujian military leader to surrender - in his opinion, surrender would inevitably lead to death.
Negotiating peace was certainly not an issue he considered.
With the support of the Satsuma clan daimyo (actually a group of ronin), and the shogunate will most likely send troops to assist, plus the more than 8,000 remnant soldiers gathered in Zhangzhou, Chen Jin feels that he is still capable of fighting.
In the Zhangzhou Governor's Mansion, Wang Zengbin's autographed letter was torn into pieces.
Because of his rage, the burly Governor Chen cursed in a Minnan dialect:
"Selianmu! (Fuck your horse), the first batch of stocks has fallen (get out!) Taqi wants to negotiate peace, but his head is broken!"
A short Japanese warrior next to him echoed:
"Governor Chen, reinforcements from General Edo are already on the way. The Tatars killed so many Japanese samurai in Quanzhou, and Liu Zhaosun will pay the price with blood!"
Chen Jin nodded and said nothing more. In his opinion, even if the Japanese country did not send troops, Zheng Sen would send people back for reinforcements.
He shouted at the envoy of the Qi army who was tied up in front of him:
"Chop off this Tatar's legs and feet and throw him into the city!"
The envoy of the Qi army did not change his expression and laughed:
"The Supreme Emperor pities the people, so General Wang asked me to persuade them to make peace. You don't know how to advance or retreat, and you don't know whether to live or die. You are hurting the people of Zhangzhou. Zhangzhou is no better than Quanzhou, and Daqi will not throw a rat weapon into the trap! A massacre of the city is inevitable! You all will be buried with them."
When he heard the word "massacre", Osaka Ronin, who claimed to be the envoy of Satsuma Domain, took a deep breath and his face changed drastically.
Ronin was about to persuade Governor Chen, but Chen Jin waved his hand fiercely:
"Push it down! Cut it!"
On the same day, the peace envoy of the Seventh Corps was cut into pieces by five horses of the Zhangzhou guard, and the body parts were thrown down the city.
Also killed were 28 shopkeepers of the Qi Chamber of Commerce in Zhangzhou, seven informants of the Coil Guards, and 324 gentry and common people in Zhangzhou City who advocated peace with the Qi army.
September 16, the third year of Guangde.
The brutal siege of Zhangzhou officially kicked off.
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Nowadays, there is a custom in Zhangzhou area of eating spring cakes and spring rolls during the Spring Festival.
This custom is closely related to a tragic siege more than 300 years ago.
Mr. Meng Wuyue once heard from a friend in Zhangzhou that due to the protracted siege of the city by Wang Shi (forty-nine days in total) and the Ming thieves robbing the people of food in the city, there was a severe famine in the city and countless people died of starvation.
The corpses were borrowed and there was no time to bury them, so the people had no choice but to wrap them in straw mats and abandon them on the roadside.
In order to commemorate this tragic history, the people used spring cakes as straw mats to wrap the corpse to show that they would not forget it, and this has been passed down to this day.
Every time at the beginning of spring, the vernal equinox, or the Spring Festival, every household in Zhangzhou, men, women, old and young, gather together to eat spring cakes and spring rolls, which has become a custom.
Tan Qian was a famous historian in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qi Dynasty. His original name was Yi Xun, his courtesy name was Zhongmu, and his nickname was Shefu. He was a native of Haining, Zhejiang Province. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, he lived in Fujian.
"Records of Journey to the South" reflects Tan Qian's personal experience in Fujian during the Guangde period, and is of high historical value.
According to "Nanjing Lu", in the third year of Guangde, the main force of the Qi army advanced by sea and land. After capturing Changtai, Pinghe, Zhao'an and Nanjing, they defeated Chen Jin, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, in Jiangdong, and then besieged Zhangzhou.
Neighbors from all four sides entered the city and stayed with their relatives to avoid the chaos of war.
The Zhangzhou defender killed the Qi envoys and could not hold out.
The 7th Corps tried several stormings, but found that the casualties were too heavy, so it turned into a siege.
"Gathered 130,000 soldiers (100,000 were soldiers who surrendered to the Ming Dynasty), built 87 wooden villages, surrounded them with two-story fences, dug two trenches outside, and added 387 artillery pieces and ships. One hundred and two ships, spread out in rows, like iron barrels, urging the Ming thieves to surrender day and night." (Volume 2 of "Southern Journey", page 74)
On the fifth day of October, fifty Japanese Zhuyin ships arrived off the coast of Xiamen, loaded with Japanese soldiers and pirates, to assist Zhangzhou.
The Seventh Fleet pretended to retreat, released Japanese ships into the Jiulong River, and then blocked the outlet.
On the eighth day of the lunar month, the Japanese ship arrived at the North Port of Jiulong River (less than ten miles away from the capital of Zhangzhou). It was suddenly attacked by artillery from the Qi army on both sides of the strait. The gunfire all over the sky instantly destroyed the Japanese ship's flagship Izumo.
The surviving ships hurriedly retreated to the river mouth, where they were intercepted by the Empire's Sixth Fleet.
Fifty Japanese ships and more than two thousand Japanese pirates were finally destroyed off the coast of Xiamen and sank to the bottom of the sea.
The siege of Zhangzhou lasted for a long time, and foreign aid was cut off. The Ming army raided the people's food caches, and those who refused to follow were executed. The city was worth fifty gold for rice.
The food in the city was exhausted, people were eaten and their bones were eaten, and countless people died.
On the second day of November, the extremely hungry defenders took the initiative to open the Zhenyuan Gate.
The Qi army marched straight in and occupied Zhangzhou. The culprit Chen Jin and his family set themselves on fire. The Japanese pirate leader Inoue Shiichiro was captured and escorted to Nanjing to wait for Lingchi.
Eight thousand Ming troops in the city died of starvation and disease in the battle. Of the three thousand, the rest all surrendered to Da Qi.
There were more than ten or twenty-three people in the city, and the number of 130,000 people dropped sharply to 50,000.
The siege of Zhangzhou, which lasted forty-nine days, finally ended.
Since then, Fujian has been under the rule of Qi.
Attachment: "Southern Journey" records:
"At the beginning, the Qi army, numbering 130,000, rushed to attack the city, but failed to conquer it for a long time. At that time, the Jiujiang River surged during the autumn floods. The Qi army built embankments to control Menshan and flooded the city. The city was depleted and everyone ate each other, leaving 70,000 dead in the door alleys. When the sea opened, Luoluo was like a wanderer in a tomb, hungry rats squatted for several days during the day, and only thirty or forty thousand people survived after the siege was rescued. Some natives were generous and led their wives to die in mourning. The neighbors secretly cooked and ate them, and saw the intestines of the deceased. There are many pieces of old paper in it, the characters are auspicious but can be distinguished, and the neighbors also discarded them with their chopsticks."
Lewen
