The night wind was getting stronger, and the flames in the illuminated brazier were constantly swaying under the blow of the night wind.
The soft crackling sound of burning firewood, accompanied by the chirping of insects, reached Chen Wang's ears.
Chen Wang was wearing a red arrow suit and holding a wooden stick to fiddle with the already extinguished bonfire in front of him.
The extremely unpleasant smell of blood was still in the air. There were thousands of casualties outside Zhankou Town, and the blood almost dyed the water red.
Fragments of the day's strife and bloodshed still flashed through Chen Wang's mind from time to time.
For so long, he has been deliberately ignoring some things to prevent himself from thinking too much.
But what he saw during the day made it difficult for him to calm down and think about it.
It is said that the late Qing Dynasty was a period of great change that had not happened in thousands of years, but at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the difficulties that the Ming court had to face were no less difficult.
There are disasters caused by the Northern invaders externally, and natural disasters and civil unrest internally. Although the chaos of Japanese pirates along the coast has disappeared, there are still pirates and Western barbarians in many places.
When recalling the Ming Dynasty in my memory, one topic can never be avoided.
This topic is natural disasters.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was the coldest and most profound period of the Little Ice Age.
The annual average temperature during this period is very low. Severe droughts and floods occur one after another in the summer. The winter is extremely cold, and even Guangdong and other places close to the tropics experience heavy snowfall.
The precursors of the disaster can be traced back to the early Jiajing period. They gradually became obvious from the thirteenth year of Wanli, and suddenly began to intensify around the twenty-eighth year of Wanli.
During the forty-eight years of Wanli, famines were recorded for twenty-five years. The farther back, the more frequent and severe the famines became.
After Chongzhen ascended the throne, the disaster reached its peak.
There were seventeen years in Chongzhen. During these seventeen years, there were successive famines that never stopped.
The ensuing natural disasters, the continuous increase of troops, the rampant bandits, and the corrupt bureaucracy finally completely destroyed the Ming Dynasty's already fragile finances.
Even in future generations with advanced science and technology, natural disasters can still cause huge damage, not to mention this world where even communication must be delivered at a fast pace.
It was precisely because of natural disasters that the rebels at the end of the Ming Dynasty were different from the rebels in other dynasties.
Whether it is Chen Sheng and Wu Guang in the late Qin Dynasty, Green Forest Red Eyebrow in the Western Han Dynasty, Yellow Turban Black Mountain in the Eastern Han Dynasty, etc.
Or Du Fuwei Wagang at the end of the Sui Dynasty, Pang Xun and Wang Xianzhi at the end of the Tang Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, Chen Youliang and others at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty.
After they have accumulated a certain amount of strength after launching the uprising, they will immediately separat one side and then fight against the government and the imperial court.
However, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Shaanxi, Shanxi and other places were already riddled with holes due to continuous natural and man-made disasters.
What's more serious is that although the Ming Dynasty was weak and decadent at this time, it was still powerful.
Although Zhang Juzheng's reforms had many shortcomings in the eyes of later generations, they caused many other problems.
But no one can deny that it was precisely because of Zhang Juzheng's reforms that the Ming Dynasty, the oldest empire, was given fresh blood and made it strong again.
The three great expeditions of Wanli consumed a lot of money and food from the Ming Dynasty's treasury, although it made the Ming Dynasty weak.
But at the same time, it also raised a group of famous generals and a large number of elite soldiers who dared to fight.
The combat effectiveness of the Ming army was not bad. Many times, the three armies were exhausted due to the incompetence of one general.
For example, Yang Hao first led the Ming Dynasty's victorious army in North Korea to besiege Ulsan. With a huge advantage, but because of the arrival of enemy reinforcements, he was frightened and fled before engaging in battle.
Later, he served as the commander-in-chief of Saerhu and destroyed more than 40,000 elite soldiers and hundreds of generals of the northern Ming army. This changed the offensive and defensive momentum between the Ming Dynasty and Hou Jin Dynasty.
But even with successive defeats and constant consumption, Ming Dynasty is still a behemoth and a towering building.
The Ming army still has a large number of elites. Although the Ming army in Jiubian has gone downhill, it still has a certain degree of combat effectiveness.
Although Shaanxi and Shanxi are in chaos, there are five important nine-border towns in Yansui Town, Datong Town, Ningxia Town, Guyuan Town and Shanxi Town.
The Ming army's military strength was at its peak, and compared to the rebels who lacked armor, their combat power was not less than tyrannical.
Separation is a dead end. Not only is there no danger to defend, but Shanxi and Shaanxi have long been corrupted, and there is no use in occupying them.
Therefore, in order to survive and find food, in order to avoid the officers and soldiers, the peasant rebels in the late Ming Dynasty could only continue to fight, constantly fleeing to various places, and looting places.
In order to fight against the officers and soldiers, they can only constantly coerce the local people, fight with the tactics of human sea, and train the soldiers by raising poison.
And precisely because of such a vicious cycle, after their power gradually grew stronger, and even after the Ming Dynasty was overthrown, they still had not changed from the old idea of running around and fighting, which laid the foundation for their subsequent downfall.
The so-called bandits were just hungry people who no longer wanted to eat tree bark, no longer wanted to eat grass roots, no longer wanted to go hungry, and just wanted to have a full meal. They didn't even think about eating rice and noodles.
But those high-ranking and pampered masters above those temples didn't care about their life or death at all.
When the civil uprising broke out, they gathered together, opened the official warehouse, ate rice and noodles, and fought against the officers and soldiers all the way, just for a way to survive.
You can't blame them. They were not wrong in the first place, because they were just trying to survive.
But later on, the situation gradually got out of control and kept changing. Some people not only ate rice, but also meat. They tasted flesh and blood.
The taste of flesh and blood was so delicious that they forgot why they rose up in the first place and the original promise.
They don’t want to eat rice, noodles, grass roots and tree bark anymore.
The law-abiding Ming troops who were mobilized to quell the rebellion were not wrong at first. They just obeyed the orders of the country and the military orders of their superiors, came to quell the bandits who were looting everywhere, and maintained the stability and order of the country.
They were at the bottom of society, and many of the soldiers were starving, even worse than the bandits.
They were just a group of ordinary people. They had no control over their own destiny. All they wanted was to live.
Living is the simplest thing, but it is also the most difficult thing...
Chen Wang put down the stick in his hand, looked at the extinguished bonfire in front of him, and stared at a piece of charcoal that was about to burn out in the fire.
The survival of Cao Wenzhao caused considerable changes in the situation in Shaanxi, and many subsequent events were shrouded in mystery.
