The Guanzhong War is about to break out. Although the process has changed, the wheel of history is still rolling forward.
On September 5, the eighth year of Chongzhen, Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, Ma Huihui and others gathered an army of 300,000 people and marched to the gates of Jingyang City.
On September 7, all Ming army battalions in Shaanxi were ordered to gather in Jingyang and Sanyuan, with a total of 15,000 troops gathered in the two cities.
Cao Wenzhao, Cao Bianjiao, Zuo Liangyu, He Renlong, Zhang Quanchang, Sun Shoufa, Gao Jie and other generals all arrived.
On September 8, Hong Chengchou came to Jingyang in person, left a death note, and swore to fight to the death.
Gao Yingxiang led the main force to attack Sanyuan, while Zhang Xianzhong and Ma Huihui led a partial force to attack Jingyang.
Three hundred thousand troops were stationed in camps for hundreds of miles. Outside the cities of Jingyang and Sanyuan, there were lights everywhere, almost connecting the sky and the earth.
Hundreds of miles of camp, beacon fire illuminates the city.
A large number of rogue cavalry scattered out to plunder surrounding towns and villages.
All parts of Xi'an Prefecture suffered from man-made disasters. Outside the cities in Guanzhong, flames shot into the sky, and many villagers were looted.
After seven days of siege, the strength of the rogue bandits increased instead of decreasing.
Under Jingyang and Sanyuan, there were corpses everywhere, and the blood accumulated under the city walls even reached people's ankles.
The battlefield between the two cities was regarded by Gao Yingxiang as a huge training ground.
Hungry soldiers from each camp of the rogue bandits were constantly being added to the battlefield. Every day when the cock crows and dawn breaks, war drums are already ringing outside the city.
It is not until the sun sets and night falls that the golden sound of withdrawing troops will be heard in the rogue camp.
A large number of people fell on the battlefield, but more people survived.
After experiencing the baptism of swords and blood, everyone's hearts became tougher.
Those who cannot cross this threshold have no way of surviving in this cruel world.
The two cities of Jingyang and Sanyuan had been continuously strengthening their city defenses as early as August. At the same time, Hong Chengchou also transferred a large number of firearms.
A total of twenty-four general cannons are placed on the city walls of Jingyang and Sanyuan.
These artillery pieces, which are only much less powerful than the Hongyi cannons, are mostly used as heavy artillery on the walls of the nine-sided city.
Half of them were newly made cannons from the artillery factory, and the other half were directly dismantled from Datong City and transported all the way to Xi'an Fuzhong.
Not only the guards of Xi'an Prefecture were pulled up to the city wall, but also a large number of young men and women who assisted in the defense.
The Ming army relied on fortified cities, heavy artillery, and various firearms to gain an advantage in armaments.
However, they could only barely hold on to the two cities, and both the generals and the generals were in dire straits.
But all this has nothing to do with Chen Wang who is in Pingliang Mansion now.
The southeastern gateway of Pingliang Prefecture, Jingzhou.
Chen Wang led his troops passing by Jingzhou. The city gates of Jingzhou were closed tightly and they were not allowed to enter the city.
Chen Wang sent Chen Gong to ask for supplies of grain and grass, but the magistrate of Jingzhou City did not respond directly.
He just sent a clerk to open the door of the granary for Chen Gong to check carefully, and then took Chen Gong to see the porridge shed in the city.
Not to mention supplying the troops, Pingliang Mansion suffered several disasters, and Jingzhou City was almost running out of food.
Chen Wang did not send any more people into the city. He knew very well that these were all in vain.
The magistrate of Jingzhou sent someone to show him the granary, but he had nothing to say.
The fire outside Chunhua City destroyed almost all the food that Li Zicheng had looted.
Fortunately, before the Great War in Guanzhong broke out, Hong Chengchou sent people to transport a lot of grain and rice. The excess grain and grass before and after was about 2,000 shi, and he even allocated 4,000 taels of military supplies.
Chen Wang exchanged all of it for grain, and the price of grain in Xi'an Prefecture had risen to more than four taels and one stone.
But no matter how high the price of food was, we still had to buy it. The four thousand taels of military supplies bought us less than one thousand shi in total.
The two battalions now have more than 4,500 men and more than 1,500 horses.
All the baggage was transported by mule carts or mules, and there were more than 500 mules in total.
A human's daily eclipse is one liter, and a horse's daily eclipse is three liters.
Chen Wang now has 4,500 people under his command, and he needs forty-five shi of food a day.
There are more than 2,000 mules and horses in total, which requires sixty shi of food per day.
Together, the men and horses needed more than a hundred shi of food a day.
Mules and horses consume much more food than ordinary soldiers, so this is why Chen Wang sold most of his mules and horses.
Mules and horses can indeed improve the mobility of an army, allowing it to maintain a faster marching speed and improve its combat effectiveness.
But its consumption of food and grass is unbearable.
During the campaign, many places were in dilapidated condition, and the price of rice was extremely high. It was difficult to buy food even if you had money.
Although nearby prefectures and counties have the responsibility to provide relief, many times the magistrates and magistrates insist that they have no food and are unwilling to provide it.
If you just close the city gate, the matter will probably be settled in the end.
More than three thousand stones of military rations can last for about a month. If you save a little, you can extend the time a little longer.
But it is also extremely limited. The mules and horses cannot be hungry, because once they are hungry, they will lose weight and their combat power will be reduced sharply.
And people can't go hungry either. If you don't have the physical strength to fight in battle, you will die.
The ordnance and food allocated by Hong Chengchou were only distributed to the guerrilla battalion under Chen Wang. Two thousand dan was already an extremely high amount.
Chen Wang estimated that Hong Chengchou allocated military rations largely in the name of Cao Wenzhao.
After all, the other battalion was not part of the establishment, so Chen Wang naturally paid for it out of his own pocket.
Jingzhou City was extremely dilapidated, and the entire southern part of Pingliang Prefecture was severely damaged.
As early as July, Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng led the army through Jingzhou.
Although they did not capture the city, they destroyed most of the villages and towns around Jingzhou.
Nowadays, the outside of Jingzhou City is full of desolation, and everywhere you look is yellow.
The trees were scorched and lifeless, with no leaves or bark, and almost no blades of grass.
The convex trees stood in the wind and sand, and the west wind blew the yellow sand towards us, leaving a broken scene all around.
The flow of water in Jingshui River has just reached the original water level, which is much lower than the previous river bank.
The towns they passed were basically in ruins, and many people could be seen lying dead on the road.
The wilderness is littered with bones and corpses.
All the way from Ningzhou to Jingzhou, for hundreds of miles, I saw almost no living person.
Until we were about to leave Jingzhou, we passed an empty town and finally met a group of about 20 refugees on the outskirts of the town.
The refugees gathered in a wilderness, lighting a fire and doing something unknown.
When Chen Wang smelled the aroma of meat, he couldn't help but tighten his grip on the riding crop. It was obvious what kind of meat he was cooking.
Chen Wang repeatedly clenched and unclenched the riding crop in his hand, but in the end he could not hold back the anger in his heart.
Because he saw a group of people tied up in the camp there.
These gathered refugees are not cutting flesh from the dead, but from the living...
Dozens of Liao cavalry rushed out of the marching column, and the more than twenty refugees were easily shot to the ground.
Chen Wang looked gloomy as he led the war horse all the way to the simple camp where the group of refugees had been.
But Chen Wang was used to seeing mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and seeing corpses and remains.
But Chen Wang still felt like his stomach was churning.
In the boiling cauldron, several severed arms had been boiled to a bloody pulp.
In the camp, there were still several arms and legs hanging with blood.
The few refugees who were rescued kept kowtowing and spoke incomprehensible words.
Those who were tied up were already extremely weak and could not even stand after being untied. One person remained in a coma.
"Pile it up and burn it all down..."
The town had already turned into scorched earth.
Chen Wang did not order to stay. He distributed some food to the rescued refugees and asked them to keep walking eastward towards Jingzhou, and then led his soldiers to continue westward.
As he continued to move westward, Chen Wang encountered more and more refugees on the road.
Those refugees walked eastward in groups. Most of those who died on the road and died in the wilderness had become bones.
I just don’t know whether it’s because it’s been too long, or because people passing by have cut off their flesh…
Rao had seen this scene countless times, but Chen Wang still found it difficult to accept it.
In my memory, there are even more desolate scenes in Shaanxi and Shanxi.
All the bandits in Pingliang Mansion had already left, and the government released the rescued people back to their neighbors.
But the arrival of Li Guo made the Pingliang Mansion, which had just recovered, become turbulent again.
A large number of people who returned to their hometowns were once again trapped, and the production that was finally restored was once again disrupted.
Chen Wang originally had the idea of chasing Li Guo all the way into Hanzhong, but now Chen Wang could no longer hold back the murderous intention in his heart.
Along the way, not only did they encounter a large number of refugees, but almost all the villages and towns they passed through were turned into empties.
And more and more bodies are being found on roads and around towns.
There are ruins everywhere, and bones are scattered on the ruins of the road.
Successive years of famine have almost destroyed Shaanxi's production, and the two bandits' disasters have made Shaanxi's situation even worse.
Only cities like prefectures and counties can barely survive the wave of rogue bandits.
Apart from this, only those Zhuangzi who merged together to keep warm and cultivate together still exist.
However, these villages and villas are surrounded by deep moats and high villa walls.
There was a large village whose walls were even higher than some of the county walls that Chen Wang had seen.
Much of the land outside the village is dark red, and not far from the village, there are several large-scale mounds, and there are traces of burning in some places.
The air was filled with the pungent smell of blood.
Chen Wang's eyes only glanced at the mountain village in the distance, and then looked away.
It was now September 15th. He had already led his troops through Chongxin, and the scouting horses in front finally discovered the trajectory of Li Guojun's march.
The messenger sent from Pingliang Mansion also delivered the latest information to Chen Wang yesterday.
There are five thousand horsemen and twenty thousand soldiers, including men, women, old and young.
The soldiers in Pingliang Mansion were ambushed and defeated for a while. Now they are defending Pingliang Mansion and dare not go out to fight in the city.
The information obtained was completely careless and extremely sketchy.
This information is from three days ago.
Now I'm afraid there will be even more troops under Li Guo's command.
"Thirty miles ahead of our army, we found a cavalry group behind the rogue bandits, with about a thousand horsemen and two thousand troops."
"The rogue cavalry are well-dressed and armored. Most of the troops are young and strong. They don't have many weapons and no armor."
"Their brigade raised so much smoke and dust that it was difficult to observe the number of most of the rogue bandits from a distance."
The reports from the scouts sent to the front were extremely detailed.
These people are all in Liaodong, and they often need to go out of the fort to explore the situation in Liaodong.
There are few people who can serve as Ye Bushou. They are all simple figures, and they are all the best in the army.
Chen Wang also stayed overnight, and one of his first-level military exploits in Liaodong was achieved when he encountered a reconnaissance team of Hou Jin while investigating intelligence.
"Continue to hang behind Yaoyao and observe, explore both sides of the road, and check for any ambush."
Chen Wang raised his head and decisively issued the military order.
"Order, the entire army wears armor!"
What rogue bandits are best at is setting ambush on official roads.
Once they discover that officers and soldiers are pursuing them, they will speed up and look for opportunities to hide ambushes on both sides of the road, making it difficult to guard against them.
In the five years from the third year of Chongzhen to the present, although the Ming army has been careful, they still get ambushed and defeated from time to time.
Although Li Guo is just a bereaved dog now, he is on the run.
But capsizing in the gutter is not impossible.
A group of Liao cavalry basically marched on two horses. One horse carried armor and armor, and the other rode on horseback and marched. However, sometimes they would dismount and march with their war horses.
Although putting on the armor was a bit cumbersome, with specific training, everyone quickly completed donning the armor.
Even the three rounds of new recruits recruited by Pizhou, as well as the auxiliary soldiers recruited, are already quite skilled.
After traveling hundreds of miles along the way, not many of the auxiliary soldiers were left behind.
The big reason for this is that most of these people are farmers and have good endurance.
Another part of the reason is because of the leggings.
Gaiters can prevent blood from accumulating in the legs after walking for a long time, thereby reducing leg fatigue and increasing the mileage of the troops.
Leggings are the simplest and cheapest equipment available.
When he was in Chunhua, Chen Wang had people buy a lot of numbness from Xi'an Mansion, cut it into long strips of cloth, and let all the soldiers wear leggings.
Chen Wang led the war horse and looked around.
Then he took out a map from the side of the saddle.
Now we have passed through Chongxin for three days, and we are about to arrive at Huating.
The terrain of Huating is much flatter than that of Chongxin. The terrain is open and there are not many places where one can set up an ambush.
To pursue them, you only need to defeat the team behind them in one go.
According to the consistent behavior of rogue bandits, they will inevitably choose to cut off their tails to survive.
To the southwest of Huating is the Gongchang Mansion, and to the southeast is the Fengxiang Mansion. How to pursue them is a huge problem.
If Li Guo fled to Fengxiang Mansion, it would be difficult to stop him from escaping all the way to Guanzhong...
(End of chapter)
