Outside Donghua Gate in the Imperial City of Beijing, there is a palace of high standards, originally called Chonghua Palace. It is one of the palaces where the Prince of the East Palace lives. If Zhu Cixiang had got married when he was in Beijing, he would have lived here.
Now, this palace belongs to Dorgon, the regent of the Qing Dynasty, and its name has been changed to the Regent's Palace. After Emperor Shunzhi moved to Beijing, Dorgon moved into the newly renovated Regent's Palace.
And this place became the center of power of the Qing Dynasty!
"Your Majesty, Wu Sangui, respectfully invites the Regent, Jin An."
Although they were both princes, Wu Sangui still kowtowed to the regent respectfully, which was of course the etiquette of the Qing Dynasty.
"Not bad, not bad!" Dorgon looked at Wu Sangui, who had shaved his hair and put on the robe of a Qing prince, and nodded with satisfaction, "King Pingxi, how is Ningyuan's harvest this year?"
"Thanks to the Prince Regent, this is a rare harvest."
Regent Dorgon smiled: "Okay, okay...since it's a good harvest, your people should be able to go out, right?"
Wu Sangui asked: "Prince Regent, are you going to go to war with Li Zicheng?"
Dorgon nodded and said with a smile: "Now that the emperor has arrived in Beijing, he will complete the expedition on the first day of October and then we can send out troops."
Wu Sangui was stunned, "The Emperor ascended to the throne? Didn't the Emperor ascend to the throne last year?"
"Ah, this is the second time to ascend to the pole." Dorgon said with a smile, "I asked someone to check, and the thief Li Zicheng climbed to the pole twice, once in Xi'an and once in Beijing. Our Emperor of the Qing Dynasty If you can’t lose to him, you have to log in twice!”
Oh, this also involves comparison.
"What the regent said makes sense!" Wu Sangui nodded, "We can't ask Li Zicheng to compete. In the future, when the Qing Dynasty unifies the North, we can go to Xi'an to climb the pole again."
"Hahaha," Prince Regent Dorgon stroked his beard, "That's unnecessary... I'll give Xi'an to you. Aren't you the King of Pingxi? If you pacify Xi'an, you will become the king there!"
Wu Sangui's people are going to take the lead...but Li Zicheng is not easy to fight! If we strike while the iron is hot in May, we might be able to capture Taiyuan in one go. But now it's already October, and Li Zicheng has been operating in Taiyuan for another five months. I'm afraid the foundation has been solid by now!
Wu Sangui frowned: "Your Majesty, although Ningyuan has a good harvest this year, it cannot afford tens of thousands of troops to go on an expedition to Shaanxi!"
"You don't need to provide it," Dorgon smiled, "the imperial court has food in hand!"
"The imperial court has food? Did the Southern Dynasty promise to pay annual tribute?"
"Humph!" Dorgon snorted coldly, "The young prince of the Southern Dynasty has never seen Sun Zhixian and Jin Zhijun! I really don't know what he is planning?"
Wu Sangui said in her heart: It must be her sister who is so powerful that she fascinated the prince so much that he even didn’t want Dorgon’s daughter!
What a pity. If I had followed him to Jiangnan, I would be so rich now...
"Your Majesty, that food..." The person who asked the question was Zu Zefu. When Zhu Cihong defeated Duolong, he was serving as the envoy in Dorgon's camp. So he joined the Tatars, and later got involved with Wu Sangui.
Dorgon said with a smile: "There is food in the unclaimed land enclosed by the soldiers of the Eight Banner Kings from the east! Now they have occupied more than 10 million acres, and the rice and wheat obtained are no less than millions of dan."
Wu Sangui immediately took a breath: This is taking away the food rations of the Han people in the capital! No, they want to take the lives of the Han people in Gyeonggi!
Gyeonggi is already short of food and relies on 4 million stones of rice and noodles shipped from the south of the Yangtze River every year to survive. Now that water transportation has been cut off, the capital will definitely be short of food. Dorgon also moved millions of bannermen and soldiers from outside the customs, and also raised military supplies for the war. Wu Sangui was originally worried about Dorgon, but he didn't expect his solution to be so simple.
They used the idea of occupying houses and enclosing land to drive the Han people out to starve to death, so as to save food rations for the Eight Banners Heavenly Soldiers!
Wu Sangui immediately understood that Li Zicheng would be in danger if he encountered such a ruthless person. As for Daming... I don't know what tricks his brother-in-law has to deal with such a ruthless person as Dorgon.
"I am willing to be a vanguard!" Wu Sangui shouted to fight, "to quell the traitors for the Qing Dynasty!"
Dorgon laughed loudly: "King Pingxi, don't worry, I don't want you to lead the battle to consume Guan Ning's army, you just need to contain the bandits... I still have a back-up plan, this battle, I, the Qing Dynasty, will win! Use the strength of your Guan Ning army to attack Shaanxi! Once Shaanxi is defeated, your surname will be Wu, and your descendants will rule it!"
.....
"Uncle Tongguan, how much did the emperor give us?"
"You Chen Chuan, how do you know about money?"
"Oh, it's not me who wants money, but the brothers below..."
"Xiaochuan, you are also an old man in the children's camp. You have been with the emperor for so many years, but you don't know how to think about the emperor? The situation is so difficult now. The emperor has to support so many people, and there is still three years of non-conquest period, so money is tight! "
"But, the Donglu people are occupying houses in the enclosure..."
"What are you talking about? Do you want to ask the emperor to imitate Donglu and lose people's hearts?"
"People's hearts, people's hearts, people's hearts again... I think our emperor really wants to win people's hearts!"
Speaking on the low tower of Guguan City were the chief and deputy commanders of the Boy's Camp, General Guoyi Tongguan Boluohu and General Wuwei Chen Chuan.
Luo Hu had just received military orders from Taiyuan and returned to Guguan. The 5,000 elite soldiers of the Boyer Camp would bear heavy responsibilities in the battle against the Qing army.
But Luo Hu's deputy Chen Chuan was very dissatisfied with Luo Hu for not being able to bring back the rewarded silver!
Luo Hu took it for granted that there was no additional reward, because Dashun's financial situation was very bad.
The three-year tax exemption period has not passed, and because the Dashun court advocated "grain-free equalization of land" and could not get the support of the landlord class, there was basically no tax revenue, and all expenses depended on gold and silver brought from Beijing. support.
Not to mention how the troops in various places are spent, the nearly 100,000 troops concentrated in Taiyuan Prefecture alone have a monthly food and salary expenditure of no less than 400,000 taels! In addition, Li Zicheng's court also had to pay for the troops that were conducting conquests and garrisoning in various places, as well as maintaining an increasingly large team of bureaucracy. Li Zicheng, the emperor, still had to spend some money. It costs a little extra for every aspect, but the money is like water!
From June to now, Li Zicheng's Dashun court has spent more than 3.5 million taels of silver!
In order to prepare for the upcoming decisive battle, Li Zicheng had to spend money to purchase food, purchase weapons and war horses, repair cities everywhere, and appease the unsteady Ming army generals.
Adding one yuan for various expenses, more than 1.5 million taels are gone!
The speed of spending money at this rate makes Lao Li very distressed.
As for the silver he gained from Beijing, he lost a lot of it in the battles of Dingzhou and Zhending, and the silver he brought to Taiyuan was less than 20 million taels.
At this rate of spending, next year he will be like Emperor Chongzhen - extremely poor!
But when Li Zicheng was about to die of poverty, there were still not enough people below him.
Now in the Ming Dynasty, the heroes who followed Zhu Cixiang were dividing their fields, houses, wives, and money.
On the other hand, the Tatars enclosed land and occupied houses and forced the Han people to become slaves! The 300 miles around Beijing are basically divided among the Eight Banners men.
Only Li Zicheng's Dashun Army received the least... Can morale be as high as this?
But Li Zicheng had a "Bodhisattva heart" and thought about how to win people's hearts all day long. The bunch of old brothers under him who had not found any profit almost hated him to death!
However, Li Zicheng felt very good at this time, because Yuan Zongdi, who was guarding Xiangyang, had just sent him a report from Gu Junen.
Zhu Cixiang did not want Li Zicheng to become a minister, but was willing to become a brotherly state with Dashun and fight against the Eastern invaders together!
"Hahaha!" Li Zicheng laughed wildly, "Everyone, our Dashun has now formed an alliance with the Ming Dynasty and can fight against the Eastern invaders together! The Prince Fujun of the Ming Dynasty has promised to let Datong stand firm and order Shi Kefa to do so. , Gao Hongtuo sent troops to Jinan Prefecture and Jining Prefecture, and also sent naval forces to attack North Korea on the sea to distract the Eastern captives!"
Li Zicheng paused, "I also got news that Donglu will send troops from Beijing on the second day of October and arrive at Guguan on the fifth day of the lunar month...E Dashun will send troops on September 30th, and the troops will be divided into two." Road, 60,000 elite troops march to Guguan! 40,000 elite troops march south to Huaiqing!"
