On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month of the first year of Hongxing in the Ming Dynasty, it was the Lantern Festival.
To the north of Dashanguan, there is the original monk.
"Get rich! Pick up some silver! There's a lot of silver, pick it up quickly..."
The monks' original battlefield under Dashan Pass erupted with loud shouts like mountains roaring and tsunami. The joy and excitement reached the extreme. It was simply not the atmosphere that a battlefield should have.
However, it is not surprising that this kind of joy and excitement is placed on the Monk Plains battlefield today, because a group of crazy poor soldiers from the Guan Ning Army and the Gansu and Shaanxi Army saw thousands of people on the Monk Plains battlefield while chasing the fleeing Daxi Army. Countless silver ingots!
This is lovely silver! It almost covers the entire Monk Plains... I'm afraid it's worth tens of millions of taels!
Wu Sangui's men are all paupers. They are either poor generals and military households here in Gansu and Shaanxi, or poor soldiers who moved from Ningyuan with nothing.
Of course, among all the paupers, Wu Sangui is the poorest! Others are just poor, but he still owes a lot of loan sharks... The debt he owed to Jabs has not been repaid. In order to attack the rest of the Western Region this time, he also asked Shaanxi merchants and Shanxi merchants in Qikou Town. I borrowed 300,000 taels of usury at a three-cent interest rate. If I don’t give in, I would have to pay back 100,800 taels in interest alone in a year!
And Wu Sangui can't afford to let go of the usury money... It doesn't matter if the money he owes Jabs is not repaid, how dare Yijin Yiwei ask Uncle Guo for the debt? However, the loan borrowed from Qikou Town was "guaranteed" by the loan king Zhu Cijiong. This guarantee is not that Zhu Cijiong will repay Wu Sangui if he fails, but that Zhu Cijiong will be responsible for urging Wu Sangui to repay him!
The Loan King came to collect debts, how dare Wu Sangui not pay back? His Royal Highness King Loi is the half-brother of Emperor Hongxing - Zhu Cixiang does not have a son now, so if he dies young, he might be the one to become Emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
In addition, although the Loan King is young, he is very capable of giving birth to a son! After going to Luliang Mountain, he has taken the daughters of twelve creditors as concubines and already has four sons - it can be seen that Zhu Cixiang has no sons until now, because his finances are too stable and there are no female creditors in the harem... In short, if Zhu Cixiang never had a son, and King Dai's son was the legal heir to the throne.
So when Wu Sangui led his troops to chase the Daxi Army who "fleeed in panic" to Monk's Plain, and when he saw the silver all over the ground, he wanted to pick it up... But this thought just passed by for a moment, and he immediately I know something is wrong.
It's not a good idea to throw money all over the battlefield for the enemy to pick up! That is exchanging one's own money for someone else's life - after getting the life, the money will probably be taken back.
This trick is not new. How could Wu Sangui not know it?
But he can no longer control the Shaanxi soldiers and Guan Ning soldiers who are crazy about poverty... They are all bitter "landowner soldiers", that is, they have to rely on land income to support military service. But how many crops can be grown on the land in Shaanxi and Gansu to support the hugely expensive military service? Wu Sangui, the Pingxi King who was in debt, could not spare much money to subsidize the landlords and soldiers below.
Therefore, Wu Sangui was not the only one who suffered losses. Most of the landlords and soldiers on the original battlefield could not make ends meet, so they just grabbed a handful of Zhang Xianzhong's black money to make up for it!
Now that you see money lying all over the place, why don't you grab it with red eyes?
The strategies used by Zhang Kewang, Zhang Dingguo, Zhang Wenxiu, and Zhang Nengqi were really simple, crude, and effective!
Knowing that something bad was going to happen, Wu Sangui quickly sent out his own soldiers to stop his poor landlords from picking up money. But who else is willing to stop at this time? There are probably millions of taels of silver in this place. Most of Zhang Xianzhong's accumulated black money is here. If he doesn't grab it now, it will be gone in the future... Even if Wu Sangui's soldiers cut off more than a dozen heads in a row , the people below still didn't listen to the orders, they were like crazy, they just wanted to collect money.
Wu Sangui's army suddenly fell into chaos!
Just when Wu Sangui's men were going crazy to pick up the money, the 13,000 cavalrymen who had been rushing to serve as the main rear guard of the Great Western Army had stopped retreating, and then hurriedly organized the team. Under the leadership of Zhang Dingguo and Zhang Nengqi, they moved toward the team in complete chaos. Wu Sangui personally led 40,000 elite troops to charge.
In one rush, Wu Jun was defeated miserably!
...
The Battle of Monk Yuan on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month of the first year of Hongxing's reign in the Ming Dynasty allowed Wu Sangui to learn how powerful the Daxi Army was without Zhang Xianzhong... It's not that Zhang Xianzhong wasn't powerful, but that this guy was crazy, especially when Iru Sichuan said After the emperor's death, he was almost mentally insane, that is, he was more normal when he was drunk.
Except for the four "eldest adopted sons" who he regarded as his own sons and Wang Zhaolin, the prime minister of Daxi Zuo who was as crazy as him, everyone else was in danger and lived in fear. Generals who have a few soldiers in their hands, of course, do everything possible to preserve their strength, lest they lose their strength and be killed by Lao Wansui in confusion.
Therefore, the death of Zhang Xianzhong was definitely a good thing for the soldiers of the Daxi Army - it was equivalent to King Hong Tian going to see God before the Tianjing Incident of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom...
Therefore, everyone in the Daxi Army breathed a sigh of relief.
The pattern of the four kings co-governing is actually conducive to bringing out the full combat effectiveness of the Daxi Army - if there is not so much external pressure now, the four kings co-governing may turn into internal strife among the four kings, but right now everyone is hanging their heads on their belts Yes, you have to fight tooth and nail to survive.
Therefore, the four kings who co-ruled all used their strength to fight at the bottom of the box. Zhang Dingguo and Zhang Nengqi, the most capable among the four kings, even personally led the team to kill.
And Zhang Kewang also spent his money and used Zhang Wenxiu's strategy to scatter millions of the money Lao Wansui had worked so hard to rob in Monk Plains to attract Wu Sangui's poor soldiers...
Wu Sangui was really beaten hard. Not only did he lose more than half of his 40,000 troops, but he also had Zhang Dingguo and Zhang Nengqi chase him all the way from the Monk Camp to the Qishan Camp. Before they had time to set up the garrison, Zhang Kewang and Zhang Wenxiu arrived with the main force of the Great Western Army.
Wu Sangui did not dare to defend the camp, so he had to abandon the food and baggage stored in Zhougong Temple and fled eastward until he reached Xi'an Fucheng before he could stabilize himself. Xi'an Fucheng and Tongguan Guards were abandoned by the Great Western Army and handed over to Zukefa. , a partial division led by Wu Guogui.
With the support of Zukefa and Wu Guogui, Wu Sangui finally saved his life. Of the 40,000 troops who followed him to Monkshangyuan and the 5,000 people who stayed at the Qishan camp, only one person survived in Xi'an. Thirty-four thousand people... Even if you include Zukefa and Wu Guogui's troops, Wu Sangui only has 30,000 troops on hand.
At this time, 28,000 bannermen led by Nikan and Mandahai also arrived in Shaanzhou, east of Tongguanwei...
After receiving the news, Wu Sangui really felt that the end was coming. He had no choice but to invite Zukefa to his handsome manor to discuss it... Or should he let him continue to be a traitor?
"This can't be done..." Zukefa shook his head like a rattle, "Uncle Chang, you lost so much in the first battle with Monk Yuan, can Donglu make up for your loss? What are you doing now? But I still owe a lot of pension money! How much money is missing? Is it twenty thousand? "
Wu Sangui said with a sad face, "Not only...30,000 yuan! Although some people returned to the team one after another, the final loss was still 25,000 yuan!"
Zukfa asked: "How much pension will be given to each person?"
Wu Sangui said: "It is agreed that it will be fifty taels of silver...it will be doubled for officials with a hundred households, and three times for officials with a thousand households. It will be settled within three months after the war!"
"Not counting hundreds or thousands of households, if one person has fifty taels, that would be 1.25 million taels!" Zukefa looked at Wu Sangui sympathetically, "Uncle, do you think we can withhold this money?" ? If you don’t give it, will the three hundred and thirty thousand households below let you go?”
Wu Sangui was about to cry. He had lost a handful of rice by stealing the chicken. No, he had lost not a handful of rice, but more than a million taels of silver!
Zu Kefa continued to count: "You still owe Jiale City (the name of the company) 200,000 taels of usury, and you also owe Qikou Shanxi merchants 300,000 taels of usury...including principal and interest. How much? You can't get by without two million! Who else can give it to you besides your brother-in-law? You still want to be a traitor now... Can you afford to be a traitor? Do you have two million? "
