After Zheng Yu held a brief meeting, he climbed onto the city wall to patrol again. At this time, he had not slept for a day and a night. When the soldiers saw that the commander of the company was so sleepless, they were even more embarrassed to be lazy, so they cheered up one by one and performed their duties.
Suddenly, countless people in ragged clothes and wounded all over came from all around. Behind them were the ferocious Mongolian cavalry, who whipped them with horsewhips from time to time and said: "Hurry up and leave."
Zheng Yu became angry when he saw this situation. He knew what the Mongols wanted to do. He punched the wall hard to vent his anger.
"General, let me get out of the city and I'll kill these damn Tatars."
"What the hell are these damn Tatars capable of bullying unarmed people? Let us get out of the city!"
General Li Ren also wanted to step forward and say something, but he swallowed the words before they came out of his mouth.
Zheng Yu smiled bitterly and said: "I don't want to go out to rescue those people, but if we go out, we will fall into the Tatars' conspiracy.
Soon, those refugees in Mongolia were driven, beaten and scolded to the gate of Datong City. Because there were countless refugees in sight, Zheng Yu did not dare to order the arrows to be fired.
"General, open the door! Open the door quickly!"
"Have mercy on us and let us go into the city."
Zheng Yu helplessly appeased the people, saying: "Fathers and fellow citizens, you are all citizens of the Ming Dynasty, and I would not be willing to let you enter the city. It's just that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the city. The reason why the Mongols drove you here , I want you to falsely open the city gate, and they will wait for an opportunity to come in, and then not only you but also the people in the city will suffer."
When the people outside the city heard that Zheng Yu was not going to let them into the city, they immediately exploded. Someone in the crowd suddenly shouted: "Dog officer, a dog officer who is greedy for life and afraid of death! The lives of the people in the city are their lives, and ours is no?"
As soon as these words came out, other people were encouraged and began to yell and curse. For a while, there was a constant noise in the city of Datong.
General Li Ren couldn't bear it and warned again: "General, if that doesn't work, let them enter the city. Our city gate has been slightly opened to let them in little by little. I really can't bear to see them die outside the city like this!" "
"No, we have to focus on the overall situation. Why don't I want them to enter the city? The Mongolian cavalry is a whirlwind force with high mobility. As soon as we open the city gate, they can come in in an instant. Besides, the people have not passed by. Training, if the city gate opens, they will rush in first, and the order will be chaotic, and the consequences will be disastrous!"
Qianzong Shao Ren suggested: "We collect some grain and grass from the people in the city and throw it down from the city wall to the people. This can be a delaying strategy. After the Mongols retreat, we can then let them into the city."
Zheng Yu nodded and said, "I'll leave this matter to you."
The people in the city were unmoved when they saw the government publicly soliciting food from the refugees outside the city. After a long time, only a few families came over to donate food.
Upon seeing this, Qianzong Shao Ren had to go from house to house to collect food. Unexpectedly, he encountered a nail in the first house.
"Master Jun, it's not that we don't want to donate, it's that the harvest this year is really not good. After paying the land tax, there is not much leftover food. Please be considerate of us and go to the next house to ask."
Shao Ren visited several restaurants in a row, and they all got the same answer. He knew that if this continued, people outside the city would starve to death and he would not be able to collect donations.
Immediately ordered people to build a big stage in the city center. Seeing that a big stage was suddenly set up, the people in the city thought there was something lively going on. They quickly arranged their chores at home and came to prepare to eat melon and watch the fun.
Shao Ren saw that the people had almost arrived, so he immediately took the stage and began to speak:
"Fellow fellows, maybe you already know that the Tatars outside the Chen Bing Pass have been eyeing our Datong in the past few days. But you may not have imagined the seriousness of the matter. Once Datong falls, it will not be our soldiers who will suffer, but you! We soldiers are our own You should be proud of being wrapped in horse leather. After the city is broken, it will be nothing more than a word of death. And you, do you think the Tatars will be kind and let you go?
"Do you know what the Tatars will do every time they break the city? They will kill all the men who are higher than the wheel. They will kill the elderly in your family, and then seize your wives and concubines to be their slaves. They will burn the houses you have worked so hard to build, trample the farmland you have worked hard to cultivate, and they will loot all your belongings.
"They did this two hundred years ago, and now they are here again. The Lanzhou Wei and the refugees outside the city not long ago are living examples. Doesn't this still sound an alarm for you?"
"Do you know that in order to prevent Datong from falling into the hands of the Tatars and to protect you, our commander-in-chief did not allow the refugees outside the city to enter the city despite the infamy? You are all citizens of the Ming Dynasty. Here, Before this kind of danger comes, you should share the same hatred and fight against powerful enemies.
“Now that your compatriots have been humiliated by the Tatars, their families have been destroyed, and now they can’t even eat, can you bear to see them starve to death outside the city?
"You have to think about it, if you don't save you today, if you suffer the same fate in the future, do you think the people in other towns will save you?
"I really have no other choice. If you listen and are willing to donate some food, just go there and register. I won't force you..."
After Mr. Qian Shao Ren said this, the people of Datong suddenly became enlightened. They were unwilling to donate a grain of rice before, but now they are rushing to register, and they consciously use the grain stored at home to help the people outside the city.
It is true that if the nest is overturned, how can there be any eggs? Only by uniting can we overcome difficulties.
The people outside the city had long been cursed and thirsty. At this time, they were all weak from hunger and leaning against the city wall dying.
Suddenly, many baskets were hung from the city wall, and the baskets were filled with food and water. When the refugees outside the city saw that they had food and water, they wolfed them down and cried with gratitude: "It turns out they didn't abandon us...
The refugees who had eaten their fill shouted in unison: "Long live the Ming Dynasty! Long live the Datong! Long live the Ming Dynasty! Long live the Datong!"
Originally, Bolger didn't take Zheng Yu's bait and didn't take it seriously. Since you are willing to be a coward, then let you watch your compatriots starve to death in front of you! If you don’t believe me, you won’t come out, but now Bolger sees that the people under Datong City, who were half-dead just a moment ago, are now full of life, as if they are alive again.
And he even dared to shout in front of them: "Long live the Ming Dynasty, long live the slogan of Datong"
Bolger ran back to the tent angrily and asked Dayan Khan Batu Mengke for an order to shoot those Han people. After learning about it, the latter just smiled slightly and said: "Don't worry, it won't be fun if everyone dies at once. You send out a hundred archers every two hours to kill for a while, and the fun will slowly begin." .”
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