It was night on the eleventh day of the first month of the second year of Zhaowu in the Great Zhou Dynasty.
Around Zhuxian Town, where the 100,000 Northern Expedition troops of the Great Zhou Dynasty were stationed, everything was quiet and quiet, without any tension of an imminent war.
The 100,000 Wu and Zhou Northern Expeditions led by Wu Yingqi began arriving in Zhuxian Town in the early morning of the 11th. This Northern Expeditionary Army set out from Xiangyang only twelve or three days ago. They have been marching northward for several days and have traveled more than 700 miles. Although there was no fierce battle with the Qing army along the way, the whole army was still nervous and did not dare to neglect at all. This time, in order to march towards Zhuxian Town, they marched overnight again, and the whole army was a little tired.
And after arriving at Zhuxian Town, they suddenly "rescued" 100,000 Xuzhou people who were taken away by the Qing army... This is another burden!
How to bring hundreds of thousands of people to Beijing is not an easy task! Dear Xuzhou people in Henan, who is willing to settle down outside the Second Ring Road in Beijing? I can’t even agree to dividing the house and the land!
So Wu Yingqi still had to coerce them!
It is also very troublesome to coerce 100,000 ordinary people to become Beijingers. They must first be organized into groups, properly armed, and then placed under the control of the Wu and Zhou armies, and they must not use excessive violence... It takes a lot of effort to coax, lie and scare!
In addition, since Wu and Zhou's army did not obtain much food in Zhuxian Town, they did not carry much food themselves. Therefore, Wu Yingqi had to send people to Nanyang, Ruzhou, and Runing to collect grain and grass.
Therefore, Wu Yingqi's army had to temporarily stop at Zhuxian Town.
Liu Xuanchu, a member of the Northern Expeditionary Army, vaguely felt that there was something wrong with this stay...but he also knew the plans of Wu Yingqi and Wu Shicong, so he did not speak to him in person, but went to see him after dark on the 11th. I met Wu Guogui, Wu Sangui’s adopted son, and wanted to hear his opinion.
Wu Guogui was actually promised a prince by Wu Sangui. Wu Sangui wanted him to become the current king after the victory of the Northern Expedition, and guard the northern border for the Great Zhou Kingdom together with King Yan Wu Yingqi.
So he also felt that Wu Yingqi's approach was inappropriate... It was inappropriate to monopolize it. Why should Datong Domain have to leave a few thousand households, right?
After an in-depth exchange of opinions with Wu Guogui, Liu Xuanchu, who had not slept a wink all day and night, yawned and said goodbye to Wu Guogui, wanting to go back to the house he occupied in Zhuxian Town to get some sleep... These days He marched with Wu Yingqi's army, but he suffered a lot. He slept in the wild for more than ten days in a row without even having to take a shower. His body was almost covered with fleas, and it was freezing cold every night. Today I finally live in a house with a roof and a bed to sleep on!
At this moment, he suddenly heard the sound of metal tapping!
Is this someone calling a gold warning?
Liu Xuanchu also suspected that there was something wrong with his ears, so he quickly looked back at Wu Guogui, only to find that Wu Guogui was already walking quickly out of the house. Now he knew something was really going on and hurried out.
Wu Guogui's residence is located near the north gate of Zhuxian Town, and the gate tower of the north gate of Zhuxian Town is particularly tall and is the commanding heights of the town. The alarm gong sounded from the north gate tower!
Wu Yingqi and Wu Shicong, father and son, also came over. They were both neatly dressed and had soldiers with them. They were obviously patrolling the camp and came over after hearing the sound of the gong.
Wu Yingqi and his son, Wu Guogui and Liu Xuanchu did not exchange greetings after meeting, and just waited together to get to the north gate tower of Zhuxian Town.
After going upstairs, the four people looked up and were shocked by the scene in front of them.
I only saw countless torches appearing in the night in the north. These torches covered a large plain and were still slowly moving south. It seemed that there were tens of thousands of troops approaching Zhu in the night. Fairy town!
Liu Xuanchu took a breath and said, "I'm afraid there are tens of thousands of people!"
"There are hundreds of thousands of people!" Wu Yingqi corrected, "There are also people in the east and west... and also in the south!"
Liu Xuanchu then looked left and right, then turned and looked back.
Sure enough, countless torches appeared in all four directions!
"Wang Fuchen, it was Wang Fuchen who tricked us!" Wang Shirong's voice also rang out. He didn't know when he also went up to the city gate tower and was jumping on his feet and scolding Wang Fuchen!
However, Wu Yingqi was quite calm. After looking at it for a while, he turned back to his son Wu Shicong and said, "I'm tired of being a father, so I have to take a rest... You are young, so you have to endure the first half of the night first, and let you have three nights in the second half of the night." I will take my place for you."
Then he said to Wu Guogui: "Third brother, go and have a rest...come back in Zishi to replace Shi Cong."
"Second brother," Wu Guogui hesitated, "How about Ma Sanbao (Ma Bao) and I lead the cavalry to fight out, charge into a few battles first, and frustrate the Qinglu's spirit!"
Wu Yingqi yawned, and then snorted: "What energy do they have? But we are all exhausted, and the most important thing now is to recharge our batteries... How to deal with these traitors, let's talk about it after dawn tomorrow!"
...
"Will the person named Wu attack?"
At this moment, on the great plain to the north of Zhuxian Town, Tu Hai, who was appointed to serve as Yue Le's deputy in the battle of Zhuxian Town, was staring at the flickering fire on the top of Zhuxian Town in the distance, talking to himself. to ask questions.
"Who knows?" Yue Le shook his head and said with a smile, "But I bet he won't! His troops are a little tired now, but he is not short of food and grass, and he still has Zhuxian Town to rely on, so he is not in a hurry at all. Why? Want to risk a decisive battle at night? Wouldn't it be better to defend for a few days and wait for the soldiers to recover the strength of the horses before fighting?
Moreover, he could not have guessed that we would use the tactic of surrounding but not attacking him, let alone that we could use shield carts, sacks, trenches, and horses... to create four traps in one night. Stay in his car array! "
It turns out that Yue Le's way to deal with Wu Yingqi was to lure the enemy deep into the car formation to encircle him, then encircle without attacking, and finally force Wu Yingqi to take the initiative to attack the Qing army's car formation...
Tu Hai is still a little unsure - he has already jumped into the river twice, and his confidence has long been gone!
So he frowned and said to Yue Le: "Even if there are four car formations surrounding Wu Yingqi, it's not necessarily possible that he can be defeated, right? He can retreat to Xuzhou as long as he breaks one of the car formations."
Yue Le laughed loudly: "Wu Yingqi's withdrawal from Xuzhou means that the Northern Expedition was thwarted. His Northern Expedition was thwarted... Can't the peace negotiation between us and Wu Sangui be successful?
And if we negotiate peace with Wu Sangui, won't it be possible to achieve one-third of the world? And the Qing Dynasty occupies the land of Cao Wei in the past! Moreover, the territory of our Qing Dynasty is wider than that of Cao Wei in the past... Our Qing Dynasty has thousands of miles of fertile wilderness in Northeast China and Mongolia. As long as we work hard and work hard for ten or twenty years, are we afraid that we will not be able to swallow Wu and destroy Zhu? "
"Tall!" Tu Hai raised his thumb, "My lord, you are so tall! You are indeed the white jade pillar that holds the sky and the purple golden beam that holds the sea in my Qing Dynasty!"
...
Ningbo, Zhenhai, Zhaobaoshan.
The newly established Zhaobaoshan military port of the Ming Dynasty's Eastern Navy was heavily guarded that night. In the light from torches and lanterns, neat Ming soldiers were silently boarding the ship.
The number of these Ming troops does not seem to be many, that is, three to four thousand people, and what they are about to board is not the Great Eastern class that specializes in traveling to the far sea, but large sea sand ships sailing along the coast. The number is also small. There are only thirty of them. They are all made of sea sand. The hulls are solid and artillery is installed on the bow. On the stern of each Daishasha ship was a tug-boat towed.
Most of the soldiers of the Ming army had already boarded the ship, but there were still some "Zhan Renru" who looked particularly powerful and tall, carrying long swords and empty hammers, and were following behind two sturdy men in yellow clothes and scarves.
These two big men in yellow clothes were walking along the pier, talking quietly as they walked.
Needless to say, these two people are of course the Ming Dynasty Supervisor King Zhu Heji and the Heavenly King Zhu Cijiong - the title of Mingwang sounds a bit like the big boss of the Red Scarf Army in the late Yuan Dynasty, while the title of Heavenly King sounds a bit like the second son of the emperor's family. .
However, Zhu Heji felt that these two titles were quite distinctive, so he asked the council to persuade him to call himself King Ming. After Zhu Heji accepted the title of King Ming, he also honored his father Zhu Cijiong as the Supreme Heavenly King.
Now the new Ming Dynasty can be regarded as two kings!
