The cronies were shocked by Shao Hongyuan's choice and immediately persuaded Shao Hongyuan not to say stupid things or do stupid things.
They feel that things are far from that point, and they are not looking for life and death at all. They can leave here to survive. At worst, they can resign from office and return home to spend their remaining years in peace, right?
What's more important is that the interests of the soldiers and the general are bound. If the general dies, the soldiers will have no theoretical basis for survival. Therefore, no matter what, the soldiers hope that Shao Hongyuan can survive and take them with him.
Shao Hongyuan had no more ideas. He felt that if he couldn't fight to the death here, even if he ran away, he would still die if he went back. Just like Wang Quan before, he was exterminated because of his cowardice and escape.
If you go back alive, you may not be able to save your family. If you die here, your family can at least be saved.
"Thanks to the Holy Family, I was able to unite the army and suppress the bandits. However, the bandits failed to be wiped out. Tens of thousands of troops were in chaos without fighting. The situation was out of control. As a general, how can this not be my capital crime?"
Shao Hongyuan cried and said: "I also know what you are thinking. Stop trying to persuade me. If you want to escape, just escape. You don't have to die with me. You can return home anonymously and spend the rest of your life in peace and be filial to your parents." If you don’t want to, then just stay and fight to the death with me, and it will be considered a friendship.”
With that said, Shao Hongyuan put on his helmet, clenched the sword in his hand, stepped out of the Chinese army's tent, and prepared for battle.
The cronies have followed Shao Hongyuan for a long time and have been deeply favored by him. Their food and clothing are much better than those of ordinary soldiers. Even some middle-level officers are not living as well as them.
They have meat to eat, money to take, women to play with, and the best armor, the best steel knives, the best horses, all the best.
After receiving such kindness, if they abandoned Shao Hongyuan at the last moment, would they still be considered human beings?
Simple emotions dominated their thinking, and they all chose to follow him until the last moment. No one chose to escape and survive.
Shao Hongyuan's headquarters has a small number of troops. In addition to his own soldiers, there are many old troops of Li Xianzhong, so they may not be of the same mind as him. There are not many people willing to resist. On the contrary, many troops saw that the situation was not good and directly defected and attacked Shao Hongyuan with the rebels. The Chinese military tent.
So Shao Hongyuan didn't go far when he ran into the rebel army and was forced to fight.
His soldiers immediately protected Shao Hongyuan and started fighting.
Because they are very elite, they fight very resolutely, ferociously, and methodically, so they can kill the rebel army on the opposite side with a single blow, leaving mountains of corpses and rivers of blood.
The rebels were killed by Shao Hongyuan's armored soldiers and howled like ghosts.
Despite this, due to the absolute disadvantage in numbers, Shao Hongyuan's soldiers continued to die in battle after their initial majesty, and were constantly hacked, kicked, and trampled to death by the large number of rebels.
As they fought to the rear, there were fewer and fewer soldiers and more and more rebels. One of his soldiers had to deal with the thrusts of more than a dozen knives and more spears at the same time, which was really too much to deal with.
After fighting for more than half an hour, less than fifty people were still protecting Shao Hongyuan. When Shao Hongyuan looked up, he could no longer see the soldiers still fighting for him.
He failed, completely failed.
Zhang Jun's entrustment, the emperor's trust, and everything else were all over.
His hope of making a comeback with the help of this war against bandits and becoming a resounding golden brand of the country was completely shattered.
But despite the failure, he was still a general, a general who resolutely resisted the rebels and refused to surrender.
So even if the soldiers around him died one after another, and he was left alone in the end, he had no intention of surrendering, but rushed towards the rebels with his sword.
Although Shao Hongyuan was older, he still had courage. He rushed into the chaos of the chaos and slashed with his sword, hitting every target accurately.
Few of these rebels had armor. Shao Hongyuan's favorite refined steel knife chopped them like a kitchen knife cutting tofu, one by one, one by one.
However, the army in the cold weapon era was a violent group that carried out the majority. After killing five rebel soldiers in a row, Shao Hongyuan's blade could no longer be used. He tried to grab the long knife of a rebel soldier and continue fighting, but his helmet failed. One rebel soldier shot him down with a spear, and another rebel stabbed him in the neck with a spear.
So his life was fixed at this time.
The knife in his hand fell down, and his body fell heavily to the ground, bleeding all over the ground.
Shao Hongyuan, who had the courage of Guan Yu and Ma Chao, died in the Song Army's own chaos, and his death was very uneconomical.
After Shao Hongyuan died in battle, the order of the Song army could never be restored.
This group of rebels killed Shao Hongyuan. The rebels in other places did not know that Shao Hongyuan was dead and continued to "fight", but they did not know who they were fighting against.
They might be remnants of Shao Hongyuan's troops, or more likely their own comrades. However, they didn't know each other, so they didn't know who would show their swords first, so they started to chop each other.
It is also possible that they were preparing to run away, holding their belongings and trying to escape. However, they were spotted by someone who rushed to snatch their belongings. The two sides drew their swords and started slashing at each other.
All in all, Shao Hongyuan is dead, but the Song Army's wave of bombing camps is not over yet, and there is a faint tendency to expand.
It was the peasant army in the Luoxiao Mountains that put an end to this wave of camp bombings.
After learning that civil strife broke out in the Song Army, the peasant army's informants immediately ran into the Luoxiao Mountains with all their might, and used relay methods to let Zhao Yucheng know the news within half an hour.
Zhao Yucheng spent another half an hour letting all the peasant troops know the news, and launched an attack on the Song Army camp from their respective stations.
More than half an hour after Shao Hongyuan's death, Zhao Yucheng personally led the first brigade of the Peasant Army to the outskirts of the Song Army camp, and fought with a mess of Song soldiers who were killing each other and plundering the army's property.
This group of Song soldiers had no organization or discipline. Facing the organized and disciplined First Brigade of the Peasant Army, they were immediately defeated. They were defeated in a chaotic manner. They were either killed or kneeling on the ground and lifting their belongings. Above their heads, they begged the peasant army not to kill them.
Because the progress was so smooth, Zhao Yucheng didn't react for a while. He didn't know what he should do now, whether to continue the attack or stop here.
However, with the expectation that he would make a profit by rushing in, Zhao Yucheng decided to continue the attack and continue fighting. So the first brigade of the Peasant Army continued to advance, fighting from the gate of the camp to the middle of the camp, killing many defeated Song soldiers. Also captured more surrendered Song soldiers.
Of course in the end he just couldn't fight anymore.
Because too many Song soldiers surrendered.
He led his troops into the Song army's camp, charging from east to west, and encountered groups of Song soldiers. The battle process was very similar - just a face-to-face encounter, killing a few fierce-looking ones, and showing off his strength. He shouted that he would surrender without killing, so the remaining Song soldiers knelt down and surrendered without any intention of continuing to fight.
So much so that Zhao Yucheng almost thought that he had developed the super skill of following his words.
He only brought a large group of peasant troops, and more people surrendered than the peasant troops. He didn't know how to take care of them.
Fortunately, the remaining four brigades of peasant soldiers also rushed over quickly. In the chaos, they agreed to attack the Song army camp from different directions, control their escape routes in all directions, and try to swallow up the Song army wholeheartedly. Indigestion should also wipe them out.
A snake swallows something like an elephant. As long as you swallow it, there is a chance it will be digested. It is better than nothing.
This bold tactical goal seemed to face many crises, but when it was actually implemented, it unexpectedly encountered no obstacles.
Because the Song Army has collapsed, it is impossible for the Song Army without clear command and organization to engage in a purposeful battle with the peasant army.
Therefore, except for some fierce desperadoes who brandished knives and fought with the peasant army in order to protect the property they had grabbed, most of the Song soldiers just ran away when they encountered the peasant army, or they quickly squatted down and surrendered, or they had to be killed. Kill.
The peasant army used a squadron or even a small team as a combat unit and ran rampant in the Song Army camp, but the Song Army was unable to stop the impact of any peasant army.
Many outrageous things happened during the entire battle, but the most outrageous thing was that Xu Tong screamed and led a team of fifty people to pursue more than a thousand Song troops.
More than a thousand Song troops fled in panic, crying like ghosts and howling like wolves, while Xu Tong and fifty peasant army soldiers chased and slashed behind them.
The defeated Song army did not realize that there were only fifty people pursuing them. As long as they counterattacked slightly, they could stop the pursuit of this mere fifty people.
For them, as long as someone is chasing them, it is scary enough, just like a group of lions and a group of tigers are chasing them. They just think about how to run faster than their companions.
For the soldiers who bombed the camp, they can no longer think and act normally.
Since fifty people can pursue more than a thousand people, it is not surprising that one hundred peasant troops captured five hundred Song troops, and two hundred peasant troops defeated eight hundred Song troops.
Now that things have reached this point, the outcome is obvious.
A battle between 7,000 peasant troops against nearly 60,000 Song troops ended in a capture battle in which the 7,000 peasant troops captured the Song troops, which outnumbered them many times.
The Song army was running around all over the ground, and the peasant army was chasing them with knives, just like a butcher wielding a knife to kill running pigs. From near noon to evening, the entire Song army camp was finally cleared of any Song army soldiers who were still running.
They were disarmed, squatting or sitting on the ground, guarded by armed peasant soldiers.
If there were 60,000 pigs, the peasant army would not be able to catch them all even if they broke off their legs, because the pigs would not surrender and would keep running until they were exhausted. Moreover, the pigs still had four legs and could run very fast.
But a man with only two legs will surrender.
The peasant army shouted not to kill the prisoners of war. As soon as the stunned Song soldiers heard that they would not kill the prisoners of war, they immediately surrendered, stopped running, and lay down.
In the end, most of the surviving Song soldiers were captured by the peasant army. A few Scuds and some established Song soldiers who had planned to escape in advance escaped.
The peasant army did not have extra troops to pursue them. Of course, their harvest was already large enough and they did not need to add such a feat.
The situation was like this. When Zhao Yucheng and the main cadres of the Peasant Army gathered together for a meeting, they all looked confused.
They could never imagine that such a thing would happen.
Seven thousand of them actually defeated the Song army of nearly 60,000, and the Song army was completely annihilated by them.
The captured weapons were piled up into a mountain, the captured grains were also piled up into a mountain, and the other captured military supplies were even piled up into a mountain. The peasant soldiers who had experienced a long and hard life looked at them with their eyes straightened and their legs and feet feeling weak.
Three large mountains were piled up in the military camp, all belonging to the peasant army.
The gains from this battle were so great that many people did not realize it, including Zhao Yucheng, the top leader of the peasant army.
However, Zhao Yucheng's psychological quality was still good. After a period of calmness, he quickly found himself again.
"We won."
The others looked at him in confusion. After a while, someone shouted.
"We won."
Then someone shouted again.
"We won."
Perhaps from here, the shouts gradually changed from one or two to three or four, then from a few people to hundreds of people shouting, and finally, to thousands of people shouting in unison. Cheering is the voice of everyone’s heart.
The peasant army was founded in the face of difficulties and obstacles, and was besieged for a long time in the Luoxiao Mountains. Finally, at this moment, it broke out, fought out of the mountains, and completely defeated the Song army that besieged them.
The victory of this battle was enough to change the entire resistance situation on Jiangnan West Road. Not only did the Song army fail to extinguish this spark, but it also caused the fire to burn raging on Jiangnan West Road.
Anyway, Zhao Yucheng didn't expect that one of his countermeasures could have such a big effect.
So early the next morning, after he became calmer, he was basically certain that the victory was not because the peasant army was too good at fighting, but because the Song army was too useless.
They themselves got into a fight because of the rumors, and they themselves were beaten to pieces.
Before the peasant army launched its attack, the Song army was already in collapse. Their own cannibalism resulted in thousands of deaths. The peasant army's attack only pushed the already shaky army off the cliff.
To this point, some people from the peasant army lurking in the Song Army gave a clear answer.
The Song Army did explode on their own, and the peasant army only added fuel to the fire on the basis of their explosion, making them explode even more completely and completely destroy them.
Zhao Yucheng laughed loudly when he learned about it.
"I really like what Your Majesty once said. Luck is also a kind of strength. I never thought that a rumor can defeat an army. The ancients often said that harsh government is stronger than tigers. Now it seems that rumors are stronger than harsh government. .”
Zhao Yucheng was very happy, but he would soon embark on a new journey, and such a happy mood could not last long.
