In mid-July, after the Peasant Army defeated Jizhou, they invaded Yuanzhou, Linjiang Army and Fuzhou, regaining control of these three areas that had been captured by the previous wave of rebels.
The combat process was very easy, because after the attacks by the rebels in these places, the local reactionary forces suffered heavy losses. Some even local officials had not yet returned to their posts, and the defending Song army had almost no strength.
Some idle officers were brought over by new officials or petty officials who temporarily acted as chiefs, and were given some weapons and immediately became local security forces. They wandered around the city and countryside all day long, and it was not known whether they were security forces or gangsters. .
Can this level of armed force confront the peasant army?
It's obviously impossible.
As a result, the peasant army destroyed everything along the way and was overwhelming. It easily wiped out all these so-called armed forces and achieved a brilliant victory.
On July 19, the third year of Hongwu, Zhao Yucheng personally led 10,000 soldiers to capture Nanchang County, the capital of Longxing Prefecture.
He successfully wiped out the Nanchang County bureaucracy, Longxing Prefecture bureaucracy and Jiangnan West Road bureaucracy in Nanchang County. Jiangnan West Road became a piece of scattered sand, and there was no longer the possibility of integrating forces to resist the peasant army.
The peasant army fully complied with Zhao Yucheng's call to "strengthen ourselves while fighting" during the campaign.
While marching and fighting, they announced that they would allocate land to farmers in the captured areas, protect their property, and attack the local tyrants and evil gentry who owned large amounts of land and had not yet been eradicated.
This is the simplest and crudest way to attract farmers to support them. It can quickly gain the support of farmers, gain a foothold in the local area, and quickly launch attacks against local reactionary forces.
Although the previous wave of rebels launched a strong attack on the local tyrants and evil gentry, when the Song army came back, some of the local tyrants and evil gentry who had escaped before also came back and became masters again.
But this time, the peasant army will not let them go.
They led the peasants to defeat the military power of the local tyrants and evil gentry, drove them out, and used practical actions to prove to the local peasants that they would really allocate land to them and protect the interests of the peasants.
Through this kind of commitment and action, the Peasant Army has gained the trust and strong support of the local poor farmers, and has received great support from the farmers in terms of food and manpower, and the operation has gone smoothly.
As a result, the peasant army grew and grew while fighting. It developed extremely fast, rivaling the speed of expansion.
After the northern state capitals were captured by the peasant army, Ganzhou did not escape the capture of the peasant army.
However, unlike other places, the remnants of the two previous rebel armies in Ganzhou still persisted in fighting the Song army and formed a confrontation with the local Song army. The arrival of the peasant army directly defeated the Song army and rescued the Song army. These rebels persisted in resisting.
As a result, the peasant army and the rebel army completed the merger, and the remnants of the rebel army were integrated into the peasant army, which expanded the strength of the peasant army and accelerated the peasant army's attack on Ganzhou.
By late July, most of Longxing Prefecture, Junzhou, Yuanzhou, Linjiang Army, Fuzhou, Jizhou, Ganzhou, Nan'an Army, Jianchang Army and other places were captured by the peasant army. The peasant army occupied almost the entire Southern Song Dynasty with a wave of offensive. Jiangnan West Road.
During this period, the local Song army and local government basically did not bring any effective resistance to the peasant army, and they basically collapsed at the first touch.
They would never have expected that the peasant army surrounded by Luoxiao Mountain would turn around and annex the Song army like a snake swallowing an elephant.
Who would have thought of such a thing?
Yet it is what it is.
Therefore, they failed to establish an effective defense mechanism. Some county towns were even captured by the peasant army when the county magistrate was on vacation. The county magistrate did not know where he failed from the beginning to the end, so he became a lonely ghost inexplicably.
In the process of conquering cities and territories, the number of the peasant army also expanded to about 80,000, and its strength was greatly enhanced.
Zhao Yucheng re-armed the peasant army through the captured state arsenal, and ordered all ministries to maintain the original division-level establishment and expand the brigade-level establishment to accommodate more rebels to join the peasant army.
On July 29, Zhao Yucheng issued an army preparation order in Nanchang City.
With a clear mind, he did not continue to choose to conquer cities and expand territory. Instead, he realized that the current peasant army's military strength was weak and its combat effectiveness was insufficient, and he realized that he could not attack excessively now.
He clearly realized that the peasant army in its current state was not stronger than the Song army except for its spirit and momentum. In particular, the peasant army had not yet completed the political construction and military legal construction of the Ming army, and there were still many shortcomings.
Many aspects such as military regulations and laws, political ideology, and methods of action need time to be sorted out, and the military's combat effectiveness also needs training to consolidate. Therefore, the peasant army can no longer continue to expand.
Controlling and building base areas around the dangerous terrain around Luoxiao Mountain is the most appropriate behavior at the moment. The peasant army needs to settle, accumulate, and build.
This war-torn land should be built into the strongest base of the Renaissance Society in the Southern Song Dynasty, so as to strengthen its occupation of the local area and essentially separate it from the Southern Song Dynasty, so that everyone would support the peasant army.
Once certain rules were established here, if the Southern Song Dynasty wanted to regain this land, they would not only face the struggle of the peasant army, but also the resistance of thousands of peasants.
Peasants who own their own land and property will never want to return to the brutal oppression of the Southern Song Dynasty. They will do their best to help the peasant army resist. The Southern Song Dynasty's offensive will face many difficulties and obstacles.
So Zhao Yucheng issued eleven army-building and preparation orders in succession according to the army-building methods he learned from Su Yonglin, and sent staff from around him to various garrison points to issue them.
He needs peasant armies from all over the country to seize the time to carry out political and military construction, and build an army that is not necessarily powerful, but must have cohesion before the next wave of the Song Army's major encirclement and suppression.
Judging from the current overall strength comparison, it is obvious that the Song army is still strong and the peasant army is weak. Unless the Ming army joins in, nothing will change in a short time.
However, a fierce anti-corruption struggle and revolutionary actions were taking place within the Ming Dynasty, and Zhao Yucheng also knew about this.
He learned through the secret channels of the Skynet Army that Su Yonglin was launching a devastating attack on the superiors, which made him very happy and at the same time full of confidence in his actions.
Although the Song army is powerful, although it has a large number of people, and although it has strong oppressive power, the peasant army is definitely not just waiting to be killed.
Based on his understanding of the Southern Song Dynasty and the Song army, Zhao Yucheng calculated that it would definitely take more than three months for the Southern Song Dynasty to launch the next military operation.
Just shirking responsibility and making noise would probably cost them a lot of time.
A huge failure requires someone to take the blame. It is unknown who will take the blame, whether it will be willing, and whether it will trigger a new round of political struggle in the court.
Su Yonglin told him that the Southern Song Dynasty was a standard civil war expert who was expert in external warfare. They were good at political struggle, but if they wanted to engage in external war, they had to finish the internal political struggle first, otherwise it would be impossible.
Therefore, this period of time is the prime time for the peasant army to develop and become stronger.
Zhao Yucheng was full of ambition, made plans, arranged manpower, and overall planning, and prepared to build a Ming Dynasty enclave on Jiangnan West Road.
The peasant association system will be built here to connect with the peasant army, and the dual system of the Liberation Army and the peasant association will be realized in this hot land, replicating the path taken by Su Yonglin.
At the same time, the Lin'an court, as Zhao Yucheng expected, fell into an extremely fierce political struggle.
The cause is of course not controversial, it was the debacle on Jiangnan West Road.
The news of the great defeat on Jiangnan West Road was sent to Lin'an eleven days after the official defeat. Some local officials rushed to send the news to Lin'an City. During this period, they overcame many difficulties and obstacles and finally got the news to Lin'an. The news arrived with some broken troops.
The news was first sent to the Privy Council, and Zhang Jun happened to be discussing matters with Zhao Xin in the palace at that time.
Privy Council officials felt that the matter was too big to be concealed, so they hurriedly sent it to the palace to let Zhao and Zhang Jun know.
