In order to ensure the suddenness of the battle, the 350,000 troops of the Northwest Army, only the Xining Corps, which was guarded by the party, was left to watch the house, and the rest quietly moved to the border in accordance with the orders of the headquarters.Hakesh led the main force of the Gansu Corps into Ningxia quietly, and Li Guo, who was in Ningxia, had already taken his Ningxia Corps out of Jingbian and advanced in the direction of Yulin.To the south, Wang Shuo, Song Xiance, and Xin Sizhong joined forces to enter Chencang, and the reconnaissance team sent entered the Weinan Plain and advanced in the direction of Xi'an.Li Yan and his wife led the main force of the mobile corps, and under the leadership of the guide, marched to the Chencang Ancient Road early, and had already passed the Qinling Mountains.Originally, there were only 5,000 Han troops in the direction of Xi'an, most of which were stationed in Xi'an City, and there were no garrisons in the rest of the county.The Manchu Qing Dynasty had just entered and occupied the Central Plains, and although it had increased its troops by more than ten times, China was too big, and all the troops were fighting and using troops in all directions.Eight hundred miles of Qinchuan is an important area, and it is already a lot to have 5,000 regular troops stationed, and in many other places, there are no regular garrisons, only the township warriors temporarily organized by civil officials.However, the information sent back by the reconnaissance team was different from the information originally obtained.The rest of the Weinan Plain has not changed, but for some reason, a day ago, a thousand Qing troops and 500 townsmen suddenly came to Meixian, and then a lot of grain and grass were transported from Xi'an, which were concentrated in the county seat of Meixian.With a garrison in Meixian, it will not be easy to suddenly attack Xi'an.When the army marched towards Xi'an, it was bound to pass through Meixian, and it was almost impossible to prevent the defenders of Meixian from discovering it.Song Xiance smiled: "This makes it easier for us to get it." ”Wang Shuo and Xin Sizhong didn't understand what he meant, and looked at him together.He said: "At this time, the Central Plains is barren, and grain and grass are the top priority.We sent a small number of troops, disguised as bandits tonight, to suddenly attack Meixian, but the main force of the ambush army was on both sides of Xi'an and Meixian.When Nadu heard that Meixian County was attacked by bandits, he was afraid that the grain and grass would be lost, and he would definitely come to his aid in the starry night.When it is halfway through, the armies on both sides of us suddenly attack, besiege and annihilate it, and Weinan can be decided in a battle. ”In the middle of the night, thousands of torches suddenly appeared around Meixian, surrounding the county seat of Meixian.A group of bandits came down from the mountains, all armed with blades, and encouraged the people of various villages and towns along the way, saying that there was a large amount of grain in Meixian County, and they went with them to grab grain.At this time, when the winter and spring of 1647 were handed over, even if the people tried their best to secretly save some surplus grain during the harvest last year, and it was not snatched away by the Qing army or the Dashun army that used to be here, by this time, there was no residue left.The people have no food, and they are very susceptible to incitement.I heard that if you can get food, it is completely worth the gamble with your life, and as a result, people gather more and more.The officers and soldiers couldn't stop it, and they were killed a lot by the bandits, so they had to run back to the city to ask for help.The chief hurried up to the city to look, and saw that the city was densely packed with torches, and that torches were coming from afar, and gathered under the city.Outside the south gate of the city, there is a particularly bright place, where more than a dozen big men are standing, holding swords and guns, shouting loudly to the city: "We are the Zhongnanshan Righteous Army, the old department of His Majesty Dashun."
For the survival of the people, I have come to borrow grain and wait, and I will give you a stick of incense, open the city gates, hand over the grain, and spare you from death.Otherwise, break through the city and kill Guang'er and others" In front of those people, there was indeed a lit incense stick, which was slowly burning.When the senator saw this, he couldn't help but think, this is a group of bandits, coercing most of the people to make trouble.As long as the people are scared away, bandits will not become a climate.He asked the sentinel who had fled back, "How many bandits with blades are there?"
and the soldier replied, "When I first found them, there were only about 3,000 men, and when I arrived here, there were more than 5,000." ”I heard that there were more than 3,000 bandits, and the leaders did not dare to be careless.If you intimidate the people under the city at this time, you will inevitably offend the bandits, and maybe the bandits will attack the city immediately.The soldiers and horses in his city, even the townspeople, together were 1,500 people.The five hundred township warriors were all recruited from this neighborhood, and it was because they had no food and couldn't survive that they came to be township warriors and eat together.It will definitely not work to count on them to fight, and it will be good to join the bandits to grab food together when the time comes.The rest, most of the 1,000 soldiers and horses under his own command were reorganized from the original Ming army and the Shun army.Because of the large number of surrendered Ming troops and Shun troops, in order to distinguish these surrendered troops from the Han Eight Banners, Dolgon set up a special green camp in the army.These people are now called Green Battalion soldiers, and they rely on Yulu to eat, and they are not even counted as the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty.It must be known that the Eight Banners soldiers do not receive money, they only have rewards.This reward is the robbed wealth of the Han people, strong men and women.In addition, it is to occupy the land after the Central Plains.After the Manchu Qing Dynasty occupied Beijing, they enclosed the land around Beijing, which rewarded the Eight Banners with Niulu, Jiala and Gushan Banners.And the minions and coats in their hands are the original owners of those lands.This reward is compared to the difference between heaven and earth.Therefore, the real Eight Banners Han, Manchu, and Mongolian Twenty-four Banners, for their military exploits and rewards, are very brave and fierce, and the Green Battalion soldiers will not be able to.The real Eight Banners soldiers in Xi'an, except for Du Zhi and his 500 pro-army, did not have it at all, and even this staff leader was a staff general in the Ming Army, and now it is called a staff leader.With such a group of people with him, he went out to fight with 3,000 bandits, not to mention going out to fight, it is difficult to say whether he can resist the bandits' attack and defend the county seat.But it is absolutely impossible to escape, if you can't defend the county seat, and if you lose your grain and grass, it must be a capital crime.He saw that there were fewer torches in the north of the city, and he expected that the real bandits were all in the south of the city, and the north of the city were the people who were instigated.He called a leader and instructed him to collect all the war horses in the city, organize a cavalry army of more than 100 people, kill them from Beicheng, and run back to Xi'an to ask for help from the capital.Let's say that there are 5,000, no, that there are more than 10,000 hungry people, who have been coerced by thousands of bandits, besieging the county town and trying to grab food.Na Zuo led the order, and the staff leader hurriedly arranged the remaining soldiers and horses to the city, and Xiang Yong and the green battalion soldiers mixed together to defend the city to prevent Xiang Yong from taking the opportunity to rebel.Sure enough, the commanding Zuo Tie took a hundred cavalry, opened the north gate, and rushed out without much effort.When the besieging people saw them coming out of the city, they did not resist at all, and took the initiative to dodge a path and let them go.Seeing that the leader had successfully left the city, the staff was relieved in his heart, and talked to the bandits under the city in the city, pretending to negotiate the conditions, and trying to delay time.He didn't know that Song Xiance wanted him to send someone to report to the capital.Of course, the bandits under the city were all pretended to be by the Northwest Army, deliberately coming down from the mountains in the south, passing through villages and towns along the way, shouting indiscriminately, and really instigating a group of local people.While the "bandits" surrounded the county seat, Wang Shuo, Song Xiance and Xin Sizhong led the army out of Chencang, sent a small force to clear the Qing army in the south of the city along the way, watched over the villages and towns, and did not let anyone enter or leave to prevent leaking the news of the army's entry into Shaanxi.The Northwest Army quietly passed through Meixian County and moved to both sides of Xi'an, waiting for the capital to come from the direction of Xi'an
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