Chapter 160, Nanjing, Nanjing The overwhelming flames of war are burning in Jinling, the largest city in the world.
In the old days, the Qinhuai River was full of mutilated corpses, where people sang and danced.
The Imperial College, which was supposed to be full of books, was burned to a white ground by the soaring fire.
The rumbling and vibrating artillery roar replaced the melodious bells of the Great Baoen Temple. . yznn Facing the blood-drenched swords and guns and the sweeping fire, millions of belated citizens of Nanjing were shocked to find that they were suddenly on the battlefield.
They could not help but cry and howl and run away, but thousands of people still died.
Under war and fire.
And more and more troops are continuing to enter this largest city in China, turning all the prosperity into ashes.
In the early days of this battle, the Ming and Qing armies each controlled half of Nanjing, and they fought fiercely inside and outside the city at the same time.
Judging from the comparison of military strength, Emperor Chongzhen brought 50,000 soldiers and horses from Dasheng Pass, plus the trusted servants and armed tenants mobilized by the Ming Dynasty nobles in Nanjing City, the total number was more than 60,000.
The Qing army around Huang Taiji only had 5,000 people.
Plus his allies, the few remaining buddies that the Donglin gentlemen could still control, the total number was only 6,000 at most.
On the battlefield, it was equivalent to a pair of ten.
However, although Emperor Chongzhen's Ming army numbered 60,000, it contained a lot of water.
Because there are not only many elite Ding family generals who were temporarily mobilized by Duke Wei and other Nanjing nobles, but they are only a few after all.
There are also 20,000 surrendered troops from the original Nanjing imperial court who were accommodated in the Battle of Wuhu.
Their combat effectiveness and loyalty All very worrying.
In other words, nearly half of the 60,000 Ming army were made up of numbers.
Even among the more than 30,000 Ming troops remaining, not all of them are soldiers who can go into battle, but all include coolies and handymen.
On the other side, although Huang Taiji initially only had 6,000 people, 5,000 of them were elite Eight Banners who were used to fighting hard and tough battles.
Moreover, his follow-up troops are constantly coming from Zhenjiang Ferry in the east for reinforcements.
In addition, Huang Taiji also took control of the Imperial City of Nanjing, a city within the city that stands in Nanjing, before Emperor Chongzhen sent troops into the city, thus gaining the advantage of the battlefield to a certain extent.
But despite this, the Ming army's strength advantage is still obvious.
Moreover, whether it is the rice fields in the Jiangnan water town or the narrow streets of Jinling City, they are extremely unsuitable places for northern cavalry to gallop.
Even more complex infantry square formations cannot be formed, and they can only behave like market hooligans.
Brawl.
The Qing army, accustomed to defeating enemies in field battles and galloping with iron cavalry, was obviously not very adaptable to such low-tech battles.
In order to boost morale, Emperor Chongzhen erected a yellow umbrella canopy on the Zhengyang Gate and personally held a hammer and beat drums to encourage the soldiers to fight bravely against the enemy.
Coach Lu Xiangsheng set up the few heavy artillery pieces he had at the ruins of Stone City, a historic military fortress in Nanjing, and violently bombarded the neighborhoods where Qing troops gathered.
Although the citizens in Nanjing were deeply resentful of the Ming and Qing armies that caused this sudden disaster, compared to the familiar Ming officers and soldiers, the Jurchen Tatars with their ugly braids were more annoying, so once they were found When the opportunity arose, they attacked these Tatars in groups.
In the extremely chaotic street fighting, even women and children armed with bricks and sticks have their place.
No matter how skilled you are, even a brick thrown at you can knock it down.
Bricks and sticks, which may seem like inconspicuous things, can still be quite powerful in sneak attacks in alleys.
Therefore, as a large number of Ming troops entered the city one after another, and Nanjing citizens gathered to besiege them, the four thousand Qing troops under Huang Taiji fought hard, but they were still squeezed out of Nanjing little by little.
The Nanjing city gates originally controlled by the Qing army also changed owners one after another.
Although Huang Taiji disregarded his status as an emperor and risked his own life to lead his troops to fight in the streets of Nanjing, even two of his horses were knocked over, and two flower pots were hit on his head and back. , a brick and a sap, plus a small half pot of boiling water, he was eventually beaten to a bloody head and passed out.
However, this heroic performance of taking the lead was still unable to restore the decline of the Qing army and its Donglin Party allies.
After a day and night of melee, the Ming army first used artillery to blast open the Hongwu Gate, invaded the imperial city, and recaptured the key stronghold of the palace.
Then they continued to compress the activity space of the remaining Qing troops, and once besieged Huang Taiji near Shence Gate.
When the situation of the Qing army was at its most critical, Huang Taiji himself was unconscious, with less than a hundred guards around him.
The attendants on his left and right had shaved his head, put on monk clothes, and were preparing to escort him to escape disguised as a monk.
However, because Emperor Chongzhen's navy was relatively weak and unable to cut off the Yangtze River navigation route, the Qing troops that had previously gathered in Yangzhou in the north of the Yangtze River were constantly crossing the river to come for reinforcements.
Huang Taiji was also ruthless in seizing Jiangnan, betting almost all of the Qing Empire's capital in one go.
In addition to the troops and horses of the Zhengbai and Xiangbai banners of the three Dorgon brothers, who were responsible for guarding the rear base camps in Xuzhou and Lunan, the Manchu soldiers of the other six banners, as well as the remaining Han army flags, Mongolian army flags, etc. , as well as the surrendered troops from Han Dynasty who were still willing to obey, they were all dragged to Jiangnan by him.
In this way, because the Ming army failed to annihilate Huang Taiji's Qing army's leading troops in a short period of time, as one Qing army arrived from Zhenjiang one after another, the battlefield situation in Nanjing gradually began to reverse again.
The Shencemen encirclement that was once formed was broken open by the supporting Qing army, and Huang Taiji also turned the corner.
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Next, from Xuanwu Lake, Mufu Mountain, to the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum on Zhongshan Mountain, it became a battlefield where the two armies fought fiercely.
As the delusion of a quick decisive battle went bankrupt, the chaotic battle continued day after day.
One after another, exquisite temples or mansions were burned to the ground.
Although the Ming army still had the upper hand, they were never able to achieve complete victory, and even continued to do so.
The entire city of Nanjing cannot be controlled.
Since the Nanjing Imperial Palace was too close to the front line of the battlefield that the two sides had repeatedly fought for, and had become dilapidated in the war, Emperor Chongzhen had no choice but to set up an imperial camp in the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum in Zhongshan.
While praying to Zhu Yuanzhang's spirit in heaven to protect him, he continued to command the palace.
A long and hard battle.
Huang Taiji set up a camp at Yanziji at the foot of Shogunate Mountain and swore to the Eight Banners soldiers that he would never give up until he captured Nanjing this time.
It should be noted that although Huang Taiji's Qing army was a foreign guest army, they did not have no supporters in Jiangnan.
Just like people seeking death, if they fail to commit suicide once, they usually do not have the courage to immediately start a second suicide. .
The Donglin Party members, who were already despairing about the situation, saw that the Qing army was marching southward, and Emperor Chongzhen who came to settle accounts with them seemed unlikely to be able to sit in the Jinluan Palace, so their thoughts began to wander again.
Among them, the two masterminds of this "borrowing teachers to assist in the suppression" were the first assistant Zhou Yanru and his student Zhang Pu.
One was on the Nanjing battlefield to provide geographical guidance and raise grain for the Qing army, and the other was at Zhenjiang Ferry to supervise the navy ships to sail from the north of the Yangtze River.
Yangzhou transported Qing troops and horses.
Some other Donglin gentlemen who had not fled far also stood up one after another.
Although the regular army under the Nanjing imperial court had all collapsed, these people quickly organized a vote based on their local influence.
A ragtag group of people came to help the "Qing allies" on the battlefield of Nanjing and grabbed some things in Nanjing city.
However, although the Donglin Party is a local leader in the south of the Yangtze River, the current Emperor Chongzhen is also not considered an outsider.
After discovering that these Donglin gentlemen, who were full of moral articles, had once again set a new limit for themselves, so much so that they did not hesitate to seek refuge with the Tatars, but also wanted to fight against themselves, the orthodox emperor, to the end.
This time-travel version of His Majesty the Chongzhen Emperor suddenly became furious.
Lei, so while urging reinforcements from the rear in Huguang and Jiangxi, he immediately summoned the nobles from Nanjing who had already taken refuge with him, as well as local officials who had defected and surrendered, asking them to mobilize the villagers to attack the rebels in Donglin, and all the wealth gained by the women was lost.
You can take it yourself.
As a result, the scale and scope of the war quickly expanded dramatically.
The Donglin Party in the south of the Yangtze River has certainly become fatherless and leaderless in recent years.
It even advocates the liberalization of the landlord class like the Polish farm owners of the same period.
But after all, the 200-year-old orthodox authority of the Ming Dynasty represented by Emperor Chongzhen is not so easy to erase.
The local power in Jiangnan has not yet reached the level where the Donglin Party can dominate the sky with one hand.
In the final analysis, the Donglin Party is not a modern revolutionary party with a strict structure and an arm in command, but a loose organization similar to the political club of landlords and gentry.
Joining and leaving the Party is commonplace.
However, the big gentry households in any place cannot be monolithic, so the Donglin Party has as many sworn enemies as it has local supporters.
More importantly, friends who have studied zoology know that even the most primitive paramecium has the biological instinct to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, not to mention humans with rich thinking abilities.
At present, Yonghe, supported by the Donglin Party, The false emperor has fled without a trace.
If he doesn't correct the chaos and returns to His Majesty Chongzhen's camp, what other choice can he make?
Should he become a slave for these stinking Jurchen Tartars?
As a result, due to the conflict between these two major political forces, large-scale group fights between landlords and league officials broke out first around Nanjing and then throughout Jiangnan.
Many large landowners held up their own banners and used swords and guns to settle old and new grudges against each other.
In addition, the previous riots among the people over rice grabbing have not subsided, and the chaos organized by various martial arts heroes is still stirring.
In addition, there are branch forces of the Wenxiang Sect, who also followed the Qing army across the river.
Entering the people of Jiangnan together, they stir up all kinds of riots.
The Ming army, the Qing army, cults, landlords, water bandits, mountain bandits, hungry people, all kinds of forces come on stage at the same time, and completely destroy this Jiangnan water town, which is known as peaceful and fertile.
Beat it into a pot of porridge.
By November 19, the sixth year of Chongzhen, the Ming and Qing armies, which had been in a stalemate for many days, finally formed a general showdown on the Nanjing battlefield.
Among them, after many reinforcements and days of losses, the Qing army still had about 30,000 troops, entrenched in the Shogun Mountain area on the bank of the Yangtze River, and controlling a small urban area in the north of Nanjing near Shence Gate.
The total strength of the Ming army reached 90,000, and they were entrenched in the Zhongshan Village where the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum was located.
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They also controlled most of the urban area of Nanjing.
However, not only did they lack cavalry, but they also lacked naval forces on the Yangtze River.
Advantages.
At this point, a great battle that will determine the future destiny of the South is about to start on the narrow plain on the east bank of Xuanwu Lake between Mufu Mountain and Zhongshan.
Both sides are betting on their overwhelming armies this time.
Who is Emperor Chongzhen?
Sitting in the Jinluan Palace in Nanjing, reuniting the fragmented Ming Empire, whether the Eight Banners Cavalry conquers the south of the Yangtze River, and revives the short-lived Qing Empire, all will be decided in this decisive battle.
However, just when the decisive battle of the Ming and Qing Dynasties was about to break out, Emperor Chongzhen, who was already exhausted from fighting in Nanjing for a long time and was just holding on with his energy, learned from a travel-worn envoy.
Got the bad news about a fire in their backyard.
"What happened to Huguang, Wuchang, and Xiangyang fell?
Wen Tiren, the chief minister, escaped with the queen and the prince?"
While Emperor Chongzhen and Huang Taiji were fighting a fierce battle in Nanjing, the rogue bandits who had been dormant in the Central Plains for a long time took the opportunity to launch a major operation and went straight to his rear: Li Zicheng entered Xiangyang from Henan and swept across the upper reaches of the Han River; Zhang Xianzhong crossed the Dabie Mountains from Huaixi He captured Hanyang and then crossed the river to capture Wuchang.
Wen Tiren, the chief minister who stayed behind in Wuchang, was unable to resist at all, so he had to escort the royal family members to board the ship and hurriedly fled downstream.
What's even worse is that before Emperor Chongzhen ordered the news to be blocked, the bad news had already spread among the military oshow7: