Chapter 198 Qing’s Southern Strategy

Li Ping's visit to Liu Xiaohui was actually an unintentional move, and he asked Liu Xiaohui to accompany him on a whim just to build up her momentum.

He knew very well that if he did nothing, Liu Xiaohui's situation would probably not be good.

In this world, the most terrifying thing is the human heart, and there will never be a lack of adding insult to injury.

Although Liu Xiaohui is now also a small manager, most people think that she has lost her power and that she fell directly from the sky to the ground.

Li Ping didn't want Liu Xiaohui to get into trouble because of this, and he felt very sorry.

Apart from that, he had no other thoughts.

However, this was mostly not the case in the eyes of others, and the atmosphere in the small courtyard began to change accordingly.

Fortunately, being busy has become the best cover, and forgetting is also the best choice. After having more freedom for a few days, Li Ping returned to business as usual.

In the midst of his busy schedule, Zhou Wen, who had been away from Jiujiang for nearly a month, finally came back. It was already the beginning of March in the 16th year of Chongzhen.

In fact, Li Ping was already prepared that Zhou Wen would not come back.

But Zhou Wen not only came back, he also lived up to expectations and brought back a large amount of various intelligence information. In particular, he successfully made a lot of contacts with the local government of Jiujiang and obtained a lot of valuable official information.

Seeing Fuchi's current state, Zhou Wen was stunned, but the news he brought back also left Li Ping stunned.

Zuo Liangyu's army not only continued its appalling atrocities in the Wuchang area in the name of lack of pay in Jiujiang Prefecture, but also went even further.

Its hundreds of thousands of troops were no longer satisfied with just plundering within Jiujiang Prefecture, but dispersed in all directions. They even continued to attack further downstream areas along the Yangtze River, and even announced that they were going to Nanjing to transport the treasury.

The most violent one, Wang Yuncheng's troops, even broke into individual county towns in order to rob, and his troops burned and killed them all the way down the river to Sanshan and Digang near Wuhu, 500 miles downstream of Jiujiang, and took the water boats and salt there.

The ship was looted.

This is no longer ordinary and outrageous.

Digang is only 200 miles away from Nanjing. It can be reached by boat along the river in one day. Wang Yuncheng's troops covered the river with large and small boats and made a great noise. As a result, Nanjing was shaken. The civil, military and people were all frightened. Many gentry and

People even started to flee.

As a last resort, Nanjing's civil and military officers and Cao Jiangdu's censor assembled a large number of troops and sent troops up the river to intercept the crazy Zuo Liangyu's rebels. The formation was much larger than the one used to guard against Zhang Xianzhong.

What’s even more frightening is that since there are rolling mountainous areas not far away from both sides of the Yangtze River from Jiujiang to Nanjing, a large number of bandits have come out to join in the fun, and many of them are big bandits and famous bandits, such as Bai Gui, Xiao Qin Wang, Tota

Tian, ​​Mr. Liu, Hun Jianglong, Guan Taishan and so on.

These bandits all used Zuo Bing's name to attack everywhere and turned both sides of the Yangtze River into a complete hell.

Zuo Liangyu dared to indulge the army in such madness, which completely exceeded Li Ping's imagination and made him unbelievable. This was basically a different name from rebellion.

And not only Li Ping, everyone who listened to Zhou Wen's story was extremely shocked, even Ma Yong and Hu Zhongshan who were used to seeing the brutality of the army, because it was too unbelievable.

But apart from looking at each other, everyone had to believe it.

What Zhou Wen said next shocked everyone even more. It also made Li Ping understand why the Ming court was so abnormal these days. He finally had answers to many questions.

The Qing soldiers broke into the pass again!

The entire north has been reduced to a scorched earth, countless cities have been conquered, countless people have been killed and injured, and the imperial court has no time to care about the south.

This is also the seventh time since Qing troops entered the Pass for the first time in the second year of Chongzhen (1629).

The Qing troops entering the Pass before 1644 were generally referred to as the Qing Army's Southern Strategy or the Qing (Later Jin) Army's Invasion of the Pass.

Since October last year, 100,000 Qing troops (a total of 12 banners of Manchu, Mongolian and Han, about 60,000 people, plus a total of 100,000 Mongolian soldiers from outer vassals) have marched from Qiangziling (to the east of Miyun Province) under the command of Abatai.

About 80 miles away) once again invaded the pass and carried out massive looting.

His troops were still divided into two wings to attack Hebei and Shandong respectively. They captured Jizhou on November 14th, entered Qingzhou in Shandong on the second day of December, and arrived in Yanzhou on the eighth day of December.

Yanzhou was subsequently captured. Zhu Yipai, the king of Lu, committed suicide in the city. Zhu Hongzhi, king of Leling County, Zhu Hongfu, king of Yangxin County, Zhu Yiyuan, king of Dongyuan County, Anqiu County King, Ziyang County King and other kings and management offices

About a thousand members of the clan were captured and beheaded.

Later, the Qing army in Shandong divided its troops from Yanzhou, and some of them went to Laizhou, Dengzhou, and Haizhou; the other part crossed the Yellow River.

Although Emperor Chongzhen established two additional governors in Changping and Baoding in response to the Qing army's invasion and plunder, and established six governors in Ningyuan, Yongping, Shuntian, Baoding, Miyun, and Tianjin, one in Ningyuan, Shanhai, and Zhong

Eight more general troops were set up in Xie, Xixie, Changping, Tongzhou, Tianjin, and Baoding, and in December more than 395,000 reinforcements were mobilized.

But everything turned out to be a decoration.

The Qing army is still raging unstoppably in the Ming Dynasty and causing terrible damage to the north of the Ming Dynasty, including the capital area, but all the Ming armies have done nothing.

It was all this that made the Ming court completely unable to care about the civil unrest in the south, because no matter how you compare it, the things in the south are nothing compared to the north.

In 1638, which was the sixth southern strategy of the Qing army in the eleventh year of Chongzhen, Dorgon on the left "conquered thirty-four cities, surrendered six, and captured a population of 257,880." Yue Tuo on the right "

The captive population was 204,423, the gold was 4,339 taels, and the silver was 967,460 taels."

In total, they killed two governors of the Ming Dynasty and more than 100 officials above the garrison, and captured alive Zhu Youshu, the king of virtue, Zhu Cizheng, the king of the county, Zhu Cishang, the general of Fengguo, and Feng Yunsheng, the eunuch who supervised the army, etc.

The strength of this seventh Qing army's southern expedition was similar to that of the sixth, and the total losses were estimated to be equally huge. No one knew when they would return.

In fact, the Qing soldiers' invasion and plundering would not end until May, that is, after seven months, and the Ming Dynasty suffered heavy losses.

The Qing army captured alive five Ming generals, five soldiers, one doctor, one minister, five lieutenants, eight staff generals, and four guerrillas, a total of twenty-seven, and all were executed.

They successively captured Yanzhou, Shunde, Hejian, eighteen prefectures, and sixty-four counties, totaling eighty-eight towns; one prefecture and five counties surrendered.

Among the treasures obtained and handed over to Huang Taiji were 2,250 taels of gold, 2,255,270 taels of platinum, 4,440 taels of pearls, and a total of five satin of various colors.

Twelve thousand two hundred and thirty horses, and captured 369,000 people, a total of 321,000 camels, horses, mules, oxen, donkeys, and sheep.

Cold and shocking data that overshadows everything in the South.

The Qing army's southern strategy was completely different in nature from the Qing army's entry into the Pass in 1644.

This was a war during the reign of Huang Taiji in order to break the stalemate in the long-term war with the Ming Dynasty, bypassing the impenetrable Liaoxi defense line and making a false crossing to Mongolia, breaking through the Great Wall Pass west of Shanhaiguan and entering the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty to carry out plunder.

The first purpose was to plunder, and the second was to use war to promote peace.

Not much to say about plundering, as Huang Taiji himself said: "Manchu and Mongolian people have always made a living by taking things from other countries."

Promoting peace through war, regardless of whether Huang Taiji wants short-term peace or long-term peace, his mentality of seeking peace is determined. As he said when he first entered the customs: "I have repeatedly proposed peace but the other side has not followed. How can I just sit back and wait for it to be decided?"

The whole brigade marched westward."

When he entered the pass for the seventh time, Huang Taiji still gave a clear message to Abatai, who was going out for the expedition: "When our army reaches the Ming Dynasty, they may send envoys to ask for peace. You will respond soon. We are ordered to come to conquer, but you will obey your orders.

He has nothing to say. If there are words in his ears, if he speaks to my lord, he will not be able to retreat until my lord orders the troops to retreat."

If there are slight differences, it is only that the first four times were proactive in proposing peace. The last three times the tone was much tougher and the asking price was getting higher and higher. However, the general direction of negotiating peace has not changed.

In other words, these seven Qing military campaigns to the south were actually carried out seven times in total before 1644. The Qing soldiers or Huang Taiji had no other ideas except looting and war to promote peace.

Although the Qing soldiers at this time did not want to replace the Ming Dynasty, the damage caused to the Ming Dynasty by these seven invasions of Guannan was huge and even terrifying.

Some scholars have counted the seven Qing campaigns to the south. During the Great Ming Dynasty, more than 1 million people were captured and more than 1 million livestock were robbed, not counting the casualties.

For example, during the sixth Qing army's southern campaign, the city of Jinan fell. Afterwards, 130,000 dead bodies were found inside and outside the city alone.

During the Qing Dynasty's seventh southern campaign, Xu Biao, the governor of Baoding, said what he saw when he entered Beijing in May: "I came thousands of miles from the Yangtze River and the Huaihe River, and when I saw the city sinking, it was completely empty; that is, there was a complete

There are only four walls left of the city. The roads are covered with grass, the chickens and dogs are silent, and there has never been a plowman. How many people are there now? How can the emperor manage it?"

Of course, what he said included not only the destruction by the Qing army, but also the destruction by the peasant army. He outlined the miserable situation in the entire northern region, but the northern Zhili and Shandong areas were mainly destroyed by the Qing army.

And that's not the scariest thing.

The most terrifying thing is the blow to the spiritual level of Ming Dynasty. It is not an exaggeration to describe it as catastrophic.

The seven campaigns of the Qing army to the south basically focused on Beijing, and they rampaged through the core areas of the Ming Empire, and then seemed to be in an uninhabited land. Many novices in later generations did not dare to write such exaggerations when writing about time travel.

Its spiritual impact on the ruling class and the highest power center of the Ming Dynasty can be imagined.

The fig leaf that the Ming Dynasty used to protect its external power and power was completely torn off, and the prestige of the empire almost fell to the bottom.

All strata of the Ming Dynasty experienced a series of psychological changes from being unbelievable and desperately resisting, to strictly defending but having no choice, to completely giving up and being extremely negative. Chongzhen, who had a strong personality, had to fight even before the Qing army's seventh southern campaign.

Make secret peace negotiations.

Although this incident completely failed because Chongzhen was too shameless and killed the scapegoat Chen Xinjia, which is also the famous Chen Xinjia incident.

But it is still enough to see the earth-shaking changes that took place in the mentality of the entire Ming society during the Qing's southern strategy.

It was during this time that the Qing army marched to the south. Hundreds of thousands of Ming troops followed the Qing army but avoided fighting. During this period, the Qing army even unguarded their saddles and herded horses in Juzhou, Shandong for more than a month.

When Abatai returned to the north and left the customs, his carriages formed a team, which was more than 30 miles long. When they crossed the Marco Polo Bridge, they had not finished ten days. However, the divisions of the Ming army gathered in Tongzhou at this time, and no one dared to

Come to intercept or even harass.

Although it is difficult to understand such a bizarre scene, it is the real history.

This is a completely different fundamental change from the previous six times when the Qing troops invaded the south, when the Ming army still dared to take some actions.

Compared with this, Zuo Liangyu's absurdity suddenly no longer seemed unusual at all.

Three feet of ice cannot be frozen in one day.

There is always a process from quantitative change to qualitative change in anything. The Qing soldiers' ability to quickly occupy the northern part of the Ming Dynasty after entering the customs in 1644 is directly related to these seven southern campaigns.

The courage is broken and the earth is burnt.

It was precisely these seven intrusions and seven outflows of Qing troops in 14 years that caused many Ming soldiers and civilians to have the incomprehensible naive idea of ​​uniting with Qing troops to eliminate the peasant army for a long time after 1644.
To be continued...