While Li Ping was determined to wait and see the changes in Luzhou, great changes were taking place in the north of the Ming Empire.

On the sixth day of March, which was also April 12, 1644, Emperor Chongzhen officially issued an edict "Ordering the King of Military Qin in the World", and ordered Wang Yongji, the governor of Jiliao, and Wu Sangui, the commander-in-chief of Liaodong, to immediately abandon Ningyuan and lead all their troops to Guan Qinwang.

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At the same time, those who were directly named and asked to lead troops to Qinwang as soon as possible were Tang Tong, the commander-in-chief of the Xixie Association in Jizhen (stationed in Tangshan, Hebei), and Liu Zeqing, the commander-in-chief of Shandong who was in Linqing, Shandong at the time.

Even the Guanning Line of Defense was no longer needed, indicating that the situation in Beijing was already very critical. However, the edict "Ordering the King of Military Diligence in the World" was issued only at this time, which also indicated that the change in the situation was very sudden.

And just the day before yesterday, on the fourth day of March, Chongzhen made a big move and conferred four uncles in a row. They were Wu Sangui as Pingxibo, Zuo Liangyu as Ningnanbo, Tang Tong as Dingxibo, and Huang Degong as Jingnanbo.

But at that time, there were no royal edicts or troop deployments.

Everything seems very contradictory and hard to understand.

The reason for this strange situation actually has a lot to do with the Ming court's major errors in judgment and Chongzhen's own heart.

Previously, Chongzhen and his ministers had judged that Li Zicheng would not go directly to Xuan and Dabian Town, which had heavy troops and solid city defenses, but would instead take a detour from Shanxi to southern Hebei. Therefore, they still had plenty of time and many choices.

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At that time, it will not be too late to mobilize the northern frontier troops or Shandong troops to help. Even the southern troops may have time to mobilize.

But the main thing is economic measures.

Seeing the cost of resistance, the Ming army was even more unwilling to block the enemy's attack.

On the seventh day of March, Feng Kaizhang, the son of Tianjin Governor Feng Yuanbiao, came to Beijing. Since Li Zicheng was marching in two directions, the Beijing-Hangzhou water transport, the best southbound route, had been cut off at this time. He came to suggest that Chongzhen move south from Tianjin by sea.

But after Chongzhen died, Li Zicheng didn't get any better. "Chasing stolen goods and providing salary" was becoming a huge pit for Li Zicheng to dig his own grave.

No matter which dynasty or generation, if a general dares to lead troops to Beijing without an imperial edict, what is the nature of that? Are you kidding!

Moreover, Zuo Liangyu, who was in the south, could not grasp the war situation in the north in time.

Once Juyong Pass was broken, no other reinforcements could arrive, and Beijing had been turned into a dead city by the plague. As we later knew it, Beijing was quickly captured on March 19th and April 25th, 1644.

However, Chongzhen did not give up.

But Zuo Liangyu is really not to blame for this matter.

Moreover, how could Wu Sangui have imagined that Beijing, which was helpless even to the Qing troops, would not be able to withstand a group of peasant armies that he had never set eyes on for a few days. According to normal logic, a few months might be a bit uncertain, but at least ten days and a half

It should be no problem!

Therefore, it is indeed not a big problem for Wu Sangui to arrive at Shanhaiguan on March 16th.

Moreover, not only Zuo Liangyu, but also Chongzhen did not give orders to his direct descendant Huang Degong in Fengyang, because it was too late to know.

Human nature is inherently evil, and humans are most afraid of having evil thoughts.

In other words, as long as the money cannot be produced, the person will be sentenced to death until the money is produced.

And Li Zicheng's army has only been under strict control in the past two years. Before that, it was not vegetarian at all, and the large number of gangsters inside had already been suppressed.

People in the Ming Dynasty also called it the "Gold Looting Order".

Even the most typical one, and the one who caused the biggest consequences, is Wu Sangui.

On the other hand, Ningyuan was a fortress where soldiers and civilians combined. Especially under the Liao people's policy of guarding Liao territory, many civilians were actually military dependents. If Wu Sangui dared to abandon military dependents, he would probably become a naked man before he reached Shanhaiguan.

Commander.

Anyway, Wang Yongji, whose official office was in Zunhua, arrived at Ningyuan on the ninth day of March without any delay.

Wu Sangui had to evacuate 80,000 people into the Pass to abandon Ningyuan. It was impossible for him to just take the army with him. On the one hand, if he did not take the people with him, it would mean that the people were given to the Manchus to be massacred or robbed.

It would be better not to do this, which is almost like child's play, and the effect will naturally be the opposite.

There is a living example of Chen Xinjia, Minister of War, who took the blame for negotiating peace with the Manchus and was killed by Chongzhen. The ministers are not stupid.

By the sixth day of March, Chongzhen, who understood that it was completely hopeless to move south, had to concentrate on Beijing's defense issues.

And the ministers simply either remained silent or opposed it.

On January 26, Chongzhen sent his cabinet minister Li Jiantai to "conquer personally on behalf of the emperor" to Shanxi to supervise the army and confront Li Zicheng, but he only gave this buddy 3,000 troops, and then they were transferred from everywhere.

However, considering that Chongzhen had just conferred the title of uncle to Tang Tong and the situation was urgent, it was still manageable.

As a result, a large number of demoted officers and soldiers regretted it after discovering what the Dashun regime was like. They quickly stood on the opposite side of the Dashun army again, and began to rebel as soon as they found an opportunity.

As for Li Zicheng, everything at the beginning was basically as Ming Ting expected, and it was also what Li Ping deduced based on common sense. Li Zicheng was not only faced with difficulties, but also the progress was not smooth.

Because he had been trying to win people's support by exempting himself from taxes for three years, and the entire north had been completely devastated by war and natural disasters, Li Zicheng, who had no fiscal revenue and no tax system, seemed to be prosperous, but in fact it was extremely difficult.

Not to mention the fact that the Fujian people who had done great favor to Beijing to fight the plague were killed.

To put it bluntly, Li Zicheng felt that it was very difficult for him, but the Ming army didn't know!

Many people were frightened by the 1.5 million that Li Zicheng claimed in his demand for Ming Dynasty! Especially since Li Zicheng had just proclaimed himself emperor, the sense of oppression brought by the new regime was even stronger.

Everyone knows that Shi Kefa, as a famous loyal minister who has entered the textbooks of later generations, will definitely not conceal military information or delay things.

For the same reason, although Li Ping was a new military star, it was even less likely that he would receive orders.

On the 19th day of the first lunar month, Chongzhen went to the court and cried bitterly to the six ministers of the cabinet to describe the current difficulties. He hoped that some of the ministers would stand up and propose moving south, so that he could immediately take advantage of the situation and settle the matter.

While he ordered people to go to Nanjing to check the arrangements for land and water troops and horses along the way, he also ordered Tianjin Governor Feng Yuanbiao to purchase 300 water ships on standby. Anyway, he was determined to run away.

The Qing army, recognized by the world as the greatest enemy of the Ming Dynasty, was in trouble several times. In the end, it was fine. No one took Li Zicheng and the peasant army seriously.

At this time, everyone suddenly discovers that there is an evil thing that can be done, and it can be done openly. What will happen?

Isn’t it natural that all evil gathers here to explode and then intensify?

In this situation, not to mention those demoted officials and the landlord class, even the common people can figure out how they feel about the Dashun Army with a pig's head.

It can be said that Chongzhen's death was entirely his own fault.

This is obviously very easy to implement.

No one can escape the laws of economics.

Under such circumstances, Beijing's defense issues naturally fell by the wayside! It was even more impossible to issue King Qin's edict and troop deployment orders, because they involved the issue of where to send the entire army to King Qin.

First of all, Chongzhen always wanted to move south, so he could not have planned to transfer Zuo Liangyu to the north.

It was not until the first day of March that Li Zicheng finally broke through the Ningwu Pass with only more than 4,000 troops held by Zhou Yuji from Jinzhou, Liaoning, after suffering tens of thousands (some say 70,000) heavy casualties, especially the loss of a large number of valuable elites.

, and expressed emotion:

"Although Ningwu was defeated, my officers and soldiers suffered many casualties. Since then, we have reached the capital, Datong, Yanghe, Xuanfu, and Juyong, all with heavy troops. If Ningwu is defeated, there will be no survivors among my men! It is better to return to Qin to rest.

Lift up after the picture."

But taking the common people with him and 120,000 people, Wu Sangui couldn't go any faster even if he wanted to. He couldn't even think about going as fast as a hundred miles a day. He could walk fifty miles a day.

In particular, the mentality of many ministers and generals living in the north of the Ming Dynasty has collapsed due to the long-term military failure and the complete lack of hope.

Even when Chongzhen called for troops to bring in reinforcements on the sixth day of March, he did not mention Zuo Liangyu. No matter how bad Chongzhen was at military affairs, he knew that Zuo Liangyu, who was far away in Huguang, would not be able to arrive in time.

On April 7th, Li Zicheng also realized the seriousness of the problem. He ordered a halt to Beijing's recovery of stolen property and subsidies. At this time, he did not know that Wu Sangui would surrender and revolt (he only found out on April 13th).

And at that time, Chongzhen was not completely confused. When he conferred the title of uncle on Zuo Liangyu on the fourth day of March, he did not mention Li Ping again, but had already considered the subtle relationship between Zuo Liangyu and Li Ping.

Li Jiantai did not disappoint. When he arrived in Handan, he heard that Li Zicheng's army had come east, so he turned back and ran to Baoding to hide.

The heavy blow to the psychology of the northern soldiers and civilians caused by the continuous Qing military campaigns to the south and the extreme psychological exhaustion caused by them must not be ignored.

According to documentary records, due to the long-term failure to receive notification from King Qin from Beijing and the unclear war situation in the north, officials in the Jiangnan region became increasingly uneasy at that time, especially since everyone knew that it would take a certain amount of time to prepare for sending troops.

But just like Chongzhen at the beginning, it was too late.

That's why it was only then that he announced "The King of Military Diligence in the World" and gave up Ningyuan.

Liu Zeqing, the commander-in-chief of Shandong Province in Linqing, was afraid of Li Zicheng and lied about being injured in a fall from his horse and refused to obey the order. The order Wu Sangui received was actually to bring all the troops into the pass.

Not to mention that the troops from other places cannot reach Beijing in time now, and he, who is not good at military affairs, continues to make mistakes one after another.

Everyone was afraid of being settled by Qiu Hou. No one believed Chongzhen and dared not speak out if he had any intentions.

But Chongzhen never dreamed that the ministers who had seen him through all the time would come together to pretend to be deaf and mute, that is, the ministers were silent.

"Nine ministers have 50,000 yuan, the middle ones will receive 30,000 taels, the supervisors will have 10,000 taels, and the state and county magistrates will have half of them." For the people, "please ask the squires to provide help, as many as 30, 40 taels, or 3 or 5 taels. Only the people who are promoted will not lose."

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But at this time, Chongzhen had completely despaired of moving south, and it was even more impossible to move by sea.

Furthermore, Beijing was not in a hurry at the beginning. Why was it anxious?

Even the edict "Ordering the King of Military Diligence in the World" was not received by the South until Chongzhen's death.

Everything has a root cause. After Li Zicheng's army entered Beijing, it was impossible for it to corrupt quickly inexplicably or simply and unreasonably. All the roots of the disaster had actually been laid long ago.

The result was that Du Zhizhi, when Tang Tong led his troops out of the pass to attack Li Zicheng, surrendered at the rear. As a result, Tang Tong, who was still brave enough to fight, was attacked from both sides and had to surrender.

There was no news in Nanjing, so how could Zuo Liangyu get any news in time?

But unfortunately, Chongzhen struggled for more than a month, but still to no avail.

Finally, on April 17, the news was confirmed by Wei Zhengcheng, a former university scholar who had escaped from Beijing.

After conquering Ningwu, Li Zicheng was so anxious that he not only slaughtered Ningwu, including the infants and children, but also burned Ningwu Pass to rubble, which is even more frightening.
To be continued...