Chapter 795 Changes in Kaifeng Prefecture

There is a village called Chenzhuang in the suburbs of Kaifeng Prefecture, Henan Province, Daming Province.

This place is like other places in the Ming Dynasty, and it is developing very well now.

This place was desolate because of the Kaifeng War, but now it has recovered as before, to be more precise than what was discovered before.

Chenzhuang has become a brand new village with newly built houses everywhere.

Although it is just brick and tile houses, the streets are very clean and tidy, and several roads have become cement gravel roads.

There are shops on both sides of the road, and people are coming and going, and a few old people are sitting on the street chatting. It is difficult for them to imagine that the village in the rubble can become what it is now.

The construction of the entire Kaifeng City is also changing with each passing day, and the prosperity of the Song Dynasty's Qingming Festival has been restored.

They are all ordinary people who survived the Kaifeng War. Now when they think of the past, they are still frightened and look back.

During that war, the Yellow River embankment was blown up, and the soldiers and civilians were killed in the battle, hundreds of thousands of people died in the battle of Kaifeng.

Why do we introduce Kaifeng Prefecture here? Because there is a big man living here.

In the first month of 1641, Li Zicheng, who had risen again, finally entered Luoyang, the ancient capital of the Six Dynasties.

The peasant army soldiers, who were in high spirits, quickly collected the King of Fu Zhu Changxun, who was invincible in the war, washed and peeled it and cooked it into the famous "Fu Lu Banquet".

After a full meal, the main leader immediately formulated a combat plan to attack Kaifeng, the capital of Henan Province.

On February 9, Li Zicheng led 30,000 troops to Kaifeng.

These included a large number of hungry people who were desperate, as well as 3,000 elite cavalry trained by the King of Chuang according to the Mongolian legacy.

Since the Ming army had previously released all the elites in Kaifeng City in order to rescue Luoyang and King Fu, they could only rely on the elderly, weak, women and children to defend the city.

With the advantage of numerous horses, the rebel army successfully arrived before the Ming army returned to aid.

Some people even put on makeup and launched an infiltration raid on the city's west gate.

If it weren't for the dense refugees blocking the road, Kaifeng, which was not vigilant, would be soon taken down by besiegers.

Fortunately, as a provincial capital, Kaifeng's urban defense is relatively sturdy, and it also has an outer earth wall and a second brick wall on the inner layer.

The wall is about 12 meters high and most of the width is close to 8 meters. It also has a large number of enemy buildings and 5 giant city towers.

As for the Zhou Palace, which has a tight barrier, it is located on the central axis of the city and can serve as a fortress in war.

Any enemy who lacks heavy firepower will find it difficult to break the defenses of the defenders through frontal attacks.

In addition, given the tragic ending of the Fu King next door, the King of Zhou, who was very wise in the world, also offered huge bounties to the soldiers and civilians who defended the city.

It is stipulated that those who go out to kill the enemy can get 50 taels of silver, and the warriors who kill the enemy can get 30 taels, and even if they only hurt the enemy, they will be rewarded with 10 taels.

He proudly paid a huge sum of money to reward the army in advance and guided the officials and gentry in the city to donate money and materials enthusiastically.

In the end, because the number of troops was really insufficient, tens of thousands of civilians were hired at a price of 5 cents a day.

Let them walk up the city wall and stab the opponent with the bamboo pole in their hands.

Due to the failure of previous raids, the rebel army switched its strategy to a frontal attack.

Li Zicheng, who had service experience in the Northwest Border Region, ordered to follow the old customs of Mongolia and use a large number of villagers they captured to serve as cannon fumes and ants for the front-wheel drive.

During the melee, some temporary engineers also tried to dig rammed earth walls.

Relying on the remote fire cover of Franz and stone casters, several gaps that can hide people were successfully chiseled on the west side.

But this approach is too inefficient after all, forcing the tide of the treacherous tactics to send out the tunnel poaching tactics.

When the defenders used gunpowder to destroy the tunnels one by one, they simply sent a large number of non-direct infantry to rush.

It was just because Kaifeng's defense was too strong and he never succeeded in the chaos.

A bigger incident happened on the eighth day of the siege.

Chen Yongfu, deputy general of the Ming army, led thousands of homesick Bian soldiers and returned to Kaifeng day and night.

The rebel army was caught off guard by them and lost thousands of tribes due to death in battle and trampling on each other. The angry Li Zicheng also personally deployed command, but was shot blinded by the son of the opponent's commander Chen De.

At the same time, the Ming court also mobilized many Hebei official troops to rush to rescue, forcing the rebel army to voluntarily end the siege and move to Dengfeng, Henan to eat.

The united military and civilians of Kaifeng won the first phase of the battle for themselves.

In July 1641, Luo Rucai, who was originally Zhang Xianzhong's old partner, had a falling out with the former.

He immediately chose to join the riot army in Henan and became the deputy commander of the camp and Li Zicheng's close comrade-in-arms.

The two sides immediately hit it off and prepared to go south to Huguang to attack Chengtian.

On the way, he defeated the Guanzhong troops commanded by Fu Zonglong, the governor of Shaanxi's three-border border, and captured the latter and executed them.

The defeat of the reinforcements in Guanzhong led to the collapse of the entire Henan war situation.

The Li Luo coalition then occupied Ye County, Chenliu, Shangshui, Dengzhou, Xiangcheng, Xinzheng and other prefectures and counties, and the Ming army along the line was powerless to resist.

By late December, the peasant army once again came to Kaifeng City, launching the second phase of the city lockdown.

At this time, there were still 3,000 Ming troops dispatched by the commander Ding Qirui from Nanyang to be stationed outside the north gate of Kaifeng.

Wang Xie, who was in charge of guarding the gate, resolutely ordered to retreat immediately without regard to the wailing of his friendly troops.

In order to prevent these 3,000 people from surrendering to Li Chuang, they also made their subordinates set fire, and the methods were so fierce that they were outrageous.

At this time, there were also significant changes in Kaifeng's internal situation from the previous lockdown period.

Due to the fall of western Henan and central Henan, a large number of refugees fled to help the elderly and children, which exacerbated the already harsh food supply situation.

It was winter, and the soldiers and civilians guarding the city did not have enough clothes, and there were many people who were frozen to death.

In contrast, the besieger camp has captured a lot due to the successive victory, and the logistics supply is very sufficient.

Ordinary bandits have clothes to protect the cold and can eat two meals a day. As for the elite core troops, they can even get three meals a day.

Seeing that the morale of the defenders was low, the King of Zhou, who was trapped in the city, once again scattered coins.

The gentry in the city also provided a large amount of wine and food to the defenders every day according to the government's levy.

They also raised a large amount of old clothes and cloth through pawn shops in the city and made them into winter clothes for the defenders to wear.

But the food and clothing cost of hundreds of thousands of refugees was completely ignored, and terrible hunger and epidemics continued to rage among them.

In the end, the stalemate was not until the first month of 1642, when the rebel army left sadly because they could not succeed.

But outside Kaifeng City was already thousands of miles away, forming a large area of ​​artificial desert, which invisibly had the effect of locking down the city.

Chongzhen, who was far away in Beijing, was also at a loss for the decay in the Central Plains.

Elite reinforcements were sent one after another, but in the end they just gave away their heads.

The first one to be defeated was Wang Qiaonian, the new governor of Shaanxi's three-sided borders.

This Confucian scholar, born in Jinshi, calculated with his fingers and thought that he could cut off his opponent's dragon veins by digging Li Zicheng's ancestral tomb.

As a result, in the battle of Xiangcheng in the first month of 1642, the general of the tent, Zhang Yinggui, was tragically executed by the rebel army.

By May 1642, the Li Luo coalition defeated the three Ming troops, which were claimed to have 180,000 people in Zhuxian Town, and collected tens of thousands of surrendered soldiers, thousands of mules and horses, and countless weapons seized.

Kaifeng has become a dead city and is trapped in an isolated and helpless situation.

Under Li Yan's suggestion, Li Zicheng no longer demolished the city walls of prefectures and counties like in the past.

Instead, he sent bureaucrats and troops to garrison and operate, which was in sharp contrast with Zhang Xianzhong who was still robbing families everywhere.

(End of this chapter)
Chapter completed!