"Zhao Wenfeng, accept the order!" Zhu Cilang shouted.

Han Zanzhou walked over with the imperial edict in his hand. Zhao Peng quickly knelt down and kowtowed, and took the imperial edict with both hands to thank him: "Thank you Your Majesty!"

Zhu Cilang said seriously: "Zhongyong Bo, Gao Jie, and Liu Liangzuo, four towns in Jiangbei, have rebelled. A total of 300,000 troops are heading south along the canal. Five days later, the matter of my ascension to the throne will be handed over to the cabinet. You can quickly arrange city defenses to stop the rebels."

Huaiyuan Hou Chang Yanling reported: "Your Majesty, after yesterday's chaos, the troops of various Beijing camps died and fled, and there were few soldiers left in the capital. The entire Nanjing city wall was more than 70 miles long. Now there are not many soldiers to guard."

Liu Kongzhao said: "Your Majesty, now the most urgent task is to order the generals to quickly recruit the people and strengthen the damaged city walls, and build weapons to defend the city, so that the rebels can defend the attack!"

Li Hongji and Tang Guozuo also expressed that they could only defend the rebels by recruiting Min Zhuang to help defend the city.

But Zhao Peng raised an objection: "Your Majesty, although Nanjing is one of the strong cities in the world, the circumference of the city wall is more than 70 miles long. If you defend it, it will be distributed according to one thousand people per mile, and at least 70,000 people will be needed to defend it. I have 10,000 elite troops under my command. If I use it to defend the city, my troops will be seriously insufficient. Since it is an elite army, I should take the initiative to attack and fight the enemy, not defend the city."

Zhu Ciyang was surprised: "Our army has only more than 10,000 people. How can we resist 300,000 rebels?"

Zhao Peng analyzed: "Your Majesty, Gao Jie and Liu Liangzuo are known as the army of 300,000. In fact, the two groups of people can be as large as 100,000! Just like Zuo Liangyu, Hubei, who is known as the army of 800,000, but in fact, it can be at most 200,000."

Zhu Cixuan said: "But even if there are only 100,000 rebels, it is not something that our army can win."

"It's not that many are because of the essence. It's not a problem for our army to defeat 100,000 rebels. If 10,000 people are used to defend the city, it will seem that they are incompetent." Zhao Peng replied.

"Zhongyong Bo, I see that your 10,000 troops are all elite. It is no problem to defeat Gao Jie and Liu Liangzuo. However, Zhongyong Bo, all of them are infantry and lack cavalry. Even if they win, they can only defeat them. How can they annihilate the enemy?" Chang Yanling said. Although the Chang family enjoyed the favorable treatment of the imperial court for nearly three hundred years and the descendants of Chang Yuchun had never fought a war, they still knew a little about military tactics.

Zhao Peng replied with a smile: "In the Huaiyang Nai Water Network area, as long as the navy is in the hands of our army, our army will be able to catch up with the enemy if we win. There are not many naval troops in the rebels. As long as they defeat them, they will not even be able to escape."

The northerners rode horses and the southerners were sailing, fighting in the south, and it was difficult to move without a ship. Zhao Peng, with the cooperation of the Zheng family navy and his infantry, could completely fight a beautiful annihilation battle in Jiangbei.

Zhu Cixuan agreed to Zhao Peng's plan to take the initiative to fight, and ordered the Ministry of Revenue to allocate food and supplies to the Jinyi New Army and the Nanjing New Army (since Zhu Cixuan was about to officially ascend the throne to the emperor, the 10,000 infantry brought by Zhao Peng were changed from the Prince's New Army to the Nanjing New Army), and Han Zanzhou and Shi Kefa served as chief and deputy chief and deputy generals respectively.

The military supervisor did not have command power, only the power to allocate food and grass, so as to control the generals.

After Zhao Peng returned that night, he immediately arranged a plan to go to war tomorrow.

This time, when we went to Jiangbei, the two thousand four hundred Jinyi New Army and 10,000 infantry went on a battle. Among the two thousand Jinyi New Army, there were 150 Mandarin Duck Formation composed of 1800 men, and another 600 firearm soldiers; among the ten thousand infantry, there were four thousand Spanish phalanx teams and six thousand firearms teams. There were also firearms in the Spanish phalanx teams, and there were three hundred bird gunners in each Spanish phalanx. These four thousand teams were hiking from Dengzhou to Xuzhou, and after two months of rigorous training in Yizhou, Shandong; the six thousand firearms teams followed the Zheng family fleet south and stayed on Chongming Island for more than two months, which was less training than the Spanish phalanx team, so they served as firearm soldiers.

Although the firearm soldiers have been less rigorous in two months of training, they have all killed veterans of the Qing army. They must be much more fierce than those of Gao Jie and Liu Liangzuo. Moreover, what they do is very simple. They just need to load ammunition, aim at the target and fire guns. The only thing they need to pay attention to is to obey orders and follow unified commands.

Each team of thousands of firearms has six hundred bird gunners, two hundred turtle dove gunners and two hundred gunners. The cannons used are tiger squat cannons, Francs and other small cannons, and there are no red barbarian cannons.

Although there were no red-branded cannons, it was enough to deal with the rebels of Gao Jie and Liu Liangzuo. Gao Jie and Liu Liangzuo's troops did not have red-branded cannons. The weapons of both sides were the same level, and Zhao Peng had more firearms here. The 10,000 infantry were originally the Shun Army infantry discarded by Li Zicheng. Although they were not considered elite before, after killing the Qing army, they had a murderous aura. After Zhao Peng's training, it was no problem to beat Gao Jie and the others.

That night, Zhao Peng didn't bother to find his newly acquired Kou Baimen to keep warm, but stayed in the military camp. When the next morning, the military supervisor and food, grass and ammunition arrived, and immediately crossed the river and set off.

Before dawn the next day, Shi Kefa and Han Zanzhou escorted food and grass to Zhao Peng's camp. In addition to the food and grass and the five thousand auxiliary soldiers who transported food and grass, they also brought imperial edicts to Huang Degong. The ships on the river were also ready. Last night, Zheng Sen received the imperial edict from Zhu Cilang, and he ordered the navy to prepare overnight.

According to the information from the Jinyiwei, Zhu Cilang learned that Huang Degong was still a reliable person. The Nanjing New Army was inseparable from the strong cooperation of Huang Degong. In fact, what Huang Degong had to do was very simple. When Gao Jie came to Yangzhou, Huang Degong immediately controlled Yangzhou City, closed the city gate, and prevented the retreating Gao Jie from retreating into the city.

At the time of Si, the army heading north to suppress the rebellion set out on time. Teams of Nanjing New Army infantry and Jinyi New Army lined up in neat formations, left the New Army camp outside Nanjing and walked towards the Zheng family fleet moored on the river.

There was a night when he crossed the river and sent it back to the military situation. When Gao Jie learned that he had left Yangzhou a few days ago, he did not choose to take a boat from Guazhou to go south, but instead marched to Yizhen, who was north of Nanjing, and was preparing to cross the river south from Yizhen and directly attack Nanjing City. Liu Liangzuo's army headed south from Fengyang. Last evening, Gao Jie and Liu Liangzuo met with Yizhen, and then the two of them worked together to capture Yizhen County.

In the Yizhen County, Jiangbei, the streets and alleys were covered with corpses, and the bluestone floor was bleeding. Gao Jie and Liu Liangzuo's bandits were plundering the people unscrupulously. The gentry families in the city naturally became their targets for robbery and many were killed. The family property passed down from generation to generation was robbed by the bandits.

Almost all the gentry in the county were killed, and ordinary people had some experiences, but most ordinary people lived outside the city, and there were few ordinary people in the city, and they had no good or bad for the bandits to rob. The robbers were not worthy of robbers. At that time, there was no evil tricks such as makeup and beauty. The women in ordinary families were ordinary, while the women in poor families were even malnourished. In addition, they applied the bottom of the pot on their faces, so the bandits naturally looked down on them, so the ordinary people almost suffered no disaster. The first thing that was unlucky was the landlords and gentry. Their family's property was robbed, and the young ladies and maids were ruined by the bandits.

Because Li Chengdong was stationed in Yangzhou, he did not participate in the looting and also allowed him to escape.

"General, there is a fleet crossing the river! The fleet is flying the Zheng banner, and there are about 200 large and small ships." One of the bandits' army reported to Liu Liangzuo at night.

"More than 200 boats? Then only ten thousand people crossed the river! Ordered to close the city gates and see how many enemies there were first." Liu Liangzuo ordered.
Chapter completed!