Lu Ming

Throughout history, every time a dynasty collapses, there will always be a strange phenomenon-concentrating power to make a big death.

This is true no matter in the Han and Tang Dynasties or the Ming and Qing Dynasties.As if under a spell, the emperors and generals completely lost their judgment in the face of the huge social contradictions accumulated, and they all became mentally disabled, and good things were forcibly turned into bad things.

Therefore, the cross-travelers will not send the living Lord Baylor to the capital.

Once Lord Baylor is sent, there is no guarantee that another speculator who has been in the Liao Dynasty for three years will jump out and demand that Lord Baylor be sent back and everyone will be good-neighborly and friendly.

Then Comrade Chongzhen, who couldn't figure it out, hesitated again, and first raised Lord Baylor to eat and drink, so that the people who traveled through could not die of anger?

This nasty thing is very possible.With regard to the muddy political ecology in the Chongzhen court, the trust between the monarch and his ministers has disappeared, and it is not surprising that any strange things have happened.

In fact, Chongzhen had planned to negotiate peace with Hou Jin in history.It’s just that the emperor’s skills are not good enough, and he wants to negotiate a peace, and wants the civil servants to take the blame. As a result, the civil service system has a bad relationship with him, and no one who takes the blame stands up and speaks out this plan for the emperor—all are waiting. Look at the emperor's joke.

You know, even if it was Zhao Gou, it was Qin Hui who came out and took all the blame.From the perspective of management, Zhao Gou, the emperor, has at least reached a normal level of internal coordination.Regardless of whether his decision was right or wrong, even if he killed Yue Fei, there would always be subordinates who jumped out to do things for the boss.

But Chongzhen couldn't even achieve this.

This kind of dismantling with the courtiers happened once before Li Zicheng entered the city: the emperor wanted to run away to Nanjing, but was abruptly given by the civil servants with "ancestral system", "the emperor guards the gate of the country" and so on. Hanging in the air, the emperor failed to run in the end, so he had to hang himself in the air.

Therefore, never underestimate the lower limit of the last imperial court... Where did Gangcun Ningci go to work after his defeat?This kind of death behavior that has lost the hearts of the people is actually the same as killing Mao Wenlong, which is a clear harbinger of the country's subjugation.

In short, the time-traveling crowd will definitely not give Chongzhen emperors and ministers the opportunity to show the lower limit of their brains.The credit for killing the Tartars this time is already great enough, and it has already broken the sky.Sending a living Amin to the capital will not increase the marginal effect. Could it be that the emperor will hold Cao Zhongchen's hand: "I will make you a king with one word? Ah Jiu will be your wife?"

……

After killing Amin with a clean shot, Qian Tieshan made another gesture of chopping down not far away.

The special forces members who received the order immediately raised their guns, aimed at the back of the prisoner kneeling in front of them, and pulled the triggers one after another.

After the gunshots rang out, Qian Tieshan, Du Dewei, Zhang Zhongqi, Yao Jianshe, Xue Haiyuan and the others who came with the troops all high-fived each other with smiles on their faces.

Everyone ran to the icy and snowy north, climbed the ice and lay in the snow for several months, and now they finally achieved a phased victory and got a lot of spoils, which is worth the hard work.

It will still be very busy.With the end of today's battle, the Long March can only be regarded as halfway through, and there are still many things to deal with later.

The crossing people first moved the headquarters to Fuya.

The officials in the government office have long since fled.After occupying the government office, it was time for Zhang Zhongqi, the Flying Tiger Camp officer, to step forward.

Soon, the knights with loudspeakers made noise in the city: the Heavenly Soldiers had recovered Yongping, and officials at all levels in the city were sent to the government offices to listen.

Yongping is a prefectural city, and there are many miscellaneous yamen. Soon, a lot of small officials and subordinates came to sign up.

This group of people used to hide in their homes and tremble with the door up, fearing that the fish in the pond would be affected by the military disaster.Later, when they heard the sound of the trumpet, they quickly asked the servants to climb up the wall to see the situation. When they finally found out that the winner was really their own, they were all overjoyed and rushed to the government office to report.

When Yongping first broke down the city, Zhang Fengqi, the prefect, hanged himself in the back hall of the government office, and Zheng Guochang, the deputy envoy of military preparation and Taoism, hanged himself on the top of the city.The soldiers and horses of Yongping City surrendered under the leadership of the guard Li Jichun.

The days after the surrender will naturally not be very comfortable.

During the period when the Tatar soldiers were stationed in the city, they raped, looted and searched wantonly, causing a large number of people in the city to flee, and social activities were almost paralyzed.

Now it is discovered that the soldiers and horses of the imperial court have come back... Although these soldiers and horses are wearing strange green jackets, they are their own people after all, so after seeing their relatives, a group of small officials and subordinates really shed a few tears and told a story Some grievances.

Sitting behind the magistrate's official case, the "Nan'ao guerrilla Zhang Zhongqi, Mr. Zhang" who came out temporarily to preside over the work, saw the little people kneeling on the floor in the hall, and naturally encouraged them after hearing the words-they will have to rely on them to organize manpower to work Woolen cloth.

After the encouragement, Master Zhang began to assign tasks.Beheading, pickling, burying corpses, cleaning the streets, and sending people to the moat to catch Tartars, there are many things.

After some distribution, the petty officials happily went to organize the manpower.

This group of people was still apprehensive when they came here. After all, they were regarded as the surrender faction. Now that the soldiers are in chaos, they may be chopped down by the heavenly soldiers.

Now Tianbing has given them peace of mind and assigned everyone to work, that is, they will still treat them as Ming officials, and this round will be over.

In addition, this Master Zhang is also very generous.He not only promised to cook horse meat for dinner, but also promised to use all the things found on the Tartars as labor rewards.

In this way, the subordinate staff are full of motivation.

Not only did they organize the people in their respective lifangs, but they also sent people out of the city to send letters to tell those who had fled to the surrounding countryside: Heavenly Soldiers have restored Yongping!

Due to various powerful firearms, at least two or three hundred horses in the city died in this battle.

So that night, many bonfires were lit in Yongping City, and almost all the people in the city were happily cooking horse meat and eating the food that the Tartars had looted from them.

At the same time, there was an endless stream of people going to kowtow to Zongbing Cao at the gate of the government office, and shouting for Mr. Cao.

There was a lot of noise outside the government office, full of festive atmosphere after the catastrophe.However, inside the government office and in the lobby of the magistrate, the atmosphere at this moment is very solemn.

Under the bright kerosene lamp, several time travelers sitting in the lobby frowned when they saw a middle-aged man kneeling in the hall.

Yongping General Li Jichun.

Chapter 454

"Li Jichun, are you convicted?"

"My lord, I will be convicted at the end."

The middle-aged man kneeling in the hall had a calm face at the moment, as if he was willing to be beaten or punished.

And Zhang Zhongqi, who was sitting behind the case, turned up the corners of her mouth at this moment, pretending to be forced by the master Qingtian, and asked a little playfully: "Wen Shijian, Wu Shizhan, look at the adults who went to the disaster in Yongping, Li Jichun, you Kneeling here today, do you feel half ashamed?"

……

In ancient times, because communication technology and social management could not keep up, the government could not extend its tentacles to all cells. Therefore, in the construction of the military system, in order to decentralize power and check and balance, including the Song and Ming Dynasties, they all adopted the "use of literature to control the military, The principle of size matching".

The so-called size system is actually a shrunken version of the military feudal system: the governor can only directly order his own supervising battalion, and the governor must order the rest of the province's troops through the commander-in-chief.

In the same way, the chief soldier can only command his own town mark, and to give an order to a certain unit, he must go through the deputy generals in the middle.

This is the principle of the feudal system: the next floor cannot be directly managed, the monarch can only go to the feudal lord if he has something to do, and the vassals below only listen to the feudal lord, and have nothing to do with the monarch.

Although China's feudal system has been different from the West since the Han Dynasty, the core rules are still the same-the emperor and the court cannot control the peasants in the countryside, and the clan landlords who are similar to feudal lords are the masters of the peasants. The imperial power does not come down to the county", which actually interprets this core idea of ​​the feudal system.

In this regard, the West has done more clearly: the king can only fight with the big feudal lords at the level of princes, and the knight (squire) class below the princes obeys their own princes.

Once there is a war, it is usually the Marquis of such and such, the Earl of such and such who takes a group of vassal knights under him to participate in the battle, and the king can only issue orders to the level of the great nobles.

Go back to the government office in Yongping City.

According to the above principles, theoretically speaking, the cross-travelers cannot control the general Li Jichun.This person's immediate boss is the General Soldier of Shanhaiguan. If he wants to kill him, he should report it to the imperial court, and Chongzhen will finally decide on this person.

But right now is not the norm.Yongping City had just been recovered, and the people who traveled through the city implemented a "military government" system, and they could kill anyone at any time——Li Jichun resisted stubbornly, and was punished by the Heavenly Soldiers for the Tartars. It was as simple as that.

So General Li Shen, who is kneeling in the hall now, is actually hanging by a thread, and will be dragged out to be slaughtered at any time.

"You kneel here today, do you feel half ashamed?"

After hearing the mocking question from the hall, Li Jichun kowtowed first, and then replied with a still expressionless face: "My lord, when the city was broken that day, the last general's more than twenty personal soldiers had all died in battle. ... If you say you are incompetent, then I admit it; if you say you are ashamed, you really don't have it. If an ant steals a life, but the last general surrenders after the battle, what is the crime?"

"This is new!" Yao Jianshe, the station manager of Tianjin Station, who was sitting beside him laughed, and said to this soldier with the concept of future generations: "According to this, it's fine to kill all your own soldiers. Then your 2000 guards Can't the city army be deployed?"

"It's really a display." Li Jichun smiled wryly when he heard the words, knelt on the ground and cupped his hands at the green-coated official who couldn't tell his rank: "My lord, let me know."

"Since the year of Apocalypse, the court's affairs have been tense and wasteful. Yongping, which seems to be the last general, has never encountered a war in a hundred years, so the military funds allocated by the Ministry of War are less than one year. Among them There are still a lot of decaying waste.”

When Li Jichun said this, a trace of embarrassment slipped across his face: "Even Mr. Zheng, the soldier who hanged himself, every time he goes to ask for the army's salary, he has to get enough as a rule."

"All the spare money that the general eats on weekdays is spent on these soldiers." When Li Jichun said this, the muscles on his face twitched, seemingly extremely distressed: "Just that little money is enough to support these soldiers. "

"Yongping has been in peace for a hundred years, and the military equipment is desolate and the equipment is rotten. In fact, most of the two thousand city guards are civilians recruited temporarily by wealthy households in the city."

"The soldiers under the command of the last general don't even have a decent fat jacket on weekdays. When they saw the wolf-like Tartar soldiers, they scattered on the spot. Only the last general and his own soldiers stood up for a while...My lord, all the personal soldiers Death, full of kindness and righteousness, the last general has done his best, and the last general has no shame. Even if he sees the emperor, the last general will say the same thing."

……

When the people across time heard this, no one spoke for a while.

Yes, for an army to complete its military missions, at the very least, it must ensure that the soldiers are fed, clothed, and equipped with basic training and basic weapons.

So again, the first step in the downfall of any regime is always financial issues.

The fundamental reason why the Ming army was unable to defeat foreigners in the middle and late stages was that the rentier classes, such as the gentry and relatives of the emperor, were greedy for a large amount of government taxes.

The so-called 600 million taels of military expenditure for the Ningjin defense line each year, in fact, more than half of it has been "sedimented" in the bureaucratic system of the capital before leaving the capital.

If things go on like this, the generals will not have enough military expenses, and if the military expenses are not enough, they can only take the road of embezzling ordinary soldiers and raising elite soldiers and family members.

Then on the battlefield, when encountering all the Tartars who are all soldiers, the large army has no choice but to break up-how much money can be used to do as much as possible, the logic is correct, there is nothing wrong with it.

In fact, how did the important garrisons of Ji Town, including Santunying and Zunhua, break through the city bloodlessly when the Tartars broke in?Sorry, the soldiers opened the city by themselves.

Why did the soldiers open the city?Because these people can't get paid.

Not long before the Houjin army entered the customs, Chongzhen had just cut some of the military expenditures of the towns on the nine sides, and laid off some soldiers by the way.

Then the gates of the capital, Santunying and Zunhua, the core defensive areas of Jizhen, the number one town in the world, were opened by laid-off soldiers.

There is a reason why later governments care about the employment rate, because once the number of unemployed people rises, society will fall into turmoil.The opening of the Zunhua Santun camp and the laid-off postman Li Zicheng are all vivid examples, including Li Zicheng's core cavalry, which is also composed of laid-off frontier troops from Gansu and Shaanxi.

Li Jichun, who was kneeling in front of the crossing crowd at this moment, was actually the same kind of person as the tens of thousands of generals of the Ming Dynasty, who were always suffering in the vicious circle of insufficient military expenditure.It's just that this guy was unlucky, and the Tartars attacked Yongping City after entering the pass.

After listening to Li Jichun's argument, Zhang Zhongqi, who was sitting in the hall, waved him to go down, and then several traversers began to exchange opinions.

In real history, Chongzhen did not spare Li Jichun afterwards.After the Tartars withdrew, all the descendants of Yongping, including a few minor officials, were killed by Chongzhen's order.

In the eyes of the time-traveling people with the thinking of later generations, soldiers who have exhausted their strength in the war do not need to bear the infinitely high moral requirements of ancient times.

In the wars of later generations, governments of various countries also allowed troops to surrender when they were wounded or surrounded, and they had to find ways to replace them afterwards, without any psychological barriers.

What the time-traversing people are discussing now is mainly about Li Jichun's arrangements.

According to Zhang Zhongqi's opinion, there is no need to waste resources on a person like Li Jichun. The whole family will be assigned to the Philippines under anonymity, and a whole reclamation team will be sent to the natives.

Two intelligence community figures, however, had different ideas.

After King Qin's operation this time, the crossing people will start a series of layouts in the north.In this case, a northern general who has been pinched will undoubtedly have a positive impact on the entire layout.

Cao's forces are all in the south right now, which is completely blank for the north. Now is the time to establish a network to recruit troops.

After the opinions of the two parties were presented, Qian Tieshan and Du Dewei remained silent.They are pure soldiers, they pat their butts and leave after the battle, and they won't get involved in such things.

Although there is a nominal head Zhang Dongdong in the Northward Delegation, but when it comes to their respective professional fields, it is still up to the individual.

Now that the two sides disagree, this matter can only be shelved temporarily, waiting for the big boss behind to make a decision.

So General Li, who was waiting outside, was passed in again, and then Zhang Zhongqi told him to "go back behind closed doors and think about your mistakes", and I will let you know when there is news.

After Li Jichun left, the news was sent back to Tianjin and Dayuan by telegram, and then everyone broke up and went to find a place to rest.Today, we have been fighting continuously for a day, and everyone is exhausted.

That night, there was a small episode.The sentry sent out to monitor Luanzhou City sent a message: the remaining 400 Tatar cavalry in the city have been dispersed into a dozen scattered teams, and they have begun to bypass Yongping and run to Yanshan in the north.

After receiving the news, the people who traveled through did not take any action, let him go, but there were only 400 people.In the middle of the night, the soldiers who had fought fiercely for a day were sent to disperse and chase the enemy, not to mention whether they could be caught, there was no need for this at all.

……

The next morning, the troops who had a good night's rest got up one after another, began to pack their bags, and prepared to set off.

The most important thing in the luggage is the head.

After being marinated overnight by the residents of Yongping City, the heads that were captured yesterday have all been packaged this morning.

As for the number of heads, the crossing crowd got 550 in Santunying, 400 in Qian'an, 300 in Luanzhou Road, and the most in Yongping. Including A Min and others, the total is 1400, excluding some brands. It's not good, the civil servants don't admit it, and now the crossing crowd has a total of 2500 heads on hand.

This was an achievement that was enough to make Man Chao drop his tongue, eyeballs and big teeth in shock.

However this is not enough.

This time, the Houjin troops stationed in several cities of the Ming Dynasty totaled 5000 people.In addition to the 400 people who ran away last night, there were a full 2000 Eight Banners soldiers in Zunhua City, which was fighting against the Ming army.

These 2000 people are also fat—if they can be caught.

So here we go to pack our bags.Amin has already sent a messenger to Zunhua yesterday, and the people who travel through the world can't judge what will happen in the direction of Zunhua now, so it is better to leave early.

Chapter 455

The first team to set off from Yong Peng is a 200-person agricultural product transportation team.This team was sent back to Tianjin as a "reverse transport team" in order to avoid too much baggage affecting operations.

After yesterday's continuous fighting, except for Zunhua and the Tartars in the territory of the Ming Dynasty, all other areas have been recovered.Therefore, this team will go straight across the Hebei Plain along the southwest direction, and return to Tianjin Old School Stadium without any hindrance.

The transport team of 200 people will bring back more than [-] war horses to Tianjin, and of course, off-season watermelons on horseback.

To tell the truth, those who sent so many captured war horses to the rear while fighting were probably the few and powerful cross-travelers.

Two hundred miles away on the plain, the transport team is expected to arrive at Tianjin's old nest tomorrow morning.At that time, the people of Tianjin will be able to see new varieties of watermelons produced in Baishan Heishui.

After the transport team left, the second wave started with a team of official troops.There are not many officers and soldiers, just ten people.

That's right, the army.

All of them wore brand-new bright red Ming army-style fat jackets, copper basin hats on their heads, and one man with two horses. They were the standard Ming soldiers.

After leaving the west gate of Yongping, this team of officers and soldiers headed straight west.To the west of Yongping, 400 miles away, is the capital city.

After the two groups set off, it was delayed until the afternoon before the large force of the Intervention Army was able to move out of the city for the third time, and the destination was Santunying.