Great time travel

1 Chapter Forty, Burning Oil
Henan, Kaifeng

Accompanied by the sound of gold ringing to signal the withdrawal of troops, another city offensive and defensive battle involving mountains of corpses and seas of blood was temporarily declared to have subsided.

The last pillar of the Ming Dynasty who was still resisting the advance of the Tartar army, Fan Shangxie, the governor of Henan who was trapped in the isolated city of Kaifeng, was standing tremblingly surrounded by a group of cronies and servants, standing on the high wall of Kaifeng City, holding the crenel with his left hand, squinting his eyes Looking at the scene in the wilderness outside the city.

On the city wall beside him, the most eye-catching thing is not the rows of soldiers and civilians holding all kinds of weapons and concentrating on guarding the city wall, but the dark red that catches the eye—whether it is the incomplete or damaged female wall, a piece of On the messy road, on the collapsed and burning city towers, on the hot and smoking cannons, or on the robes and armors of the soldiers, there is such a muddy and dazzling dark red:

That is the color of human blood after it dries up!
Dots of blood stains covered almost every inch of the city tower, mixed with old and new, and exuded a pungent fishy smell, which made people want to vomit.In addition, there is no shortage of broken limbs that have not had time to clean up, as well as internal organs flowing out of the corpse.

Compared with the situation on the city wall, the scene under the wall is even more unsightly.Layers of corpses piled up at the foot of the city wall to form a hill, and the flowing blood turned the soil into a swamp.Among these dead people, it is considered lucky to be able to leave a whole corpse. Most of the corpses were smashed to pieces by rolling stones and trees, and their intestines and internal organs were scattered all over the ground. They were trampled repeatedly by the soldiers behind, almost all of them Rotten to a pulp.

There are also many destroyed ladders, crashed cars and other siege equipment scattered everywhere, and at this time they are still sparsely emitting flames and black smoke.

Both the corpse and the ground were filled with dense arrows, like lush weeds on the wasteland.

Everything is like the legendary Shura Purgatory.

Seeing such a scene of mountains of corpses and sea of ​​blood again, Governor Fan Shangxie's complexion turned pale, and the folding fan was tightly clenched in his drooping right hand.

This is not the first time that Fan Shangxiu took advantage of the gap between the enemy's siege outside the city and went to the top of the city to watch the battle.I remember when he first walked up to the top of the city, seeing the bloody corpses inside and outside the city, he immediately vomited all over the ground.Until now, he still couldn't deal with it calmly.

"...This is a war in troubled times where people are dying..." He murmured to himself in a daze.

But the other people on the top of the city did not have the leisurely mood of the governor to be so sentimental about current affairs.

There was only a "pop", and a large bucket of water poured out from the hands of a sergeant, washing away the blood and stumps on the horse path.

"... Hurry up, quickly lift the corpse down, and wash the blood again, so as not to slip your feet when you walk on it later!"

Under the leadership and reprimand of the sergeant, a large number of civilians rushed to the top of the city. While carrying away the corpses, they poured clean water on the horse path, and the people behind quickly swept it away with a broom, and the muddy sewage slowly flowed over the wall. , and finally washed down the city at the preset drainage holes everywhere.

Immediately afterwards, the gang of peasants ran back and forth on the city wall, carrying rolling stones, wood and other defensive equipment to the top of the city, and stacked them behind the parapet.At the same time, they raced against time to repair the gaps in the city wall.The large gaps were hastily plugged with sand, gravel and wood, while the small gaps were ignored.

"...Hurry up, hurry up, go and lift up the copper juice! Don't overturn the charcoal fire!"

"...There seems to be something wrong with this bed crossbow! Who will fix it?!"

"...There are not enough stones here! Go down and bring some baskets!"

"...What? No more stones? You won't demolish the house? Go!"

……

All of a sudden, people were moving around on the top of the city, coming and going, and there was a lot of noise, including the shouts of officers, the clash of weapons and armor, the sound of chaotic footsteps, and the shouts with different accents.Only Governor Fan Shangxiu was in a daze.

However, Governor Fan Shangxiu was not able to take a break from his busy schedule for a long time—a moment later, a middle-aged man in a yellow robe, surrounded by a team of armored guards, walked up to the collapsed tower.Behind him, there was a team of servants carrying baskets, which contained bread and meat, steaming with heat and aroma.Seeing that food was delivered, the civilians and soldiers at the top of the city were overjoyed and rushed to fight for it.But Governor Fan Shangxie, who recognized the middle-aged man at the head, was shocked, hurriedly adjusted his official uniform, and said politely:
"...My lord, why are you bothering? Just send a steward over to reward the soldiers. The lord only needs to rest in the city, so why come in person? And, please forgive me for saying a few words, the vassal is not allowed to Making friends with foreign ministers and military generals is the iron law of the imperial court all along!"

Although the words are polite, they are actually quite unkind.The middle-aged man known as the prince frowned, and said in a deep voice:

"...Governor Fan, now that you have reached this level, what are you worried about? Are you worried that the king will seek refuge with the Tartars?!"

"...Uh, it's just a little reminder to the prince. I hope the prince will not be offended if the official made a slip of the tongue for a while!"

Hearing Zhou Wang Zhu Gongsun's angry words, Governor Fan Shangxiu hurriedly bowed and said with an apologetic smile, but he still refused to budge on the issue of principle.

——In addition to adjudicating cases and managing people's livelihood, the local governors and governors of Daming also have to monitor the pro-vassal nobles in their localities to prevent them from plotting wrongdoing.Although the official treasury in Kaifeng City is clean enough to starve a mouse to death, and even the gold, silver, food and rice for raising the people to defend the city are still begged by the governor's yamen to take it out, but no matter how critical the battle situation is, Governor Fan Shangxiu also refused to let King Zhou have any military power.

"...Hmph! Of course, this king will not blame you, but please don't forget that this world is still the world of my Zhu family!"

King Zhou snorted coldly, and then moved to the edge of the crenel. First, he looked down at the piles of corpses under the wall. Immediately, he felt a rush in his stomach. He had to cover his nose with his sleeve, and at the same time took out a binoculars from his pocket, and looked at it. Looking at the Qing army camp in the distance, I was shocked again, "... How many miles is this company? There are so many troops from the Tartars who invaded Kaifeng? Could it be that the slave chief Huang Taiji came in person?"

"...the Tartar commander who invaded Kaifeng was Dorgon, who built the slave Zhengbai Banner, and he had at most two or three thousand real Tartars under his command. Even with the addition of the Guanning rebels and the Liaodong Han army, there were still less than 10,000 people. The remaining [-]+ people are all Henan refugees recruited by the Tartars!" Governor Fan Shangxiu replied with a gloomy face, "...at a time when the world is in turmoil and the country is in danger, these unscrupulous people don't want to serve the country with all their loyalty. To recognize a thief as a father should be killed!"

In this regard, Zhou Wang Zhu Gongyan also nodded again and again, deeply agreeing, but he completely forgot what kind of living conditions the people in Henan are currently in. People in Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi are all in dire straits, but the most miserable place is Henan.Several years of severe drought and years of disrepair of water conservancy have made this piece of fertile land in the Central Plains barren and barren, and the imperial court not only failed to provide relief, but also imposed heavy taxes on the devastated victims.Coupled with the cruel exploitation of a group of vassal kings and countless landlords, and the fighting between various rogues and officers and soldiers...the whole province is full of endless famines and soldiers, and many places have been depopulated.

——The Ming court once established several vassal kings in Henan successively. As for the rest of the royal relatives and official officials, there are countless more.These aristocratic families occupied most of the land in the province, but because of their official titles and fame, their land did not have to pay the imperial court's taxes, and their tenants did not have to submit to the imperial court's corvee.However, any tax increase by the Ming court, such as the famous Lian Xun, Xun Xun, and Liao Xing, all included Henan in the scope of taxation, and the bearers of these taxes and corvee can only be those who Powerless poor people.

What's more, the bad government that exists everywhere in the world is especially severe in Henan. If the imperial court wants to get one tael of Liao's salary, it can receive as much as two or thirty taels.So every time the tax was added, a large number of farmers in Henan went bankrupt, and the fields of these bankrupt farmers were naturally embezzled by vassal kings, nobles and gentry.As a result, most of the peasants who lost their land became refugees and became the source of the country's troubles.There are fewer farmers left, and the taxes and oppression they have to bear become heavier. Naturally, they will soon have to go bankrupt and go into exile, or raise the knife of resistance in despair.

Therefore, long before the soldiers of the Eight Banners broke through the pass and went south, the situation in the whole of Henan, except for Kaifeng, the provincial capital, was still in order, and the situation in the rest of the province was already miserable like hell.In the countryside of all prefectures and counties, there are no pedestrians on the roads, no one lives for hundreds of miles, and large groups of refugees gather together, busy killing officials and rebelling.The nobles, gentry and powerful built Wubao one after another, and gathered family members and people to resist the rogues and hungry people, or attack each other.The peasants either starved to death in the countryside, or gathered in groups to fight to the death with the landlord militia and officers and soldiers to see if they could find a way out.

In Henan at this time, almost every farmer has experienced a catastrophe, the government forced him, and watched his relatives starve to death beside him.Therefore, for these Henan people who were tortured to the point of insanity by hunger and despair, what national righteousness is, what is loyalty to the emperor and serving the country are all nonsense words that the hungry don't know the hungry.For the Ming court that drove their whole family to a dead end, everyone naturally only had incomparable hatred in their hearts.As long as someone can control them to eat, as long as someone can lead them to kill officials and soldiers for revenge, they are willing to follow, no matter if they are bandits or Tartars.

And when Dorgon was ordered to attack Henan, he noticed this very keenly, so he played the banner of "walking the way for the sky, opening warehouses and releasing grain".According to his military order, every time a county town or mansion of a powerful mansion is breached, after taking enough military rations, the remaining food will be distributed to any hungry people who can arrive in time. There is so much food in storage, which is really ironic.

As a result, a large number of hungry and crazy refugees joined Dorgon's command, willing to work for these Eight Banners masters.As a result, Dorgon, who had a few soldiers under his command, led this partial division into Henan, and quickly snowballed, repeatedly attacking various prefectures and counties, not only seized countless gold and silver supplies, but also engulfed 10,000 + Refugees, used as cannon fodder to attack Kaifeng City, the provincial capital.

——These refugees are not ignorant of the fate of filling trenches with cannon fodder, but after experiencing so many horrific sufferings, they no longer fear death.Compared with those relatives who starved to death in their hometown, or even were eaten by others.They can be said to be the lucky ones if they can struggle to survive to this day and are driven to fight the officers and soldiers!As long as he can eat a few full meals before he dies, what can he do if he sells his life?
However, as the ruling class of the Ming Empire, Zhou Wang Zhu Gongyun and Henan Governor Fan Shangliu certainly would not understand the resentment and despair of these Henan people, they would just stand on the head of the city of Kaifeng where the corpses were stinking, stomping their feet and cursing these troublesome people Working for a tiger, ignorant of loyalty, betraying the kindness of the court...

However, although these unscrupulous people who disregard the country's grace have been rushing to attack the city these days, the governor of Henan, Fan Shangxiu, still has enough confidence in defending the city of Kaifeng.After all, Kaifeng's city walls were tall and strong, and the food stockpiled in the city was also sufficient. With the silver taels generously rewarded by His Royal Highness King Zhou, the morale of the defenders was also maintained well, and there were still enough strong men in the city to conscript.

In addition, in his opinion, although the iron cavalry of the Jurchen Eight Banners were invincible in field battles, they were of little use in siege battles.And Dorgon in front of him is obviously not carrying a cannon that can break through the city - if he had one, he should have used it these days.

What Governor Fan Shangxiu was really worried about was whether Huang Taiji, the Great Khan who built slaves, would personally lead an army to take revenge after defeating the Tartars. If so, how long Kaifeng could last? A little hanging.

However, what he didn't expect was that if the enemy wanted to break through the city walls of Kaifeng, they didn't necessarily have to use heavy artillery bombardment, and there were other tricks-if history is any guide, then almost the same tricks were used as early as the Qin Dynasty. It was already used once in Wei State...

Just when Governor Fan Shangxiu finally persuaded King Zhou to go back, and then he planned to return to the Governor's Yamen to rest, he suddenly felt that the city wall under his feet seemed to be shaking, and there was an ominous rumbling sound in the air.

The next moment, feeling the warning sign, he quickly raised his eyes to look around, and saw a rushing and roaring turbid wave looming at the end of the horizon!
At the same time, there was a terribly tragic howl, which echoed hysterically over the city of Kaifeng:
"...the embankment has burst!!! The Tartars have dug up the embankment of the Yellow River to flood the city!!!"