stubborn thief

Chapter 655 Defend

Being the Governor of five provinces was once Chen Qiuyu’s lifelong honor.

But if God could give him a chance to start over, he would rather not be an official.

Fighting with Liu Chengzong and being surrounded in the city was such a torture.

He now didn't know what the point of defending the city was. The morale of the defenders in the city had long since collapsed in an unimaginable direction.

There are two princes of the Ming Dynasty, one in the city and one outside the city.

The old King Qin in the city is stingy and always says that at worst he will die in this city; the little King Han outside the city shouts every day that the commander-in-chief has been chosen by heaven and that he asks the army in the city to surrender as soon as possible.

This is nothing. The key point is that there was a real chaos in our Xi'an city a few days ago.

The soldiers guarding the west gate mutinied. The city gate was opened for half an hour, and the marshal's troops were invited into the city, but they didn't even bother to look at them and refused to come in at all!

Finally, the three hundred defenders made a commotion, tied up the defending general Li Kecong, and marched out of the city to surrender.

In fact, this siege, which had never been fought hand-to-hand, had continued until this point, and the soldiers and civilians in the city were no longer thinking about how to defend the city.

Because what the Marshal's Army has been doing outside the city these days is basically obvious.

Not only did they let the defenders on the city wall see it, they also openly let the defenders and flag soldiers who came to the city wall to buy food or do small business to inquire about it.

The military fields of the Four Guards, the ownerless civilian fields, and the manor fields of the Qin vassal state are ownerless fields as long as no one claims them when they are registered.

The ownerless fields were all official fields of the Marshal's Office. Not only had they harvested all the land that should have been harvested, they had even planted new crops on it.

Chen Qiuyu also tried to seize this opportunity. He selected 100 warriors who had fields outside the city from the army, and each of them carried armor, arrows, gunpowder and the like, and sneaked into the besieged camp, waiting for an opportunity to cause chaos.

As a result, someone who left the city reported the incident. Not only the death squads that were picked out, but also hundreds of unlucky guys who went down to the city to buy food were quickly registered as soldiers and sent to the Military Yamen in Hexi.

All the people were escorted all the way to Dalai Taiji's training camp and happily received one-way tickets for a tour to the Tianshan Mountains.

By this time, Liu Chengzong's intentions had become very clear.

  They don't even want to attack the city, let alone enter it - what exactly are you guarding?

The defenders of Xi'an City were tortured in this way and had no will to defend the city at all. Now, with more than 100,000 soldiers and civilians in the city, all they were considering was whether they would be starved to death by Liu Chengzong this winter if they continued like this.

Many people even believed that Liu Chengzong's goal was to starve them to death.

Because by this time the military and civilians in the city had figured out that the significance of Xi'an Prefecture City to Liu Chengzong was just Xi'an Prefecture City.

There was not much food in the city to begin with. After all, the farmlands were all outside the city. The food was not yet ripe when the city gates were closed, and now Liu Chengzong had asked him to harvest it all.

All the city had were gold, silver, and other inedible items. Those things could not be eaten. People starved to death, but the things and the city were still there.

A mood of despair hung over the city of Xi'an.

During this period, Chen Qiuyu's main focus was actually on preparing the defenders to guard against the civilians attacking the city gates.

Because of hunger, the contradiction between the Xi'an officials, soldiers and civilians and Liu Chengzong evolved into an internal contradiction between the soldiers and civilians and the officials and generals headed by Chen Qiuyu when the Marshal's army refused to attack the city.

Among them, local officials in Xi'an, because of their family reasons, some conservatively persuaded Chen Qiuyu to let the people leave the city, while some radical ones simply began to persuade Chen Qiuyu to consider his funeral arrangements.

The implication is that it's time to consider surrendering.

But Chen Qiyu could not surrender.

He was forced into a corner and had no choice but to grit his teeth and write a letter to Liu Chengzong, saying that the food in the city had run out and asking him to withdraw the siege, otherwise he would release the people in the city.

Liu Chengzong was delighted at first when he saw the letter. He thought that Chen Qiuyu didn't look very smart. How could you, the governor of five provinces, threaten me with this?

  Are you out of your mind?

When the officials were defending the city, they treated the people in the city as a burden and released them to the besieging troops. This was a huge joke and scandal in itself.

This is not a matter of dereliction of duty, but a abandonment of legitimacy and self-degradation.

Only bandits who occupy a city would do this.

However, Liu Shizi thought about it carefully and called Zhang Xianzhong.

The two men went into the general's tent and discussed for a long time, and found that the threat posed by Chen Qiuyu was a bit stupid, but still had a certain lethality.

Even if all the people in Xi'an were released, Liu Shizi really couldn't afford to support them.

After all, it is now the season, approaching winter, and it is really difficult to resettle the people, and it will cost them a lot of food.

  But they spent food and gained people's hearts and minds, while the imperial court suffered a net loss and even lost its legitimacy. How long can the city of Xi'an be defended?

It's like killing 200 enemies and losing 8,000 of our own people, it's like crazy.

Liu Chengzong said to Zhang Xianzhong: "I think about it carefully, this is not a bad thing."

The Xi'an city has always been a hidden danger to the Marshal's Office, which was determined by Liu Chengzong's strategic policy of entering Guanzhong.

If he wanted to attack the provincial capital, he would have taken it long ago.

However, the rapidly expanding army of the Marshal's Office was beyond Liu Chengzong's imagination and the Marshal's Office's ability to bear, so it was impossible to do things perfectly.

Therefore, they swallowed up the military farms and the fields outside the city, and took advantage of the people hiding in the city to rob the harvest outside the city this year.

This in itself is quite inhumane.

Eat those inside the city and keep those outside alive.

But the problem is still there. It is not a matter of whether the city people starve to death or Chen Qiuyu is capable. It must be solved.

At this moment, Chen Qiuyu could not hold on any longer and wanted to release the people in the city, which would give Liu Chengzong the opportunity to deal with them in batches.

But no matter how he thought about it, Liu Shizi always felt that Chen Qiuyu was out of his mind for resorting to such a desperate measure.

If we can’t even protect the people, what’s the point of defending the city?

Han Xiaowang learned the news from Zhang Xianzhong, and he went to Liu Chengzong with his sleeves raised: "General, I heard that Chen Qiyu wants to release 100,000 people from Xi'an to eat your military rations?"

"General, don't be angry with him. With one order, I will send a letter back to the vassal state. My brothers in Pingliang will immediately report to the emperor of the Fourth Ancestor's family and severely impeach Chen Qiyu."

Liu Chengzong was stunned.

You have a very unique idea.

Can I still report this to the Emperor?

"Don't bother, it's not that serious."

Liu Shizi thought to himself that Chen Qiuyu's entire family was in my hands and they were also in Xi'an, so the emperor had no way to deal with him.

What's more... although his sending a newspaper to Chen Qiyu was a bit abstract, it was to undermine Chen Qiyu's will.

Complaining to Chongzhen from two thousand miles away would be a blow to Chongzhen's will.

It makes no sense.

"Chen Qiyu must have lost his mind when he wrote this letter. He is now asking me to do things as if I were an emperor."

Liu Shizi spat on the ground and said, "Do I need him to ask for it? I got into the imperial robes myself. He doesn't want the position of herdsman, but I do."

"If he wants to release people, then let him go. I will take as many as he wants. If I can't afford to support him, I will support him. The divine artifact will belong to the virtuous. He has ruined the court's reputation in Shaanxi!"

On that day, Liu Chengzong ordered people to shoot arrows to deliver letters from the top of the Xi'an city wall, and more than a hundred letters were shot in a row.

The meaning of the letter is very simple. You have no food, and I have no food either. If you let people out, they will starve to death. So the brothers guarding the city told the people in the city to bring some food with them when they go out, and they will be given land when the time comes. Don't starve to death before you reach the place where you want to reclaim land.

Chen Qiuyu in the city received the news, took the letter and read it, thinking that Liu Chengzong was talking nonsense.

In the whole Shaanxi, who has more food than you now?

If you have no food, others will starve to death.

To be honest, Chen Qiyu sent the letter to Liu Chengzong and lowered his status to make the bad decision of letting the people out of the city. In fact, his target was not Liu Chengzong but the King of Qin. To be precise, he wanted to reduce the pressure of grain in the city, but more importantly, he wanted to put pressure on the Qin vassal nobles and the wealthy families in the city who had grain, forcing them to take out the grain.

Because Chen Qiuyu no longer knows what he can do.

We cannot win the battle; we cannot defend the city; there is nowhere to escape; and we cannot surrender.

All I can do is wait to die.

The problem is that it is difficult to even delay death because there is no food.

Now it is no longer a problem that can be solved by borrowing grain, not to mention whether there will be chaos in the city due to food shortage.

Even Chen Qiuyu wanted to lead his troops to rob the rich families in the city.

So the only solution he could think of was to release all the civilians and soldiers in the city who were not so determined.

If 60,000 to 70,000 people escape and the people in the city are united in their hatred of the enemy, the Qin vassal and the rich families will have to hand over their food and grass, and they will be able to defend the city until next spring.

If hundreds of thousands of people fled and there were not many left in the city, that would be even easier to say.

This means he took the wrong path and this city should not be defended.

The donkey from Guizhou has run out of tricks.

As Liu Chengzong's letter spread in the city, the city became...even more chaotic.

The government ordered people to leave, and people were scrambling to flee and hide in the city; people were buying food privately everywhere in the city, and some even robbed money and food and secretly ran out of the city walls.

However, the unrest did not last long. After just a few days, Chen Qiuyu actually opened the city and released more than 2,000 elderly, weak, women and children who had no food.

Liu Shizi understood most of Chen Qiuyu's thoughts as soon as he saw it.

Releasing more than 2,000 elderly, weak, women and children was obviously a test to see if they would accept assistance.

This was not a problem for him at all. He immediately ordered the soldiers to set up soup kitchens outside the siege camp.

At the same time, he also sent Li Rugui, a captain of Luo Rucai's army, to lead a general to find a thousand-household office outside the city and start setting up a camp for refugees to spend the winter.

This was also a test of Li Rugui by Liu Shizi.

This guy was a fierce general under Luo Rucai. He led a small group of cavalry in a night raid and shot and killed Cao Dingjiao, a general under Cao Wenzhao, and Luo Dai, a general under Zuo Liangyu. He was cunning and brave.

With his military achievements, it would not be unusual for him to be promoted to lieutenant general. However, Liu Shizi was a little skeptical about the organizational and management abilities of Luo Rucai and his fellow brothers.

So we gave the task of resettling the refugees to him to test his abilities.

If he performed well, Liu Chengzong planned to send him to Zhang Zhen's Yanqing Brigade as a guerrilla general.

For the next seven days, Chen Qiuyu released people from the city. He started by releasing the elderly, the weak, women and children, and later he released every family, leaving the city gates unclosed. He kept releasing people until Liu Chengzong became angry.

There was no other reason. It didn't matter to Chen Qiuyu that he let people out. He actually didn't allow anyone to take food or gold and silver. Anyone who escaped had money on them, so they had to sneak down from the city wall.

Liu Chengzong thought to himself, you miser, it’s fine that you don’t allow people to bring food, but you can eat in the city, I understand.

Why don’t you allow people to bring money? You can’t get gold, silver or copper coins in the city!

The most important thing is trouble.

Silver is a scarce commodity in the Marshal's Office.

Chen Qiuyu did this, and when the Marshal's Office took over Xi'an, Liu Chengzong had to order the city of Xi'an to be dug three feet deep.

Liu Chengzong was too lazy to get angry with Chen Qiuyu, so he simply ordered: "Please ask General Zhou to come over and bring Chen Qiuyu's family to the city!"

Mantianxing Zhou Qing is not considered a general of the Marshal's Office, but his intention to get closer to the Marshal's Office is very obvious.

Liu Chengzong asked Zhang Zhen to ask Zhou Qing and Hui Dengxiang to borrow a few good men who had been to Shanxi to serve as guides, and sent dozens of people to Baode Prefecture to bring Chen Qiuyu's family over.

As a result, when Zhou Qing heard that it was an order from the Grand Marshal, he immediately abandoned his troops and led 800 soldiers to cross the river from Fugu and rush to Baode Prefecture. He brought back more than 470 members of Chen Qiuyu's family, basically bringing all the relatives within the five generations of mourning back to Shaanxi, and moved the whole family.

Moreover, the matter was handled with great care. Except for Chen Qiuyu's close relatives of more than 60 people, the rest of the clansmen and the elderly who were unable to move were all settled in Suide.

The most powerful one was Zhou Qing's troops. They were not an elite unit known for their good military discipline, but they managed to hold off fighting back when Chen Qiuyu's clansmen were scolded in this operation.

However, the only drawback was that Zhou Qing did not bring Chen Qiuyu's old mother over, leaving her in Suide, and only brought Chen Qiuyu's stepmother, Bai.

Liu Chengzong was delighted when he saw the list of names of Chen Qiyu's family. The naming of this generation was quite interesting. The name pattern of the generation with the character "Qi" was the same as that of the clan members of the Han Dynasty at the end of the Han Dynasty.

Yu, Huang, Lian, Hu, Ying and Zhang are all ceremonial stone objects with the character "王" on the side. Except for Chen Qiuyu, all of them are scholars.

Zhou Qing also explained this matter to Liu Chengzong specifically. It was because Chen Qiuyu's old mother was very fierce. She kept scolding whoever she met on the road, as if she was in a hurry to die.

All the brothers in their family pleaded with Zhou Qing, saying that Tai Laojun would definitely commit suicide if he arrived at the city, which would be a bad thing. If anyone wanted to persuade Chen Qiuyu to surrender, they should persuade him together.

Chen Qiuyu originally had a younger sister named Chen Jing.

  When their father Chen Jiaxun was working as an officer in Guangning Guard in Liaodong,

She was promised to the son of Guo from Baode Prefecture since she was young, and Chen Qiuyu also took Guo's daughter as a concubine.

When Chen Jing was sixteen, it was time for him to get married. Chen Qiuyu had already become a nobleman, and he looked down on the scoundrel from the Guo family whom his sister was going to marry, so he wanted to break off the engagement. But his sister still wanted to marry him, and when she heard the news of the break-off, she locked herself in her room.

No matter how their mother called, the door would not open. Then they heard Chen Jing say inside that her daughter wanted to take a bath, so her mother was boiling water outside. When she went in, Chen Jing had already hanged himself.

Therefore, the old lady of the Chen family has always been full of regret and has long wanted to stop living.

So Zhou Qing was also afraid that something bad might happen, so he first placed Chen Qiuyu's mother in Suide and sent someone to look after her, and then came over.

However, when Liu Chengzong heard this, he ordered someone to bring the old lady back - he had seen many dead people being driven away in this world, so this was nothing new.

Liu Chengzong's order had just been issued, and not long after, the old ladies in the camp could be heard cursing along the way from afar.

When they arrived outside the camp, the old lady saw Liu Chengzong and scolded him even more vigorously: "You traitor, kill me if you want. I, Chen, will never persuade Yuxuan to surrender!"

Even Chen Qiuyu's brothers who were following behind, looking as pale as death, started to toughen up.

There's no way. They were flexible earlier because they thought Zhou Qing was very friendly to them along the way and it seemed like there was still a chance for them to survive.

Now that the old lady had scolded him like that, the rebel leader became furious and humiliated. The entire Chen family would definitely die here.

Kneeling and begging for mercy means death, and being tough means death as well, so why be polite? It is better to make him angry and let him die in peace.

Unexpectedly, after listening to the old lady's scolding for a long time, Liu Chengzong stopped talking, but just made a playful look in his eyes and smiled from time to time.

There was no way he would be broken by the attack power of Old Lady Chen.

Instead, he waited until the other person got tired of scolding him, and then he looked at him like a fool, and asked in confusion: "Who told you that I asked Chief Zhou to invite you here to persuade Chen Yuxuan to surrender? Who do you think he is?"

Zhang Xianzhong, who was standing by, understood everything.

Sure enough, his guess was correct.

As early as when he knew that Liu Chengzong had sent people to pick up Chen Qiuyu's family, he guessed that even if Liu Chengzong killed everyone under the city to vent his anger, he would not use the family to persuade him to surrender.

Based on his understanding of Liu Chengzong, this great marshal has always been arrogant and would never do such a mean thing.

"If he wants to fight, the coalition forces of the five provinces will be destroyed overnight; if he wants to defend, he will even abandon the civilians in the city; now the entire Shaanxi Province is in my hands, but he still refuses to surrender and wants to defend to the death... Haha."

Liu Chengzong laughed as he spoke, raised his head and looked at the towering Xi'an city tower from afar: "Do you think I will persuade you to surrender, or kill you all here? I am not the one who will kill you."

"Ming councillor Duan Fuxing was ordered by Chen Qiyu to defend Qianzhou. He stored firewood in the drum tower and placed his mother, wife and daughter upstairs. When the city was breached, he set fire to the tower and died in battle."

Liu Chengzong raised his hand and pointed at the city wall: "The families of the defenders are all in the city, why are Chen Qiuyu's family in his hometown? You all go into the city and teach Chen Qiuyu what it means to defend to the death!"

good afternoon!