national surname chiming

Chapter 310 Surrendering Li Dingguo

The counterattack troops sent by Zhang Xianzhong outside the city were wiped out, which would naturally bring about a series of chain reactions.

On the other side, the morale of the officers and soldiers who were attacking the city increased, while the morale of the remaining bandit defenders in the city fell to the bottom.

Under the cover of the Hongyi cannon, the officers and soldiers continued to charge bravely. Everyone was like a rainbow, and they shouted while charging: "Bai Wenxuan, Feng Shuangli, and Li Dingguo have surrendered! Those who follow Zhang Xianzhong will die! Those who surrender will not die!"

The inside of the bandit army was panicked, and even the soldiers who were on the front line were confused by this shocking news.Those who have not reached the front line for the time being, at least have the brains to think about whether Dudu Bai, Dudu Feng and the second general really surrendered to the government, and have no intention of fighting at all.

Finally, in the evening of the same day, the officers and soldiers blew up a corner of the city wall of Chengdu, and when tens of thousands of officers and soldiers swarmed in, the defenders completely collapsed.

In a panic, Zhang Xianzhong had no choice but to let Di Sanpin and Qi Sansheng tie up Li Dingguo, and led thousands of direct cavalry and all the old battalion infantry to break through to the west of the city.

All the treasures he had left in western Hunan, as well as all the things he had snatched after entering Sichuan, all the light gold, silver, jewels, brocades and satins, were also loaded into carts, pulled by horses to break through the siege, and he only wanted to throw them on the boat as soon as he reached the pier. , filled the sails and went down the current, paddling and galloping.

And the reason why he tied Li Dingguo and didn't execute him immediately was because after all, there was still the last trace of humanity that hadn't been wiped out, but not much.

After all, he still hasn't figured it out: Is all this really Li Dingguo and Feng Shuangli's betrayal, or is it the result of Zhu Shuren's aggressive tactics?
If Li Dingguo was chopped off at this juncture, it would undoubtedly appear that he was very intolerant and could easily be calculated by the enemy's scheming.

The only remaining people like Di Sanpin and Qi Sansheng around him may not go all the way with him, maybe everyone will be in danger, thinking that "when the Eight Great Kings are really at the end of the road, will they be so paranoid that they will become crazy?" Fat, no one is trusted, and whoever is arrested will be killed."

This chain of suspicion is really not groundless or a battle of wits with the air. In history, after Zhang Xianzhong's rule in Sichuan could not be maintained, the last stage of the crazy massacre was actually the most important reason. Off the charts, everyone looks like a traitor.

This kind of suspiciousness combined with a slightly cruel and vicious personality makes it easy to kill innocent people indiscriminately.

Li Dingguo looked at all this with a sigh, but his heart was ashamed, and he had nothing to say. He was tied up like a walking dead.

He couldn't justify it, because two months ago, Zhang Xianzhong asked Zhang Xianzhong to let Bai Wenxuan's family members go, and stop detaining the family members of the general who died in the city. This suggestion was originally made by him to Zhang Xianzhong.

The only thing that can be justified is that "he, Li Dingguo, was also deceived by the rhetoric of Bai Wenxuan's confidant sent by Zhu Shuren, and he didn't know that Bai Wenxuan was actually alive and voted." useless.

Incompetence, misjudgment, and disloyalty are sins.

Does it make sense to wash off infidelity as being duped?At this time, it is meaningless. If you want to defend yourself, you have to get out of danger and argue again.

The last old cavalry of Zhang Xianzhong's troops added up to more than 1 people and tens of thousands of old infantry. These more than 2 soldiers and horses became the capital of Zhang Xianzhong's last desperate escape.

Not to mention, although Zhang Xianzhong did not have the ability to fight the decisive battle with the officers and soldiers upright, it seemed that he still had a good chance of escaping.

After all, until now, he still has more than twice the number of troops,
Although his 10,000+ Sichuan peasants surrendered in groups, 10,000+ people were still in a chaotic battle. They lost their command system, and the officers and soldiers had to catch them for a long time, which was enough to contain most of Zhu Shuren's troops.

The [-] soldiers who formed the system and surrendered can be surrendered in a short time.But [-] soldiers who have lost their organizational system and fought on their own are as difficult to catch as [-] pigs scattered in a herd. Anyone who has fought with common sense knows this.

What I was most afraid of when I was surrendered was that the enemy no longer had a command system, and whoever said it didn't count.

On the other hand, Zhu Shuren is also a commander who is well versed in the art of war. Of course, while he is attacking the city, he will send out troops to keep encirclement and containment outside the city of Chengdu, blocking Zhang Xianzhong's route at any time.

However, this time Zhang Xianzhong wanted money but didn’t want to die, or he felt that even if he chose to die, the probability of survival might not be much higher than if he chose to ask for money. .

Zhu Shuren never expected this. He always felt that if Zhang Xianzhong wanted to have a higher chance of survival, he should retreat to Mianzhu and Jiangyou and hide in Jianmen Pass. At least he could ensure that he would live for another half a year or a few months. die.

Zhu Shuren's blockade troops in the direction of Xinjindu were only a few thousand people, and Zhang Xianzhong rushed and slammed them regardless of casualties. Zhu Shuren's troops there were not enough cavalry, so they could only fight hard in formation and output crazy firepower.

However, Zhang Xianzhong's men just tried their best to break open a hole, and ran wildly into the corridors and gaps, piercing through the blocking army formation and continuing to run wildly without looking back.

Under such a situation of desperate fighting, officers and soldiers are also afraid of death after all. Why do they have to block the enemy head-on to increase casualties when they can flank the enemy?
The front-line generals naturally chose to continue shooting and firing arrows at the enemies rushing to the side, reaping human lives, chasing after them to kill them, and using Zhang Xianzhong's fleeing soldiers to attack free vanguards, trampling each other to expand the results of the battle.

So on the [-]-mile road from Chengdu Ximen to Xinjindu, at least a dozen miles, the corpses of Zhang Xianzhong's army were scattered all over the way, and more soldiers were surrounded and blocked and failed to rush out, so they knelt down and surrendered.

Zhang Xianzhong rushed to Xinjindu, snatched hundreds of small and medium-sized ships, and there were no professional warships, so he set sail one after another, almost running one by one, and it was too late to wait for his comrades.

In the chaos, some old battalion bandits wanted to board the overloaded boat, so they naturally staged a "finger in the boat" again, and they were lined up in a row and chopped off their fingers climbing the boat in the boat.

The wailing by the Minjiang River shook for ten miles, and the floating corpses in the river floated hundreds of feet—but these people still follow Zhang Xianzhong at this point, and they can be regarded as relatively thieves, and they are not so innocent.

In April of the 16th year of Chongzhen in history, they should have slaughtered innocent people in Wuchang.

At this moment in another time and space, Wuchang Mansion was killed until "floating corpses covered the river, blocked Yingwu Island, and the people's paste was more than an inch thick, and they would be scattered in more than a month."

It is the parrot island of "Qingchuan Lili Hanyang trees, fragrant grass and luxuriant parrot island". Human corpses are washed by the river to the place where the flow is slow and piled up. The sandbar in the river can be directly connected with the land by the river and become a peninsula. , the human oil clogged in the middle can be more than an inch thick.

(Note: The width of the Wuchang section of the Yangtze River is two kilometers. The modern Parrot Island has been connected to the land. There are maps in the Song Dynasty, and the narrow part of the south bank of the Parrot Island is "about a hundred feet". No information is available at the end of the Ming Dynasty. It is estimated that it is at least narrower than the Song Dynasty. More than half, even the narrowest part of the island is less than 100 meters offshore.

In addition, it is not ruled out that the massacre of the city and the dumping of corpses changed the geological structure around Yingwu Island and accelerated the process of connecting the sandbar to the land.Without Zhang Xianzhong, the modern Parrot Island may not have been fully integrated with the main land of Wuhan so quickly. )
After Zhang Xianzhong seized the boat, he went down the river, thinking for a moment that he had escaped.But he obviously underestimated the technical content of the navy -

Even if the officers and soldiers were negligent for a while and could not determine the direction of his escape, the ships pursued by the officers and soldiers obviously had better sailing performance, and the sailors were much more skillful in steering them.

Before midnight, the fleet of government troops had already arrived in a single file, and the torches lit up the Minjiang River with nowhere to hide. There were hundreds of warships.

What made him even more desperate was that in the south downstream, there were also warships going upstream to search. Obviously, they were the officers and soldiers left behind by the wharves along the river in Meishan, Leshan and other places.

Those officers and soldiers seem to have received the fast horse transmission on land. Because galloping horses are faster than ships, they got the news in advance to intercept them. Sun Kewang, who lived and surrendered, was arrested and placed on the bow of the boat to order them to declare their identities and shout.

You know, in Zhang Xianzhong's direct line of troops, the news that "Sun Kewang has given up Emei and fled eastward, completely betraying his adoptive father's large army" has not been confirmed yet.

A considerable number of diehards still think that this is a tactic to alienate the officers and soldiers, and that General Sun is still in Emei County to meet them.

This is also the reason why Zhang Xianzhong's last loyalists dared to go south to break through the siege. If they really knew that Sun Kewang had escaped for nothing, at least half of their determination would be discouraged.

And the combination of siege and pincer attack by the officers and soldiers, incidentally attacking the heart, completely destroyed Zhang Xianzhong's last lineage.

The rogue fleet with a big target was hit directly, scattered and wiped out on the river.

At the beginning, the big ship of the official army wanted to bombard it with a Frang machine or directly sink it. In the end, Shen Lian, the captain of the naval army in charge of the official army, was more knowledgeable, and quickly ordered his subordinates not to overturn it or use heavy artillery. Turtle dove gun.

Before he set off, he got the attention of his young master, asking him to pay attention to whether Zhang Xianzhong's escape fleet was loaded with gold, silver and jewelry, because with Zhang Xianzhong's temperament, he likes to escape with the most valuable and soft belongings.

Fortunately, the combat power was overwhelming, and none of the ships seized by Zhang Xianzhong's troops had cabin armor. The turtledove guns were already able to sweep across. Silver, for a moment actually fell into the snatch.

Shen Lian hastily reiterated the military order again, that the seized property must be returned to the public, and the rewards will be redistributed.For this reason, they even had to cut off seven or eight officers and soldiers who were so jealous that they lost their humanity.

Seeing that it was impossible to escape, Zhang Xianzhong's eyes were bloodshot, he roared unwillingly and drew his knife to slash at the ship's side. He turned around and cut off the thick hemp rope tied to Li Dingguo's body. Wound.

"Father! At this point, do you still want to kill me? I didn't cooperate with the enemy! Even if I did, is there any point in worrying about it now! Why!" Li Dingguo was also aroused fiercely, and after breaking free from the restraints, he jumped back, With the knife drawn from Qi Sansheng, he also refused to sit still.

Zhang Xianzhong saw that he had also taken a weapon, but he just smiled miserably: "If I want to kill you, I won't chop the hemp rope together! Just cut off your head with a horizontal knife! This is to let you go, the attack has no importance, don't you?" It is impossible to remember revenge and kill your father!"

After listening to his explanation, Li Dingguo made some sense, he held the knife still for a while, as if he was thinking.

Zhang Xianzhong didn't bother to hide it anymore, and finally issued an order: "Look at the relationship between father and son, who was right and who was wrong in the past, whether it was a trick or a betrayal, you and I can clean up, let the past go, how about it?
If you don't want to bear the name of betraying your father, then do one last thing for me, and I will take these boats of cavalry to the west bank and sneak up to the west bank to join Xiu'er in the north.If you are caught and killed on the way, that is the same fate.

You just need to continue going south with these fleets, pretend to be me, and distract the officers and soldiers. All the treasures on this fleet will be left to you!But my father advises you, when you are overtaken by the officers and soldiers, it is better to scuttle all the boats!What we can't get, we can't let anyone in the world get it! "

As Zhang Xianzhong said, he ordered the boat to dock west, gathered a small group of cavalry in the dark, and climbed up Mount Qingcheng, intending to go northward from Mount Qingcheng, along the edge of the mountain all the way to Jiangyou, and join Liu Wenxiu.

He has completely given up on the treasure, and just wants to gamble one last time to see if he can save his life.

And he ordered Li Dingguo to lure the enemy away, and finally sink the river with property, which is really in line with his temperament-Zhang Xianzhong has always been a "as long as I temporarily control something, and in the end I can't keep possession, it is better to destroy it." drop" person.

The "Jiangkou Shenyin" he launched in Sichuan in history is almost the same as now. The territory he wants to give up is to massacre the city, which is also the mentality.

Li Dingguo's hand holding the knife tightened, thinking that after all, he worshiped the other party as his adoptive father at the beginning, and it was really not easy to do something rebellious.

After about an incense stick of time, the battle on the Minjiang River was completely over, and the chaos gradually subsided.

Li Dingguo made a decision to let the twenty-odd small boats under his control, carrying the most valuable gold, silver and jewels, all run aground on the Qingcheng Mountain on the west bank, and then abandon the boats and prepare to surrender.

"Second General, don't we follow His Majesty's order to scuttle the ship and sink the gold and silver into the river?" Qi Sansheng didn't have any brains, and finally asked.

"Do you want to die that much? Leave the gold and silver to Zhu Shuren. Maybe Zhu Shuren left us a way to survive because we have a chance to sink the silver and not sink. The matter has come to this point, we have repaid enough, and the debt of gratitude is over. If you can't live like this, it's what you deserve. We killed no fewer people than Tartars."

Soon, Shen Lian also noticed that the last largest group of thieves who gave up resistance abandoned their boats and rushed to the beach. It seemed that at least they could not run away, so he did not open fire indiscriminately. He ordered several rounds to let the musketeers cease fire , and then lined up on the shore to search for and suppress the prisoners.

"I am Li Dingguo! Don't fire! The stranded boats are full of gold and silver! If they blow up, they will rush into the river!" Li Dingguo took the lead in shouting, and all the living soldiers shouted.

As soon as Shen Lian heard that it was true, the group of captives were standing in a pile of gold and silver, and he quickly became more civilized, lest these small broken boats fall apart and rush tens of thousands of taels to a hundred thousand taels into the Minjiang River.

"All put down your weapons! Those who surrender will not be killed!" The officers and soldiers chanted slogans, carefully registering the captives on the boats full of property.

Shen Lian asked Li Dingguo to be tied up, and then he took out his saber and put it on the opponent's neck: "You are Li Dingguo? Where is Zhang Xianzhong?"

Li Dingguo sighed, and Qi Sansheng beside him hurriedly said: "Eight Great Kings...ah no, Zhang Xianzhong asked the Second General to lead the fleet to lead you away. He just brought a few boats with hundreds of riders and sneaked in the water and grass in the north. washed ashore in densely turbulent places, and got into Mount Qingcheng."

Li Dingguo saw that the other party's whereabouts had been exposed, and added: "Don't search randomly, he will definitely go to Jiangyou in the end, and join his third brother Liu Wenxiu."

If ordinary officers and soldiers search randomly, it will inevitably disturb the people, and if the direction is pointed out, then they only need to search in one direction.

However, Shen Lian didn't take the opponent's hypocrisy seriously, and said proudly: "At this time, you have to kill the people to pretend to be a good person? Our Shen family army is no better than other soldiers and horses, and never disturbs the people! Don't demolish houses if you die, don't plunder if you die of starvation!
If you really still have a conscience, you should have arrested Zhang Xianzhong just now to receive the reward!Now what is hypocrisy and hypocrisy!Our Lord Governor likes to reuse those who killed the adoptive father among the thieves the most! "

……

After Li Dingguo was captured, Zhang Xianzhong's last main force was completely wiped out. Early the next morning, Li Dingguo was escorted back to Chengdu, along with Zhang Xianzhong's leftovers from the previous massacre in western Hunan, and the massacres in the past few months. The treasures obtained in Sichuan.

Zhang Xianzhong's "Jiangkou Shenyin" was a magnificent sight in history. In the 21st century, several sunken silver ships were excavated. There is also a "Jiangkou Chenyin Museum" between the northern suburbs of Meishan City and the southern suburbs of Xinjin District, Chengdu.

But all this obviously will not happen again now. At least [-]% of the stolen gold and silver have been recovered, and only less than [-]% were scattered and sank into the Minjiang River with the ship.

However, the Shen family army now knows the location of last night's battle, and they will be able to fight steadily and slowly send soldiers with good water skills to dive and salvage.It is completely different from Zhang Xianzhong's secret Shen Yin and outsiders who don't know the exact location in history.

Zhu Shuren was also a little depressed when he learned that Zhang Xianzhong hadn't been caught yet. He asked the captive's confession, and after thinking about it, he made some deployments and asked the troops to intercept them in possible directions.

Then, he personally arraigned Li Dingguo, and brought Fang Kongxuan, Zhang Huangyan and other civil officials to testify together, and the three parties interrogated.

Zhu Shuren also asked repeatedly why the other party didn't chop off Zhang Xianzhong's head to offer it.He has nothing to say about this kind of people who want to save face and can't kill their father to vote.

It's true that he likes to reuse people who killed his adoptive father, but this kind of thing is rare.

However, if Li Dingguo was sent to Beijing according to the laws of Ming Dynasty, he would probably die.

He thought for a while, and discussed with Fang Kongxuan and Zhang Huangyan: "Fang Shibo, cousin, I thought that this Li Dingguo is the highest-ranking general in Zhang Ni's army who surrendered and captured. In the end, it is said that he didn't listen to Zhang Xianzhong's Shen Yin order. All the stolen gold and silver were handed over.

If he is still sent to the capital, I am afraid that the tens of thousands of captives will be panic-stricken and it will not be convenient for us to reform.Why don't we set up a private court here to give a final opinion on punishment, and not send the capital to the capital, so as to calm people's hearts as soon as possible. "

Fang Kongxuan didn't understand why Zhu Shuren did this, and thought it was really just out of the need to quickly stabilize the situation, so he took on this responsibility as the governor of Sichuan.

The governor of Sichuan, of course, is in charge of civil affairs in Sichuan. Now that Chengdu is officially liberated, the first case was judged in Chengdu, and Fang Kongzhang presided over it. There is nothing wrong with the law.

On the contrary, Zhu Shuren's identity is just a provincial governor who crossed the border to pursue the bandit army, and he should only co-sign this matter in the end.

I believe that after the case is finalized, and the news is reported to Beijing, Chongzhen should be too devastated and have no time to deal with these crap things.

Zhu Shuren unified everyone's thinking, and then gave Li Dingguo a step down: "Li Dingguo! When Chongqing was destroyed, did you suggest that Zhang Xianzhong slaughter the city! When Chengdu was destroyed, did you suggest that Zhang Xianzhong slaughter the city!"

Li Dingguo: "No, my eldest brother and I have dissuaded my father...dissuaded Zhang Xianzhong from massacring the city, saying that this law will certainly not last long."

Zhu Shuren: "Do you have any witnesses?"

Li Dingguo: "Feng Shuangli and Bai Wenxuan can be witnesses."

Zhu Shuren: "Those are all your own people, of course they helped get rid of the crime, but what about the massacres in Changde, Changsha, and Hengzhou?"

……

Zhu Shuren asked for a long time, and the result of the temporary question at the end was that Li Dingguo was able to clear up his relationship with those massacres.

His final surrender can only absolve him of the basic crime of accomplice, and handing over his gold and silver can absolve him of other war crimes.

But there is one last item, which is really difficult to deal with: two years ago, he attacked Xiangyang two years ago, plundered and killed countless people, and even killed King Xiang and King Gui.

That is the crime of killing two princes.

If this happened a year later and Chongzhen was dead, then there is no need to say that the Southern Ming Dynasty would pardon any crime, as long as you were willing to fight for the court.

But now it is only a year away, Chongzhen is still alive, and Ai Nengqi, who was accomplice to Li Dingguo, was sent to Beijing Lingchi two years ago.If Li Dingguo had nothing to do, he really wouldn't be able to convince the public, and the news spread that Zhu Shuren wouldn't even need to be the governor.

So in the end, it was only because he voluntarily surrendered and handed over the silver, exempted from the death penalty, sentenced him to a hundred sticks, and served as a sin, it was a redemption for him to lead a team to attack and kill the two vassal kings.

During the execution, Zhu Shuren personally whipped the thorns thirty times as a warning to others before handing them over to the yamen servants.

Li Dingguo was severely beaten, but he didn't say a word, and was carried down after the beating.

That night, Zhu Shucai went to the prison and continued to interrogate him: "Think about it, you people from Shaanxi can't survive, what kind of grudges do you have against people from Sichuan and Huguang! These innocent and poor people will not be able to provoke Zhang Xianzhong!

Your Majesty's increase of three rates is also to fight against the Tartars!It is the invasion of the Tartars that makes people in the world miserable!If you are a man, in the future, you will help me reform those Zhang Ni soldiers, and kill the Tartars together, and you will still have a chance to wash away the shame in this life!

Otherwise, the imperial court fights against the Tartars for the people of the world, but you only dare to drag your feet behind. In the future, you will leave your name in history, and you will only be infamous as traitors!Whether or not to wipe out the traitors is just a matter of thought!As long as we kill the Tartars together, the sins of the past have a chance to be wiped out! "

(End of this chapter)