Sichuan.

Liu Wenxiu has been besieging Chongqing for more than two months, but has been unable to overcome it.

Chongqing is located at the confluence of the Yangtze River and the Jialing River. It faces the river three times. It is a mountain city that is easy to defend and difficult to attack.

When Zhang Xianzhong led the Western Army into Sichuan in the 17th year of Chongzhen, he had no choice but to take Chongqing City at first. Later, Li Dingguo used the coffin gunpowder method to blow up the city wall near Tongyuan Gate in Chongqing. Only then did the Western Army conquered Chongqing in one fell swoop and killed Ming Rui King Zhu Changhao, Sichuan Governor Chen Shiqi and other Ming Dynasty officials. This battle also laid the foundation for the founding of the Great Western Kingdom in Sichuan.

After Zhang Xianzhong decided to leave Sichuan to fight against the Qing Dynasty, he left only the general Liu Tingju to station in Chongqing with few people. As a result, Chongqing was soon recovered by the Ming general Zeng Ying, who made a comeback.

Because Zeng Ying had a close relationship with Sichuan Governor Ma Gan, he had a very poor relationship with the "airborne" governor of Sichuan Wang Yingxiong. Therefore, when the Shun Army attacked Baoning from Hanzhong and quickly defeated the local Ming army and came to Chongqing, Wang Yingxiong, as the governor of Sichuan, failed to make the decision to rescue Chongqing as soon as possible, resulting in Zeng Ying, whose troops were less than Shun Army, was surrounded by the Shun Army in Chongqing City.

At first, Zeng Ying's generals advocated giving up Chongqing and luring Shun's army into Sichuan to fight again. Zeng Ying believed that Chongqing was a key place and must not be lost, so he stood there and asked Sichuan Governor Ma Gan for help.

In April, Sichuan Governor Ma Gan convened generals of Ming army from all over Sichuan to discuss military discussions in Chengdu to discuss the matter of Shun Army entering Sichuan.

Because Ma Gan has a very high prestige in Sichuan and is deeply loved by the people, almost all the Ming army in Sichuan participated in this military convention.

In terms of the regular army of the Ming army, there were Li Xiao, the general entrenched in Suining; Wang Xiang, the general entrenched in Zunyi; Yang Zhan, the deputy general entrenched in Luzhou; there were Cao Xun from Lizhou, Tan Hong from Kuizhou, Tan Yi from Wushan, Liu Tiren from Hu Daoming, Yao Yulin from Liangshan and others.

Most of these Ming generals were defeated by the Western Army. They were originally in danger. As a result, the Western Army became active again because they went out of Sichuan to fight against the Qing Dynasty and became the main force of the Sichuan Ming Army.

In addition to the regular army of the Ming army, Ma Gan also invited Wang Guangxing, Wang Youjin, Hu Jiusi, Fan Yiheng, Fan Wenguang, Liu Daozhen, Yuan Tao and others to join the military convention.

Before this, in order to consolidate his position as governor, Ma Gan better undermined the Sichuan Governor Wang Yingxiong, and was willing to reward the loess thieves, which turned the local thieves into official positions and became official troops.

However, it is said that last year, the Shunjun also sent people to contact the loess thieves, promising their high-ranking officials and generous salaries. It is unknown whether anyone in the inner circle was secretly attracted by the Shunjun.

Because he had no soldiers and no power, the governor's headquarters of Sichuan Governor Wang Yingxiong was not located in Chengdu, but in Jiading. Perhaps one was because he was afraid of being excluded by Ma Gan in Chengdu, and the other was because he wanted to win over some local chieftains in Jiading for his own use.

Ma Gan became the governor of Sichuan as a juren. He did not start from childhood like a local official during the Taiping period and was promoted step by step. He relied on the merits and prestige accumulated in fighting with the peasant army to become a brigade. Therefore, he was very capable and had a very accurate judgment on the current situation.

If he can gather a pile of loose sand of Sichuan army leaders and local thieves, he will know that this Sichuan governor is far more capable than that of the governor.

At the meeting, all forces from Sichuan reached an agreement on rescuing Chongqing and resisting the enemy beyond the "national gate", and they all believed that the Shun Army could not be allowed to capture Chongqing, otherwise the Shun Army would definitely launch troops to attack Chengdu by land and land, reappearing the old story of Zhang Xianzhong's capture of Chengdu back then.

Qin Liangyu, who was far away in Shizhu, also sent an envoy to attend the meeting and told Ma Gan that if necessary, she would lead Shizhu's children to compete with the bandits again.

The Shizhu soldiers had a strong combat power. During the Tianqi period, they fought the Battle of Hunhe with the Zhejiang soldiers, and later fought with Zhang Xianzhong. Although most of Qin Liangyu's brothers and nephews sacrificed their lives for the country, the essence of the Shizhu soldiers was still there. If they could participate in the battle to rescue Chongqing, they would be able to increase the chances of victory of the official army.

However, Ma Gan considered that Qin Liangyu was 70 years old after all, and how could he bear to let the veteran take the battlefield again at such an age, so he refused Qin Liangyu's request to re-open.

After two days of discussion and private coordination, perhaps with money, grain, territory, or official title, Ma Gan finally determined the rescue plan.

The plan is mainly composed of 20,000 generals, 30,000 Wang Xiang's army, and more than 20,000 Yang Zhan's army. The rest are divided into three groups, and actually mobilized 140,000 troops, and 300,000 troops to rescue Chongqing.

The Ming army set out from Hezhou to Chongqing, and the elite troops went out of Fotu Pass on land. The main force followed the Hezhou waterway and waterway, hoping to attack Liu Wenxiu's troops in Shun Army that besieged Chongqing from land.

When Liu Wenxiu found out that the Ming army was coming to help, he was not afraid because in his eyes, the Ming generals were just defeated generals.

However, Liu Wenxiu did not underestimate the enemy. His 12th Army was adapted from the original elite of the Western Army. Most of the generals had experience in Pingchuan. Therefore, whether it was terrain or humanistic, the Shun Army was not inferior to the Ming Army.

After carefully listening to the information, Liu Wenxiu finally decided to let Li Laiheng lead a army to resist the Ming army Yang Zhan's unit who came from Fotu Pass on land, and ordered Helan and Wu Dading to lead Hanzhong troops to resist the Ming army who came from water.

He ordered Zhang Yuanli, Dou Mingwang and other former generals of the Western Army to lead 20,000 people to monitor Zeng Ying's troops in Chongqing city, and Liu Wenxiu led 3,000 light cavalry to detour, running more than 200 miles from Bishan and Yongchuan, and launched a surprise attack from the rear of the Ming army, Yu Tingxi defeated the Ming army Li Xiao's troops.

General Li Xiao was beheaded by Liu Wenxiu's formation, and the remaining troops were defeated.

When Wang Xiang heard that Li Xiao was defeated, he did not dare to fight and hurriedly withdrew his troops to Qijiang. Yang Zhan became an isolated army all the way, but he was not scared away. Instead, he fought fiercely with Li Laiheng's troops, who blocked him, at Fotu Pass.

The battle was very fierce. Shunming and the two sides did not give in to each other. They fought from morning to evening before they stopped their troops. The soldiers on both sides suffered great losses.

However, Yang Zhan’s mission is to rescue Chongqing City, so Yang Zhan’s mission cannot be completed if he cannot break through Fotu Pass.

Even if the Shun Army suffered heavy casualties, as long as it can successfully block Yang Zhan's troops at Fotu Pass, it will be a victory.

There were more than 10,000 people from Ertan's army that sent troops from Kuizhou. Originally, they should have joined the main force of the Ming army in Jiangjin, but who would have thought that Hu Jiusi, a thief who was taken over by Sichuan Governor Ma Gan, attacked Ertan, and forced Ertan to retreat to Kuizhou.

When Cao Xun of Lizhou and Liu Tiren of Wushan learned that Ertan had withdrawn his troops, they stopped to march and waited and watched. As a result, except for Yang Zhan at Fotu Pass and Shun Army fighting desperately, Li Xiao's army was defeated by Liu Wenxiu who was rushing to attack, and the rest of the Ming army did not join the battlefield as agreed by the Chengdu army.

In terms of waterways, the generals of the Shun Army, Helan and Wu Dading, were both from the former Ming army. The two generals sent people to pull up iron chains on the Jialing River overnight and secretly hid arson ships in the reeds on both sides of the straits. When the Ming army warships rushed downstream, they were crossed by the iron chains on the river. They were burning with fire. When they were chopped, hundreds of arson ships filled with tinder oil quickly rushed towards the Ming army ships using the wind direction, and they burned hundreds of Ming army warships and retreated in a hurry.

Zeng Ying, who was surrounded in the city, did not know that the reinforcements had been defeated. Seeing that the siege of Shun was often transferred, he judged that the reinforcements had arrived. Therefore, he led his generals Li Ding, Yu Chong, Tao Kefa and others to move all the warships in the river to the south bank, preparing to attack his camp while the Shun army was dispersed.

Unexpectedly, Zhang Yuanli, who was left by the Shun Army, Dou Mingwang was too familiar with Zeng Ying's fighting style and knew that this man was good at night attacking, so he dug a large number of pits in the camp, and a large amount of gunpowder was buried in it. When Zeng Ying found something wrong after rushing to the camp, he exploded everywhere, and Shun Army ambushed out from both east and west directions at the same time.

Zeng Ying knew that he had fallen into a trap and was suddenly defeated and hurriedly sent an order to withdraw his troops. The Ming army was in chaos and three or four thousand people were killed.

Zeng Ying, who escaped by chance, was still scared and never dared to leave the city again. He was determined to stand firm and wait for help.

Sichuan Governor Ma Gan finally struggled with the defeat of the reinforcements, and the retreating, the loess thieves Hu Sanjiusi, Fan Yiheng, Fan Wenguang and others raised their flags to rebel, causing chaos in the rear of the Ming army. In the short term, even if Ma Gan was willing, he was unable to organize reinforcements to rescue Chongqing again.

However, although Zeng Ying was defeated, Liu Wenxiu still couldn't take Chongqing. The reason was that Zeng Ying knew that the Western Army used coffin sealing gunpowder to blow up Chongqing's city walls, so it not only reinforced the city walls, but also spread many positions on the city walls, which caused the two tunnels organized by Liu Wenxiu to be discovered and destroyed by the Ming army.

The war was in a stalemate.

On May 18, Liu Wenxiu received a notice from the Imperial Camp that Li Chengdong's Ninth Army had already moved south from Xi'an and could enter Baoning within five days at the latest.
Chapter completed!