On the sixth day of February, the Shun army arrived at Taiyuan City.
Seeing the overwhelming and boundless Shun army, all the officials in the city were frightened.
Of course they knew what would happen if they fell into the hands of the Shun army, and they quickly went to Jin King Zhu Qiugui to find a solution.
To put it bluntly, I hope that the King of Jin will provide money to recruit dead soldiers to defend the city and kill thieves.
At the critical moment of life and death, Zhu Qiugui shed a handful of bitter tears and held out the silver tremblingly.
"The country is in trouble, and I feel the same way. I can only dedicate all my wealth in the hope that I can help."
Looking at a mere three thousand taels of silver, Cai Maode and others almost vomited blood on the spot.
As expected of the vassal king of the Lao Zhu family, even when death was imminent, he still loved his wealth as much as his life.
Cai Maode was dissatisfied and handed three thousand taels of silver to Ti Xue Li Zhisheng.
"Master Li, I'll leave it to you to reward him accordingly."
Li Zhisheng took the order and came down. Looking at the three thousand taels of silver, he felt that the white flowers were particularly dazzling.
With so many officers and soldiers guarding the city, three thousand taels of silver may not be enough.
Plan for today...
He kept the silver safely in his bag, and then took out the score sheet.
The officers and soldiers guarding the city didn't have much morale to begin with, so one can imagine their mood when they saw the waste paper in their hands.
In the early morning of the eighth day of the lunar month, Zhang Xiong, the governor of Biaoying Pi, opened the new south gate and surrendered to the Shun army.
The Dashun army swarmed in, and Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, fell easily without experiencing any fighting.
Zhu Qiugui was captured alive, Cai Maode committed suicide, the chief envoy Zhao Jianji, the patrolling road Bi Gongchen, the guarding road Mao Bingwen, the governor Lin Gangzhong, and the Taiyuan magistrate Sun Kangzhou were executed.
I only mentioned Li Zhisheng’s eloquent explanation.
"I have been in office for three months and have not entered the examination room yet."
Han Lin, a scribe who surrendered to the army, praised him and said that he was the most literate scholar in the world.
Li Zhisheng, who was greedy for money, was lucky enough to survive.
Li Zicheng stayed in Taiyuan for eight days. While resting his troops and horses, he assigned officials to bring Shanxi under the rule of Dashun.
After the rear was stabilized, they continued to march towards the capital.
Just after setting off from Taiyuan, Li Zicheng issued the edict of the first year of Yongchang.
In this edict, he formally persuaded Chongzhen to surrender. Obviously in his eyes, the Ming Dynasty was already in his pocket.
After Taiyuan, Shun's army encountered resistance in Ningwu.
This was also the only decent resistance from the Ming Dynasty during the entire march.
The commander-in-chief Zhou Yuji was extremely stubborn and would rather die than surrender, intending to become a loyal minister and martyr of the Ming Dynasty.
The entire Ningwu offensive and defensive battle was lackluster. The strength gap between the two sides was too great. The city did not hold for long before it was breached by the Shun army.
Zhou Yuji finally fulfilled his wish and was buried with the Ming Dynasty which was about to collapse.
Next is Datong.
The civil servants in the city wanted to defend the city to the death, but the commander-in-chief Jiang Yu was very cunning and directly opened the city gate and surrendered.
This person had no position to speak of in the chaos of the late Ming Dynasty, like a reed falling in the wind.
In the end, he died due to speculation.
Datong, an important city on nine sides, surrendered without firing a shot, quickly triggering a chain reaction.
From then on, the Shun army marched eastward without encountering any resistance. Officials even came out to meet them for ten miles.
Similar to the North Road, Liu Fangliang's march on the South Road was also extremely smooth.
In early March, they swept through southwestern Shanxi and northern Henan, and invaded Zhangde Prefecture and Daming Prefecture.
But here, Liu Fangliang became much more cautious.
"Is Xia Kingdom over there?"
Surrounded by his generals, Liu Fangliang climbed up and looked into the distance, looking eastward.
In the distance, on the horizon, there are clearly defined boundaries on the flat land.
Stretching barbed wire divides the same land.
Behind the barbed wire are various trenches, which are difficult for both humans and horses to cross.
Only a few small roads in the middle were guarded by Xia troops in "fancy clothes".
The junction looked peaceful, with only a few Xia Army soldiers patrolling back and forth. But Liu Fangliang knew very well that there must be a terrifying army hidden behind it.
"General, now that I, Dashun, have been destined by fate, these Xia people are trying to separate themselves and do not know their fate. I will be the vanguard at the end of the year to annihilate them for your majesty."
Zhai Feng was gearing up and wanted to start a war with Xia Guo.
Liu Fangliang was startled and quickly warned.
"Before leaving, Your Majesty repeatedly stated that the first priority is to destroy the Emperor of the Zhu family, and must not create any extraneous problems. I believe that the Xia thieves will only live in peace, and although they may be tyrannical for a while, they will not have much future. When Your Majesty captures the capital,
When you sit in the Dragon Court and order that no one in the world dares to disobey, it will be easy to annihilate the mere Xia thieves."
Only then did the generals of the Shun army have to restrain their thoughts of making great achievements.
Under the constraints of Liu Fangliang, after the Shun army occupied Daming Mansion, they only looked at the Xia army from a distance and did not provoke any trouble.
The area where the two sides bordered was peaceful for a while.
After settling in place, Liu Fangliang sent his army northward and approached Baoding.
By this time, it was useless for Daming to try to struggle any more.
In March, the Shun army entered Jifu, with the capital in sight.
Chongzhen finally understood that a disaster was coming.
At this time, he became anxious and sought medical treatment, and he did not want to let the ministers take the blame.
He began to randomly award rewards, hoping that someone else would serve him.
He decreed that Wu Sangui should be named Ping Xibo, Jizhen's general Tang Tong should be named Ding Xibo, and Fenglu's general Huang Degong should be named Jingnan Bo. He also quickly ordered Wu Sangui and Tang Tong to lead troops to defend the capital, intending to make a final desperate struggle.
Unfortunately, it was too late.
It was already March 13th when Wu Sangui received the order and started to leave.
Chen Yan, the chief assistant, saw that something was going wrong and did not want to be buried with the Ming Dynasty, so he actually resigned.
Chongzhen went crazy with anger and cursed loudly.
"Your death will not be enough to fulfill your obligations."
Chen Yan didn't care at all. After returning, he packed his luggage and planned to leave.
The funny thing is that he had so much property that he couldn't finish it after many days of cleaning up. As a result, he was blocked in the city by the Shun army.
In the end, even if he handed over 40,000 taels of silver as salary, although he did not suffer the same physical pain as the officials, he still could not escape death in the end.
The Shun army pressed forward step by step, but reinforcements were delayed in arriving.
Chongzhen finally panicked.
The feeling of doomsday coming made him finally feel scared.
The staunchness he had pretended to be in the past made Chongzhen's mind active in the face of real death threats.
He thought of a way.
Move south.
"I have thought about this for a long time, but no one agrees, so I have postponed it until now. I am very pleased that my beloved and I agree. I have decided to move south, but I am afraid that the ministers will not agree. After my beloved goes down, I will discuss it secretly with others.
, come up with appropriate measures.”
Chongzhen secretly summoned Zuo Zhongyun and Li Mingrui and expressed his desire to move south. He hoped that Li Mingrui would join forces with officials who had the same idea to build momentum in the DPRK to facilitate this trip.
Even with a knife on his neck, Chongzhen was still playing tricks and did not want to take responsibility.
I have to say that if he did not die, there would really be no justice.
Originally, this matter was carried out secretly, but in February, Li Jiantai, who personally campaigned on behalf of the emperor, saw that he could not escape the blame for his crimes, and publicly proposed: "The thieves are powerful and invincible. I would like to serve the crown prince and go south."
This is tantamount to making the intention to move south public.
Not only did it disrupt Chongzhen's plan, it also put Chongzhen on the fire.
Chongzhen's original idea was to go south himself and leave the prince behind to supervise the country.
But the ministers in the court were all afraid of being left to assist the prince, becoming scapegoats, and being blamed for losing the capital.
Furthermore, even if I go south with him, I am afraid that I will be punished for proposing to move south.
So everyone pretended to be deaf and dumb and didn't take a stand.
As long as you don't speak, you won't take responsibility.
Chongzhen, once again played himself to death!
On March 15th, the Shun army approached Juyongguan.
The capital has begun to feel the aura of Shunjun.