In the history of the Ming Dynasty, only the level of defeat in the Tumu Fort Incident can be compared with the defeat in the eastern suburbs of the capital.
The elite troops of the Beijing camp (no one can know whether they are elites or not, because most of the selected "elite" soldiers of the Beijing camp who participated in the war have never returned to the military camp again) lost 30,000 yuan, except for the General Du Songsou, Shanhaiguan. Outside the ministry, there were only more than 10,000 troops from other towns who fled back to the capital.
More than 100,000 troops collapsed within one day. Such a major blow almost fooled all the officials of the court, and everyone was at a loss. In the court, the big guys were quarreling in a hurry. The pirate army, which was close to the corner, seemed to be able to enter the city immediately, but none of the civil servants and generals in the capital could come up with practical solutions that could cope with the crisis.
Only two people could still stay awake and immediately went to the palace to persuade the emperor to go on a tour: the chief assistant of the cabinet, Fang Congzhe, and the Minister of War Huang Jiashan.
After the Chinese army won a great victory on the battlefield, some generals were impulsive and ignored Chen Zhongji's order to withdraw his troops and return to the camp. They chased the defeated soldiers of the imperial army and chased the Ming army all the way. The farthest-running unit even captured Changping.
The governor of Ji Liao in Changping, Wang Keshou, had only a few thousand men under his command, and the rest were defeated soldiers without fighting spirit, with completely chaotic organization and unorganized and disciplined.
The student barracks were chased to the city of Changping. The battalion commander Wang Shuowang was young and energetic. The official army was defeated too quickly. As a reserve team, his troops had not had time to participate in the battle. The battle had ended. He was very unwilling to accept it. In the evening, I received an order to clean the battlefield and led the team to pursue Changping without authorization. There were two sailors and marines on the road. A sentry from the 1st Brigade of the First Division was also pursuing the Ming army. So the 1,000 people promoted the military ranks together. Wang Shuowang, the highest (major), was heading and headed towards Changping. They did not have heavy firearms, but only carried more than fifty thunder rockets.
At dawn the next day, they arrived at Changping City, and set up rockets on the plain 200 steps away from the east gate with a dedicated launching frame, and shot more than 50 rockets into Changping in one breath.
The Ming army soldier who had been panicked for a night was sleepy and suddenly woke up by the explosion. With a whistle, he exploded the camp.
At the beginning, Wang Keshou's direct battalion could still control the situation of the four gates. However, when the student army blew the conch horn, the Ming soldiers who had not recovered were completely in chaos by yesterday's defeat. set.
The four gates of Changping City were wide open, and all the soldiers fled out, leaving nothing to care about.
The soldiers who escaped from the east gate bumped into the Chinese military camp and immediately knelt down and surrendered. The rest of the soldiers ran around. In a short while, Changping became an empty city.
Wang Shuowang and the two sailors and marine whistle commanders looked at each other, full of suspicion. They sent people to the city to investigate and found that the official army had indeed run away. Then they entered the city with confidence. In the central tent of the Beijing camp, several sailors found that they had hanged themselves. Governor Wang Keshou of Ji Liao.
Wang Shuowang and others were shocked by their own battle results: various materials were piled up in Changping City, not only supplying food and grass for more than 100,000 troops, but also a large amount of gunpowder, countless cold weapons, firearms, and 500,000 taels. Silver, the imperial court originally planned to reward the three armies, but Wang Shuowang and his team had only more than 1,000 people in total, and they could not move these things away anyway.
Mai Haisheng, the chief officer of the sailor and musket team, rushed over and was shocked by so many supplies. While he dispatched people to the northern suburbs of the capital, he also captured the new soldiers and sent the scouts to set up guard posts everywhere. At the same time, He sent a messenger to the camp to report, asking Chen Zhongji to send someone to transport the spoils.
Fortunately, although the Beijing camp's official army still has 50,000 or 60,000 people, they are curled up in the city and dare not leave the city at all. Chen Zhongji organized tens of thousands of people from nearby places and sent most of the troops of the First Division to transport supplies. The Chinese army was busy in Changping City for three days before emptiing all supplies. During this period, it was not disturbed by any official army. All the supplies concentrated from half of the empire were captured by the Chinese army.
In addition to Changping's material, around the battlefield in the eastern suburbs of the capital, the Chinese army also seized 806,950 kilograms of clean salt, 176,28 kilograms of sulfur, and 5500 kilograms of gunpowder. There are also 100,000 kilograms of lead bullets, 253,200 iron bullets, 50,000 cannons, bird guns, and Folang machine guns, as well as various horses, cows, and donkeys. More than 50,000 mules and more than 3,000 vehicles, and nearly 3,000 vehicles such as large trucks were obtained. Changping mainly obtained food and grass, which solved the problem of winter food and grass supply for the Chinese military's northern line troops in one fell swoop, and it was far from being able to do so. Many, Chen Zhongji ordered the allocation of a large amount of food and grass, and began to distribute grain to people around the capital, including Tianjin and other places to win people's hearts.
If it weren't for the poor quality of the Ming army's gunpowder, the Chinese army's arms supply burden would have been much reduced. Based on the Tianjin Guard Arms Workshop, the Chinese army opened a temporary arsenal and used the seized gunpowder to process and produce a large amount of them. Thunder rockets, grenades, mines and other things, high-quality musket launchers, cannon launchers and flowering bullets filled with explosives, they still have to be supplied by Taiwan.
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The fall of Changping made all the nerves of the court officials in the capital collapse. High officials of the court kept abandoning their posts, and relatives of all nobles and royals fled Beijing one after another. The city gates were strictly guarded before the war and the court officials were not allowed to be allowed to be The regulations on leaving the city without authorization have been ignored. Some of the eunuchs who manage the city gate have also abandoned their posts and fled. For several days, large and small vehicles have left the city gate and the people in the capital are shaken. However, what the court feels strange is: the sea After the Kou-Chinese Army captured Changping, it stopped further military activities.
Fang Congzhe and Huang Jiashan suggested that the emperor would go west to Luoyang or Chang'an, and Fengyang could also be set as the "Zhizai" - the temporary capital, that is, to move south, and also suggested that the prince be kept in the capital. Emperor Wanli was hesitant and did not agree, he After staying in the Danei Deep Palace for decades, he didn't leave the palace and didn't want to leave. He also hoped that the king-supporting army could come in time to save the crisis.
However, a large group of censors jumped out and criticized several major officials in the cabinet, who were "greedy for life and feared death, and encouraged the emperor to abandon his ancestors' tombs and ignore them. They were undoubtedly treacherous officials.
Some ministers were afraid that when the emperor moved south, they would be left to assist the prince in guarding the capital and become scapegoats. Even if they moved south, once the capital was lost, they might have been accepted by others because they once advocated moving south. So the ministers were all submissive. , No comments were made, some court officials, such as the left censor Li Banghua, advocated that "the emperor naturally defended the country" and could not fight west or move south. Besides, the southern capital had been lost, so it was not safe to move south, so it was placed outside the city and was eyeing it. The Chinese army ignored it, and the ministers of the court began to separate their parties and attacked each other's "gentlemen and villains" and "treacherous ministers and treacherous ministers". Another round of quarrel began.
Emperor Wanli has learned about the old problems of the civil servant class over the past few decades, but he is not a promising master, and he is powerless and unwilling to completely reform politics. At this moment, the court officials began to quarrel again, which made him extremely disappointed with the court ministers. On the day, he summoned ministers to discuss the move of the capital, and some people suggested sending the crown prince to Fengyang or Luoyang to supervise the army. Several censors attacked this person with "bad intentions". The censors in the late Ming Dynasty had become the pioneers of political party disputes. , Hypocrites who seek fame and integrity are unrealistic in order to "learn their reputation in history" and are their best bet on the ground regardless of facts.
Emperor Wanli was furious and patted the armrest of the imperial seat and shouted: "The ancestors worked hard for a long battle and set up their tripods on this land. If the thief comes, how can they blame the people of the countryside and the people for the guards of the city? Why do they thank Governor Wang and others for the accident? I? Let me go alone, like the ancestral temple, what is the country? What is the ancestral tomb? What is the millions of creatures in the capital? Even though the treacherous thieves are rampant, I will use the spirit of the ancestors of heaven and earth and the help of all my strength, or may not be so. If things are unknown, the king dies in the country, and the righteousness is the right thing, my ambition has been decided!"
When Fang Congzhe heard this, he was very disappointed and quickly came out to persuade him: "Your Majesty is considering the country and the people. Please send His Highness to Fengyang to supervise the army in Fengyang to try to suppress the enemy's plan."
Emperor Wanli sneered on the throne: "The ministers here assisted me in managing the world for more than ten years, but I still can't help you. What are you doing? Mr. Wang talks about the strategies of fighting and defense, and the ministers think about defeating the enemy. Strategy, there is no need to say anything more," said Emperor Wanli, after saying that, he left with a sleeve.
The imperial court looked at each other, and each saw despair, disappointment or light of hope in each other's eyes.
Of course, these imperial courts were not unplanned in military affairs. The Ministry of War’s emergency reports also flew dozens of times a day, requiring the Jiubian Bian soldiers, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Henan, Shandong, and Huguang to immediately send royal soldiers to the emperor. Come to the capital to defend the city.
After the imperial court made this happen, it was originally gathering in Huzhou and other places, preparing to recover Huguang in Nanjing, and Ming troops in Shandong and other places had to turn around and go north to support the direction of the capital. As a result, the proposed counterattack on Nanjing was still in the womb, and before it started it's over.
As a large number of troops were transferred to the two capitals of the north and south, the defenses of various places were empty, and the chaos across the Ming Empire had begun to take shape.
First of all, Shandong, which has been affected by disaster for several consecutive years, under the agitation of the Chinese military, civil unrest occurred everywhere in Dezhou, Qingzhou, Jinan, Dengzhou and other places. Hungry people seized the granary of the government, robbed the grain of the large households, robbed the grain of the canal, and even took up weapons to attack. Prefectures and counties.
Then, after a large number of Sichuan soldiers left Sichuan, the people of Chengdu, Chongqing, Pengxian and Yazhou rose up at the end of the 45th year of Wanli, spontaneously punished clerks, gentry, and gentry, and the royal family's minions and toothaches. The rest of the prefectures and counties also heard the news and moved. , The people entered the city with guns and sticks, demolished the houses of the yamen runners, and killed dozens of yamen runners. Most of the officials in various prefectures and counties had to close the doors of the yamen all day long, staying inside and not daring to come out, and then the people turned to plunder the wealthy households, Many people who have accumulated wealth in rural areas suffer as a result.
Public riots have also spread across the northwest. Shaanxi people, who were overwhelmed by the newly added "sea pay", began riots of robbing grain as winter approached.
Various information gathered in the hands of Yin Feng in Nanjing. He laughed and said to Zeng Qi with a smile: "My father-in-law, it's time for negotiation,"