Chongzhen's domineering

Chapter 209 The Arrogant Rebel King Suffers the Consequences (Part 2)

In February, the capital city was still covered in ice and snow, but in Runing Prefecture, the southernmost part of the Central Plains, spring breezes were already blowing, making people's hearts itch with longing.

Zhang Xianzhong had been itching to act for a long time, and with this spring breeze, he finally couldn't resist making his move.

He directly led his army north and besieged Ruyang, the capital of Runing Prefecture, in one fell swoop!
This is the heartland of Chongfan. Chongwang and his clansmen almost all hid in Ruyang City. Hong Chengchou even sent 5,000 troops to garrison here.

Originally, a prefecture city, plus 5,000 border troops and a city full of able-bodied men, would not be easy for even hundreds of thousands of rebels to take. Historically, Li Zicheng led hundreds of thousands of troops to attack Yunyang Prefecture twice but failed.

Although Ruyang Prefecture was not as strategically important as Yunyang Prefecture, its city walls were about the same height, and it had a much larger number of able-bodied men than Yunyang Prefecture.

As a result, the five thousand border troops guarding Ruyang City surrendered without any resistance!

It's unclear whether this was due to the secret efforts of the three powerful clans and eight imperial merchants in Puzhou, or whether the border troops felt that the overwhelming number of rebels was simply impossible to resist.

In short, Zhang Xianzhong captured Ruyang City with ease, and Chong Fan's money, grain, land, houses, shops and so on were all taken into his possession, so he made a small fortune.

Immediately afterwards, he led his army north without stopping, heading straight for Kaifeng Prefecture.

Historically, he suffered a setback because Li Zicheng launched the attack first, so at that time his strength was not as great as Li Zicheng's.

At this moment, he seemed to have suddenly become enlightened, constantly taking the initiative to launch attacks, and even preparing to take advantage of the fact that the northern part of the Central Plains was still covered in ice and snow to sweep away all the vassal states of the Central Plains in one fell swoop with lightning speed.

Gao Yingxiang wasn't stupid. The fatty meat was already on the table, and Zhang Xianzhong had already started eating. Naturally, he wouldn't stand on ceremony.

As soon as news of Zhang Xianzhong's siege of Ruyang reached Shanxi, he immediately led his army into Weihui Prefecture and captured Luzhou in one fell swoop!
As for why he chose to attack the Lu vassal state of Weihui Prefecture first instead of the Zheng vassal state of Huaiqing Prefecture, there were naturally reasons for that.

When Prince Lu was enfeoffed, Empress Dowager Li, the birth mother of Emperor Wanli, gave all the gold and silver treasures she could give to her precious youngest son. Emperor Wanli also reluctantly gave a lot of flesh to his own brother. It is said that when Prince Lu was enfeoffed, there were more than 500 cargo ships carrying wealth!
Moreover, after the Prince of Lu took up his fiefdom, he continued to plunder and extort from his fiefdom. His wealth now is certainly no less than it was at the beginning of his fiefdom.

Furthermore, taking Weihui Prefecture would not only prevent Prince Lu from fleeing to Beizhili by alerting the enemy, but also block Prince Zheng of Huaiqing Prefecture from escaping to Beizhili.

If he takes down Prince Zheng of Huaiqing Prefecture first, then Prince Lu of Weihui Prefecture will most likely flee to Beizhili with his gold, silver and valuables, and he will suffer a huge loss.

After Gao Yingxiang seized control of Luzhou, he made a fortune. Immediately afterward, he led his army straight to Huaiqing Prefecture, as if he was afraid that if he ate the fat meat, Zhang Xianzhong would devour it all.

When Zhang Xianzhong captured Chongfan, the first to receive the news was not the imperial court in the capital, but Pan Guozhong, who was far away in Yunyang Prefecture.

This is because the waterways to the south from Runing Prefecture are now open, and steamships are much faster on the waterways than the fast horses at the post stations in the freezing cold.

Pan Guozhong had already secretly sent people to keep an eye on Zhang Xianzhong. As soon as Zhang Xianzhong made his move, Pan Guozhong immediately sent his trusted men by cart, boat and ship to Xing'an Prefecture to secretly inform Pan Yunteng of the news.

Pan Yunteng had made preparations in advance; he had already arranged for over a thousand trusted confidants to infiltrate Hanzhong Prefecture.

Furthermore, Hanzhongwei was his hometown, and he was extremely familiar with its defenses. He knew exactly where the troops were inside and outside the city and how many troops would be needed to take it down.

However, he did not go there in person, because too many people there recognized him, and even with his slight disguise, he could not fool many people's eyes.

He then sent one of his disciples, a true disciple, to take over Hanzhong Prefecture in one fell swoop, looted all the money and grain from Prince Rui's mansion, and then placed Prince Rui and his family under house arrest in the mansion.

This resulted in the siege and even fall of three vassal states, and the urgent memorials sent from 800 li away flew to the capital like snowflakes.

Zhu Jue, however, seemed completely unaware.

He's keeping an eye on the construction progress of the shops and canal wharves in the northern outer city.

Around 9 a.m. that day, after he had finished reviewing the memorials, he led Zheng Zhilong, Wang Chengen, Fang Zhenghua, and others straight to the northern outer city.

However, this time he did not go to check on the construction progress of the shops in the city, nor did he go to the construction site of the widening of the moat. He directly led his group to the gate tower of the new North Gate, and then raised a large telescope to scan it carefully.

At this time, the water in this section of the moat had been drained. The 50,000 soldiers of the Beijing Garrison and the 100,000 young and strong farmers who had been conscripted had already dug up the embankment on the north side of this section of the moat, and had dug down to a depth of nearly three feet. Lu Xiang-sheng, Bi Mao-kang, and others were below directing the soldiers of the Beijing Garrison to prepare to break the ice.

This so-called icebreaking involved breaking through the nearly three-foot-long ice floes on the moat.

However, their method of breaking the ice was not to smash the ice surface, but to dig along the riverbank.

Lu Xiang-sheng was directing the soldiers of the Beijing garrison to carefully dig under the ice along the existing irrigation canal, while Bi Mao-kang was directing his craftsmen to carry fifty-pound wine jars into the ice.

After a while, all the soldiers of the Beijing garrison finally climbed out from under the canal and ran to the far end of the canal. Only one soldier remained, holding a tinderbox, standing on the riverbank, staring at the row of flag bearers standing on the distant mound.

Lu Xiang-sheng raised his large telescope and scanned the surroundings until all the flag bearers had raised their command flags. Only then did he loudly command, "Light the fire!"

The command flag was waved downwards like waves, and the soldiers of the Beijing garrison, holding tinderboxes, immediately lit the fuses and ran towards the end of the canal. Soon, a row of white smoke rose from the canal.

Not long after, a series of explosions rang out in the moat. The ice beneath the surface turned milky white, as if a river of milk had been poured in. Many canals were even blasted into chunks of ice. With a loud bang, the entire earth trembled. The three-foot-long section of ice on the river tilted to the north as if its support had been removed, and then broke into countless pieces.

Seeing this, Zhu Jue couldn't help but secretly breathe a sigh of relief.

Thankfully, it was a success.

Otherwise, breaking through the ice on the river would be too dangerous.

This is solid ice that is more than ten miles long, ten zhang wide, and three chi thick. A quick calculation will tell you that its weight is at least two or three hundred thousand tons!

If you try to smash it while standing on the ice, it could crack the ice, which would be disastrous. If you try to dig it up from the side, it could collapse the ice, which would be even more disastrous. The safest option is to use clay pots and explosives.

When the soldiers of the Beijing garrison saw the broken ice covering the moat, they couldn't help but cheer in unison.

Many of them worked tirelessly, digging new ice cellars, waiting for this last batch of broken ice!

Who knows how much money they could make from that?

Seeing this, Zhu Jue pondered over the broken ice covering the river.

At this moment, Lu Xiangshan, Bi Maokang, Yuan You, and others had already hurried to the city gate tower, cupped their hands and bowed, saying, "Your humble servants pay their respects to Your Majesty."

Zhu Jue nodded slightly, then solemnly said, "Jiandou, from now on, the dredging of the moat will be handed over to the soldiers of the Beijing Garrison. They can take turns cleaning sections of the moat every year, just like this, when it is frozen."

We can also take this opportunity to build more docks along the moat, and convert the canals into dock areas. In this way, the moat will be densely covered with docks in just a few years, and the soldiers of the Beijing garrison can also obtain a large amount of ice through this.

At this time, there were very few docks in the moats inside and outside the capital, because the moats were too narrow to make it easy to build docks.

If the river is cleared in this way, the digging of the canal can be done directly in the area where the dock needs to be built, which is equivalent to widening the river channel, and there will be no problem in building the dock.

Lu Xiang-sheng nodded repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty is wise, I understand."

Uh, it explodes like this every year?
Upon hearing this, Bi Maokang cautiously replied, "Your Majesty, I dare to say that this method of blasting is too wasteful of gunpowder. In order to ensure the support under the ice surface is in place, we have buried ten canisters of fifty catties of gunpowder in the riverbed in front of each canal. That's more than one hundred thousand catties of gunpowder."

The charcoal is manageable; we can have as much as we need. The problem is we don't have much sulfur or saltpeter. If we keep blasting like this, we won't even have enough gunpowder to make bullets and shells.

Sulfur and saltpeter are really hard to find right now.

Saltpeter is also a major raw material for making potassium fertilizer and even nitrogen fertilizer, and this is something that is lacking in the Ming Dynasty.

However, the world's largest nitrate mine was also in a Spanish colony, near the world's largest copper mine complex.

They could easily buy in bulk.

As for sulfur, that's even easier to handle. There are plenty of sulfur mines in Dongfan, and the villages there have even used them to barter for supplies.

Zhu Jue pondered and said, "Lord Meng, sulfur and saltpeter are not a problem. There are large sulfur mines in Dongfan. We can send people to mine them."

As for saltpeter, Spain has an inexhaustible supply in its American colonies. We can just buy it directly from them; that amount of money is nothing to us.

For us, it's just a matter of sending a few more ships. A medium-sized Zhiyuan merchant ship can carry 100,000 jin (50,000 kg) of saltpeter. If we send ten more ships, we can bring back a million jin (500,000 catties) of saltpeter in one trip.

We can also use saltpeter to make fertilizer. We'll have enough merchant ships by July this year. We can send hundreds more ships over then, and bringing back tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of kilograms of saltpeter every year won't be a problem."

Uh, you're talking about tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of kilograms right off the bat!

Bi Maokang nodded repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty is wise."

As they were discussing, Fang Zhenghua suddenly rushed over with a memorial in his hand, bowed, and said, "Your Majesty, His Highness Prince Chong has sent an urgent report from eight hundred li away."

Did Zhang Xianzhong make his move?
Zhu Jue took the memorial and read it. Sure enough, the Prince Chong reported that rebels were surging from the south of Runing toward Ruyang. Your Majesty, save us!

If Zhang Xianzhong has already made his move, Gao Yingxiang and Pan Yunteng will definitely follow suit.

Why should I save you?
After reading the memorial, Zhu Jue handed it directly to Liu Ruoyu and said coldly, "Reply! How many rebels are there? The number of rebels is not even specified. How can I send troops to rescue them? Report again!"

Isn't this just standing by and watching someone die?

It seems that King Chong can only seek revenge in the next life!

(End of this chapter)