The Ming Dynasty: Starting with the border troops, it was overthrown and the Qing Dynasty was destro

Chapter 197 Flooding Yinchuan
In the days that followed, the entire city of Yinchuan was transformed into a high-speed war machine.

Jiang Han worked almost day and night to handle all matters, big and small, within the military.

He ordered Zhao Shengli to recruit thousands of craftsmen to work intensively on manufacturing weapons and armor, utilizing the existing workshops and armory in the city.

For a time, the city of Yinchuan was filled with the roar of furnaces and the clanging of blacksmiths striking the iron day and night.

On the other hand, a large-scale military training exercise was also taking place in several military training grounds.

Jiang Han gathered the newly surrendered soldiers from Ningxia and Gansu, divided them into ten groups, and had nine groups train every day, with one group taking turns to have a day off.

The practice was "archery drills every five days and military exercises every ten days".

Specifically, every five days, each soldier would practice archery in an open space, with the general personally watching. Those who hit the target would be rewarded, while those who missed would be punished.

In addition, every ten days, the entire battalion conducts drills, first demonstrating formations, then engaging in combat.

If the enemy arrives, upon hearing the signal cannon, the main force and the unorthodox force will be divided into regular and unorthodox forces. The regular force will form ranks to meet the enemy, while the unorthodox force will flank and attack from the side. It is essential to ensure that the steps are in perfect unison and that the sounds of drums and gongs can be heard.

Although the training was tough, these newly surrendered soldiers did not back down at all.

After all, back in the fortress, they couldn't get three full meals and meat every day.

Just as Jiang Han was burying himself in accumulating strength, news of the fall of Yinchuan and the loss of Qingfan had already spread throughout the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Forbidden City, when Hong Chengchou's report was placed on Emperor Chongzhen's desk, the young emperor trembled with anger.

He grabbed a brush washer from the side and slammed it onto the gold brick:
"Waste! All of them are waste!"

The emperor's roar echoed throughout the Qianqing Palace.

"The prince has been killed and the city has fallen! This is an unprecedented disgrace in the more than two hundred years of our dynasty!"

Zhu Youjian was furious and even threatened to send all the incompetent generals involved to the capital so that he could personally lead the expedition.

It was only after much persuasion from his cabinet ministers and close attendants that he finally calmed down.

It's not that he doesn't want to hold people accountable; it's just that he can't find anyone to hold them accountable.

The general and governor who were guarding Ningxia had both died in battle. Hong Chengchou, who was in charge of military affairs in the three border regions, had been busy suppressing bandits in Shanxi and Henan and was unable to spare any attention.

Cao Wenzhao and others were busy suppressing the rebellion in Guanzhong, and their efforts were also too far away to be of any use.

Zhu Youjian couldn't possibly take all the blame upon himself, could he?
After searching for a long time, Chongzhen finally found out Zhao Jinzhong, the eunuch. It was this fellow who had been secretly colluding with the bandits and deceiving the emperor.

Emperor Chongzhen immediately issued an edict ordering Deng Qi to arrest Zhao Jinzhong, escort him to the capital, and execute him by slow slicing as a warning to others!
Upon receiving the news, Eunuch Zhao committed suicide by poison that very night without saying a word.

When the news reached the capital, Emperor Chongzhen was furious.

He simply couldn't believe that he, the emperor, had been tricked by a group of rebels and a eunuch!
Most importantly, even the palace eunuchs dared to betray him. Who else in the entire Ming Dynasty could he trust?

After much deliberation, Zhu Youjian placed his hopes on Governor Hong.

He swallowed his anger and ordered Hong Chengchou to annihilate the traitors within six months and present them as prisoners to the capital.

Upon receiving the order, Hong Chengchou dared not delay and immediately dispatched messengers to gather people from all directions.

"Go! Summon my generals and bring Cao Wenzhao and Zuo Guangxian from Guanzhong!"

"Tell them to stop fucking hiding in the forests of Guanzhong! Leave those small band of bandits to Deng Qi to deal with!"

"Order the two of them to immediately muster their troops and rush to reinforce Ningxia without delay!"

"I hereby order General He Huchen and Governor Chen Qiyu of Yansui to lead 6,000 elite troops to advance along the border wall from the direction of Huamachi towards Ningxia!"

"We must arrive within ten days!"

"Send word to Shanxi again, and order the troops under the command of Zhang Zongheng, the Governor-General of Xuanfu and Datong, to immediately enter Shaanxi from Tongguan and guard the key roads as a reserve force!"

With each order from the governor, it was sent out in all directions by fast horses.

In less than a month, several armies converged in Ningxia and marched towards Yinchuan.

Among them, General Yang Jiamo of Gansu and General Yang Lin of Guyuan will take the western route, towards Zhongwei, Ningxia.
He Huchen, the General Commander of Yansui, and Chen Qiyu, the Governor, will take the eastern route, towards the rear guard of Ningxia.

Hong Chengchou personally led a group of fierce generals, including Cao Wenzhao, Zuo Guangxian, He Renlong, and Zhang Yingchang, to form the main force in the central route and head north from Lingzhou.

A full 20,000 elite border troops gathered at the foot of Yinchuan City, their banners fluttering like a forest, their battle cries shaking the heavens.

March, mid-spring.

The protracted battle for Yinchuan has officially begun.

The first major attack by the government forces was launched by He Huchen's troops in Yansui.

He led his generals Zuo Guangxian and Ai Wannian in a fierce attack on the Nanxun Gate of Yinchuan City.

The sound of cannons boomed and smoke billowed everywhere.

As the moat was filled in, thousands of government troops, carrying ladders and pushing battering rams, surged towards Nanxun Gate wave after wave.

The unit responsible for guarding Nanxun Gate was Li Laowai's left battalion.

"Hold on for me!"

Wearing double armor and carrying a short spear, Li Laowai stood on the city wall, constantly directing his soldiers to throw rolling stones, logs, and hot oil down from the city.

Thanks to the accumulated resources within Yinchuan City over the years, these defensive supplies were poured into the attacking government troops as if they were free.

In a short time, the government troops suffered heavy casualties.

But this time, the troops that came were all elites from various towns in the Northwest. Even with a hail of arrows raining down on them, they were all fearless and carried their shields as they climbed the city walls one after another.

Fortunately, Li Laowai and the soldiers of the Left Battalion, who were stationed there, fought bravely, and the government troops that attacked the city walls several times were pushed back down.
The battle was incredibly fierce. After a day of bloody fighting, He Huchen lost nearly a thousand men, but he was still unable to establish a temporary position on the city wall and ultimately had to return empty-handed.

In the following days, government troops from all sides launched successive attacks on the city gates. Yang Jiamo on the western front and Cao Wenzhao on the central front took turns launching fierce attacks on the various city gates of Yinchuan.

The siege battle raged back and forth for seven days, with shouts of battle and the sound of cannon fire never ceasing.

The six city gates of Yinchuan City have all been transformed into grinding mills of flesh and blood, constantly devouring the lives of soldiers on both the attacking and defending sides.

Beneath the city wall, the corpses of government troops were piled up like mountains, more than ten feet high;
On the city wall, the blood of the defending soldiers flowed down through the gaps in the battlements, pooling into pools of blood.
In the end, Jiang Han, relying on the high walls of Yinchuan and the massive amount of supplies he had captured for defense, managed to hold off the first wave of fierce attacks from the government troops.

After the battle, both sides took stock of their casualties, finding that the government troops had suffered heavy losses. According to preliminary estimates, no fewer than 5,000 government troops died in the battle outside Yinchuan.

Jiang Han's side also paid a heavy price, with at least 1,500 people killed or seriously wounded.

Jiang Han, who was inspecting the battlefield, felt extremely heartbroken when he saw the battlefield littered with corpses.

These are all elite troops from various towns in the Northwest. If he could bring them all under his command, he could easily conquer half of the Ming Dynasty.

The imperial court hasn't paid salaries for years, why should I serve that dog emperor?
Seeing that a direct assault was not going to work, Hong Chengchou tried all sorts of siege tactics over the next few months.

In April, Yang Lin, the general of Guyuan, attempted to dig a tunnel to sneak into the city.

Thousands of laborers and government troops arrived in an endless stream, and under the cover of night, they began a secret excavation operation several miles outside the city.

However, Jiang Han had already seen through the government troops' trick.

He ordered his men to fill the inner side of the city wall with covered earthenware urns, and then had well-eared soldiers listen for underground sounds to determine the location of the tunnels before digging them in the opposite direction to destroy them.

The government troops had just dug their tunnels down to the city walls when the defending soldiers discovered their location.

With Shao Yong's order, hundreds of buckets of pre-prepared sewage and toxic fumes were poured directly into the dug hole.

For a moment, screams and coughs filled the tunnel, but then quickly fell silent.

The hundreds of laborers and government soldiers who were digging the tunnel suffocated to death in the very tunnel they had dug. It was the same old story.

As early as the Hongzhi era, when the Oirat army was digging tunnels near Hongshan Fort, the defending troops located them using "earthenware jars" and then forced them to retreat by using smoke and water tactics.

In May, Hong Chengchou, having failed in his first attack, once again considered instigating a rebellion and offering amnesty.

He ordered the production of tens of thousands of "exoneration plaques," which were then launched into the city via catapults. He then sent men to the city walls to announce that as long as they surrendered immediately, the court would not hold them accountable.

On the contrary, the imperial court would bestow high-ranking official positions and generous salaries, and grant titles and privileges to wives and children.

This trick worked every time, and soon some people in the city started to have the same idea.

Upon hearing about the generous treatment, a captain of the Ningxia Zuotunwei immediately summoned his soldiers, intending to launch a rebellion within the city.

This group of people somehow found a dog hole and managed to sneak out of Yinchuan City under the cover of night, eventually finding the government army camp.

Hong Chengchou was overjoyed and immediately arranged a time with the officers to light a fire at midnight three days later, so that they could launch a coordinated attack from within and without, and break into the city through Zhenyuan Gate.

However, these people underestimated Jiang Han's control over the army.

The commander of the Right Garrison had long since discovered that this group of people were secretly gathering and behaving improperly, and immediately reported it to Jiang Han.

When the officers returned from outside the city in high spirits, they were greeted by Li Liyuan, who had been waiting for them for a long time.

After being subjected to severe torture, the team leader confessed in detail the plan he had made with Hong Chengchou.

Three days later, at midnight.

Jiang Han decided to use this as a pretext, deliberately setting fire to Zhenyuan Gate to lure the government troops there.

Upon hearing the cannon fire, Hong Chengchou was overjoyed and immediately ordered Zuo Guangxian and others to lead troops to Zhenyuan Gate, preparing to capture the city in one fell swoop.

But what awaited them was not the open city gates, but rolling stones, logs, and scalding hot oil falling from the sky.

Caught off guard, the government troops suffered heavy casualties once again and fled in disarray.

……

The protracted siege has entered its third month.

Hong Chengchou tried every method he could think of, but the bandits in the city were as stubborn and unyielding as rocks in a latrine.

With the emperor's deadline of June for quelling the rebellion already more than halfway over, his army was still unable to make any progress under the walls of Yinchuan, and their supplies were about to run out.

Hong Chengchou finally couldn't sit still any longer.

He stood on the high hill, gazing at the city of Yinchuan, which lay prostrate on the banks of the Yellow River, a hint of madness flashing in his eyes.

He decided to follow the same strategy used to quell the "Bo Bai Rebellion" and flood Yinchuan.

The Bo Bai Rebellion, also known as the Ningxia Campaign.

As the first of Wanli's three major campaigns, the rebellion lasted for nearly nine months, during which the governor-general changed twice, troops from seven garrisons were mobilized to suppress it, and more than two million taels of silver were spent before it was finally quelled.

When Bo Bai launched his rebellion, the rebels also occupied the fortified city of Yinchuan and put up a stubborn resistance.

The imperial court mobilized border troops from Liaodong, Xuanfu, and Datong to besiege the enemy. The army besieged the enemy for several months, but still could not break through and suffered heavy casualties.

Ultimately, it was Ye Mengxiong, the then Governor-General of the Three Border Regions, who overruled objections and came up with the idea of ​​using water as a weapon.

(Some say it was Li Rusong, the General of Ningxia)
The government troops conscripted tens of thousands of laborers to build a massive dike stretching for dozens of miles north of Yinchuan City over a period of seventeen days. This dike forcibly blocked and diverted the Yellow River, causing it to flow entirely into the low-lying city of Yinchuan.

The raging floodwaters swept across the fields, submerged the villages, and eventually turned the entire city of Yinchuan into a vast expanse of water.

The flood caused the deaths of many civilians in the city, and the survivors could only eat tree bark to fill their stomachs; the rebels killed horses to satisfy their hunger.

Prolonged flooding caused the city walls to collapse. After being besieged by the flood for more than a month, the rebels inside the city ran out of food and supplies, and a plague broke out.

In the end, he had no choice but to surrender to the government troops and become an inside agent.

Although this tactic is vicious, it's the only way to capture Yinchuan quickly at the moment.

That night, Hong Chengchou summoned his generals and, in the central command tent, revealed his plan.

Upon hearing this, all the generals gasped in shock.

Chen Qiyu, the governor of Yansui, was the first to stand up and oppose it:

"General Hong, you mustn't!"

"This action is against the natural order. The people already have a hard life and suffer greatly from natural disasters and wars."

"If we divert water and breach the dikes again, what will become of the people in Yinchuan?"

"At that time, most of Yinchuan will be turned into a vast swamp, and tens of thousands of people in the city will become fish and turtles!"

Chen Qiyu's voice trembled slightly.

Although he and Hong Chengchou were both Jinshi (successful candidates in the highest imperial examinations) in the same year, unlike Hong Chengchou, Chen Qiyu still had some conscience and immediately thought of the people in the city.

When the Ming army flooded the city, almost all the people in Yinchuan died.

If he were to face the people again now, how would he face history?
However, Hong Chengchou remained unmoved upon hearing this.

He looked at Chen Qiyu and shook his head:
"Yu Xuan, the imperial decree is urgent; how can we act out of womanly compassion?"

"Furthermore, since the bandits entered the city, the people of this city have not thought of resisting, but instead opened their doors to let the thieves in, letting the wolf into their homes."

"Now, they are even more like accomplices to the enemy, not only refusing to open the gates to welcome the king's army, but also helping the bandits transport supplies and manufacture weapons."

"Aiding the wicked, how are these people any different from bandits?"

Upon hearing this, Chen Qiyu's face flushed red, and he immediately retorted:

"Commander Hong! Most of the people in the city are unarmed civilians. Under the enemy soldiers' swords, what can they do but submit?"

"They were just forced into this situation; how can you generalize and treat them all as thieves?!"

As Chen Qiyu spoke, he subconsciously glanced at the other generals in the tent, hoping that one of them would step forward and say a few words in defense of the people.

Inside the tent, however, there was only deathly silence.

If Ma Shilong were here, he would certainly have argued for the people of his hometown, but now both the Ningxia General and the Governor have died for their country.

The remaining generals and officers had no choice but to obey orders.

They all lowered their heads, looking down at their noses and minds, not daring to meet Chen Qiyu's gaze.

Even worse, people like Cao Wenzhao snorted coldly and turned their heads away impatiently.

In his eyes, there were only military merits and imperial orders; the lives and deaths of the people in Yinchuan were none of his concern.

Hong Chengchou frowned impatiently as he looked at Chen Qiyu, who still wanted to speak. He didn't have time to argue with Chen Qiyu right now.

Hong Chengchou simply stopped wasting words and, in his capacity as Governor-General of the Three Border Regions, forcefully implemented his plan.

He slammed his hand on the table, stood up, and swept his gaze across all the generals in the tent:
"For the sake of the nation, eliminating this major threat is nothing to worry about, even at a small cost."

"This governor only wants a city like Yinchuan without rebels. As for the people in the city, whether they live or die is up to their own fate!"

"Pass on my orders!"

"Starting tomorrow, conscript laborers from Ningxia to build a dam north of the city. This governor intends to divert water to flood the city!"

(End of this chapter)