Southern Ming, my destiny is too abstract

Chapter 127 A Young Man Came to Jinxia
A young man came to Jinxia. He was of Zhu family. He had been a prisoner in Hongsha, fought in the Nanyang War, studied in Yunnan and Yunnan, and was an emperor, a general and a hero.

He is both civil and military, and very handsome.

Many people say that he looks more like an emperor than Emperor Hongguang, Emperor Longwu, and Prince of Lu, and is 70% similar to Emperor Shenzong.

If Zheng Yanping gave up Yizhou and returned to defend Jinxia, ​​it would be like a stone that stirred up a thousand waves, and there were unexpected twists and turns behind the scenes.

Prince Yongli unified Southeast Asia and brought troops and food to aid the southeast, which was when a tornado destroyed Kinmen and Xiamen Island.

No one could believe it. When they heard the news, their first reaction was the same as Zhang Huangyan's: Zheng Yanping had found a fake prince to establish his prestige.

After the Cantonese people and Lin Ying of the Yongli court confirmed Zhu Cixuan's identity.

No, you guys really did go to Fujian?

I'm pretending to tease your Yongli court.

Even if the emperor really went to Fujian, he would still be a puppet.

As a result, Prince Yongli used the power of the situation to suppress Zheng Yanping, who became like a puppet.

More people are crying out that Guo Xing was wronged.

No, can overseas land really serve as the foundation for restoring the country?
Koxinga really did not withdraw from the Central Plains, withdraw from Jinxia, ​​and retreat to Yizhou.

Then Yizhou was defeated again, the Li Dynasty was defeated, and finally France was defeated.

Uh... Britain, the Netherlands and the Ming Dynasty fought wars. Portugal is now in the process of restoring its country like the Ming Dynasty. Only France is relatively familiar in Europe.

The officials in Jinxia are somewhat skeptical of the world.

Can the wild islands outside of China really be used as a retreat for advancement and for recuperation?
The Eastern Tartars arose from the barren deserts, but the Crown Prince of the Ming Dynasty actually followed their example, starting a business in the barbaric south and restoring the Ming Dynasty.

Convinced that the crown prince's civil and military achievements were truly comparable to those of the Second Ancestor, the former Ming officials called him the living Emperor Guangwu.

The four emperors and regents waited in agony and finally waited for the true leader of the revival.

The generals of the Zheng family were not as ecstatic as the civil officials. They did not think that Prince Yongli, who was based in Southeast Asia, was only here to help them.

Instead of fighting against the Qing in the southwest, he came to the southeast alone, definitely to seize power.

On Wuzhou Island, the people of Lu Fan looked at each other in confusion and experienced a brief moment of embarrassment.

They are still instigating the enthronement of King Lu.

The orthodox and wise leader who can truly command the world has arrived next door.

The eighteen-year-old Crown Prince Yongli did more in this year than the emperors who had been regents had done in the previous sixteen years.

A few people stole glances at Prince Lu, wondering if he was really a descendant of the Zhu family. They felt that the resurrected Second Ancestor was no more than this.

The vassal officials were confused, and Zhu Yihai himself was also bewildered.

They all have the surname Zhu, why is there such a big difference?

The princes of the Ming Dynasty were all raised like pigs. They were good at eating, drinking and having fun, but they knew nothing about civil or military strategy.

King Longwu of Tang was just a vassal king with great ambitions.

After all, the only two skills of the princes since Jiashen were to lie down and act as puppets by relying on the bloodline of Emperor Gao, and then escape.

Hongguang and Longwu failed to escape, but Prince Lu himself successfully escaped death three times.

Then, Yongli, who was the best at escaping, actually had a prince who was so good at fighting?
After a brief brainstorming session, Zhu Yihai chose to give up thinking.

"The Second Patriarch has appeared," Zhu Yihai glanced at the old ministers in the room.

"The true master of our family has appeared. Heaven has sent down a sage to rule China. Please do not think of anything else."

Upon hearing this, the officials of Lu vassal state bowed their heads and obeyed the order with different expressions.

Upon hearing that Crown Prince Zheng Jing had gone to Siming Prefecture to see the emperor, Zheng Yanping ordered the release of Prince Lu from house arrest.

The ruler and his ministers of Lu packed up and prepared to go to Siming Prefecture.

Zhu Yihai specifically called out to Zhang Huangyan, "Xuanzhu, don't show the rift between you and Zheng Yanping to Crown Prince Yongli."

Zhang Huangyan was slightly startled: "Don't worry, Your Highness, I won't."

"To resist the Qing in the southeast, we still need the Zheng family of Jinxia. Even if the emperor and the prince have a foothold in Southeast Asia, they are still thousands of miles away."

"Without the Zheng family's troops, the Crown Prince would have no choice but to mobilize troops from thousands of miles away, and the recovery of the southeast would be a distant prospect."

Zheng Yanping and Zhang Huangyan depend on each other and cannot live without each other.

Not to mention the geographical situation of Fujian and Guangdong which is easy to defend but difficult to attack, due to the difficulty of war and political considerations, the southeastern Ming army wanted to recover southeastern Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

It would have been inseparable from Zheng Yanping's tens of thousands of elite troops, and also from Zhang Huangyan's familiarity with the situation in Zhejiang Province and his recruitment of the righteous army.

Zheng Yanping was responsible for recruiting soldiers and collecting food in Fujian and Guangdong, while Zhang Huangyan was responsible for contacting the gentry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang and scouting the strength of the Qing army.

Therefore, Zheng and Zhang both tolerated each other.

Zhu Yihai patted Zhang Huangyan on the shoulder and said, "Xuanzhu, you are different from those bandits like Li Dingguo, and you are also different from those pirates like Zheng Yanping."

"You are a Ming Dynasty scholar, and the Yongli Crown Prince urgently needs you. You must assist and support him in matters concerning the southeast."

Zhang Huangyan was extremely smart and understood the meaning of Prince Lu's words in the instant he was stunned.

This meant that he was asked to abandon Shandong and go to Guangxi to save his life, so as to support the Yongli Crown Prince and gain the credit for making the decision.

The political struggles in the Ming Dynasty were very cruel, even brutal.

According to convention, supporting the wrong monarch is considered treason. Even if one has made contributions to the country, it will take until the next monarch to redress the injustice and posthumously honor the person.

The deep-seated reason for the internal strife among Ming Dynasty civil servants from the Southern Capital to eastern Guangdong lies here.

The example of Yu Shaobao is right there in West Lake. Once the civil officials are involved in the enthronement event, they will have no way out and can only fight their opponents to the end.

After Prince Lu took over the throne, he and Zheng Yanping lived in peace for several years.

The reason why he was placed under house arrest by Zheng Yanping was because of the imperial edict issued by Yongli during his southern expedition.

Zhang Huangyan disagreed with Prince Lu being regent at that time because he knew that the stubborn Zheng Yanping would never obey the emperor's order to let Prince Lu be regent.

Zheng Yanping would rather bear the crime of murdering the prince than believe that Prince Lu would be magnanimous enough to forgive his previous crimes.

Zhang Huangyan once suspected that the Yongli imperial edict was intended to create internal strife between the Zhejiang and Fujian armies.

As he had supported Prince Lu many times, he was naturally a traitor to Crown Prince Yongli.

Besides, Zhang Huangyan himself did not want the Prince of Lu, with whom he had known for more than ten years, to die unexpectedly like Emperor Jingtai.

Prince Lu asked him to seek refuge with Crown Prince Yongli, which was also a way of risking his own life in order to save him.

Zhang Huangyan opened his mouth several times but couldn't say a word.

Seeing this, Zhu Yihai sighed and said, "Many people have been angry with me in the past ten years."

"I hate the traitors who broke into my camp and forced the late emperor to death, destroyed my Ming Dynasty, and allowed the Eastern Tartars to take advantage of the opportunity to enter the pass. I hate the civil and military officials in Jiangnan who couldn't defend half of the country. I hate the Tartars who wantonly slaughtered the people of my Ming Dynasty."

"But what I hate most is that I failed the people of Jiangnan. I hate that I fought for the throne with the Tang vassal state, which led to the loss of Zhejiang and Fujian."

Zhu Yihai solemnly said to Zhang Huangyan: "When the country is overthrown, the disputes between Tang and Lu, and between Gui and Tang, must not happen again."

"His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is truly the master of national rejuvenation. We cannot let him hinder us."

"Zhang Cangshui, this is my final order."

Zhang Huangyan pursed his lips and nodded heavily, "Your Highness, I will obey your good advice." Zhu Yihai smiled, adjusted his dragon robe, and strode forward, "Let's go and see my Qilinzi."

Zhang Huangyan and others were somewhat disappointed when they met the prince for the first time.

Have you been hanging out with those traitors of the Western Army for too long?

The prince has a bandit-like air and lacks the elegance and grace of the Zhu family.

He is handsome indeed, but does he look like an emperor?
I heard that he recovered Yunnan and Yunnan and unified Southeast Asia, so I can still see some signs of this.

After Zhu Cixuan met with the civil and military officials of Jinxia, ​​he couldn't help but look at Zheng Ershiwan again.

Except for Zhang Huangyan.

All the civil and military officials in Jinxia can say that they are rotten fish and shrimp.

Compared with the Yongli Dashi court, which produced many famous generals, Jinxia did not have a single first-class famous official.

Even second-rate famous officials were pitifully few, and they were all generals of the Zheng family.

Well, a famous official with reputation and military achievements would not surrender to the pirate Zheng Yanping.

Either they died for their country or they shaved their heads and surrendered to the Qing.

Almost all the civil officials in Jinxia are Juren. The real Jinshi all guarded one side during the Ming-Qing War. The ministers fled to Emperor Yongli, so it was not Zheng Yanping's turn to take advantage.

The ministers were naturally happy about the arrival of Crown Prince Yongli.

Led by Zhang Huangyan, some people knelt down and apologized, saying that it was their fault that they had not obeyed the order of King Yanping and captured Yizhou.

Zheng Yanping, feeling proud, said magnanimously that they had also been in the mainland for a long time and were not familiar with maritime affairs, so ignorance was not a crime.

The Zheng family generals, wearing armor and holding swords, looked at each other coldly and watched the Jinxia civil officials and Koxinga pretending to get along well with each other.

Zhu Cixuan carefully looked at the ministers in the hall.

It was vaguely divided into four or five groups, but in front of him, the civil and military officials on the left and right were facing each other.

The Ming army in the southeast was as complicated as the Yongli court.

But the main force is still the armed maritime merchant group led by General Zheng Jiaxun.

Then there were all sorts of people, including the Hongguang court, the Lu court, the Longwu court, and the Yongli court, as well as civil and military officials from Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong who defected to Zheng Yanping.

The Zheng Group has never belonged to Zheng Yanping alone.

Apart from anything else, Emperor Longwu was supported solely by Zheng Hongkui, the uncle of Zheng Yanping, and only later did he bring Zheng Zhilong into the group.

Zheng Yanping slowly annexed the various warlords of the Zheng family and finally brought the fragmented Zheng family together.

Therefore, except for Zheng Hongkui and Zheng Cai, most of his subordinates were generals left by his father, such as Zheng Tai, Hong Xu, Huang Ting, Shi Lang and others. Only a few of them started their military careers with him.

The conflict between Zheng Yanping and Zheng Jiaxun is also very simple.

The pie is getting bigger and bigger. Zheng Yanping, who has become the banner of the anti-Qing movement in the southeast, has already shown signs of establishing a country and wants to regularize and centralize his own power.

The centralized monarch who wants to control the military with civil power is naturally in conflict with the powerful and entrenched ministers.

The same thing happened when Li Dingguo repelled the Qin and Shu armies in Yunnan and Yunnan.

However, Zhu Cixuan was one of the two pillars of the country. When he was concentrating power, the enemy took advantage of the chaos to attack him, and the other had to compromise and make concessions in the face of powerful ministers.

Faced with the overwhelming pressure from Crown Prince Yongli, the armed maritime merchant groups, who were accustomed to being independent, naturally banded together to resist.

After Xu Fuyuan and the other ministers in the hall finished praising the Crown Prince, they excitedly said, "Now that Your Highness and the imperial clan have decided to recapture Haicheng, we should focus on the eight provinces of Fujian. We should dispatch troops from the islands of Kinmen and Xiamen to Haimen and Haicheng to consolidate the recaptured territory."

Many civil officials nodded in agreement. Wang Zhongxiao said, "The current pseudo-Qing emperor is young, and the regents have seized power, leaving the central government without a decision."

"Thanks to your Highness's wisdom and courage, all the Eastern Tartar soldiers have fled to Yunnan and Guizhou, leaving the region empty. Only Geng Jimao remains in the southeast. God bless the Ming Dynasty. Now is the time for us to recapture the eight provinces of Fujian."

Zhu Cixuan glanced at Zhang Huangyan, who seemed to be hesitant to speak. The latter was looking up at him and Zheng Yanping, and the three of them looked at each other.

Everyone understands that Fujian is not a good direction to attack.

The Prince of Lu once recovered many areas of Fujian, which was purely due to the general trend of shaving the hair and changing customs on behalf of the Qing Dynasty and restoring order in the world.

The terrain of Fujian, with eight mountains, one river and one piece of farmland, is a place that military strategists must not fight for. Only a fool would want to start a counterattack against the Middle-earth from here.

Zhang Huangyan exchanged a glance with the prince, then followed his gaze to the Jinxia generals on the right.

Military officer Hong Xu immediately retorted, "No, although the Crown Prince has brought some large Western ships and 3,000 elite soldiers, we don't have many troops at the moment."

"Kuo Xing Ye lost several thousand soldiers in Yizhou, and ordered Yang Chaodong to stay behind with two thousand soldiers."

"Our army has not increased, but decreased. We have to garrison Jinxia Haimen Penghu and even Yizhou. At most, we can mobilize 20,000 to 30,000 troops to attack Fujian."

Hong Xu glanced at Wang Zhongxiao and said, "Minister Wang, you were the late emperor's inspector of Fujian. How could you not know the situation in Fujian?"

"Even if we recover Zhangzhou, we are still trapped in this southeast corner. The Qing army will attack from the north and south by land. How many soldiers should we leave in Zhangzhou? If the pseudo-Qing Governor of Fujian and Guangdong and Geng Jimao attack Kinmen and Xiamen from the sea, then we will have to choose Zhangzhou or Kinmen and Xiamen."

"Over the past three years, we have spent over 100,000 men, and the Qing army has been entrenched along the coast, clearing the land and fields. We have no way to replenish our forces."

Wang Zhongxiao ignored the sarcasm in Hong Xu's words. He was holding the imperial sword and patrolling the border for Emperor Longwu, but was blocked and sent back to the court by Zheng Zhilong, who held all the military power.

Wang Zhongxiao replied calmly: "If Zhangzhou is not feasible, why not follow Zhang Cangshui's strategy and recapture eastern Guangdong to replenish food and manpower?"

After being defeated by the Qing army, Zheng Yanping wanted to use Yizhou as a logistical base, Zhang Huangyan and others wanted to attack eastern Guangdong, and as for Zheng Jiaxun's generals, their idea was simpler: if they couldn't win, they would surrender.

Unexpectedly, Wang Zhongxiao made a feint to the east and attacked in the west, and Hong Xu was choked.

Many people did want to recover eastern Guangdong. Not to mention that many civil and military officials were from Guangdong, Nan'ao Island, where Zheng Yanping started his career, was right next to eastern Guangdong. Chaozhou had always been the logistics and grain depot for the southeastern Ming army.

Zheng Tai, the household official standing in front of Hong Xu, said, "After three years of war, Jin and Xiamen are currently running low on food and fodder. Just for the sake of Guoxing's conquest of Yizhou, five or six grain ships were sunk in the strait's rocky winds."

"Although the Crown Prince has sent some rice, it can only temporarily alleviate the urgent need in Jinxia."

Zheng Tai raised his hands and bowed, "May I ask, Your Highness, how long will it take for the next batch of food to arrive?"

Liu Xuanchu stepped out and said, "We just need to wait for Jinxia to send a ship to Nanyang and contact the court officials there, and then we can transport the grain north."

Zheng Tai thought about it and immediately said, "That will have to wait until next year."

"Although the north wind will prevail over the sea in two months, and we can send ships to communicate, we will have to wait until the south wind returns next year before we can transport grain north from the South Seas."

"If the grain arrives next year, we can hold out for a few months until the sweet potatoes in Yizhou are unearthed. This way, Jinxia and Xia will have enough food to fill their stomachs for the next six months. However, we simply cannot send out tens of thousands of troops."

Zhu Cixuan glanced at Zheng Tai and the others.

Among the six government offices, General Zheng Jiaxun held great military and economic power. No wonder Zheng Yanping was helpless against them.

Wang Zhongxiao refuted: "Why do you need tens of thousands of troops? Your Highness came here to take him as his leader."

"If we recover eastern Guangdong, the center of Kinmen and Xiamen will be moved to Nan'ao. We can still be happy in Yunnan and Yunnan. With the title of Crown Prince, eastern Guangdong can be taken at a glance."

"Then the south will be connected to the Nanyang, and the west will be able to join forces with Li Dingguo and his men."

Some Cantonese people spoke out one after another, saying that the prefectures in eastern Guangdong still remembered the emperor's kindness, and the pseudo-Qing migration to the coast had aroused the wrath of heaven and the resentment of the people, and the coastal areas could immediately rebel.

At this moment, someone no one expected suddenly spoke.

Zheng Jing, the eldest son of Zheng Yanping, said, "Your Highness, Father."

"When my father captured Yizhou and besieged the Dutch, he moved his family to Yizhou."

"Now, they are heading to Nan'ao and eastern Guangdong. I'm afraid the people in Kinmen and Xiamen are uneasy."

(End of this chapter)