Chapter 514: Killing the Monkey to Warn the Chickens!

A fiery dragon was rolling forward along the official road across the Jianghan Plain in the dark of night, under a moonless, star-scattered sky.

The Jianghan Plain was, of course, flat. Here the waterways were dense and the lakes scattered like stars, much like the watery country of Jiangnan. The Yangtze and the Han River, one to the south and one to the north, wound their way through it. Unlike the broad river surface downstream, the Huguang stretch of the Yangtze could hardly be called a natural barrier. It was only a few hundred meters wide, and for the Shun and Ming armies, both of which possessed a certain number of cannons, either could cross at some point along the long river with a small number of boats under the cover of artillery.

And either side in the fighting, so long as it deployed a certain number of cannons on some high ground along the Yangtze, could also block the other side's superior naval force.

Therefore, since Zhu Cilang had not succeeded in taking the two cities of Hanyang and Hankou, his superior naval force could not actually enter the Jingjiang stretch of the Yangtze.

And with Zhu Cilang's navy temporarily unable to serve as a trump card, Li Zicheng gained the advantage of operating on interior lines.

Li Zicheng's army could use the flat terrain of the Jianghan Plain, its convenient official roads, and its dense network of waterways to rapidly concentrate his main force and create local numerical superiority in both the eastern and western directions.

His opponent Zhu Cilang, although he held superiority in total troop strength on the Huguang battlefield, could not maneuver on the Jianghan Plain and could only maneuver on the Dongting Lake plain. Thus in moving east or west he had to travel many extra wasted li, making it very difficult to concentrate superior forces at any one point.

That was right — the numerical advantage on the Huguang battlefield now lay with Zhu Cilang!

Because although He Tengjiao and Chang Yanling were warlords who commanded their own troops, they were unquestionably on Zhu Cilang's side!

How had the two of them become warlords in the first place, if not through Zhu Cilang's backing behind the scenes?

When Zuo Liangyu was still alive and Zhu Cilang had not yet killed Hooge, the territory of Hunan was very difficult for the Crown Prince to control directly.

So he had adopted the method of propping up He Tengjiao and Chang Yanling, letting them control Hunan.

This had two advantages. First, it could guarantee Hunan's stability — Hunan was a great granary, and half of Huguang's land tax came from Hunan!

Second, when necessary, it could provide support and convenience for Zhu Cilang's military operations in Huguang!

Without the existence of He Tengjiao and Chang Yanling, Zhu Cilang's army could never have carried out large-scale rapid maneuvers in the Huguang-Jiangnan region, moving to the vicinity of Jiangling, the seat of Jingzhou Prefecture, without Li Zicheng noticing at all!

The new army that had now moved to Jingzhou Prefecture was not just Tang Laosi's regiment. There was also the main force of the Right Army Division of the Hard-Working New Army, led by Wu Guoyong — Tang Laosi was only the vanguard. This division had arrived one step later than the Central Army Division personally led by Zhu Cilang and the Left Army Division that Li Yan had brought from Huaixi. It had not entered Wuchang either, but had marched directly from Jiangxi into Hunan, quietly following He Tengjiao westward.

Besides the more than fourteen thousand men of Wu Guoyong's division, Chang Yanling also held in his hands sixteen thousand elite troops from the various Hunan armies — including He Tengjiao's Governor's Standard Battalion, Chang Yanling's own standard battalion, and elite soldiers provided by several other prefects of Hunan.

The combat strength of these troops naturally could not compare with the regular new army, but they were not too weak either. At the very least they could endure hardship, their equipment was fairly complete, and they made quite good local militia.

Near Jiangling, besides the thirty thousand troops of He Tengjiao, Wu Guoyong, and Chang Yanling, there were also Zhang Yong's eight thousand men, the fifteen thousand men of Qiu Lei, Zuo Mengmei, and Du Yinxi, and the seven thousand men Ma Jiaolin had placed at Yuezhou — Ma Jiaolin himself had not linked up with Zuo Mengmei, but had taken a thousand men to send Zuo Liangyu off, while his army had been surrounded by Wu Guoyong's troops and forcibly absorbed.

In addition, the thirty thousand men of Jin Shenghuan's force stationed at Yiling had also secretly gone over to Zhu Cilang. Adding everything together, the total number of Ming troops in Jingzhou Prefecture actually reached more than ninety thousand!

Although the Ming army numbered as many as ninety thousand, its weakness was also obvious: it was a motley patchwork of units with no unified command — Zhu Cilang might be able to command it, but He Tengjiao, Wu Guoyong, and Chang Yanling none had the prestige to command so many mixed troops.

But Zhu Cilang had not yet reached Jingzhou Prefecture... because the distance was too great, and he could not get there that quickly.

Li Zicheng, however, could get there first, leading his main force — nearly thirty thousand veteran camp soldiers — on a forced march from the Hanyang front toward Jiangling, where the infighting was now taking place.

The morale of this army was extremely high!

The thirty thousand veteran camp soldiers had just been allotted land — now they could be said to be sharing in the fruits of the Shun dynasty's victory!

Moreover, because the method of equal land distribution by headcount was welcomed by the poor peasants throughout the Jianghan Plain, these Shun heavenly soldiers once again felt the way they had two years earlier when they were advancing on Beijing.

And good news had also been coming from the north during this period. It was said that Yan'an Prefecture and Yulin Garrison had returned to the hands of the Shun heavenly dynasty — some generals who had surrendered from the Shun to the Qing had suddenly risen in revolt, killed the Qing governor and regional commander, and gone back to the Shun to serve as thrice-turned ministers...

So looking at the map, the Shun dynasty's prospects were rising. His Imperial Majesty Li Zicheng might well be the true Son of Heaven after all!

At this moment, Li Zicheng also had a feeling that his fortune was turning back... Victory was right before his eyes. With a bit of effort, he should be able to seize it!

"Your Majesty! Reporting to Your Majesty..."

At some unknown moment, several mounted scouts had galloped up before Li Zicheng, shouting loudly: "Jiangling is ablaze with fire, and fighting is raging inside the city!"

Li Zicheng jolted awake from his thoughts and raised his head to gaze into the distance. He saw red light flickering in the sky far away!

"Ha ha ha..." Li Zicheng threw back his head and laughed. "Jiangling is still fighting... Pass the order to the whole army: advance at full speed. The rise or fall of our Shun rests on this one battle!"

"Aye!"

The personal guards relaying orders roared in response.

Jiangling, the seat of Jingzhou Prefecture, had by now become a sea of fire — not only a sea of fire produced by fighting, but also one produced by looting and burning!

Zuo Menggeng's army was no longer merely frenzied; it had become possessed by demons! Even Zuo Menggeng himself had lost control of these soldiers transformed into fiends.

His Zuo family army had always followed the pattern of a great warlord coaxing along lesser warlords, and the standard for great and lesser warlords was not the number of troops under their names — the Zuo family army claimed to be eight hundred thousand strong! The actual number was a complete mystery; probably even Zuo Menggeng himself did not know.

But how many household retainers each regional commander had — that everyone knew perfectly well!

Among them, Zuo Liangyu and his son Zuo Menggeng had the most household retainers, a full three thousand, and all of them were stout men from Liaoxi, well equipped and well trained.

Yet these three thousand men of the Zuo family had been effortlessly thrashed earlier that day by the two thousand men He Tengjiao had brought. Several hundred were killed, several hundred surrendered, and although the rest had fled back, their prestige was utterly ruined — the Zuo family's death warriors were nothing more than this!

So the several regional commanders below no longer gave any deference.

But these regional commanders and vice regional commanders, most of whom came from the Liao garrison, had not thought of killing Zuo Menggeng and going over to Zhu Cilang... First, Zuo Menggeng was not easy to kill; second, Zhu Cilang's great army had not arrived; and third, there was still the city of Jiangling to be thoroughly looted!

Grab what they could first, and worry about the rest later!

On the other side, He Tengjiao's military ability was proving somewhat inadequate.

At this time, of Jiangling's six city gates, only the Great North Gate had been taken by Zhang Yong and his death warriors; the other five gates were all still under the control of the Zuo family army.

If He Tengjiao's military ability had been sufficient, he should have had Tang Laosi's regiment bypass Jingzhou city, enter through the Great North Gate, and join the street fighting — although there were at least fifty thousand troops fighting inside Jiangling at that moment, most of the officers and men were actually looting, and not many were truly fighting in earnest!

If Tang Laosi's two thousand men had charged in and fought for real, Jiangling would have been taken.

But He Tengjiao was overly cautious and wanted to establish a defensive position first, so he had Tang Laosi build a bridgehead outside the city and prepare to hold it while awaiting reinforcements. At the same time, he sent men to contact Zuo Mengmei and Qiu Lei, telling them to withdraw from Jiangling if things truly became impossible.

So when, in the early hours of the next morning, several fiery dragons came rolling in from the northeast of Jiangling, the "Prince of Chu's army," which had fought bitterly all night and every man of which had made a fortune, lost all interest in further fighting. They escorted Zhu Cizhao and Zuo Mengmei out through the Great North Gate, crossed the floating bridge south of the city, and retreated to the south bank of the Yangtze.