Chapter 52: Jisi Change
Chongzhen was unwilling to believe that the middle-aged man who had a cheerful and confident personality and with whom he had a good chat was only talking big to deceive him, but Wang An had proved with facts many times that what he said was absolutely true.

The pain of being deceived and betrayed began to torment his heart. He didn't understand that he had not forced Yuan Chonghuan to make any promises to him, and Yuan Chonghuan could tell him the truth whether he could do it and to what extent he could do it.

Chongzhen felt that he would still use him and would not look down on him just because he did not get a confident answer and a definite date for achieving his goal.

After all, Yuan Chonghuan had already proved his talent with the two great victories of Ningyuan and Ningjin, and did not need more lies and flattery to enhance his status in his own mind.

Looking at the silent Chongzhen, Wang An was a little puzzled: "My dear brother, are you so hot-blooded again? How about Yuandudu? Let's just chat. Don't get too involved in something that you can't influence."

Chongzhen hurriedly calmed down, forced a smile, and asked with the last bit of hope: "So, Yuan Chonghuan is just a liar and a villain?"

Seeing that Chongzhen was in a bad mood, Wang An did not have the heart to continue to attack his patriotic younger brother. He thought about Yuan Chonghuan's deeds and concluded: "It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that he is a villain who only knows how to lie and deceive others. As I said before, although Yuan Dudu cannot be called a military genius like Qi Jiguang, the title of a famous general is still appropriate."

"There was no problem with the general direction of his strategy to pacify Liaodong. He pressed on step by step, compressed the living space of Jiannu, pinned Huang Taiji in Liaodong, and suppressed Jiannu's war potential."

"And I don't know if you've noticed that Yuandudu almost never loses a defensive battle. This shows that Yuandudu is good at defense. Combined with the strategy of farming and building cities, it can at least stabilize the situation in Liaodong."

"As long as Yuandudu doesn't commit suicide, the situation in Liaodong will basically be stable."

"But what a pity!" Wang An sighed, "I don't know what our Chubby is thinking. He always does things unconventionally, which eventually led to the Ji Si Rebellion when the Jian Nu invaded Beijing. Only two years after the bold statement of pacifying Liao in five years, he was punished by the emperor and cut into pieces!"

"What? The Jiannu have reached the capital!" Chongzhen jumped up from his chair as if he had heard the end of the world was coming.

Chongzhen did not express any doubts about the "32nd generation disciple of the Mayi Sect" in front of him, but anxiously asked about what happened.

Wang An had long expected Chongzhen to ask, after all, his younger brother was a patriotic young man.

So, they began to talk about the Ji Si Rebellion and why Yuan Chonghuan died together.

Speaking of the Ji Si Rebellion, many people in later generations believed that it started with Yuan Chonghuan's unauthorized killing of Mao Wenlong, the Governor of Dongjiang River.

The Pi Island where Mao Wenlong was stationed was located in the rear of the Jiannu army. It was an enclave of the Ming Dynasty and was only a few dozen miles away from North Korea.

As long as Mao Wenlong was willing, he could take a boat to Korea and cross the Yalu River to penetrate into the heart of Jianglong, or he could take a boat directly to the territory of the Jiannu.

Although history has proven that Mao Wenlong did not play a big role in containing the Jiannu, whether it was the Jiannu attacking Korea or the Jiannu fighting Liaodong many times, big and small, Mao Wenlong rarely took the initiative to send troops to cooperate.

But the restraining effect of Pi Island still exists. Its main significance is to make Huang Taiji afraid to attack the Ming Dynasty with all his might, for fear that Mao Wenlong would take advantage of Jianzhou's weakness and cross the sea to attack the Ming Dynasty.

This is the greatest value of Mao Wenlong's existence. Obviously, Mao Wenlong is also very clear about his own value. Therefore, even though Mao Wenlong has no outstanding military achievements, he has developed an arrogant personality, hiding on his own island as a king, and ignoring Yuan Chonghuan's orders.

Moreover, Mao Wenlong embodies almost all the characteristics of the soldiers of the late Ming Dynasty: eating empty salaries and sucking the blood of soldiers, killing innocent people to claim credit, smuggling supplies to the Qing army, etc.

For example, the total military strength of Pi Island was probably more than 10,000 but less than 20,000. However, every time Mao Wenlong asked for pay, the number of troops he reported was either 80,000 or 100,000. The most he reported was even 170,000, which was several times or even dozens of times more than the actual number.

At that time, the entire Liaodong army had only 60,000 to 70,000 people.

At that time, the Ming Dynasty's treasury was empty and the financial situation was extremely difficult, but Mao Wenlong had no sympathy at all.

The most exaggerated thing is that the military pay allocated by the court could not even leave the capital before it was divided up by Mao Wenlong.

No matter from which point of view, Yuan Chonghuan was right to kill Mao Wenlong.

But Yuan Chonghuan was only thinking about killing people, but did not think about what to do after killing Mao Wenlong.

After Mao Wenlong's death, three military mutinies broke out in Pi Island. Neither the Liu Xingzhi brothers sent by Yuan Chonghuan nor Huang Long appointed by the court could control the situation in Pi Island.

In the end, the famous "Three Shun Kings" Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming, and Shang Kexi surrendered to Huang Taiji with the most advanced artillery technology and navy of the Ming Dynasty at that time, allowing these savages from the Tunguska Plateau to ride on sailboats and use firearms.

It was not until the tenth year of Chongzhen that the Jiannu completely took over Pi Island.

The empire that Mao Wenlong had built with his two hundred remaining soldiers was completely destroyed.

It is worth mentioning that there was a beast like "Three Shun Kings" in Pi Island. When Huang Taiji launched the "Thorn Pulling Out" operation and landed on Pi Island, more than 100,000 soldiers and civilians on the island were killed in the battle except for a small number of women, children and sailors, and no one surrendered.

Therefore, this incident shows that Yuan Chonghuan is a very strange person. Even the "Veritable Records of Emperor Xizong of the Ming Dynasty" clearly records that Mao Wenlong "is not capable of destroying the enemy, but is more than capable of capturing them." As the commander-in-chief of Liaodong, Yuan Chonghuan could not have been unaware of Mao Wenlong's role, but he still wanted to kill Mao Wenlong.

It is not known whether Yuan Chonghuan was overconfident and felt that he was enough to fight against the Jiannu, or whether he felt that even if Mao Wenlong died, he could still control Pi Island. In any case, Yuan Chonghuan killed Mao Wenlong directly.

It was the death of Mao Wenlong that made Huang Taiji realize that Pi Island had lost its restraining effect on him. That year, he rushed out in full force, passed through Mongolia, bypassed the Ji-Liao defense line carefully arranged by Yuan Chonghuan, and headed straight for the Ming capital from Xifengkou!

And the even stranger thing is that when Yuan Chonghuan learned that Huang Taiji had entered the Pass, he did not take this opportunity to "besiege Wei to save Zhao" and directly attack the Jiannu's lair. Instead, when the emperor did not summon him to defend the country, he led his troops to defend the country. He even asked his beloved general Zhao Rujiao to lead 4,000 elite soldiers to hold back Huang Taiji even though he knew he would die.

Rather than being a loyal servant of the king, it would be more accurate to say that he was escorting Huang Taiji into the pass, and they accompanied him all the way to the capital without engaging in any battle.

(End of this chapter)