Chapter 3310
The Ming Dynasty's defeat in Nanjing is a foregone conclusion. Unless a miracle comes from heaven and the Ming army can cause heavy losses to the Haihan army that can change the direction of the war, the fall of Nanjing city is only a matter of time.
Can Nanjing City make a comeback with the remaining tens of thousands of defenders? The answer is obviously no.
For Ming Dynasty, if Nanjing is bound to be lost, then it is not impossible to do this business in exchange for the ownership of Nanjing in exchange for the safety of Beijing.
The most important thing is that the longer it is delayed, the lower the value of Nanjing will be. If the Haihan army loses patience, suspends the truce, and directly raises troops to attack Nanjing, then Mingting will have one less card in his hand.
In exchange for this before Haihan captured Nanjing, it seemed to be the best choice Mingting could make under the current situation.
For a clever person like Qin Jian, it is not difficult to imagine what will happen next when the eunuch arrives and enters Nanjing with the permission of the Haihan Army.
After this group of people left, Qin Jian happily walked to Yang Jin to inquire about the news: "After this person entered the city and announced the imperial edict, the people in the city should open the city and surrender, right?"
Yang Jin shook his head and said: "That's hard to say. What if the people in the city don't accept the order and want to fight to the death?"
Qin Jian smiled and said: "Mr. Yang, you are from another place and don't understand the situation in Nanjing. If the high-ranking officials in the city had such character, they should have gone to the front line to supervise the war. You have conquered so many cities, but have you ever Have you ever caught a senior official sent by Yingtian Mansion to supervise the battle?”
"This...it seems like it really doesn't exist!" Yang Jin thought for a moment and felt that what Qin Jian said made sense.
The resistance of the Ming army in the Jianghuai area cannot be said to be very strong. This may indeed have something to do with the level of the war supervising officials. The senior officials of Yingtian Mansion are not on the front line to supervise the battle and help the frontline troops coordinate various resources. They rely on the various states and counties to fight independently. It's crazy if they can defeat the Haihan Army.
As for the reason why these senior officials did not appear on the front line, apart from being greedy for life and afraid of death, there seems to be no other more reasonable explanation.
Perhaps what these people were waiting for in Nanjing was not the decisive battle on the day when the Haihan Army attacked the city, but an imperial edict that would free them from this predicament.
Yang Jin warned Qin Jian not to spread these speculations casually, so as not to shake the morale of the army. After all, the Haihan Army is still preparing for the decisive battle according to the siege plan. If the news that the Nanjing defenders are preparing to surrender gets out, it will inevitably make some people relax.
Qin Jian agreed repeatedly, but knew in his heart that his guess was probably accurate.
But not everyone can keep their mouths shut like Qin Jian. Just one day later, there were already people on the dock muttering about the imminent surrender of Nanjing City.
Even the prisoners of the Ming army who were assigned to work as laborers on the docks were discussing the matter in groups during their work breaks.
For the prisoners of war, the end of the war should be considered good news. It means that their threat to Haihan has been reduced, and they may be able to get the opportunity to be released. Even if people are not released for the time being, the possibility of being exiled to hard labor overseas will be greatly reduced.
What these people didn't know was that while they were discussing the war situation, both sides had actually sent representatives to make contact somewhere outside the city. The content of the discussion was exactly the imperial edict coming from Beijing. An agreement has been negotiated in Beijing. The Nanjing defenders will surrender Kaicheng and hand over control of Kaicheng and various official assets in the city to Haihan's army, while Haihan will give up his claim to Shuntian Mansion and Beijing City.
In exchange for surrender, Haihan would allow three days for the people in the city to leave safely. The same goes for the defenders in the city. As long as they are disarmed, they can leave the city on their own.
In other words, anyone who wants to leave can use these three days to evacuate Nanjing. However, in order to ensure that chaos such as looting, army mutiny, etc. will not occur during the handover process, the Haihan Army will be stationed in the city to maintain order.
The Ming Dynasty expected that more than 100,000 people would evacuate Nanjing. With so many people traveling by water or land, they constituted a very large group, and the evacuation plan needed to be properly arranged to avoid causing trouble.
The Haihan Army promised to provide it with several river crossing locations, including Yanziji Pier, and Haihan would organize ships to transport people who wanted to evacuate to Jiangbei.
As for those captured in previous battles, the two sides only agreed to exchange prisoners of war based on their numbers.
Compared with the losses of the Ming army, the number of prisoners captured by the Haihan army was less than three digits. Most of them were captured alone during reconnaissance or missions. This means that only a very small number of Ming army prisoners of war can be released through exchange, and the Ming army naturally tries to exchange them for senior military attachés from their own camp.
As for the prisoners of war at Yanziji Pier, most of them did not even belong to the front-line troops, and there were no named military attachés. This kind of good thing would probably not be their turn.
A few days later, just when Qin Jian was wondering if the two sides were going to fight again, there was finally new news. The Nanjing defenders had decided to surrender in Kaicheng, and the Haihan Army would enter the city to take over the defense soon.
Of course, Yanziji Wharf would not stay aloof. A large number of disarmed Ming troops arrived here under the escort of the Haihan Army and boarded ships to go to the other side of the river.
As for the dignitaries in the city, there is no need to walk such a long way to Yanziji and cross the river with the soldiers. After the Haihan Army lifted the blockade on the river, it was much more convenient to cross the Yangtze River by boat from the mouth of the Qinhuai River upstream than at Yanziji.
However, the water transport capacity is limited after all, and only special groups designated by the Ming Dynasty can be given priority. Ordinary civilians who want to leave Nanjing cannot enjoy such treatment.
Their only escape route was to go upstream along the river, passing through Taiping Prefecture and Chizhou Prefecture, until they entered Jiujiang Prefecture in Jiangxi Province, and then returned to the Ming Dynasty's ruling area. And this route is a full seven to eight hundred miles away. Not everyone can have such determination to abandon everything and go to a strange area hundreds of miles away.
After the Haihan army entered the city and immediately took over the city defenses and various government offices, warehouses, and barracks in the city, they began to post notices in the city to promote the measures taken by Haihan to take over Nanjing.
The Haihan Army's propaganda to calm the people, coupled with the difficulty of escaping, did dissuade many people who planned to leave Nanjing.
After all, what they were worried about was that the Haihan army would burn, kill, loot and treat the people in the city as criminals after entering the city, but this did not happen. Moreover, since the Haihan Army released all officials and defenders and did not embarrass official personnel, it is obvious that there is no need to persecute civilians anymore.
(End of chapter)