The famous patriotic poet Lu You of the Southern Song Dynasty has a sentence
"The remnants wept in the dust, and looked south to Wang Shi for another year."
It expresses the historic long-cherished wish of the Han nationality to resist foreign oppression and unify the rivers and mountains.
To the disappointment of Lu You and many patriotic literati and soldiers, the homeland of the Central Plains has not been recovered for a long time, and Lu You issued a famous desperate poem on his deathbed:
"Shi'er"
The dead Yuan knows that everything is empty, but the sorrow does not see Kyushu Tong.
Wang ShiBei fixed zhongyuan day, and the family sacrifice did not forget to tell Naiwong.
I don't know how many benevolent and righteous people are still working hard to restore the great rivers and mountains one after another, but they are all ambitious and unpaid, and the sky is not what people wish.
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, when the world was in chaos, the rebellious Red Turban Army was proposed
"Tiger Three thousand, straight to the land of youyan"
Unfortunately, the slogans have failed in another way, and the various groups in the north have also been destroyed.
Since the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, the north has been under the iron hooves of foreign tribes for more than 240 years.
Now, the historical task of overthrowing the brutal rule of the Yuan Dynasty and recovering the northern homeland should be fulfilled by Zhu Yuanzhang.
After Zhu Yuanzhang defeated Chen Youyi, Zhang Shicheng and other local separatist forces and unified the south, he sent a large army of the Northern Expedition in the 27th year of the Yuan Dynasty (1367), with Xu Da as the general of the conquest and Chang Yuchun as the deputy general, leading a 250,000 infantry cavalry army, who would devote themselves to completing this sacred mission and saving the northern life from water and fire.
In October, as soon as the Northern Expedition army left the army, it was as invincible as if it were destroyed, first sweeping through Shandong, conquering the important towns of Jining, Jinan, and Yidu, and then transferring to Henan and occupying Bieliang (present-day Kaifeng, Henan) and Luoyang. The biggest battle fought during this period was in the north of Luoshui, where Chang Yuchun took the lead and led his troops to easily defeat the 50,000 yuan army and win countless victories. Aruwen, the Liang king of the Yuan Dynasty who was guarding Henan, immediately surrendered, and the whole territory of Henan was pacified in turn.
When the news of the reconquest of Henan reached Ying Tianfu, Zhu Yuanzhang set out from Jiangnan and personally came to the front line of Bieliang on the south bank of the Yellow River to discuss with Xu Da the next step of play.
They decided to divide their troops into attacks on Tongguan, a military stronghold on the border between Henan and Shaanxi, according to the predetermined plan, in order to monitor the enemy of Shaanxi and Gansu and protect the flanks, while the main force returned to Shandong and directly attacked the Yuan capital with a thunderous momentum, giving the crumbling Yuan Dynasty a heavy blow.
Subsequently, Xu Da and Chang Yuchun gathered heavy troops in Heyin with great fanfare, and sent some of their generals into Hebei with partial divisions to bluff and confuse the enemy, while the main force connected the cities of Weihui, Zhangde, Guangping, and Linqing, and at the same time dredged the Grand Canal running through Shandong and Hebei to transport grain with water divisions.
Along the way, the Yuan army collapsed at a touch, and the Ming army, which was like a broken bamboo, advanced simultaneously by land and water, and was invincible for a time.
In the face of the successive victories of the Northern Expedition, in the first month of 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang officially ascended the throne as emperor at Yingtianfu (present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu Province) and established the Ming Dynasty, with the era name "Hongwu".
On July 28 of the same year, the Ming army took Tongzhou, the gateway to the Capital of Yuan (present-day Beijing), and the Yuan Dynasty was in danger. When the Northern Expedition sent by Zhu Yuanzhang attacked, the Yuan Dynasty was in a mutual internal conflict, and the rulers had no way to mobilize the elite soldiers of various warlords to intercept the Ming army that had been killed.
When the Northern Expedition army attacked Tongzhou, the restless Last Emperor Yuan Shun of the Yuan Dynasty led the nobles such as concubines, crown princes, and some of his relatives to evacuate Dadu on the night of the fall of Tongzhou, and fled to Saiwai in a daze.
On August 2, Xu Da led his army into the Capital of Yuan, and he decisively killed Timur Buhua, the King of Huai, who was trying to use his arm as a car, and others; used iron fist means to eliminate those Yuan officials who refused to surrender; and ordered Zhang Sheng to lead a thousand troops to guard the Yuan Dynasty palace, seal the warehouse, and return all the treasures counted to the public.
At the same time, Xu Da strictly forbade the soldiers to act recklessly, not a single civilian was killed, the residents of the capital lived as usual, the shops opened as usual, and the historic city was easily restored.
Later, Xu Da and Chang Yuchun took advantage of the victory to attack, and while catching up with the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty, they casually recovered the "Youyun Sixteen Prefectures" that had been ceded to the Khitan Liao State by Shi Jingyao, the "Son Emperor" of the Later Jin Dynasty.
This road is dangerous, easy to defend and difficult to attack the barrier of the Central Plains, and after losing it for four hundred years, it has returned to the hands of the Han people. The Northern Expeditionary Army did not suffer many casualties before completing the historical task of recovering the land of Youyan.
The fall of the Yuan Dynasty marked the demise of the Yuan Dynasty, and also marked the realization of the great unification of the Ming Dynasty established by Zhu Yuanzhang, which is of extremely important significance in the course of China's history.
This article refers to: "Daming God of War Spectrum"