The Soul of the Han Dynasty in the Late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 727
Training is known to increase productivity and reduce casualties in times of combat.

"Sweat more in peacetime, bleed less in wartime!" It's not just words, it has already been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the soldiers and civilians are training hard to the sound of military songs, sweating profusely.

At the beginning of February in the tenth year of Chongzhen, the land of the Central Plains was cold in spring, and people on the official road leading to Nanyang shouted horses.

That was the return of the Tianxiong Army, the King Tang's Department, which had grown to 6000, and the "Red Banner Army" Zhao Kun, Gu Zhun, Pei Yuanwu, and Gu Rushan, which had grown to nearly 2.

Rogues are good at destruction, they don't need any cities that have already been taken.

Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong and others have been ravaging Xiangyang and Nanyang for [-] days. They have literally dug three feet into the ground. They have robbed all gold, silver, treasures, food, and livestock that can be found.

Knowing that King Lu Yan and the "Red Devil" had killed more than [-] people along the way, they were not willing to stay and started to run around and commit crimes again.

Huang Han knew that if there were a large number of hungry refugees, he would not be able to wipe out the bandits.

After analyzing the Henan intelligence summarized by Qiwei, it can be predicted that the rogues will not choose to head-to-head with the Tianxiong Army and the "Red Banner Army".

Lu Xiangsheng and the king of Tang regained the lost ground in a flick of a finger, and it must be a long way to eliminate the bandits.

The "Red Banner Army" will not foolishly follow the rogues in an armed parade, but will still adopt the consistent policy of regaining an area and bringing the people back from the brink of starvation.

The areas of Xiangyang and Nanyang should be relatively affluent places in Henan, with fertile land and beautiful water. If there is no military disaster, the ability to deal with natural disasters is much better than other places.

The Hanshui River, the largest tributary of the Yangtze River system, detours in the Jianghan Plain and goes straight to Xiangyang.

This section of waterway can completely navigate flat-bottomed river boats with a displacement of less than [-] tons. From Xiangyang to Nanyang in the northeast direction, there is Tangbai River, and there are more than [-] miles of waterway that can also navigate inland river boats with a displacement of less than [-] tons.

In ancient times, shipping was the cheapest and most efficient means of transportation. Because of this, once Huang Han had a foothold and capital, he spared no effort to develop the shipbuilding industry.

After seven or eight years of development, embezzlement, robbery, and construction, Huang Han not only owned a large number of merchant ships and warships for maritime trade.

It also has hundreds of cargo ships, passenger ships, and gunboats suitable for the Yangtze River, Han River, and inland waterway navigation with navigation capabilities.

Huang Han issued an order to generals such as Zhao Kun, Gu Zhun, and specially selected [-] young officers from the personal guard battalion to be promoted to officers. These young officers will serve as grassroots officers and town governors to strengthen the organizational structure of the "Red Banner Army" in the interior .

The reason why he picked the best seedlings to join the guard camp was because Huang Han trained these thousands of people as reserve officers, which is equivalent to the officer training team for later generations.

Release [-] grassroots officers, give money, food and weapons, and after six months, these young people will bring out [-] regular troops.

Once Xiangyang, Nanyang and the nearby cities are recovered, the "Red Banner Army" will stay here and will not leave. Next, they will rescue refugees and enclose unowned land for reclamation.

Tang Wang was always a responsible person, and now that the family has changed, he doesn't care about those fiefdoms. The "Red Banner Army" took the lead in organizing refugees to enclose the land belonging to Tang Wang's family, and there should be no resistance.

What's more, the "Red Banner Army" planted the land of princes or landlord bureaucrats, and paid rent and national taxes in accordance with the standards of the lease agreement signed with King Lu and King Zhou, and did not change the ownership of the land.

It's just that the "Red Banner Army" provides seeds, cattle, etc., collects half of the harvest, and covers all the exorbitant taxes that farmers need to bear, preventing farmers from taking risks when they are exploited and facing starvation.

Three years ago, the "Red Banner Army" was very domineering, enclosing the land of more than a dozen vassal kings and county kings and directly arranging for the villagers to cultivate it, and then making up the agreement to pay the rent afterwards, which worked very well.

Even Lu Wang, Zhou Wang, Fu Wang, etc. all recognized their noses. In the end, landlords big and small could only accept the status quo.

It’s not that the landlords are highly enlightened, but that they are savvy. Knowing that the “Red Banner Army” is not a vain name, they can get [-]% of the average annual land output as land rent, and they can bear the anger in their hearts because of drought and flood.

After all, natural disasters and man-made disasters continue, without strong force as a guarantee, without large-scale reclamation, and without spending money to build water conservancy facilities for irrigation and flood drainage, it is an indisputable fact that large areas of land are barren.

In troubled times, who can organize the refugees to settle down in reclamation?Only Huang Han, who owns the "Red Banner Army", has such financial resources, force and commanding power.

The current "Red Banner Army" has grown for more than three years, its numbers have doubled, and it has become even more domineering in handling land disputes in the areas it touches.

Unowned land is of course included in the bag, and as long as no one is found to be plowing in the spring, the owned land will be regarded as good land that is about to be abandoned and the villagers will be arranged to cultivate it in time.

King Xiang has been passed down for more than ten generations, with so many fiefdoms, such a big business, and the family's cash is more than one million taels?
Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng did not kill Zhu Yiming, King of Xiang, Zhu Changfa, King of Guiyang, Zhu Changcheng, King of Fuqing, Zhu Changgan, King of Jinxian, etc., but they did not let them go.

After draining King Xiang's lineage, Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, Ma Shouying, Luo Rucai and other bandits led their subordinates to live a good life with sufficient money and food for [-] days, and took many young and middle-aged men under their command.

Among the rogues, there are more than 20 people with weapons and capable of fighting, of which the core force exceeds [-].

They refused to expend their newly accumulated strength to fight the Tianxiong Army and the "Red Banner Army" desperately, and chose to avoid the battle.

The officers and soldiers in the mainland are really poor, and it has long been no longer the Ming Dynasty's standard [-]% cavalry and [-]% infantry.

In most of the Ming army, only the main general and a small number of family members had horses, and the rest were infantry, and most of them were infantry with no armor but only cold weapons, broadswords and spears, and very few bows and crossbows.

Why seven years after Chongzhen did not the Ming army chase the rogues to fight, but the rogues continued to surround the Ming army and behead the Ming generals?

The reason is that the more Ming fought, the poorer it became, and the quality and equipment of the Ming army became worse and worse.

But the rogues became richer and richer as they fought, and the equipment of the old battalion became more and more neat. The leaders, big and small, learned about war in the war without interruption, and their military quality improved rapidly.

Gao Yingxiang judged the situation and decided not to challenge the strong army, and arranged to separate in four directions and three directions.

They didn't run away at all, they walked more calmly. If they found that the pursuing Ming army dared to advance alone, they would concentrate their forces to encircle and wipe them out like Cao Wenzhao, who planned to be brave.

The total number of cavalry in the old battalion of rogue bandits exceeds fifteen thousand, and they have the ability to run.

With such strength, it would be much easier to deal with the pursuers. The infantry of the Ming army was not of high quality, and their marching speed was not as fast as that of the rogue infantry.

(End of this chapter)