Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 60 The Northern Expedition
"Huang Qing, Feng Qing, Lu Qing, are you willing to make such an arrangement for Shizhong Camp?" Zhu Yihai asked the founders.

Huang Zongxi and the others are also in their [-]s and [-]s, and after experiencing life and death today, they can see many things more clearly. Lu Jianguo's various behaviors far exceeded their expectations.

"The minister is just a failed candidate, and dare not take the heavy responsibility of this patrol."

Several people in Feng Jing also thanked En and refused to refuse this official position, thinking it was too much.

"My dear fellows, if you do extraordinary things in extraordinary times, you would naturally do what you need to do in peacetime, but now when the country is in crisis, you don't need to follow the old system in everything. You have ambitions and are more loyal. , not lacking in talent and ability, and these have been seen by lonely eyes."

"Your Highness, the ministers are ashamed. The Shizhong camp was newly established, and it was beaten and wiped out."

"What a shame, your performance today, even Wu Sangui, who surrendered to captives, is ashamed. He led the Guanning army, and received a generous salary from the court. Is there such a loyal and brave performance by Qing and others? Is there such a fearlessness? the spirit of sacrifice?"

"He is far worse than you guys! You guys are great, and so is Shizhongying!"

"Originally I wanted you to continue to lead the Shizhong Camp, but I just felt that this would be a bit of a waste of talent, so I decided to transfer from the Orphan Army Standard Bearer Battalion to rebuild the Shizhong Camp. You will take on more important positions. Do more for ZTE's recovery."

After some persuasion, Huang Zongxi, Feng Jingdi and others accepted Zhu Yihai's appointment, and Zhang Shixun also took over the banner of Shizhong Camp with a whole group of officers and soldiers from the outpost of the Banner Bearer Battalion.

Zhu Yihai personally wrote the flag of loyalty to the camp for him, and awarded it to them.

"Your Highness, those prisoners of the Ertars request to abandon the darkness and turn to the light, and are willing to join the Shizhong camp."

Zhu Yihai shook his head disdainfully, "I will never believe the nonsense of these people. They are not the Ming army who was forced to surrender due to the situation in the Central Plains, but the coated slaves whose family is outside the pass and who have entered the Eight Banners of the Han army. These people are invaders. The vanguard of Ming Dynasty, they fought no softer than the Tartars before."

"Your Highness, I think you still have to step up the expansion of troops, why don't you just stay and use them and observe?" Shen Chenquan suggested.

"Even if we really want to use them, Gu will not use these people now. Didn't we select more than 1000 troops under Chen Wu's command before? These people can be further reused if they show their strength in this battle."

For those captives, whether they were Jurchens or those from the Han Army Banner, Zhu Yihai had no good feelings for them.

All of them had blood on their hands.

When Chen Wu looted the rebels in the village, he chose left and right to keep a small number of them, and he would not easily keep these Tartars and Ertars.

There are few reliable core soldiers under him, and if he annexes too many miscellaneous soldiers at one time, he will only suffer from indigestion. Even if he must expand the army in the future, he must do it slowly.

Otherwise, once indigestion, poor control, and loss of control over the army, everything will be over.

The Shizhong camp was almost wiped out, but Zhu Yihai valued Shizhong camp's courage to fight today, so he was willing to take out a post from his standard bearer camp to rebuild.

The army needs a sense of honor, and with such a glorious history and such a loyal experience, this army is extremely precious and worthy of vigorous development.

"Today's bloody battle is a great victory, all soldiers will be credited with a merit, and there will be rewards!"

Zhu Yihai still has a lot of money in his hands now, including the money raised from Linhai, the money brought by Pang Tianshou, the money borrowed from Haimen, the money from the local tyrants in Ningbo, and of course, he just made a windfall from Chen Wuna.

Recruiting soldiers and buying horses, rewarding pensions, and spending money like flowing water, Zhu Yihai was not reluctant.

There is no gain in reluctance.

The army is the most costly, so if there is money that is not spent on the army, where is it used?
In Meishan Village.

Still busy after the war, cleaning up the battlefield and making statistics on the aftermath, everyone is busy.

After Zhang Mingzhen's simple bandaging, he asked Zhu Yihai for orders, took the light cavalry who had hastily rested, and continued to search for the defeated Tartar army.

In the stockade, the captives were temporarily not killed after being interrogated. They were used as livestock to help repair the stockade, pull corpses and dig graves.

The pensions for the dead and disabled were distributed as soon as possible.

For locals in Meishanzhai, they are sent directly to their wives and children, and for those who are not married to their parents or brothers. For soldiers from other places, they are first deposited in the account of the camp, and when they return, they will be sent back to the soldiers' homes, or sent to them.

When an ingot of silver was really sent out, the small Meishan Village was still shocked.

After all, this is the end of the world. How long has it been since those battalion soldiers and guards received their rations?The so-called preferential care and care is even more impossible to talk about. It is difficult to cash in even food and rewards. Now Lu Jianguo actually issued pensions directly after the war.

The first consequence of this was that all the young people in Meishan village actively signed up to join the army, and even half a day later, the people and young people in the nearby villages also came to sign up.

Many people came here not only for the generous wages, but also with hatred for the Tartars. This time the Tartars raided, thousands of people in the surrounding villages died under the swords of the Tartars, and many people forged blood feuds with them. .

Zhang Shixun quickly recruited a full battalion, and finally Zhu Yihai's four battalions also recruited many new recruits, and there were still many young people who wanted to sign up to join the army.

Seeing such enthusiasm, Zhu Yihai also planned to recruit more soldiers.

So the Bannerman Battalion and the Shizhong Battalion were expanded by one battalion, and finally the Second Yongwei Battalion, Zhenbiao, and Shenji were expanded by one battalion each. Originally there were four battalions, but now they have become ten battalions.

It directly expanded to [-] soldiers and horses.

The weapons and equipment carried by the army were insufficient, and the recruits wore civilian clothes and took sharpened wooden spears and bamboo spears as weapons.

Although the weapons are insufficient, the morale is extremely strong.

On the side of the road outside Meishan Village, the heads of hundreds of real and fake Tartars were planted on sharpened wooden stakes, which was very exciting.

Huang Zongxi, Feng Jingdi and other local gentry in Yuyao actively donated their family property to help the army. Even the major families in Meishanzhai who had just experienced a war disaster also generously donated money and food.

Matchlock guns, carrying guns, bows and arrows, spears, machetes and other self-made weapons were also donated to His Royal Highness Lu Jianguo.

The expansion method adopted by Zhu Yihai is to directly turn one battalion into two battalions. One battalion divides two outposts to build a new battalion, and then each uses two outposts as the backbone. One battalion.

For a while, almost all officers were promoted.

Shichang becomes team chief, team chief becomes whistle chief, and whistle chief becomes battalion officer.

Even ordinary soldiers are promoted from third-class soldiers to second-class soldiers, and second-class soldiers to first-class soldiers.

This kind of promotion for everyone made the whole camp even more excited.

Although in this way, the number of combatants plummeted, but Zhu Yihai felt that this method was the only way to ensure that the newly established battalion could have the fastest combat effectiveness in the shortest possible time.

However, changing from one to two is the limit that Zhu Yihai can accept for the time being. The soldiers of the fourth battalion were only three thousand and two, but now that they have been expanded again and again, they have directly soared to ten thousand, which has doubled several times.

Not only is there a shortage of experienced officers, but there is also a serious shortage of veterans, not to mention military supplies and salaries.

Nearly [-] captive Tartars were beheaded in today's battle, and some horses, armor, and weapons were seized, but it was only a drop in the bucket.

On the contrary, these armors and equipment were very good, especially the equipment of the Tartars, which was very high-quality, so Zhu Yihai directly added them to the first battalion of the standard bearers.

The First Battalion of Banner Bearers is the pro-army that Zhu Yihai wants to focus on building, and it is natural to have good equipment to get them first.

He currently has several battalions of troops, but what he lacks the most are horses and cavalry who are good at riding and shooting. Today, he was not able to wipe out all the Tartars because of insufficient cavalry, and they couldn't catch up.

Everyone is busy outside.

Zhu Yihai rested at the home of a big family in the village, and the injured Huang Zongxi and others also recuperated here.

"The interrogation revealed that this group of Tartars came from the opposite side of Haining, because rebels have appeared in various places in Ning, Shaotai, and the Jiangbei Tartars were a little confused about the situation here, so they sent a few troops across the river. Reconnaissance, the team we encountered came across the sea by boat from Haining."

Zhang Mingyang reported the results of the interrogation to Zhu Yihai, "I got an unexpected news that the Haining Guard in the north of the Qiantang River has not yet been occupied by the Tartars. Shou, even beheaded the puppet general Wang Dengxuan not long ago."

"As for Xuanyang, on the north bank of the west side of the Qiantang River, it had already been captured by the Tartars. The commander of the captives sent general Lang Jindou to lead troops to guard it, and Yu Gongnai sent his deputy general Liu Mu to lead his troops to raid at night. The local righteous gentry responded bravely. Qiu Ruojun, the head of the Ministry of Military Affairs, and Yao Zhizhuo, the former deputy general of Pingyao, captured Yuhang Beiling in response."

"Hangzhou was defeated one after another on the east and west sides, shaking Hangzhou. I heard that Bo Luo, the captive commander in Hangzhou city, was both shocked and angry."

Hearing this news, Zhu Yihai was also very excited. Although he always thought that Yu Ying's strategy of deploying defenses on the Qiantang River was actually wrong in the long run. Is it the same as positional warfare?

On one side is the unstoppable Qing army, and on the other side is the Ming army, which lost two capitals in a row. The two sides are head-to-head at this time, and there is no hope of victory.

Hongguang's plan to use the Jianghuai River as a line of defense has failed. How can this Qiantang River be defended?
However, Yu Ying still has a lot of credit for running on the front line during this time, at least she has stabilized her position.

"The Tartars sent a few battalions across the south of the Yangtze River. I guess they were caught off guard by the sudden upheaval in eastern Zhejiang. Now they must come to find out the situation and make countermeasures against the encirclement and suppression."

"It is very possible that the Tartars are planning a major counterattack."

Combining his own memory of history, Zhu Yihai made a counter-inference.

In any case, although the Qing army is now based in Hangzhou and does not go south, they are strong and strong after all. In fact, it is not difficult to guess why the Qing army did not continue to go south.

One is that the Qing army advanced too fast this year. From Beijing to Shaanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Nanzhi, and Zhejiang, it can be said that two armies swept almost half of China.

Although the momentum is overwhelming, there are only tens of thousands of horses after all. On the way to recruit surrenders and accept rebels, the surrendered troops received are tens of thousands of horses, which is more than ten times that of the Qing troops who went south.

At this time, whether it is Shandong, Huaiyang, Nanzhi, or Jiangxi and Hubei, the rear is still not convinced by the Manchu occupation. Many gentry officers and soldiers, and even the rest of the Dashun Army, are still fighting against the Qing army. .

The Qing army also had to take care of the rear, not only to beware of those troops who surrendered, but also to be on guard against the uprising troops in the newly occupied areas in the rear. Their offensive had indeed reached its peak, and they had no strength left to continue fighting.

Combined with the historical trend, Jiangyin 81 and the Jiading Three Massacres will soon occur, and these are exactly the actions of the Tartars in purging the newly occupied areas.

Jiangyin City held on for 81 days.

However, the main forces of the Qing army that attacked Jiangyin and Jiading were all Qingming generals. For example, Liu Liangzuo and Kong Youde were the ones who attacked Jiangyin. Later, Liu Liangzuo and Kong Youde, two big traitors, could not be taken down, so Bo Luo, who was stationed in Hangzhou, led the Eight Banners himself. Go north and deploy cannons with Nikan to attack the city.

In this tragic battle of defending the city, the Qing army also lost several teeth. For example, the traitor Xu Dingguo who killed Gao Jie, one of the four towns of Hongguang, died in the battle against Jiangyin.

It was Gao Jie's original subordinate Li Chengdong who fought in Jiading. Li Chengdong, who was surrendered after Gao Jie's death, created the Jiading Three Massacres in Jiading.

"Haining probably won't be able to defend it. It is said that the captive commander Bo Luo not only sent a few troops across the south of the Yangtze River, but also sent two groups of troops to attack Fuyang and Haining separately, trying to wipe out the two wings of Hangzhou."

Zhu Yihai pondered for a long time when he heard the news.

"Gu Xiang led his troops across the sea to rescue Hai Ning, and caught the Tartars by surprise, what do you think?"

As soon as these words came out, all four were shocked.

Isn't this too bold?
(End of this chapter)