"kill!!!"
"Kill Silunfa!"
"Capture Yunjiemu! Destroy the Mengmao Dragon!"
On June 19, as shouts of death rang out in the mountains of southwest China, the civil strife in Luchuan that Zhu Gaoxu had expected finally began.
Beneath the Ruili River under the winding mountains, a group of tens of thousands of soldiers wearing armor and tattoos surrounded a prosperous city under the winding mountains.
This place was the Damao Kingdom of the Dai people at that time, and the Han people called it the capital of Luchuan, Yun Jie Mu.
Once upon a time, this was the place where the Mongolian cavalry was broken and sunk in the sand. Even though Dingbian suffered a disastrous defeat, the Dai people never let the Ming army reach Yunjiemu City.
Luchuan, which had hundreds of thousands of soldiers, was not surrounded by the Ming army, which they regarded as their enemies. Instead, it was surrounded by its own people in the ninth year after the Battle of Dingbian.
As the leader of the Damao Kingdom of the Dai people, Silun Fa, who once ambitiously wanted to conquer the entire Southeast Asia, was defeated by the then Xiping Hou Muying in the Battle of Dingbian using the creative "three-stage" musket shooting method combined with artillery.
The 50,000 Lucchuan army suffered heavy casualties from Mu Ying. This battle also completely destroyed Silunfa's vigor, and he had to apologize to the Ming Dynasty and pay taxes.
After that, Silunfa became depressed and became obsessed with the way of Buddhism, which even made the status of the monks higher than that of the chiefs of various tribes, including Dao Ganmeng.
Such connivance eventually led to the rebellion.
Dao Gan and Meng united with some chiefs who were dissatisfied with Silun's law to attack Silun, and an army of 50,000 people surrounded Yun Jiemu tightly.
Among the four city gates of Yun Jiemu, some people could not bear the pressure, opened the city gates, and put Dao Ganmeng's army into the city.
Soon, Dao Ganmeng led his troops to approach the palace, and encountered a blockage here.
Three thousand soldiers wearing armor and holding Dai knives formed a camp step by step and guarded the gate of the palace.
"Throw the gun!"
Facing these three thousand sharp soldiers, General Aohei, who was riding a pony in western Yunnan, gave an order, and a large number of strong men in the army immediately stood up.
They held javelins and threw them with all their strength, and they fell like dense rain on the formation of sharp soldiers, causing blood to roll in the enemy formation.
At this time, the elephant soldiers came out and completely disrupted their formation.
As the formation of sharp soldiers was broken, hundreds of Yunnan horse cavalry rushed into the formation, expanding the victory.
Under their offensive like a violent storm, the palace's elite soldiers were quickly defeated, and three thousand people were defeated like a mountain.
After learning the news, Silunfa, who was hiding in the palace, put on monk's clothes, shaved off his beard and hair, disguised himself as a monk, and escaped from the palace during the chaos.
The next day, Daogan Mengzhao informed the leaders of Luchuan tribes that Silunfa set himself on fire in Yunjiemu Palace, causing an uproar within Luchuan...
On June 22, Dao Ganmeng attempted to rebel against Silunfa on the pretext of being put down by himself, and sent an envoy to Kunming, requesting to be succeeded as the peace envoy to Burma.
Unfortunately, before Dao Qianmeng's men arrived in Kunming, Silunfa, disguised as a monk, escaped to Jin Teeth with the help of several monks.
Wang Zhao, commander of the Golden Tooth Guard, received news of the civil strife in Luchuan and immediately sent someone to escort Silunfa to Kunming.
Knowing that Silunfa survived and fled to Kunming, Daoqianmeng began to clean up the leaders loyal to him and stationed troops in Menglin Village to confront the Ming Army's Golden Tooth Guard at Shuiyan Pass. The Golden Tooth Guard commander Wang Zhao led two soldiers Qiantun is located at Shuiyan Pass.
On June 30th, Silunfa arrived at Kunming Mansion. Wei Guogong Xu Huizu, who was stationed in Kunming Mansion, learned of the matter. After discussing with Muchun, the Marquis of Xiping, he decided to send Muchun to Yongchang Guard and He Fu to garrison Jin Teeth.
At the same time, Xu Huizu relied on Muchun's prestige in Yunnan to mobilize 7,000 troops from chieftains in Lijiang, Dali, Menghua, Yuanmou and other places, and he took Silunfa to Nanjing to report the matter.
When the news reached Nanjing, it was already the fifth day of July, and Xu Huizu and Silunfa had just arrived in Chongqing.
In the Qianqing Palace, Zhu Yuanzhang was sitting on a chair in his middle coat, looking thin.
Looking at the urgent memorandum on his desk, he just felt very irritable.
The matter of the North and South Lists had just been resolved, but before the wealthy families in the world could safely move into Nanjing City, another rebellion broke out in the southwest.
More importantly, Daxueshan Luoluo from Xingdusi in Sichuan also came down the mountain to cause rebellion. Fan people from Litang, Batang, Daowu and other places also entered the bandit to provoke provocations. Guzhou barbarians in southern Huguang rebelled again, and Guangxi also raised flags to rebel. of toast.
Suddenly, the entire southwest seemed to be full of smoke. In the past, Zhu Yuanzhang would not have found this situation very troublesome, but it was different now.
"Tell Muchun and He Fu not to act rashly for the time being. At the same time, they will transfer grain from Kunming to the front line and wait for my order."
Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the eunuch on duty who was standing in the palace, and the eunuch also bowed and obeyed.
Before he could turn around and leave, another eunuch walked in from outside the palace.
Looking at his appearance, Zhu Yuanzhang thought another rebellion broke out somewhere, but when he approached, he saw the smile on his face and he calmed down.
"Your Majesty, here's the good news for Jilin City..."
The eunuch who was responsible for the ceremony smiled and presented the memorial with both hands, and reported with a smile: "In the sixth month of Gengyin, the King of Bohai led 3,000 men on horseback to the Songhua River. They traveled north for more than 2,000 miles along the waterway, and suddenly the Wen rebels came. Atai Wailan fled, and commanded Meng Zhang, the chief minister, to pursue him with his troops, and captured 167 of his men and more than 200 cattle and sheep."
"The King of Bohai changed Hulawen into Heishui City and set up Heishui Qianhu Station to appease the Jurchens in the area above Hulawen and at the same time to prevent Ataiwailan from going south."
The ceremonial eunuch and the eunuch flattered each other to announce the good news. After hearing the news, Zhu Yuanzhang showed a hint of relief on his face: "Finally there is good news."
Just after he finished speaking, Zhu Yuanzhang realized that his intention was to let this boy go to patrol the Wuliangha ground in the north. Why did he run to the northeast, so he asked: "Has that boy ever had anything to report back to the army?"
"Your Majesty, there is indeed it." The eunuch opened the memorial and took out a piece of letter.
Zhu Yuanzhang took it and opened it and read it. The beginning of the letter was still the same. It was just Zhu Gaoxu talking about how difficult it was for him. The transportation in Jilin City was inconvenient, so it was not easy to write letters to the south. He also had no achievements in his hands. If he wrote letters often, he would be worried. The ministers in the DPRK criticized him, so he took advantage of this achievement to write to his grandfather.
Although he knew it was a polite statement, Zhu Yuanzhang was still very happy to read the content of the letter.
He continued to look down, and as expected, the boy talked about business and the importance of Blackwater City.
Not only that, he also hand-drawn a map for himself outside the customs.
The craftsmanship of this map is exquisite. Not to mention other places, the drawings of Liaodong alone are more accurate than those drawn by Liaodong Dusi himself. As for the map outside the pass, the mountains, rivers and hydrology are drawn in an orderly manner, unlike Drawn by nonsense.
"This boy dares to hand over such a picture to the imperial court..."
Lao Zhu was inspired. He knew exactly what such a map represented.
It can be said that if this map is true, then if there is chaos in Jilin City in the future, the court can completely deal with Jilin City based on the terrain of this map.
By doing this, Zhu Gaoxu undoubtedly handed over his handle to the court.
But it was his actions that made Lao Zhu feel a little uncomfortable.
He suppressed this child so much, but this child could still give this such a detailed map without reservation. He...
Zhu Yuanzhang sighed and couldn't help but reflect on whether he had suppressed this child too much.
After sighing, he continued to look down.
In the second half, Zhu Gaoxu explained the reason why he attacked Ataiwailan first. To put it bluntly, he wanted to mobilize more troops to patrol the north, so he attacked Hu Lawen and turned Anton City from the front line to the hinterland.
As for the Northern Patrol Wu Liangha, this time he will arrive in Zhaozhou City in early August and wait for the supplies to be fully deployed in Zhaozhou City before setting off for the expedition.
In addition, he also wrote the number of soldiers and horses sent out in the letter.
Originally, he wanted to mobilize one thousand cavalry and three thousand horse infantry to go north, but after learning that the imperial court had transferred two thousand more soldiers and horses, he decided to mobilize one thousand cavalry and four thousand horse infantry to patrol north of Zhaozhou.
The route of his northern patrol was to go north along the Naowen River (Nen River), use boats to transport the army's baggage for fifty days, and then rush to thrash the grass and grains on the ground of Wuliangha before winter, just like the autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves. Then he returned to Zhaozhou City.
"This kid has gained a lot of inspiration after the siege of Jilin."
Looking at the letter written by Zhu Gaoxu, Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't help but praise him.
In his opinion, Zhu Gaoxu knew very well the purpose of going out to the fortress this time, and compared to Prince Ning, this boy was thicker-skinned, and he actually dared to write "Throwing Grass Valley" in a letter to himself openly.
If such content were seen by Confucian scholars, they would probably write several articles accusing him of cruelty.
However, Lao Zhu was very satisfied with what this kid said. After all, he founded the King of Sai system in the first place, and his purpose was to allow King Sai to be semi-nomadic and semi-agricultural to squeeze out the living space of the Mongols.
Because of this, he divided the grasslands along the Northland among his sons and gave them cattle and sheep.
Not only that, he also wrote letters to all the vassal kings north of the Huaihe River, including Zhu Fan, teaching them how to herd and take care of cattle and sheep.
Even for Zhu Ju in Henan, he set aside a piece of pasture for him.
The purpose of this is to cause conflict between the vassal king and the Mongols in the north. After all, the pasture in the north is limited. If the Mongols go south, they will inevitably seize the pasture in Monan, and the pasture in Monan is in the hands of the Sai King. It is inevitable for both sides to Conflicts will break out.
The more Sai kings in the north, the more stable the mainland will be.
Instead of spending thousands of dan to raise a general to defend the enemy in the frontier fortress, it is better to spend 20,000 dan to raise a son to defend the enemy in the frontier fortress.
The king of Sai could not only prepare the border, but also stabilize the place and suppress rebellions. Therefore, he established fewer vassal kings in places with many Han people and more vassal kings in places with few Han people.
In places like Liaodong, he planned to set up two or three Sai kings, one to defend against the Jurchens and North Korea, and one to defend against Mongolia.
As for Beiping, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Henan, one should be set up each. It is best to have one to three Xingdu divisions in Shaanxi.
However, doing so can easily make the vassal king powerful, so it is necessary to place some weak vassals with slightly distant relationships among the strong vassals to cut off their ties.
If this is maintained, it will only take four to fifty years for the frontier to be completely stabilized.
In order to prevent the feudal kings from causing rebellion, he also established the rule of "only enfeoffing feudal lords but not granting land, only ennobling titles but not visiting the people".
Under this rule, the fiefdoms of all vassal kings were actually only the scope of their palaces and their pastures outside the wall.
Even if the vassal king wants to cause rebellion, he must first develop the pastures and then have enough strength to cause rebellion. Otherwise, with more than 10,000 guards in hand, he may not even be able to capture the city where the palace is located, and he will be suppressed by the court.
As for being defeated by a vassal king with no more than 10,000 troops, Zhu Yuanzhang really couldn't imagine what kind of situation it would be. I'm afraid that at that time, the Ming Dynasty would be almost over.
With the 600,000 elites he has trained for twenty years, as long as he is allowed to follow them, there will be no problem for at least thirty years.
Thinking of this, Zhu Yuanzhang seemed to feel that there was really no need to suppress Gao Xu like this.
Looking at the letter in his hand, he thought for a while before speaking: "Heishui City is extremely important. In addition, the post road from Jilin City to Thirty Thousand Guards is too long, so a Thousand Households Building must be built to connect the two."
"According to my decree, we will establish a thousand households from Shandong and the Huaihe River, and set up a thousand-household residence in Heishui."
"Send an order to the King of Bohai again, asking him to choose a place to build a city and set up a base between Jilin City and Thirty Thousand Guards after returning from the Northern Tour. In the coming year, a thousand households will be moved there to garrison."
"My servant accepts the order." The eunuch and eunuch, the eunuch in charge of ceremony, agreed without hesitation. After all, they were just eunuchs and they did not dare to get involved in any political affairs.
"Back off."
Zhu Yuanzhang put the letter on the table, and the eunuch also left.
But not long after he retired, the imperial edict drafted by the Supervisor of Ceremonies was sent to Chunhe Hall.
Zhu Yunwen, who was wearing Chinese clothes and ready to rest, received the imperial edict and frowned slightly.
On the Babu bed, a pretty girl who had taken off her clothes was already lying down. Seeing that Zhu Yunwen had not put down the imperial edict for a long time, she curiously asked: "Your Highness, what's wrong with this edict?"
"It's okay..." Zhu Yunwen didn't answer the girl, he just wrote and approved, and then stamped it for distribution.
After a while, he lay back on the bed, but when the girl touched him, he turned sideways and said, "I'm a little tired today, so go to bed early."
"Yes..." There was a trace of disappointment in the girl's eyes, but she still lay down and hugged Zhu Yunwen.
Her hug was a bit of a hindrance to Zhu Yunwen, but he didn't care now. What he cared about was the fact that his imperial grandfather had set up a new guardhouse for Gao Xu.
"Two thousand were allocated the year before last, two thousand last year, and another two thousand this year..."
"If this continues, year after year, won't it create another powerful vassal?"
Zhu Yunwen was thinking a lot. After all, there were not many vassal kings with more than 8,000 soldiers, and Zhu Gaoxu already had 10,000 soldiers including the 2,000 he transferred this time and next year.
Although these two thousand people were still civilian households, Zhu Yunwen knew Zhu Gaoxu's talents. If he could train eight thousand soldiers, he could train ten thousand.
Ten thousand soldiers is no longer a small number.
Zhu Yunwen wanted to get up and think about how to check and balance Zhu Gaoxu, but then he thought about it. Now that Zhu Fan and Zhu Gaoxu have not been resolved, if he confronts Zhu Gaoxu first, it will put the cart before the horse.
Thinking of this, Zhu Yunwen slowly closed his eyes: "Gao Xu, let me give you a little more time, Third Uncle's side will be very fast..."
"boom!!"
When Zhu Yunwen had already fallen asleep, a gleam of fire lit up in a mountain col in the north, accompanied by thick smoke.
"how?"
Beside the torch, Zhu Gaoxu's voice came from the smoke in the darkness.
When the smoke dissipated, he was now wearing double heavy armor and holding a matchlock gun similar in shape to a modern rifle.
The total length of this matchlock gun is four feet and three inches. Since Zhu Gaoxu stipulated that all craftsmen in Jilin City use cloth rulers, the length of this matchlock gun is about 1.37 meters.
Zhu Gaoxu asked at the light of the fire ahead, and soon two craftsmen brought a wooden mannequin.
This wooden mannequin is covered with a set of bright armor, and the armor on the left abdomen is obviously sunken.
"Forty steps, one shot out of three, no open armor."
Zhu Gaoxu turned to Meng Zhang, who was in charge of recording next to him, and Meng Zhang also quickly picked up a pen and wrote down the experimental results.
There are other experimental data written in the booklet he wrote.
"Try changing to a heavy matchlock gun."
Zhu Gaoxu handed the matchlock gun in his hand to Wang Yuan who was standing next to him, and Wang Yuan also handed over another exaggeratedly large matchlock gun.
"This is a heavy matchlock gun, six feet two inches long, with a charge of one, two, and five cents."
Wang Yuan introduced the matchlock gun, and Zhu Gaoxu also took it and took a look.
Well, a little taller than me, but luckily I haven't grown to two meters yet.
Zhu Gaoxu took the heavy matchlock gun to visually measure his height, then placed it diagonally on the ground and took two oil paper tubes, one large and one small, from Wang Yuan.
The oil paper tube has been torn open, and inside are grains of black gunpowder.
Granular black powder and fixed charge, this is what Zhu Gaoxu and Wang Yuan had said, and they got it right away.
Since this heavy matchlock gun had not been test-fired, the inside of the barrel was very clean.
Zhu Gaoxu first loaded the gunpowder into the medicine chamber of the matchlock gun, then closed the medicine chamber and poured the large barrel of propellant into the barrel.
After he finished doing this, Wang Yuan handed over a lead bullet padded with paper.
Zhu Gaoxu took it and stuffed it into the barrel, pulled out the purge bar from under the barrel, and tamped the projectiles and propellant in the barrel.
After doing all this, he took out the matchstick from his waist, blew it open, and then lit the match rope.
The match rope burned slowly, and he had enough time to fix the match rope on the match rope clip.
Since the gunpowder pool cover is closed at this time, there is no need to worry about the sparks from the match rope igniting the primer and causing a fire.
After doing all this, Zhu Gaoxu raised his gun and waited, pulling the trigger when the match rope fell.
"boom!!"
In just a moment, the priming charge in the gunpowder pool 'exploded', the propellant was ignited, and the matchlock was bounced off the matchlock clamp by the explosion. The firelight and smoke rushed into Zhu Gaoxu's face.
After a while, Zhu Gaoxu put down his gun. There was some dust on his face, but it didn't bother him.
"Hit! Ming Jia was penetrated!"
The firelight swayed forty steps away, and a voice followed.
Hearing this sound, people standing around Zhu Gaoxu, including himself, laughed. Zhu Gaoxu also said to the distance: "Test fifty steps!"
"Yes!" The fire flickered, then began to get smaller.
"Beep!!"
After a few breaths, a wooden whistle came from over there, which was a signal that the test could begin.
Zhu Gaoxu followed the same method and loaded and fired again. He was not very fast and counted the numbers silently in his mind. It took about fifty seconds to complete one round of loading and firing.
"boom!!"
Gunshots rang out again, and Zhu Gaoxu put down his gun and waited.
"No hit, you can continue!"
The sound came again. Faced with the result of missing the shot, Zhu Gaoxu was not discouraged. After all, he knew that the accuracy of smoothbore guns was very poor, and it was difficult for rifled guns to standardize the production of barrels and bullets before entering an industrial revolution.
Therefore, the musket is one of the few opportunities for Zhu Gaoxu to clearly climb technology.
Loading the gun again, and with a 'bang' sound, good news came from the firelight shortly after: "Your Highness, it was shot, and it penetrated the front!"
"Weared?!" Meng Zhang, who was in charge of recording, was shocked when he heard the words of the man in the distance.
The power of this heavy matchlock gun is too terrifying to penetrate Ming Jia head-on at a distance of sixty steps.
"Go on, sixty steps!"
Zhu Gaoxu was not dazzled by this result. After all, the heavy matchlock gun could not withstand even slightly thinner plate armor at a distance of fifty paces, let alone armor.
Soon, the person in charge of setting up the target placed the target 60 steps away. At this time, the fire was already very weak. Zhu Gaoxu missed the target three times in a row, and it was not until the fourth time that he hit the target.
In this test, Ming Jia was penetrated again, and Zhu Gaoxu also asked people to move the target to seventy steps.
This time Zhu Gaoxu fired five times in a row and missed. He didn't hit until the sixth time, but the lead bullet got stuck in the armor.
In order to find out whether it was a coincidence, Zhu Gaoxu fired more than 30 times and hit six times. He either hit the ground after hitting the target or got stuck in the armor.
"It seems that the armor-breaking limit of the light matchlock gun is thirty steps, and the armor-breaking limit of the heavy matchlock gun is sixty steps."
Zhu Gaoxu gave the results of this test and said to Wang Yuan beside him: "It's already pretty good. Next, you just need to test its accuracy again."
"Accuracy?" Wang Yuan was confused, and Zhu Gaoxu explained to him how to test the accuracy.
"To be precise, it means firing a musket a hundred times at different distances, and then recording the number of bullet hits."
"Such as ten steps, twenty steps, thirty steps, forty steps, fifty steps... and so on."
Zhu Gaoxu explained, and Wang Yuan nodded quickly: "The common people understand."
"You are not a commoner. Now you are an official of the Hundred Households of the Jilin Guard Ordnance Station." Zhu Gaoxu interrupted Wang Yuan and told him the happy news with a smile.
While he was still dazed, Zhu Gaoxu also said to the craftsmen around him: "Although the flintlock gun has not been developed yet, you can already receive the reward of ten guan each."
"Your Highness is a thousand years old!!" After hearing Zhu Gaoxu's words, the craftsmen around him cheered.
Seeing their appearance, Zhu Gaoxu also patted Wang Yuan, who was still stunned: "I will leave for Zhaozhou City tomorrow. You can build a factory for this matchlock gun and prepare for mass production."
"It takes three months for the clay mold of the artillery to dry in the shade, right? I'll come back and see it in three months. I spent the winter in Blackwater City this year."
"If you can make this artillery, you will be the Qianhu Officer of the Ordnance Department, and all the craftsmen will be rewarded with ten coins each..."
After Zhu Gaoxu finished speaking, he motioned for Meng Zhang to follow him and leave, leaving only the cheering craftsmen and Wang Yuan who had not recovered for a long time.
"I have become an official of hundreds of households..."
Wang Yuan murmured, then slowly raised his head and looked at the backs of Zhu Gaoxu and Meng Zhang.
At this moment, Wang Yuan came to his senses. He bowed to Zhu Gaoxu and shouted:
"Please rest assured, Your Highness, the common people will definitely study it as soon as possible!!"
After shouting, Wang Yuan also put his arms around the necks of the grinning craftsmen: "Mom! The hundred or so of us are going to be prosperous!"
He was happy, and Zhu Gaoxu was also explaining to Meng Zhang beside him.
After getting on his horse, Zhu Gaoxu looked at Meng Zhang when the two men and their soldiers were heading towards Heishui City: "You are in Heishui City, I allow you to do things easily."
"As long as Blackwater City is not lost, whether you go to encircle and suppress other savage tribes or surrender to them, you can recruit as many people as you can."
"Over in Jilin City, I will ask Yishiha to provide you with food. For every household you recruit, I want you to train one soldier."
"This..." After hearing Zhu Gaoxu's words, Meng Zhang hesitated and said, "Isn't there a quota?"
Seeing Meng Zhang ask this, Zhu Gaoxu looked at the road ahead without squinting, and then spoke.
"The more the merrier..."
"Records of Emperor Shizong of the Ming Dynasty": Taizu ordered him to patrol the north, train his troops in Heishui City, and make firearms, which was called Shenji Camp.
(End of chapter)
