Li Si'en had a thousand troops, but in fact he only had 80 cavalry and more than 200 infantry.
It's not that he maliciously embezzled the military wages of 700 soldiers and horses, but that the actual food and wages he received could only barely feed 500 soldiers and horses at most.
In the late Ming Dynasty, most military attachés supported their families by depriving most of the soldiers of their food and wages.
There is no way, there are layers of deductions. If you don't do this, you will have to use your own money to raise troops for the court.
Li Si'en was originally a son of the Li family, and it was the Li family who helped him become a military attache in Zhangjiakou.
Li Weida now has a higher and higher status in the Li family, managing the business in the entire north.
He asked Li Si'en to stay out of things and hand over the army to the Xinghe Army. How could Li Si'en dare to object?
Moreover, the Xinghe Army only wanted troops, and Li Si'en was not deprived of the benefits he deserved.
Because Huang Dapeng was responsible for the garrison of Zhangjiakou, Huang Yi did not send additional people and allowed Huang Dapeng's 800 garrison troops and horses to train together with Li Si'en's troops. The vacancies were selected from the auxiliary troops of the Xinghe Army.
At the end of February, the number of Xinghe Army soldiers reached 7,000.
In addition to the Xinghe City Qi Barracks with 3,600 troops as deputy general Huang Yi, there are also three garrison battalions with 2,400 troops, plus Li Sien's Qian Commander.
The number of Xinghe Army auxiliaries has also increased a lot, and there are currently five thousand people. These people are infantry who cannot ride on horseback, and more than two thousand can move quickly on horseback.
Horse riding training is a compulsory course for the Xinghe Army, whether it is a regular soldier or an auxiliary soldier.
Over time, five thousand auxiliary soldiers can improve their riding skills.
Except for those who were already capable of archery and had excellent shooting skills, the other auxiliary soldiers were all musketeers, and everyone was equipped with flintlock muskets.
Born in sorrow and died in happiness, how difficult is it to gain a foothold outside the Great Wall?
Huang Yi wanted to deliberately create a tense atmosphere and exaggerate the imminent war. Xinghe City was full of slogans painted with white lime. The most frequently painted slogans were:
"Always be ready to fight, a big fight!"
The second most popular one is: "If you don't want to be beaten by Tatars and Jiannu slaves, you have to take up arms to defend your homeland!"
"Being a soldier is the most glorious thing!"
Every Baojia farm in the base area has militiamen in training.
Militia corps commanders and commanders and above are all equipped with flintlock rifles, and ordinary militiamen use long spears measuring one foot to two feet to practice thrusting.
In order to improve the defense of the militia, each centurion militia is equipped with a shield that can cover the whole body.
This kind of shield cannot be made of steel, nor is it a cowhide shield. It is a shield, light enough to withstand bows and arrows.
The militiamen equipped with shields do not use long spears of one foot or two feet. Their weapons are four short spears that can be thrown or stabbed with one hand.
Huang Yi believes that the simpler the army's weapons, the better. In the future, all cold weapons will be eliminated, and only archers with superb shooting skills will be retained.
The main equipment of the Xinghe Army was flintlock muskets with bayonets. Each hundred commanders were equipped with two three-pound regimental cannons, and the serious eight hundred artillery battalions were equipped with dozens of twelve-pound field cannons.
At the end of the fourth year of Chongzhen's reign, the rogue bandits in Shanxi and Shaanxi were contained, but great chaos broke out in Shandong.
After Li Jiucheng and Kong Youde mutinied in Wuqiao, one thousand troops became two thousand, three thousand, four thousand...
They did not advance toward the capital, but turned to fight back to the Shandong Peninsula. For a time, they were unstoppable and fell into Linyi, Lingxian, Shanghe, and Qingcheng cities.
Yu Dacheng, the governor of Shandong, was a coward and tried his best to avoid fighting. It is possible that his own family members knew about their own affairs.
The soldiers and horses under his command not only have too many vacancies, but also lack training and are simply vulnerable.
But the governor is a high-ranking official in charge of the military and political affairs of a party, and he cannot hide.
Therefore, Yu Dacheng was forced to send Fubiao Battalion Deputy General Shen Tingyu and Staff General Tao Tingquan to put together seven or eight thousand troops to quell the rebellion.
He didn't have the guts to lead the troops himself.
The fact that the generals who were dispatched had no combat effectiveness did not mean that they had no intelligence. They knew that the vast majority of these patchwork soldiers were beggars, refugees and temporary strong men.
Any encounter with the rebels will inevitably lead to collapse.
So they adopted a procrastinating approach and tried to avoid encountering rebels as much as possible.
But no one could have imagined that the rebels who mutinied because they were afraid of death and did not dare to go to Liaodong to build slaves, were now like chicken blood.
Li Jiucheng, Li Yingyuan, Kong Youde and other rebel generals led the rebel cavalry to attack the Shandong soldiers who followed them from a distance and had no intention of starting a fight.
Deputy General Shen Tingyu and Staff General Tao Tingqin both thought wrong. Their troops did not collapse at the first touch, but turned against each other one after another. Just after the battle, everyone heard: "Brothers, rebel!"
"Chop the dog officer who drank the soldiers' blood into pieces!"
"Don't let Shen Tingyu and Tao Tingqin escape!"
Because the governor of Shandong sent thousands of troops to quell the rebellion, the number of rebel troops immediately doubled.
After repeated battles and victories, the rebels' morale was as strong as a rainbow. When they reached the gates of Dengzhou City, they had more than 15,000 troops.
However, the governor Sun Yuanhua was just a scientist, not a military strategist or a politician. He could not understand the reality at all, and he did not choose to stand firm and wait for help.
Instead, he urgently ordered the commander-in-chief Zhang Keda and his confidant general Zhang Tao to lead their troops and horses to form a two-pronged attack and go out of the city to fight in the field.
There were too many people from Liaodong among the soldiers and horses who came. These people were fed up with the local people's contempt, and more than half of the soldiers and horses turned against each other as soon as the battle began.
The guerrillas in Dengzhou City, Geng Zhongming, Dusi Chen Guangfu, etc. were all old generals in Dongjiang Town. They were all full of resentment towards the imperial court, and their resentment gradually turned into hatred!
They were overjoyed when they saw the rebels outside the city defeating the Ming army, so they led their men to open the door with fire.
In the first month of the fifth year of Chongzhen's reign, Dengzhou City, a fortified city, a large city with unparalleled defensive power, fell in less than half an hour after being united inside and outside.
The rebels captured 8,000 Ming troops who had not defected, more than 3,000 horses, more than 20 Hongyi cannons, and more than 300 French cannons.
A search of the treasury revealed hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, and a large amount of gold and silver treasures were seized from the homes of Dengzhou civil and military officials, with a total value of more than one million taels of silver.
There are many dignitaries and merchants in Dengzhou City, and the value of precious metals in their homes may not be less than five million silver.
The matter is getting bigger and bigger. Sun Yuanhua, the governor who came here to try to hide it, was captured by the rebels. He must not be able to hide it.
In the middle of the first month, news that Dengzhou had been captured by the rebels finally reached the capital.
Emperor Chongzhen was furious and sent Tiqi to arrest Yu Dacheng, the governor of Shandong.
In February of the fifth year of Chongzhen, Li Jiucheng, Kong Youde and other rebel generals released Sun Yuanhua after failing to persuade him to establish himself as king.
The reason is simple. Sun Yuanhua was kind to them.
Also released were Song Guanglan, deputy envoy of Shandong Ancha Division, Wang Zheng of Bingbeidao, deputy general Zhang Tao and other civilian and military generals who were unwilling to surrender to the rebels.
As things progressed into February, it was getting worse and worse!
The performance of the civilian and military generals made Emperor Chongzhen even more chilling.
Then he remembered Wang Kun, a model eunuch who knew soldiers, had the courage to do his job, and was as honest as water.
