"Master, as expected, they turned around and chased us."
"Hmph, a bunch of losers, let them chase. Now we don't have to worry about our people safely retreating."
"Master, if we let them chase us like this, we won't lose our reputation as a servant.
"Tell me what you want to do."
"It's better to lay a few landmines."
"Okay, go ahead and do it. I don't think we can let them be too idle. We have to find something for them to do."
"Okay, you see how I concoct them." Zhang Geda turned around and went to make arrangements.
Let them slow down, it's time for lunch, and your soldiers still need to eat, not only eat, but eat well.
Hu Dawei led the forward battalion of more than 500 people and ran the fastest, tracking them all the way. He is a Mongolian, and he can tell how many enemies there are and how long they have been walking based on their footprints and horse dung.
Ahead is a three-way intersection, one direction is to Tongzhou Okura, and the other is to Nanyuan.
He lay on the ground, carefully opened up a pile of horse manure with his hands, smelled it, and then thought about it.
There were still undigested soybeans in the horse manure. Hu Dawei murmured in surprise, "These Japanese pirates are so good at rearing, and their horses actually have soybeans to eat. How did they do it?"
No one in Ming Dynasty could eat soybeans. It's really irritating to see people compare to each other.
"Follow this road, they are heading to Tongzhou Okang. Hurry, run fast. If the food in Tongzhou is burned by the Japanese pirates, there will be a famine this winter." Several officers from the Hudawei team said.
Hu Dawei yelled at the soldiers and stabbed the horse in the abdomen with his spurs. The horse felt the pain and ran quickly. The officer behind him was panting with the soldiers.
"I said, Changsheng, can you still run? I'm so hungry, I'm sweating, and I can't run anymore." A soldier in his thirties asked a young man in his twenties or eighties next to him.
"Brother Han, I'm hungry too. I didn't sleep yesterday. I was bombarded in the middle of the night last night and marched all night. I was very hungry in the morning. As a result, I didn't eat in the morning. I said it was an urgent enemy situation and rushed to Tongzhou again."
Old Han sighed, these officials, have they taken gunpowder? What are they doing? How can soldiers have the strength to march if they don't eat? It's still this kind of long-distance and fast march.
"Alas! The emperor is still short of hungry soldiers," a young man in front cursed.
"That's right, isn't it easy for us to be a soldier? It's hard to nail the iron, and there is a way out. Who would want to be this Qiu Ba?"
"You haven't heard yet. When I was changing my guard during the morning break, I heard from the people in the second team that our luggage was attacked by Japanese pirates and burned down. Otherwise, why didn't we start cooking in the morning?"
"What, the food and grass are all gone. Then what shall we eat? We haven't received military pay for half a year, so now we don't even have food to eat?"
"Our Shaanxi Yulin Town and Xuanfu Yanqing Guards are guest troops. How can we eat without food and grass?"
The soldiers suddenly panicked.
Originally, they were not happy to be mobilized to fight. On the outskirts of Gyeonggi, they were the only two armies that could fight, but they couldn't do more work, right? Why aren't other health centers mobilized?
There are five guards in Tongzhou. Xianghe and Sanhe each have a guard.
"I think this road is going to Dacang, Tongzhou. I escorted grain and grass on this road last year. I think that nine times out of ten, it is true that the grain and grass were burned. It was going to Tongzhou to eat." Chu, the team leader Cai Liang couldn't help but say.
"Okay, stop yelling. Hundreds of households will hear you soon, and you will be whipped again. Everyone, please bear with me. When we get to Dacang, Tongzhou, we will have as much food as we need. I will let you eat until you are full." Xiaoqi Li Ying scolded.
Everyone thought that they would not die without eating, so they untied their bags and drank some water, and continued marching hungry.
I didn’t eat and drank only water. As soon as I started running, water sloshed in my stomach. Makes strange noises.
Hu Dawei was the pioneer camp, and more than 6,000 people followed behind.
He was walking in front with a cavalry team of more than 30 people. Suddenly he saw a dead tree on the road, lying sideways on the road, blocking the way.
"Chen San, go and move that broken piece of wood away." Hu Dawei quickly reined in his horse and shouted loudly.
The infantry at the back, under the command of Commander-in-Chief Chen San, ran out with hundreds of people, groaning and moving the big dead tree.
The tree was so heavy that seventy or eighty soldiers worked together and dragged it with ropes before it was lifted from the ground.
Chen San can be the boss because he is smart.
At a glance, he saw several black iron balls under the trunk, as big as watermelons, and they seemed to be connected to the trunk by thin ropes.
When everyone lifted it up, the strings were pulled off, and immediately, the iron balls as big as watermelons began to smoke.
"The Romance of Fairy Wood"
Although Chen San didn't know what it was, he obviously smelled the smell of gunpowder.
Chen San's soul emerged and he yelled, "Put it down and run."
After saying that, he turned around and ran, jumped down and jumped into the ditch on the roadside.
The other soldiers were stunned for a moment, and before they had time to react, the iron ball exploded violently.
A huge fireball soared into the sky. This cast iron sphere with high phosphorus content was filled with thirty-five kilograms of black powder. The explosion speed of the black powder was equivalent to one-seventh of the kicking ladder. This iron ball has the explosive power of five kilograms of explosives.
Suddenly, a large piece of the soldiers in front were blown down.
Hu Dawei only saw a flash of fire in front of his eyes, and then he was pushed off his horse by the shock wave.
A long time passed before Hu Dawei came back to his senses. He was sitting on the ground in a daze, his armor in tatters, his ears bleeding, and a blood-red sphere flying in front of his eyes.
My head was buzzing and I couldn't hear anything.
Several soldiers ran over and picked him up, shouting something unknown.
"My lord, my lord, are you okay?"
"Well, I'm fine, what is this?" Hu Dawei finally heard the sound, and his mind returned to normal.
"It's an iron ball, filled with a lot of gunpowder, weighing thirty or forty kilograms. It's like a thing that can defeat ten thousand people." Hu Huoding, the captain of the soldiers, shouted loudly. The adults were a little deaf and couldn't hear clearly.
"Sir, the explosion just killed a dozen brothers and injured more than thirty. The brothers were all frightened. Why don't you repair it first?"
"Help me up, give the order to go down, carry the dead and injured brothers aside, and pass the news to the commander-in-chief. We will continue the pursuit. If Tongzhou Okura is lost, we will kill the whole family."
"Sir, brothers, we haven't touched our teeth since last night. It's already noon. We're still marching in a hurry. I'm afraid everyone won't be able to carry it," Hu Huoding said worriedly.
"I can't take care of it anymore. Let's take care of our family and life first. What's the use of staying here? Do you have food? When we get to Tongzhou Dacang, let's see if the commander can come forward in person and negotiate with them. Let's borrow some military rations first. us."
Hu Dawei is quite good at leading troops.
He is not as greedy as other generals. If there is a reward, he will give most of it to the soldiers.
Therefore, even if they were hungry, the soldiers still obeyed his orders.
Although their border army in Shaanxi only had more than 3,000 people, they were very capable of fighting. This was one of the reasons why Chongzhen transferred them over.
In Yulin Town, they are characters that grandma does not love and uncles do not love. The composition of the team was complex, and many of them were Mongolians who came from the grasslands like him. The Taijis on the Mongolian side were more ruthless than wolves, and there were many who could not survive.
The last time Tu Shanyong went to Yulin Town, he dealt with the issue of a mutiny caused by a pay dispute.
He keenly discovered that the soldiers in Hu Dawei's battalion were capable of fighting and reported to the emperor when he came back.
Only then did the Shaanxi frontier troops be transferred to Yanqing.
At that time, Tu Shanyong was going to Guihua City to negotiate with Lin Danhan, and he needed a strong force as a guard. He finally selected seven battalions from the border army, totaling more than 3,600 people.
These people are marginalized in Yulin Town, and their treatment and salary arrears are the most severe. However, they did not actively participate in the pay dispute this time and just waved the flag and shouted.
Tu Shanyong went there with the money. He would give it to whomever he wanted and who he would not give it to. With the power in hand, he easily conquered these seven camps.
The emperor deeply felt that the Beijing camp was unreliable, and he must place a force in the suburbs of the capital that did not have complicated backgrounds and could be mobilized by himself. For more than two hundred years, nobles, eunuchs, civil servants, and generals have infiltrated the Beijing camp to a great extent.
A tiger is as powerful as a tiger. It was the Mongolians who fled to the pass to serve as soldiers, and then they were promoted from ordinary soldiers to the commander-in-chief of the first battalion by chopping the heads of the invading Mongols.
Their loyalty goes unsaid.
And more importantly, they have nothing to do with civil servants.
Yang Fan and others are continuing to march, getting closer and closer to Okura, Tongzhou.
"Master, Meng Ruhu is catching up with me again." Zhang Geda ran over and reported.
"Haha, this fool is really desperate for his life. It seems that the emperor summoned him once and moved him to death. This is the rhythm of being a lonely minister and a loyal minister."
"How about we ambush them, there are only five hundred of them in total, and just eat them."
"It's not necessary. Their marching speed can't catch up with us at all. Our training is much better than theirs. Go directly to the warehouse, find some empty warehouses and set them on fire to force them."
