There is a man named Li Hongsi.
He was appointed as the deputy commander-in-chief of Gansu Province, and his duty was to guard the Suzhou defense area, but he did not have Suzhou soldiers under his command because this man was a hard worker.
Li Hongsi's military career in his early years was quite normal. He recruited soldiers into the camp at the age of seventeen, was promoted to captain in battle, was awarded a hundred households for battlefield merit, and was promoted to a series of official positions such as Deputy Qianhu, and then got the position of fortress garrison in Yansui Town. Sent.
In the year of Tianqi, he was already a guerrilla general in Yansui Town. There were four guerrilla generals in Yansui Town. As a rule, they had to take turns leading troops to defend the capital, divided into two shifts in spring and autumn. Therefore, this official position was also called Yansui Guards. Guerrilla.
Li Hongsi led the Yansui soldiers into the guard and caught up with a major event, called the Battle of Ningyuan. In the winter of that year, before he could be transferred back to Yansui Town, he was promoted to the staff general of the Ningsai Battalion in this town.
There were many heroes in the Ningsai Camp. Li Hongsi’s former general was named He Huchen. Later, the more famous officers in the camp in the second and third years of Chongzhen included the rebels Shen Yiyuan, Shen Yikui, Red Army Friends, Ru Chengming, Du San, Yang Laochai and others, as well as Gao Yingdeng, the current commander of the right brigade and left camp of the Marshal's Mansion.
However, Li Hongsi did not perform his duties in Ningsai Camp. When he returned to Shaanxi in the seventh year of Tianqi, his official position was still that of a staff general, but his residence was changed by the court and he was sent to Guyuan Camp, another place where heroes were born in large numbers.
When he was in office, the Guyuan camp went smoothly. He was promoted to Gansu Province as deputy commander-in-chief. However, his old subordinates mutinied and a large number of outstanding talents emerged from the Marshal's Office, such as brigade marshals Yang Yao and Wang Wenxiu, and generals Hu Sanhuai and Wu Yangchen. Mr. Qian Han Shipan, Han Shiyou and others.
In the Shaanxi Uprising that swept half of the world during the Chongzhen period, the backbone of the uprising was divided into two groups, one was the rebels and the other was the civilian army.
The rebels are divided into three groups, all of which started from Yansui Town. One group is Liu Chengzong with the Guyuan Ningxia border army as the backbone, one group is Shenyiyuan based on Yansui Town West Road and Ningxia East Road, and the other group It is Wang Jiayin who is mainly located on East Road of Yansui Town and Hequ in Shanxi.
It can be said that in Li Hongsi's military career before he took up the post of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Suzhou, most of the rebels' later rising figures had experience of serving under him.
After he was promoted to deputy commander-in-chief of Suzhou, Li Hongsi was ordered by the emperor to kill another group of rebels in Shaanxi.
In fact, since he took office as the deputy commander-in-chief of Suzhou in the second year of Chongzhen, Li Hongsi was stationed in Gansu for only five months in the five years, and he had not gone to Suzhou during these five months. He was transferred to Gulangxia to supervise the army by Hong Chengchou. He spent the remaining four and a half years fighting in Shaanxi to counter the rebellion.
Ordinarily, there is no credit but hard work. Li Hongsi should have been given the title of chief military officer long ago, but he was unlucky because he only had the right time to lead troops to counter the rebellion, but he did not have the right location and harmony.
When he was ordered to assist the rebels, he had just been promoted from Guyuan and had not yet arrived in Suzhou. He was also an old officer in the Guyuan rebellion, so the court sent him to lead the troops to fight the rebellion; but no one thought at the time that the Guyuan rebellion was just the beginning. The rebellion is over.
Compared with other local generals, deputy generals, staff generals, and guerrillas in Shaanxi, his official position determined that he was just a guest soldier who came to help. Although Li Hongsi chased the peasant army all over the ground like a big mouse, no one accepted him. I even felt that he was taking the credit.
However, Li Hongsi believed that he was a local general in Shaanxi and had never had the consciousness of being a guest army. Although he was the deputy commander-in-chief of Suzhou, he had no Suzhou soldiers, not even Suzhou horses. Shaanxi origin.
As for the lack of harmony, it is because these governors and senior officials all had their own generals. The only senior governor who did not have his own generals at that time was Hong Chengchou. Li Hongsi once refuted the decision to kill and surrender at a military meeting, so that the superiors There's no one around, so it's hard to talk.
But the Qibing camp signed by Li Hongsi is very capable.
In the Ming Dynasty's town camp military system, there were four generals and four types of soldiers, namely the chief military officer's 5,000 regular barracks, the deputy chief soldier's 3,000 odd barracks, the staff general's 3,000 reinforcement battalion and the guerrilla guerrilla's three barracks. Qianyou Barracks.
On this basis, there is one general soldier in each town, one deputy commander-in-chief and one staff general in each road. At the same time, there are generally four to five guerrilla generals in a town, namely Zuoying guerrillas, Right camp guerrillas, Weiwei guerrillas, and Baobiao guerrillas.
The left and right guerrillas led guerrillas to and from defense, with three thousand troops at their disposal; the guerrillas at the guard were those who went to Beijing to defend the country with the foreman Dusi every year, and led three thousand troops. The guard army led by the foreman Dusi constituted the squad army of the Ming Dynasty; standard downstream
The army is subordinate to the governor or governor. This force is relatively small and usually only has a thousand soldiers.
Li Hongsi's Qibing Battalion was quite special. Originally, his subordinates were supposed to be the Suzhou Army, but they had not yet arrived in Suzhou when they received the transfer order. Therefore, half of them were soldiers recruited on the spot in Ganzhou and Liangzhou, and the other half It is the Guyuan Army.
The strength here is dominated by Guyuan soldiers. Although these Guyuan soldiers were almost out of food at that time, they were indeed veterans, so they were very useful in early counterinsurgency.
But as the war progressed, after five years of fighting, not even a tenth of the veterans from that year were left... Not all of them died, not many died, some collapsed, and some ran away.
Now his surprise army camp has 2,079 soldiers, 1,524 horses, and 554 mules. Although there are relatively few people, they are more experienced and equipped than the newly recruited armies from various places. It can also be called luxurious.
It can be seen from the configuration of troops and horses that this strange army camp is not serious.
Because the official configuration of the Ming army in the north was three horses and seven steps, Li Hongsi had seven horses and three steps, and they were all faked.
In fact, when he first participated in the counter-rebellion, Li Hongsi's army had many people but was very poor. He still worked hard and followed the rules, but following the rules was useless. It's so bad, I still have to cry if I survive.
Li Hongsi thought to himself that following the rules should not be a derogatory term.
If you do this and don't get good results, it can only mean one problem - the rules have changed.
After figuring this matter out, Deputy General Li gradually let go of himself and never lost in quarrels with his colleagues. He tried to hide the spoils of war and snatch war horses, but found that it was indeed what he thought, and no one would accuse him. , because those people still need him to continue fighting.
In the end, he discovered that the key point that restricted him was that those people really thought that they could hold him by treating the position of chief military officer as a carrot hanging in front of their eyes.
Li Hongsi became a rotten old man, saying that his ancestors never lied to others. What does it mean to be strong without desire?
No desire means that as long as he doesn't want to be the chief soldier, he can live happily every day with this capable elite battalion in his hand, and his mentality is even better than that of the chief soldier.
After the war to suppress thieves, he earned a lot of loot. The soldiers who followed him in the war were also comfortable. Their weapons and equipment were better than the others. After the war, they could send money to their hometowns and occasionally get money from stray thieves. Save the little widow, she will be very happy.
He thought he could be happy forever, until on the evening of the seventh day of March this year, Li Hongsi suffered a bolt from the blue - the beacon fire at Jiayuguan reached Gulang Gorge.
It had been five years, and Li Hongsi just remembered that his full official title was Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Suzhou.
God be damned, he led his troops to wait for Liu Chengzong at Gulang Gorge. Why did this guy go to attack Jiayuguan?
On the seventh night of the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, the Qi Army Camp was ready to go. Li Hongsi met with Hong Chengchou. On the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, he set off westward. Passing through Ganzhou on the way, he discussed with Gansu Commander-in-Chief Yang Jiamo about rushing to the Jiayuguan Pass, and then hurriedly and slowly marched 760 miles on the eighth day. On March 15th, he arrived at Gaotai Qianhusuo, 250 miles away from Suzhou.
When he reached the high platform, he did not dare to go further west.
Because he hurried and hurried slowly, he finally saw the refugees from Jiayuguan in the deserted Gaotai Camel City. People rushed to convey to him the instructions of Ding Guodong, the guerrilla general of Jiayuguan, and persuaded the people to go eastward. Jiayuguan could not be defended.
"Why can't Jiayuguan be defended?"
After Li Hongsi issued this soul torture, the general's cavalry who came from Ganzhou brought him another shocking news: the rebels had breached the Jiayuguan border wall, and Suzhou General Zhao Zhirui Maliantan was defeated.
This news shocked Li Hongsi. His two thousand men were here to help Jiayuguan, not to fight in the field with Liu Chengzong's army.
Besides, the biggest problem before him was not that Zhao Zhirui was defeated, but that he didn't know the way.
One step further west after passing the high platform is his defense area. However, in the five years he has been in office, he has never set foot in Suzhou. Liu Chengzong did not break through Jiayuguan. Li Hongsi can also say that the two of them are equally familiar with this land. between.
now
After Liu Chengzong broke through the barriers and entered, the iron hoofs of the war horses had already stepped on the land of Suzhou, so he was the only one left to care about this desert, both people and land.
He didn't even know where there was water, so what the heck, even if Yang Jiamo and Hong Chengchou asked him to march, he would not go further west. He immediately sent people to search for a suitable location for setting up camp, and sent troops to contact the surrounding forts. Ready to dig trenches.
Fortunately, the commander-in-chief Yang Jiamo knew his situation very well, and the purpose of sending the messenger was to stop the advance, build an offensive on the spot, and prepare to fight a step-by-step positional battle around the Heihe River with the Marshal's Mansion.
Li Hongsi felt guilty when he heard this. It wasn't that he thought positional warfare was ineffective. In fact, the Ming Army's greatest advantage was positional warfare. The military system of the General Deputy Director General was specially prepared for positional warfare. Zhenghe Qisheng .
He just thought that he was not good enough, because the troops in the Suzhou Defense Area had been reimbursed by the Marshal's Office, leaving him alone with an understaffed military battalion.
Secondly, it’s because his family knows his own affairs. In the past five years, his soldiers have changed more than once. He only fought a positional battle three years ago, and the rest of the time he spent the rest of the time chasing bandits. , there is no time for training, and it is easy to deal with the poor bandits, but fighting against the relatively regular Marshal's Mansion, I am afraid that he will suffer a loss in a head-on battle.
However, Gansu Marshal Yang Jiamo, who was reinforced from the rear and wore the seal of the Pingqiang General, had a very clear judgment of the current situation. When he sent a letter to Li Hongsi for the first time, he sent two newly recruited Ganzhou battalions to the west. , I changed horses along the way and traveled three hundred miles a day to rush to Gulang Gorge to meet Hong Chengchou.
His attitude was particularly resolute, and he bluntly told Hong Chengchou: Gan Jun must fight a positional battle with Liu Chengzong on the high platform.
In front of Hong Chengchou's governor's tent, Yang Jiamo, whose legs were bruised by the saddle, clasped his fists and apologized. He asked his soldiers to carry the couch to the map of Gansu spread out on the ground. He pointed with a wooden whip and said: "This battle The victory lies not in the Gansu army but in the military gate. Gansu and Liang have hastily gathered only a few thousand troops, and the rebels at Knock Pass number tens of thousands. Once they are taught to cross the high platform, the entire territory of Hexi will fall."
To be honest, Hong Chengchou was a bit embarrassed at this moment.
A few days ago, he was very complacent. He turned a blind eye to the Mongolian-Fan coalition forces rampaging through the Zhuanglang Valley. All he thought about was that he had his own wisdom. Sooner or later, the Marshal's Army would turn over from the Qilian Mountains frozen into ice.
I never expected that I guessed the beginning correctly but not the ending.
These three months were too exciting for him. One moment Lanzhou was lost, another moment hordes of fanatics came out of Zhuanglang River, and a moment Liu Chengzong's handsome tent banner appeared in Zhuanglangwei. After a while, another army came over from the Qilian Mountains.
Is there anything in this world that is more fulfilling than following the enemy's plan exactly according to one's own script? there is none left.
Until the moment when the beacon fire came from Jiayuguan, Hong Chengchou thought that he was Zhuge alive.
I never expected that Liu Chengzong would secretly infiltrate Chen Cang and conduct a large-scale maneuver of more than 2,000 miles under his nose. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was desperate, what a courage.
In the past, Hong Chengchou always thought that Liu Chengzong could be where he is today because of the steady and steady work that did not exist in the personalities of other leaders, but he did not expect that Liu Shizi was a guy with a greater gambling spirit than anyone else.
As long as the elite troops of the Commander-in-Chief are stationed outside the military pass, the Hehuang Valley will inevitably be recovered by the imperial court, and they will really have to become savages.
Of course, this incident did not affect Hong Chengchou's mood much, because there was no time for him to immerse himself in shame and anger. What was even more outrageous than Liu Chengzong bypassing Jiayuguan was that Jiayuguan was breached.
As long as there are three thousand more soldiers at Jiayuguan, or Zhang Tianlin does not leave the Qilian Mountains, that magnificent pass will not be lost.
Unfortunately, the matter has come to this. His original idea was to use the complex terrain of Gulang Gorge to block the Marshal's Mansion army and wear it out until it was helpless, so that Gansu and Lanzhou could form a pincer attack on the Marshal's Mansion.
At this time, the entire battlefield situation was reversed with the appearance of Liu Chengzong in Jiayuguan. The Gulang Gorge, which was once beneficial to them, became a natural hazard that prevented them from going south.
All this made Hong Chengchou put away all his pride and asked Yang Jiamo humbly: "What does Marshal Yang mean by calling you 10,000 more elite troops to fight against Liu Xie?"
Seeing that he could listen to suggestions, Yang Jiamo felt a little anxious.
Huan, shook his head first, then pointed to the border wall between Suzhou and Gaotai on the map, and said: "The reason why the general said that the enemy must be blocked at Gaotai is because this is a 200-mile desert, which can meet the water supply for the army. The black river ends at the edge of the high platform."
"And that line of border walls is the most important part of the defensive fortress. There are ten forts in a row. If our army defends it, the rebels will hardly win quickly." After Yang Jiamo said this, he changed the topic: "However, his troops were invaded by the Banishi tribe. There are many reasons, but today the only advantage of the Japanese army is that the military is disciplined and the generals are experienced, while the disadvantages of bandits and bandits are that they are far apart in the north and south, making it easy to defeat them one by one."
Yang Jiamo clasped his fists and said: "The general will defend the high platform for three months. Please send Cao Wen and Bai Guangen to the south to Gulang Gorge, attack from the south and defend from the north. We will annihilate the Mongolian group Chou, sweep across Hehuang, and force them into exile outside the fortress!" "
