To fight a war, we naturally need food and fodder!
However, Chen Yongfu didn't have much food and grass on hand, and sending troops north and south this time was expected to consume a lot of food, so he could only ask local officials and gentry to ask for it.
Theoretically speaking, the imperial court gave Chen Yongfu food and salary to the field camp sentry, but it was not much in total, not to mention that he had to go through several hands in the process. After giving out 10,000 taels of silver, Chen Yongfu could get two or three. A thousand taels is pretty good.
In addition, this year the rebels went east to stir up trouble, and the little money and food the court had was basically spent on the battlefields in the Central Plains, but they could not take care of Chen Yongfu and the others who were watching the theater in Nanyang.
So in the first few months of this year, Chen Yongfu didn't even see half of his salary.
However, this actually has little impact, because Chen Yongfu's army did not rely on the royal court's salary in the past!
He has thousands of people under his command, and their daily consumption of food, drink, chewing food, weapons, etc. is not a small sum. They would have starved to death if they relied on the little money and food provided by the court.
On weekdays, Chen Yongfu takes care of raising the army by himself.
For example, during a battle, the local officials and gentry who were garrisoned or passing by donated military supplies to solve part of the problem. Sometimes, in order to get these local officials and gentry to contribute money and food, it was often necessary to conduct repeated negotiations with them.
Not giving?
Chen Yongfu would sit and watch the bandits attack the city, and watch the show by himself. By the way, he would send people to ask the officials and gentry that the bandits were about to attack the city. Do you want to pay them? Hurry up, hurry up. If you give me the money, I will immediately lead the troops to kill you to ensure your safety.
Or as soon as the bandits come, he will retreat with his army, leaving the officials and gentry to face the bandits alone...
Of course, in most cases, the officials and gentry can see the reality clearly, and they will give some advice more or less, and they are rarely said to be so stubborn that they will never give up a cent.
Of course, there are exceptions, but those who can't see the reality clearly usually end up badly. For example, the famous Iron Rooster Song family in Ruzhou heard that their ancestral home has turned into a den of thieves...
When the Baoxiang Army attacked Songjiazhuang, it was normal for the officers and soldiers in Lushan County to be indifferent. They were not strong enough, and they didn't even have a few serious battalion sentry soldiers...
However, the nearly two thousand officers and soldiers in Luyang Pass over there pretended not to see it. It was purely Songjiazhuang's own fault.
This Song Pinghe is famous for being a tough guy!
But he was always willing to give up money. Even Huang Guangmao went to beg for military supplies in order to suppress bandits, but he returned without success.
Now that I've been attacked by bandits, do you still want officers and soldiers to come to the rescue?
Although there is everything in the dream, what do you dream about in broad daylight...
In addition to the sponsorship of the local government and gentry, Chen Yongfu and many other officers and soldiers also let the soldiers go out to eat on their own. Well, to put it bluntly, they turned a blind eye and let the soldiers plunder on their own.
This part of the income is also very important, accounting for about 30 to 40% of the daily income of Chen Yongfu's army.
In addition, Chen Yongfu also set up a card to collect some money and food, and set up a caravan with the army to do some business, but this part of the income was relatively small.
Looking at the sources of military supplies for Chen Yongfu's department, you will find that Chen Yongfu solved the problem of food, grass and money by himself, and basically did not rely on the small amount of money allocated by the court.
So don't say that Chen Yongfu didn't want to go to the Lu family and fight with the main force of the rebel army to be unfaithful to the emperor and serve the country. He was still loyal.
When the imperial court did not provide food and salary, he tried his best to raise military supplies to maintain an army of several thousand to suppress thieves for the imperial court.
This is not a loyal minister. What is a loyal minister?
If it were someone else, they would have given up their responsibilities long ago or simply rebelled.
This time when he was going to go out to suppress bandits, Chen Yongfu naturally had to go to the local government and the local gentry to ask for military supplies as usual.
It's a pity that Chen Yongfu was so talkative in the past three days. The adults and gentry in Nanyang City only collected ten thousand catties of grain and one thousand taels of silver for him...
Later, Chen Yongfu didn't bother to pretend to talk to them, and directly said that Xuanmo's order had been issued, and he was going to lead the army to Lu's garrison.
He also said that although the Lu family did not have military supplies for him, as long as he went to the Lu family, Hong Chengchou would allocate a batch of military supplies to him, so that he would have no worries about food and drink.
When Chen Yongfu stated that he would take away all the troops and not even leave a single soldier in Nanyang City, the officials and gentry in Nanyang City panicked.
Nowadays, the defense of Nanyang City is basically supported by Chen Yongfu.
If Chen Yongfu really wants to lead his troops and leave, he can only rely on the thousands of ordinary guard soldiers and government officials in Nanyang City, as well as young and strong people, and hundreds of thieves to kill them, and they can probably capture Nanyang City.
After some threats from Chen Yongfu, the officials and gentry of Nanyang City allocated another batch of grain and money.
Of course, they also made a request: when Chen Yongfu led his troops to the north, he could not take away all the troops, especially those soldiers who had to stay behind.
They were also afraid that Chen Yongfu would take the money and food and run away with all the soldiers...
Chen Yongfu was also a happy man. He agreed to go on the expedition on the spot, and he took half of them, that is, a thousand soldiers to go north, while the remaining one thousand soldiers stayed in Nanyang City.
In addition to the soldiers, Chen Yongfu also brought two thousand guardsmen and two thousand temporarily recruited young men.
A total of 5,000 troops were gathered to march north to Nanzhao County to annihilate the group of village-protecting thieves who came from Funiu Mountain.
After Chen Yongfu spent five days to deal with the officials and gentry, he leisurely led the army northward.
When he first started heading north, he still didn't pay much attention to the hometown protection army, thinking that they were just a group of ordinary thieves.
But this attitude only lasted for one day. Just one day after he led his army north, his whole attitude changed.
Because he discovered the elite cavalry of the thief army!
He also knew from the spies that there was a group of about a hundred cavalry among the rebels. However, the spies did not dare to get too close to these rebel cavalry. They just glanced at them from a distance, but there was no way to confirm these rebel cavalry. What is its actual combat power?
Based on his many years of experience in suppressing thieves, Chen Yongfu determined that these were just ordinary thieves running around on horseback.
He had seen too many thieves riding horses, but they were just able to ride horses, which meant they were faster when running, but they couldn't be used as real cavalry in actual fights.
But this time, he discovered that the rogue cavalry appearing on the opposite side were truly elite cavalry.
If you asked him how he knew, it would naturally be because of the actual battle.
He sent out a half-baked cavalry force of about a hundred men to serve as the vanguard to clear the way for the army. As they passed, they encountered the rebel cavalry.
After the cavalry encounter between the two sides, the half-baked cavalry on the officer's side was quite confident at first and pretended to line up to rush forward. However, the cavalry led by Wang Xiazi did not turn around and run away as they expected, or they rushed over stupidly. .
Instead, you have to bend the bow and shoot arrows directly on horseback...
This posture scared the half-hearted officers, soldiers and cavalry on the opposite side to death.
The cavalry general among the officers and soldiers was also knowledgeable. When he saw the rebels on the opposite side bending their bows and shooting arrows on horseback, they knew they were in trouble.
This is enough to play horseback shooting. Even a fool knows that the opponent is a group of professional cavalry. They are not comparable to these half-baked cavalry who can barely ride a horse and can't even charge with a sword on horseback.
The leading Ming cavalry general decisively ordered a retreat.
But even if they retreated in time, they still lost as many as twenty or thirty knights.
After these half-hearted officers, soldiers and cavalry fled back, Chen Yongfu knew that the Baoxiang Army, all bald and wearing uniform gray military uniforms, was definitely not an ordinary bandit.
Seeing his subordinates' arms being shot by the bandit cavalry, the cavalry officer with a pale face, Chen Yongfu frowned: "This is definitely not an ordinary bandit. An ordinary bandit can never pull out a soldier with hundreds of numbers." An elite cavalry player who plays cavalry shooting."
"Absolutely impossible!"
Looking at the world, except for the Ming frontier army and the Donglu and Mongolia, which have a relatively large number of fine cavalry, the number of fine cavalry in other places, especially in the hinterland of the Central Plains, is very small.
Chen Yongfu has thousands of troops under his command, but he doesn't have many cavalrymen who can ride and shoot. The hundreds of cavalrymen under his command are all half-baked. Even if they are capable of cavalry, only a few dozen of them can survive.
Zuo Liangyu is relatively powerful, but he only has a few hundred elite cavalry under his command.
Chen Zhibang in Ruzhou only has more than a hundred elite cavalry under his command.
Most of the so-called cavalry in the hands of these people still rely on half-baked mounted infantry to make up the numbers.
Therefore, Chen Yongfu absolutely did not believe that ordinary thieves could produce hundreds of elite knights.
"Is it really true that the intruders and other elites under the big thief crossed Funiu Mountain and went south?"
"But I haven't heard of the big thieves like the Intruders having a bandit like the Baoxiang Army under them, nor have they ever heard of someone like 'General' Luo Zhixue working under these big thieves."
"Where did these thugs come from?"
"And who is this Luo Zhixue?"
With these questions, Chen Yongfu's attitude instantly became cautious.
The forward cavalry attack was unfavorable. Losing twenty or thirty cavalry was nothing, but discovering that the opponent actually had hundreds of fine cavalry was the key point.
There are hundreds of fine cavalry, who knows what else is behind, if thousands of soldiers wearing heavy armor appear again, I will die!
So he ordered the army to stop moving north and choose a place to build a camp.
The enemy situation ahead is unclear, and if you head north rashly, you may die without knowing how.
Chen Yongfu used his troops carefully and only went north for one day. He stopped and set up camp only fifteen miles away from Nanyang City. This made Wang Xiazi not far away breathed a sigh of relief.
"Looking at this, these officers and soldiers will stay here for at least two or three days."
Wang Xiazi came with the important task of delaying the officers and soldiers' march north. He wanted to buy time for Luo Zhixue to lead the third infantry battalion and a large number of baggage from Li Qingdian.
Before Luo Zhixue leads his army to Zhaozhuang, he cannot let the officers and soldiers run to Zhaozhuang first. Otherwise, the tactical concept of keeping the enemy out will fail, and it will easily become a fueling tactic.
This was also the reason why Blind Wang didn't flinch when he encountered the officers, soldiers and cavalry, and rushed forward to attack them.
He wanted to give these officers and soldiers a warning so that they would not dare to go north easily, so as to buy enough time for Luo Zhixue, the main force in the rear.
Now it seems that his battle plan is quite successful!
Although I don’t know how long it can scare the other party.
But let’s wait for as long as it takes.
