As for whether Luo Zhixue's army can defeat the Ming army after arriving, An Yongduo has no doubts about this. As the former director of the General Staff Department (now the director of the General Staff Department), An Yongduo knows very well the strength of the main forces such as the 1st Infantry Brigade. Combat strength.
That was an absolute main force that could defeat even the 15,000-strong army led by Lu Xiangsheng himself!
What's more, the main force of this force is led by General Luo Zhixue himself!
With the superb military talent of General Luo Zhixue, there is absolutely no possibility of failure when used against people like Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong!
Anyongduo has confidence in the core main forces such as the 1st Infantry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Brigade, and 1st Artillery Brigade, and he has absolute confidence in General Luo Zhixue.
In his view, the Baoxiang Army's success depends entirely on General Luo Zhixue's planning and extraordinary talent.
The reason why the Baoxiang Army is so powerful is not because of the new tactics proposed by the general.
Why did the Baoxiang Army have so many armors, muskets and other weapons?
It was not because the general built the arsenal and improved the ordnance production process and technology that the Baoxiang Army's arsenal output increased significantly.
Why the Baoxiang Army was able to have a lightweight and powerful 600-pound long cannon was not because General Luo Zhixue presided over the research and development of the cannon last year, personally proposed a series of parameter requirements, and even developed it himself. A new gun mount was installed.
In actual combat, it has been proven many times that this 600-pound long gun is powerful and has amazing maneuverability. It has played a huge tactical role in many battles, especially in field battles.
All this, in An Yongduo's view, was brought about by Luo Zhixue.
Because as one of Luo Zhixue's earliest four soldiers, he had witnessed Luo Zhixue single-handedly bring the Baoxiang Army to its current level, and An Yongduo was also one of the most important participants.
An Yongduo, who has seen and participated in it many times, knows very well that General Luo Zhixue is definitely not an ordinary person.
A mediocre general like Zuo Liangyu will definitely not be happy with his own general. If he is not careful, he may be defeated and die like Lu Xiangsheng.
Anyongduo's blind confidence in Luo Zhixue was also the reason why he still dared to defend Yuzhou City with the help of 2,000 remaining soldiers of the Fourth Mixed Brigade under the threat of more than 10,000 enemy troops.
Because he firmly believed that victory would belong to the general and their hometown-protecting army.
And he, Anyondo, will also become a decisive person in this victory.
To defend Yuzhou City and hold back Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong's army was what he had to do, and it was also a meritorious deed.
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When Anyongduo was looking forward to the two messengers successfully crossing the blockade, the two messengers under his command did not disappoint him.
Although one of them got lost in the night and failed to deliver the secret message, the other one successfully crossed the Ming army's blockade.
At dawn, the messenger carefully crossed the Ming army's blockade and walked more than 20 miles before delivering the secret letter to Shanghe Town, a town 20 miles west of Junzhou City.
And handed it over to the joint stronghold established here by the Communications Office and the Intelligence Department of the General's Mansion. Then the letter will be quickly delivered to Luo Zhixue by the personnel of the Communications Office.
However, after the secret letter arrived at the secret base of the Baoxiang Army, people from the Communications Office first verified the identity of the messenger and at the same time conducted a detailed inspection of the packaging of the secret letter.
This letter has several layers of packaging. The outermost layer is an ordinary packaging with the exclusive wax seal of the Fourth Mixed Brigade’s brigade headquarters.
Inside, there is actually a second layer of packaging, which also has an independent wax seal. This is the personal wax seal belonging to the communications staff officer of the 4th Mixed Brigade.
On the innermost envelope, there is also Anyong Duo's personal wax seal.
On Yongduo's personal wax seal, there is a private seal with only half of the pattern.
The pattern of this private seal is very unique, the lines are very dense, with different shades, and only half of the lines...
Because the other half of this seal is in the Communications Office of the General's Mansion.
After this kind of private seal for communication is made, it will be violently smashed into two halves on the spot. The cracked pattern is also irregular. Half of it is carried by the general and half is kept by the general's communications office.
It is specially used for encrypted communication between Luo Zhixue and a certain general who is leading the troops to verify each other's authenticity.
Only when the personal seal matches and the wax seal is intact can the Communications Office of the General's Mansion ensure that the letter is authentic and valid.
This is also one of the measures taken by the Baoxiang Army to prevent military intelligence from leaking and letters from being switched or counterfeited.
In order to ensure the safety of the transmission of military information, the Baoxiang Army developed a very thorough and complex confidentiality plan.
In addition to the most basic things like wax seals, there are even several sets of code pads.
At present, each brigade in the Baoxiang Army has two different sets of code books. One is a general code book and is used exclusively for secret communications between brigades. The other is a code book unique to each brigade and is dedicated to each brigade. Yu He communicated secretly with the Communications Department of the General's Mansion.
At the same time, the secret orders issued by the communications office of the General's Military Mansion have a higher priority than the secret communications orders of friendly forces. This is to prevent the enemy from seizing the friendly forces' code book and falsely transmitting the coded message, causing the friendly forces to be recruited!
At the same time, the Baoxiang Army's code book will be regularly replaced and destroyed even if no leaks are discovered.
Moreover, Luo Zhixue directly issued strict orders to each brigade. If the war goes unfavorably, the first priority is to destroy the code books to prevent the code books from being leaked.
Even if the messenger Anyongduo sent out of the city encountered something unexpected and the secret message he was carrying was captured by the Ming army, Zuo Liangyu would still be blinded looking at a bunch of meaningless numbers!
In order to effectively transmit military communications and avoid information leakage or even counterfeiting, the Baoxiang Army created so many seemingly complicated procedures. This was not an unnecessary step by Luo Zhixue. In fact, the Ming Army also widely used various different procedures. Using the method of encrypting letters, the Baoxiang Army had also tried to capture Ming Army messengers before and found letters.
But they are all encrypted letters and cannot be read at all...
Not to mention the current Ming army, even the Song army hundreds of years ago used the alphabet secret message system on a large scale.
As for various clay seals and wax seals, they have been around for thousands of years and are nothing new.
The communication security of military intelligence has been highly valued at all times and at home and abroad. The Baoxiang Army is just one of them, and it plays a more in-depth role.
After personnel from the Baoxiang Army Communications Office and Intelligence Section in Shanghe Town confirmed that the outer package was indeed a secret message sent by the Fourth Mixed Brigade, they directly arranged for manpower to deliver the secret message to Luo Zhixue in the shortest possible time. in hand.
However, after the riders bolted away, the small Shanghe Town returned to calm. If you looked from the outside, you would not notice any difference between this place and an ordinary market town.
However, this small market town is where the Baoxiang Army's Shanghe Town Yamen is located. It is so peaceful now that it does not even have to hang up the Baoxiang Army's unique Baoxiang flag. This is purely because there are a large number of Ming troops twenty miles away, and Ming cavalry and small-scale grain-recruiting Ming troops often appeared nearby.
In order to avoid attracting a large-scale Ming army to attack, the Shanghe Town Yamen not only put away the iconic Baozi flag, but also the town signboard, and basically moved to semi-underground activities.
Shanghe Town belongs to Fangcheng County, Yuzhou, and governs a total of 13 nearby villages.
Although the Baoxiang Army only captured Yuzhou City a few days ago and failed to control the other two counties under Yuzhou, namely Wuyang and Ye County, the Baoxiang Army was actually formally established half a month ago. All prefectural governments were established, and three county agencies were established: Fangcheng County, Wuyang County and Ye County.
At the same time, we also began to establish lower-level town and village-level institutions in the Fangcheng County area that we have already controlled.
Shanghe Town is one of them.
However, after the Ming army arrived at Yuzhou City a few days ago, they began to send sporadic soldiers everywhere to loot and collect grain and grass. In order to avoid attracting the attention of the Ming army and being destroyed, the Shanghe Town Yamen was also established just a few days ago. Had to go underground.
This is not an isolated case. There are many underground town or even county-level yamen in the fringes of the existing areas controlled by the Baoxiang Army, or in areas controlled by the Ming Army close to the areas controlled by the Baoxiang Army.
For example, the Wuyang and Yexian county yamen under Junzhou are currently in a state of underground activity, let alone rule.
Today's Wuyang County Yamen is secretly set up in a private house in Wuyang City, with only seven or eight people, and two of them are tax officials sent from the former Grain Collection Office and the current Taxation Department.
Now the job of Wuyang County Yamen is not to manage the place, but to collect all kinds of intelligence.
Not only military intelligence, but other internal affairs intelligence was also collected to provide a basic intelligence basis for the follow-up army to capture Wuyang and the Wuyang County Yamen to formally implement the administration.
The most important thing is to find out the situation of each large gentry household in advance in order to provide basic intelligence support for subsequent tax collection and grain collection.
This is why the tax department will send tax officials over in advance. If they want to confiscate homes, exterminate clans, seize various assets as soon as possible after the army captures Wuyang, and quickly start taxation work, they must collect information about Wuyang in advance. Those people If you have more money, you can ransack your home, and if you have more people and space, you can collect more taxes. You must be aware of it in advance.
Otherwise, it would be impossible for the tax department to collect so much tax revenue and seize so many assets.
If the tax department doesn't have any skills and doesn't make some achievements, why should Luo Zhixue be allowed to increase the tax funds of the tax department many times?
Among the many systems under the Baoxiang Army, the tax department's funding is second only to military spending.
While other agencies are struggling and struggling to feed themselves and clothe themselves, the tax department has recruited large-scale personnel to improve tax agencies at all levels, and has even begun to form its own tax investigation department and even tax law enforcement department.
Thanks to the huge financial support, the officials and employees of the tax department are second only to the military personnel.
At present, the total number of tax officials and employees in Nanyang Prefecture alone exceeds more than 2,000, which is more than the number of people in other administrative offices at all levels in Nanyang Prefecture combined...
There is no doubt that this is very abnormal, but now the situation in Nanyang Prefecture and Xiangyang Prefecture is in an unstable state. It has not been long since the Baoxiang Army captured these places, and they have not yet been able to form effective rule, let alone Stable tax collection.
If you want to collect taxes, you will inevitably have to spend more manpower, material resources and even violence!
After the situation in Nanyang Prefecture stabilizes, the number of tax collectors will be reduced to a reasonable level.
And this proves it:
The rural protection army is serious about collecting taxes!
