Outside Mumbai, a group of local aborigines with tattered clothes or even shirtless clothes, with only half a piece of cloth covering their crotches, and brown-skinned people were working hard.
Laihar was also one of them. He was wearing the tattered cloth left by his father and was barefoot. He was struggling to pull the rope.
Beside him, there were dozens of civilians pulling the rope. Behind the rope was a huge 150mm artillery.
This artillery was originally a naval gun on a cruiser. In order to support the army's attack on Mumbai, the Navy temporarily removed some 130 mm and 150 mm naval guns from many warships, and used these more than ten naval guns to form a temporary Naval Heavy Artillery Battalion.
However, even the naval guns moved ashore are short-barreled artillery among naval guns. They are lighter than long-barreled naval guns of the same caliber, but that is only relatively speaking. These big guys are lighter than the long-barreled naval guns of the same caliber in the army. Howitzers and field guns are much heavier.
At the same time, after these naval guns came ashore, they did not have the large two-wheel gun mounts used by the army's field guns. They could only use small four-wheel gun mounts for naval guns, so it was more difficult to maneuver.
Why didn't the Ming army pull out the Hongyi cannon and use it as a field gun? It was because although the small four-wheel gun mount of the naval gun was strong, it was not suitable for maneuvering in the field.
In order to transport these heavy naval guns from the temporary dock all the way to the city wall to participate in the battle, the Chu army used a lot of manpower.
As for livestock...the Chu army did not bring many mules and horses when they crossed the sea and landed. They could not recruit many mules and horses locally for a while, and the few they had had to be used by carriages to transport baggage.
In the end, manpower could only be used instead of mules and horses to pull the artillery.
Because Laihar was young and strong, he was chosen to firecrackers. Laihar was very happy about this... because he finally had his first full meal with oil and water in his life!
Cracking a cannon is a strenuous job, and the Chu army has a lot of food baggage. When these indigenous people work so hard, the Chu army doesn't mind giving them better food.
Therefore, although pulling the cannon these two days was very hard and even a bit dangerous. In the morning, they had to pull a 150mm gun down a hill tens of meters high from the foot of the mountain. As a result, a tracker's foot slipped while going up a steep slope. It also caused a group of trackers to fall down, which eventually caused the cannon to fall directly. Several indigenous people nearby were unable to dodge and were crushed on the spot...
However, Hal still has no fear, and he even enjoys his current life...
Because he can walk freely in the sun without worrying about his shadow falling on others. Even if his shadow falls on those noble Chu soldiers, they will not speak ill of him or even beat him severely.
However, when he was sixteen years old, when he entered the village to work, he was walking well. Suddenly, a monk walked out of a small alley nearby, and Hal's shadow happened to fall on this monk. On your body!
As a result, he was beaten half to death on the spot, and his injuries were extremely serious!
Because he is an untouchable pariah, the lowest group of people in the Indian caste system. He has to avoid other high-caste people when walking. Even if his shadow falls on a high-caste person, he will be beaten severely. !
In the end, his father sent his sister to a temple to become a goddess, and then he got money back to buy him medicine to cure his injury.
Two years later, he learned that his sister, who was bought to be a goddess in the temple, died. He heard that on the day his sister died, a goddess event was held in the local temple. As one of the goddesses, his sister was forced to participate and was subjected to dozens of people. Violation by monks.
His sister died after the event.
After learning the news, he stood far outside the temple for a long time, watching the monks coming in and out. He didn't swear, nor was he angry, he just watched quietly... He didn't go back until dark.
Two more years later, his father also fell ill and died, and his mother died in childbirth when she was giving birth to his sister.
Laihar, who had lost all his family members, came outside the temple again!
He lingered, waiting, waiting for those monks to come out and then be alone!
It was then that he realized that those noble Brahmin monks would be so frightened that they would kneel on the ground, trembling and begging for mercy when faced with their rusty ancestral woodcutter!
One was even so frightened that he became incontinent!
In the past, these monks who were unwilling to even come close to their own shadows, knelt at their feet under their rusty machetes, licked their dirty toes, and prayed that they would be spared!
From that time on, he felt that these so-called upper caste people were nothing more than that. They all had hands, feet and a head. The most important thing was that they would die if stabbed with a knife!
He did three experiments in a row, and it was the same every time, without exception!
He once thought that these monks were protected by gods and would be invulnerable!
Is this the result?
After attacking and killing three monks in a row, the local temple finally discovered something was wrong and began to organize personnel to search for the murderer. Only then was he forced to leave his hometown and walk all the way to the seaside.
He had heard in the past that there was a group of outsiders in Mumbai on the seaside who would recruit people to work or even serve as soldiers, regardless of their ethnic origin.
What he heard was actually the Portuguese... The Portuguese recruited the indigenous people to do hard work or recruit servants, and they did not care about the so-called racial system within the local indigenous people.
But what Laihar didn't know was that his news was out of date for several years. The Portuguese had been driven away long ago, and the owner of Bombay had been replaced by the English.
What he didn't expect was that when he finally arrived near Bombay, he heard that there was a war ahead. Another group of outsiders from the east started a war with outsiders from the west in the city.
Lai Haer can't figure out these outsiders. He only knows that there is the future he wants ahead!
He didn't want to be a oppressed pariah, he didn't want to be beaten half to death if his shadow fell on others, and he didn't want his sister to be violated and killed by dozens of monks.
He doesn't want to!
The only people who can change his situation, change his destiny, and free him from his status as a pariah are outsiders.
So when he encountered the Chu army recruiting young civilian men nearby, Laihaer signed up without hesitation!
In fact, not only Laihar, most of the indigenous husbands recruited by the Chu army were these so-called untouchables, and a small number were bankrupt Sudras whose actual lives were not much better than untouchables.
As for the upper-caste people in the kennel and above... everyone was watching the show.
There were many local aborigines riding in carriages, sedans, riding mules and horses, and even dragging their families to other places to watch. At the same time, their skin color was generally white, they were these high-caste people.
Lai Haer and others struggled to pull a 150mm short-barreled naval gun up the hill. After drinking water and resting, he looked down a hillside in the distance.
There were hundreds of well-dressed people there. They were high-caste people who came from nearby areas to watch the excitement... many of them were bringing their families... and they were treating this as a vacation!
Looking at them, Raihar spat on the ground. These people made him feel bad and reminded him of the upper caste people in his hometown.
Sooner or later!
————
Laihar and hundreds of civilians worked hard for several days to transport the dozen or so naval heavy artillery pieces from the temporary dock on the seaside to a heavy artillery position outside Mumbai. There is also a large amount of ammunition.
In the past few days, Laihar worked hard and took initiative, which impressed a Chu army corporal who was in charge of their group of civilian laborers, and made Laihar the foreman of their group of civilian laborers.
There are tens of thousands of civilians, and how to organize them to work efficiently is also a science. Even with the translators provided by Western trading companies, it is very troublesome.
Therefore, the Chu army will also select some proactive indigenous people among these people and let them be small foremen or something like that.
In this way, the Chu soldiers responsible for supervising their work can reduce their workload and improve work efficiency by managing these small foremen.
After transporting these heavy artillery, Laihar's team was transferred to dig communication trenches.
Before attacking the city, the Chu army had to dig some communication trenches to facilitate the siege infantry. In particular, the 115mm light howitzers could successfully approach the city wall to avoid being counterattacked by enemy fire during the march.
While the trenches were being dug, the English at the top of the city also tried to fight back, but with little effect.
After all, the British fired solid artillery shells, and these solid artillery shells had little lethality against traffic trenches.
This is why the Chu army likes to dig communication trenches when attacking cities...it can effectively reduce casualties during sieges.
However, this effect was not very effective, and it was also a matter of probability. In fact, many civilians digging trenches were killed and injured after being hit by British artillery shells.
After all, these indigenous people have no military qualities. Sometimes they will run back in a swarm when they are bombarded by the British army.
Forget about running backwards, some will foolishly pick out the traffic trenches and run in the open space above... This is not just a living target for the British gunners.
At first, when Lai Hal faced the British artillery bombardment, he would be very panicked. However, after experiencing it a few times, he found that the British artillery shells would only fall outside and could not hit the trenches at all, so he became calm. .
Now when the British army shelled again, he would still shout to the indigenous people under his command to be panicked, especially not to run around.
In this way, the casualties of the group of civilians he led were even smaller. After digging trenches for several days, one person was killed at the beginning, and nothing happened in the next few days.
The excavation continued even during the British bombardment, and the excavation progress was the fastest among the other surrounding indigenous peasant teams.
All this was naturally seen by the Chu army personnel who were responsible for supervising their work.
As a result, before the trenches were dug, Laihar became the captain of a brigade of civilians. He was in charge of hundreds of indigenous civilians, and among these hundreds of civilians, there were more than a dozen Sudras.
This makes Laihar even more happy and even excited!
As a person of untouchable background, he had never imagined that he could control hundreds of people under his command, and there were also Shudras under his command.
Even Sudras are only the fourth level in the caste system, only one level higher than untouchables like them. However, if this were placed in other places in the past, these Sudras would also be offended by untouchables like them. of.
I usually have to hide when I walk.
In fact... in daily life, those who bully the untouchables, such as untouchables, the most ruthlessly and frequently are actually the Sudras.
Because the caste system is a very interesting oval structure... Brahmins and Kshatriyas belong to the absolute upper echelons, and their number is actually not large. The majority are Vaishyas and Sudras.
Then there are the lowest untouchables, the untouchables. This group of people is actually far inferior in number to the Sudras.
The untouchable class constitutes the bottom corner of the oval social structure of the Indian caste system.
This kind of social structure is very interesting, because oppression is passed down layer by layer, and the sense of superiority is also obtained from people with lower status than themselves, so even the penultimate Sudras, they I think this system is very good... because there is still a group of untouchables that they can bully.
However, the oppressed and untouchable people at the bottom are unable to resist because of their small numbers, lack of resources and force.
This also means that this social structure is extremely stable, because except for the untouchables, even Sudras can find a sense of superiority in this system!
By the way, Americans are proud of themselves. The oval social structure praised by countless sociologists is very similar to the oval social structure under the Indian caste system.
The so-called sense of superiority of the middle class is not fundamentally different from the sense of superiority of Indian Shudras. They are both obtained by comparing the poor or untouchables at the bottom.
This extremely stable social structure can be so stable that the people at the bottom are desperate... You can't find enough bottom partners even if you want to resist.
So, when you are a pariah and at the bottom of society, you don't want to see this stable oval social structure.
You'd rather see a pure pyramid structure...so you can find more of your fellow pariahs to fuck with with guns blazing.
Laihar didn't know these things, but there were people in the upper echelons of the Chu Army who were thinking about these local caste issues and trying to use these caste issues to do something.
Especially Major General Bai Zhen, the commander of the 72nd Division, felt that it would be difficult to colonize and rule a huge area like the Indian Peninsula with a population of over 100 million in the future by relying solely on the Chu people themselves.
No matter how capable the Chu army is in fighting, the number of troops on the Indian Peninsula is only over 50,000, and these 50,000-plus are only during the war, and some of the troops will be transferred away after the war.
Therefore, how to maintain local colonial rule and seize more colonies is an issue that needs to be considered.
After seeing the servant armies created by many European colonists, Major General Bai Zhen felt that the Chu army could also build a servant army to undertake some high-risk, high-casualty combat missions to reduce the Chu army's own casualties.
After having this idea, Major General Bai Zhen, the officials from the feudal affairs department who accompanied the army, and a political officer sent from the Indian governor's office had a brief discussion, and after a brief discussion, they prepared to build a servant army of several hundred people to test the effect.
It's not that we should pull out this servant army now and let them attack the city of Mumbai... The untrained indigenous servant army basically has no fighting ability. They go to attack the city of Mumbai simply to let them die.
Bai Zhen is preparing to let these servant armies go deep into the local villages around Mumbai, eliminate and expel the local indigenous people, and make room for the subsequent immigrants arriving from the country!
These trivial combat missions are not very intense and can be used to test the quality of the servant army. If the effect is good, you can build a few more servant armies later to increase the scale... Anyway, it doesn't cost a lot to build a servant army. For the money, just give them some cold weapons and exported matchlock guns, and the salary and benefits are also very low.
Therefore, when the order to form a servant army was issued, Laihar was recommended by the Chu Army corporal who was in charge of him to join the servant army named "Indian Legion".
