"Master, as expected, they turned around and came after us."
"Hmph, a bunch of losers, let them chase. Now we don't have to worry about the safe retreat of our people."
"Master, if we let them chase us like this, we won't lose our reputation as a servant.
"Let me tell you what you want to do."
"It's better to lay a few landmines."
"Okay, you go ahead and do it. I don't think we can let them have too much time. We need 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 a bit. It's time for lunch. Your soldiers still need to eat. Not only do they need to eat, but they need to eat well.
Hu Dawei led the forward battalion of more than 500 people and was the fastest runner, tracking them all the way. He was a Mongolian, and he could tell how many enemies there were and how long they had been walking based on their footprints and horse dung.
There is a three-way intersection ahead, 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. Their horses actually have soybeans to eat. How did they do it?"
People in the Ming Dynasty can't eat soybeans. It's so irritating that people are so different from each other.
"Follow this road, they are heading to Dacang, Tongzhou. 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 officers and soldiers behind him were panting as they ran.
"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 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 without eating? This kind of long-distance and fast march.
"Alas! The emperor still has hungry soldiers," a young man in front cursed.
"That's right. Is it easy for us to be a soldier? It's hard to make nails out of a good iron. If you have a way out, who would want to be like 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, there's no more food and grass. So what are we going to eat? We haven't received military pay for half a year, so now we don't even have 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.
They were not happy to be mobilized to fight in the first place. They were the only two armies outside the capital that could fight, but they couldn't do more work. Why weren't the other guard posts mobilized?
Tongzhou has five guards, and Xianghe and Sanhe each have one 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 Tongzhou Dacang, we will have as much food as you want. I will let you eat to your heart's content."
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, the water in my stomach sloshed and made a strange noise.
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 lying 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 apart, and immediately, the iron balls as big as watermelons began to smoke.
Although Chen San didn't know what it was, he obviously smelled the smell of gunpowder.
Chen San's soul emerged and he shouted, "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 that of the ladder. This iron ball was full of
The detonation power of five pounds 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 adult's ears were a little deaf and he couldn't hear his voice clearly.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! "Sir, the explosion just killed a dozen brothers and injured more than thirty. The brothers were frightened. Why don't you repair it first?
"
"Help me up, give the order to go down, carry the dead and wounded 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, my brothers have not touched their teeth since last night. It is already noon. We are still marching in a hurry. I am afraid that everyone will not be able to bear it," Hu Huoding said worriedly.
"I can't care about it anymore. Let's take care of my family and life first. What's the use of staying here? Is there any food? When we get to Dacang, Tongzhou, we'll see if we can ask the commander to come forward in person, negotiate with them, and 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 Shaanxi frontier army only numbered more than 3,000 people, they were very capable of fighting. This was one of the reasons why Chongzhen transferred them here.
In Yulin Town, they are characters that grandma doesn't care about and uncle doesn't love. The composition of the team is complex, many of them are Mongolians who came from the grassland like him. The Taijis in Mongolia are more ruthless than wolves and cannot survive.
There are a lot of people there.
Last time Tu Shanyong went to Yulin Town to deal with the mutiny caused by the 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 Dan Khan, and he needed a strong force as a guard. He finally selected seven battalions of troops 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 serious. However, they did not actively participate in the pay dispute this time, they just waved the flag and shouted.
Tu Shanyong went there with money, to whom he would give it 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, so he had to put a force in the suburbs of the capital that had no complicated background and could be mobilized by himself. For more than two hundred years, nobles, eunuchs, and civil servants had infiltrated the Beijing camp.
It's out of shape.
Hu Dawei and Meng Ruhu were 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 is unspoken.
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 to report.
"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."
