The day before departure, Li Zhi told Cui He what happened, and Cui He was a little panicked.
"My husband is going to Huguang to fight?"
"I am a military attache of the Ming Dynasty. Of course I have to lead troops to fight!" Li Zhi grabbed Cui He's hand from behind and said confidently: "But don't worry, madam, my army is strong and everything will be fine!"
Cui He bit his lip and whispered, "But I'm still scared!"
Li Zhi gently hugged Cui He from behind and said with a smile: "Don't worry, madam, I'm the only one who beats others, and no one else beats me. I'll be back in a few months!"
Cui He said: "Husband, can you not go?"
Li Zhi shook his head and said: "The governor personally comes to order the generals, there is no way to escape!"
Cui He lowered his head and said nothing.
After a while, Cui He turned around and said, "Then we agreed, we'll be back in six months, no, five months!"
Li Zhi nodded and said, "Don't worry, madam!"
On July 20, the eighth year of Chongzhen, Li Zhi left Li Xing in Fanjiazhuang to take charge. He took Zhong Feng, two infantry battalions of Li Laosi, and an infantry company and two artillery companies under Zheng Kaicheng, and headed towards Huguang.
On the day the troops left the city, the people of Fanjiazhuang crowded the streets to see off Li Zhi's troops and cheered loudly for Li Zhi's troops to fight against the thieves. Unlike the poor farmers in the northwest, the people of Fanjiazhuang who lived a comfortable and prosperous life were very disgusted with going out to loot and destroy.
There are thieves. If these thieves are not eliminated, the good life in Fanjiazhuang will not be safe.
Looking at the strong horses and cannons of Li Zhi's army, the people of Fanjiazhuang were very confident in their own soldiers.
Li Zhi's troops marched all the way south, marching thirty miles every day, and took a month to reach Zhangde Prefecture in Henan Province. It was already August 21 when they arrived at Zhangde Prefecture, and Li Zhi met Lu Xiangsheng, whom he had sent.
The envoy from the office. The envoy told Li Zhi that Lu Xiangsheng had been promoted, and now he is the right deputy censor of the capital, minister of the Ministry of War, and prime minister.
In the west, Shaanxi military affairs. Prime Minister Lu Xiangsheng asked Li Zhi to abandon Huguang and go to Luoyang, where he would join the other armies.
The envoy also told Li Zhi that Lu Xiangsheng was very unhappy when he heard that Tianjin sent only one guard officer to assist in the suppression.
Li Zhi was shocked by Lu Xiangsheng's official title, and secretly thought that such a big official was actually in charge of so many places.
Li Zhi knew the strength of the selection team and did not care if Lu Xiangsheng was unhappy. He asked the envoy to go to Lu Xiangsheng again and told Lu Xiangsheng that he would be ordered to drive to Luoyang and expected to see the Prime Minister there.
Farewell to the envoy, Li Zhi commanded the troops to march south. After walking for ten days, he met the envoy who was returning. The envoy said that there were many bandits in Luoyang, and the Prime Minister would go to Ruzhou, south of Luoyang, to gather all the people.
army, and asked Li Zhi to abandon Luoyang and gather in Ruzhou.
Li Zhi asked the envoy to reply to Lu Xiangsheng, saying that he had received the order and would be ordered to drive to Ruzhou.
In the next few days, messengers shuttled back and forth, passing orders between the selection team and Lu Xiangsheng.
After walking for another ten days, Li Zhi passed through the suburbs of Luoyang and felt a strong atmosphere of war.
It was September 12th, which was already the beginning of winter. The soldiers were all wearing thick winter clothes. Li Zhi rode on his horse and looked around the fields, but he could not see a single human being. The villages he passed on the road did not know whether they were villages.
The village had fled or had been looted by bandits, and it was all empty. The granary was empty. The broken doors and windows of the villagers' houses were half open, and there was nothing inside.
Seeing the dilapidated appearance of each village, Zhong Feng said: "Fortunately, Tianjin was not in Henan where thieves were repeatedly attacked, and the villages were in such a dilapidated state."
Zheng Kaicheng shook his head and said: "The Yellow River is so dangerous that no bandit can cross it."
Li Laosi frowned and said: "If the bandits come to Tianjin, I will fight with them!"
A few people were talking when they suddenly saw something moving in the distance. It was Tang Ma, the scout of the bandits.
Encountering the enemy, Li Zhi did not dare to be careless. He sent out a hundred scouts to detect the enemy's situation in front, rear and left, and accelerated towards Ruzhou in the south. However, when the vanguard group reached the south of Luoyang City and near Ruzhou, they were surprised.
They were surrounded by more and more Tangma, the cavalry of the rogue bandits.
At the beginning, there were only dozens of bandit horses in the distance. Li Zhi ignored these stray horses and continued to walk south. After walking for an hour, more and more pond horses were outside, turning into hundreds. Later.
, there were actually two to three thousand pond horses riding around, whistling and howling, surrounding the selection group, overwhelming Li Zhi's scouts and unable to investigate.
Those Tang horses didn't know which bandit team they were from. They probably felt that there were few soldiers in the vanguard group, and they seemed to want to eat up Li Zhi's team.
It is said that the bandits have developed into strong soldiers and horses, and their equipment has even surpassed that of the officers and soldiers. Li Zhi saw it with his own eyes today and knew that this statement was true. How could there be so many cavalry in the ranks of the officers and soldiers?
Li Zhi asked the soldiers to form a circular formation, protect the baggage artillery in the middle, load the rifles, and march slowly, ready to enter the battle at any time.
When it was time to set the time in the afternoon, the more than two thousand pond horses in the distance started shouting loudly, shrinking the encirclement. In the end, a large number of pond horses came to test the vanguard group 200 meters away.
Most of Li Zhi's soldiers had never experienced combat. They were surrounded and oppressed by cavalry, and they were all very nervous.
Li Zhi did not wait for these casual cavalry to continue to suppress the morale of the vanguard group, and loudly asked the soldiers to shoot in three stages. The orderly shouted loudly, and the soldiers raised their rifles. Only a few hundred gunshots were heard, and the first batch of three-stage fire was fired.
The soldiers opened fire, and large swaths of thick fog emerged from the barrels, and the air was filled with the smell of gunpowder smoke.
The soldiers had practiced shooting for several months, and their accuracy was very good. Four hundred rounds of mini bullets were fired at the bandit's Tangma. In just one salvo, nearly two hundred bandits' Tangma were killed by rifles.
He fell off his back and died on the deserted field in early winter. Thirty bandits were hit on their hands and feet and other non-vital injuries, but they also fell off their horses. In addition, the horses of more than thirty bandits were beaten.
During the battle, the horse twitched and struggled, causing the bandit on its back to fall off.
The thief who fell off his horse under the impact was immediately injured and fell to death, losing his fighting ability.
The thieves in the distance were frightened by the power of the mini rifle. Where had they seen such a powerful "bird gun"? It killed two hundred people before it came into contact. What would happen if it came into contact. The thieves knew what to do.
The front group was not a weak force, so they immediately gave up their plan to besiege the selected group and fled far away with their tail between their legs.
The horses' hoofs stirred up smoke and billows of dust, and these pond horses disappeared in the blink of an eye.
The surrounding fields suddenly became extremely empty again. If there were not two hundred corpses and wounded soldiers screaming and moaning not far away, it would be difficult to believe that the battle was about to break out just now in the open fields in the distance.
Li Zhi asked the soldiers to behead all the dead and injured bandits, and took the horses that had lost their owners and distributed them to officers and veterans at all levels. The selection team seized more than 200 heads and 200 horses.
War horse.
The killed horses were bled, their flesh cut, roasted and eaten.
The first time he fought against the Liu thief, the Liu thief gave Li Zhi a big gift.
