Two hundred and eighty-eighth, the official army recovered Zhengtai Li and died
Song Zhiwen regarded the 1,500 recruited soldiers as ordinary civilians. This really cannot be faulted by him! Because the status of these recruited soldiers was only young and strong.
Today, there are not many recruits in the Ming Dynasty. Only in coastal areas where Japanese pirate attacks are serious and in inland banditry are serious, local officials will train these recruits. And the total number is not large, and there is no nationwide coverage.
The trend of training and recruiting soldiers has not affected the northern frontier army. The northern frontier army still has garrison soldiers as its core, and their combat effectiveness is not bad. Their combat effectiveness is much stronger than the local garrison soldiers in the interior.
Therefore, strictly speaking, the soldiers recruited during this period could not be counted as the official army of the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, these soldiers naturally did not have a formal establishment recognized by the court. At best, they could only be regarded as a garrison organized by the local government.
At this time, the regular army of the Ming Army was still the garrison soldiers. Although these recruited soldiers wore the military uniforms of the Ming Army, they were still essentially young men recruited from the civilian population. Different from the ordinary young men who worked as coolies and cannon fodder, these recruited soldiers
Their pay is better, their equipment is better, and their combat effectiveness is stronger, even more than that of local guardsmen. Well, they usually serve for several years, unlike ordinary young men who are drafted before the war and then demobilized after the war.
Therefore, if the local official feels that it is necessary to recruit soldiers, he will recruit them himself. At most, he will report to the court. Of course, when they report, they will not use the name of recruiting soldiers, but they will use the name of recruiting young people.
name.
For local officials to recruit young men to suppress bandits, it was too normal for the huge Ming Dynasty. If the central court had to deal with this kind of thing, it would have to deal with hundreds of them a year.
When the people above saw his report, they would have imagined in their minds that three to five hundred Ming troops were attacked by a large number of daring thieves when they were crossing the river. The soldiers fought hard to resist the enemy, but the young and strong civilians were afraid of death and rushed into chaos.
Regarding the formation of the Ming Army, in the end, in order to preserve their strength for the purpose of suppressing bandits in the future, the Ming Army took the initiative to temporarily avoid the enemy.
To the big bosses at the top, this was nothing more than a big deal. Even if this kind of thing was reported to the capital in a memorial, no one would even look at it.
Of course, if Song Zhiwen stupidly said that he sent an army of 3,000 people, but was defeated by a bandit led by a mere country fool, and more than 2,000 people were lost, then it would not be a trivial matter, but would be a serious matter.
It became a matter of reporting it to Emperor Zhengde's desk.
But if Song Zhiwen does this, the first unlucky person will not be Li Xuan, the leader of the rebellion, but Song Zhiwen, followed by Su Jiakang, and then a large number of officials in Xingquan Prefecture, which may even affect the provincial capital.
All the governors have to bear the crime of negligence.
In the end, it was the Tang Dynasty and Li Xuan who were unlucky, and this was only if the Ming army sent a large army to attack and defeat the new army of the Tang Dynasty.
And according to the combat effectiveness of the Ming army in these inland areas, if we don't send out 18,000 troops, there's really nothing we can do about the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, let alone the New Army of the Tang Dynasty that has been expanded, trained, and fully equipped.
Others don't know the combat effectiveness of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, but the Ming army generals in Xingquan Prefecture who have experienced the war know it. Even if they are unwilling to believe in the combat effectiveness of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, Su Jiakang definitely understands and even knows it very well. Otherwise
Otherwise, he would not have faced off against the Ming Army in Fucheng and the New Army of the Tang Dynasty on the Lanjiang River, and would even have hunkered down in the county seat while crossing the river.
He really didn't have the confidence to defeat the new army of the Tang Dynasty with the six to seven hundred remaining soldiers in his hands.
Even though the New Army of the Tang Dynasty deployed only more than a hundred troops outside Zhengtai County at that time, even these more than a hundred troops frightened Su Jiakang.
It's not that he's not brave enough, but that he really doesn't have many available soldiers. The total number of regular army guards and recruits is only three to four hundred people. Su Jiakang has already deeply felt how poor the quality of these soldiers is.
I took them out to fight with the puppet Tang rebels, and they were probably going to be disbanded before the battle even started.
The remaining approximately 400 people are all young men recruited temporarily, not to mention their combat effectiveness.
But it's not a problem to be too hasty, especially after knowing that the puppet Tang rebel army had obtained a large number of strategic materials, Su Jiakang thought, could he send some of his troops to sneak out of the city at night to conduct an ambush?
Su Jiakang is also a courageous man. If you ask him to lead hundreds of people under him to attack the main force of the Tang Dynasty's new army, he naturally does not have the confidence and courage.
But he still had the courage to attack a supply unit of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, and he was always brave enough to think and do. He decided that day to send two hundred soldiers out of the city to attack tonight.
Although Su Jiakang was only a civil servant, in terms of bloodiness and courage, he definitely had to be better than most of the generals of the Ming army. Otherwise, he would not have suffered repeated defeats and defeats for more than a year.
After the war, careful calculation showed that he had suffered many defeats at the hands of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, but he still wanted to destroy the New Army of the Tang Dynasty. Even this time, he attacked the baggage train of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty. His purpose was also for the overall situation.
For the sake of this, destroy these materials and curb the rapid expansion of the puppet Tang rebel army.
Without these materials, weapons cannot be manufactured, and without those firearms, how can the puppet Tang rebel army expand its army?
However, Su Jiakang had the courage, which does not mean that the Ming army generals under him also had the courage. When Diao Leixun heard that Su Jiakang was going to send his troops to attack the new army of the Tang Dynasty, he suddenly became panicked and went boldly.
He went to Su Jiakang to ask him to give up this extremely dangerous idea. No matter what happened, he would have to let Su Jiakang change his general. He was not willing to go out to seek death at night.
However, when he found Su Jiakang, he saw Su Jiakang's serious face and encouraged him, saying that he would trust him with everything.
Diao Leixun could guess at that time that if he dared to say no at that time, Su Jiakang would really dare to kill someone.
He, an ordinary person from a thousand households, really didn't have the guts to say "no" against a genuine seventh-grade civil servant like Su Jiakang.
In the end, they could only lead people out of the city in despair. When they sneaked out at night, they said that they had escaped the new army of the Tang Dynasty who were monitoring the movements of the Ming army outside the city.
The next day they set up an ambush in a certain place, and successfully waited at the ambush place for the large group of Datang's new army's baggage convoy.
But when he saw the size of the baggage train, Diao Leixun waited until the baggage train of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty walked out of the ambush, but he did not have the courage to issue an order to attack. The two hundred Ming troops just watched the baggage train of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty.
The team passed safely under their noses.
When the baggage team of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty left, many Ming army officers and soldiers, including Diao Leixun, showed expressions as if they had escaped from death.
Damn it, it was so scary just now!
The total number of this baggage team of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty actually reached almost 500, and they were all fully armed. More than 200 of them were clearly the main force of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty at a glance, because among them there were
There are hundreds of musketeers.
To eat up this new army of the Tang Dynasty, Diao Leixun estimated that at least one thousand people would be needed, and these one thousand people must be elite recruits, not guardsmen, and this would have to be a successful ambush.
Down.
With just two hundred of them, they would probably be beaten to the point of collapse by the musketeers before they could even charge forward. If they charged in forcefully, the whole army would definitely be annihilated.
These Ming army soldiers did not want to die, and Diao Leixun did not want to die, so they chose to endure!
After the new army of the Tang Dynasty had gone far away, these Ming troops began to leave the ambush and prepare to return to Zhengtai County. On the way, Diao Leixun saw that his men were a little frustrated, and immediately said to everyone: "A man takes revenge. It is not too late in ten years. Sooner or later, one day
We will get the place back, and we will make sure those thieves look good when the time comes, but... not today!"
These words can generally be understood as self-comfort!
The Ming army who was preparing to ambush went back dejectedly, but the soldiers of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty who were transporting supplies didn't know yet that a Ming army had wanted to ambush them, and even concealed it from them, if Diao Leixun hadn't been so timid and afraid of death.
, even if Diao Leixun could not completely defeat the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, he would definitely cause some trouble to the New Army of the Tang Dynasty. In the chaos, he might actually be able to kill a large number of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty.
Diao Leixun did not do this, and the New Army of the Tang Dynasty naturally did not know that it was facing a huge crisis.
A few days later, these goods finally arrived at Xikou Village. At that time, Shi Blacksmith, the minister of the Ministry of Industry, who went back with the goods, was very happy, because the arrival of these goods was enough for the workshop of the Ministry of Industry to start working at full capacity for more than a month.
And we can use these materials to make a large number of muskets, bayonets, spears and other weapons. At the same time, combined with the previous copper reserves, it is enough to build three 500-pound copper artillery.
However, these supplies may be a lot for the Tang Dynasty today, but if they are placed outside, they are not actually a large amount.
The output of official iron workshops in the Ming Dynasty can reach hundreds of thousands of jins a year, and the output of private people can also reach hundreds of thousands of jins, and this does not include the iron that is secretly mined and smelted, and Old Man Sun sells it to
In the Tang Dynasty, iron, salt, and copper were all mined secretly. As for the black households among the black households.
Therefore, even if the Tang Dynasty had 100,000 people, hundreds of miles of land, and thousands of troops, it was still just a small trouble for the Ming Dynasty.
The Tang Dynasty now only occupies one Zhengtai County, and does not even have the courage to occupy the county seat. If it develops according to normal conditions, the Datang Dynasty will only leave a record of one or two sentences in the history books, maybe it will be written like this:
In a certain year, the Li family, the leader of the Zhengtai bandits, and his son took advantage of the foolish people to cause chaos and trapped Zhengtai. In a certain month, the army returned to Zhengtai, and Li Ni died.
The number of words used is estimated to be no more than a hundred words.
However, this is just the end of an ordinary rebellion. Is the Tang Dynasty ordinary?
Not ordinary, why?
Because the emperor of the Tang Dynasty was named Li Xuan!