Hao Bainian thought that the 8,000 Ming troops would be divided into multiple groups and head to Liuzhou. In this case, even if all the troops were sent out, he would not be able to intercept many of them. He also thought that the Ming troops would turn around and run away.
I even thought that these Ming troops would take the initiative to attack like the previous Ming troops in Rong County and have a field battle with me.
But he never thought that these Ming troops would stop, not daring to do anything, and stay on the spot.
When he heard that the Ming army had shrunk and started building camps, he was a little confused. What did these Ming troops want to do?
Do you want to wait for reinforcements?
Or do you want to wait for work?
Hao Bainian was a little confused as to why the Ming army made such a choice. After all, he was not an official from the Ming Dynasty, so naturally he could not understand the difficulties of Zhu Zhihai, Song Zhiwen, and Wei Yan.
It's not easy for them to be officials. There are people above who are keeping an eye on them, and if they don't succeed, they might have their heads taken away. And many of the officials below are just obedient and disobeying them, and not many of them will actually carry out their orders attentively.
Of these ten things, it would be great to see two or three of them actually implemented!
Therefore, Hao Bainian did not understand that these Ming troops would make choices that were obviously inconsistent with military strategy.
Watching him come, if you can't defeat him, you can either divide your troops and advance, or make a strategic retreat. No matter what you do, it is much better than staying and waiting to die.
However, he is not a Ming army general. He doesn't like to think about many other things that Ming army generals need to consider, such as whether they will be beheaded by their superiors in anger if they retreat without a fight.
After all, the two sides haven't started fighting yet, and Wei Yan and the others don't know how many puppet Tang traitor troops are coming, so it's better to stay where they are and keep things unchanged.
After all, they have an army of 8,000, so if they don't go out in formation to fight, there won't be any major problems.
If they stay where they are, they will have a camp for protection and a place to work, plus there are a large number of boats on the riverside for them to retreat from the waterway at any time!
If you think about it this way, you will understand why Wei Yan did this. This was a helpless choice based on comprehensive considerations.
If given the choice, Wei Yan would definitely choose to run away as soon as possible, but could he?
cannot!
As a result, the Tang army came in a panic, fearing that the Ming army would escape, but it was in vain!
Why?
Because they planned the advance route according to the estimated advance route of the Ming army, they should have stopped them about ten miles away from Liuzhou.
But the Ming army has not come over, so it is naturally impossible for them to intercept the Ming army. It is natural that they will miss the target.
Since the Ming army won't come, Hao Bainian will naturally lead his army to find them!
His purpose has always been very clear and simple, which is to gather and annihilate most of the Ming army in Guangxi with Liuzhou as the center.
The current eight thousand Ming army is just the beginning of this series of plans!
It is impossible for him to let the eight thousand Ming army Pangu be in Xiangzhou, because then the Ming army who will be reinforced later will continue to join them. In this way, their number will become more and more, and then the number of enemy troops will increase.
Too much will make it difficult to fight.
Not to mention, there are tens of thousands of Ming troops in Liuzhou City. Although they are not coming out now, who knows if they will show up to attack from both front and rear.
Hao Bainian led the army southward. The speed could not be said to be very fast, but it was not slow either. This was because this army was originally intended to travel long distances. Therefore, when setting off from Liping Prefecture, the southward army gathered most of the Tang Army's livestock.
The Second Artillery Battalion and the Second Baggage Regiment of the troops going south had more horses, mules, donkeys and other livestock than the First Artillery Battalion and the First Baggage Regiment combined.
In addition, after entering Guangxi, the southward detachment will naturally not just focus on fighting and consumption, but will still try every means to supplement or even strengthen its own strength.
For example, the Ming army soldiers captured in Huaiyuan County and Rong County were basically reorganized into the Third Guard Brigade after simple reorganization to supplement the relatively large loss of troops after the Third Guard Brigade entered Guangxi.
Then the captured and recruited horses, donkeys and other livestock were replenished to the troops on the spot, especially for the use of the Second Artillery Battalion and the Second Baggage Battalion.
With a large number of livestock, the mobility of the southbound detachment was quite good compared to the walking era. There was no problem at all walking twenty or thirty miles in a day. If it was a forced march in a hurry, it could barely cover the distance in a day.
A fifty-mile journey.
The army going south was in a hurry even if they said they were in a hurry, because several other units of the Ming Army were also gradually thinking about advancing in the direction of Xiangzhou and Liuzhou, but their arrival speed was relatively slow, and they were afraid that they would have to wait until they arrived.
It’s been half a month.
In other words, the time left for Hao Bainian was about ten days at least.
Ten days, no more, no less!
Even if they are small, it would be very difficult to completely annihilate these 8,000 troops in ten days in a normal battle.
But if you say there are many, it certainly isn't true. Zhu Zhihai's army of more than 30,000 men was completely defeated in just two days.
How the next war will proceed depends on the choices of the generals on both sides and the combat effectiveness of the soldiers.
But what is certain is that in Xiangzhou, a war is about to break out!
When the war was about to break out, in the government office of Huaiyuan County, which had just been brought under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, Mei Pingdong sat on the main seat in the lobby of the county government office with a satisfied look on his face, looking at the many landowners and businessmen below!
Mei Pingdong is different from most civil servants in the Tang Dynasty. He is not a poor scholar. Although he can read and write first-hand articles, he has absolutely nothing to do with being a scholar. He used to be a bookkeeper.
Well, that is, the accountant of Pa La Abacus. Wherever he goes, he carries the copper-wrapped abacus handed down from his father’s father’s father’s father.
When he was brought to his hometown at the beginning of this year, he was captured by the puppet Tang rebels because he could do arithmetic. Oh, no, he should have voluntarily surrendered to the great Tang Dynasty.
After becoming a member of the Tang Dynasty, he worked hard every day in order to revive the Tang Dynasty, to be loyal to His Majesty, and to keep himself and his family fed.
But I didn’t know how to calculate, but I slowly got promoted. From the beginning, I was a ninth-grade section officer, then from a ninth-grade deputy section chief, and then to an eighth-grade section chief, all the way
It can be regarded as slowly integrating into the big family of the Tang Dynasty.
Last month, the Ministry of Official Affairs sent someone to talk to him and asked him if he was willing to contribute more to the rejuvenation of the Tang Dynasty for the Eternal Saint King Li Xuan.
As soon as he heard this, he knew that he was going to be promoted, because his superiors said the same thing when he was promoted to section chief last time.
Promotion, this is a good thing, I must be willing to do so. He immediately nodded and expressed his willingness to contribute all his efforts to the rejuvenation of the Tang Dynasty, and begged the organization to give him a chance.
Then, he became the county magistrate of Huaiyuan County in Guangxi, reaching the seventh rank, and was promoted two levels in a row! He jumped directly from the seventh rank to the county magistrate of the seventh rank.
This made him extremely excited. His family, Lao Mei, had gone through the family tree for eight generations, and all of them had the same accountant. However, when it came to Mei Pingdong, they all had official status. How could he be unhappy?
After receiving the appointment, Mei Pingdong brought a few trusted followers with him, and also temporarily found a few friends' nephews from outside to take him to the office.
When he first arrived in Huaiyuan County, he had a big boss named Ma Wei and many big bosses from the military above him. Naturally, he, a small seventh-grade county magistrate, had no sense of existence.
But once the army left and Ma Wei and many officials went south to Rong County, Huaiyuan County became his own.
Looking around, he is the most powerful person in Huaiyuan County for tens of miles up and down. Countless people rely on his breath to live, especially those big landowners and gentry who would not even look at themselves a year ago.
Now they all look at me with a flattering expression.
How can I describe this feeling? It’s just one word: cool!
"Weren't you all very powerful before? You all said that you were from a scholarly family, but why are you all so weak? Haha, the tax inspection team must be uncomfortable!" Looking at a group of gentry and landowners who are humble
He looked like his parents were dead, he was so happy!
Haha, I asked you not to pay taxes, now you are fine, you will be targeted by the tax inspection team, if you are targeted by them, you will have to be skinned even if you don't die!
Hum, the most powerful combatant in our Tang Dynasty is not the Tang Dynasty King, but the tax inspection team!
Even if we officials have received a salary, they dare to come to us and ask for personal income tax. Damn, Mei Pingdong has never heard of such a tax since ancient times!
When he remembered that he had just taken office as county magistrate, he had not received his salary for this month yet, but at least 25% of the tax had been deducted by those Zhou Bapi from the tax department, which made him feel very sad.
The Tang Dynasty did not follow the example of the Ming Dynasty, which only wanted to let the horses run without giving them grass. Although the salaries of these hundreds of officials were not very generous, they could definitely maintain the dignity of their official status.
Moreover, in addition to salaries, there are several types of subsidies, such as war zone subsidies, which are aimed at officials serving in war zones, such as ice and coal subsidies, which are paid in winter or summer.
In addition, in order to reduce the burden on officials, their various entourages, including masters, are allocated a quota, and then the salary is distributed by the court, so they do not have to pay for it themselves.
Taking a low-level county like Rong County as an example, the county magistrate's salary and various subsidies add up to more than eighty taels of silver a month, but when he pays taxes, he pays two and a half percent.
It means that if you cut it every month, you will get almost ten taels of silver in vain.
You don’t want to pay? What a wonderful idea, without the need for the tax inspection team to take action, the tax department will directly deduct this so-called personal income tax from your salary!
There is no chance for you to evade taxes at all!
This behavior of deducting personal income tax from official salaries was considered among officials in the Tang Dynasty as taking off their pants and farting, which was unnecessary.