Chapter 26 Liu Guoneng in the front, Shen Shuren in the back
After receiving the news that the bandits were retreating due to internal strife, Shen Shuren remained calm and unhurried.
After a day of full preparation and repair, in the early morning of the fifth day of May, he steadily and steadily led his nine thousand troops to slowly pursue the retreating He Yilong.
The reason why there are 9,000 troops is because he recruited and transformed some relatively reliable rogue bandits into the army.
The first batch of captured bandit soldiers were captured when Erhe took the initiative to attack Zuo Zixiong's camp on April 20. There were about 1,600 people, and many of them were elites from the old bandit camp equipped with iron-clad cotton armor. , it has been more than half a month now.
Shen Shuren asked Zuo Zixiong to identify them and confirm that there were few bad deeds. It was indeed the former government troops who forced the rebellion after the court owed wages after the second year of Chongzhen and used force to suppress the payment, so he tried to brainwash them.
Instill ideas such as "Shen Bingbei is different from other civil servants in the Ming Dynasty today. Shen Bingbei never puts literature over military force, and often discusses matters to help generals, especially those who surrender, so Liu Guoneng is so willing to contribute to him."
These prisoners were given a full meal and were required to do heavy physical work such as building camps and transporting food every day. After half a month of transformation, they were ready to be used by the army.
As for Chen Shuren's original 5,000 troops, in the previous two waves of small battles, about 400 people were killed or seriously injured, and some were maimed and injured, and they will not recover in more than half a month. So it can be Only 4,000 elite veterans were mobilized.
Shen Shuren picked among the old men of He Jin's confidants who had recently come to join him, and raised more than a thousand people. Together with He Jin's two thousand people, a total of five garrison battalions were formed, with a total of nine thousand people.
The newly surrendered soldiers will be dispersed and expanded into the original troops to ensure that the number of newly surrendered soldiers is less than one third and can be controlled.
…
In the early morning of the fifth day of May, after the troops set off, everything went smoothly from the beginning.
Although he didn't follow He Yilong very closely, this was the effect Chen Shuren wanted. He was not in a hurry to fight He Yilong at all. What he wanted was just to force He Yilong to move and drive the enemy where he wanted. Let’s talk about it on the battlefield.
The journey from Xiaogan County, Suizhou Prefecture to Tongbai County, Xinyang Prefecture is not short. After all, Xiaogan County is located in the southeastern corner of Suizhou Prefecture.
When He Yilong planned to withdraw his troops, it was tantamount to abandoning the entire mountainous counties along the Jianshui River in Suizhou Prefecture.
Therefore, in the first five days of the pursuit battle, the two armies did not break out into large-scale conflicts, at least they were nearly a hundred miles apart.
On the seventh day of May, after two days and more than 70 miles of march, the army took the lead in arriving at Anlu County, the first county along the Jianshui River.
When He Yilong retreated, he was not able to take away all of He Jin's old troops. There were always some who stubbornly made excuses to delay and insisted on staying there.
He Yilong was not completely forceful, because he realized that these people's willingness to help him cut off his back actually played a role in benefiting him, so he left these stubborn bones to the officers and soldiers to deal with them.
Even if they were annihilated by the army in the end, at least they would have been delayed for a few more days.
On the side of the army, Jin Shenghuan seized the opportunity to be a vanguard, so he rushed directly to Anlu County with great vigor, and grabbed a few civilians to question them.
It was learned that there were less than 2,000 guards in the city, and they were all local men captured by He Jin on the spot after he came to Suizhou, and there were some even lower-quality cobbled-together personnel.
Jin Shenghuan immediately sent people to the city gate to shout with satisfaction, asking Anlu County to surrender directly and accept the liberation of the imperial troops.
What I didn't expect was that maybe it was because I heard that the soldiers in the vanguard garrison were from Jingzhou Prefecture. They were guest troops fighting in a different place. The previous military discipline was not as strict as Chen Shuren's troops.
In addition, He Jin had been here for two years and had accumulated some power. The defenders of Anlu County actually refused to surrender directly and still wanted to fight with the government troops.
Jin Shenghuan was very angry, so he just used some flying ladders to hit the wood and started to attack the city. However, his soldiers were not more numerous than the defenders, and they were a little tired from the distance. After dozens of people died and Bai Lai was injured, he had to stop his recklessness. Try and prepare to raise other better siege weapons, and wait for the rear army to arrive together before making long-term plans.
Half a day later, Zhang Mingzhen from the second battalion also arrived. After hearing about the situation, he couldn't help but frown and taught Jin Shenghuan a few words in a neither humble nor overbearing tone:
"Jin Shoubei, since you are a reinforcement guest general invited by my army, you must also be subject to the military discipline of our army. Your troops have collected food on the spot along the way. Coupled with the ignorance of the people, this has deepened the situation. Their fear of fighting like a comb!
Master Shen's soldiers are benevolent and righteous troops. The people of Suizhou will be his subjects in the future, and they have to write down to raise food! It's your first offense, this time it's just a warning, take a good look at how we attack the city, you Just cooperate from the side - but after the city is broken, looting and massacre are not allowed, this time even if you don't know, you will not be guilty."
Jin Shenghuan was humbled and became more submissive. He was about to see how Zhang Mingzhen would attack the city.
However, Zhang Mingzhen's performance really surprised him: there were no bells and whistles at all, they just let the troops repair for one day, and waited for the artillery from the rear to arrive the next day.
Then six Hongyi cannons fired directly at the south gate of Anlu County.
The accuracy of the cannon was not very high. The cannonballs hit high and some flew off and landed on the tower.
Finally, after five or six rounds of volleys, the city gate was completely blown to pieces, and the walls and pillars on one side of the tower were also blown apart and collapsed.
Zhang Mingzhen led his troops into the city gate and quickly ended the battle. Jin Shenghuan was stunned by the whole process.
How strong can the city walls and gates of a county-level place like Anlu be? All this requires Hongyi cannons?!
After entering the city, since it was only after resisting the army that the city was breached, one can imagine the fate of the rogue officers who escaped within the city.
Zhang Mingzhen directly announced again that Shen Bingbei had surrendered. Anyway, he was a thief and resisted the standards for handling thief troops of all levels.
According to the law, all the rebel officers above the "Commander" level in the city were captured, taken to the crossroads in front of the county government office, and beheaded. The heads were taken to other places for public display, and the headless bodies were strung on sharpened wooden stakes for the common people and rebel soldiers to see. .
After the main force of the bandits has been defeated and the bandit kings have ceased to exist, those who still hold on to the county town must be killed in principle!
If the commander of the post and above take the initiative to surrender immediately after contacting the enemy, they do not need to be beheaded. If the commander and above want to make an exception, they must capture their commander or behead him and surrender to the army in order to avoid death.
After promulgating these laws, the officers and soldiers strictly enforced military discipline and did not rob the people. However, within one day, the locals realized that Chen Shuren's troops were different from before, and there was no more friction.
After establishing his authority in Anlu County, he can be regarded as a chopping wood worker.
Two days later, when the troops marched to Suizhou County, many of the bandit defenders and ordinary people left here had heard about the fate of Anlu.
So as soon as Jin Shenghuan arrived, he directly raised the banner of Shen Shuren and imitated Zhang Mingzhen's words before. After deliberation for an hour, the city opened the city gate without any blood.
There were more than a thousand strong local men who chose to stay and did not want to go with the bandits, and joined the official army anyway.
Seeing this scene, Jin Shenghuan fell into more and more self-doubt: If he had known why he didn't pretend to be Shen Bingbei's banner a few days ago? Why did he insist on using the banner of the Jingzhou Prefecture Army given to him by Governor Fang?
Among the common people, Shen Bingbei's reputation was so much better than that of other Ming troops!
This ironic scene is similar to what happened three years later in history when Gao Jie, one of the four towns in Jiangbei, wanted to lead his troops from the north to Huainan -
Historically, Gao Jie wanted to join the Southern Ming Dynasty after the death of Chongzhen, but he was originally stationed in Shandong, and he had to pass through many solid city defense areas to go south. At first, he was marching under the banner of the Ming Army, but everyone was afraid of it. He was obviously marching on the territory of the Ming Dynasty. , but it was difficult to move forward.
Later, Gao Jie remembered that he had followed Li Zicheng in the past, and he still had the flag of the Breaking Army. He could not go back) Then he used the Ming army to pretend to be the Chuang army and traveled from Shandong to Huainan without any hindrance.
Of course, Shen Shuren is a person who practices virtuous government, which is definitely not the same as Li Zicheng who relies on robbery to divide the spoils and attract people.
Li Zicheng's economic routine is just like a pyramid scheme to recruit people. It needs to rely on external snowballing for blood transfusion, and there is no sustainability in the self-operation of the economy.
"Shen Bingbei is benevolent and the people love things. Only today can we know. If the world could be like that under Shen Bingbei, and all the people were in their own places, why would the world be in such chaos!" That night at the Suizhou County Standing Committee, Jin Shenghuan drank heavily. Drunk and sad.
…
After passing Suizhou County and heading north until entering Xinyang Prefecture, there is no longer a county seat, only some towns and checkpoints.
Those villages and towns were even less likely to resist the government troops. They just accepted them as they passed by.
Shen Shuren also showed that he did not take He Yilong seriously at all. While taking over the territory, he transferred Yan Yingyuan and Zhang Huangyan from the rear and asked them to seize the time to stabilize the people in Suizhou counties and resume production.
At the same time, in the busy schedule of the battle, they did not forget to detach part of the Shen family's fleet to transport surplus potatoes from Huangzhou and Xiaogan, so that the counties in Suizhou could try to grow summer grain in May. , convert part of the suitable land to potatoes, so that the potato breeding area can be doubled when harvested at the end of the year than if it were only grown in Huangzhou.
As for corn, there is no way. You can only plant it once a year, and it is impossible to plant it in May.
As for other superior animal species, they were also promoted to the local gentry during the war. Relying on this benefit, the people quickly reunited.
The soldiers who were originally captured by He Jin to be young men saw that their stepfather and fellow villagers were living a better life anyway, and their morale became higher and higher, and they were willing to fight for Shen Bingbei.
These tasks of persuading farmers and organizing production will last for months. Shen Shuren doesn't have time to worry about it himself. He can just listen to Zhang Huangyan's report when the time comes.
On May 12, after completing repairs in Suizhou County, the army continued northward and finally left the Jianshui River Basin.
Further north from here, there are three dangerous passes in Tongbai Mountain. The source of Jianshui River ends here. There are no large-scale farming settlements to the north, only poor mountains and not even bad water.
After delaying for so many days, Liu Guoneng had already given up attacking Xinyang County, and instead blocked the attack outside Pingjing Pass at the northern end of this mountain road.
There is a garrison left by He Yilong at Pingjing Pass. The terrain is steep and difficult to defend and difficult to attack, so Liu Guoneng cannot break in. He can only stay outside the pass on the north side.
According to the trend of the march route, He Yilong will soon lead his army to retreat to Pingjing Pass, and Shen Shuren will soon pursue them from a distance to the south of Pingjing Pass to encircle them.
In the evening of that day, when it was time to set up camp again, Shen Shuren spread out the map and, under the guidance of the scout officer, updated the latest enemy and friend location information.
Seeing this progress step by step, he became more and more confident: "This He Yilong is really reckless. He really doesn't read any art of war or history. He even dares to escape this way. It seems that this Pingjing Pass, This is where he will die."