Old John was a freeman who lived on a farmstead in the countryside of Plymouth, far away from the crowds.

When he was a child, his family had a small property, and he caught up with the aristocratic lord to collect land and raise sheep, and he should have been able to inherit some inheritance or something, but his desperate father got on the ship and became a sailor.

It's the sea, there are Portuguese, Spaniards, French, and terrifying sea monsters, joking? Sure enough, it's gone.

So by the time he got to this, he had nothing left, so he dug a big tree hole to make a house, and lived by hunting and gathering outside the knight's pasture.

Sometimes he will work part-time as a robber, in fact, there is no word for robber in England, the same word is called a robe-picker, sometimes he will attack passers-by, and he will make money by just getting something.

His luck is very good, so he hasn't been caught until now, people call him the wild man in the forest, and his social status is similar to that of the wild man Jurchen in the distant Ming Kingdom.

He had a crossbow, either the kind of steel crossbow of the elite troops, or an ordinary wooden crossbow, which was used to fight rabbits.

He was very happy to hear the news of the war, and he carried a wooden basket with air-dried meat and dry food, and carried a crossbow to find the nearest knight lord, and said that it is estimated that the Ming people who occupied Plymouth did not believe it - old John begged the knight lord to go to the battlefield.

Not only him, but there were many peasants around him, all carrying food and preparing their own weapons, begging the nobles to go to the battlefield.

Why is it required? Because the nobles didn't want them to go to the battlefield, low combat effectiveness was only secondary, their will to fight was extremely low, even if they formed an army, it was easy to collapse, lack of protective equipment and little discipline and combat skills, the most critical problem was the small feudal economy, if these peasants were allowed to go to the battlefield, the logistics supply could not be met.

Back to Old John, why did he want to go to war?

These years are boring, anyway, I know that I am not the main force, and it is very happy to go to the battlefield to fight soy sauce.

It is often said that life is better now, and a blacksmith can buy a suit of armor for himself for as many days as he works, and a soldier can buy as much equipment as he wants to serve. There is no shortage of blacksmiths in the lord, two in a village are enough, and the lord has no shortage of soldiers, and old John has been poor for several years without new clothes to wear.

He carried a wooden basket on his back to collect all his belongings, and gambling on his belongings was one purpose, and the combat goal he gave himself was to pick up two swords on the battlefield.

As for whether it was the sword of his own noble lord, or the sword hanging on the waist of the Ming merchant, he didn't think about it, he just wanted to pick up two swords and go back, as long as he picked up two swords, he didn't have to worry about the expenses in the next two years.

If you're lucky, pick it up and put on a robe, regardless of whether it's the knight's robe or the robe on the horse, preferably the silk robe worn by the Ming merchants.

With a silk robe, he will be able to marry a wife and have a litter of children, and it is better to fight this battle a little longer, so that the price of land around Plymouth will be lower, and he will buy a few acres of land to build a wooden house, and he will count on this battle after he has given the name of his grandson.

He believed he could survive, at least a much better chance of surviving than he did as a sailor, and his luck had always been exceptional.

Old John's luck was indeed very good, on the way to the knight's lord's territory, he was hit by a well-equipped Beiyang cavalry scout, and four horsemen on ponies carried spears and pistols around him, and interrogated him in words he did not understand, what was the scene?

So old John was lucky, he didn't die in this situation of extreme difference in strength, and he also got a basket of black bread from the Ming army, isn't it powerful?

When he went to the besieged camp to brag about this experience, the peasants who arrived with the same expectations called him John the Brave, and even he wondered why he had survived.

He didn't do anything, but when he saw the cavalry, he couldn't help but urinate first as a respect, and laid out the wooden crossbow, air-dried rabbit meat, two pieces of black bread, short robes, and hoods, and finally saw what the Ming knight was still saying, and reluctantly took off the sackcloth leggings that were wet with three patches.

The horsemen went away, and after a while they caught up with him, and under the blank gaze of old John, who was wearing trousers, they threw a bag of black bread, two leather water bags, and a penny into his wooden basket and drove away.

From that time on, Old John felt that he had a subtle connection with the Ming knights, and he thought that the knight who had given him black bread, water bags, and money wanted to hire him to fight, but he could not catch up, so he arrived at the besieged camp.

A few days after arriving at the siege camp, he was issued a long-handled chain flail, and was ordered to follow the mercenaries to build the camp and build fortifications, repair equipment, and take care of the troops to eat, drink, and Lazar, they are not mercenaries, they are vagrants hired by the lord lord, just like him.

This is a strange circle, the lord is reluctant to recruit his people to fight, because they are not soldiers but tools of wealth; The poor peasants were willing to go to war, begging the gods to protect them from death, and it was better not to leave any cripples behind, and to pick up something to catch a handful.

In addition to the subjective game between the lord and the lord, there is also a realistic objective condition that the army needs someone to repair the camp and build the fortifications, loot the materials, torture the prisoners, transport supplies, repair and inspect equipment, clean up the battlefield, deal with the problems of eating, drinking, and Lazar, etc., and the regular army composed of lords, knights, and propertied infantry is unwilling to do these tasks, and the professional mercenaries take care of everything.

Then the problem is, someone has to do it.

The final result is that Lord A hires the wandering exiles under Lord B as mercenaries; Lord B hires the wanderers under Lord A as mercenaries; In the end, the lord and the lord met in the camp but did not belong to each other, and when the war ended, the lord and lord found that the lord was missing a stubble of the lords under his rule, and was puzzled by this.

Old John had been looking forward to the start of the battle, but he had waited for several days, transported two grain trucks, dug a whole day of tunnels, his arms were sore and his limbs were weak, as if he had been fighting for nine and a half hours in a row, not to mention that the pennies stuffed in the crotch of his pants when digging the tunnels were returned, and he didn't know which Wang Ba would pick them up, and he didn't sleep all night.

In the morning, when they finally squinted and took a nap, they were woken up by the master who led them with their plate armor boots, and the whole camp was praying, as if to launch a general attack.

The moment had finally arrived, when he and many of the like-minded outcast mercenaries had been rallied in the rear as reserves, presumably after the troops had taken control of the walls and gates, and then joined the battle for control of the streets.

The captain who led them praised the dirty rat's skill in digging tunnels, saying that three brave knights had led his troops into the city through the tunnels they had dug, and that they would soon be able to control Plymouth and drive away the Ming people who occupied the city, especially telling Old John to be careful not to hit his own people with the wooden crossbow.

The honest old peasant could understand the captain's anger that he could not be on the front line of the battle because he led himself, and stared at the back of the captain's heraldic burqa and wrote down the advice.

The golden time of a lifetime was finally coming, and old John swallowed the saliva in his throat viciously, and the basket had long been left unavoidable, carrying his old crossbow and clutching the long-handled chain flail, and at this moment the camp was in chaos, and a man with a bloody hole in his body came out of the tunnel, shouting.

A few old men on horseback tried to lead their troops away from the line.

The men in front did not know what was happening, but soon they were in disarray, and the people could only see the Plymouth Gate open through the crowd, and the smoke and dust of the movement of people and horses in that direction.