"Master Hou, after passing Niuxin Mountain, go east for forty miles, and you will reach the boundary of Shanhaiguan." Chang Yu took the map from his subordinates and looked at it.

The Jingying army repaired at Xifengkou for one day and two nights, both the horses and the soldiers were restored to the best condition, and finally set off from Xifengkou on the fourth day of the first month of March, that is, this morning, and sent out to Shanhaiguan.

It is about more than 200 miles from Xifengkou to Shanhaiguan, even if the Beijing camp is fully equipped with war horses, it will take at least one and a half days to walk from the Guannei, and it only takes one day to walk all the way from the Guanxi to Pingchuan.

In order to rush to Shanhaiguan before dark, Liu Hongchuan took the risk and chose to go outside the pass, but fortunately, the Beijing camp was a full cavalry team, and they were all light horses, and they could run away at any time if they couldn't beat it.

When he was in the camp in Xishan in the capital, Liu Hongjian once conducted a drill for these soldiers on the issue of running away, and there was a world of difference between an orderly run and a hasty rout.

Under an order, run away collectively, and with another order, you can switch to the attack state in the fastest time, which is the state that Liu Hong gradually wants.

Today, there is no problem with the training of this unit, what is lacking is only practice.

Now, although the Azig of the middle route army of Jianguan has been repelled and hurt, there are still more than 20,000 Azig troops who have retreated to Shanhaiguan, and if they converge with the main force of Jianguo in Shanhaiguan, there must be at least 100,000 Jianjiao outside Shanhaiguan.

Huang Degong of Shanhaiguan must be under tremendous pressure.

Shanhaiguan and Xuanfu, one east and one west, stretched the battle line for thousands of miles, and the initiative of the war was still in the hands of Jianyu, and they attacked wherever they wanted.

The Ming army did not have mobile troops, and even if they did, they would not dare to fight in the field with their Eight Banners, and this concept has always been ingrained in the Jianyu army, after all, it has been the case for decades.

The entire northern defense line was organized, and only the less than 30,000 cavalry in the hands of Liu Hongjian were formed, and in this war, the Ming army was too passive.

Repairing at Xifengkou is also a last resort, after this battle, there are less than 10,000 defenders left in Xifengkou, and almost half of them are wounded.

Several gaps in the city wall collapsed and had to be repaired urgently, otherwise Liu Hong's front foot had just left, and the Eight Banners soldiers who came and went like the wind would have more than worth the loss.

The cleanup of the battlefield also took up a lot of time, and although there were packs of wild wolves in the wilderness outside the gate, there were too many corpses.

The weather was cold and warm, and in order to prevent the plague from recurring, Liu Hongjian had to order the soldiers to clean up the corpses and burn them in a centralized manner.

The corpses of the Jianyu were piled up on several mountains, and in order to save materials and speed up the burning efficiency, all the Jianyu were stripped naked.

Fuelwood was laid with coal from Shanxi Province as the base, and then the white chicken-like corpses were lined up, and the raging fire burned for a whole day, mixing the smoke and aroma of the meat from the burning of the flesh.

The strong smell of burning human flesh wafted for miles.

Even the border troops, who had always been brave and rough-lined, were disgusted by the smell, and many new troops from Beijing were so smoked that they vomited all the food they ate in the morning.

Liu Hongjian naturally looked down on the built-up military uniforms that he picked off, and the border army also scoffed at these things, but there were always people who liked them.

For example, in the bitter and sour Chahar in the west, the military uniform of Jianlu is similar to the service of the Mongols.

More than 20,000 sets of military uniforms and more than 20,000 bright scimitars were sent to Wei Penghong, the chief soldier of Xuanfu.

The four Dutch salesmen were also forcibly left at Xifengkou by Liu Hongchuan, and they were to be supervised to teach the border army to use this cannon, and the two cannons were installed in the dangerous places of the city wall.

When the Dutch learned that Liu Hong was leaving, he even cried and begged to take them away, but the cannon was too heavy to follow him on a rapid march, and these four foreigners were useless except for selling cannons.

Liu Hongjian had no choice but to dump them at Xifengkou and promise to take them back to China after the war, but privately ordered Li Jie to strictly guard the four of them, and arrange for someone to learn from them and ask them everything they knew until they were drained.

Joke! Ben Hou's promise is only limited to soldiers and people, as for these hairy foreigners, it depends on how much benefit you can bring to Ben Hou and Da Ming?

If it's not worth anything, go to his M's, it's not so fraternal.

Liu Hong gradually had a premonition that there would be a big war between the Ming Dynasty and the coachman behind the East India Company in the future.

"Order the whole army, rest on the spot for half an hour, people and their own horses must not be separated, pay attention to vigilance!" Liu Hong gradually said to the several heralds behind him.

Even though the sentry cavalry had been sent out to inspect the surrounding area for dozens of miles, Liu Hongjian still did not dare to take it lightly, and he was walking on thin ice for the generals, and he was carrying the lives of tens of thousands of people.

The sun had just arrived, and there was still plenty of time, and the horses were about to foam at the mouth after running for most of the day.

The soldiers got the order and got down from their horses, and many of them sat on the ground with numb legs and unsteady standing due to the long run.

The soldiers took out the beans from their horses and fed them to the horses, and they themselves took out the bacon that the Xifengkou Huotou Army had made for them.

In the past, the dry food of the march was nothing more than mixed bread, but now it is an extreme luxury to be able to eat meat, and all soldiers eat it with relish.

The war horse chewed the beans even more loudly, don't expect the war horse to eat grass, the war horse that eats grass will not be able to go to the battlefield, in fact, the food consumption of a horse is more than several soldiers.

Raising war horses is extremely costly, and the average service life of war horses is only three or four years.

This is even worse for the Ming Dynasty, which is already short of horses, some of the war horses in the original cavalry camp of the Ming Dynasty are even grandfather-level, and the cavalry of the Ming army can't do it, and the war horse is also one of the reasons.

"Master Hou, you can also eat something to cushion your stomach!" Chang Yu took out a piece of smoked and fine horse leg meat from the horse's back and handed it to Liu Hongji.

Alas, it seems that this firefighter has to continue to work, Liu Hong gradually sighed and took the piece of meat from Chang Yu's hand.

Fortunately, after the baptism of the previous two days, the group of Jingying troops under his command are now more and more high-spirited.

It is no wonder that in just one day of fighting, these young men killed nearly 20,000 enemies, and they did not suffer any major battle damage.

The most important thing is that after the end of this battle, many soldiers asked someone to take an abacus, and each person was able to get a small reward of eighty taels of silver, plus military salary, which was simply not too comfortable.

As long as you fight well, the life of parents and mothers-in-law and children in the future will be better, and all the soldiers have made up their minds in their hearts.

Whether it is the cavalry of the 3,000 battalion, or the musketeers of the Shenji battalion, or the young men of the thousand households carrying AKs, they can't wait for the battle now.

There is no doubt that in their eyes, Tartar is not Tartar, but silver!

"Report - report to the Hou Ye, twenty miles to the east has found the enemy's grain transport team!" A sentry rode from a distance, ran to a distance of a few steps in front of Liu Hong, dismounted and saluted.