A team of thousands of people walked along the banks of the Yongding River and among the winding mountains. The mountain road formed by hundreds of years of coal transportation is very suitable for marching.

The main force of the 1,500 Xishan Army, plus 3,000 township soldiers, this is all the strength in Chen Yue's hands, and it took nearly three months to pull out the team.

The gate of the city was closed and the coal could not be transported into the city, and the miners in the entire Xishan mining area could not start work, and they had no income and no source of livelihood, so they enthusiastically joined the Xishan Army, in order to earn the salary of one or two silver per month. There were more than 20,000 miners digging coal in the entire mining area, and Chen Yue selected 5,000 of them, all of whom were about 20 years old, and then selected more than 1,000 from these 5,000 people, and the selection criteria were all unmarried miners who were not the only children in the family. Chen Yue thinks that sooner or later he will leave Beijing for the south, and only these people who don't care much about his family will always follow him. These more than 1,000 people, together with the original 240 veterans, formed the Xishan Army with 1,500 men and two outposts. The remaining 3,000 or so are auxiliary village soldiers.

It's not that Chen Yue doesn't want to recruit too much, it's that he can't do it now. All the weapons, together with the armor and weapons captured by the defeat of the Manchu Tartars, as well as the weapons obtained from the arsenal of the military headquarters last time, were only enough to arm the 1,500 men, while the more than 3,000 village soldiers could only take some rudimentary bamboo spears and iron forks and other weapons.

Among the 1,500 main forces, only officers above the rank of commander can be equipped with armor, and ordinary soldiers only have a mandarin duck battle jacket, which is acceptable for defense against stray arrows, and the defense power in frontal combat is really limited. As for the village soldiers, they didn't even have mandarin duck battle jackets, and each person had a red scarf on his head, and he wore a red vest, and the fabric was made of silk and filled with cotton, but it also had a certain defensive function.

A large amount of silver seized by the coal mine owners was confiscated, but it was not until the recruitment of equipment soldiers that the shortage of silver money was realized. If you ask Chen Yue what is the most money-burning thing in the world, he must say that it is the army!

Weapons and armor, daily meals, monthly salaries, and silver were about to be spent, and more than half of the seized silver was gone in a blink of an eye. In the future, they will have to pay more than 15,000 taels of silver and several thousand taels of food every month.....

In Chen Yue's opinion, these are nothing, at most, he will spend some brains on silver, he now has a title on his head, and his subordinate army should naturally be supported by the imperial court, and the imperial court has no money, but he can go to the local government to ask for silver. But what he didn't expect was that the army, which had only been trained for two months, had to go to the battlefield immediately, and it was to fight against the Manchurian Tatars!

Although they have fought with the Manchu Tartars a few times, they are all a few Manchus, and the most is only a hundred people. And now, he is facing an army of more than 100,000 Tartars! He only had 1,500 recruits, and although he had 120 newly made chariots, his weapons were only one modified crossbow on each vehicle, and the muskets were still the original muskets plus some captured from the Mantars, adding up to less than a hundred, and the artillery was still the original two tiger squat cannons. Such weapons and equipment, not to mention the Mantars armed to the teeth, even ordinary Ming army equipment can't be compared. As for the more than 3,000 village soldiers with bamboo spears, they are even more like Hanako.

Such an army pulled into the battlefield, Chen Yue thought about it and felt ridiculous, but he had no choice, because the order was issued by Zhou Yanru, the current superintendent of the first assistant of the dynasty, nominally speaking, all the troops around Gyeonggi had to obey his dispatch, so Chen Yue could not shirk, and after delaying for more than ten days, he still came to Tongzhou reluctantly.

Chen Yue led the team to Tongzhou, and saw that there were continuous military camps outside the city, and I was afraid that there were more than 200,000 troops in the scale. Soon after arriving outside the city, a horse galloped out of the city, bringing with him the general order of the Zhou Governor, ordering the Xishan army to be stationed in the south of the city, just by the canal.

It took half an hour to set up the camp, relying on more than 100 chariots, laying wooden stakes between the chariots, and in a short time it was set up into a camp, and there were dozens of tents in the camp, and people could live in the chariots and tents, and the space was enough for thousands of people to rest. These recruits had been trained repeatedly, so the camping proceeded quickly.

As soon as he set up camp, Chen Yue sent people to Tongzhou to ask for grain and grass, since he came to Tongzhou, the food should naturally be paid by the supervisor Zhou Yanru. After Zhang Chengkai followed Chen Yue to the Xishan Army, he quickly showed his talent in business, and his arithmetic skills were very deep, Chen Yue felt that there was no one to manage the heavy grain and grass for him, so he was promoted to temporarily act as a logistics officer in the capacity of a personal guard, responsible for the work of grain and grass.

In fact, the grain and grass of the Xishan Army is very simple, because the whole army carries military rations that can be eaten quickly. Military rations are made from wheat, soybeans, and sesame seeds crushed into flour, then fried in a large pot, and then put into a long bag sewn from cotton cloth the thickness of an arm, and the long bag can be tied at both ends and hung on the shoulder. Each long bag can hold twenty catties of fried noodles, enough for a soldier to eat for half a month. In order to make this batch of military rations, it was delayed for half a month.

Although it is said that according to the Ming military system, the local government is responsible for the military rations when the army marches within the territory. However, with the temperament of the Daming local government that Chen Yue understood, he knew that it was extremely difficult to ask for military rations, so it was better to bring some by himself, and he couldn't let his subordinates go hungry if he couldn't ask for military rations.

Zhang Chengkai went to ask for military rations at noon, but he knew that he had only returned from Xishan at dusk, and what he brought back was only about 20 bags of grain, and the amount was probably not enough for the soldiers to eat.

"The people from the Governor's Mansion said that the military rations can only be allocated once a day, and there are too many troops to receive the food, so I waited for half a day before it was our turn." Zhang Chengkai's face was slightly red, and he explained to Chen Yue.

"The military rations are set every day, why are they so troublesome?" Chen Yue was surprised.

"It's very simple, this is a means used by the Inspector to control the armies of the various ministries to prevent everyone from disobeying his orders!" Shan Minglei said quietly on the side.

Chen Yue thought about it, it's true, if you don't allocate food, you won't be able to move, so you have to obey the orders of the superintendent, otherwise, as long as you stop your food for a few days, your army will have to be in chaos!

"Tongzhou is the granary of Beijing, and there must be a lot of grain in it. Although we bring some food with us, we can't support it for many days, we can't let the Governor's Mansion get stuck in our necks, we have to get some food from Tongzhou! Chen Yue thought for a while and said.

"But what are we supposed to do? To bribe the officials of the Overseer's Palace? Zhang Chengkai asked

"There must be a way, so you can inquire tomorrow when you go to get the food, and see if there is any other way." Chen Yue commanded.

"Yes, Lord Binggen!" Zhang Chengkai commanded.