Autumn season.

The autumn wind rises, the leaves drift away, dancing and swaying with the wind.

Silver frost falls, the earth is cold, and the maple leaves are soaked in red clouds.

The wind is howling in the north, and the golden iron horse is stepping on the wasteland, playing in the same room, so enthusiastic.

The land of Guanzhong is dressed in gold, stable and peaceful, and the wife is filial to the son, and it is a bumper harvest year.

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"Click--jingle bell!"

On the official road from Hanyang County to Chang'an, hundreds of wide carriages are traveling mightily, not in a hurry or slowly, enjoying the golden autumn scenery along the way.

On both sides of the car, a group of cavalry wearing battle armor marched forward, with guns and halberds, hunting with banners, strong soldiers and strong horses, and it was mighty and extraordinary.

At the moment, there are a huge number of warhorses driving these escort cars. There were as many as 30,000 cavalry walking in the front to open the way, and the cavalry were all wearing black black iron armor, and the mounts under the crotch were also wearing soft armor; Even if you walk on the official road, you can feel a strong killing atmosphere, which is very fierce. If you are familiar with the various battle camps of the Xiliang Army, you will definitely be able to recognize the origin of this road-opening cavalry, because this cavalry team enjoys a good reputation among the Xiliang Army, and it is the starting force of the great general Li Li. As a result, the name of this war cavalry is about to come out, it is the Dragon Battalion, one of the war cavalry battalions that Li Li relies on the most.

After Li Li pacified Xiliang two years ago, the Longxiang battalion was ordered to garrison Jincheng, the main general was Ma Chao and Ma Mengqi, the deputy commanders Meng Chong and Li Zheng, and the remaining young generals of the Ma family were all serving as generals in the Longxiang battalion, they were: Ma Dai, Ma Tie and Ma Xiu. After two years of development and growth, the Longxiang battalion increased from 20,000 cavalry to 30,000, during which under the leadership of Ma Chao and Jincheng Qiang fought all the year round.

Two years down. Ma Chao established a great reputation among the Qiang people, and was praised by the Qiang people as the "Shenwei Heavenly General", so thousands of carefully selected Qiang cavalry were recruited in the Longxiang battalion. Because of this, many tribes of Jincheng Qiang were subdued by Ma Chao and moved into Jincheng for resettlement, which increased the population of Jincheng County by tens of thousands, greatly promoted ethnic integration, and made Jincheng County a great rule, and there was no war in the past year, a peaceful and stable image.

With the great governance of Jincheng County, Ma Chao's status in the Xiliang Army has been rising. In addition, his sister Ma Yunluo was taken as a concubine by the coach Li Lina, which made his position in the army more and more stable. Then he stood out from the fifteen Zhonglang generals, and the upward momentum was strong, and his prestige was close to the five tiger generals, faintly showing that he was on a par with the five tiger generals. It's a pity. In the past two years, there have been no large-scale battles in the whole territory of Xiliang, resulting in many generals having military exploits. but did not achieve the merit of promotion. So the position has remained in place; Ma Chao is one of the representatives.

The team in front of the road is the Longxiang battalion, and the team in the middle to protect the driver is naturally not a nameless person.

That's exactly what happened. The battle camp guarding the left and right of the car is the Flying Bear Heavy Armored Cavalry with the "First Battle Battalion of the Xiliang Army", which is the heavy armored cavalry under Huan Fei, the first general of the Western Liang Army. Two years ago, the Flying Bear Soldiers were ordered to garrison Zhangye County, which is a place where many barbarian tribes are concentrated, adjacent to Hehuang. To the southwest is the West Sea. And Huan Fei himself is a belligerent person, and he almost never stayed for a moment after the troops were stationed in Zhangye, and he continued to fight continuously for half a year, and jointly sent troops with the Wuwei Battalion and the Longxiang Battalion. Gather nearly 100,000 cavalry to attack the barbarian tribes in the Hehuang area, and then capture hundreds of miles of territory around the West Sea in one fell swoop, and conquer the entire Xihai County. The Battle of Hehuang was the largest battle in the two years of recuperation in the whole territory of Xiliang, which made Huan Fei, Fan Yong and Ma Chao out of the limelight, and their prestige spread far and wide in the Western Regions, and they won a lot, fame and fortune.

After two years, the Flying Bear Soldiers did not increase many soldiers and horses on the surface, the original was 20,000 war horses, and now it is 25,000 people. However, Huan Feiqi's best ability, in addition to fighting, is to pull people into the gang, and the team of 25,000 people may not be able to satisfy him. I think that when he was the leader of the horse thieves, he had twenty or thirty thousand horses under his command, and now that three or four years have passed, how can he get worse and worse? What's more, he is the favorite general of the lord Li Li, and others dare not do the things that are deceived and concealed, but he Huan Fei definitely dares to do it. Moreover, recruiting troops was something that Li Li had promised to do a long time ago, and it was not considered a violation of military orders.

Therefore, in the past two years, there are only 25,000 Flying Bear heavy armored cavalry under Huan Fei, which is actually far more than that. During Li Li's trip to the Central Plains, Huan Fei revealed little by little, and the right was to report to Li Li, and finally shook out all the family background of the flying bear soldiers.

Huan Fei, this guy is worthy of being born in Xiangma, and he knows that the heavy armor and equipment of the Flying Bear Soldiers are not easy to come by, and it is impossible to expand the army indefinitely. So he found another way, cleverly set up a name, and added two auxiliary teams to the Flying Bear Soldiers; One is the baggage brigade, and the other is the sentry cavalry brigade. According to the normal establishment of each battalion, the baggage is generally the responsibility of the personal guards under the commander, and the sentinels are included in the scout brigade. However, Huan Fei divided these two arms separately, and the baggage team recruited a full 8,000 people, and the sentry cavalry brigade was a full 10,000 soldiers and horses.

In this way, under the name of Huan Fei's clever design, Shengsheng doubled the strength of the Flying Bear Battalion and had a surplus. In every battle, he combined the baggage brigade and the sentinel cavalry brigade to form 20,000 light cavalry to lead the battle, and the heavy cavalry to the rear; Once the light cavalry entangled the enemy, the heavy cavalry then crushed it, invincible and invincible.

When he sent the Flying Bear Soldiers to garrison Zhangye County, he wanted to find a good battlefield for Huan Fei and let him show his skills. However, what Li Li never expected was that in less than a year and a half, Huan Fei actually doubled the number of troops in the Flying Bear Battalion, from 20,000 to more than 43,000 troops, and if you add a few personal guards under the commander, it would be a full 45,000 war cavalry. Moreover, Huan Fei has the same temperament as Ma Chao, and the selection of soldiers regardless of origin and race, as long as they are skilled in archers and horses, brave and brave, and young warriors who obey orders, whether they are Qiang people or Xiaoyue clans, they will all be absorbed into their own accounts.

Therefore, the Flying Bear soldiers are strong in battle, and the soldiers are extremely brave, but the personnel are mixed. Among them, Han Chinese accounted for the majority, and there were young and strong people of various races, and there were even dozens of blonde and blue-eyed wanderers from the Western Regions. This invisibly caused Li Li a lot of trouble, prompting him to send Eagle Eye to keep an eye on the whereabouts of the foreign hairy soldiers, and once he found an abnormality, he would be killed. However, as long as these people are honest and sincere, Li Li will not treat them equally, and they will be rewarded and punished, without special treatment. After all, the blonde and blue-eyed Caucasian people look strange on the land of Shenzhou, but they have slowly developed on the other side of the sea, and they can't be killed endlessly anyway, so it's better to keep them to see the after-effects.

The consequences of Huan Fei's large-scale expansion of troops were very strict, so that when he traveled with Li Li, he was often worried that the supply of food and grass for the Flying Bear soldiers would be insufficient, not to mention the salary. Because of this, he had to confess to Li Li that he hoped that the Chang'an Mansion Treasury would allocate food and salary to support the daily consumption of the Flying Bear soldiers. Li Li naturally would not refuse this, as the commander of the Xiliang Army, it was incumbent on him to ensure the supply of food and salary for the soldiers and horses under his command. It was because he handed over the matter to Zhangye Taishou Li Dian to be fully responsible, and all the revenue of the government treasury of Zhangye County in the past year was invested in the Flying Bear Soldiers, and the pressure on Li Dian's shoulders was huge, and he repeatedly complained about his grievances.

In view of this, he had explained to Li Xin and others long before Li Li's travels that in the event of a sudden war, the first soldiers and horses to consider recruiting were the flying bear soldiers under Huan Fei. After all, Zhangye County is vast and sparsely populated, with a total population of only 100,000 people, but it has to supply nearly 50,000 troops and more than 10,000 county soldiers, plus the people are exempt from paying taxes for two years; In addition to collecting taxes on caravans and shops, the entire Zhangye County government soldiers were wantonly cultivating fields, and even Li Dian was cultivating vegetables in his mansion to supplement his family.

Li Li didn't know anything about these things before. He only knew that Li Dian's burden was not light, but he didn't expect to force Li Dian to such a field, and he had to grow vegetables by himself, otherwise the family would have no money to buy vegetables. If this is the case, the situation of others can be imagined.

It wasn't until all the Flying Bear soldiers marched into Hanyang County this time that Li Li learned about Li Dian's situation from the mouth of Deputy Commander Huang Lie. Li Li felt deeply guilty about this, and on the second night of his return from Beidi County to the Hanyang Assassin's Mansion, he immediately ordered a reward for all the officials of Zhangye County, promoted Li Dian to the Marquis of Duting, and rewarded him with 300 gold and 100 horses of silk, and the other officials were given a year's salary.

The follow-up army guarding the chariot was the largest, namely: 20,000 Qinglong Battalion Iron Cavalry, 30,000 Wushuang Iron Cavalry, 10,000 Wuwei Battalion Infantry and 5,000 Golden Qiwei War Cavalry, a total of 65,000 cavalry.

The front, middle and rear teams of soldiers and horses have a total of 140,000 horses, stretching for more than 20 miles, and more than 100 carriages need so many soldiers and horses to escort along the way?

Obviously, such a large team was not specially designed to escort more than 100 cars, because Li Li had not yet fainted to such a journey. Mobilizing more than 100,000 soldiers and horses to escort him at every turn, no matter how good Li Li is and how pomp and circumstance he is, he can't do such a ridiculous thing.

It can be seen from the mobilization of soldiers and horses alone that these 140,000 infantry cavalry are all the main battalions stationed in the two states of Yongliang, and almost eighty percent of the troops in the two states of the garrison. In addition, only 40,000 main forces stationed in Yongliang and Yongliang were still stationed in place, and the rest of the soldiers and horses stationed in the city were all county soldiers.

Combined with Li Li's return to Liangzhou in advance after putting down the Northern War, and then taking all the families of Hanyang County to Chang'an, and leading the main battalions of Yongliang and Liangzhou to Chang'an. All of this shows that the Xiliang army will face an unprecedented war, and Li Li's center of gravity has also shifted from Yongliang to Chang'an, and the enemies he has to face are naturally the princes of the Central Plains.

At the same time, the matter of the alliance of the princes of the Central Plains was not concealed from the eyes and ears of the Xiliang army, so that Li Li had already prepared to hand over the security and defense matters of the prefectures and counties to the county government soldiers to take over, so as to transfer the main battle camp. After a full two years, Chang'an City will once again usher in the assembly of the Xiliang Army.

―――――――――――――― (To be continued)(To be continued......