"My lord, how are you going to fight this time?"

After crossing the Wei River and arriving at Gaoling County, 30 miles away, Hu Wenqing asked about the battle strategy. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Originally, Chang Wei thought that there was no need for Lao Hu to follow the war, but as a result, the old man said that he had also fought pirates and widows with others, and had seen the battlefield of corpses and blood, and running fast would not affect him.

Chang Wei turned his head to the tall and majestic man next to him and asked politely, "Qin Taibao, tell us the details of the thief again." ”

This man is the eldest of the thirteen Taibao, Qin Da. According to Chang Wei's own feelings, this person's strength is at the lowest level.

"My lord, Wang Er, the main force of the Weibei thieves, Wang Jiayin is in Huanglong, Gao Yingxiang is in Ansai, Wang Zuohang, Feishan Tiger, and Big Red Wolf are in Yichuan, Wang Hu and Heisha God are in Luochuan, and Monk Wang is in Yanchuan, with the number ranging from 3,000 to 20,000. ”

Qin Da said, Chang Wei used a pencil to draw lines on the map, and soon drew two large areas on the map, the west is Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Yansui, plus Guyuan is called a trilateral town, where Lanzhou Suwangfu, Yinchuan Qingwangfu, Pingliang Han Wangfu are located.

A small area to the east, between the Wei River and the Yellow River, was the main area of bandits' activities.

Chang Wei patted the map and said, "Jian'an, tell me what you think." ”

Wu Ding pointed to the map and said, "Looking at the map circled by the adults, our troops should divide into two routes, one from Fuping to the north, along Yaozhou, Central, Luochuan, and Yulin all the way to Ansai, and drive all the thieves to the east along the Yellow River; ”

Wu Ding said confidently: "If everything goes well, more than 100,000 thieves will finally be driven to Huanglong County, where Wang Er and Wang Jiayin are located, and our department will encircle him in two ways to annihilate him in one fell swoop!"

Chang Wei looked at Hu Wenqing and said with a smile: "What does the old man think of Jian'an's plan?"

Lao Hu replied with a smile: "According to General Wu's strategy, the thieves can be isolated from the trilateral towns, and they will not be able to hurt the vassal king, and they can also encircle and annihilate the thieves, a clever plan!"

Chang Wei turned around and asked Qin Da again, and he also said: "I have been in Shaanxi for a long time, and I know that the thieves are not strong, and the reason why they are powerful is because they run away when they grab a game, and it is difficult to catch them." Our troops are all cavalry, coming and going like the wind, and General Wu's strategy is really good!"

Chang Wei looked at Chang Ping again, and the latter nodded in agreement.

"Good!"

Chang Wei waved his hand, "In this case, let's divide the troops, Wuding, Changping, and Cheng Laohu, you take 1,500 people, carry artillery along Pucheng to the northeast, don't go too fast, don't care about those small groups of thieves, and drive their main force to Hancheng even if they win." Feng Lu and Leng Xin, you take your subordinates to protect the safety of General Wu!"

"I took another 1,500 men straight north and drove the rest of the thieves between Huanglong and Hancheng. After arriving at the predetermined battlefield, a burst of artillery fire will blow him clean!"

Gao Wencai saw that Chang Wei had nothing to do with himself for a long time, and asked anxiously: "My lord, what about our brother of Jinyiwei?"

Chang Wei said: "Although the Beizhen Tiqi is also a soldier, it does not exist for the regular battlefield. Therefore, your task is to continue to cut the feudal domain, Qin Taibao, you are familiar with Shaanxi, so you took Wencai to Pingliang, Yinchuan, and Lanzhou. Remember not to rush to the road, calculate the itinerary, all the way along the big towns, it doesn't matter if you take a detour, if you encounter thieves with muskets, just move forward, don't fight hard. ”

After determining the strategy, the army quickly advanced to Fuping, Chang Wei distributed the Wang Ming banner to Wuding, Gao Wencai carried the holy decree, and he carried the Shang Fang sword.

In Fuping, the official warehouse and the stored grain of large households were requisitioned to make dry food, this grain was not for nothing, and the later Wang Guoxun and Ji Kongjia would make up for them, and because they had the grain and grass documents of the Shaanxi government as collateral, the local officials and wealthy households lent him grain, which was also the use of Chang Wei deliberately looking for grain transportation officials.

Bring good water and dry food, divide the troops in the three routes, Gao Wencai to the west, Wu to the northeast, and Chang Wei to the north.

As liaison officers, Zuo Fu and Yin An were responsible for transmitting messages between the two departments.

The cavalry of the Volunteer Battalion each had a war horse and a pack horse. He carried a flintlock spear with a bayonet weighing 10 catties, 100 rounds of paper shell bullets, 6 catties, a 100-pound iron helmet, a three-pound steel plate heart armor, a flintlock pistol weighing 3 catties, plus more than 20 catties of dry food and marching supplies, a total of 60 catties of salute.

The pack horses were cared for by the prisoners of war servants from the Nanami Battalion, each of whom had a flintlock pistol, and was only responsible for loading ammunition and taking care of the horses. Thus, an army of 3,000 men was actually 6,000 men.

The normal marching speed of the cavalry was 80 miles a day, and the cavalry of the Volunteer Battalion did not need to sprint quickly in order to maintain the formation, so the speed was not much faster when fighting.

It is precisely for this reason that Chang Wei said that the Jinyi Guards did not exist for battle, and with the support of the post station, they rode horses and hurried, and they could run three or four hundred miles a day, but without systematic cavalry tactical training, they could only be called riders and not cavalry.

From Phu Binh, the first two days of the march were quiet and did not encounter thieves.

On the third day, they arrived at the south of Central County (Huangling County), encountered a team of more than 100 thieves, and after the volunteer battalion disembarked in Xuzhou, they went all the way to Kaifeng, Henan.

The cavalry, under the command of the officer, lined up in four columns, cut straight forward into the ranks of the thieves, and did not need to shoot, as soon as the cavalry charged, the thieves immediately scattered and fled.

The galloping formation of thousands of war horses is extremely terrifying, the thieves are just a group of hungry people, all they want is to be able to eat enough, and even the second king who rebelled first only asked for tax reduction, and there was no idea of killing officials and rebelling. Therefore, these chaotic thieves are even worse than the group of white lotus thieves with ideals at the beginning.

They wanted to escape, but how could the two-legged man outrun the four-legged horse? In the blink of an eye, the cavalry of the Volunteer Battalion caught up with the ranks of the thieves, and the cavalrymen outflanked the thieves in strict accordance with the discipline and in units of 100 people and 200 horsemen.

The chaotic ranks of thieves began to trample on each other under the pressure of the cavalry, and the cavalry of the Volunteer Battalion did not do much killing, the soldiers shouted and shouted, and the servants who were responsible for the encirclement around them were all over the place erecting banners and horns sounding in unison, loudly conveying the order to kneel and not kill.

The thieves also knew each other, and when they saw that they couldn't run, they immediately knelt down and surrendered, and when they looked at their pocket watches, Chang Wei found that an encounter was over in only ten minutes.

Yes, these thieves have no organization, no weapons, and the leaders can entrap them by relying on a large number of people and emboldening each other to attack the estates of large families. Once you meet the regular army, it is a death. However, at present, except for the Guanzhong region and the important towns on the three sides, there is no regular army willing to fight in the whole of Shaanxi.

Chang Wei learned from the mouths of the thieves that since Wanli, due to the surge in military spending due to the rise of Jiannu, many bankrupt peasants in the border areas of Shaanxi have no food to eat and can only serve as soldiers or post soldiers.

However, the military expenditure of the imperial court was spent on Liaodong, and the three sides of Shaanxi, which had no war, were not taken seriously, and the poor military expenditure was swallowed up by eunuchs, civil officials and military generals, so the shortage of troops in the towns in the northwest was very serious.

There was no guarantee that the soldiers would be paid five cents a month, and the worst soldiers had not been paid for three years, so they had to do hard labor, miscellaneous labor, and all kinds of abuse and exploitation for the generals. The poor do not cover their bodies, and there is no difference between calling Hanako, and the bold ones sell armor and equipment, and the timid sell their wives and children.

Chang Wei was indignant in his heart, "It's so patient to rebel now, it's really unreasonable not to rebel in this situation!"

But what he could do was: first, to alleviate the killings, to tell the displaced people that the imperial court had pardoned this year's taxes, and to vigorously promote the cultivation of potatoes; second, to tell them the good news of the reduction of the feudal domain and return to the fields, and to persuade everyone not to be thieves and go home; third, to record these things one by one, write them down, and make them a first-hand account, and spread them in the officialdom and in front of the emperor, in the hope of alleviating the suffering of the people.

Although Chang Wei has deep sympathy for the so-called thieves, the painful thing is that the battle still has to be fought, and there were six battles on this day, all of which were small bands of more than 100 thieves.

These people are not only the subordinates of Wang Hu and the Black Demon God in Luochuan County, fifty miles away in the north, but also Wang Er and Wang Jiayin eighty miles away in the northeast.

Chang Wei's original plan was shaken, because these poor and unarmed people had no power to resist in front of his musket, this is not called war, this is called slaughter!

Chang Wei couldn't bear to fight, and the soldiers of the Volunteer Battalion also had a deep exhaustion in their eyes, they were not the veterans of the Ming Army who drank the blood of the soldiers and killed the good and risked their merits, they were also poor people before joining the Volunteer Battalion.

Earlier, although they were not doing well, they were in the prosperous and rich Jiangnan, and they never thought that the people in the border areas of Shaanxi would be like this.

In view of this situation, Changwei garrisoned the central county, sent scout light cavalry, and contacted the Wuding Department one hundred and ten miles away, and the news sent back was almost the same, and the soldiers over there couldn't bear to fight again.

In this case, the plan to encircle and annihilate it will be ruined. Therefore, it has become the best choice to capture the thief and capture the king, and directly eliminate the culprits Wang Er and Wang Jiayin in Huanglong!

But when the cavalry on both sides arrived, there were only a bunch of old and weak women and children, and when I asked, I realized that the two surnamed Wang had run away yesterday, and the young and strong men had also run away. After all, the sudden arrival of a cavalryman with a musket in such a place is too dazzling for others not to notice.

The imperial policy was propagated again, and these people were persuaded to go home, but they fell to their knees and wept bitterly, saying that they were homeless. In the land of northern Shaanxi, at least five years, droughts, floods, locust plagues, high temperatures, and severe cold have come one after another.

Chang Wei rushed into the county government with the sword of Shang Fang, the officials in the county were killed, those who escaped, there was not a grain of grain in the treasury, there was no broken silver at all, and the big families had already been slaughtered and robbed.

If you go to the nearby central county, it is also a poor jingling, and the county order is even more miserable, I can't wait to let Chang Wei kill him with a sword, and he can also have a good reputation and mix up the court's pension. Although it has not been breached here, and there are still a bit of big families, but the year is not good, and there is no surplus food for others, Chang Wei can't really rob it, and he forces these gentry and village elders to rebel, so he doesn't have to mix.

Chang Wei was finally able to understand why Wu Zhiwang committed suicide in despair, but anyone with a little conscience would not be able to attack these people, but if they were not exterminated, the imperial court would behead the officials and put them in prison!

In the face of this situation, either they will be ruthless and carry out a massacre and kill all the people; or the imperial court will make great efforts to transport grain and rectify the rule of officials, otherwise there is really no help!

Fortunately, Chang Wei still has a way, he thought of the more than 10 million stone of grain that he copied out of the three major feudal kings in Henan, and the food with the average number of heavenly figures is still stored in the treasury, one stone of grain for one person is enough to manage half a year, and the transfer of millions of stone grain is enough to appease the hungry people in Shaanxi.

At the moment, Chang Wei wrote a good song, covered the Beizhen Fu envoy and Qincha's pass, and made people cross the Yellow River from Taiyuan, Dingzhou, Baoding, this shortcut road to Jingshi, please order to do this. There is no way, the grain storage is the imperial court's, and if you want to transfer, you can only ask the household department to come forward.

After doing this, he didn't care about anything else, and chased and killed with all his strength with three thousand cavalry, but those two surnamed Wang were worthy of being the leaders of the thieves, and they ran really fast.

What's worse is that this place is called the Loess Plateau, which is full of undulating earth walls and fragmented river valleys and mountains. It seems that the thieves are fleeing for their lives in the mountains a hundred or twenty miles away, but it often takes a day or two to chase them, and they can't walk fast on horseback. Fortunately, the discipline of the Volunteer Battalion was strict, and Chang Wei said that he was going to kill the first evil, and the morale of the army was high.

Along the way, the thieves ran in front, and the volunteer battalion chased behind, the process was quite boring, and the volunteer battalion chased to Yichuan County, and the thieves had already run to the north to Yanchang, and the dry food was almost exhausted.

Fortunately, the nearby is Yan'an Mansion, as an important town in northern Shaanxi, where the government is located, the thieves here can't be defeated, and there is also food in the city, so it's still okay to give 6,000 people a big biscuit for ten days and half a month.

Chang Wei's first priority was to find Zhang Xianzhong, but unfortunately the information he got from Yan'an Mansion was that Zhang Xianzhong had already rebelled with Gao Yingxiang.

The second priority is to grasp the Frost Palace, Chang Wei thinks that with the 6,000 army and muskets and artillery in his hands, it is not as easy as drinking water to destroy a sect? But what disappointed him was that under the leadership of Fang Huan'er, the masters only caught twelve small minions, and copied a rice shop and a cloth shop.

It turned out that in the summer of last year, the Frost Hall felt that the form of northern Shaanxi was very bad and had no future for development, so they moved, which is also the reason why they dared to appear at the martial arts conference.

The lair of the Frost Temple is in the Hetao north of the Yellow River!

Hearing the name of the Hetao, Chang Weiden had the motivation to blackmail the local big families for a few meals of wine and meat, and the volunteer battalion, which had completely recovered its morale, went on the road and continued to chase!

Chased to Gao Yingxiang's hometown of Ansai, Erwang and Lao Gao ran to Suide, and the soldiers were divided into two roads and chased all the way to the back, all the way north along the Yellow River, blocking the way for the thieves to flee to Shanxi.

When he arrived in Suide, he didn't have time to appreciate Aunt Suide, Chang Wei led his troops to chase after him, because he knew that the thief's next foothold was an even more terrifying character, although this person was not famous yet.

Kill the rice fat, don't bother looking for it, everyone big and small knows that Li Zicheng is a well-known leader among the thieves, and he has already followed Gao Yingxiang away!

Chang scolded majestically: "Grass! Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, the two scourges, have run away away, and this is broken!"

"Two thieves ran away, what's the big deal. Fang Huan'er was kind enough to comfort her, but she was scolded by Chang Wei inexplicably, and now, everyone saw that Chang Wei was really angry, and he was angry.

"Chase Lao Tzu! chase to the sky, and hack those two bastards to death!"

Chang Daren got angry, the consequences were very serious, on the way, in addition to mixing a few meals of wine and meat in Yulin Town, and replenishing dry food, he really chased all the way, putting on a posture of killing the main force of the thieves no matter whether he went to heaven or earth.

On May 25, at noon, thirty-three days after coming out of Chang'an City, Chang Wei finally caught up with Wang Er, Wang Jiayin, Wang Ziyong, Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, and Li Zicheng's army of thieves!

It's not that the thieves can't run, but because this place is the place where the Great Wall and the Yellow River meet, and this section is more steep without the Great Wall, and it is called the river meander. As the name suggests, this is where the Yellow River bends in the shape of a zigzag.

To the east of the Yellow River is Shanxi Chongguan, and on the north bank of the Yellow River is the world of Mongolian nomadic tribes. Thirty miles northeast of Hequ County, there is a Longkou Canyon, the stone wall on both sides of this place is steep, the Yellow River is sandwiched in it, the river water to the Longkou erupts thinly, the sound is like thunder, after flowing to the Liangjia moraine that is dozens of miles away, it suddenly opens up, becomes a river valley plain, the water flow suddenly widens and slows down, resembles the dragon's mouth, hence the name.

Although the weather is dry this year and the flow of the Yellow River is gentle, more than 100,000 thieves want to cross the river from here, whether it is to enter Shanxi to the east, or to escape from the land of the Ming Dynasty to the north, they must get rid of Chang Wei's relentless cavalry!

Therefore, they had to let go of their fear of guns and cannons, and lined up against the Yellow River, wanting to defeat Chang Wei's cavalry with a numerical advantage!

The battlefield is on the edge of Longtou Beach!

Chasing here, Chang Wei looked up to the sky and laughed wildly: "Hahaha! Dog, you bastards, finally have nowhere to run? Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, today is your death!" (To be continued.) )