Brother Zhu Youxiao

Chapter 402 The Great Chaos in South Asia

The first summer is still clear and peaceful, and the grass has not stopped...

Nellore in late spring is very stuffy, the smell of rotting corpses permeates the air, and the corpses exposed among the ruins are covered with corpse spots.

The disgusting corpse water pooled in the potholes, forming "small puddles".

Ming army soldiers wearing face scarves are dumping kerosene in the city, and there are thousands of people as far as the eye can see.

The corpses at the top of the city were kicked down one by one. Lu Xiangsheng, Wang Chong and the other two generals walked up to the top of the city, and had a panoramic view of the whole Nellore.

What can you do in ten days?In this era, I am afraid that even a market town with a thousand people cannot be established, but the Ming army used a large amount of gunpowder and advanced firearms in their hands to turn the whole of Nellore from prosperity to ruins in just ten days.

Looking around, except for the Ming army, the entire city is full of broken eaves and walls, and stinking corpses.

Faced with this situation, Lu Xiangsheng asked Wang Chong without looking back: "Have all the [-] prisoners of war been handed over to Governor Huang?"

"They have been escorted northward, but there is no news from Tangqi for the time being." Wang Chong responded respectfully, and Lu Xiangsheng also nodded slightly to show that he knew.

Before he could issue any military orders, a thousand households trotted up the city wall, bowed beside the four of them and said:

"Inspector, the fuel has been poured out."

"Hmm..." Lu Xiangsheng responded, and then ordered:

"The whole army withdraws from Nellore and sets fire to..."

With Lu Xiangsheng's words, thousands of Ming troops withdrew from Nellore, and then a fire ignited all the corpses and ruins in the city.

The orange-red flames and billowing black smoke reflected the city wall of Nellore in the dusk very strangely, so Lu Xiangsheng led his soldiers and horses to watch the big bonfire in the camp outside the city.

The sky gradually darkened, and the fire continued, illuminating the dark night sky and reflecting the forest and river outside the city in a particularly terrifying way.

At dawn, all the religious and cultural buildings in Nellore collapsed and disappeared, and tens of thousands of heads were built at the ferry on the north bank of the Bennell River.

Some soldiers of the Ming army stayed up all night and did not finish their work until dawn, wiping the blood off their knives with a coarse cloth.

Also under this circumstance, a group of Tangqi brought bad news to Huanglong in the barracks.

"Captain, Inspector Lu is going to lead troops to encircle and suppress the rebels in the inland areas, and he specially ordered his subordinates to come to inform the commander..."

In the camp, a personal attendant was helping Huanglong to dress, while the leader of Tangqi knelt in the tent to report the news.

Huang Long turned his back to him so that he couldn't see Huang Long's expression.

After the report, he knelt for a long time, before Huang Long turned his back to him and said:

"Understood, you tell Inspector Lu that you don't need to tell me these things in the future. As for the affairs of the Fifth Army Commander's Mansion, I will tell him every detail."

Huanglong's clothes were finished, but he walked to the glazed mirror in the corner of the tent to look at himself.

"Biaoxia takes the order...Biaoxia resigns..."

Tang Qi was not a fool, he could hear that Huang Long was very uncomfortable, so he reported back and left the camp after receiving the order.

It was after he left the tent that Huang Long's attendant said:

"Captain, this scholar doesn't take you seriously..."

"He's a civil servant, so why don't you take a martial artist like me seriously?" Huang Long turned around, with a very ugly expression on his face and a somewhat eccentric tone.

Obviously, he was a little dissatisfied with Lu Xiangsheng's arbitrarily mobilizing the army to leave, and leading troops to encircle and suppress the rebels without waiting for his consent.

Although Lu Xiangsheng is the supervisor of Xiaoxiyang Supervisory Department, but the supervisor is only a third-rank official, and he, Huang Long, is a second-rank official.

When he opened up Ryukyu, regained the old port, landed in Jiaozhi, and coerced the governors of European countries, Lu Xiangsheng was just a small Liaodong envoy.

Although Huanglong knew that King Qi sent Lu Xiangsheng to Xiaoxiyang as a supervisor because he was worried that he would become a big boss, and Lu Xiangsheng did this to avoid too many interactions with him to avoid suspicion, but this did not affect his discomfort.

Captured Nellore yesterday, and left early this morning...

To put it bluntly, even if Lu Xiangsheng stayed until noon, Huang Long would not be so upset.

"Captain, calm down, Nellore has been captured, and now the eastern coastal corridor has been opened up, we can also go north to support Qi Zongbing."

After confirming that his own governor was really uncomfortable, the follower specially spoke out to comfort him.

"A mere scholar, you don't deserve my anger." Huang Long straightened his beard, and then ordered to his followers:

"Tell Fei'er to rectify the troops. After an hour, the army will go north to Yanan to rest. In addition, it will send an order to the Ceylon government to make all the saltpetre in stock into gunpowder."

A smoldering look appeared on Huang Long's unruly face: "These southern captives should be killed because of the rebellion in my rear to seize my territory!"

"Kill?" Qin Sui was speechless for a few seconds, and tentatively asked: "Captain, are we waiting for more troops?"

"The number of troops needs to be increased. You will take my handwriting later and have someone send it back to Daming. Your Highness, please increase the number of troops by another [-]."

"As for the southern captives, before the additional troops arrive, I will fight back the front line first!"

"It's just a group of guys with mushroom hair drinking blood, and they dare to break ground on Tai Sui's head."

Huang Long has already shifted his target from the rebels to the Mughal's 12 southern invasion army, but his words made his followers hesitate:
"Captain, there are still more than [-] rebels in the interior, if we withdraw..."

"Didn't the scholar want to put down the rebellion? With 5 people in his hands, can't he even deal with the more than [-] farmers who picked up hoes?!" Huang Long mocked and responded:
"If you can't clean it up, pack up and leave as soon as possible. Don't show off your talents in Xiaoxiyang, and lose Guochao's face."

"Yes..." The follower was helpless, he knew that his governor wanted to be decent, and what Lu Xiangsheng did was fine for other officials, but not for his own governor.

After accepting the order, Huang Long personally arranged the things that Huang Long had explained to him. Huang Long stationed a battalion of troops in Nellore and embarked on the Northern Expedition again with less than [-] troops.

This time he left enough defensive troops in the eastern coastal city-states, vowing to regain the lost ground in the north while ensuring the rear.

Under his arrangement, the Ming army began to move northward.

At the same time, as time passed, the temperature on the Deccan Plateau began to rise gradually. The sultry and humid environment not only caused the Ming army led by Huang Long and Lu Xiangsheng to experience non-combat attrition, but also made the soldiers in the Godavari River Qi Yuanfu and others on the defensive line were in great pain.

Since the Ming army was basically attacking coastal cities in the summer of last year, there were not many manifestations of acclimatization.

But when they came to the high mountains and dense forests in the north, the changes in the natural environment caused many people to experience temporary symptoms of discomfort.

Many soldiers suffered from allergies, pimples, eczema, insomnia, diarrhea and other discomforts.

These phenomena made many soldiers unable to eat. They obviously had enough food, but they couldn't eat any.

Everyone's body is losing weight rapidly, and their spirits are also very tired on weekdays, and they often feel fatigued.

Even the strong generals like Zhu Yujian and Li Zicheng were prone to cold and cold, and their whole body lost weight rapidly.

"Mother, in a month, I lost ten catties of meat, and I don't know when I will gain it back..."

Although his voice was weak and he was still lying on a hospital bed in the civil engineering works of the trench, Li Zicheng kept talking.

Liu Zongmin, who lived with him, was transferred to Yanan, a seaside city hundreds of miles away. Along with Liu Zongmin, there were hundreds of soldiers who were not acclimatized.

In just half a month, the number of soldiers transferred due to acclimatization reached more than [-], accounting for almost one-tenth of the Ming army.

In such an atmosphere, the morale of the Ming army on the Godavari River defense line continued to plummet.

"Tuk Tuk..."

"Brother, the porridge is here."

Li Zijing's voice sounded after the knock on the door. Li Zicheng coughed a few times when he heard this, and then he forced himself to shout to the door: "Come in..."

As soon as he said this, with the "creak" sound of the wooden door, Li Zijing opened the door and entered the underground wooden house, and walked in with a large bowl of porridge.

He moved a tree stump stool with his feet, then put the porridge on Li Zicheng's bedside, and sat on the tree stump stool by himself.

"Ahem...it's wild vegetable porridge again..."

Looking at the bowl of green wild vegetable porridge, Li Zicheng couldn't whet his appetite, but he also knew that not eating it would be against his body.

Picking up the bowl of porridge with wild vegetables, Li Zicheng gritted his teeth and drank it in a few seconds.

This is due to liquid food, if it was rice, Li Zicheng would have choked to death here, but...

"vomit……"

As soon as he drank the porridge, Li Zicheng felt nauseous, and instantly hunched over the bedside and retched.

He didn't spit out any food, but the retching made his eyes bulge and red, and his face was very pale.

Seeing this, Li Zijing quickly ran out of the wooden house, and after half a cup of tea, he rushed back to the house with the military doctor.

Li Zicheng, who had finished retching, was leaning against the head of the bed exhausted when they arrived, in a trance.

Seeing this, the military doctor quickly diagnosed his pulse, then frowned and said:

"Li Shen is not in a good state, it seems that he has to be transferred to Yanan for training..."

"I'm not going!" Hearing that he was going to be transferred, Li Zicheng yelled as if returning to the light, and then coughed violently:
"I waited for more than three months for the gunpowder to come. I don't want to give this group of captives some color and just retreat like this. I'm not reconciled..."

"Brother!" Li Zijing looked at Li Zicheng's self-torturing appearance, feeling anxious, and his tone inevitably became a little more serious.

After all, they were both educated in Yanshan. Li Zijing and Li Zicheng knew very well that if a small acclimatization could not be treated in time, it might lead to death.

Therefore, seeing Li Zicheng tortured himself, Li Zijing gritted his teeth and said simply:
"I'm going to find Zongbing Qi now, and find a boat to take you to Yanan!"

"Li Zijing, your wings are hard... Cough cough!" Li Zicheng coughed continuously before he could stop him.

After coughing, he fell into a drowsy sleep, while the military doctor lifted Li Zicheng's quilt and examined him carefully.

When Li Zijing came back, the military doctor had already written the method of self-cultivation.

"Like other soldiers, after returning to Yanan, we should recuperate in the city and wait for the summer to pass."

"Hmm..." Li Zijing took the prescription, and sure enough, he saw various unacceptable symptoms such as pimples and eczema.

"Bring General Li Shen to the boat!"

After seeing the patient, Li Zijing ordered his four soldiers to carry the drowsy Li Zicheng out of the wooden house, and then walked along the trench to a simple wharf on the surface.

Here, boats of gunpowder, medicinal materials, and luggage were moved down, and the empty boats were filled with unaccustomed soldiers.

Under such tight conditions, even the generals need two people to squeeze into one cabin.

Li Zicheng was lifted onto the bed in the cabin. During this process, he was conscious all the time, but his mind was dizzy and he couldn't make any effective resistance.

After finally waiting for him to wake up a bit, he heard a familiar voice and broke into the cabin noisily.

"Which bastard disturbed my slumber..."

Li Zicheng cursed in a low voice, but due to excessive coughing, his voice was very hoarse, and the visitors couldn't hear him at all.

He reluctantly turned his head to look at the person who was sent to the opposite bed, and his spirit improved a lot in an instant, and he was also happy.

"Isn't this the grandson of my little Tang King..."

With a bit of ironic ridicule, Li Zicheng looked at Zhu Yujian who was being carried by Zhu Yukai, Zhu Yukai, Zhu Yue, and Zhu Yuxie, and couldn't help laughing.

"Li Zicheng?"

Hearing Li Zicheng's voice, Zhu Yukai and others realized that there was actually a person lying on the pair of beds, and it was Li Zicheng who they usually thought was very "vulgar".

"Second brother, change to another cabin, don't let eldest brother live with this guy."

Zhu Yukai glanced at Li Zicheng with dissatisfaction, and then suggested to Zhu Yukai.

It's just that before they finished talking too much, Zhu Yujian on the bed tugged at the hem of Ra Zhu Yukai's clothes.

At this moment, Zhu Yujian's cheeks were sunken, he had lost more than ten catties, his eyes were darkened, and he was very weak.

"Just here..."

Zhu Yujian felt very uncomfortable, he didn't want to argue about the position of the cabin at this moment, he just wanted to go down the river early and arrive at Yanan to recuperate.

"Yes..." Although I was unwilling, but after all Zhu Yujian spoke up, so Zhu Yukai and others could only get off the boat after Zhu Yujian was settled.

However, not long after they disembarked, the ship went down the river with a full ship of soldiers, and Li Zicheng and Zhu Yujian on the hospital bed coughed one after another.

The conditions of the two were similar, both suffering from wind-cold, pimples and eczema.

They were fine. Although they were sick, the soldiers on the ship would come to look after them from time to time.

Compared with them, the ordinary soldiers who lived in other cabins felt uncomfortable.

Most of them squeezed into a room of eight, coughing constantly.

According to the flow speed of the Godavari River and the speed of the boat, it is estimated that the people on this boat will arrive at Yanan by the sea in two days.

After arriving in Yanan, their bodies will slowly recover.

But if even Yanan can't keep them healthy, they can basically only be sent to Ceylon, or directly return to Daming mainland on the ship of Huangdian.

Shiploads of soldiers were sent away, hundreds of them almost every day.

Such non-combat attrition caused Qi Yuanfu a headache, and at the same time the pressure on the Ming army on the front line gradually increased.

Fortunately, enough gunpowder was delivered, and the Ming army could rely on artillery to suppress the Mughal army.

However, with the slow arrival of summer, both sides on the front line know that the day when the two sides will fight each other is not far away...

"It has dropped another foot and two. It seems that the Godavari River will not be able to stop the southern captives for a month at most."

The 56-year-old Qi Yuanfu frowned as he hunched over to measure the water level by the river.

Beside him, Zhu Changqing, who was transferred back from Yanan due to lack of generals, took the opportunity to say:

"News came from Yanan that Dudu Huang led the fourth battalion back to Yanan and is going up Hebei to add troops to the defense lines."

"Not enough..." Qi Yuanfu shook his head, commanding on land, his experience was even richer than Huang Long's, so he explained to Zhu Changqing, Li Zijing and others:
"The line of defense is too long, and the four battalions alone won't do much. It's better to rely on another [-] reinforcements and the [-] troops from Inspector Lu in the south."

Qi Yuanfu was right. It was indeed difficult for the Ming army to defend the [-]-mile-long defense line.

They can rely on the river network to stop the Mughal army in spring and rainy season, but not in summer.

The Mughals had too many cavalry. Among the [-] Ming troops in the north, there were only [-] cavalry, and the number of artillery on both sides was evenly divided.

In this case, if there are no new variables, even if the Ming army can win, it will have to pay a painful price.

However, under various policies, the generals of the Ming army were destined to not be able to bear too many casualties.

The pension for the soldiers and horses of the expeditionary army killed in battle is 200 taels, plus the ten acres of pension land of origin, the pension is basically between 400 and [-] taels.

At present, the Xiaoxiyang Expeditionary Army has paid nearly 2000 combat and non-combat reductions, which means that the country will have to pay about 360 million taels to 460 million taels of pension silver.

Qi Yuanfu is well aware of the situation in the Ming Dynasty. There was a severe drought in the eight local provinces, and tens of millions of people were affected.

Under such circumstances, even if the Xiaoxiyang Expeditionary Army delivered nearly 4000 million taels of silver to Daming successively, it would be difficult to fill the gap.

Therefore, if they suffered heavy casualties in this battle, everyone would probably be impeached and criticized by the courtiers.

Even if they wiped out the opponent's 12 army, as long as they lose more than one-third of themselves, Ming can hardly bear it.

Of course, at this moment, Qi Yuanfu still doesn't know that the drought in the Ming Dynasty has subsided, that Yang Wenyue has destroyed the Tokugawa shogunate, and developed the Iwami Silver Mine and the Sado Gold Mine.

If he knew, he wouldn't be so anxious.

This is the problem of the limited information of the times. Even Zhu Youjian could not solve this problem before the invention of the telegraph and the telephone.

"General, those southern captives have started to scout our army again."

Li Zijing, who was standing by the river with Qi Yuanfu and others, saw the Mughal soldiers on the other side of the river looking at them clairvoyantly, so he immediately reported back.

Hearing this, Qi Yuanfu picked up his clairvoyance, and under Li Zijing's gesture, he saw the Mughal general standing on the other side of the river.

The man looked very young. Although he couldn't see his face clearly, judging from the other person's body posture, he should be a young man.

Young age means lack of combat experience. Even though Qi Yuanfu knew that the enemy should not be underestimated, he was still relieved.

Naturally, when he saw that the Mughal general was very young, the Mughal general on the other side of the river also saw him.

"I didn't expect that I would fight against the Han people in India..."

On the north bank of the Godavari River, a Mughal nobleman holding a binoculars spoke in a joking tone, and put down the binoculars in the next second, revealing his true colors.

He is dressed in Mongolian and Halal culture costumes, with a curly beard, and looks very ethnic and geographical. You can tell that he has Persian ancestry at a glance, and this is exactly the case.

Mirza Abu Talib, who was just 30 years old this year, is better known as "Shaista Khan" than his name Mirza.

This is the title given by the former Mughal emperor to thank his family for serving for three generations.

At present, Mirza came to reap the results as the governor of the Deccan of the Mughal Empire, but he was a little afraid of the fighting power of the Ming army, and the Godavari River network was not conducive to the Mughal army's operations, so he was waiting for the summer.

In fact, the name Mughal is actually a self-proclaimed name for the descendants of the Turkic Mongols in Central Asia, and it is also a contemptuous name for the nomads by the Turkic farming residents of the Mongolian descendants who have accepted a highly civilized civilization.

The Mughal Empire was established by Babur, a descendant of Timur, and their lineage originated from the Mongolian Balusha tribe, not the golden family descended from Genghis Khan.

Since there is no golden family blood, they cannot be called khans, so after Timur established the "Tamerlane Empire", they also began to fabricate their family background, and traced their ancestors to Harachar, the general of Genghis Khan.

Then he fabricated "the legend that the ancestors had agreed with Genghis Khan to alternately rule the world for the descendants of Genghis Khan" to elevate his family background.

Therefore, Timur failed to be called Khan all his life, but called Dayimi (Emir), took the emperor (puppet Khan) to make the princes, and later married a woman from the Jin family as his wife.

Therefore, Babur, who established the "Mughal Empire", has the blood of the two conquerors Timur and Genghis Khan.

But as far as he is concerned, he is a Turkic influenced by Persian culture and has a contemptuous attitude towards the Mughals.

After the establishment of the "Mughal Empire", Babur and others did not follow the Mongolian custom of calling Khan, but called "Padisha" (emperor).

Since the local residents of India still remember the multiple invasions of the Chagatai Khanate in the Mongolian era, they also scorned the invaders from the northwest, such as Babur, as Mughals.

Although Babur considered himself a Chagatai rather than a backward Mughal (Mughal) people, some Indian and Persian nobles still used this to mock them.

The Ming army didn't know that the term "Mughal" had a mocking meaning, because they didn't understand the history and culture of Mughal, or they didn't bother to understand it.

That's why they don't care about "Mongols", "Turks", or "Chagatais", and they all belong to them as "captives" who drink blood.

Nomads, in the south they are the southern captives, in the north they are the northern captives, in the Hetao they are the tao captives, and in the northwest they are the western captives.

Therefore, both Ming and Mo collided without knowing each other's culture and detailed military strength. However, the advantage of the Ming army is that everyone in the army is Han Chinese, and there is no alien servant army, which reduces a lot of intrigue.

But it is not enough on the Mirza side. Among the upper-class nobles within the Mughals, there are only a few Mongols, followed by Turks, Afghans, Persians, and Indians.

It doesn't matter that there are so many races and nationalities in politics, but the Mughals also like to recruit some European musketeers and artillery.

As a result, the Mughal army became a battlefield for many ethnic groups, many races, and many religions to fight for power and profit, which also caused them to worry about death and injury, thus delaying the best time to attack the Ming army.

Although Mirza is the commander-in-chief, there is no good way to deal with such a serious internal fighting Mughal army.

Fortunately, he has been observing the smoke and barracks of the Ming army. According to his observation, the smoke of the Ming army has decreased by nearly one-tenth. This means that the Ming army must have reduced some soldiers and horses for some reason.

But the Ming army was not feeling well, and the Mughals were not feeling well either.

The sweltering heat and humidity of the Deccan Plateau made many Mughal soldiers uncomfortable and suffered from pimples and eczema.

Before the war started, nearly 4000 Mughal troops were sent back to the north.

For this reason, Mirza once again applied to Emperor Shah Jahan for military strength...

"Governor, we have prepared enough sand and gravel. As long as you order, we will soon be able to build floating bridges in some shallow places."

Mirza was absorbed in his own strategy, but the officer behind him interrupted his thoughts.

"Hmm..." Mirza was not angry, but nodded slightly, and then continued to look at the camp of the Ming army:
"This group of Han people is difficult to deal with. I will think about how to deal with them after the news from Lahore comes back."

Mirza took a deep look at the "little" figures on the south bank of the Godavari River, then turned and left...

　Chapter 2 at ten o'clock in the evening

　　
　
(End of this chapter)