In the late Ming Dynasty, rising from the grassland

Chapter 125 Expansion of the Army
There were nearly 2000 prisoners. Lin Rui first selected some of the older and sick ones and organized them into logistics troops, totaling more than [-] people.

As a result, the entire logistics camp, including craftsmen and family members, as well as the more than 300 young ladies and maids, has a population of close to [-], of which [-]% are adult men and women, and [-]% are young men and women.

Then some of the more honest and tall people among the prisoners jumped out and reorganized the Longbow Battalion. Zhou Meng was still the commander of the battalion.

With a number of five thousand, these longbowmen will no longer be temporary workers from now on, but professional longbowmen, and their daily training will be like that of young soldiers.

The military uniforms will also be changed into a unified red color. In addition to bows and arrows, they will also be equipped with a short sword for self-defense, as well as a helmet and a cotton-padded vest.

From now on, these longbow soldiers must not only be able to carry out long-range bow and arrow suppression alone, but also must be integrated into the juvenile phalanx to cooperate in combat at any time.

The remaining more than 3000 prisoners are the real veterans, including extremely fierce desperadoes and those who are afraid of death and take advantage of the situation on the battlefield.

These people were mixed with two thousand mercenaries. They were all equipped with long knives and armors to match their combat merits. They only practiced briefly on a daily basis. These 5000 people were officially named by Lin Rui as the trapped camp.

From now on, he will be responsible for fighting in melee, chasing defeated troops, and attacking strongholds. Such tasks are destined to gradually eliminate those who are greedy for life and fear of death, and the remaining ones will probably be desperadoes who dare to fight and fight.

The trapped camp is still wearing blue military uniforms and is led by Huang Ben.

As a result, the Lin family army will only have four uniform colors from now on, black cavalry, red infantry, blue mercenaries, and cyan logistics troops.

In addition, logistics soldiers, regardless of gender, old or weak, must wear military uniforms and tie their hair in the future.

As for Mongolians not being forced to tie their hair for the time being, take your time. After all, there are still many tribes that have not been conquered. At this time, forcing hair to be tied will be counterproductive.

The Shuozhou area is densely populated and very wealthy. There are far more civilian landlords than military attachés, so the people's lives are slightly better and they are more comfortable. It is not like in Yanghe, where everyone was vying for the first place. Join the rebels.

Faced with the Lin Family Army's intimidation and extortion, the landlords in all areas also chose to lose money to avoid disaster.

After all, regardless of whether those rumors were true or false, the powerful [-] border troops were defeated at the first touch by this group of rebels, and even almost wiped out, leaving the landowners and gentry in Shuozhou unable to feel any toughness.

"Rui Lang, Tan Ma just caught a dozen teenagers sneaking around nearby and said they wanted to join us. How should we deal with them?"

"Oh? Bring the person in first, and I'll ask him personally."

Lin Rui's eyes lit up and he became energetic.

He always welcomes people who come to him on his own initiative and likes them the most.

After a while, a dozen teenagers were brought into the big tent. They were all between fifteen or eighteen or nineteen years old. They were all very nervous and apprehensive.

"You are from the same village, right? Want to join our Lin Family Army?"

"Back to the king, yes, the little people do want to join, but..."

Everyone nodded quickly, and then hesitated for a long time, but they didn't dare to say the next words.

Lin Rui smiled: "You want to ask about An's family expenses, right?"

"exactly…"

Everyone nodded in unison, and then looked at Lin Rui eagerly.

"We don't have much money left. We can only give two taels to each person, plus one stone of food. If you are willing, you can keep it."

"If you are willing, little people are willing, this life will belong to the king from now on."

When everyone heard that there was one stone of grain and two taels of silver, their eyes lit up and they all kowtowed excitedly to thank him.

Apparently, the news that the Lin family army was recruiting young soldiers near Yanghe with high settlement fees had already spread throughout Datong. These people came here because of the reputation and wanted to try their luck. Who would have thought that the rumors were true.

"Everyone, get up. Don't kowtow all the time from now on. You must know that there is gold under your knees!"

"Sign the contract first, and then I will send someone to take you back to say goodbye to your family!"

As Lin Rui spoke, he stepped forward and circled around them twice, looked them over, and nodded with satisfaction.

After a while, four women in blue military uniforms walked in nervously, holding pens, ink, paper and inkstones.

Lin Rui pointed to the table next to him: "Write a contract for each of them."

"Excuse me, sir, what kind of contract is it?"

The oldest, beautiful and dignified woman among them asked in a trembling voice.

This woman was originally the wife of Commander Yang Hewei Lu, which was quite unlucky to say the least.

The eldest son and eldest daughter are adults. One was killed and the other got married. Although the younger daughter is only 13 years old, she happened to have her period last month. According to Lin Rui's rules, she is considered an adult.

As a result, the mother and daughter were packed away together.

On the contrary, several concubines whom she looked down upon in the past, because their children were still young, stayed in Yanghe City and became the masters of the family from then on.

So even though he was actively asking at this moment, when he looked at Lin Rui, he couldn't hide the hatred in his eyes.

"Just write it in the same way as the deed of sale, but write the name of the master as Lin Jiajun, and also indicate that if the title is promoted to the general banner, the contract will be automatically invalidated and returned to the person."

Lin Rui waved his hand.

Naturally, he saw the hatred in her eyes, but he didn't care at all. Anyway, he would not give these women a chance to take revenge.

Because of this, he never slept with these women.

The reason why they wanted to get a contract for these young soldiers was because they were worried about the imbalance in the hearts of the captured Ming soldiers.

After all, they don't have a big piece of housing expenses, which is also a kind of restraint and incentive for young people.Mrs. Lu didn't speak. She took the much younger girl beside her to the table and started working. The other two girls were sharpening their ink beside them. They were obviously maids.

The entire Lin family's pens, inks, papers, inkstones and all books, including the gold and silver jewelry, were kept by more than 300 young ladies and maids, and Lin Rui also appointed a head for them, Mrs. Lu.

Not long after, more than a dozen contracts with the same content were written. The teenagers lined up to have Mrs. Lu sign for them, and then put her fingerprints on their names. The procedure was quite formal.

Immediately, Lin Rui asked Namuzhong to send a team of cavalry to carry food and send these teenagers back to say goodbye to their families.

"Master Lin, this contract?"

"You guys, keep it, don't lose it, keep it safe, you know? Also, we may have to stay here for a while, go back and ask everyone to write more contracts like this, and cut out the extra white paper. Bind it into a blank book, and I will make a roster in a while."

After Lin Rui finished speaking, he waved his hand.

"Yes!"

The four people hurriedly replied and walked out with their things in their arms. One of them, a pretty maid, suddenly turned around when she reached the door and said, "Sir, the female soldiers guarding us often scold us and beat us..."

Mrs. Lu and the other two were startled, but they had no choice but to stop and turn around. Mrs. Lu even glared at the maid reproachfully.

Lin Rui was a little surprised and said: "Oh? Why do they beat you and scold you? Are you trying to escape or doing something wrong?"

"Young master, we didn't want to run away at all, and we couldn't run away. They just always got angry at us for no reason. Anyone who dared to talk back would be beaten with a stick or whipped. My young lady's head was broken, and my wife was also beaten. The beatings all over my body were bruised..."

The maid hurriedly defended, and started sobbing as she spoke. The other two girls also lowered their heads and shed tears, but Mrs. Lu's face was calm.

Lin Rui frowned, stood up and came to them.

"Young Master, look, they are so bullying..."

When the brave maid saw Lin Rui coming over, she quickly rolled up Mrs. Lu's sleeves.

I saw that the white and tender arm was full of pinch marks and streaks of purple and blue.

Mrs. Lu glared at the maid again and quickly put down her sleeves, but remained silent, obviously not wanting to show weakness in front of her enemies.

"Do other people get beaten often?"

"Yes!" Mrs. Lu nodded this time.

Lin Rui also didn't expect that the women who were rescued would beat these ladies and ladies like this.

But I feel relieved when I think about it. All the relatives of those women were killed by the Tatars, and they themselves were ruined by the Tatars. They must have strong hatred and resentment in their hearts. These ladies and ladies who used to be aloof are now under their care. It would be strange not to torture and vent.

But he didn't want to punish those women for this. After all, these prisoners were not protected by military law. The most they could do was to prevent such incidents from happening in the future, so he waved his hand.

"You go back first. I will explain it. I will not beat you or scold you for no reason in the future. If this happens again, you can come directly to see me and report to me, or you can ask the Fourth Madam to deal with it."

"Yes!"

Mrs. Lu still just nodded lightly.

On the contrary, when the other three saw that Lin Rui was not going to punish those evil women, they couldn't help but feel a little disappointed on their faces, but they did not dare to say anything more.

After the four people left, Lin Rui called Habeier over and told her about the beatings of the captives, asking her to pay more attention in the future. At the same time, he decided to hand over the task of taking care of these young ladies and maids to the wives of craftsmen. them.

Otherwise, it may be impossible to completely avoid being under the care of the rescued women. If things go on like this, people will have to be forced to commit suicide.

…………

Datong.

Hearing that Hu Dawei was severely defeated and almost wiped out his entire army, Wang Pu clapped his thigh and almost lost his breath with laughter.

"Ha ha…"

"That idiot didn't even know how much he weighed, and even his beggar soldiers dared to intercept him. Who does he think he is?"

"Hmph, he was lucky this time and saved a small life."

"Haha, Marshal, I guess that guy didn't want to fight, but he was forced by Governor Lu, so he had to fight."

The two lieutenants next to him also looked gloating.

"Did Governor Lu really lead his men to chase him out of the Great Wall?"

When Lu Xiangsheng was mentioned, Wang Pu's smile also faded.

"We did chase him out, but I guess we could only chase him to the mouth of the valley at most."

"Commander, although we have the Tatar head in hand and are not afraid of him, there is no need to completely quarrel with the supervisor. Otherwise..." the deputy general on the side reminded in a low voice.

"You are right. Prepare your horses. I will go to Yanghe to pay a visit to our new governor."

Wang Pu thought about it and finally decided to go.

Wang Pu is indeed in a state of confusion these days. He is just waiting for the Ministry of War to come and inspect the head, be rewarded by Emperor Chongzhen, and then become famous all over the world, so he is not afraid of Lu Xiangsheng at all.

Because based on the current situation, if his military exploits are reported, His Majesty will definitely be very happy and make a big fuss to boost morale, and maybe even get a title.

(End of this chapter)