open sea

Chapter 1172 Sentinel
On November [-]th in the tenth year of Wanli, the sky was not clear.

Yuan Zizhang, Admiral of the Ming Army Squadron, led the headquarters, Wang Youlin, the deputy guerrilla general of Qianhu, and the Beiyang Banner Army with 800, [-] men, and the Baishan Battalion General Kang Gulu's horse team of [-], led the army to pull out of the camp.

As the pioneer, Huang Xi, a Korean officer of the Baishan Battalion, set off half an hour ago. The Spanish donkey dragged the prefabricated wooden blocks unloaded from the boat and quickly completed the bridge construction work in late autumn.

Shrouded in cold fog, the French scout in the damp bunker of the riverside bushes was awakened by the vibration of the cavalry's horses' hooves. He grabbed the crossbow in his hand, trembling involuntarily, and his left arm was curled up all night. Paralyzed, he kept pulling on the old thick linen blanket so that his right arm was frozen stiff, and the stimulation of the cold and fright made him sleepless, but the clarity of his mind was delayed due to hypothermia, so he could only stare blankly at the outgoing In the thick fog of horseshoes and trampling.

In 1 minute or less, solid drumbeats and faint military music continued to come from that direction. According to the order, the scouts should turn around and run at this moment, and quickly convey this news to their troops. The confrontation between the camp and the Dordogne River has lasted for half a year after the peace talks between the Catholic Royal Army and the Huguenots. Large and small raids and small-scale battles will be carried out two or three times a month. Those who survive will experience life and death. veteran.

But this is the first engagement of the winter.

He has never been trained in winter detection. The weather has been getting colder and colder in recent years. There was even a light snowfall on the banks of the Seine last year. Ice, otherwise it shouldn't be so cold.

People are lucky. The baron gave him a half-new armor before the last guy with the same task set off. Although that thing is not a high-end item lined with iron armor, it can be stabbed with a long sword. I'm wearing it, but I heard it's stuffed with cotton, so it must be very warm.

Although Europeans finally managed to control cotton production after the Crusades and tried to plant spinning threads in Milan, Venice and other places, farmers still had nothing to do with such things. Cotton grows on cotton trees that are hybrids of animals and plants. During the day, the sheep hanging at the end of the branches of the trees grow quietly. When night falls, the branches hang down to the water, and the sheep in the calyx can drink clear water.

Of course, the scout was skeptical about this after being conscripted to fight. When he told his companions that the Ming Dynasty must have planted a lot of sheep trees, he was ridiculed by everyone. A well-informed veteran who has been to the New World said that cotton is a low plant. It grows in the field, and the Spaniards plant it, and as long as one piece is planted, it will grow a lot—that is an experienced swordsman, and he was a well-known village blacksmith in his early years. Know more than yourself.

As for Lord Knight's followers?He had no chance to talk to such noble people, and the noblest people he had ever seen in his life were only the village priest and the baron's knights.

Because the previous unlucky ghost couldn't bear the cold, even though he was wearing a cotton-stuffed armor, he still lit a bonfire to keep warm on the third night. A Ming army knight who sneaked over from the river bank to let his horses graze shot through his head with a bow. When he was found, there was nothing left on his body except the terrible blood hole on his face, and he was thrown on the ground naked, like a dead sheep whose skin had been taken away.

The baron was not as close as he was when he was appointed, but he rode over with a few knights and conscripts, holding a bright and reflective silk scarf in front of his mouth and nose from a distance, and looked at the corpse in the distance with disgust , and left without saying anything.

The remaining knight lord wished he had to open his mouth and use his nostrils to tell him 'get rid of it, you are the new scout'. There was no armor, no funeral, and no encouragement. The scout who was left here dragged the corpse alone. Go to the river and find a place where it is easier to hide.

He never made a fire, and even if he went to the river in the dark to get water in the middle of the night, he would wear his shoes backwards, with a few pieces of black bread and two handfuls of beans, and he would live for nine days.

Although he had a fever and had diarrhea for three days, he was still as strong as a wild dog.

This is much better than being nailed to the face by Ming army knights with their long and three-edged terrifying arrows, which can be opened on horseback, approach four or five steps before releasing their bows, and are half asleep and half awake.

It was cold, and Scout felt like he knew it all.

He knows that everyone has their own difficulties. In this period of general winter truce in previous years, it is understandable that there is no food sent to the front line; Like knights who have received military training, it is understandable that they do not have armed clothing.

The footsteps gradually became clear with the drumbeat and the unique military music of the Ming army, and memories flooded my heart like a tide.

The scouts had heard such military music before. It was three months ago that the baron led the levy army, with forty decree knights sent by the royal family as the vanguard, and built a bridge across the Dordogne River. The frightened Spanish mercenary phalanx of the Ming army spread out in the endless wilderness.

In that battle, the two sides failed to engage in direct combat. The scouts gathered together with many untrained conscripts like him. The noble officers tried their best to strike the baton and instruct the soldiers to form the same formation as the opponent. A cannonball collapsed when it landed on the edge of the formation.

The scout remembered very clearly that as he and his comrades fled across the Dordogne, the military music was always lingering in his ears.

The encounter did not result in the loss of a single soldier of the Baron's men, but more than thirty men died of fever in the fortnight after that.

When he retracted his thoughts, he looked over the moth-eaten crossbow and the dead branches and haystacks in front of him. In the direction pointed by the thick arrow, the sound of heavy horseshoes was close at hand. The sound made the scout's teeth chatter. .

A flag spear pointing obliquely to the sky was the first to pierce the fog, and the hanging triangular dragon flag was soaked and hung down. The officer holding the flag also had the same small flag on his helmet. He wears a thick blue cotton armor with a yellow breastplate on his chest, and his clothes are bulging and bulky, red cotton trousers and fat black boots are exposed through the gaps in the armor skirt with a dragon pattern, and a slightly curved scabbard hangs on his waist. Carrying a tanned brown leather backpack, there are also several leather goods wrapped in various leather boxes that the scouts don't know what to use.

Behind him are two rows of ten Ming army infantrymen in similar outfits holding muskets. Their muskets are pierced with sharp straight knives. Each of them looks so healthy and full of energy, as if this weather can freeze the French to death. It is as warm as spring to them.

A few knights with their spears upside down or bows and reins brushed past the infantry. They rode the best horses of Spanish and French breeds, and they were equipped with a full set of plate armor from Milan or Paris. Half of his stern face was exposed in his high-topped helmet, he looked carefully at the thick fog, and stepped on a safe path with his horse's hooves.

The Scout thought to himself that he knew that everyone was different.

Perhaps others will also understand his decision to be a deserter.

Right now, right now.

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)