open sea

Chapter 1266 Explorer

Qi Jiguang's army marched all the way west, leaving behind a man as a scenic spot.

This is of course restoring the name of the Han Dynasty. Starting from Daning City, Taining Wei, Duoyan Wei, and Fuyu Wei were re-established in the north, and there was Muliji Wei in the north. The leader recruited soldiers from the surrounding Mongolia and Jurchen tribes, and the imperial court dispatched troops from the interior. The Taining and Duoyan guards, also known as the road guards, protected the Wulianghai Railway coming from the interior; the Fuyu and Muliji guards Also known as the River Guard Army, it protects the rivers navigating to Dali Lake.

The railway will be used by Qi Jiguang in the future, and the river will be used by Li Chengliang.

Li Chengliang's attack on the Northeast was based on the river course, unlike Qi Jiguang's chasing and marching on the boundless grassland on the western front, he was on the marching road when he was not on the march; Li Chengliang's troops were more static and less active. Then they stationed in the nearby tribal strongholds, waited for supplies, requisitioned food and grass, sent scouts to explore along the river, collected more information, and determined the next target according to whether the surrounding tribes accepted the persuasion.

Once the target is confirmed and the preparations are completed, the army will divide into two groups and go out to both sides of the river. On the river, warships carrying infantry, artillery, and supplies will rise up from the camp, marching at a fast speed.

The two troops on the Eastern Front and the Western Front were joined together, and it was still a matter of last year.

Qi Jiguang saw Li Chengliang's soldiers on the second day after defeating the Tuman in Dali Lake. They drove a small boat to the mouth of Dali Lake. Qi's army found them when they abandoned the boat. The soldiers were circling around Dali Lake and handed them over to Qi Jiguang.

After some conversation, I found out that they were Li Chengliang's scouts. They walked all the way along the river from the mouth of Heilongjiang near Kuwu Island. When they encountered a small river, they abandoned the big boat and replaced it with a smaller one. Make a raft by yourself, just walk all the way along the river, only a dozen groups of people get here, no one knows where everyone else is.

They don't know when this mission will end. Li Chengliang's order to them is to find the source of the river. No matter which river or fork they go, as long as they reach the source at the end, they can go back.

Maybe everyone else has gone back, and they are the only ones who walk and walk along the river... Every time they encounter a fork in the road, they go wrong.

Qi Jiguang sympathized with them very much. This group of unlucky Liaodong lads went all the way north along the Heilongjiang River, and followed the winding river in the northeast of the empire. They bathed in Hulun Lake and Bell Lake, which are rich in water. The two names, to be precise, are Kuoluan Haizi and Yuyuerhai.

Both Hulun and Kuoluan are homonyms of the Mongolian word 'haliu', which means water wase; Beier and Yuyuer mean male otter in the Mongolian language. These two lakes are rich in this, hence the name.

In the early Ming Dynasty, Sapphire went to Yuerhai, where she wiped out the small imperial court of the Northern Yuan Dynasty.

However, the imperial court's understanding of the Northeast Water System has been almost blank after so many years, so Qi Jiguang ordered people to copy their records, keep these people by his side, and let them go to Guihua City with him, and then go to Guihua City. Then go south to enter the pass and return to Liaodong.

In a land without roads, navigable rivers are the best roads. Control the rivers and you control all the land.

Qi Jiguang left empty cities after his death. They were the land where the Zhe army once camped. Some places built barracks on the ground, and some places built underground barracks. Shortly after the Ming army left, those barracks were discovered by nomads. Transform and use.

The army camps are very particular about the environment. Although being a soldier is a hard job, and for soldiers, they are almost no better than wild dogs on the march, but their camp environment is very good.

A shrewd general must choose a place where water can be collected on a large scale, the external environment is safe, and the terrain has no risk. These places are also suitable for towns or grazing.

However, when Marshal Qi was about to arrive in Jining, the Zhejiang Army under his command became extremely cautious.

The news was brought back by Chen Dacheng, who was a vanguard officer. He was ordered to search for the old and disrepaired official roads in the northern part of Jining on the endless grasslands.

The ruts and hoof prints are deep, there are paw prints of lackeys on the road, and the ground is littered with gnawed bones and broken arrows. Chen Dacheng's analysis is that a group of thousands of Mongolian soldiers were threatened by the Ming army's northward advance. Migrate through here.

Then they found a suspicious camp. The traces left in the camp also told his speculation. Besides, there was another group of people who appeared here. The people who left these traces were not Mongolian soldiers but Ming soldiers. , The broken wooden board left over from cooking was punched with a hole by the lead shot, and there was a mark of gunpowder leaking on the ground. Chen Dacheng thought it was because the guards came out to chase the Mongolian army in front.

The food, drink, and diarrhea of ​​the "two groups of people" were clearly distinguished in the traces, and even the disposal methods of the excrement left behind were different.

The only thing that made Chen Dacheng suspicious was that the gap between the excrement buried in the soil and the excrement in the open air seemed to be less than a day.

In such a short period of time, why did the Ming army choose to camp instead of catching up?

The jittery state lasted just two days, and Qi Jiguang's frontline troops ushered in the second batch of what Chen Dacheng called "a large number of armed personnel".

A large mixed caravan.

The Zhe army scout with binoculars carefully leaned on the low hill, looking at the caravan stationed in the distance. The scout's deputy was sketching the layout of the camp with a pen and paper. The camp was clearly organized into three circles. The merchants used wagons to encircle the connected car city. They had a hundred or more wagons. Almost every wagon contained spears and quiveres, and there were countless camels in the camp. .

There were hundreds of people with weapons outside the camp, most of them were wearing military uniforms and armors used in spring, summer and autumn. As a standard, different colors can be used to distinguish whether they are from the mainland, the frontier army or Beiyang.

Others did not wear military uniforms, and looked like armed guards. Some wore leather armor, some had chain mail, and many more did not wear armor.

There is a large banner with Ming characters in the camp, just like a military camp. The soldiers include the Beiyang Banner Army and the Frontier Army.

Outside the car camp, there is a long banner belonging to the right-wing Mongolia of the Jin Kingdom of the Ming Dynasty. Under the banner, there are nearly three hundred armored cavalry. There are not many tribes in the world that can come up with such armed forces. Just look at them and you will know that they are the Mongolian armored cavalry of King Shunyi of the Jin Kingdom of the Ming Dynasty.

Seeing this caravan, the old scouts of the Zhejiang Army couldn't help but think of those Quanzhou merchants in the southeast overseas. Isn't that also the appearance of self-recruited sailors rampant overseas.

Could that scene be repeated in the northern Great Wall?
　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)