Chapter 21: Kill the officers and eat meat and drink tonight?
On the sixth day of the twelfth lunar month in the thirteenth year of Chongzhen reign of the Ming Dynasty, outside the west gate of Mi County, Kaifeng Prefecture, Henan Province.
Li Jiyu's camp was located in a dilapidated temple five miles northwest of the city. The temple occupied a large area, but it was famine-ridden and generally in disrepair. Fortunately, the houses and halls in the temple were still intact.
After this group of Dengfeng thieves captured Dengfeng County, their power grew instantly. They not only recruited hungry people from around Dengfeng to join the bandit, but also absorbed thieves, deserters, ruffians, etc. from the surrounding bandit dens.
The number actually grew to tens of thousands, and they even colluded with the intruder Li Zicheng to cause trouble in Henan. Now they took advantage of the intruders' siege of Luoyang and came to attack Mi County.
Li Jiyu was originally a farmer from Mogou Village, Tangzhuang, Dengfeng County. His family had been farming for generations. He had been studying for several years when he was a child, but later dropped out of school due to poverty and worked at home to farm.
Mogou Village is only more than fifty miles away from the Songshan Shaolin Temple. There are many martial arts practitioners among the people. Li Jiyu has been practicing martial arts since he was a boy. He even went to the Shaolin Temple to study, so he is good at martial arts.
Li Jiyu had a reputation as a chivalrous man, and he also had good intentions. He often stood up for the poor and was very popular.
In August of the 13th year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, the Dengfeng County government officials went to Mogou Village to demand food and payment, and their attitude was very fierce. Li Jiyu was so indignant that he beat the government officials and led a crowd into the city to ask for a grain tax exemption. Instead, he was beaten with "
On the charge of being a "servant and leading the crowd to cause trouble", Li Jiyu was put in shackles and tied to the leg of a stone lion in front of the Yamen "for public display".
Fortunately, he was rescued by the volunteers. After returning home, Li Jiyu took off his red cloth quilt, ran up Jianshan, set up an uprising flag, and began to recruit troops. Soon the team grew to 40,000 to 50,000 people. Xinya
In the previous period, they even attacked Dengfeng County, held a public trial outside the County Yamen, the county magistrate Yan Tingjie and Dian Shi Wang Dabi, and beheaded him in public. Since then, he has been entrenched in Dengfeng City, and eventually the thieves plundered everywhere.
Early this morning, Li Jiyu fed the horse thieves and foot thieves, but did not give food to the hungry people. He said that when Mi County is attacked, the hungry people will start eating. If Mi County cannot be conquered today, there will be no food today.
Under his encouragement, nearly ten thousand hungry people went crazy and threw themselves at the west gate wall of Dengfeng County. Facing these desperate hungry people, the soldiers in Dengfeng City who had been guarding the city for three days were exhausted.
The city is broken.
Li Jiyu was urging his thieves and hungry people to step up their attack on the city. Suddenly he saw a huge chaos on the city wall, followed by hungry people climbing up the city, and the city gate was opened.
Now that the war has reached this point, he no longer needs to command. The hungry people are as docile and cowardly as sheep in front of this group of bandits, but to the people in Mi County, they are as fierce and terrifying as jackals, tigers and leopards.
Li Jiyu really never thought that Mi County would be captured like this. He was in no hurry to stop the hungry people who were like wolves and tigers from entering the city. Seeing this scene, he had no choice but to shout loudly: "Ji Zhiying, lead a team into the city quickly and protect the city."
Take the treasury and go quickly!"
A horse thief with a helmet and armor rushed out at the sound, leading a group of bandits towards the west gate of Mi County.
Li Ji Yuce shook his head while riding on his horse and told the horse thief beside him: "You two, go quickly and see what's going on in the north and south."
The two horse thieves just took the order and ran out. They saw two horse thieves from the north galloping towards them in panic. They shouted something from a distance, but they were covered by the wind and could not hear anything.
True.
Li Jiyu felt something strange and hurriedly ordered the horse thieves around him: "Quickly, form a formation. Get a few people to stop them from entering the city. Form a formation quickly!"
Fortunately, his reaction was quick enough. There were nearly four hundred horse thieves gathered around him, and they quickly formed a formation to wait. Dozens more horse thieves rushed out of the formation to prevent the foot thieves and hungry people from entering the city.
Li Jiyu has more than 500 horse thieves here. Just now he followed Ji Zhiying into the city with a group of about 100 horsemen. Now there are more than 400 horse thieves, who are extremely powerful.
In addition, there are nearly 3,000 foot thieves on his side. After three days of siege, there was not much damage. After all, the hungry people are the main force of the thieves' siege. Now there are more than a thousand foot thieves outside the city gate who have not entered the city and have been driven away by the horse thieves.
A loose battle formation has been formed at the city gate.
Li Jiyu saw from a distance about 300 steps behind the two horse-riding thieves in the north, smoke billowing, and the faint sound of galloping war horses on the ground. His expression tightened and he shouted loudly: "Quick, follow me to the back of the formation.
Standby."
All the horse thieves followed Li Jiyu and quickly ran to the rear of the foot formation, forming a four-row formation. Although the formation was a little loose, it was still very powerful.
In front of Li Jiyu's cavalry formation, there was an array of thousands of infantry thieves in the middle, and nearly two thousand hungry civilians on each side gathered together in an unformed formation. After all, they had not been rigorously trained, so how could they unite in a panic?
Form a battle formation.
At this moment, the two horseback thieves also rushed back to the front of the formation, shouting: "Commander Li, the officers and soldiers, all the fucking cavalry are coming..."
Li Jiyu was so angry that he waved the long knife in his hand and shouted: "Damn, why are you panicking? How many officers and soldiers are coming, but can you see clearly?"
"It looks like there are almost three to five hundred riders..."
Li Jiyu yelled angrily: "You are like a bear, you only have three to five hundred officers and soldiers, you are so scared."
He turned around and encouraged again: "Send the order, kill the officers and soldiers, and everyone will eat meat and drink tonight!"
The horse thieves roared and howled enthusiastically, and even the foot thieves in front made the hungry people extremely excited. They rarely had enough food on weekdays, let alone meat and wine, even a few steamed buns.
, they can all risk their lives to fight for it.
Their morale rose sharply for a while. Whether they were infantry thieves or hungry civilians, they were all roaring and howling. Although the battle formation was not neat, it was much tighter. Everyone held the swords, guns, clubs and shovels in their hands.
Nail rake.
…………
Zhang Guangda, Su Laohu, Mo Rigen and others separated from Zhang Cheng on the avenue outside the north gate of Mi County and ran forward for some distance before stopping. Su Laohu and others led Mengqi to be on guard.
Zhang Guangda directed the heavy knights to put on their armor and equip their horses, and then they began to form a team. At this moment, more than ten horse-riding thieves came running towards them.
Mo Rigen hurriedly led his subordinates, Meng Qi, to greet them. They were already good at riding and shooting, especially Mo Rigen, who was the best among them, known as the "Condor Hand" who could bend a bow and shoot eagles!
He galloped forward on horseback, holding a bow and an arrow. When he was less than sixty steps away from the horse thief, he shot an arrow, and the first horse thief who came from the opposite side fell off his horse.
The rest of the horse thieves were all frightened. Although they were very powerful, after all, the mob had always bullied the weak and feared the strong. Now seeing how brave the officers and soldiers on the opposite side were, they immediately shouted and turned their horses' heads and fled.
Mo Rigen led all the Mongolian cavalry to pursue them on horseback. Behind the horse thieves, there was a burst of horseback shooting. Arrows flew randomly. Several horse thieves were shot off their horses, but there were still two horsemen who fled far away.