Chapter 24: Thieves and bandits have good generals
Screams rang out, and Zhao Hao slashed diagonally with his sword, splitting the woman opposite him in half. Against the backdrop of the raging fire, his big face stained with blood looked extremely ferocious.
Wen'an County was a sea of fire.
Five steps away from Zhao Hao, his second brother Zhao Hao had just inserted his own spear from the body of a guard soldier and laughed loudly: "It was really a pleasure to kill!"
Zhao Xiu's spear danced like a spear, tilted downwards, slammed his legs into the stirrups, and galloped forward. This was a standard impact action for light cavalry. In conjunction with the speed of the war horse, he could easily use the force to sprint.
"Kill three more in and three out," a burly man rushed in front of Zhao Xiu and killed the Ming army soldier opposite him with one blow. He pulled the bloody blade and sprayed it all over Zhao Xiu's face. He could only hear this
The man smiled boldly and said, "Zhao Laoer, do you still have the guts?"
Seeing his brother being humiliated, Zhao Hao snorted angrily without saying a word. He raised his knife and rushed forward to kill him. Behind the man, a group of people also rushed out. The two men and one woman at the head were all tough people.
Not like ordinary people.
The fight between the two sides seemed to be on the verge of breaking out. Zhao Xiu quickly blocked his younger brother with a shot and said with a smile: "Brother Jia has your destiny, how dare I disobey you? It's just that my eldest brother is still outside the city. I don't know if Brother Jia has something to tell me."
he?"
When the man surnamed Jia heard Zhao Hao's name, his face darkened, and suddenly he smiled and said: "My thirty-six families conspired with Wen'an and used their plan to defeat Wang Qinian's wishful thinking. For the sake of Boss Zhao, this
I will give up Dongcheng to your Zhao brothers."
After the man led his men and horses away, Zhao Hao said angrily: "This Jia Mian'er looks down upon others. When the time comes, I will chop him with a knife."
Zhao Xiu was riding on his horse, kicked his younger brother on the waist, and reprimanded: "He has a lot of strength. His subordinates, including Xing Bendao, Liu Zi, Widow Yang, etc., are all heroes among men. What are you going to do to chop his head off?"
? Now we are all rebels. The world is so big that there is no place where I can be at my mercy. Why bother with him and rob this east city? It is the business of going to find my brother as soon as possible."
While the two were talking, hundreds more cavalrymen rushed past along the long street.
The leading man was a short man with round features like a rich man. His eyes were moving and his body was covered in blood. There were several heads hanging on the left side of his horse's head, and they were still dripping with black dirt.
Blood.
"Brother Liu," Zhao Xiu quickly asked his brothers to clear a path and shouted, "How is the harvest?"
Brother Liu was different from the previous ones. Hearing this, he immediately stopped his horse with a smile and pointed at the heads: "I killed all two thousand Ming troops, and none of the thousands of officials who led the team escaped.
Lose."
"Brother Liu is so brave!" Zhao Xiu quickly flattered him.
Brother Liu smiled and said: "Second brother, it's getting late. It should end soon, otherwise the next wave of officers and soldiers will not be so easy to deal with when they arrive."
Zhao Xiu nodded and said, "Let the brothers withdraw after they finish robbing this area."
Brother Liu refused to be polite to him and was about to leave when he suddenly stopped his horse again. He hesitated for a moment and then asked: "Where is Fengzi?"
Fengzi was Zhao Xun's alias when he was a boy. People who went wild abroad used pseudonyms to avoid disturbing their relatives.
Zhao Xiu smiled bitterly and said, "You and my eldest brother are close friends, how can you not know his nature?"
Brother Liu also sighed, shook his head, turned his horse and left.
Although the several hundred cavalrymen he led were not large in number, they were all extremely powerful. The dust carried by the horses' hooves spread all over the street, and the target turned out to be the Wen'an County Government Office.
Dozens of government officials faced the sun and couldn't see clearly what was coming from the other side. They could only hear the roar of countless horses' hooves. By the time they reacted, they had already met their enemies with sharp blades and were chopped into pieces of flesh and blood.
Those who were lucky enough to escape with their lives were so frightened that they screamed wildly, threw away their weapons, and ran away...
"Whoever dares to kill the county magistrate," Brother Liu said with a smile, "his wife, children and property belong to this brother!"
In his opinion, killing two thousand officers and soldiers, and killing a few civilian officials was not a big deal. What's more, the reputation of Brother Liu Hui and Liu could be used to stop children crying at night in Hebei.
It is easy to kill a powerless county magistrate, just cut it off with a single knife. No matter how noble the head is, it is made of flesh and blood. There is no one who can't be cut off.
But the county magistrate is different from the officers and soldiers of the guard station. One is a real civil official and the other is a soldier. For the people of the Ming Dynasty, soldiering is a humble profession. Most of Liu Hui's subordinates have served as guardsmen and killed their fellow soldiers.
Officers and soldiers with low-level jobs will naturally not show mercy. But killing a real civil servant is a bit timid.
Mr. Guan, I heard that Wen Quxing came down to earth. If he were killed, would he die without a burial place?
"All officials are dog officials, and everyone will kill them if they get it!" Seeing the brothers' hesitation, Liu Hui said, "Brothers, who wants to take away the grain we rely on to survive every year?"
"It's a dog officer!" one brother replied.
"Who robbed the twelve-year-old daughter of Widow Zhang from Jiuli Village?"
"It's this dog officer!" the brothers shouted back.
"Who took Yuan Chen's money and beat the old man of the Liang family in a small alley in the east city to death unjustly?"
"Kill this dog official!" A young man jumped off his horse, carrying a steel knife, and rushed into the Yamen.
Behind him were dozens of young people doing the same thing. Liu Hui waved his hand, pointed at the open door of the county government office, and said in a deep voice: "Charge!"
Encountering almost no resistance, more than 3,000 bandits from Hebei easily ransacked Wen'an County, and in the decisive battle at Deshengdian Bank in the northeast of the city, they defeated 2,000 Shuntian Prefecture Guard soldiers who came to the rescue.
According to later records of Wen'an County, less than 500 people survived in the city after this bloodbath.
But Wen'an County is not the last target of thieves in Hebei.
On the second day, Dacheng County was captured, the county magistrate was killed, and all the big families in the city were massacred.
On the third day, Qingxian County was also captured. This was a large county town by the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which choked the lifeline of transportation between the north and the south. Once the city was defeated, the whole court was shaken and the whole world was shocked!
On the first day of May in the fourth year of Zhengde, outside Jinghe Town, 7,000 guardsmen were confronting Hebei bandits. At this time, the size of the bandits had reached 7,000, and their power could compete with the official army.
Liu Hui gently lifted the reins and led the cavalry behind him to sweep across the formation of the officers and soldiers. Black arrows sprayed out from the cavalry formation and hit the phalanx of the officers and soldiers.
Blood spattered and dozens of Ming soldiers fell to the ground.
"Mount the shield!" Yuan Biao, the general of Hejian Prefecture, roared, "First spear formation, second horse army, advance together!"
The archers of the Ming army also shot out a shower of black arrows. Liu Hui heard screams all around him, and more than ten brothers fell down in an instant.
Qi Jin? Seeing the banner of the Ming army, Liu Hui, who was also proficient in military rules, sneered in his heart. The general opposite was just mediocre.
Both sides are serious guard soldiers, and no one has any secrets from the other. There are even many veterans of the past in the formations of both sides.
But feelings are feelings, and a battlefield is not the place to talk about feelings.
Under the blazing sunshine, white brains and red blood splashed everywhere alternately. Countless long arrows flying around could kill a person in the blink of an eye.
There was not much difference in the number of the two sides, and they were fighting in the wilderness. The weather and location were favorable, and neither side had an advantage.
However, the officers and soldiers were paid for their meals. Some of the soldiers did not even receive their pay, so they drank the blood of their superiors. Their passion for fighting was naturally not as good as that of the rebels who rebelled and fought for their lives. If they had the upper hand in numbers, they could still fight a smooth battle.
.
Now evenly matched, the bandits in Hebei became more and more courageous as they fought, and gradually took the initiative on the battlefield...
Liu Hui's cavalry became more and more courageous as they fought, forming the protruding point of the group of thieves. Under the banner of "Wind Fire Camp", they even forced themselves in front of General Yuan at one point, frightening General Yuan to retreat repeatedly.
On his left is Jia Mian'er's "Sweeping King's Camp"; on his right is Zhao Xiu's "Pingshan King's Camp".
In just a few days, the bandits in Hebei actually had their own names. However, except for Liu Hui, the other local kings looked like a bunch of unknown people. Even the little thieves in the swamp had their own names.
His name is also much more literate than them.
Although Liu Hui was short, he wielded a sword with a ring-shaped head. He was unstoppable in the battle formation. The mounted bandits followed him and attacked the weakest left side of the army.
This is the juncture of the Ming Army's spear formation and cavalry formation. The two formations had different steps. In addition, General Yuan's command was wrong, which has long formed a weak area here.
After knocking down a Ming army cavalryman with a sword, Liu Hui roared, spurred his horse to leap, and trampled over the body of a Ming army spearman without hesitation with his horse's hooves.
To defeat a spear formation that thinks it is impregnable and sweeping the world, even a rookie general who has just entered the battle has countless strategies, and all of them can be found in the history books.
What are you talking about? Do you think your opponents are all idiots? Or do you think you are living in a certain era before BC?
Even in BC, countless examples of breaking gun formations can be found, so General Yuan's command can be said to be truly unparalleled.
The Ming Dynasty has been at peace for a long time, and the guards at the border have become weak in Wang Shouren's eyes. As for the guards in the interior, let alone mention them.
The price General Yuan Shen paid was that Liu Hui's cavalry broke through from the junction. From this breakthrough point, countless thieves swept through the Ming army's square formation like a flood, becoming invincible and unstoppable.
The rogue cavalrymen holding machetes did not even need to make too many movements. They followed the large group of people and cut through the gap at the junction to harvest the Ming soldiers on both sides.
Not all the low-level officers in the Ming Army Guards were mediocre. Dozens of officers formed a small formation within an formation on the right side. They did not act according to General Yuan's arrangements, but combined long and short troops.
, adapted to local conditions, and re-deployed a strong defense circle against a small hillside.
Unfortunately, General Yuan Shen was frightened by the defeat on the left, abandoned the central army, and ran towards the back.
The defeated soldiers began to attack the defense circle on the right. Between the enemy and Paoze, they instinctively chose Paoze.
"There is no distinction between friend and foe," an officer who looked like a thousand-year-old man shouted, "shoot to death!"
Countless Ming soldiers and thieves died in groups in front of the hillside, their bodies piled together as if they had fought side by side.
Liu Hui, who was chasing the defeated troops, frowned, then spurred his horse to gallop, cutting through the Ming army's Chinese formation and running towards the hillside.
The banner of Fenghuo Camp, and hundreds of brothers, followed closely behind him, cutting through the waist of the Ming army with a very beautiful offensive arc that could be written into the textbooks of the Ming Martial Arts Academy, like a knife cutting through butter.
, leaving blood and flesh all over the ground, he crashed into the right defensive circle.
It's a pity that they are bandits. If they were official soldiers and were discovered by Zhu Shou, they might be admitted to the Ming Dynasty Martial Arts Academy and trained as cavalry.
Amidst the sound of the hoofbeats of the war horses, Liu Hui slashed his broadsword horizontally and cut off the head of a Ming soldier without using any force at all. The war horses continued to move forward, several heads flew up, and hot blood splashed all over his head and face.
.
An officer who looked like a member of the Ming army was so frightened that he stepped back. However, after taking a few steps, he was knocked down by the head of a rebel horse. In an instant, he was trampled to pieces by the horses.
One defensive circle after another was broken by Liu Hui's Fenghuo Camp, and the Ming army's defeat seemed to be a foregone conclusion.