Ming Taizi's Total War

Chapter 269 The Ming army is back

But it was a pity that his arms couldn't twist his thighs, and in the end Zhou Yuantong honestly handed over the large amount of supplies he had hoarded in Jinan Mansion to Zhu Cihong.

Among them, there were many iron armors that Zhou Yuantong planned to replenish. There were more than 1 collars. After obtaining these armors, the equipment speed of Zhu Cihong's army went up to a new level.

After staying in Jinan Prefecture for two days, Zhu Cihong left here and set off to go north along the Grand Canal.

In modern society, time is money and time is life, and it is the same for Zhang Peilun in the backward feudal society.

If it is delayed for one more day, an unknown amount of food will be consumed and an unknown amount of manpower will be consumed.

The food and grass needed by the hundreds of thousands of troops around him had to be transported almost from the entire north, south of the Yangtze River, and Huguang, and countless civilians and ships were needed during the transportation.

If it wasn't for Zhu Cihong's ability to get some money, and a series of victories inspired people's hearts, everyone believed that Daming would win, and Zhu Cihong would reward everyone according to their merits.

Otherwise, most local officials and people would have long refused to cooperate with Zhu Cihong. After all, transporting grain and grass requires a lot of manpower, they need to spend precious time, and even risk the land being abandoned, and there is no possibility of a good harvest in the coming year.

In the agricultural society, everything was gambled. If there was no absolute certainty of victory, who would accompany Zhu Cihong on the expedition.

Although Zhili is definitely considered inland, after decades of war, both the north and south of the Yellow River are in dilapidated condition. Although the terrain is flat, marching here is not even as good as the south with many mountains, rivers, and hills.

Because of the successive uprisings, riots, continuous natural and man-made disasters, and wars, all industries here have been destroyed, and the people's livelihood is poor. It is difficult for the army to get local supplies after marching, and even military food has to be sent to help the people.

But fortunately, with the Grand Canal as the main supply line, supplemented by civilians along the line, and the confiscation of Jiangnan and Shandong merchant ships along the coastline, Zhu Cihong's supply of hundreds of thousands of troops barely maintained.

The larger the army, the slower the marching speed. It takes several quarters of an hour just to send an order to each barracks. In addition, the daily allocation of places to set up camps, bury pots for cooking, and constant cleaning Garbage produced by the army.

The most deadly thing is that Zhu Cihong and the senior generals of the Ming army did not have experience in commanding so many troops. Two 10,000+ people and more auxiliary soldiers and civilians were crowded together, and they were caught blind in an instant.

So most of the time every day was not spent on the march, but on the difficult command and dispatch of the armies.

The daily marching speed of the army is only thirty or forty miles at most, Jinan Prefecture is several hundred miles away from the capital, and it took Zhu Cihong and the Ming army more than ten days to reach Gyeonggi, which is the outskirts of the capital.

……

"Look, what is that big black thing in the south?" A group of Manchurian officers and soldiers hunting in the wild discovered the whereabouts of Zhu Cihong's army.

"Where is the flag?" Several Manchurian soldiers who saw it saw the flag in Zhu Cihong's army.

Although it is a march, the flag should still be erected high in the marching team, so that the soldiers will not lose their way and unite tightly under the command of their commanders.

"It's the Ming army, it's the Ming army." The army was getting closer and closer, and a Manchu soldier was horrified to find that the black cloud was nothing but the Ming army that could not be seen at a glance.

In fact, this is just the vanguard of the Ming army of 4 to [-] people.

It is impossible for Zhu Cihong to crowd everyone together. Even if he forces orders, no one will obey them. After all, people cannot be stacked together in cans. Besides, if they are all crowded together, once they are attacked, the Ming army will be beaten Went out.

Moreover, the terrain in North China is open, and some land is suitable for marching, so Zhu Cihong roughly divided into five armies, front, back, left, middle, and right, and the marching team stretched for tens of miles.

The army discovered by these Mite Island officers and soldiers was Zhu Cixiang's former army.

"Go back and report to Ezhen, the Ming army is back." After the leader of this group of officers and soldiers found that the Ming army had arrived, he immediately took his subordinates back to the capital, and told his superiors about the discovery of the Ming army.

At this moment, they had only entered the customs for a few months, and they did not yet have the awareness of the upper-class nobles of Mite Island to regard the capital and even the entire world as their own.

These ordinary Manchurian officers and soldiers still think that Daming is the master here, and seeing the Ming army at this moment is like the master returning when the thief finds out that he is stealing.

A few hours later, the Forbidden City learned that the Ming army was marching towards the capital.

In the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, Bumbutai, Fulin, Dorgon, Daishan and others gathered together, and even other princes and nobles found a chair in the hall to sit down.

"Tell the Empress Dowager and the Emperor what you saw outside the city." Dorgon pointed at the two Michow soldiers kneeling on the ground and said.

Finding that the news of the Ming army was always being suspected by himself, so Dorgon directly approached the soldiers of Mizhou and asked them to report what they had seen and heard to Bumbutai and Fu Pro.

"See the Queen Mother, Your Majesty." The two Manchurian soldiers did not rush to tell what they knew, but kowtowed to Bumbutai and Fulin first.

If they were facing ordinary Manchu princes and nobles, they would only need to make a thousand salutes, but now they were facing the emperor and empress dowager of the Qing Dynasty, so naturally they needed to be more solemn.

"We found the whereabouts of the Ming army's large troops fifty miles away from the city. There are so many of them that they can't see the end of the sky."

"How many people are there in the Ming army?" Bumbutai wanted to know an exact number.

"I'm afraid it's no less than [-]." Qizhou Bing replied.

In fact, he didn't know, because there were too many Ming troops and the distance was far away, so he had to estimate a number.

But it turns out that he guessed too little, and the Ming army was more than twice that number.

"So many." Bumbutai was shocked.

He never expected that the Ming army had such a large number of people. They gathered all the strength of the whole country and dispatched all the soldiers of the Mongolian and Han tribes, and they were only more than [-].

If there were not a large number of soldiers and generals from the Ming Dynasty and the Shun Army after entering the customs, they would not even be able to control the few provinces they had already occupied.

"Are you serious?" Bumbutai suspected that the Manchu soldier was trying to scare him.

How could the Ming Dynasty still have so many troops? Didn’t it mean that they were all buried in the war with Li Zicheng? In the Ming and Qing wars in the past few decades, the Qing Dynasty wiped out hundreds of thousands of Ming troops.

Bumbutai, a barbaric nation outside the Great Wall, could not imagine how great the potential of the Central Plains was. If it weren't for the serious internal friction, it would not be difficult for Ming to mobilize a million troops.

(End of this chapter)