At the beginning of May of the lunar calendar, it is close to the height of summer, and although the weather at Dagukou near the sea is cool, it often rains. In the evening, the summer rain fell like a pour, pouring everything around it beyond sight, and it seemed that the entire land of Youyan was shrouded in a violent storm.

And this scene of wind and rain covering the earth also alludes to the complex situation in Beizhili today. The Ming Dynasty is not dead, the Great Shun still exists, and the Qing Dynasty has not yet thrown away the gauze to cover the shame. No one knows who will be the lord of Yan Land after a bloody storm!

More than ten miles west of Dagukou City, I don't know when a pontoon bridge was erected to communicate the north and south of the Wei River. The pontoon bridge is made up of many boats, which are nailed together with sturdy wooden planks, and a lot of mud is smeared on the west side of the boats to prevent fire.

At the north and south ends of the pontoon bridge, a bridgehead was built on each. They were all wooden forts, but they were very strong, and each fort was guarded by soldiers of the new army. The person who led the troops to guard the North Fort was a junior officer of the former Tianjin Town Army who was included in the New Army after the bloody battle of Tianjin Wei's Long Street.

This little officer named Yu Daren was born in a hereditary military household of Tianjin Wei, and his ancestors were from Hunan, and he followed the Northern Expeditionary Army all the way to Yandi in the early Ming Dynasty, and also played a hereditary official position of a thousand households. However, it was passed on to Yu Daren's generation that had completely declined, and he did not get any official position, but abandoned martial arts and wanted to take the test to make a name for himself. But after ten years of exams, I didn't even get a show! In the end, I had to go to the army, relying on the sturdy body handed down by my ancestors and working hard. But it was not satisfactory, seeing that they were all forty years old, and they had just mixed with a banner chief, with the official rank of only the small banner of the Shuaifu, and he was in charge of more than eighty brothers.

But he still cherishes this position very much, because the captain of the new army can really get a military salary of four taels of silver a month, and it is a lot!

The crown prince was strictly controlled, and when the salary was paid, the officials of the military and political guards and the officers of the division command department went down to the camp together, and then the salary was paid by name in public.

In addition to being satisfied, eating is also good, the rice and noodles are full, and there is meat every three or five days. The food of ordinary soldiers can catch up with the family members in Cao Zongzhen in the past.

In addition, there are paddy fields on the south side of the Yangtze River waiting for the officers and soldiers of the New Army to get them! Yu Daren is just a small flag, but he also has 80 acres of land, which is still a paddy field in the south of the Yangtze River...... As long as he arrives in Jiangnan, he will have a field and a house, and when the time comes, he will ask for a mother-in-law, he must be less than eighteen, and he will have a yellow flower girl!

On this day, he has a head! The days are rushing, but the military discipline is really strict!

Military law is like a mountain, but it is not a saying in the new army of overcoming difficulties. In the new army, not only are officers at all levels in charge of military discipline, but there is also an independent system of military law and supervision! At the top of this system are the Judge Advocate Advocate Offices directly under the Generalissimo of the Fu Army, at the middle level are the Military Judge Offices in the divisions of the New Army, and at the grassroots level are the military judges at the Union and Battalion levels. Among them, the Military Judge Advocate General's Office and the military judges are not subordinate to the division commanders, assistant commanders, and battalion generals, but are under the jurisdiction of the Military Judge Advocate Generals, who are specifically responsible for rectifying military discipline and supervising operations and training.

These uncles in charge of military law are either Jinyi Wei or Jingjun, all of them are as fierce as tigers and as evil as wolves, so they point to tossing people and climb up! It is necessary not only to manage law and discipline in the army, but also to manage training, combat readiness, and duty...... I heard that the prince also gave them indicators, and they have to hand over people every day!

Whoever commits a crime in their hands will be beheaded at the most serious level, and at the slightest point, he will be beaten, locked up in a black house, or demoted! It's not good for him...... And definitely play for real!

This kind of military discipline and military law, I'm afraid I didn't even have it back then, right?

On one side is strict military discipline and military law, and on the other side is generous pay and tempting painting cakes. Therefore, in the past 20 days or so, grassroots officers like Yu Daren have all bled up their spirits and dare not slack off. The training and garrison tasks assigned by the superiors do not dare to have the slightest discount, the training is two exercises a day, one exercise for one hour, and the full amount of practice for two hours every day! One hour trains the queue, and the other hours trains weapons.

The 80 men of the banner commanded by Yu Daren were compiled with reference to the 100-man squad of the preliminary soldiers of the Ming Dynasty, and among the 80 people, there were 40 spearmen, 20 archers, and 20 sword soldiers, and they were not equipped with firearms. Among them, the spearmen equipped with zhangsan (one zhangsan, equivalent to more than four meters) spears are the absolute main force, so the pikemen form a team to attack or deploy in formation, which has become the main method of warfare. The battle between the archers and the sword bearers revolves around the pikemen.

For Yu Daren and his subordinates, this kind of tactics that existed in the early Ming Dynasty is not unfamiliar, most of them are from Tianjin town soldiers, almost all of them are children of military families, can't they pull a hard bow and can't raise a big gun?

The Generalissimo's Mansion is now equipping the troops with a large number of spears, in fact, there are also factors that are easy to train - the foot bow does not have dozens of catties of arm strength at all, and it is not easy to play the knife card well, only the spear is the simplest, that is, sprinting and shooting, as long as it can form a gun formation, the lethality is still very large.

And Yu Daren's banner soldiers are almost all oil, and they are not good at swords, guns, bows, and cards, and the formation is not neat. If you summarize the weaknesses, it is a lack of practice and discipline!

Therefore, after 20 days, a total of 40 hours of rigorous training, this banner soldier was able to play the gun array decently.

In addition to training, there is still the task of guarding the pontoon bridge to be completed, and there must be no slackness either! In the last battle of Tianjin Wei, because the pontoon bridge was burned, the officers of the bridge guarding troops were all demoted to the lowest level of marshal guards!

So Yu Daren is sleeping with one eye open now, for fear that the thieves from Tianjin Wei will kill him again.

By the way, the function of this pontoon bridge is actually to block the Wei River and prevent the fleet of thieves from raiding Dagukou and Haisha Island Wharf.

In the heavy rain, Yu Daren once again began his routine inspection. He put on a cloak over the cloth and iron armor, did not wear a helmet, but put on a rainproof hat, carried a spear wrapped in oilcloth, and put on a pair of non-slip straw sandals over his boots, and walked across the pontoon bridge from the wooden fort on the south bank, checked all the sentry posts on the bridge, and then boarded the wooden fort on the north bank, and waited for the secret sentry placed on the outskirts of the north bank to return.

Now the north bank of the Wei River is a zone where Ming, Shun, and Qing are irritated, bandits are rampant, and there are many powerful and powerful people who form villages to protect themselves, which is very chaotic. But what really worries Zhu Cihong is that the Tartars in the north suddenly go south!

Yongping to Dagu is only more than 300 miles, and the cavalry and horse team can be completed in two days, and Prince Zhu does not dare to take it lightly. Even if today is a good day for his own concubine, he still sent a large number of secret sentinels to the north bank.

These secret posts are all directly under the command of the new army to overcome difficulties, all of them are soldiers from the local Wei area in Tianjin, who are very familiar with the terrain on the north bank of the Wei River, and when they go out, they will disguise themselves, or pretend to be merchants, or disguise themselves as refugees, and they have to be rotated for one day each time.

About four hours ago, a group of outposts disguised as salt sellers had headed north through the pontoon, and it was almost time for the outposts they had replaced to return.

As soon as Yu Daren boarded the wooden fort, the sound of horses' hooves trampling the muddy water suddenly sounded there, and I don't know if the secret post has returned?

He hurriedly shouted to the soldiers on duty on the wooden fort: "Be on guard! ”

The soldier answered, "Order." ”

Then he took out a gong and struck it with a wooden stick, making a screeching sound of "dang dang dang". There was a group of resting soldiers in the wooden fort, and when they heard the warning of the gong, they did not dare to slack off, and hurriedly put on cotton armor or cloth iron armor, and put on their respective blades and took their battle positions. The gate of the wooden castle has been closed, and at this time, it is even more upper, so it looks like a great enemy.

After a while, I saw a group of "traders" dressed in robes, carrying wooden sticks, carrying bamboo baskets, and pulling donkeys, spreading their girls and running towards the wooden fort.

"Mr. Qi, it's your own people!" The team that had just boarded the wooden castle was saying to Yu Daren.

"That's not right!" Yu Daren was very vigilant, "There are not so many people...... There is a case! ”

As soon as his words fell, Tianjin dialect came from there: "Two-five eyes!" ”

This is a curse word, and it is also a secret whistle to cross the bridge.

Yu Daren immediately replied: "Bend your heart!" ”

This is also a password, the two sides of the password are on the same page, and someone over there immediately shouted: "Open the door, there is a large group of people from the north!" It seems to be the person who acts as the king! ”