How could the estates belonging to the Duke of Württemberg and his loyal subordinates survive the attack of the peasant army? This is mainly due to Marin's previous good arrangement.

First of all, Marin had sent thousands of mercenaries to infiltrate the Duchy of Württemberg, and divided into several groups of men and horses, scattered and lurked in the territory of the Duke of Ulrich, or the nobles of the Duke's faction.

The first thing the mercenaries did after entering these areas was to build tall walls around the estates, and they also instructed the local peasants to dig moats around the walls, greatly improving the manor's protective capabilities.

Of course, if the peasant army had engineering ladders or artillery, these arrangements were of little use. However, the peasant rebel army of "poor Conrad" had neither siege ladders nor artillery. Then, faced with a wide moat and tall walls, nature was helpless.

Moreover, the scattered mercenaries of the North Sea States are not fixed. They had long since sent scouts to follow the peasant army and conduct reconnaissance. Once they know where the peasant army is moving (in fact, Wolf and other undercover agents will also leave information to inform these scouts of the peasant army's next move), they will divide their men and notify the nearby mercenaries to rush overnight to the territory of the Duke of Ulrich or the territory of the Duke of Ulrich's henchmen who are passing by the peasant army. As a result, the manors of the dukes and dukes' henchmen along the way have always maintained a garrison of one or two thousand people, and they are all elite mercenaries of the Beihai Kingdom.

With tall walls and moats, plus at least one or two thousand elite Beihai mercenaries, even if the peasant army numbered more than 10,000, there was nothing to do with these estates. Not to mention, they also did not have ladders and artillery specialized for engineering. After hitting a wall a few times, Casbal had no choice but to honestly follow the route pointed out by the undercover Charlie to ransack the noble estates.

And the aristocratic manors pointed out by Charlie were indeed empty because the knights and auxiliaries in the manor were taken away, and they were easily conquered.

These aristocratic manors are rich in oil and water, and they are easy to conquer, which naturally makes the peasant army happy. As for why Charlie was able to find these weakly guarded aristocratic estates with precision? The explanation given by Charlie is that I used to be the one in charge of finding out the news and stepping on the points of the bandits, and I knew the news of it......

If you are a wise leader, you may be suspicious. However, there were no literate people in the peasant rebels of the "poor Conrad". Wolf and others, who are really literate, or undercover, how does this make Casbar play? You know, Casbal was once just a blacksmith for forging knives, he only knew a few words, and he had no ability to think about complex problems.

As a result, this peasant rebel army, which was growing in number more and more, snowballed and became bigger and bigger, and plagued many noble estates.

And because of the rogue tactics used by Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong to destroy the Ming Empire, the "poor Conrad" peasant army lived a very prosperous life. The food they grabbed along the way could feed and drink enough for the rebels, and they could often eat a lot of meat and wine prepared for themselves by the nobles, and their lives were not too pleasant.

Gradually, this peasant rebel army grew stronger. The total number of people has successfully exceeded 20,000. And the "elite" who have armor and standard weapons are as many as 3,000 people. These armors and standard weapons, all found from the arsenal of the captured noble estates, are now in the hands of the peasant army. Then, three thousand sturdy warriors were assigned to Casbal's selection......

Even, Casbal now has 300 plate cavalry and 1,000 light cavalry in his hands. It's just that the 300 plate cavalry are all soldiers with good riding skills and strong body selected from the army, and they are not really knights. They had no professional knightly training, and they were just looking at them for example. Including the 1,000 light cavalry, it was just a selection of a group of peasants who were good at horseback riding. Mainly, these peasants originally raised horses for the aristocratic lords......

However, even if these 300 plate cavalry and 1000 light cavalry were all the same, there were still people who were scared. After all, 1300 cavalry can already be regarded as a very powerful force in the struggle for hegemony among the small German princes.

There were even cases where neutral nobles were frightened by this peasant army with 1,300 cavalry and surrendered directly.

In Stuttgart, Baron Mystol, a close vassal of the Duke of Ulrich, asked the Duke of Ulrich in a restless manner:

"Lord Duke, there are so many cavalry on the other side, will there be an accident when the net is closed?" He was a confidant of the Duke of Ulrich and one of the insiders. So, for this cavalry that exceeded the plan, it was very uneasy.

The Duke of Ulrich was also nervous, so he released a carrier pigeon to ask Marin for advice. After reading the letter asking for help, Marin thought for a long time, and finally gave a reply:

"With croton powder!"

When his fleet returned from Daming, he had brought back a batch of crotons as seeds of traditional Chinese medicine, which were kept and cultivated in a glass greenhouse. Today, he can still get a batch of crotons. If it is ground into flour, it is mixed with the feed of the peasant army's war horses...... The cavalry of the peasant army was all abolished the next day......

Coincidentally, because he was good at riding and had "been a small bandit leader", the undercover Wolf was appointed as the captain of the 300 plate cavalry of the peasant army. As for the 1000 hussars, Charlie also hung the post of deputy captain in it.

As long as Marin handed over the croton flour to Wolf and Charlie the day before the final collection of the net, let them mix it in the war horse feed the next morning, and keep all the cavalry of the peasant army to be abolished......

Once there are no cavalry, those peasant infantry will wait to be slaughtered...... No, if Marin wants to live, he must capture the prisoners......

Moreover, even better, these 1,300 war horses, after eating croton flour feed, as long as the dosage is not too ruthless, can still be saved. When the time comes, these 1,300 war horses will also be good trophies.

The Duke of Ulrich was also overjoyed when he received Marin's reply. So, he began to wait for Marin to send the croton powder. It's just that croton flour is a cargo, and it can't be transmitted through carrier pigeons that fly hundreds of miles a day like MeSign, so it can only be sent over a long distance by people on the ground. But fortunately, there is still a long time before the final closure of the net, so there is no need to rush so much......

In addition, Marin promised to provide Duke Ulrich with 5,000 Cossack cavalry as the main force in the final net. With these 5,000 Cossack cavalry, I am not afraid that the enemy will run away. And in the face of the charge launched by the Cossack cavalry, even if the number of peasant armies reached tens of thousands, it was easy to be defeated. After all, this is a rabble, fighters with no formal military training at all. Even the elite of them are just sturdy farmers with more strength and taller in the rebel army, and professional soldiers are completely different things. After all, the core of Li Zicheng's elite troops is mainly the border army officers and soldiers who participated in the uprising in the trilateral towns. Even Li himself is a pawn who has been laid off, and he is also half a soldier. It's like the "poor Conrad" rebel army, except for a few undercover agents, the rest are all farmers or craftsmen without any military foundation. Even if it is an elite, it does not have enough military literacy. With such an army, it is easy to end up when it encounters a regular army.

It is no wonder that peasant uprisings in the European region were always easily suppressed. The point was that there was a lack of leaders with military talent in the peasant army. This is mainly due to the fact that in ancient Europe, only the children of the aristocracy had the knowledge of military command, and ordinary people basically did not have it. In ancient China, there were too many people who had read the book of soldiers. As long as the leader of the peasant rebel army finds a few half-baked scholars who have read military books, his level can be greatly improved immediately. In other words, compared with the European peasant rebel army and the Chinese peasant rebel army, there is probably a lack of a few dog-headed military divisions. After all, it was the uprising of the heroes of Liangshan, and there was a military advisor Wu Yong......

The literacy rate in Europe was much lower than in ancient China, and only the nobles and clergy, as well as a small number of children of wealthy merchants, were literate. But they were unlikely to take part in the peasant uprising, which doomed the European peasant uprising to be difficult. And in ancient China of the same era, there were not too many down-and-out scholars who knew a little bit about military affairs. For example, Li Zicheng found Niu Jinxing, Song Xiance, Li Yan and other strategists to assist. Casbal obviously did not have such luck, so his defeat was inevitable.

In ancient China, there were many ambitious scholars who understood military affairs. For example, Xiao He and Cao Shen, who helped Liu Bang rebel; Zhu Sheng and Liu Bowen, who helped Zhu Yuanzhang rebel; and the Daoyan monk who helped Zhu Di rebel...... With these predecessors in front of Zhuyu, I don't know how many ambitious scholars in ancient China were willing to give advice to the leaders of the rebel army, in order to be like Xiao He and others in the future, and be able to be a prince for all generations...... And these people, when it comes to rebellion, are professionals. Therefore, the rebellion in ancient China was easy to sit on.

On the contrary, peasant uprisings in Europe generally lacked professional rebel strategists, so it was naturally difficult to rise up, so they were easily suppressed. And the most famous leader of the German peasant uprising, Münzel, was not a peasant, but a low-level clergyman, the kind with culture and brains. Therefore, he made a big deal and was recorded in history. And the leader of the turtle rebel army of Casbar and his ilk was doomed from the beginning......