Chapter 242: On the Road

Li Meng stood there and pondered, Zhou Juren also drafted the manuscript on the side of the bookcase, which was nothing more than the need for each grange to prepare to raise grain and grass personnel to supply the army, and at the same time, the village protection team should also pay close attention to mobilization, maintain order, and stabilize the place.

Zhou Juren is also a literati from the right path, this kind of official paperwork is easy and fast to do, and he still has the spare energy to think about other things, Zhou Yang is also a capable official, and he still opposes Li Meng's plan to send troops, but once the decision is made on the master's side, he immediately makes suggestions for this matter.

"General, this is going to Jinan Mansion, there is something that has to be guarded against, after all, Jinan Mansion has been operated by Qiu Lei, the chief military officer of Shandong, for many years, and this time I went to work together, we must beware of this Qiu Lei making a stumbling block for us!"

Li Meng laughed and said:

"No matter what we do, General Qiu will definitely find something unpleasant for the Jiaozhou battalion, but it's okay, the Jiaozhou battalion has always abided by the laws of the imperial court, and will never do that arrogant thing, and it can't be done by provoking private fights, but if you want others to create contradictions, the Jiaozhou battalion will defend itself reasonably and legally, then it makes sense."

As soon as the words fell, Li Meng and Zhou Yang glanced at each other, laughed together, and the dull atmosphere in the room was swept away.

There are 7,000 soldiers in the Jiaozhou battalion headquarters, each 1,000 people are a battalion, and they are stationed separately, and the order to assemble this time has a period of four days, and the rapidity of the actions of each battalion is actually an important test of the ability of the officers leading the group, and it is also a test to consider the ability of the officers leading the various battalions before the war.

After General Li Meng issued the order, he took the guards to inspect the battalions every day, check the preparations, and compare and evaluate the officers at all levels.

Wang Hai led the five hundred guards ranked second in each battalion, so that Wang Hai was ashamed, the soldiers and horses led by the generals of the Ming Dynasty, the guards were the most elite soldiers, the Jiaozhou battalion was not like this, the guards were often used as a preparatory class for grassroots officers, but the practice of the times, Wang Hai always felt that the guards battalion led by him should be the strongest soldiers in the Jiaozhou battalion, and was a model for each battalion, but he didn't expect this to be the result.

Li Meng didn't criticize Wang Hai because of this, because there are such and such differences between the guard battalion and the troops below themselves, and they can't be treated all the same, and it's already very good to be ranked second. And this is my own informal consideration, which does not explain anything, and the real superiority must be tested in wartime.

The first-ranked battalion is the battalion stationed in Qianhusuo on Xuejiadao, and the battalion is very close to the Jiaozhou battalion, and it is Zhang Jiang, the head of the Ma Army and the nephew of the old military household Zhang Lin.

This incident made Li Meng feel a little emotional, the outstanding officers in his own system, the old Yanding who followed him back then, that is, Zhao Neng, Wang Hai, Chen Liu, Tang Er, Ma Gang is from the Lingshan Guard, this Zhangjiang is also from the military household of the Lingshan Guard, at present, there are twelve battalions in Shandong, twelve thousand generals, only three are more than a dozen people who started back then, and most of the rest are in Tuntian Grange as a head of the village.

As for the remaining group of officers, most of them were recruited in the Lingshanwei Institute later, and in that batch, some of the children of families, such as the children of the general banner, hundreds of households, and thousands of families, most of them have received some special military training, and the conditions at home are relatively good.

After entering the Jiaozhou camp, these people were able to accept the ideas and knowledge instilled by Li Meng faster than those old Yanding from poor families, and were more suitable for the hard training of the Jiaozhou camp. Of course, emotion is attributed to emotion, these officers are more loyal to Li Meng, and even have some fanatical worship. And more than a dozen people who started together at the beginning got along with Li Meng, and they had a somewhat equal attitude.

Therefore, the old brothers who are still working in the camp are all conscientious and very low-key, so that they can have today's position, and the others have unknowingly left this system and went to the relatively less critical Tuntian system to be the head of the village.

Zhang Jiang is three years older than Wang Hai, twenty-two years old this year, and recruited soldiers from the Lingshan Guard for the first time into the Jiaozhou camp, at that time, the free and easy old sect leader Zhang Lin had already begun to train to ride a horse and salt Ding, knowing that his nephew joined the Jiaozhou camp, and he also lost his temper, but this young man also had an idea, saying that it was interesting to farm and eat food at home for a lifetime, if he worked hard in the Jiaozhou camp and could get a full salary to support his family.

After all, he is from a military family, and his uncle Zhang Lin is also a good hand at arching horses, Zhang Jiang and Ma Gang have some basic military education, and it is a little strange that although Zhang Jiang's father is already a military household who farms the land, Zhang Jiang has a kind of courage that is not afraid of death.

Proficient in combat skills, has military experience, dares to take the lead, the ancient city set to fight the Peng family, Gaomi Xiazhuang to the horse bandits, Pingdong Changfu thieves, sneak attack Yanzhou Liu Zeqing. All battles are participated, and they all have military merits, have such skills, have such qualifications, naturally they have been promoted step by step, and now they are already the thousand commanders of the battalion below.

There are many officers who have such experience, and they are the backbone group of the Jiaozhou battalion and are Li Meng's fanatical supporters, because they can have today's strategy and training methods taught by Li Meng, and their wealth today is completely due to Li Meng's giving.

On October 19 of the 11th year of Chongzhen, 6,000 soldiers from the Jiaozhou battalion headquarters set off, and the troops of Dengzhou Mansion and Laizhou Mansion were empty for a while, but the two prefectures were stable and fine, because the guards of Tuntian Grange were enough to deter lawbreakers, and those thieves and bandits were already safe and good because of Li Meng's requirements.

Because along the way, it is mostly dependent on the strong strength of the Jiaozhou battalion, and the Tuntian Grange is distributed everywhere, there are people to assist in the supply on the marching road, and the inner line is marching, and there is a camp at any time, so the marching speed is broken.

Leading the army to fight, life and death are common things, Li Mengwei has been a general for many years, so he naturally saw through this, but when he left, he also felt a little heavy in his heart, Yan Ruoran forced himself to calm down, and Li Meng said some words to pay attention to safety, and wished the army success, but who could see Yan Ruoran's red eyes, it was crying.

As for Mu Yunyao, she didn't dare to meet Li Meng, Guo Dong's mother-in-law reported that Mu Yunyao had cried in her room, and prayed for Li Meng in front of the Guanyin statue every day. Gu Hengbo and Liu Ru are relatively normal, but they are also worried, but they are calm.

The backbone of the Jiaozhou battalion soldiers is the military households of the two guards of Lingshan and Aoshan, and these military families are of course reluctant and sad when they go out on this expedition.

If there is a deserter, he will be beheaded immediately. This is a death order issued by Li Meng and officers at all levels, and he is also very worried about the impact of this reluctance on morale, and the situation is much more optimistic than Li Meng expected.

Unconsciously, these Ming military households replaced the imperial court in their hearts with "General Li".

On the second day of November, Li Meng's headquarters joined Zhao Neng's 1,000 troops.

The speed of the march was very fast, the team remained unchaotic, and the Jiaozhou battalion didn't think there was anything special about it, but in the eyes of the powerful clans along the road, as well as in the eyes of the officials in the counties and towns of Zhouxian County, such a mighty and majestic division was really respectable and terrifying.

Invisibly, the Jiaozhou battalion held a demonstration along the way, and when the Jiaozhou battalion was so powerful, all the localities were convinced, and the villagers from all over the country were all eating pot pulp and rewarding along the road.

This march also made the gentry and wealthy families who were just looking at the scenery in the past see the true strength of the Jiaozhou battalion, and those who were originally loyal were even more desperate, and those who originally had other ideas became loyal. In addition, the local young and strong see such a majestic style, I heard that the rumors that the soldiers of the Jiaozhou battalion can eat enough have been verified, and the military discipline of the Jiaozhou battalion is excellent, and the soldiers have a kind of spirit that other armies do not have.

On the eighth day of November, Li Meng's headquarters met with Ma Gang's 2,000 soldiers, and at the same time, Yan Jizu, the governor of Shandong, sent a messenger to send a message, ordering the army not to enter Jinan and rush to Dezhou to set up defenses.

When he received the news on the march, Li Meng thought that Qiu Lei, the chief soldier of Shandong, was making a mistake and let him go to the border to face it, while Qiu Lei lived in the city of Jinan, but the next day, Hou Shan and Huang Ping's spies came back with the news, saying that this decision was the idea of Yang Sichang, the secretary of the Ministry of War.

Yang Sichang, a member of the cabinet and a secretary of the military department, believed that if the Qing army entered Shandong, it would inevitably enter from Dezhou, so he sent a messenger to Yan Jizu, the governor of Shandong, asking him to mobilize most of Shandong's troops and horses to strengthen the defense in the Dezhou area and avoid being invaded by the Qing army.

Yang Sichang is currently the most favored minister of Emperor Chongzhen, and his orders are almost the same as the emperor's will, and Yan Jizu, the governor of Shandong, naturally does not dare to disobey it, this Yang Sichang is not a character known for his magnanimity.

But the army is outside, how can the means of communication at this time, and the Beijing division, which is hundreds of miles apart, clearly judge where the Qing army is breaking in, Yang Sichang has the eye to heaven.

However, since the army is on the march, it must also act in accordance with the orders from above, otherwise the nature of this operation will change from official business to unauthorized action.

Inexplicably, Li Meng thought of someone before the liberation of modern times, who often issued "xx handwritten edicts" indiscriminately, blindly commanding the bald image of the troops......