Ask for subscriptions, recommendations, and monthly passes

Northern Guangdong, Yingde.

Zhu Mingke's number one hero in Guangdong, Zheng Hong, who had just been named the Duke of Yanping County and the commander of the North Route Army by Zhu Jishi, wore a red official uniform and strode into the command office of the North Route Army.

This office was originally the office of the general army of Yingde Town in the Green Battalion. At this time, it was already the sun and the moon fluttering with the flag, and there were many Ming officials who were also in red official robes and wearing black gauze hats. As Zheng Hong approached, everyone bowed and saluted, and there was a clanging sound of waist knives colliding. In the entire hall of the government office, there were all the generals of Zheng Hong's North Road Army, all of them were arrogant, and their voices were also over one another, and they greeted Zheng Hong loudly and martiously.

This Northern Route Army is a bit special in the current Ming Army, just look at their dress. The other officers of the Ming army, except for the brocade pro-army and the brocade cavalry, all wore gray military uniforms, and no one wore this kind of red official robe to hang around in the barracks - this dress is the so-called "court uniform", which is actually for the officers to wear out to show off, not when they are on duty. However, the general Hongmen bigwigs of the Northern Route Army like to die in this red official uniform, and they can't wait to wear it when they sleep.

However, the biggest difference between the Northern Route Army and other Ming armies was not in the clothes, but in the personnel and establishment.

The Northern Route Army was pulled up by Zheng Hong on the basis of becoming a citizen in Sanyuanli, and after winning over the Hong brothers in more than 20 counties in northern and western Guangdong! A large number of people leaders and Hongmen bigwigs who had not received serious military training were appointed to official positions by the Generalissimo of the Ming Dynasty under the recommendation of Zheng Hong.

In addition, the establishment of the various departments of the Northern Route Army was also different from that of other Ming armies. The number of the Fifth Brigade has been cancelled. Under the command of the Northern Route Army, there were battalion heads. Nor is it numbered. Instead, they were grouped under the name of the officer with the troops. For example, the battalion led by Wei Shaoguang is called the Shaozi Left Battalion and the Shaozi Right Battalion. Zheng Hong's pro-army is called the Yanzi Battalion, with a total of five battalions. In addition, there are more than 50 battalions of soldiers in the Xuanzi Battalion, the Shengzi Battalion, the Hezi Battalion, the Yizi Battalion, the Chengzi Battalion, the Iron Character Battalion, etc., with a total number of 53,400!

Seeing such a messy name, you must be able to guess what kind of armed force this Northern Route Army is. That's right, the Northern Route Army is a warlord!

It was Zheng Hong's warlord armament gathered under the banner of opposing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty! Most of the battalion leaders under the Northern Route Army are the real "masters of a battalion". The payment of military salaries for these more than 50,000 soldiers was also "contracted" by Zheng Hong, and the Generalissimo's Office sent 400,000 silver dollars to Zheng Hongjun every month. Then Zheng Hong distributed it to the following camp leaders according to the price code negotiated in advance.

And Zheng Hong, the prince of Yanping County in the Ming Dynasty, naturally turned into a big warlord!

However, being a warlord does not mean that he is not loyal to Zhu Jishi, the king, in fact, he is also forced by the situation to be this warlord - the news of the Battle of Dongjiang, the Battle of Baiyun Mountain and the fall of Guangzhou on the same day spread to northern and western Guangdong, and heroes from all walks of life immediately rose up one after another! Although the scale is not comparable to the "Hongbing Uprising" that broke out in 1854 in history, the number of participants is always more than 100,000 or 200,000! However, it swept most areas of northern and western Guangdong in ten days. Except for the Shaozhou Prefecture City and a few counties in Lingbei guarded by Seng Lingqin and Saishan'a, almost all of them were occupied by a motley Ming army led by a gang of Hongmen bigwigs.

Such a revolutionary situation "surprised" Zhu Jishi, who had just held a ceremony to complete the opening ceremony of the king's mansion in Guangzhou. After convening Zuo Zongtang, Lu Peifang, Su Yuniang and other ministers for "urgent discussion", he issued an order for Zheng Hong to come forward to appease the "righteous army" from all walks of life. Zheng Hong was also given a quota of 50,000 people, so that he could try to gather all kinds of "rebel armies" together. Organize the army into an army, so as not to poison the place - the discipline of these "flood soldiers" is really not much stronger than that of the Qing soldiers. Fortunately, Zheng Hong himself is the Hongmen boss at the level of the chief helmsman. The status of the rivers and lakes is very high, and the bigwigs in northern and western Guangdong have all sold his face, and the matter of forming an army is going very smoothly. If someone else had come forward, there would have been no way to reorganize the hundreds of thousands of "Hong soldiers" into 50,000 Ming troops in such a short period of time.

Therefore, the existence of Zheng Hong, a big warlord, is to a certain extent beneficial to Zhu Jishi's Daming Kingdom - after all, the consciousness of those Hongmen bigwigs is not as good as Su Yuniang's "old revolutionary" who joined Daming Mountain before regaining his sight, and his ability is relatively limited. So let's let Zheng Hong, the big warlord, coax these small warlords to fight a few battles first.

And Zheng Hong himself is quite proud of the position of the lord of the first army with tens of thousands of troops. He is not Zeng Guofan, who is stupid to read sage books, as long as he has heavy troops in hand, he doesn't care about gossip!

Zheng Hong walked to the back of the public desk in the middle of the hall and sat down. In the pipe belt of the Shaozi battalion, Wei Shaoguang, who has the rank of Jinyi Guard, shouted: "Stand on the shift, be careful in front of the army!" A group of Hongmen bigwigs, the generals of the bank, hummed and returned to their positions one after another, and it took a while to stand up according to their respective grades.

"See the big handsome! Congratulations to the handsome! ”

Zheng Hong had just been named the Duke of Yanping County, and the generals bowed and saluted and congratulated him.

Zheng Hong smiled faintly at the generals under his command, glanced at the past one by one, and then took enough jiashi and arched his hand: "Fengming Wang's holy edict!" The county has been appointed as the commander of the Northern Route Army, supervising the northern attack on Shaozhou, and the 53rd battalion of the Northern Guangdong Army is fully dispatched and acted cheaply. All generals should be sacred, should abide by military discipline, be cautious in orders, and be diligent in everything! ”

All the generals below were full of breath, and they all shouted - it is estimated that they all learned from the Qing Dynasty government, and the other armies of the Ming Dynasty all shouted "Yes, sir".

Zheng Hong proudly stretched out his hands and motioned for everyone to sit down.

"Everyone used to be brothers of the Hong family in the rivers and lakes, and many of them were in Hongmen for several generations, running for the revival of the Ming Dynasty. This time, everyone has become the minister of the dragon as they wished...... As for how much credit you can have, it depends on your true ability, I, Zheng, promise like everyone that meritorious service will be rewarded, and if you have done it, you will be punished! From now on, the Northern Route Army only has military discipline and military orders, and there are no rivers and lakes! ”

Zheng Hong said seriously, but the generals below all smiled. No one took the tens of thousands of Qing soldiers in Shaozhou seriously. That monk Grinqin is already a defeated general of the Ming army, and he still dares to speak bravely? Using the generals of the defeated army to command the troops, this light is really mediocre.

Zheng Hong looked at everyone with a smile, and said: "Our North Route Army Infantry Brigade has fifty battalions, two battalions of artillery teams, and one battalion of naval divisions. The armament was half foreign guns, half bird guns, half sword brand spears, as well as thirty-six 12-pounder cannons and one hundred and ten warships. Although it is not as good as the army directly under the Generalissimo's Mansion, it is much stronger than the green battalion of the Qing army in Shaozhou. This battle is supposed to be won and undefeated...... But we can't take it lightly. Therefore, the commander decided that from today onwards, the whole army will conduct drills for 20 days, and drill every day and sunrise, and train strictly. After the expiration of the twentieth day, the northern expedition to Shaozhou was dispatched! ”

The following officers all stood up and bowed together: "Mark and obey the orders of the commander!" ”

Zheng Hong nodded with satisfaction, then got up and left, and went to the flower hall at the back. In the flower hall, there were two young people, one fat and one thin, waiting, and when they saw Zheng Hong coming in, they all stood up at the same time to greet them.

The fat man was Hong Xiuquan's cousin Hong Renji, who went to Guangzhou from Wuzhou as an envoy and asked Zhu Jishi to take Hunan together.

The thin man was only in his early twenties, not tall, fair-skinned, with bright eyes, and an extremely serious complexion, and he did not smile. This person was wearing a gray military uniform, and he also hung a military rank of two bars and one star (the style of the military rank of the Ming army was designed by Zhu Jishi with reference to later generations).

This person's name is Zheng Yongyi, a Japanese, who, like Zhu Jianyu, is a descendant of Chinese who went into exile in Japan at the end of the Ming Dynasty. His ancestor is called Zheng Zhilong, who is Zheng Chenggong's father. Zheng Zhilong's Japanese wife Tagawa gave birth to two sons to Zheng Zhilong, one is Zheng Chenggong, and the other is Tagawa Nanazaemon, Zheng Yongyi is the seventh grandson of Tagawa Shichizaemon, and is also a student of Sakuma Kozan, who knows a little bit of military affairs, once served as a general officer of the Tokugawa shogunate, and later became one of the eighty-eight courtiers of Tokugawa Akiko. Originally, he was only Zhu Jishi's secretary, but recently the Ming army has expanded rapidly, and there is a shortage of officers, Zhu Jishi saw that he was a descendant of Zheng Zhilong and his own vassal, so he transferred him to the General Staff as a Chinese to do some errand work, this time as a special envoy of the General Staff, escorting Hong Renji to Zheng Hongjun. (To be continued......)