To be honest, the combat power of Huang Degong's army is the strongest among the four towns, and the military training may not be as good as Yang Chao's army, but he has many more veterans than Yang Chao.

Before Huang Degong was captured in Beijing, he was already the earl of Jingnan, and he, the earl, fought with a knife and a gun.

This person is nicknamed Huang Chuangzi, Kaiyuan Weiren, brave and powerful, it is said that when he was a child, he stole wine and drank, his mother blamed, when Liaodong was in turmoil, Huang Degong laughed and went out with a knife, and took back a few Tartar heads at night, and told his mother that he could exchange for reward money and wine money.

After that, Huang Degong joined the army and led the Beijing camp with little combat effectiveness, but repeatedly made military exploits, and the title of Earl Jingnan was obtained by him following Ma Shiying to pacify the Henan rebels.

The soldiers under him have fought several times with Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zixuan, so there are many veterans.

Such an army, as long as it is disciplined, is an elite soldier.

And Huang Degong's military discipline is very strict, and it is enough to show that he can not rob the people in troubled times.

With such an army, it is naturally invincible to fight bandits like Zuo Liangyu who burn, kill, loot and do all kinds of evil.

Sure enough, when he was in Taiping Mansion, Huang Degong joined Wang Pu's troops to attack Zuo Liangyu together, and the left army was defeated by the two of them, and fled all the way west, and was finally annihilated.

After Yang Chao and Wang Pu joined the circle, they naturally heard the news of Huang Degong, and Wang Pu was quite dissatisfied with this person, naturally because Huang Degong grabbed merit from him.

But Huang Degong has a good impression of Wang Pu: "No wonder you can break 10,000 from 600, Lao Tzu has never been able to understand when this tartar became such a waste." When I saw your army today, I believed. Whatever you say about flooding the Seventh Army, it's all false, and in the end, it's still a knife, and whoever has the right knife can win. Your soldiers are strong enough and ruthless enough, Lao Tzu is not as good as you! ”

Huang Degong said while describing, what he said was naturally the army led by Wang Pu, who had always liked to fight and rush. This time, Yang Chao wanted to exterminate Zuo Liangyu's army as soon as possible, and the order he gave him was to advance rapidly, ignore the rout first, and surround the two roads first. wiped out his main force, so Wang Pu was even more fierce by three points, attacking and advancing frantically, Wang Pu's military formation was like a meat grinder, which made a fierce general like Huang Degong feel cold.

"Lao Tzu didn't understand. How are you training as a soldier, and what kind of formation is it? Lao Tzu has been in the army for decades, and he has seen all the mandarin duck formations, car formations, and ball breaking formations, and in the end, he still has to see blood with a knife. ”

Huang Degong said while eating.

Yang Chao said with a smile: "Thank you General Huang for your compliment, in the future, my formation will be called the Iron Wall Formation." ”

Yang Chao's new wall formation was only started after Haizhou, and it was naturally based on the idea of using the shield as the wall and having both offense and defense.

This formation is very demanding for pace training. You can't do it without rigorous pace training.

Because once there is chaos, the phalanx will also be scattered.

Now Yang Chao's new phalanx, the first three rows are bird guns, the last three rows are archers, and the last three rows are crossbowmen.

There are 1,000 people in each row, a total of 9,000 people, and a cavalry of 1,000 people is reserved, which is a strong formation that can attack, defend, and pursue. The soldiers habitually become a wall array, but it is actually a comprehensive array composed of multiple layers of wall arrays, and when he heard Huang Degong's praise, Yang Chao felt that it really meant that there was an iron wall. Then it's just called the Iron Wall Array.

As for the wall formation, of course, he didn't give up, it was just a deformation of the iron wall array, and it was the impact formation that was unfolded when he charged.

Yang Chao had already canceled the pure spearman establishment at this time, and the nine thousand people were all long-range attacks, but each soldier had practiced assassination, so after long-range killing and wounding the enemy. When the enemy approaches, they will seize the opportunity to put it on the shield wall, and the whole army will change their spears to attack, and the enemy will be crushed at once.

After the meal, Huang Degong expressed his intention, and he came to discuss with Yang Chao how to deal with Zuo Liangyu's defeated soldiers.

Too many captives.

There is only one way for warlords to treat prisoners, that is, to co-opt, although Huang Degong is a military law with strict military discipline, but he is also a warlord, he also covets Zuo Liangyu These soldiers, if he can be co-opted, his strength will overwhelm the other three towns in one fell swoop.

"Of course whoever caught it counts!"

Yang Chao said.

Huang Degong said dissatisfiedly: "No, no, no, the official rushed here after receiving the news, who knows that you still took the lead." You have taken a big advantage, and you should give some points to your own official, at least half of one person! ”

Although Huang Degong was stationed in Chuzhou and Hezhou, he was nominally under the control of Shi Kefa, the superintendent of Jiangbei, and when Shi Kefa's orders reached him, Yang Chao's army was already approaching.

Yang Chao shook his head and said, "Let's not talk about this first." Although the left army has been defeated, there are many deserters, not to mention 70,000 or 80,000 people. General Huang should work with this official to encircle and suppress these rebels, and then this official will divide half of you! ”

Huang Degong was satisfied, Yang Chao looked down on these soldiers who had completely lost military discipline, and even lost their wayward ruffians, the moment the knife that slaughtered his compatriots was raised, Yang Chao could no longer tolerate them, and he wanted these soldiers to go back, definitely not to be incorporated into his own army, but to let them do hard labor until death.

"Happy. This town has a toast to you! ”

The four towns in Jiangbei were originally the general soldiers, and the general soldiers were already the highest military attachés in their official positions, but after they opened the town in Jiangbei, they were called town ministers, which were distinguished from the ordinary general soldiers, and they were also called the general towns, and they all had many general soldiers under their commands.

Soon after Wang Puqing suppressed the rebellious soldiers nearby, he also returned to the camp to rest, and when he saw Huang Degong here in Yang Chao, he immediately raised his eyebrows and almost fought.

Yang Chao didn't want Wang Pu to fight with him, and he still needed Huang Degong's cooperation at this time, because Yang Chao had other plans.

"Wang Pu, this official is about to leave immediately, you stay here to cooperate with the Marquis of Jingnan to clean up the rebellious soldiers, and you must not let a rebellious soldier become a disaster in the township. The official will give you ten days, and after ten days, you will go directly down the river to Guazhou, and the official will be waiting for you in Yangzhou. ”

Wang Pu was a little reluctant to cooperate with Huang Degong.

"If you don't want to, then let many men stay, you go to Yangzhou with me to defend the city!"

Wang Pu was even more reluctant to give up the credit for cleaning up the rebellious soldiers.

"Let's stay!"

Yang Chao smiled, comforted him, and asked him to stay and drink with Huang Degong, asking him to drink Huang Degong.

Then the two rough billets shouted that they couldn't fight the wine, but the wine rack could still fight.

Yang Chao took Yuan Jixian to take a boat and immediately went down the river, only the personal soldiers led by Zhao Kang and many elite soldiers in the hands of men on the boat, and the rest of the soldiers were left to Wang Pu, so that he could lead the rout of the left army.

When he arrived in Nanjing, he put down Yuan Jixian, and at the same time sent a letter to Yuan Jixian to justify the crime of losing the city, hoping that the imperial court would continue to appoint him to patrol Jiangxi, and the soldiers sent troops with him to recover Jiujiang, and the Jiujiang defenders rebelled with Zuo Liangyu, so Jiujiang was still in the hands of these rebels at this time.

Yang Chao didn't have time to clean up such rebels, so the imperial court casually sent an army, with the emperor's edict, and in the case of Zuo Liangyu's destruction, he believed that those rebels would rebel again.

Yang Chao didn't even get off the boat, and immediately rushed to Guazhou and went north to Yangzhou.

The tense situation brooks no room for delay.

Fortunately, there was no delay, the situation in the north was beyond Yang Chao's expectations, and the Ming army in Jiangbei did not stop the Qing army at all, and either collapsed at the first touch, or swarmed to surrender.

After Duoduo's army pacified the Liukou bandits in Henan, it went south to Jianghuai, and the first to bear the brunt was naturally the Gao Jie Department who guarded Xuzhou and Sizhou.

Gao Jiebu should be regarded as the more effective army among the four towns.

However, in the case of gathering the main force in the case of heavy defense in Sizhou, it was defeated by the elite of the Eight Banners led by Duoduo, Gao Jie fled, and was ambushed by Xu Dingguo, the general soldier of Henan, who had secretly surrendered to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Gao Jie did not guard against Xu Dingguo, and was ambushed and killed, and Gao Jie's troops were in chaos.

Shi Kefa was sitting in Yang Chao at this time, and when he heard about the defeat in the north, he was already panicked, and ordered all the soldiers to concentrate in Yangzhou, and he actually planned to abandon all the cities north of Yangzhou and concentrate his troops to defend Yangzhou, probably thinking that as long as he held Yangzhou, he could protect Jiangnan.

After Gao Jie's remnants got this order, they immediately routed down the canal, robbed as much as they could, and were denied entry into the city after Huai'an, so they plundered the four fields and continued to go south!

It was only after fleeing to Yangzhou that it began to reorganize!

Gao Jie was killed, and all the soldiers entered Yangzhou, and Shi Kefa ordered them to be stationed outside Yangzhou and allocate rice and grain relief.

Soon the rest of Gao Jie's troops stabilized, although more than half of the troops were lost, only about 30,000 people remained, but the main elite were all there, Gao Jie started from the peasant army, and was a general under Li Zicheng, and his status was higher than the current Liu Zongmin, so he should be regarded as the number one person under Li Zicheng.

Therefore, his troops are actually the same as Li Zicheng's army composition, the core and main force are the peasant army that began to follow from the northwest, these people fought from northern Shaanxi to Sichuan, northwest to Jiangnan, most of China has been mobile all over, has been broken up countless times, and has long been accustomed to it, so his core can be completely preserved under the rout, I have to say that it is due to experience.

And the main officers are all there, so in addition to the loss of the main general in the battle and the military spirit is a little unstable, the combat effectiveness is still there.

Shi Kefa then temporarily appointed Gao Jie's general Li Benshen as the commander to temporarily command Gao Jie's army, and Gao Jie's title was made by his son Gao Yuanjue as the son, hoping to stabilize the rest of Gao Jie's army as soon as possible.

However, at this time, the remaining three towns in Jiangbei, which had not encountered the attack of the Qing army for the time being, suddenly jointly wrote: "Gao Jie has no merit, arrogant and lewd; (History) Kefa wants his son to inherit it, and Ben Shen is the admiral, what kind of lungs and intestines? Please divide it among others. ”

Seeing that Gao Jie was killed in battle and his troops were damaged, the three towns actually came up with the idea of annexing Gao Jie's generals.

This move made Officer Gao Jie panic.

At this time, Yang Chao rushed to Yangzhou City.

Shi Kefa was reprimanded by the three towns, obviously completely lost control of these warlords, he, the superintendent, had no effect, seeing Yang Chao's arrival, as if he had found the backbone, he hurriedly invited Yang Chao to discuss the military situation together! (To be continued.) )