Hundreds of thousands of people died and millions of people were displaced, and the intruding army, which had also suffered heavy losses, retreated for more than a dozen miles, and soon withdrew from Kaifeng Prefecture and re-established itself on the edge of the Yellow Flood Area. Xu Ping gathered the stragglers, and at the same time helped the military families who broke into the camp to settle down.

After retreating to a safe place, Xu Ping, who finally took a breath, hurriedly began to count the troops, and the seven battalions under his command broke into the army, there should have been more than 40,000 soldiers before the flood, but now there are only more than 10,000 left, and the loss of equipment and weapons is extremely heavy.

"There should be a lot of brothers who have been separated, so let's use our banner so that they can find us." Xu Ping ordered his subordinates to send cavalry, and once the water became smaller, they would enter the Yellow Flood Area to make contact, so that the lost subordinates could return to the building.

A few days later, Xu Ping and Li Zicheng and other generals who broke into the camp got in touch, and it sounded like the other departments were not much better than Xu Ping, and Luo Rucai was even worse. Cao Ying's elite cavalry originally had more than 3,000 people, and Luo Rucai had worked hard to strengthen his descendants, and many particularly elite cavalry even reached one person and three horses, such luxurious equipment allowed him to easily leave the battlefield without encountering any losses in the first battle of Zhongdu.

But this kind of equipment could not guarantee that Cao Ying's troops would be able to escape the flood, and now Luo Rucai only had more than a thousand of his men still around, and everyone was in shock. Due to the successive victories in Henan in the previous two years, Luo Rucai was also able to recruit tens of thousands of strong men to serve as auxiliaries for his cavalry troops. Luo Rucai estimated that nearly half of his army was swept away by the flood, and those soldiers who narrowly escaped also scattered and did not know where to go.

"I'm afraid Cao Ying won't be able to recover within a year." Luo Rucai, who looked gloomy, said to Xu Ping's envoy.

In the invasion army around Kaifeng, Xu Ping was responsible for the tight siege of the city, Luo Rucai was in the south of the city, and Li Zicheng's old battalion was stationed farther away from them, so his loss ratio was relatively small - but this was also compared with Xu Ping, Li Dingguo, Luo Rucai, the most unlucky people, the absolute losses of Li Zicheng's old camp were still quite staggering: his five battalions were originally expanded to 40,000 men through a series of military victories, and now there are only more than 12,000 left.

"Now we have only about 30,000 or 40,000 people left in our army." Xu Ping introduced to his subordinates that the morale of the intrusive army was low and the morale of the army was fluctuating, and it was the lowest combat effectiveness in recent years: "Fortunately, it is almost winter, and fortunately, the new army has just been hit hard this year, and they will not come to attack us." ”

Xu Ping's subordinates also felt that this was a great luck in misfortune, if the imperial court attacked the Henan army at this time, the army would be in great danger due to lack of food and clothing.

"My lord, the general thinks that this may not be a natural disaster." Zhou Dongtian groaned and said the thoughts that had been haunting his mind for the past few days, and after seeing the tragic situation of the troops, Zhou Dongtian felt that not only could he not get this thought out of his mind, but it became stronger and stronger: "Isn't this Dimo dug by dog officers and soldiers?" ”

None of the other officers spoke, and they now had similar thoughts, but they just didn't say them.

"Hou Xun won't be so frustrated," Xu Ping still thinks that the possibility of natural disasters is relatively large, although it is a dry season recently, but digging the Yellow River embankment is still too crazy to think: "Hou Xun is the supervisor of the Ming court, he drowned so many people, many of them are gentry, how can he explain to his court?" ”

……

Next to Xu Ping's newly established collection center, the immortal Yue Mu had just reported to the troops, and the officer in charge of containment was happy to have returned to the army, and now Xu Ping urgently needed every veteran to rebuild the army. The containment officer asked Yue Mu to have a hot meal, and then immediately returned to the camp, the work of counting the surviving soldiers of the guards battalion was in full swing, and what worried Xu Ping the most at the moment was that the officers and soldiers took the opportunity to attack, and the task was to restore the army's combat effectiveness as soon as possible.

After the end of the report, Yue Mu took Miss Liu to the women's camp and pleaded with the officer in charge to let this girl join the women's camp in the camp, and the officer in charge asked, "Is this your wife?" ”

"No," Yue Mu replied, "but an orphan girl." ”

"Anyone else?"

"She has no family."

……

After the initial panic, Sun Kewang said that he would take a team of soldiers to Guide to have a look, at this time Xu Ping rejudged the situation, thinking that the possibility of the new army attacking the camp through the Yellow Flood Area in winter was very small, so he let Sun Kewang leave.

At the same time, after learning that all the camps had withdrawn from Kaifeng Mansion, the imperial court ordered Hou Suisuo to be taken into Beijing, and after he was taken into the imperial prison, the Ming court began to publicize through the Di Bao: The digging of the Yellow River and the breaking of the embankment was not done by the Ming army.

After seeing these reports, Yu Shenhe was furious: "If we had already received the news that the officers and soldiers had broken the embankment, it would have been too late to escape, how could we have time to dig the embankment, and besides, there is a flat river near Kaifeng, there are plains everywhere, and we have no city towers to hide. ”

Zhou Dongtian, who has always been calm, also scolded, after learning that Hou Xun sent a boat to meet the king of Zhou at the first time, he began to suspect that this was not a natural disaster but the Ming army digging the river, and now he was about to go crazy after seeing the imperial court report confirming that the Ming army had dug the embankment: "Our army is on the south bank, and as a result, we also went to the south bank to dig the embankment and reverse irrigation, are we stupid enough to think that we can dig the north bank by opening the south embankment to counter the officers and soldiers on the north bank?" ”

"Like the guard in Xuzhou, Hou Xun doesn't care how many people die, he only cares about the land, even if the people of Henan are dead, as long as the land is still there," in the midst of a loud scolding, Xu Ping also seemed calm: "The faint monarch and the Ming court seem to have not lost their conscience, so they don't dare to take on this kind of thing alone, if the Ming court not only does not say that we dug the embankment, but instead advocates that digging the embankment is a great achievement, I think it will be even worse." ”

"Now this dog official is going to reap the consequences." Yu Shenhe said hatefully.

"It's hard, I don't think the faint king will punish him in the end." The newspaper only said that Hou Xun was dismissed and investigated because of his ineffective suppression of bandits, not because of the deaths and injuries of the people, Xu Ping knew that even those Sichuan army generals who killed Yang Zhan, the imperial court did not move a single cold hair on them: "What is Hou Xun's ineffective suppression of bandits?" He obviously drowned our vitality. Now it's just that there are too many people who impeach him, and the court has to hide it, and when the limelight passes, I guess the faint king will definitely treat him leniently. ”

Suppressing the indignation of his subordinates, Xu Ping ordered all battalions to step up the expansion of barracks, build toilets and other sanitary facilities, in short, everything must be done in accordance with the sanitary regulations of the new army: "...... Refugees or our soldiers are never allowed to drink raw water, and more firewood is cut so that everyone has hot water. Every catastrophe, especially after a flood, is followed by a plague, and so many soldiers and civilians are crowded here, and once the plague spreads, it will be troublesome. ”

As people continued to return, Xu Ping's confidence also increased slightly, and he asked the training teams of each battalion and all field troops to participate in the aftermath work: "There is no need to train new recruits. Xu Ping laughed bitterly at himself, there is no shortage of baggage equipment now, and he said to Chen Zhe: "Anyway, we don't have gunpowder and guns to train recruits." ”

……

In the midst of this chaos, an unexpected person came to Xu Ping's tent to ask for a meeting.

"Grass people Yuan Feng, knock on the general."

"Central Plains Hero?!" Xu Ping was quite surprised when he heard the name of the person who came, he had persuaded him to surrender many times before, but this person did not enter the army, but this time he brought some of his apprentices to Xiangcheng to join the army: "Yuan Daxia, please get up." ”

The prostrate Central Plains hero shouted: "The grass people have eyes and no beads, and they don't know how to lift, so that the general can know that the grass people still have many martial arts friends in Henan, if the general does not give up, the grass people will write to them and let them come out to serve the king." ”

These heroes not only have channels for smuggling salt, iron, and munitions, but also all of them are local snakes, if these people help, Xu Ping can better understand local intelligence, and accordingly curb the activities of the Ming court spies, Xu Ping saw Yuan Feng lying on the ground and refused to get up, and hurriedly went over to help him.

Xu Ping saw that the Central Plains hero was very emotional, so he wanted the Central Plains hero to sit down and talk, but the Central Plains hero kept repeating what he had said countless times - that is, to kill the officers and soldiers cleanly. After repeating these words seven or eight times in a row, the tough guy of the Central Plains Hero suddenly burst into tears. It turned out that including Yuan Feng, there were a total of seven brothers who were righteous, and in the Kaifeng water, all six of his brothers were drowned.

……

A few days later, Xu Ping convened a plenary meeting again to discuss the aftermath.

The expansion of the barracks and other work did not go very smoothly, the main reason was the lack of supplies, and the battalion commanders wanted to put their limited forces on the work of collecting grain and grass: "My lord, we definitely don't have enough food to eat. ”

"Compared to the baggage, the troops we have lost are trivial." Zhou Dongtian reported to Xu Ping that the problem was even more serious than expected, that the hard-managed Kaifeng Prefecture base had been destroyed, and that a large amount of grain had been scattered and stored in various counties, but now these reserves were destroyed by floods; In addition, there is the problem of refugees, tens of thousands of refugees fled from the Yellow Flood Zone, and after seeing the notice of the various departments of the camp to collect stragglers, these refugees rushed to the camp area, saying that they wanted to serve as soldiers and eat food: "Originally, these were the people under our rule, and if there was no flood, we could have obtained food and clothing from them, but now they have all come to eat us." ”

"How many are there?"

"There have been as many as 50,000 in the past few days, and it is estimated that it will soon exceed 100,000," Zhou Dongtian's face was embarrassed, although he had never been responsible for internal affairs, but the basic understanding was still there - that is, Xu Ping did not have enough inventory, and he could not collect materials from the people as in previous years: "So many mouths, don't say now, even last year, you can't afford to raise it." ”

"yes, I can't afford to support that many people."

"There is another problem, my lord, which is our military discipline." Immediately following Zhou Dongtian, Chen Zhe reported another, worse news: "There is already a plunder problem in our army. ”

"Plunder?" Xu Ping shouted.

"Yes."

"Plundering refugees?"

"Yes." Chen Zhe reconfirmed that he reported to Xu Ping that after the flood, the military discipline of the camp had generally begun to have problems, and that Cao Ying and other allied troops had begun to brazenly rob the people to supplement themselves, while Li Zicheng seemed helpless.

"If it were just the other battalions, we would have pretended not to see it, but now your subordinates are doing this, and they are by no means a minority." Chen Zhe took out a list for Xu Ping to see, and the names of some of the guards battalion were also on this list, and after these Xu Ping's descendants saw that no one cared about the behavior of the friendly troops, they also appeared to steal and rob openly: "Our officers have always strictly observed military discipline, but now they have an ambiguous attitude towards this. The officers' reaction to this incident was consistent with their request for Xu Ping to give priority to the issue of grain and grass, to which Chen Zhe reported worriedly: "The officers of the battalion know that we don't have much stock, and they all want to do their best to collect grain and grass for the winter." ”

The western and southern parts of Henan were far from being operated, and tens of thousands of hedgehogs were gathered in one place, and it was impossible to collect enough supplies to cross the east.

"I have several battalions under my command, and the reason why I can strictly abide by military discipline is that I can ensure that they are fed and clothed. If you can't give the soldiers enough food and clothing, no one can try to maintain military discipline, even Grandpa Yue can't do it. Xu Ping remembered that Yue Fei himself ran a variety of businesses for military needs, so although the military discipline was strict, soldiers could still have no complaints, not to mention that Yue Fei was still an officer and soldier, and breaking into the camp was more similar to a bandit.

"If the adults don't strictly prohibit plunder, our military discipline will be ruined!" When Chen Zhe heard Xu Ping's words, he thought he wanted to connive, as an officer who never participated in internal affairs and logistics, Chen Zhe always considered the problem from a purely military perspective: "My lord, military discipline is our foundation, if there is no military discipline, what will we use to fight the new army in the future?" ”

"Of course I will not agree to plunder the people's property," Xu Ping is not unaware of what Chen Zhe said, since he founded the Guards Battalion, it is by strict military discipline that has relied on strict military discipline to maintain combat effectiveness: "Not to mention that it is precisely because the military discipline of our army is far above that of the officers and soldiers and even the new army, and we have never harmed the people of Henan, that they will not support the officers and soldiers but support us thieves." ”

Without the support of the people of Henan, Xu Ping estimated that he would not be able to defeat the strong with the weak in the first two times, and defeat the new army again and again.

"Your Excellency is wise." Chen Zhe saw that Xu Ping agreed with his opinion, and his heart was relieved, and he hurriedly asked, "What are your plans?" ”

"Intended?" Xu Ping smiled bitterly: "Let's see if General Sun has a cornucopia that can conjure cotton clothes and grain." ”

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