The mask on Zhu Houzhao's face is gone......

Today's Zhu Houzhao has a thick beard and a face full of vicissitudes, and the former Emperor Zhengde, who only knew how to have fun and was a little haggard, is already like two people.

In the middle of August of the first year of Jiajing, Zhu Houzhao led 3,000 musketeers out of the customs, and now it is the beginning of November!

The ambitious Zhu Houzhao's goal is to learn from the famous generals of the ancients, turn to war for thousands of miles, attack the grassland, and inevitably restore the glory of his ancestors, sweep away the decadent military style of the Ming Dynasty since the Tumu Fort, and then fight a hundred years of peace for the Ming Dynasty!

In order to achieve this strategic goal, 3,000 musketeers and 6,000 war horses drove to the steppe.

However, one person and two horses are not for transfer, but to turn the war horse into a pack horse and carry a lot of baggage!

The soldiers and horses did not move the grain and grass first, which shows the importance of logistics and transportation in the war, but it was a conventional war, and it was not suitable for the grassland at all, at least not for Zhu Houzhao!

Zhu Houzhao's purpose is to make a surprise attack, find the main force of the Mongolian army, and annihilate it in one battle!

And then sweep the steppe!

Of course, just 3,000 soldiers and horses want to wipe out the entire grassland, if this were changed before, including Zhu Houzhao himself, they would feel that it was pure nonsense.

I think that when Huo Qubing ascended to the altar of famous generals, that is, when the Battle of Hexi achieved great fame, the army he led also had 10,000 elite horsemen!

But Zhu Houzhao is full of confidence, and the source of his confidence is firearms!

To be honest, Zhu Houzhao, who has always felt that he is a fierce general, has never put firearms in his eyes before, this is not that he is short-sighted, but that there are indeed great drawbacks in Daming's firearms.

Range, accuracy, bore, water......

There are too many problems with the bird, so for Zhu Houzhao, firearms are easier to use artillery, and there are also many problems with artillery.

Artillery that can fire more than 20 catties of iron bullets can easily weigh thousands of catties, and transporting one such cannon requires more than a dozen healthy horses and manpower.

Small artillery has a short range and low power, and its actual effect is not as good as that of a bow and crossbow, so it is naturally not welcomed.

But now the world has changed......

The artillery and muskets made by my brother's military workshop greatly overcome these shortcomings, not that they are perfect, but they are indeed a sharp mess.

Zhu Houzhao is not stupid, he naturally thought that since his brother has made such a sharp firearm, why don't he contribute it to him, is it possible that he wants to rebel?

If the elder brother really wants to rebel, with the thousands of soldiers and horses of Yongwangwei, plus those soldiers who were trained and then retired in Huzhou, Zhu Houzhao believes that the elder brother can pull out tens of thousands of soldiers and horses in the shortest possible time, and it is an extremely terrifying elite soldier with such firearms!

With such an elite army, its combat effectiveness is definitely stronger than the 5,000 foot soldiers in the first battle of Dushikou!

Because these soldiers have been trained for several years, and more than eighty percent of the infantry soldiers in the Battle of Dushikou are the original three battalions and newly recruited soldiers, and the training time is only more than a year!

An army with terrifying combat effectiveness, Zhu Houzhao doesn't think that any army in the Ming Dynasty can stop its soldiers, if the elder brother really wants to rebel, do not consider the baggage logistics, but choose to fight to nourish the war, then at most two months, it is enough to push to the foot of the capital!

However, the idea that the elder brother would rebel hardly stayed in Zhu Houzhao's mind for half a moment, he is such a person, as long as he is willing to believe in a person, then he will trust it without reservation!

is like Liu Jin at the beginning, Liu Jin is certainly the sharp knife that Zhu Houzhao released to clean up the civil officials, but why Liu Jin?

Because Liu Jin is the companion who served him as a big partner, and he is a person he can definitely trust, so when Liu Jian and Xie Qian, these important ministers asked to kill Liu Jin, Zhu Houzhao directly compromised, and even hoped that the ministers could give Liu Jin a way out, for example, he could let Liu Jin go to Nanjing to guard the eunuch, and if it was not good, he could also let him go to guard the tomb.

However, the insistence of the ministers finally aroused Zhu Houzhao's rebellious mentality, coupled with Liu Jin's crying made his heart soft, so the civil officials finally missed the best period to exile Liu Jin, which also caused the world to blow a whirlwind of terror for Liu Jin to take revenge on the officials.

Later, Liu Jin was ambushed, and Zhu Houzhao could still think of Liu Jin's goodness, and said, "Why did the big companion rebel?", so that Zhang Yong was almost scared of pee......

Although the two brothers have different hobbies, they are the same mother and compatriots, and they grew up together in the palace, and the relationship is pretty good anyway, so Zhu Houzhao feels that he is definitely suspicious, and it is absolutely impossible for the elder brother to rebel against him.

There is no other reason, that is, I think that if my brother really wants to be the emperor, then he can give up this throne anytime and anywhere, and this bird throne is already depressed.

And the queen mother is still alive, her youngest son rebelled against her eldest son, and the angry queen mother may seek death, even if the younger brother takes the throne, he will inevitably be ashamed of the world.

He Zhu Houzhao is not Emperor Jianwen, Emperor Yongle was forced to rebel by Zhu Yunwen, and he only had to dig out his heart and lungs for his younger brother......

This time to lead troops out of the customs, Zhu Houzhao can command tens of thousands or even tens of thousands of troops, you must know that he can completely mobilize tens of thousands of Shence army musketeers to the north, but he only brings 3,000!

Because what he needs is speed, whether it is a breakthrough or a retreat, he needs speed, and the only one who can guarantee speed is the war horse!

The Ming Dynasty is not the Great Song Dynasty, and there is not so much shortage of war horses, but the excellent war horses are not rich, and it is not easy for Zhu Houzhao to mobilize 6,000 war horses in a short time.

Six thousand horses does not mean that six thousand cavalry can be equipped, because it is necessary to transport baggage, and if you do not use war horses to transport baggage, but use mules and horses, the speed of the march will inevitably be seriously affected.

In addition, it is not food but ammunition that firearms rely on, and if the ammunition is exhausted, then the firearms themselves are not good at using knives and guns, even if the new firearms are equipped with bayonets.

As for grain, Zhu Houzhao only prepared 3,000 soldiers and horses for 15 days' worth of food, as well as hay for the war horses to eat.

To put it bluntly, Zhu Houzhao wants to use war to feed the war and plunder all the grassland tribes he encounters!

In the past three months, Zhu Houzhao led the army to advance and implement a sweeping policy, sweeping through more than a dozen grasslands such as Xilingrad, Baiyin Xile, Zhurihe, Horqin, and Subohan, and exterminating more than 70 small and medium-sized tribes!

The tribes that were conquered were slaughtered bloodily when they met with stubborn resistance, and those who did not resist fiercely were mainly surrendered.

Of course, the surrender is not in line with Zhu Houzhao's character, according to his meaning, it should be to kill him wherever he passes!

As long as the grassland people are killed to extinction, the disaster of the grassland will naturally be gone!

However, Shu Tianlu disagreed......

Shu Tianlu disagreed, even Zhu Houzhao did not withdraw......

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