The first summer is still clear and peaceful, and the grass has not stopped......

Nellore in late spring was very sweltering, the stench of rotting corpses filled the air, and the corpses exposed from the rubble were covered with corpse spots.

The disgusting corpse water collects in the potholes, forming "small puddles".

Soldiers wearing face toveils were pouring fire oil into the city, and there were thousands of people in sight.

The corpses of the city head were kicked down one by one, and Lu Xiangsheng, Wang Zhong and the other two generals walked up to the city head and had a panoramic view of the entire Nellor.

What can you do in 10 days? In this era, I am afraid that even a market town of 1,000 people could not be established, but the Ming army used a large amount of gunpowder and advanced firearms in its hands to turn the entire Nellore from prosperity to ruins in just ten days.

As far as the eye can see, the entire city, except for the Ming army, is the broken eaves and stench corpses.

Faced with this situation, Lu Xiangsheng asked Wang Zhong without looking back: "Have the 20,000 prisoners of war been handed over to Huang Dudu?" ”

"I have sent someone to escort him north, and there is no news from Tangqi for the time being." Wang Chong responded respectfully, and Lu Xiangsheng also bowed slightly to indicate that he knew.

Without waiting for him to issue any military orders, a thousand households trotted up the city wall and waved beside the four of them:

"Inspector, the oil has been poured out."

"Hmm......" Lu Xiangsheng responded, and then ordered:

"The whole army withdrew from Nellore, set fire to ......"

With Lu Xiangsheng's words, thousands of Ming troops withdrew from Nellore, followed by a fire that set fire to all the corpses and ruins in the city.

The orange-red flames and billowing black smoke reflected the Dusk Nellore City Wall very strangely, and Lu Xiangsheng took his soldiers and horses to watch the big bonfire in the camp outside the city.

The sky was getting darker, and the fires were still ongoing, illuminating the dark night sky and illuminating the forests and rivers outside the city.

By dawn, all the religious and cultural buildings in Nellore City had collapsed and disappeared, and tens of thousands of first-class Jingguan had been built on the ferry port on the north bank of the Benel River.

Some of the soldiers of the Ming army stayed up all night and did not finish their work until dawn, wiping the blood from their knives with coarse cloths.

It was also in this situation that a team of Tang cavalry brought a piece of bad news to Huang Long in the barracks.

"Governor, Inspector Lu is ready to lead troops to encircle and suppress the rebels in the hinterland, and he has specially ordered to come down to inform the governor ......"

In the tent, a retinue was helping Huang Long get dressed, while the captain of the Tang cavalry knelt in the tent to reply to the news.

Huang Long had his back to him, so that he could not see Huang Long's expression.

After the report, he knelt for a long time, and then Huang Long turned his back to him and said before getting dressed:

"I know, you tell Inspector Lu that you don't need to tell me these things in the future, as for the matter of the Governor's Mansion of the Five Armies, I will tell him nothing."

Huang Long's clothes were dressed, but he walked to the glass mirror in the corner of the tent to look at himself.

"Commanded under the mark...... Marked down the ...... of retirement"

Tang Qi was not a fool, and he could hear that Huang Long was very uncomfortable, so he returned and withdrew from the camp after receiving the order.

However, after he withdrew from the camp, Huang Long's entourage next to him spoke:

"Dudu, this scholar didn't take you seriously......"

"People are civil officials, why can't they take a martial artist like me in their eyes?" Huang Long turned around, the expression on his face was very ugly, and his tone was a little yin and yang.

Obviously, he was a little dissatisfied with Lu Xiangsheng's actions of mobilizing troops to leave without authorization, and leading troops to encircle and suppress the rebels without waiting for his consent.

Although Lu Xiangsheng is the inspector of the Xiaoxiyang Supervision Department, the inspector is only a third-grade official, and he Huanglong is a second-grade official.

When he opened up the Ryukyus, recovered the old port, landed in Cochin, and suppressed the governors of European countries, Lu Xiangsheng was just a small Liaodong envoy.

Although Huang Long knew that the King of Qi sent Lu Xiangsheng to Xiao Xiyang as an envoy because he was worried that he would be too big, and Lu Xiangsheng did this to avoid suspicion by not intersecting with him too much, but this did not affect his discomfort.

Captured Nellore yesterday and left early this morning......

To put it mildly, even if Lu Xiangsheng stayed until noon, Huang Long would not be so bad.

"Governor, dissipate your anger, Nellor has been taken, and now that the eastern coastal corridor is opened, we can also go north to support General Qi's army."

After confirming that the governor of his family was really uncomfortable, he deliberately spoke out to appease.

"It's not worth my anger, just a scholar." Huang Long straightened his beard for a moment, and then ordered his entourage:

"Tell Shu'er to straighten out the troops and horses, and in an hour the army will go north to Yanan to rest, and another order will be sent to the Ceylon Province to make all the saltpeter in the stock into gunpowder."

A sinister look appeared on Huang Long's unruly face: "Relying on the rebellion in my rear to seize my territory, these southern captives should be killed!" ”

"Kill?" He spoke for a few seconds, and asked tentatively: "Governor, aren't we waiting for more troops?" ”

"The increase in troops is going to increase, you will take my handwritten letter later, let people send it back to Daming, and ask His Highness to increase the number of troops by another 30,000."

"As for the southern captives, before the reinforcements arrive, I will first fight the battle line back!"

"It's just a group of lonely hairy blood-drinking guys, and they dare to break ground on Tai Sui's head."

Huang Long had already shifted his target from the rebels to the Mughals' 120,000 southern invasion army, but his words made his followers hesitate:

"Governor, but there are still more than 100,000 rebels in the mainland, if we withdraw......"

"Didn't the scholar want to put down the rebellion? With 50,000 people in his hands, can't even these more than 100,000 farmers who picked up hoes clean up?! Huang Long mockingly responded:

"If you can't clean it up, roll up and cover it early, don't show off your talent in the little West, and lose the dignity of the dynasty."

"Yes......" was helpless, he knew that he had to be decent, and what Lu Xiangsheng did was fine for other officials, but not for his own governor.

After responding to the situation, Huang Long arranged the things explained by Huang Long one by one, and Huang Long set foot on the Northern Expedition again with less than 15,000 soldiers and horses after stationing a battalion of soldiers and horses in Nellor.

This time he left behind enough defensive forces in the eastern coastal city-states, vowing to secure the rear while recovering the lost territory in the north.

Under his arrangement, the Ming army began to pull out the camp and march north.

At the same time, as time passed, the temperature on the Deccan Plateau began to rise gradually, and the hot and humid environment not only made the Ming army led by Huang Long and Lu Xiangsheng begin to suffer non-combat attrition, but also made Qi Yuanfu and others in the defense line of the Godavari River miserable.

Since the Ming army was basically attacking coastal cities in the summer of last year, there was not much performance of adaptation.

However, when they came to the high mountains and dense forests in the north, the changes in the natural environment caused many people to experience temporary discomfort symptoms.

Many soldiers suffered from allergies, pimples, eczema, insomnia, diarrhea and other discomforts.

These phenomena made many soldiers unable to eat, and they could not eat a little of it, even though they had plenty of food.

Everyone's body is rapidly losing weight, and the spirit of the day is very tired, and I often feel tired.

Even strong generals such as Zhu Yujian and Li Zicheng are also prone to colds, and their whole people quickly lose weight.

"Damn, in a month, I lost ten catties of meat, and I don't know when it will come back......"

Although his voice was weak and he was still lying on a hospital bed in the civil engineering work in the trench, Li Zicheng's mouth still kept talking.

Liu Zongmin, who lived with him, was transferred to the seaside city of Yanan, hundreds of miles away, and with Liu Zongmin, there were also hundreds of soldiers who were not accustomed to the water and soil.

In just half a month, the number of soldiers who were transferred due to the lack of adaptation to the water and soil reached more than 3,000 people, accounting for almost one-tenth of the number of the Ming army.

In such an atmosphere, the morale of the Ming army on the Godavari River defense line was constantly at a low ebb.

"Tuk Tuk ......"

"Big brother, the porridge is here."

Li Zijing's voice sounded after the knock on the door, Li Zicheng heard this, coughed a few times, and then forced himself to shout to the door: "Come in......"

As soon as he said this, with the "creaking" sound of the wooden door, Li Zijing pushed the door into the underground wooden house, and walked in with a large bowl of porridge.

He moved a tree stump stool with his feet, then put the porridge at the head of Li Zicheng's bed, and sat on the stump stool himself.

"Ahem...... It's wild vegetable porridge again......"

Looking at the bowl of green wild vegetable porridge, Li Zicheng couldn't raise his appetite, but he also knew that not eating it was against his body.

Picking up this bowl of wild vegetable porridge, Li Zicheng gritted his teeth and drank it all in a dozen seconds.

This is a liquid food, if it is rice, Li Zicheng is afraid that he will choke to death here, but ......

"Vomit ......"

As soon as the porridge was drunk, Li Zicheng felt a wave of nausea, and instantly retched on the side of the bed.

He hadn't vomited any food, but the retching had made his eyes bulge and red, and his face was very pale.

Seeing this, Li Zijing hurriedly ran out of the wooden house, and after half a cup of tea, he rushed back to the house with the military doctor.

Li Zicheng, who had finished retching, was leaning on the head of the bed in a state of exhaustion when they arrived, in a trance.

Seeing this, the military doctor hurriedly checked his pulse, and then frowned:

"Li Shen is not in a good state, it seems that he has to transfer to Yanan to recuperate......"

"I'm not going!" Hearing that he was going to transfer, Li Zicheng shouted as if he was returning to the light, and then coughed violently:

"I waited for more than three months to wait for gunpowder, and I didn't want to retreat like this without giving this group of Nanyu a little color, I was unwilling to ......."

"Big brother!" Li Zijing looked at Li Zicheng's self-tortured appearance, he was anxious, and his tone couldn't help but be a little heavier.

After all, they are all people who have studied in Yanshan, and Li Zijing and Li Zicheng actually know very well that if a small water and soil adaptation cannot be treated in time, it may also cause death.

Therefore, looking at Li Zicheng's self-tortured appearance, Li Zijing gritted his teeth and said simply:

"I'll go to General Qi now, find a boat to send you to Yanan!"

"Li Zijing, your wings are hard...... Ahem, ahem! Li Zicheng didn't have time to stop him, so he coughed continuously.

After coughing, he fell asleep groggily, while the military doctor lifted Li Zicheng's quilt and examined him carefully.

By the time Li Zijing returned, the military doctor had already written down the method of cultivation.

"Like the other soldiers, after returning to Yanan, you can recuperate in the city and wait for the summer to pass."

"Well......" Li Zijing took the prescription, and sure enough, he saw all kinds of diseases such as pimples and eczema.

"Carry General Li to the boat!"

After seeing the patient, Li Zijing ordered his four soldiers to carry the drowsy Li Zicheng out of the wooden house, and then walked down the trench to a simple wharf on the surface.

Here, boatloads of gunpowder, medicinal herbs, and baggage were carried down, and empty boats were filled with soldiers who were not accustomed to the water and soil.

Under such tight conditions, even the staff members needed two people to be crammed into one cabin.

Li Zicheng was carried onto the bed in the cabin, and he was always conscious in the process, but his brain was dizzy and he couldn't do anything effective to resist.

Finally, when he was a little sober, he heard a familiar voice, and broke into the cabin noisily.

"Which bad thing disturbs my dream......"

Li Zicheng scolded in a low voice, but due to excessive coughing in his throat, his voice was very hoarse, and no one could hear him at all.

He reluctantly turned his head to look at the person who was sent to the bed, and at this glance, his spirit instantly improved and he was happy.

"Isn't this my little Tang Wang's grandson......"

With a bit of sarcastic ridicule, Li Zicheng looked at Zhu Yujian, who was carried by Zhu Yujian, Zhu Yulu, Zhu Yuyi, and Zhu Yuji, and couldn't help laughing.

"Li Zicheng?"

Hearing Li Zicheng's voice, Zhu Yujin and the others found out that there was actually a person lying on the bed, and it was Li Zicheng, who they thought was very "vulgar" on weekdays.

"Second brother, change the cabin, don't let the eldest brother live with this guy."

Zhu Yulu glanced at Li Zicheng with dissatisfied eyes, and then suggested to Zhu Yucheng.

It's just that before they finished their words, Zhu Yujian on the bed pulled the hem of Zhu Yujian's clothes.

At this moment, Zhu Yujian's cheeks were sunken, and he lost more than ten pounds, his eyes were dark, and he was very weak.

"That's it......"

Zhu Yujian was uncomfortably tight, and he didn't want to argue about the location of the cabin at the moment, he just wanted to go down the river early and arrive in Yanan to recuperate.

"Yes ......" Although he was unwilling, after all, Zhu Yujian opened his mouth, so Zhu Yujian and others could only get off the boat after placing Zhu Yujian.

However, not long after they got off the ship, the ship went down the river with a full ship of soldiers, and Li Zicheng and Zhu Yujian on the hospital bed also coughed one after another.

The condition of the two is similar, both suffer from wind chills plus pimples and eczema.

They were fine, and although they were sick, the soldiers on the ship would come to look after them from time to time.

Compared to them, the ordinary soldiers who lived in other cabins were uncomfortable.

Most of them were crammed into a room with eight people, coughing incessantly.

Based on the speed of the Godavari River and the speed of the boat, it is estimated that the people of this boat will reach Yanan by the sea in two days.

After arriving in Yanan, their bodies will slowly heal.

However, if even Yanan can't take care of their bodies, then they can basically only be sent to Ceylon, or directly return to Daming mainland by Huangdian's ship.

Boatloads of soldiers were sent away, hundreds of them almost every day.

Such non-combat attrition gave Qi Yuanfu a headache, and at the same time, the pressure on the Ming army on the front line gradually increased.

Fortunately, the delivery of gunpowder was sufficient, and the Ming army could rely on artillery to counter-suppress the Mughal army.

However, as summer slowly approached, both sides of the front line knew that the day was not far off when both sides were short-handed......

"It dropped another foot two, and it looks like the Godavari River won't be able to stop the south for a month at most."

Measuring the water level by the river, Qi Yuanfu, who was already fifty-six years old, frowned.

By his side, Zhu Changqing, who was transferred back from Yanan because of a lack of generals, took the opportunity to speak:

"There is news from Yanan, Huang Dudu has returned to Yanan with the fourth battalion of troops, and is heading north along the river to increase troops for each defense line."

"Not ...... enough" Qi Yuanfu shook his head, commanding on land, he was even more experienced than Huang Long, so he explained to Zhu Changqing, Li Zijing and others:

"The defense line is too long, and only four battalions of soldiers will not make a difference, so it is better to hope for another 30,000 reinforcements and 50,000 troops from the Lu Inspectorate in the south."

Qi Yuanfu was right, the defense line of more than 2,500 miles long was really difficult for the Ming army to defend.

In the spring and rainy season, they could rely on the river network to hold back the Mughal army, but not in the summer.

The number of Mughal cavalry was too large, only 10,000 cavalry out of the 60,000 Ming troops in the north, and the number of artillery on both sides was equal.

In this case, if there are no new variables, even if the Ming army can win, it will have to pay a heavy price.

However, under various policies, the generals of the Ming army were not destined to afford too many casualties.

The pension for the death of the soldiers and horses of the expeditionary force is 200 taels, plus 10 acres of pension fields of origin, and the pension is basically between 300 and 400 taels.

At present, the Xiaoxiyang Expeditionary Force has paid nearly 12,000 combat and non-combat attrition, which means that the country has to pay about 3.6 million taels to 4.6 million taels of pensions.

Qi Yuanfu is clear about the situation in the Ming Dynasty, there is a severe drought in eight local provinces, and tens of millions of people are affected.

In this case, even if the Xiaoxiyang Expeditionary Force successively transported nearly 40 million taels of silver for the Ming Dynasty, it would be difficult to fill the gap.

Therefore, if they suffer heavy casualties in this battle, then everyone is expected to suffer impeachment and criticism from the courtiers.

Even if they annihilated the opponent's 120,000 army, as long as they lost more than one-third, it would be difficult for the Ming to bear it.

Of course, at this moment, Qi Yuanfu did not know the news that the drought in the Ming Dynasty had subsided, and that Yang Wenyue had destroyed the Tokugawa shogunate and developed the Iwami silver mine and the Zudu gold mine.

If he knew, he wouldn't be so anxious.

This is a problem of limited information in the times, and even Zhu Youzhen could not solve this problem before the invention of the telegraph and telephone.

"General, those southern captives have started to scout our army again."

Li Zijing, who was standing by the river with Qi Yuanfu and others, saw the Mughal soldiers on the other side of the river looking at them with clairvoyance, so he immediately replied.

When Qi Yuanfu heard this, he also picked up his clairvoyance, and under Li Zijing's gesture, he saw the Mughal generals standing on the other side of the river.

The man looked very young, and although he couldn't see his face clearly, judging from the other party's physical posture, he should be a young person.

Not being old means that he lacks combat experience, although Qi Yuanfu knew that he could not underestimate the enemy, he still breathed a sigh of relief.

Naturally, at the same time that he saw that the Mughal generals were very young, the Mughal generals on the other side of the river also saw him.

"I didn't expect that I would fight the Han Chinese in India......"

On the north bank of the Godavari River, a Mughal nobleman with a monocular spoke in a joking tone, and the next second he put down the telescope in his hand, revealing his true face.

He was dressed in Mongolian and Halal costumes, with a curly beard, and a very ethnic and geographical character, which at first glance would tell that he was of Persian descent, and that was exactly what he was.

Mirza Abu Talib, who was just thirty years old this year, is better known as "Shayinsta Khan" than his name, Mirza.

It was a title given by the previous Mughal emperor in gratitude for the service of three generations of his family.

At present, Mirza, as the governor of the Deccan of the Mughal Empire, came to reap the fruits of the war, but the fighting power of the Ming army made him a little jealous, and the network of the Godavari River was not conducive to the Mughal army, so he was waiting for the summer.

In fact, the name Mughal is actually the self-term name of the descendants of the Turkic Mongols in Central Asia, and it is also a contemptuous term for the nomadic herders of the Turkic agricultural inhabitants who have accepted the Mongolian descendants of the highly civilized civilization.

The Mughal Empire was founded by Babur, a descendant of Timur, who was descended from the Mongol Baru Assassin and was not a descendant of Genghis Khan.

Because they could not be called Khan without the bloodline of the golden family, after Timur established the "Timurid Empire", they also began to fabricate family history, tracing their ancestors to Genghis Khan's general Haratsar.

Later, he fabricated "the legend that the ancestors had agreed with Genghis Khan to alternately rule the world for the descendants of Genghis Khan" to raise his family background.

Therefore, Timur did not call himself Khan for the rest of his life, but called him the Great Secret (Emir), coerced the Son of Heaven (puppet Khan) to order the princes, and then married a woman from the Golden Family as his wife.

Therefore, Babur, who established the "Mughal Empire", has the blood of the two conquerors, Timur and Genghis Khan.

However, for his part, he was a Turkic influenced by Persian culture and had a contemptuous attitude towards the Mughals.

After the establishment of the "Mughal Empire", Babur and others did not follow the Mongol custom of calling Khan, but called "Padisha" (emperor).

Because the native inhabitants of India still remember the many invasions of the Chagatai Khanate during the Mongol era, they also called invaders such as Babur from the northwest with contempt for the Mughals.

Although Babur considered himself a Chagatai rather than a backward Mughal (Mughal), some Indian and Persian nobles used it to mock them.

The Ming army did not know that the word "Mughal" had a mocking connotation, because they did not know, or disdained, the history and culture of the Mughals.

Therefore, they don't care about the "Mughal people", "Turkic people", and "Chagatai people", and they are all classified as "captives" who drink blood from lonely hairs.

The nomadic people are in the south and the north in the north, the hetao and the west.

Therefore, the Ming and Mo sides collided without understanding each other's culture and detailed military strength, but the advantage of the Ming army was that all the people in the army were Han Chinese, and there was no foreign servant army, so there was a lot less intrigue.

But not on the Mirza side, there were only a few Mongols among the upper nobility of the Mughals, followed by Turks, Afghans and Persians, and Indians.

Even if there are so many races and nationalities in politics, the Mughals also like to recruit some European musketeers and artillerymen.

As a result, the Mughal army became a battlefield for many nationalities, races, and religions to compete for power, which also led to their own fears of death and injury, thus delaying the best opportunity to strike at the Ming army.

Although Mirza was the commander-in-chief, he had nothing to do to deal with such a Mughal army, which was seriously infighting.

Fortunately, he has been observing the cooking smoke and barracks of the Ming army, and according to his observations, the cooking smoke of the Ming army has decreased by nearly one-tenth, which means that the Ming army's army should have lost some soldiers and horses for some reasons.

However, the Ming army was uncomfortable, and the Mughal side was not comfortable.

The sweltering heat and humidity of the Deccan plateau left many Mughal soldiers with pimples and eczema.

Before the war began, nearly 4,000 Mughal troops were sent back to the north.

For this reason, Mirza again applied to Emperor Shah Jahan for troops......

"Governor, we have prepared enough sand and gravel, and if you give the order, we will soon be able to build a pontoon bridge in some shallow water."

Mirza was immersed in his own strategic arrangement, and the officer behind him interrupted his thoughts.

"Hmm......" Mirza didn't get angry, but nodded slightly, and then continued to look at the Ming army's camp:

"This group of Han people is not easy to deal with, and when the news of Lahore comes back, I will think about how to deal with them."

Mirza took a deep look at the "small" figures on the south bank of the Godavari River, then turned to leave......