Henan, Huai Khanh Province, Hanoi.

As the governor of Henan in the Ming Dynasty, Li Xianfeng has not had a day of peace since he came to Henan, first famine, then civil unrest, and then all the rogues from all over the country gathered in Henan to start a business, which made him annoyed.

Like most governors, Li Xianfeng also played balance in Henan, balancing not only the relationship with the local landlords, but also the relationship with the local military leaders, since his arrival, he used various means to entrap the Henan officialdom, especially the guerrilla general Gao Qian, who had 3,000 battle-hardened border troops under his command.

Li Xianfeng relied on Gao Qian's military strength to gain a firm foothold in Henan, and he was able to wipe out the thieves in northern Henan.

"Master, there is news from the Yang Pavilion Department, saying that it is to go south quickly to destroy Li Chuang." In the palace, a middle-aged man who was not wearing an official uniform held the letter in his hand and said to Li Xianfeng, who closed his eyes and recuperated.

Li Xianfeng is a second-class member of the imperial court, and was ordered to patrol Henan, and he was also wearing a scarlet official uniform, embroidered with brocade chicken, and the texture used was first-class Shu brocade, although like most people in this era, the skin on his face was not brilliant, but it could not hide its majesty at all.

"Yang Sichang, this waste, still dares to dictate to me" Li Xianfeng snorted coldly, his eyes opened slightly, and he could see that his relationship with Yang Sichang was not good, and there was no respect between his words.

"If it weren't for his disadvantage to suppress the bandits, how could Li Chuang be allowed to poison Henan? This account, the official hasn't settled it with him yet! Li Xianfeng obviously has a lot of resentment towards Yang Sichang, after all, the situation in Henan is like this, and it has nothing to do with Yang Sichang.

When the middle-aged staff heard Li Xianfeng's curse, they didn't know what to say, but just asked: "Now that the king of Yongning is here, will the court ask us about this matter?" ”

It's a big sin.

Li Xianfeng didn't take it very seriously, and snorted coldly and said, "What is there to treasure a county king who can't be served?" If you want me to say, the one who died should also be dead, he has done evil in Yongning all these years, and he really thinks that no one will cure him? ”

Li Xianfeng also didn't think very much of King Yongning's virtues, and now that he died at the hands of Li Zicheng, he was secretly happy in his heart, and even praised Li Zicheng for doing a good deed in private.

"But the court always needs an explanation......" The staff glanced at Li Xianfeng, who was full of care, and admonished, after all, the death of a heavenly bloodline would not be so lightly stated.

Li Xianfeng waved his hand, knowing the staff's worries, and immediately spoke: "Isn't Wu Dalie of Yongning Zhixian martyred?" Naturally, this matter is on his head, what does it have to do with us? ”

At this point, the staff also understood, and immediately breathed a sigh of relief, and then continued to ask: "Now that the messenger has been sent to Jingshi, I think the imperial court will know about this matter in the near future, but I am afraid that after this incident, the imperial court will focus on exterminating Li Chuang, master, do you think we will return to Luoyang first?" In this way, it will be easy to deal with the imperial edict in the future. ”

"Now when you go back to Luoyang, will you release the thieves in northern Henan?" Li Xianfeng interrupted dissatisfiedly: "Now it is not easy to force the thieves in northern Henan into a dead end, if you return to the army, it won't take long for it to resurrect!" ”

Li Xianfeng's biggest political achievement in Henan is to eradicate the civil unrest in northern Henan, of course, he does have the means, and the motto of life is "Rather kill by mistake than let go." ”

In northern Henan, he led the army to often massacre the entire village, one thief, the whole family was executed, one family was a thief, the neighbors sat together, and every thief was left behind, and one of his arms was cut off......

This method of extermination, although it made the people angry and resentful in northern Henan, but it was also effective, under several iron-blooded suppressions, the rebel army in northern Henan suffered heavy casualties, and could only shrink in the mountains to survive, in order to completely trap the rebel army, Li Xianfeng simply moved all the people near several mountains where the rebel army was active, and played a white ground tactic.

"No, master, I'm worried that Luoyang will ...... if it goes on like this" The staff member hurriedly explained, of course he knew that it was impossible for Li Xianfeng to give up his low-hanging fruit achievements, but the importance of Luoyang was obviously self-evident.

"Hmph, aren't you worried that Li Chuang will fight Luoyang?" Li Xianfeng asked disdainfully.

"After all, Fu Fan is in Luoyang, if something goes wrong, we will be guilty," the staff hurriedly added.

King Fu is not comparable to King Yongning, that is Emperor Chongzhen's own uncle, a real prince of the imperial court, if it wasn't for the failure of the competition with Emperor Taichang, this is the one sitting in Beijing now......

"Luoyang City is dangerous, and there are heavy soldiers, although Li Chuang has more than 10,000 people, but most of them are homeless, there is no artillery, there is no siege equipment, and the Fu Fan is not short of money and food, how can he not be able to hold it?" Li Xianfeng scoffed at the fighting power of the intruding army.

"If Li Chuang really dares to fight Luoyang, I should watch from the wall, wait until his troops are exhausted, and then break it in one fell swoop, this way of using troops is also" Li Xianfeng added, Luoyang is steep, but it is not comparable to these counties in Yongning, Li Zicheng really fights, and if he wants to attack, he must pay a lot of price.

That's right, Luoyang's biggest problem is the lack of food, the grain has been brought to the north by him to suppress bandits, but there is no shortage of food in the hands of King Fu, as Wanli's favorite son, King Fu's wealth and food are difficult to calculate, Li Zicheng besieged the city, is it possible that King Fu can still watch from the wall? There is no way in this world that there is no one who has to protect his money when his life is lost, right?

Therefore, Li Xianfeng is not worried about the problem of Luoyang at all, now he also has 30,000 troops in his hands, Gao Qian's 3,000 border army is the main force, and the rest is the army put together by the general soldiers of Henan, although it is not much elite, but he is still confident that he can touch Li Zicheng, but he still has to wait until he finishes cleaning up northern Henan.

Soon, Li Xianfeng set the tone with Gao Qian and other generals, the army still stayed in northern Henan to suppress bandits, anyway, it would take some time for the messenger to go back and forth to the imperial court, so he took this opportunity to wipe out the traitors in northern Henan, and then went south to fight a decisive battle with the army!

.......

On the side of the army, after confiscating a large amount of silver from the Yongning Palace, he immediately shifted the direction non-stop, and advanced towards Yanshi, Lingbao, and Xin'an, with a clear goal, to sweep the periphery of Luoyang, completely turn Luoyang into a lonely city, and then find an opportunity to attack Luoyang.

Of course, Li Yan did not follow Li Zicheng this time, perhaps because of the incident of King Yongning, which led to a distrust between the monarch and the ministers, Li Yan took the initiative to ask for orders to lead the reserve army to stay in Yongning for training, so as to prepare for the battle of Luoyang in the future.

Li Zicheng now has no shortage of people under his hands, and seeing that Li Yan's letter didn't say much, he immediately agreed, so the reserve army temporarily stayed in Yongning County to carry out rectification.

There is also a reason why Li Yan asked to stay, Henan now has no power to fight back in the face of Li Zicheng's troops, and the army has been pulled to northern Henan by Li Xianfeng, Li Yan is not worried that someone will come to attack Yongning, in terms of strategic situation, he is safe.

Secondly, he didn't want to consume the reserve army anymore, there were a lot of losses along the way, plus the newly incorporated army, the whole of the reserve army has become very messy, and it was time to sort it out, so he and Gao Yigong totaled it, and planned to repair it in Yongning for a period of time.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Li Yan also planned to launch the second round of military reform against the reserve army.

At this time, the reserve army is completely different from the reserve army a few months ago, although it is not said that everyone wears armor, but there is no shortage of weapons, and many soldiers have seen blood, which is no longer the same.

In order to restore the establishment of 1,200 people as soon as possible, Li Yan posted a conscription notice in Yongning, preparing to recruit a group of young men to serve in the reserve army.

Generally speaking, the reserve army is still divided into several parts, Li Laiheng commands more than 200 people, after all, he is Li Yan's most valued general, so the gap in troops can be quickly filled, followed by Guo Junzhen's 200 people, this group of people is Guo Junzhen's troops, Li Yan is difficult to command, and it is not easy to split at this stage.

The third part is Hao Yongzhong's people, Hao Yongzhong is miserable, there are only more than 100 people, who told him to dare to fight and rush every time, the troops suffered the greatest casualties, and the soldiers were unwilling to go with him.

Huang Jun, and Zhang Hong's soldiers and horses are less than two hundred, there is no way, they are the same as Hao Yongzhong, it is difficult to get timely replenishment, as for Li Yan and Gao Yigong's pro-guard army at the beginning, they have already broken up the reinforcements to the generals.

In view of the current situation, Li Yan did not plan to adjust the establishment too much, but only planned to fill the gap in some soldiers through conscription, anyway, there is no shortage of weapons now.

What really needs to be changed is the combat mode, the previous set of four different combat modes exposed a lot of problems in the battle, not to mention the high requirements for organization and cooperation, secondly, this combat mode is as said before, suitable for street warfare and siege warfare, but field warfare is absolutely impossible, and the next stage of the army is bound to start field battles with the Ming army, out of this consideration, Li Yan began to design a new combat mode of the reserve army.

During this period of time, combined with the combat style of the Ming army, as well as the combat style of the breaking army, and then in connection with the Western combat style in the memory of later generations, Li Yan is also pushing through the old and bringing forth the new, preparing to tinker with a new combat formation.

In fact, he can be regarded as seeing that the idea of fighting wars all over the world is almost the same, and the difference between the phalanx composed of how many hot and cold weapons are coordinated lies mostly in how the phalanx cooperates, as well as the fighting quality and will of the soldiers.

The problem of the phalanx of the breaking army is that because of the lack of long-range troops, it relies too much on cavalry and spearmen, which is easy to cause great casualties before engaging the enemy, and the problem of the Ming army is even more significant.

And coincidentally, the Ming army and the Chuang army are not enough for the application of firearms, and most of them still rely on cold weapons and bows and arrows, which is unreasonable in Li Yan's opinion, especially when facing a large number of cavalry, especially heavy armored cavalry, there will be big problems.

At the same time, the Spanish phalanx also had a problem, that is, the formation was too large, the training requirements were too high, and it was too rigid, and the firecrackers arranged in the four corners often had the problem that they could not play the maximum role against the enemy unilaterally.

After experience and deliberation, Li Yan plans to comprehensively use the strengths of the three to create a new formation unique to the army, that is, the "slider spear formation".

The so-called slider, in fact, is to rely on the thinking of the Spanish phalanx, the Spanish phalanx to slim down, the original need to build hundreds of people to build the large phalanx condensed into half the scale, and then the four corners of the fire gun hand independent, the formation of four independent small squares, once the enemy, the four corners of the fire gun hand will be able to slide along the four sides of the square to form a large square of fire guns, forming a line of fire guns.

This can maximize the attack power of the firebolt, and at the same time, because the organization is simple, the difficulty of coordination requirements is not high, and the most important thing is that the formation can also be changed at any time according to the battlefield situation through the slider operation, and the long-range and close-range switching can be flexibly realized.

Of course, this set of things that Li Yan made up by himself has long been applied in the West, but because later generations really did not understand this aspect, he did not know that in fact, on the battlefield of the Thirty Years' War in Europe now, the phalanx invented by the Dutchman Morris is probably his idea......