Chapter 102
Bi Zisu made up his mind, "One thousand is one thousand, at least 4,200 taels more of military pay."

There will be a major battle in a few days. There are still two to three thousand strong soldiers in Haizhou City. If we fight well, we can recover southern Liaoning and take back the four guards of Gaihai from Jin.

Even if the battle was poor, at least Guangning and Yizhou were in their hands. From now on, this muddy area in the lower reaches of the Liaohe River would be the front line of confrontation, and they would be able to give an explanation to the court and the people of the world.

Li Hao glanced at the many forward commanders in the tent, pointed at them and said to Bi Zisu:
"They also need to be settled, and a lot of cavalry must be arranged under their command. They will be stationed at various forts on weekdays and assembled in times of war. After the Liaoyang and Haizhou areas are cleared, I will discuss this with you in detail."

The deputy envoy of Liaodong agreed readily. This was a routine reward. If Liaoyang could be captured, Liaodong would have been mostly recovered. It was the basic requirement for generals at all levels to be promoted by two levels. Generals with famous titles could even get a promotion for their sons.

The Ming Dynasty had nothing else but plenty of hereditary military officers.

Li Hao talked with Bi and Hu about the situation in the rear and in the court.

Generally speaking, the Ming Dynasty was not completely paralyzed at this time. Both the court and the public praised the Liao army. The Ministry of War even embezzled the silver and grain rewards given to the Mongolian tribes and sent them to the front line as military pay for the Liao army.

"The Imperial Household Department took the lead and sold the horse farm in Nanjing for a good price. Half of the hundreds of thousands of taels of silver was used by Eunuch Wei to build the palace, and the other half was sent to Tianjin and Shanhaiguan, waiting for good news from General Li, General Zhao, General Man, and the Liaozhen soldiers."

"Things are spreading like wildfire in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Southern Zhili. They say that Li Shuai is 18 feet tall, holding a drum-beating hammer as big as an ox's head, and can lead 800 cavalrymen to charge back and forth in my army of 100,000 as if they were in an empty space. When Li Shuai's name is mentioned, not only can the Tartar children stop crying, but even my Mingjia guards will tremble with fear."

Hu Liangfu had been staying in Tianjin, and he was much more informed than Bi Zisu.

You can tell these remarks come from various novelists. The generals in the tent have all been on the battlefield, so they naturally understand the exaggerations in them.

Li Hao was also amused by the 18-foot height. When the coach laughed, everyone followed suit.

Hu Liangfu, the best eunuch, immediately flattered him and said, "I have also been in the army for a long time. When I heard these words before, I thought they were well-made and unreasonable. Now that I have met General Li, I know that they are 70% to 80% credible. Apart from other things, Bayala from the two yellow flags has run away faster than a mouse seeing a cat when he sees General Li."

After the Jinzhou general had laughed enough, he said sternly, "Now that we have said all the good things, let's talk about something bad. I don't believe there aren't some petty intrigues in the court."

He has always had a psychological expectation about the death of Ming Dynasty civil servants, and all kinds of unexpected things are bound to happen.

Hu Liangfu, who had a square face, became serious. "General Li is indeed as good as a god. Earlier, officials of the Ministry of Personnel had submitted a memorial to impeach General Li for advancing rashly. After Huduntu Khan died, they submitted one impeachment memorial after another.

Even Zhaisai, the leader of the Five Camps imprisoned in Jinzhou City, was advocated by the censors to be released immediately, otherwise the Five Camps would rebel and the Tartars would gain a great help for nothing.

Huduntu Khan is Lindan Khan.

Li Hao sneered, "These are all Wang Huazhen's allies, right? Is Donglin still so powerful now?"

Lin Danhan was supported by Wang Huazhen at great expense. He was a disciple of Ye Xianggao. He used to be a member of the Donglin Party, but later switched to Wei Zhongxian's faction. He happened to have a wide network of contacts, so no one from either side could bother him.

After the disastrous defeat in the Battle of Guangning, Wang Huazhen took most of the responsibility, and many officials in the court spoke well of him. Even though Xiong Tingbi was beheaded and sent to the nine frontiers last year, he is living well in prison.

"It's not just the civil servants from Donglin. Many officials from Qi, Zhejiang and Chu who are close to Eunuch Wei want to protect him. Although the people of Lin Danhan cannot fight the Tartars, they have done their best for the Ming Dynasty. It is reasonable for the officials to impeach him out of nostalgia. General Li, don't take it to heart. I will submit a few memorials after I return to explain the reasons."

Bi Zisu explained to the Jinzhou general.

He himself was from Shandong, but did not belong to the Qi Party. His elder brother Bi Ziyan led troops to suppress the White Lotus Rebellion and was in charge of Liao military pay for many years. He was a rare official in the court who was a man of action. The factions involved in the party disputes generally did not fight against these two brothers.

Because the civil servants who were assigned to handle affairs fought against each other, there was really no one in charge of the entire Ming Dynasty.

"It's alright, it's just an impeachment. I won't let him go like this. The five major camps must at least provide 10,000 horses, donkeys, cattle and sheep to redeem him."

Li Hao told his plan. Four years ago, when the Inner Khalkha tribe redeemed Zhaisai from the Later Jin, the five tribes gathered a total of more than 10,000 livestock. Although most of them were sheep, there were also many horses.

The impeachment of these censors was like flies, which only made people feel sick. When he was about to return to Beijing to collect salaries, he took the opportunity to deal with these censors who only talked but did not work.

Hu Liangfu and Bi Zisu looked at each other, and the latter told another piece of bad news.

"Marshal Li, although Mao Chenglu was persuaded by the Shang brothers to lead the navy and island soldiers from Lushun and other places to the north to provide assistance, he did not have time to consult with Marshal Mao first. There seems to be a lot of complaints on Pi Island. After the battle, please ask Marshal Li to appease Marshal Mao and the Dongjiang soldiers."

This is actually not bad news. Although Mao Wenlong is very concerned about others interfering in the internal affairs of Dongjiang Town, this person can always talk some sense.

"I plan to give Marshal Mao another 100 or 200 Tartar heads when the time comes. We can discuss everything."

Apart from a few thousand elite core troops, ordinary Dongjiang soldiers could not defeat the Later Jin soldiers and Liao army, but they could easily defeat the Shandong garrison soldiers.

Moreover, the Dongjiang generals and soldiers were of Liao nationality origin, had a weak sense of belonging to the Ming Dynasty, and had strong rebellious intentions, so they could be of great use.

Li Hao's plan of extorting military pay included forcing the Dongjiang troops to move south.

At that time, he would lead the Liao army into Shanhaiguan and attract the elite troops from the other eight borders of the Ming Dynasty. The Dongjiang troops would go to Denglai and other places. The two sides would attack important cities on the water transport routes such as Tianjin and Cangzhou from the north and south, cutting off the water transport. The northern part of the Ming Dynasty would not collapse immediately, but at least it would be paralyzed on one side.

Therefore, we must maintain good relations with Dongjiang Town.

After understanding the various situations, Li Hao did not waste any time and directly ordered the Jinzhou army, which only had the standard battalion left, to set up their positions in the camp, clear the area, set up targets and weapons, and prepare to select elite soldiers.

Many generals, captains and other officers from the other two reinforcements came and surrounded the venue with two or three thousand Jinzhou soldiers to see how General Li, who was feared in Liaodong, selected his soldiers.

Zu Dashou, Jin Guoqi and other military generals who were in charge of the Guancheng reinforcements sat on the west side, the eunuchs who supervised the army were on the east side, and Jinzhou General Da Ma Jin Dao sat in the center.

After the soldiers of the standard camp are ready, the selection of cavalry in the vanguard town officially begins.

Cao Wenzhao read out the criteria on behalf of the commander-in-chief: "Although we are selecting cavalry, we will still give priority to firearms who are good at using muskets and Lumi guns. Those who can hit the target at a distance of 100 steps will be selected, and those who can use three-barreled guns and bows will be selected tomorrow."

This standard battalion was originally a battalion under the command of the Shanhaiguan general. Most of the soldiers were recruited from northern Zhili and Shandong, and were slightly different from the Liao soldiers who loved to use three-barreled guns.

At least they were much more patient in using firearms than the Liao soldiers.

The bird gun and Rumi gun, which have a charge of about three cents, can engage in medium and short-range shooting with Qing bows for a long time.

Li Hao's idea was to form a cavalry force with Mongolian soldiers, Jurchen soldiers, and elite Han soldiers, and to transform the soldiers in the standard camp into mounted musketeers.

They were not required to charge into battle. They could march quickly on horseback, dismount and form a formation to shoot after arriving at the battlefield.

The matchlock gun has much more advantages than the bow and arrow. The Liao soldiers with stronger combat effectiveness did not like to use it because the firearms made by Ming craftsmen were of very poor quality and could not be guaranteed to be fired stably on the battlefield.

After hearing that the selection criteria were still the firearms shooting that the soldiers of the standard camp were familiar with, the soldiers immediately got ready to show their skills in front of the commander-in-chief and several generals.

The invincible Li Shuai has a very high status in their hearts, and anyone with ideas would never miss such a good opportunity.

Li Hao looked at the high morale and nodded with satisfaction, then ordered someone to call Liu Xingzuo.

"If there are any surrendered soldiers who can use firearms but are not good at archery, call them over for selection and disperse them in. Tomorrow, your subordinates will also be selected. I will give you as many horses as the number of brave soldiers who can ride horses into battle."

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(End of this chapter)