Chapter 7: Combat Soldiers and Guards

When Li Hao saw the Tartars carrying corpses approaching from the corner of his eye, he immediately drew his sword and chopped them down. The Tartar was a little slow to react, and just as he stretched his right hand behind his back to draw his sword, he was hit in the face.

The iron helmets of the Liao Army of the Ming Dynasty and the Eight Banners were similar in style, both of which were inherited from the Yuan Dynasty's bowl-shaped helmet type, that is, four or two pieces of iron plates pressed together to form the main body of the helmet, with an eyebrow guard above the forehead, and decorations such as helmet spears, helmet tassels, and helmet flags on the top of the iron helmet, with cheek guards on both sides hanging down to the collarbone.

That is the so-called "the front brim of the military helmet should be hung down to the level of the eyebrows, the back brim should be hung down to the level of the neck, and there should be ear covers on the left and right sides."

If it is made of two pieces of iron sheets, with movable dragon patterns hollowed out and carved on the front and back ridges, it is a live dragon iron helmet, which is mostly worn by senior generals of the Ming army, leaders of the Jiannu flags, and Jiala Ezhen.

Ordinary soldiers naturally wore four-petal iron helmets, leaving only the face exposed.

Li Hao's knife only injured the Tartar's face, and the friction between the knife and the brow guard of the iron helmet produced a string of sparks.

This was enough. Sudden injury slowed down the Tartar's movements. His right hand was still drawing the knife, but his left hand instinctively covered the wound.

Li Hao took advantage of the situation and kicked the Tartar to the ground. Then he grasped the handle of his sword with both hands and thrust it into the unprotected face with all his strength, nailing the Tartar's left hand to his face.

After getting rid of this Tartar, he had to draw his sword and face another Tartar who had already reacted.

"What, you want to escape?"

On the other side, the Tartar who was trying to untie the rope was very alert. After hearing a string of Chinese words, he realized that he had fallen into a trap and prepared to leave on horseback.

He happened to be next to several tied horses, so he started to untie the ropes, thinking of riding the nearest horse. However, he did not expect that the Han people's knot-tying technique was different from theirs, and he could not untie it in the dark for a long time, so he ran to the horse he was riding.

Unexpectedly, there was more than one Ming army near this area. Two more Ming soldiers appeared on the dark hill. Although they did not dare to step forward and fight the Tartars head-on, they threw stones and drove the untied horses away seven or eight steps.

Just these seven or eight steps took the life of the last Tartar.

At this time, the sturdy Ming soldier was seven or eight steps away from the Tartar. The Tartar did not hesitate, took out a large bow from his bow bag, and then took out three arrows from the quiver behind his waist.

Medium and short-range archery is the Tartar's specialty. Although he encountered a sudden change, this Tartar was still agile and drew the bow, aimed the arrow and completed the task in one go.

"Shooting again?" Seeing this, Li Hao quickly lowered his head and bent over, rolling on the ground and rushing towards the Tartar.

In the previous fight, he had observed the power of the Qing bow. The two arrows hit the secondary torso covered with cloth armor. Each arrow caused him about five points of damage. If he was hit hard by these three arrows, he might have died.

Although Li Hao was looking forward to the situation in the future where he could use several thousand health points and wear two or three layers of heavy armor to borrow arrows, he couldn't be too wasteful at the moment.

So he rolled forward. Fortunately, the night helped. The Tartar shot two arrows in succession, both of which just grazed Li Hao's body.

The only thing that impressed him was that after the two arrows hit the frozen ground, the tail feathers of the arrows continued to tremble, which showed the power of the Qing bow.

After two arrows, Li Hao started fighting the Tartar face to face. The ordinary bannermen's close combat ability was indeed not high. The Tartar didn't even have time to draw his sword before he was knocked over by Li Hao and his men.

"No~"

The huge weight of more than two hundred kilograms made the Tartar feel that he could not breathe, but he still instinctively used the only weapon in his hand to attack the Ming soldiers. He grasped the bow, ready to strangle the enemy with the bowstring.

"The King of Heaven and the Tiger of Earth!" Li Hao did not give him a chance. After he pressed forward, his waist knife was not very flexible, so he used his right elbow with the Iron Arm to hit the Tartar in the face.

One, two, three... Elbow strikes can be said to be the most powerful move in close combat. In the first few strikes, you can hear the Tartar's whimpering groans and vague words of crying "Father, Mother" from his mouth, but in the end there is only the sound of panting.

After Li Hao was sure that he had killed the Tartar, he stood up and shouted, "Come here, light a torch and deal with these two."

The two soldiers came running over, "Master Li is so powerful, he killed two Tartars by himself."

"Master Li is a Hundred Commander today. After today, he will be at least a Thousand Commander. He may be a Dusi, a Guerrilla, or a Lieutenant General."

Flattery and fawning words kept coming out of the mouths of the soldiers in these two battalions. As low-level soldiers, saying auspicious words is a necessary skill.

Li Hao is currently the captain of the garrison troops. He has seventy or eighty garrison troops and guard troops under him. Converted into the battalion soldier system, he is roughly below the captain, about half a level lower than Zuo Liangyu's captain.

In the battalion soldier system, the number of people in a standard battalion ranges from a little over a thousand to three thousand. A battalion has two to three thousand captains under its command. A thousand captain has about forty to fifty servants and seven to eight hundred to more than a thousand battalion soldiers.

A battalion commander is a subordinate of a thousand-man commander, in charge of twenty or so retainers and four hundred and forty soldiers, but a battalion commander's battalion troops are usually not full.

Dusi is the name of the chariot camp, the defense camp, and the patrol camp. It is generally divided into the sitting camp dusi, the central army dusi, and the chariot camp dusi. A chariot camp usually has two dusi, whose rank is higher than that of a thousand commander, between the garrison and the guerrilla, but the number of soldiers under their jurisdiction is similar to that of a thousand commander.

The lieutenant general and guerrilla commander are the chief officers of the combat battalion. At this level, the number of retainers given by the court will increase to hundreds, and the number of soldiers in the battalion will fluctuate between seventeen and three thousand.

Although the word "jia" (family servant) is in the title of the title, the number of vacancies is decided by the Daoting (provincial government) and Futai (provincial government). Daoting (provincial government) is the government where Yuan Chonghuan's military governor is located, and Futai (provincial government) is the government of the Liaodong governor.

Starting from the second year of the Tianqi reign, Sun Chengzong, the teacher of the Carpenter Emperor Zhu Youxiao, began to supervise the military affairs of Liaodong. After some reorganization, the number of camp soldiers and garrison troops under the name of Liaozhen reached a nominal number of 110,000, and the camp soldiers were organized into 15 camps.

The fifteen battalions are divided into three battalions each for the vanguard, left wing, right wing, center power, and rear force. The three vanguard battalions are stationed in Songshan, Jinzhou and other places, while the three left wing battalions are usually stationed in Ningyuan and other places.

This group of soldiers belonged to the left wing left camp stationed at Tashan.

Li Hao and his five servants belonged to the garrison system. In this system, the team commander was roughly equivalent to a centurion, and the officers in charge of the large forts above him had similar forces to those under the command of a captain-general, but were half a level higher in rank.

Above the ethics officer is the garrison officer at the level of a thousand households, who is higher than a thousand commander and lower than a dusi and guerrilla officer in the battalion system.

For example, the Tashan Fortress had a garrison officer who was mainly responsible for managing the nearby garrisons and forts. The chief officer of the left wing left camp stationed at Tashan would generally be given various military titles such as lieutenant general, commander of the central army, garrison general, and pacification general.

Li Hao's promotion path after that would most likely see him transferred to the battalion system as a combat soldier, because the garrison troops and the garrison troops belonged to the garrison system and were generally not sent to undertake various defense and field missions. At most, they would be gathered into the fortified city by the city guards when a war came. Therefore, the two battalion soldiers congratulated Li Baizai with military titles such as Qianzong, Dusi, and Youji, rather than the ethics and garrison officers of the garrison system.

He was not interested in promotion, but was very interested in the increase in armed soldiers that would come with it. According to convention, if Li Hao chose to exchange all these four heads for promotion, he could be promoted four levels in a row, from deputy captain, captain, pacification envoy to assistant commander of the guard.

Of course, in reality, the Ming Dynasty would not let Li Hao actually hold the position of Guard Commander-in-Chief, but would only give him a military officer title, with a monthly salary of Guard Commander-in-Chief, which might actually be no more than a Qianzong.

For example, Manzhen Mangui is nominally a general, so he is called Manzhen and Manshuai, but he actually holds the title of deputy governor, and can mobilize several war camps under the name of Ningyuan Weicheng and the garrison troops composed of the garrison and defense systems.

But giving Li Hao a Qianzong rank was already very good. At this level, he could have forty or fifty retainers and more than seven or eight hundred soldiers, and his name could appear on the newspapers sent to the emperor, the Ministry of War and people all over the country.

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(End of this chapter)