Nanming Engineer

Chapter 378

After confessing to Ma Zuoheng in Tongguan City, Wang Huan took all the officers of the Kuizhou Army with more than a thousand commanders, and under the guidance of Li Yukui and his son-in-law Wang Chenglong, they went out of the city to inspect and investigate.

Tongguan in the Ming Dynasty was different from the Tongguan in history. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Qin Hangu Pass was abolished and Tongguan was rebuilt. In the Tang Dynasty, it migrated twice and built by the Yellow River.In the ninth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, on the basis of Tangtong Pass, the city of Guan expanded to the south, including Qilin Mountain, Phoenix Mountain, Bijia Mountain, Yintai Mountain, Xiangshan Mountain, etc. , The risk of building Tongguan.

Wang Huan galloped his horse and came out of Dongguan. He came to a vast plain outside the pass. There was a wide open space in front of him. It was early spring, the grass was green and the flowers were blooming. On the land that had just thawed, dots of farmers were working in it. The wind was bright and sunny. , is a good time for spring plowing.

Wang Chenglong leaned forward to please him, and by virtue of being a landlord and general, he introduced: "Master Hou, please look, Dongguan Gate is also called Jindou Pass, and there is a plain tens of miles wide between the gate and Shuangqiao River. The floods over the years will always come up, so this land is extremely fertile, and our soldiers and people in the pass have always regarded this place as farmland, and the annual income is enough to support ourselves."

Wang Huan swept his eyes, pointed forward with a whip, and asked, "Are all the people working here are military households?"

Wang Chenglong replied: "Exactly, Tongguan was the guard of Tongguan in the Ming Dynasty. There were five thousand households, and the military relatives who had been reproduced for many years totaled more than 3 people. When the Tatars came, they cleaned up and moved all the relatives of the garrison soldiers. I went to Puzhou City on the other side of the Yellow River, and now the people here are all Dinghu."

Wang Huan was startled when he heard the words, and then turned around after a moment of stupefaction. He stared in disbelief and asked, "You mean, the people working in front of us are all soldiers?"

Wang Chenglong didn't seem to have expected such a big reaction from Wang Huan, and he glanced at his father-in-law guilty, but saw Li Yukui also looked confused, so he had to bite the bullet and answer: "Yes, it's spring plowing now, If we don’t rush to plow the land well, it will affect the sowing, and the grain harvest will be poor at that time, which will be troublesome.”

Wang Huan's chest obviously rose and fell several times, his face turned blue, and he took several deep breaths before calming down.

Li Tingyu has worked with him for the longest time, and he knows what Wang Huan is thinking, so he hurried forward and whispered to him: "My lord, all the guards of the Ming Dynasty are like this. Military households are called soldiers, but they are actually tenants. Hoes are much better than knives, thousands of households are landlords, and some of them do small business to supplement their household expenses, it’s not what they want, it’s really forced by the court.”

Seeing Wang Huan looking sideways at him, he sighed, and said, "Everyone is corrupt since the general of the Ming Dynasty, and the fields in the army have long since become the private property of the generals in the guard. These military households have to pay hundreds of dollars for farming the land. Hundreds of households pay thousands of households, and thousands of households turn over to the deputy generals and generals, and the deputy generals have to turn over to the general army, exploiting layer by layer. The military households worked hard for a year, but what fell into their hands was not enough to feed the whole family. In order to survive, they Of course, they only care about farming, hoping for a better harvest, so who cares about training soldiers? The town generals also don’t go to supervise for the sake of pockets and a better life, so the troops in the mainland of the Ming Dynasty are weak and the guards are chaotic. Elephant is its root."

Wang Huan closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. The color on his face slowly returned to normal. He shook his head lightly, opened his eyes and looked at the figure bowing to the ground on the plain, and sighed: "I know all of this, but what I don't understand is that the Tatars are hundreds of miles away, and they are like fire and water. They are still leisurely and leisurely. Are they really not afraid of moving their heads?"

This sentence was said a little loudly, and everyone present heard it. The faces of Li Yukui and others blushed suddenly, and they were a little ashamed. Come here, let the military households rush for time, it’s not a big problem, and, besides, isn’t your lord’s tiger and wolf division already here, so..."

Wang Huan couldn't laugh or cry, his face was blue and red, he didn't know whether to scold or laugh, he held his last breath in his heart, he was depressed, and said to Li Yukui with a dark face: "Master Li, these people must be taken back immediately, Strengthen your military training, otherwise it's hard to say whether your Puzhou can be kept."

Li Yukui's face was ugly, he gave Wang Chenglong a hard look, and quickly responded: "What Hou Ye said is, I will let them do it right away."

In Wang Huan's heart, his expectations for Li Yukui were lowered a bit, and he wondered whether he should keep some troops in Puzhou. He casually looked to the right, and saw a rammed-earth fortress on the mountain.

"Let's go up and have a look!" Wang Huan rode up the mountain and led a group of people to run up.

The mountain is quite steep and looks not high, but it took some time to go up. This is an earth mountain formed by the flooding and impact of the Yellow River for many years. It is scenery of earthen mountains.

After climbing up the mountain and looking around, you can see that the Tushan Mountain is actually part of the Loess Plain. It is isolated by several ravines created by the mountain torrents flowing out from the deep streams in the Qinling Mountains during the rainy season, forming a ravine with a width of more than ten meters. On the high ground here, a very deep ravine lies in front of you. The ravine extends towards the Yellow River. When it reaches the river, it is connected with the Tongguan Dongguan City Gate and becomes a natural obstacle to the east of Tongguan.

"This is the Wangyuan Valley. The ditch is five feet deep and ten feet wide. It stretches for several miles. Beyond this ditch, not far ahead, is the Tongguan Forbidden Valley. The Forbidden Valley is steep and dangerous. It is deep and wide. It is thirty miles long, extending from the Qinling Mountains to the Yellow River. On the west side of the forbidden ditch, there is a fort, three miles and one pier, commonly known as the Twelve Linked City. With the forbidden ditch there, there is no fear of the Tatars detouring to attack Nanguan. "Wang Chenglong felt that he had gone out of his way just now and had lost his points in Wang Huan's heart, so he had to be more diligent to get them back, so he hurriedly introduced him step by step.

Unexpectedly, Wang Huan didn't seem to listen carefully. Instead, he built a canopy with his hands, stood on the horse and squinted his eyes and looked around, pointing at the mountain with Li Dingguo, Li Tingyu and others.

Wang Chenglong was making fun of himself, and was embarrassed when he heard Ma Zuoheng speak.

As the town general who will guard Tongguan, Ma Zuoheng is extremely cautious. He politely pointed to the loess beacon towers standing on the top of the hill beyond the two ditches and asked: "How many people guard each of these piers?" ? How about the armament layout?"

Wang Chenglong spread his hands out, wondering: "There is no one, all the soldiers have withdrawn into Tongguan City."

This sentence brought Wang Huan and others together, and everyone said in surprise, "No one?"

Wang Chenglong was taken aback, and quickly explained: "The last general has only 3000 people. This number of people is scattered on the pass city, so how can they be spread outside?"

Ma Zuoheng's face was as calm as water, with rare veins appearing, and his eyes almost burst into flames. He was so prepared for battle, so defending the gate, if the Qing army didn't come, he would be defeated.

"Tomorrow, send people to Xi'an and ask Meng Zhiyu to dispatch 5000 soldiers from Shaanxi!" Wang Huan said decisively, and everyone could feel the helplessness in his tone: "Return to Ma Zuoheng to dispatch."

(End of this chapter)