Prince Chongzhen

Chapter 37 The arrival of the army
January 5

Last night was the night when Wu Changrui was on duty in the small flag. Under normal circumstances, they would have been on duty this morning, but in the end, their small flag team was called up because the captain wanted to give a speech.

Wu Changrui usually complained a lot, and he cursed even more, but when Li Chaodong finished the first sentence, he had to shut up.

"The Tartars arrived at Tangshan last night."

As soon as the words fell, the team, which had been making noises from time to time, suddenly became silent.

Wu Changrui's heart sank immediately. Tangshan was only fifty or sixty miles away from Yingtian. Even if the Tartars marched slowly, they could reach Yingtian in just one or two days.

"Your Highness has ordered that the city gates be closed tightly and no one be allowed to enter or leave. All units must step up their alert and follow the rules if any trace of the Tartars is discovered."

Thanks to Zhu Cilang's inspection, the soldiers were familiar with the so-called regulations, so Li Chaodong didn't need to emphasize this again. His only worry was whether the iron sticks distributed to the militiamen could be delivered on time.

Yesterday, His Highness suddenly sent an order, asking these newly promoted captains to go to the camp in the north of the city to lead the troops.

This was expected, but when he arrived at the camp, he found that although the thousand households that had arrived earlier had only been given some militiamen armed with iron rods, those given to him were left with bare hands.

Li Chaodong originally thought that with His Highness in charge, those superiors would be more restrained, but who knew that they would become even more rampant than before.

I think it must be because Your Highness is too busy to take care of these things that they dare to act so recklessly.

With this in mind, he prepared to file a complaint with His Highness when he inspected the city, but he only found out the "truth" when chatting with the militiaman Xiaoqi.

It turned out that this iron rod was a blunt weapon specially prepared by His Highness to target the Tartars. The craftsmen's camp spent two days modifying the ones stored in the warehouse, and the rest needed to be melted and remade.

Since His Highness specially prepared them, they will definitely be able to restrain the Tartars, so Li Chaodong thought that if they could be issued earlier, he would distribute these weapons in a unified manner.

"From now on, everyone should be alert and remember that the Tartars will leave no one alive in Yangzhou."

After saying this, Li Chaodong ordered the ordinary soldiers to disperse, leaving only the small flags to arrange the order of guarding the city.

Yesterday he brought back a total of fifty small flag teams. In addition to those assigned to each hundred households, he also left ten small flag teams as reserve teams within the thousand households in accordance with military orders.

As a result, the power in his hands increased a little, and he stood taller when interacting with other centurions.

"Disband, go back and arrange your own team's affairs. Newcomers, please go to the city and take a look around. Don't wait until the Tartars attack the city without knowing where the pole is."

After talking for a while, Li Chaodong felt that he had arranged everything that could be arranged, so he prepared to disperse the small flags and go patrol the city for a while.

“Beep~~~~~~~~! Beep~~~~~~~~~~!”

At this moment, a whistle sounded from the city.

"Up to town!"

Li Chaodong shouted and rushed out of the camp first.

With Zhu Cilang's patrols of the city over the past two days as a foundation, although the soldiers were still a little flustered, they were much more efficient than before.

As for the newly arrived militiamen, some of them stood there in a daze, not knowing what to do, but after being reminded by their own small flags, they blindly followed the crowd and ran towards the city.

A moment later, Li Chaodong climbed up the city wall. When the soldiers on duty on the city wall saw him coming, they shouted, "Sir, the Tartars are coming!"

"Get down! You're risking your life!" Li Chaodong shouted to the soldiers, then half-crouched to the wall and looked outside the city.

At this time, there were thirty or forty Tartar cavalrymen patrolling about a hundred or two hundred steps away from the city wall. Apart from them, there was no other soldier. Fortunately, the city gate had not been opened since it was closed last night, otherwise if these cavalrymen had taken advantage of the chaos to rush in, who knows how much trouble would have been caused.

"Don't order anymore." Seeing this, Li Chaodong straightened up a little. He shouted to the soldiers on the beacon tower and then said to the person next to him, "Go and tell His Highness that the Tartar scouts have arrived."

"Sir, how would I know where His Highness is?"

The soldier asked with a sad face, and then he was slapped on the neck.

"Guard camp on the mountain!"

"Sir, His Highness is just spending the night on the mountain. How could he still be on the mountain now?" The soldier clearly felt a little unfair about the slap he received.

Upon hearing this, Li Chaodong was stunned for a moment, and then he said in a quibble: "Stupid, His Highness is either in the training ground or in the city, can't you call a few people to look for him separately?"

The soldier felt helpless, but a higher-ranking official could suppress others, so he could only call a few people down from the city wall in shame.

"Ride my horse."

Li Chaodong shouted, then stood up and looked carefully at the Tartars outside the city.

These people were wearing leather armor and holding short bows. Although they kept patrolling and shouting outside the city, they never came within the range of the enemy.

Obviously, they were just scouts, not the main force of the Tatars. So it seemed that there was no possibility of attacking the city in a short period of time.

Thinking of this, Li Chaodong felt a little relieved. He turned around and gave some instructions to the small flagmen before going along the city wall to inspect the other hundred households.

Without talking about how the Li Dynasty patrolled the city in the east, let's just say that the soldier who went to report the news rushed to the parade ground and searched for a long time but couldn't find His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.

When he was extremely anxious, he saw Zhu Cilang slowly appearing outside the training ground.

Last night Zhu Cilang had planned to rest early, but somehow he associated the food and fodder with the wealthy families in the city.

There is an old saying that those who have constant property have constant perseverance, but how can this perseverance preserve the family property?

Don't be fooled by the fact that they are as docile as sheep at this time. They will prepare meals obediently when asked to do so, and transport food, fodder and military supplies obediently when asked to do so.

But if you dare to touch even a little bit of their property, they will certainly be ten thousand times more brutal and vicious than the Tartars.

Everyone thinks that whoever has power and military power can get whatever they want, but they don't know that one of the threads of human history since the beginning of civilization has been the struggle between the central government and the wealthy families.

This is true for both China and the West. The only difference is that the central government in the West was completely defeated, while the wealthy families in China have always been suppressed by the central government.

However, this does not mean that China's wealthy families are powerless to fight back, not to mention that in the early years, warlords who received support from wealthy families repeatedly launched rebellions.

Even in the Ming Dynasty, the central government was always constrained by various rules and regulations by civil servants representing the aristocratic families. If there were a few emperors who were ready to break these rules, they would die in obscurity.

Therefore, Zhu Cilang, who was quite wary of this, had no intention of coming into conflict with this force right now.

But he was just an ordinary person who traveled through time and space, and he never thought that the three dou of regular money would be so attractive to the people of Yingtian.

So when he thought of the nearly 100,000 militiamen and the surplus grain in his hands, he had to turn his attention to the wealthy families.

So he rushed back to the city in the middle of the night to discuss with Wang Fuping, and only then did he go to the parade ground to inspect.

(End of this chapter)