Red Mansion: Seizing Jiangdong, starting with pirates

Chapter 66: Capturing Mao Cheng alive

Let’s not talk about what happened in Shanxi for now, and talk about Huaizhou.

The double harvest brought about a rapid expansion of Fang Yong’s strength.

Relying on the wealth brought by the salt trade and the doubled land output, Fang Yong's standing army expanded to 150,000, with an additional 30,000 naval forces, and countless reserve militia in the countryside.

Fang Yong specially selected the 10,000 strongest soldiers from his own army, gave them double the food and wages, and prepared to form a heavy cavalry!
This is to prepare for the strategy after autumn.

Fang Yong planned to fully capture Suzhou and the neighboring Huizhou and Xuzhou areas after the second harvest this autumn.

The specific time of mobilizing troops will depend on the actions of the imperial court, but it will definitely not be later than the beginning of next spring.

According to the strategy of military advisor Wu Yuan, Fang Yong needs to endure the humiliation for a period of time to divert the court's troops and attention, and then he can take advantage of the court's unpreparedness and launch a large-scale attack.

The troops were divided into two groups, one group would advance from Hailing to Yangzhou, and then capture Jinling and Chuzhou!
Another route went north to capture Xuzhou from Zhongwu, control the entire Huaibei region, and then joined forces with the first route to attack from the front and back, and then captured most of Huizhou.

After these are captured, the remaining cities such as Hefei can be easily captured.

However, due to the scarcity of horses, Fang Yong’s current heavy cavalry has not yet been fully formed.

Now most of them are just heavy infantry.

Xue Dacui's caravan has been going to the grassland to trade horses with Wu Yuan's letter of recommendation for some time, but there has been no news yet.

However, the good news is that with Huang Wenzhou's help, the Huo family in Foshan smuggled a large amount of iron materials over, which enabled Fang Yong to have the ability to make his own armor.

The craftsmen under him were not very efficient. All of them combined could only produce approximately 300 to 500 sets of armor per month.

Fang Yong tried to use the assembly line working mode to improve efficiency, but the effect was not good.

On the one hand, the craftsmen are very resistant to the assembly line.

They would rather take in more apprentices than accept the model where each person only forges part of the armor and then piece it together with those forged by others.

Many craftsmen believe that such production is an insult to their ancestral craftsmanship.

On the other hand, the quality of armor produced on the assembly line was seriously substandard, and some were even unusable.

After inspection, Fang Yong discovered that each of these craftsmen used different sizes and techniques.

There are more than 300 size standards for more than 300 people, and the armor produced on the assembly line cannot be smoothly pieced together.

Limited by these factors, Fang Yong could only temporarily abandon the assembly line working mode and switch to the traditional armor casting mode.

During this period, Wang Ziteng continued to attack the opponent's Yongcheng City.

After all, you have to perform the whole play.

And Fang Yong was also happy with it.

Wang Ziteng's attack was not fierce. As the defenders, Fang Yong's casualties were not serious and were completely within an acceptable range.

Fang Yong can use this opportunity to train his troops.

He sent some of the new recruits to the city walls, and then under the guidance of veterans, he made these new recruits mature quickly through actual combat.

time flies.

On this day, Mao Cheng came to take office with 500 personal soldiers.

During the Nanjing Uprising, Mao Cheng led his troops to attack the enemy without knowing the immensity of the world, which resulted in him receiving nearly a hundred wounds and almost dying there.

After that life-and-death experience, Mao Cheng had a great trauma in his mind about charging into battle.

But that injury turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Suzhou Governor Yan Hongzhang was afraid of being held accountable for the loss of the city and territory, so he teamed up with him to fabricate facts and deceive the emperor.

Yan Hongzhang was a student of the Cabinet Grand Secretary Cheng Bei, who had great influence in the court, and no one dared to stand up and point out the improprieties of Emperor Longqing.

As a result, Yan Hongzhang successfully escaped death, and Mao Cheng also gained the favor of Emperor Longqing.

Now that Mao Cheng has recovered from his injury, Emperor Longqing promoted Mao Cheng as the deputy commander of the three armies to come to Huaizhou to support Wang Ziteng. It can be said that he trusts Mao Cheng very much.

However, for Mao Cheng, he would rather not have this trust.

When Mao Cheng was in the capital, he heard people say that the Huaiyin bandits were even more vicious than the White Lotus rebels in Nanjing, which made Mao Cheng very frightened.

But now that the imperial order has been issued, even though Mao Cheng is extremely frightened, he dare not not come.

Mao Cheng was very cautious along the way. When passing Jinhai, he asked his father Mao Jie for 500 personal soldiers to protect him. But even so, Mao Cheng still did not feel safe.

Along the way, Mao Cheng did not dare to take a boat, but chose to take the land route to avoid the influence of the Huaiyin bandits.

Soon, Mao Cheng arrived at Jiashan County, a county town south of Hongze Lake, through which he could go directly to Yangzhou.

According to the map provided by Wang Ziteng, this place was under the control of the imperial court and was very safe, so Mao Cheng rushed here without any precautions.

From afar, Mao Cheng saw the county town and walked in with his personal soldiers.

The magistrate seemed to have received the news in advance and went out of the city to greet him.

Behind the county magistrate followed a group of imperial troops.

They were all fully armed, tall and strong, wearing heavy armor, and looked very powerful.

Mao was prejudiced and always felt that something was wrong.

As he was thinking, his personal soldiers reacted first and reminded him:
"No, young master, we have come all this way, how can the imperial court have such elite soldiers?"

When Mao Cheng heard this, he realized what was going on and stopped.

When Fang Yong's men saw this, they knew that the plan had been exposed, so the troops lying in ambush around them immediately took action and shot arrows all over the sky.

Mao Cheng's face changed drastically and he rode away on his horse.

This guy was really lucky. Under the rain of arrows, his horse was shot to death, but he himself managed to escape with his head down. He did not suffer any fatal injuries the whole time, except for two arrows on his buttocks.

Fortunately, Mao Cheng's horse was shot dead, so he was captured by Fang Yong's men before he could escape far.

Soon, Mao Cheng was tied up and brought to Fang Yong.

"General Mao, I have long heard of your great name!"

Fang Yong said with a faint smile.

When he heard that Emperor Longqing had sent a powerful general, he took it very seriously and cooperated with Wang Ziteng to set up an ambush.

The result was very smooth and Mao Cheng was captured alive.

But what should we do with Mao Cheng now?

I heard that the other party is very brave and may be difficult to surrender, just like Xie Jing, who has refused to surrender to him so far.

Fang Yong was thinking about how to deal with Mao Cheng.

Should I be tougher or use both hard and soft tactics?

Then, something happened that Fang Yong never expected.

When Mao Cheng saw him, he knelt down without saying a word and kowtowed loudly.

Fang Yong can’t handle this anymore.

"What are you doing?"

Mao Cheng said with tears and snot:
"General Fang! I have long heard of your great reputation. Now that you have come to me, I am filled with awe and prostrate myself before you. I beg you to consider my sincere heart and grant me the grace of rebirth. I swear to repay your kindness with the rest of my life, and am willing to hold the whip and stirrup and serve you like a dog or a horse."

Fang Yong looked at this scene, the corners of his mouth twitched slightly.

Is this Daxi’s powerful general?

What a surprise.

But if you think about it carefully, it makes sense...

Just looking at Mao Cheng's servile appearance, Fang Yong no longer wanted to accept him even if he surrendered.

Fang Yong’s men are indeed short of people now, but they are not short of this kind of people.

Afterwards, Jia Yucun suggested that Fang Yong send Mao Cheng back.

Talents like Mao Cheng can be more useful if sent to the opponent's camp rather than killed directly.

As expected of Jia Yucun, he can always come up with such sinister plans.

But there is an old saying, "Those who make promises lightly cannot be trusted!"

In order to prevent Mao Cheng from repeating his mistakes in the future, Fang Yong ordered people to tattoo eight big characters on the soles of Mao Cheng's feet: "Anti-Xi, Restore Ming, Longqing is a Pig".

In this way, even if Mao Cheng has ulterior motives in the future, he can use this as a threat.

Not long after, Wang Ziteng took Mao Cheng back.

(End of this chapter)