Volume 4: Hot! The whole world is a warring state Chapter 668: Ming Dynasty’s Indian Army
March 1638, Agra, India. The headquarters of the Ming Dynasty’s Indian garrison.
"Hey, Brother Zhennan, long time no see."
"No, Lao Li, you are at least two years older than me. Come on, sit down."
The so-called Old Li refers to Li Yongfang, who joined Xiong Tingbi's army together with Mao Wenlong, and then trained together in Kuandian for many years.
Although Zhu Youdong has been reminding himself that some people in history who have no integrity or have done wrong are often the trend of the times, as an emperor, he should be as fair as possible and should not look at those people with tinted glasses based on things that have not happened in this plane.
However, he thought so, but actually doing it was another matter. Especially after Zu Dashou got involved in the Donglin Party's attempt to poison him, he could not take off his tinted glasses.
Therefore, in the past few decades, Mao Wenlong has always been the actual commander of the army, and his rank has been promoted very quickly. After conquering India, his military rank became general, and his military position was the commander-in-chief of the Ming Dynasty's Indian Army. As for Li Yongfang, Mao Wenlong took the initiative to find the Imperial Horse Supervisor and transferred him from the reserve army headquarters in the Ming Dynasty to be his chief of staff.
After both parties sat down, Mao Wenlong glanced at Li Yongfang and said, "A few days ago, Yang Lian and Zuo Guangdou impeached you one after another, saying that you rode your servants in your garden to travel. Is this true?"
"Ah? These Donglin remnants like to make trouble after having a full day! Hey, Zhennan, you know that Indians are born slaves. They are willing to let us ride on them, what can we do? Oh, I did ride for a while that day, just to inspect the cultivated land in my own garden and urge the people below to prepare for spring plowing. What's the big deal?"
"Dong, dong, dong~" Mao Wenlong knocked on the table vigorously and said sternly, "Old Li! We are military generals! We ride horses, not people! Even though machine guns and submachine guns are popular now and cavalry has declined, when we go out, isn't it better to take a car? Why do we have to ride people? When the emperor left India, he repeatedly told me to maintain the combat effectiveness of the army and not to be corrupted by the dirty things here. Look at you! You have been in India for more than two years, and you have recruited one after another. You have at least 3,000 slaves under you, if not 5,000? What do you want to do? Are you going to learn from those noble families of the Eastern Han Dynasty?!"
"Bang~" Li Yongfang took out his lighter and lit a cigarette. After taking a deep puff, he blew out a smoke ring and said, "Zhennan, old brother, you are a bit too much. How old are you this year? Sixty-two, right? What about me? Sixty-four. According to the regulations on the management of officers, if I, a major general, cannot be promoted, I must retire at the age of sixty-five. What do you think of me at my age? Since slavery is not allowed in the country and officials and gentry are required to pay taxes together, I can only buy a manor here and pass it on to my descendants in the future. Otherwise, I will be a prime minister and work hard for the emperor all my life, what's the point?"
Glancing at the silent Mao Wenlong, Li Yongfang continued, "Besides, I am a senior officer after all, so I have some self-control. Thanks to the emperor's kindness to us, my annual military salary as a major general is also thousands of silver dollars. When I bought the farm, I bought it at a fair price with the local princes and nobles, and never took advantage of others. Look at those middle and lower-level officers and ordinary soldiers? They married one wife after another. With so many wives, they also had many children. With so many mouths to feed, how can the military salary be enough? Don't they have to bully the local natives?"
Hearing Li Yongfang's words, Mao Wenlong frowned even more.
The people in India are so docile. To be honest, Mao Wenlong felt that if the Ming army stationed in India were to use the same method in India in China, it would cause a civil uprising in a matter of minutes, and then the imperial court would suppress it. But here? The harder you treat these Indians, the more obedient they are.
Although there is still a deep-rooted caste system among Indians, and high and low castes never intermarry. But the officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty don't care about this? As long as you are obedient and docile, you are one of them! In this way, the officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty naturally won the favor of many low-caste Indian women - although the officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty are not white, they are still much whiter than the Shudras and Dalits in India!
Generally speaking, it is very easy for a woman to pursue a man. Therefore, in the more than three years since the Indians were basically settled in August 1634, most of the Ming Dynasty soldiers stationed in India had concubines or wives here. Naturally, a large number of Ming-Indian hybrids were born ...
As Li Yongfang said, with more mouths to feed, the Ming army's salary was not enough. And for most people, morality is something that can only be achieved after food and clothing are solved. Therefore, in the past six months, the relationship between the Indian army and the surrounding people - well, it's not tense, after all, the people here are typical bullies who are afraid of the strong. But in any case, it is not as harmonious as before.
Wen Tiren and Mao Wenlong were somewhat helpless about this situation: the division sent to America by the Ming Dynasty was given resettlement allowance in addition to the normal salary - just as if they had returned. However, there was no resettlement allowance for the three divisions sent to India: they risked their lives to go to America, but you are enjoying life in India. Therefore, the Ministry of National Defense did not provide any additional subsidies to the officers and soldiers stationed in India.
What should I do if I don't have enough money to join the army? Is the gun in my hand just for decoration?
Therefore, Old Wen had no choice but to ask Mao Wenlong to issue a strict order, requiring Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers stationed in India to marry no more than one wife and three concubines. If they married more than that, they would be ordered to retire.
But even so, the officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were taken down again and again by the enthusiastic Indian girls. If these guys had children after having sex with each other, even if they could not marry each other openly due to military law, they still had to give each other living expenses: Chinese men, at least in this era, the proportion of scumbags is extremely small. It is much better than the black uncles who disappear after successfully creating life.
However, the soldiers always wanted to do various things, which led to tensions between the military and the people. And the combat effectiveness...
"Swish!" After shaking his head helplessly, Mao Wenlong threw out a document: "This is the news that the Jinyiwei's spies in Europe desperately sent me. Since December last year, Europe has gradually started to mobilize. In January and February of this year, the scale of the mobilization has become larger and larger, and it can't be concealed. According to the analysis of the Jinyiwei, the troops mobilized in Europe this time are at least more than 300,000."
"What? Are they going to fight Osman?"
"It would be great if we really wanted to fight the Ottoman Empire! After all, the Ming Dynasty had envoys stationed in the Ottoman Empire before, so we also developed some subordinates. According to the information revealed by these people, the Ottoman Empire is also conducting large-scale mobilization."
"That's right, the two countries are going to fight again."
"Bullshit! The Ottomans are concentrating their forces in the east!"
"This..." Although he is a little older and has lost some of his energy in recent years, Li Yongfang is still a veteran. When Mao Wenlong said this, he naturally understood the situation.
First, the EU has mobilized a large-scale operation, and this scale is definitely not just a waste of time. It must be going to attack somewhere.
Second, the Ottoman Empire is also mobilizing, but in the face of the EU's large-scale mobilization, it is still deploying its main forces to the east instead of strengthening the defense of the western border. This can only mean that the two countries have reached some kind of agreement - the EU's mobilization this time is not aimed at the Ottoman Empire.
3. In this case, it is clear who the EU is targeting: it is impossible to transport more than 300,000 soldiers to America. The terrain and conditions there determine that having more soldiers may not necessarily bring about an advantage.
Therefore, it can only be India. And it is possible that the troops mobilized by the Ottomans are also heading for India. After all, the Ottomans have already torn Persia apart over the years, and there is no need for large-scale mobilization to deal with a scattered Persia.
"Hmm..." After lighting another cigarette, Li Yongfang pondered for a while: "What does Prime Minister Wen say about this matter?"
"The entire Indian Viceroyalty is mobilized, and all the vassal states in South Asia are mobilized. In addition, send an urgent letter to Beijing."
"No matter how fast the reinforcements from Beijing arrive, it will take half a year." After muttering softly, Li Yongfang blew out a smoke ring and said to Mao Chengdou, who had been standing next to him, "My dear nephew, why are you so ignorant? Go get your father a topographical map of India."
After the two old men unfolded the map, Li Yongfang said, "Zhennan, I heard that the displacement of the new warships of the Western bandits exceeds 10,000 tons. Are our navy afraid?"
"Yan Siqi said at the meeting yesterday that if that 10,000-ton battleship comes, he can only do his best to deal with it."
"Yeah." Without complaining about the navy, Li Yongfang thought for a moment and said, "In this case, the ports on the west coast of the Indian Peninsula will not be safe."
"That's true. So what I mean is to concentrate our main forces on the main transportation routes inland. If the Western bandits really come, then our main forces will respond flexibly based on their landing location."
"...Well, if the navy can't win, then that's all we can do."
"Yes." Mao Wenlong sighed helplessly and said, "The question now is who will guard the Khyber Pass. If I am right, if the Ottomans really form an alliance with Spain, then his army should come from the direction of Persia, and the Khyber Pass is the only way to go."
The so-called Khyber Pass, in simple terms, is where the north-south Hindu Kush Mountains and the east-west Himalayas are just a little bit apart.
For thousands of years, from the earliest Aryans, to the Alexander Empire, the Kushan Empire, the Ghaznavid Empire, the Qajar Dynasty, the Durrani Dynasty... all the way to the Mughal Empire, before the Age of Discovery, the forces of Central Asia and West Asia all entered South Asia from here - this was almost the only entrance to South Asia by land under ancient transportation technology.
However, although so many invaders entered South Asia from here, after they entered and became the new masters of South Asia, they never thought of building a checkpoint or a complete defense system at the Khyber Pass. Instead, they accepted the caste system in the warm and fertile land of South Asia, and then quickly decayed, waiting to be conquered by new invaders...
After the Ming Dynasty conquered India, the Ming Dynasty officials had a little understanding of the history of this continent and did not need Zhu Youdong to remind them. The first thing Wen Tiren did after taking office was to mobilize 200,000 civilians to build a defense system at the Khyber Pass.
Therefore, the defense system of Khyber Pass is complete at this moment. It just needs to determine the personnel and the number of troops to guard it.
When Zhu Youdong left here, he left behind three divisions. In the past three years, Wen Tiren has drawn some officers from these three divisions, using these officers as the backbone and local Indians as the source of soldiers to form five Indian divisions. Therefore, at this moment, Mao Wenlong has eight divisions and 120,000 people under his command.
However, Mao Wenlong himself knew that if he followed the combat power table set by Cao Wenzhao for each unit when he conquered India, the combat power of the three Ming divisions, which were originally 80% and 90%, would be reduced by at least 20% after more than three years in India. As for the five Indian divisions, well, since the Sikhs had established an independent country, the combat power of these Indian divisions formed purely by the Hindustani people was probably at the level of 20% and 30%.
"Old Li, this is what I think. If the enemy attacks, the quickest way is to land directly on the peninsula by sea. The Khyber Pass is a pure land route, and it is unlikely that hundreds of thousands of troops will go there. So, what I mean is that we should send one of our own battalions there, and then let the Sikhs send 10,000 people to follow our command."
"...Okay, then who should go?"
"Cao Bianjiao and Zuo Menggeng, after all, one is Marshal Cao's nephew, and the other is Zuo Liangyu's biological son. In the past three years, only their battalion has maintained daily drills... Strengthen their battalion with more manpower, equipment, ammunition, etc. Leave the Khyber Pass to them. Our main focus should still be on dealing with the landing enemy."
"Okay." Li Yongfang lit another cigarette and said leisurely, "I don't know whether the enemy will arrive first or the reinforcements will arrive first."
"Haha, who cares? It's a war anyway, it's just a matter of life or death!"
