Since he went to Kunming, Deng Ming kept a diary every day, recording the information he had in detail, so he made the judgments and decisions. Since it was completely military issues and there was no other content, Deng Ming turned this diary into a military diary. Every time he finished writing a military diary, Deng Ming would read the content to the guards. Under Deng Ming's influence, Li Xinghan and several others also tried to write their military diaries after learning to write.

"On September 22, 14th year of Yongli, Zheng Chenggong and Zhang Huangyan's troops had broken up with us. I think they would return to Zhoushan without any danger... Li Laiheng and I will leave Nanjing as soon as possible. I think Nanjing will decide the victory within a few days, and the winner will not be able to reach any deal with me again... In order to ensure that the Qing army in Nanjing (in the diary, Deng Ming has always used the title of Qing army rather than the Tartars) has a fierce fire and, before leaving, I told them that I would return in five days and ask them for one million taels of silver. This suggestion was made for the following considerations: If the Qing army knew me,

If they have retreated and will not return, they may not be in a hurry to start an internal strife. In the end, it is likely that they will decide the winner without force. This is the least loss for the Qing court. And if they think I will return in five days, they may want to solve the internal worries as soon as possible and solve the opponent by force before I return. This kind of force solution will harm the Qing court more... I think Lang Tingzuo and Liang Huafeng are more likely to win, and these two will be the final winners... Lang Tingzuo had the experience of being captured, and Liang Huafeng suddenly ascended to the top, and they may not have any threat to Zhang Huangyan in the near future."

The next day after leaving Nanjing, Deng Ming read the military diary he had just finished and listened to his subordinates: "What do you think?"

Everyone has similar views to Deng Ming. Most people think that Lang Tingzuo and Liang Huafeng have a higher winning rate. Some people were still unsure of their minds, but after hearing Deng Ming's reasons, they also believed that Lang Tingzuo would win.

"Oh, it seems that I should let you say it first, and then read it later." Deng Ming closed the diary with a smile. Now after camping every day, Deng Ming continues to exercise the guard's reading and writing skills, but Ren Tang obviously does not need such training. He probably knows more words than Deng Ming.

Therefore, Deng Ming planned to start the second step in the plan in advance and start the officer literacy activities. Originally, Deng Ming planned to start literacy for officers after establishing a base, but now there is still extra time. After more than half a year of training, the guards have already known hundreds of common words on average. Letting them carry out some teaching work will also help them consolidate their knowledge.

Ren Tang was very interested in Deng Ming's diary method, but hesitated about the literacy plan, because it seemed that the Ming Dynasty had not conducted such large-scale literacy and writing training in the army for hundreds of years. Since there had never been such training content, Ren Tang was worried about whether there would be any hidden concerns that led his predecessors to give up such work.

"In the past, it was unnecessary for officers to recognize words without teaching them," Deng Ming immediately exerted himself after hearing Ren Tang's concerns, and explained: "In the past, we could have completely relied on hiring staff to solve this problem, but now we do not have so many scholars, and most of them have defected to the Tartars, so our officers not only have to know how to fight, but also have to recognize words by themselves. In the past, when the army was in the mastery of local officials, if the imperial court issued any orders, local officials could understand and understand them, but now we do not have so many local officials. Those who recognize words have participated in the imperial examinations of the Tartars. All the military and political work in our various places must be borne by the Qianzong, the general manager. Therefore, they not only have to know how to fight, but also have to read and recognize words. In the future, I want to arrange for them to learn how to calculate the baggage, and at least they can calculate the roughness of the army, and transport the vehicles and ships needed for the baggage."

Deng Ming's explanation was not very satisfied. He felt that the other party seemed a little taken for granted: When the Ming Dynasty was able to recruit talents from the country by relying on the imperial examinations, it was not completely unnecessary for officers to engage in some military government affairs. However, the Ming Dynasty never encouraged officers to learn cultural knowledge. However, Ren Tang could not think of any reason to oppose Deng Ming's idea. After all, all the various needs raised by the other party were in front of him.

After convinced Ren Tang, Deng Ming discussed the matter with Li Laiheng again. Li Laiheng also did not object to letting the officers recognize their words, but he was worried that this kind of cultural training would squeeze out the time for military training, and was also worried about educational resources. Deng Ming pointed out that there was no problem in time. Generally speaking, due to insufficient meat, the Ming army could not perform daily training; even if they could eat enough food every day, the training intensity of the Ming army would be maintained at about three days. Deng Ming pointed out that cultural learning can be arranged in days without training. For example, the Ming army is in a marching state, so the officer study class can be organized after camping every day. As for the teacher issues that Li Laiheng is worried about, Deng Ming can now provide a group of guards for free to serve as teachers. They first learn from Deng Ming and then lead a few officers in the camp one by one.

Li Laiheng thought about it and thought this method was good. Even if each of Deng Ming's subordinates brought ten students, he could help 200 officers in the camp to recognize their words. Even if he could not read the complicated mansion report, he could understand simple warrants. However, Deng Ming was unable to help Li Laiheng train 200 officers. After they arrived in Anqing, Ren Tang proposed to help Zhejiang Army officers recognize their words. Deng Ming's guard was therefore divided into two halves and trained officers in the camp and Zhejiang Army respectively.

Of course, Ren Tang went to serve the Zhejiang Army. He felt that it was too many to bring ten students by one person, so he pointed out that under normal circumstances, private school professors would only bring less than five students. If there were too many people, the teaching quality would drop rapidly. However, Deng Ming quickly dispelled Ren Tang's doubts: "We are not cultivating children and scholars, but teaching officers to understand the simplest warrant. It is not necessary to teach so many. Now they are familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics and have no place to take the imperial examinations unless they go to the Tartars."

Ren Tang admitted that Deng Ming was right, and no one from Li Xinghan and others took several students. If we follow the standards of private schools, these guys are obviously not yet completed the work of education. Based on the principle of being able to work harder, Ren Tang brought a large class with more than 20 Zhejiang Army officers in one go, and taught them to recognize words after camping every day.

Yu Youming, a young Zhejiang Army general who had previously urged Anqing prefect to report Hu Laoxiao at the head of Anqing City, was in Ren Tang's class. Although Yu Youming was young, he claimed to be the descendant of the general, so everyone called him General Yu Xiao. Yu Youming and Ren Tang were about the same age, and the two soon got familiar with each other and talked about their ancestors.

"My father was named Shizhong," Yu Youming said that his father was an officer from Jiangbei and a hereditary warrior. He fought with Zuo Liangyu's troops in front of the Qing army. After defeat, he retreated to Huguang and died of illness in Longwunian: "My father loved soldiers like his son and was deeply energetic. When the left thief counterattacked Nandu, his father was outnumbered and was repelled by the left thief. However, he was defeated but not in chaos. After retreating to Hunan, there were many soldiers, and there were no offenses along the way, and the people were all happy."

"It's true that it's the style of a general." Ren Tang sighed. Yu Youming's father's premature death also made him sigh. If such a general who deeply wins the morale of the army and loves the people can live a little longer, and he can also make greater contributions to the Ming Dynasty.

After Yu Youming finished speaking, Ren Tang also talked about his father: "I first took the test to Bo Tong. In the 15th year of Chongzhen, he was appointed as the magistrate of Guide Prefecture, Henan. After taking office, the thieves came soon after. I first learned military books and were very familiar with military affairs. Unfortunately, the prefect was stubborn and did not listen to the good words of the first test. He was defeated by the thieves in less than a month after he stayed in the capital. Although he escaped, he was dismissed because of this. Unfortunately, if he was the magistrate of Guide at that time, he would definitely be able to let the thieves return in vain. At least it would not be a problem to stick to it for a year or two."

(The author's note that these two paragraphs are an easter egg given to readers of "Tiger and Wolf".)

...

The Ming army was on guard when they traveled westward and passed by Jiujiang to prevent the Qing army from coming out to harass him.

At this time, Deng Ming had learned about the outcome of the Nanjing battle, and also heard that Liang Huafeng was boasting, claiming that he had repelled the Ming army. Now the Qing army in Nanjing has also confirmed that the Ming army is far away from Nanjing and will not return. Jiang Guozhu and Liang Huafeng attribute all this to themselves: claiming that they gave Deng Ming's vanguard a heavy blow, so the Ming army clearly realized that since Nanjing was guarded by Jiang Guozhu and Liang Huafeng, it was definitely not something they could seize, so they had to retreat with regret.

Deng Ming had no intention of refuting the self-proclaimed Qing army in Nanjing.

In fact, Liang Huafeng's boast was quite restrained. The notifications to nearby provinces only said that they destroyed Deng Ming's plan and killed Lang Tingzuo, who surrendered to the enemy and treason. At most, they said that they defeated Deng Ming's attack, but they never mentioned defeating Deng Ming himself.

Such restrained propaganda is extremely rare, and since the other party is so cautious, Deng Ming has no good way to refute it - if the Ming army's vanguard has not suffered any defeat, why would the Ming army retreat? Moreover, since the propaganda of Jiang Guozhu and Liang Huafeng in the "victors" of Nanjing Defense War is so restrained, most Qing officials also understood that their actual results must be more limited, and most of them had no achievements except killing Lang Tingzuo. As for Lang Tingzuo, many officials also believed that it was mostly Deng Ming's temptation, with the idea of ​​being able to succeed best, and without success, there was no loss. After all, Zhu Hongwu's city wall was too solid; after Lang Tingzuo and Guan Yizhong who led the way were killed, Deng Ming realized that there was no other good way except for a strong attack and retreated on his own - Liang Huafeng called this vanguard and offensive attempt to defeat Deng Ming.

Jiangxi's understanding of the Nanjing War was basically the case. The elites and main water camps of Ganzhou Province had long been sent to Nanjing and were annihilated by Deng Ming. Some prisoners who were released earlier even magnified the combat effectiveness of the Ming army. When the Ming army passed, Jiangxi had no intention of going out to provoke the Ming army, which had not been damaged. After most of the Ming army passed, Jiujiang ruled out a team of 150 cavalry, intending to see if there was any advantage to take.

This team of Qing cavalry met nearly a hundred Li Laiheng's cavalry. Forty people were killed and fled in a hurry. Only two people died in battle in the camp.

Before leaving Jiangxi, another team of Qing cavalry sent from Nanchang followed behind the Ming army, and it seemed that there was an attempt to attack the Ming soldiers who fell behind. Li Laiheng sent the cavalry unit of a hundred people, which in a blink of an eye killed the Qing army and fled again. Like the Qing cavalry in Jiujiang, he left about one-third of the bodies, and the losses of the camp were still in single digits.

When the cavalry of the hundred trespass camps returned to the army with their heads, their heroic behavior aroused a large number of cheers, and even the officers and soldiers of the Zhejiang army admired them very much.

"It turns out that there are no weak soldiers under the strong generals." Deng Ming congratulated Li Laiheng. When the Qing Navy in the Yangtze River before, Li Laiheng had never dispatched this horse team. When Jiujiang cut off the rear, Deng Ming was not at the rear of the team and had no chance to see the style of this horse team. Today is Deng Ming once met these knights.

However, as soon as we met today, Deng Ming realized that this cavalry was quite elite. Everyone seemed to be very good at riding. They cooperated very well with each other, and killed the Qing cavalry on the opposite side without any ability to fight back. It was quite difficult to train such a cavalry unit, and it was probably cost a lot. Deng Ming guessed that it was a pride in the army cultivated by Li Laiheng with all his financial resources.

After hearing Deng Ming's praise, Li Laiheng, who had been silent, smiled bitterly: "The Admiral is praised, this is not the one I can train. Alas, these people are all lost and one less."

After looking at these camp knights up close, Deng Ming found that these people were almost middle-aged, at least they looked much bigger than Li Laiheng, and some of them had gray hair.

Li Laiheng hesitated for a moment, and finally told Deng Ming bluntly: "This is the three walls of the camp in the past. Now there are only these ninety-two people left. Oh, no, there are only eighty-nine people left after today."

Deng Ming did not know the history of the three walls of the camp, so he asked a few more questions. Li Laiheng observed for a moment and felt that Deng Ming had no other meaning, so he slowly began to tell the history of this army.

In the 14th year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng, who came out of Shangluo Mountain, was determined to build a real army. He selected a thousand horse riders from the rebels in Henan, Shaanxi and Huguang, and paired them with two horses to act as the backbone of the battlefield. In many battles, this horse formation array blocked the impact of the Ming army, and was not messy every time, so it was named Three Walls. During the Three Opening Period, Three Walls reached its peak, and people said that there were four or five thousand people.

All were brave riders collected by Li Zicheng from all over the country, each with two horses or even three horses. Before and after the camp, the Qin army, which was known as the elite of the Ming Dynasty, was defeated by four times, and the three walls played a great role. During the flood in Kaifeng, half of the three walls were swept away by the flood. Later, although Li Zicheng tried his best to recover, until he entered Beijing, the number of people in this horse team returned to its heyday level, but its combat effectiveness was still much worse.

"...It seems that in the first year of Hongguang, my uncle launched a counterattack against the Tartars in Huaiqing. At that time, the three walls had already suffered a considerable loss, with less than one thousand left and less than two thousand people left, but they still defeated the Eight Banners Cavalry of Manchuria, which was more than them in the field." Li Laiheng sighed here. The Qing army, which had already moved south, turned westward and attacked Li Zicheng with all its strength after this war. Therefore, the Hongguang regime won a year. However, the Hongguang regime did not take advantage of this rare opportunity, but mistakenly believed that their "union of enemy troops to suppress the enemy" policy received an active response from Dorgon. As the celebration of the whole court, Shi Kefa pointed out that the next Nanming strategy should be dispatched to direct the Qin Pass, and cooperated with the Qing Dynasty to fight against Li Zicheng.

"Although my father and General Gao (Gao Yigong) all wanted to rebuild the three walls, but they lacked money and food, and it was difficult for the army to make a living. Where can they still have the strength to train riders?" Many of the riders who Li Zicheng selected for the three walls were between eighteen and twenty, and were brave and brave. Now the youngest among these riders is over thirty-five. Li Laiheng watched the cavalry passing by, and his heart was filled with regret: "More than ten years ago, there were thousands of riders on the three walls. In the Battle of Huaiqing, they could still charge and repel the five thousand cavalrymen of the Eight Banners of Manchuria and repel them. But now, the three walls can only fight with more than a hundred green camp cavalry in the local area."

After listening to this story, Deng Ming was full of emotion. He looked at the camp riders who took the enemy's head to the tip of the gun, and a question arose in his heart: "With repeated battles and rushing with more than 100,000 Qin troops, and after the three walls of Shanhaiguan, Tongguan, Huaiqing, etc., will they really take the achievements of these Jiangxi green camps seriously? Or are they just trying to boost the morale of our army? Or are they missing the past years? Will they imagine the Zhejiang army cheering to them as the camp army that was more than ten years ago, recalling the glory and victory of their youth?"

"This time, Husband was seized a lot. Have you ever thought about rebuilding... no, expanding the three walls?" Deng Ming asked.

Li Laiheng turned his head and looked at Deng Ming more carefully than before. After a moment, he shook his head: "No."

"Don't get me wrong, I do think that three walls can be expanded, they..." Deng Ming whispered to the older cavalry: "They will be very happy."

"Yes, the admiral is open-minded, and I am very impressed." Since Li Guo accepted the title of the Ming Dynasty, he no longer used the name "Three Walls" in the camp. After all, the name of this cavalry was won by the Qin army of the Ming court. Although Li Laiheng had just been convinced that Deng Ming had no intention of temptation, he still felt that it was inappropriate to use this name. Even if Deng Ming did not think too much now, he would feel unsure of his heart.

Besides, Li Laiheng has other reasons: "I did seize a lot this time and I also want to train the Xingshan Army's horse team, but they are... well, they are only three walls."

Deng Ming understood what Li Laiheng meant. The other party believed that the cavalry that broke into the camp had no inheritance. Since there was no fresh blood in it for too long, these old riders may no longer accept the successors and no longer allow newcomers to enter their circle. Therefore, after these riders withered, the three walls will naturally no longer exist.

A few days later, Deng Ming came to Li Laiheng's camp with two flags.

"What is this?" Li Laiheng asked curiously.

"I gave Hushang a gift, but I didn't use a pennant because I think it's better to draw with a square flag." Deng Ming spread out the first flag, with a colorful tiger on it - Deng Ming had been painting this flag for a long time and wanted to take it out a little later, but he changed his mind a few days ago: "Give it to Hushang a gift."

"Thank you, Admiral." Li Laiheng was surprised and happy after seeing the flag clearly. He took the flag over and looked at it again with a smile.

"There is another side of this. I just drew it and planned to give it to a army under Hushuai." Deng Ming handed over the second flag.

Li Laiheng hurriedly shook and looked at it. The pattern on the flag was quite simple, with three rows of front and back... Well, it seemed like three brick walls.

"This is," Li Laiheng showed an incredible expression on his face, and turned to look at Deng Ming.

"What does Hushuai think?" Deng Ming asked with a smile.

"Three walls?" Li Laiheng asked softly.

"That's right," Deng Ming nodded: "I hope this military flag can be passed on forever, Shi Zhong will fly on the battlefield and will never fall into the enemy."

Li Laiheng placed both flags on the table and thought quietly for a long time. Li Laiheng remembered the name of "Tiger Shield", which actually came from his father's "A Tiger", that is, the generals in Kuidong liked to call themselves "Little Tiger". The more orthodox Ming ministers never used this title. For example, Zhang Huangyan, Wen Anzhi and others, they could use "Duke Linguo" or "General Li", but they never used the word "Tiger Shield" to call Li Laiheng.

"It's the Admiral..." Li Laiheng thought to himself, and spread the tiger flag that Deng Ming gave him again. The tiger on it was vividly painted. Li Laiheng could see that Deng Ming had spent a lot of thought and was very serious: "The Admiral never had any prejudice. When talking about camping, he never evades and always was open and upright."

After thinking for a while, Li Laiheng made up his mind and raised his head to thank the riders of the three walls, "Since it is the admiral's intention, then we should obey our orders. However, this flag is not good for me to give it to the riders of the three walls. I think since it was painted by the admiral himself, it would be better for the admiral to hand over the flag to them."

"No, no, this flag is of course handed over to them by Hushang," Deng Ming shook his head immediately and said, ""I am not the boss of the three walls, and it is not my turn to hand over the flag to them. But Hushang said it well. Since this flag was painted by me, I can of course watch the ceremony next to me."

After the march the next day, Li Laiheng summoned all the remaining riders on the three walls. In front of a large number of soldiers in the camp and Zhejiang Army, he solemnly handed over the military flag pattern painted by Deng Ming to the leader's riders, so that they could use this square flag to replace their existing military flag from then on.

In front of all the bystanders, Li Laiheng announced that the flag was painted by Jiangnan Admiral Deng Ming, and took advantage of the situation to announce Deng Ming's expectations: "The Admiral hopes that you can pass on this flag well, so you need to carefully select outstanding young riders and give them all their skills so that they can protect this military flag on the battlefield."

"Affect the order." The rider who took the military flag bowed solemnly to Li Laiheng, then turned to face Deng Ming on the side, and bowed deeply again: "I'm pleased to accept the order."

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