Southern Ming Rebel Army

Chapter 153 Martial Arts Performance

Outside Suzhou city.

The spectacular scene of the army's large-scale military exercise, with flags flying and drums beating, was shocking. Tens of thousands of soldiers lined up in neat rows, like a black ocean, surging like waves.

Outside the city, there were dense crowds of people, some standing and some sitting, their eyes focused on the army performing martial arts exercises in the distance. These people came from different social classes, but at this moment they were all equally excited, looking forward to witnessing this spectacular military show.

As the military performance began, the soldiers marched in neat steps, shouted loud slogans, and the military formation was as natural as flowing clouds and water. Meng Jun and the generals on the platform showed satisfied smiles on their faces. They had not taken any action for half a year because Meng Jun knew that the Qing army was not strong enough in Jiangnan at the moment, so he suppressed the restless hearts of the generals.

The infantry of various towns mainly practiced formations. During the wars, there were very few battles involving strange strategies. Most of the wars were fought in an upright manner with the men fighting in line. As the saying goes, those who are good at fighting do not have glorious achievements.

Amidst the clamor, the people watching seemed to have forgotten where they were, completely immersed in the grand scene before them. They exclaimed from time to time, and the children, who knew nothing about war, opened their eyes wide, observing it all with curiosity and excitement. Perhaps the seed of courage had been planted in their hearts.

Then, the cavalry split into three groups at lightning speed, and then merged into one group, sweeping past like a whirlwind. The only flaw was that the horsemanship of these riders was not good enough, and one cavalryman even fell off his horse and died during the martial arts performance. However, the cavalry was only recently formed, from scratch, and the biggest flaw of the cavalry formed by Meng Jun was that there was no place to raise horses. Every horse lost was a lesser horse.

During the martial arts performance, archers would occasionally shoot arrows like locusts. The sound of arrowheads breaking through the air was endless, and dense arrows were shot at the straw man in front.

What Meng Jun was most concerned about at this time was the newly built Musketeer Battalion. He saw that the two thousand men in the Musketeer Battalion were arranged in three long and thin lines. The musketeers in the first row raised their self-made muskets and aimed at the targets in front of them.

Following the officer's order, the first row of the musket line, with nearly seven hundred muskets, fired a round of volleys and then reloaded on the spot. The second row took a step forward, fired a volley, and reloaded on the spot. The third row took two steps forward, fired a volley, and reloaded on the spot, and so on. Fixed-load gunpowder could increase the firing speed of the muskets. On average, the loading speed of the muskets was about one shot per minute. Of course, it was still slower than the speed of archers firing three or four arrows a minute.

Gu Yanwu, who was watching from a high place, frowned and asked Meng Jun: "Commander-in-chief, the smoke is so thick that the musketeers' vision is blocked."

Meng Jun said without turning his head: "This musket battalion is definitely not fighting alone. It needs to cooperate with a large number of long-range and short-range artillery. The firearms and artillery are powerful. Even if the Qing soldiers are wearing heavy armor, they cannot withstand the attack of firearms. Although there is thick smoke, it cannot hide the advantages of firearms."

As the military exercise ended, Gu Yanwu boasted in the Zhenxing newspaper about how elite Meng Jun's troops were, as if the restoration of the country was just around the corner. When the news of the military exercise spread to Jiangsu and Zhejiang, those who called themselves the old and young descendants of the Ming Dynasty were excited. The newspaper had so many editions, and in the very first edition, Gu Yanwu used the slogan "The rise and fall of the country is the responsibility of every man", which frightened the Southern Ming Shaowu Emperor and Yongli Emperor and his ministers.

Gu Yanwu's commentary said: "The world does not belong to one family or one surname, but to all people in the world." At the same time, in subsequent editions of newspapers, Gu Yanwu even promoted Mencius' people-oriented thought, which is: "The people are the most important, the country is second, and the king is the least important."

This is obviously contrary to the views of our dynasty. After reading "Mencius", Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, became furious at the content of the book and immediately ordered Mencius to be expelled from the Confucius Temple. However, Gu Yanwu promoted it vigorously in the newspapers. How could this not make the Ming officials feel threatened?

In the south of the Yangtze River, when Dorgon went south, all parts of the south of the Yangtze River surrendered. If Dorgon had not forced them to shave their heads and change their clothes, the common people and gentry in the south of the Yangtze River would not have risen up in resistance. For the common people, the change of dynasties was just the ebb and flow of the tide. The common people did not care whether the emperor in the Forbidden City had a golden bowl to eat or not. However, when the order to shave their heads was issued, the whole nation resisted one after another. As the saying goes: "If the crown is gone, the world will perish. If the clothes are there, the world will still exist."

Everyone said that Dorgon's hair-shaving order was a chaotic order. Without this order, the world would have been stable long ago, and Emperor Shunzhi would have enjoyed a peaceful reign. Was Dorgon really incompetent? In fact, it was not. Dorgon's move was very clever. He knew that he was a small tribe facing a large clan. In the Central Plains, there has always been a saying that no one can last a hundred years. Dorgon was worried that the Qing Dynasty would be like the Mongols, whose rise was rapid and whose fall was sudden.

The hair crown represents the dignity and heritage of a nation, and Dorgon wanted to castrate this heritage and dignity!

The people of Jiangyin advocated that "the head can be cut off but the hair can never be replaced". This was the voice of the people with dignity in this era. It was under such circumstances that Meng Jun followed the trend of the times and gathered people's hearts.

The Jiangnan region, where Qian Qianyi had advised the Qing court that "the people of the Three Wu regions are weak and there is no need for a large army to conquer them; a single decree can conquer them," became the burial place of tens of thousands of Qing cavalrymen.

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Jiangnan has been the territory of Zhang Shicheng. It took Zhu Yuanzhang a long time to pacify it. The city of Suzhou alone blocked Zhu Yuanzhang for ten months. During the 300 years of the Ming Dynasty, Suzhou's taxes were the heaviest in the country. The Suzhou and Songjiang areas had been burdened with heavy taxes for hundreds of years, and it was impossible not to complain about the Zhu Dynasty in secret.

When Xia Wanchun handed the newspaper to Meng Jun, Meng Jun looked at the newspaper and laughed. He said to Xia Wanchun: "Mr. Gu is exaggerating."

On the recommendation of Chen Zilong, Xia Wanchun became Meng Jun's personal secretary. He was usually responsible for copying or conveying Meng Jun's various instructions. Meng Jun had some impression of Xia Wanchun. It seemed that he was captured for resisting the Qing Dynasty and was killed for insulting Hong Chengchou. Meng Jun saw that Xia Wanchun was only a boy of seventeen or eighteen years old at this time, but he didn't know when he was captured. However, with his arrival, Xia Wanchun's fate would inevitably be changed by himself.

"Governor, Mr. Gu is telling the truth. I think the troops in various towns are all elite. I'm afraid they will be no match for the elite Tartars," Xia Wanchun said with some confidence.

Meng Jun smiled and did not refute. Although this was still not enough for the elite Eight Banners, Meng Jun had unknowingly mustered the courage to fight the Eight Banners of the Qing army in the field.