My Apprenticeship to Uncle Jiu: I Was a Warlord in the Republic of China

The four giants of the coalition were stunned when they saw this scene. How could they be defeated so completely when they just changed their defense?

But the defeat was so overwhelming that you couldn't just ignore it. As the defeated soldiers fled, the four giants of the coalition immediately dispersed and each gathered their own people.

But it was not so easy to identify these hundreds of thousands of defeated soldiers. In desperation, they could only randomly gather some people and barely retain a little bit of strength.

Among these four, the happiest one was He Jian. Since he had only more than 10,000 people, he did not participate much in the previous battles.

Only a thousand people were lost during this period, and now there are still 10,000 troops at hand. Seeing that the coalition forces were unable to organize an effective resistance again, he simply decided not to resist.

Instead, he planned to take advantage of the chaos to gather the defeated troops of his allies and then wait for an opportunity to make a comeback.

He acted as he thought. He used the relatively organized troops he had and quickly recruited the defeated soldiers.

In just half a day, he actually gathered over 20,000 people before Jiang Li attacked.

Seeing that the Anmin Army was about to attack, this guy immediately ran away with 30,000 people.

When Tang Shengzhi, Zhao Hengti and Tan Yankai heard the news, they were so furious that they wanted to cut He Jian into pieces immediately.

But they were destined to have no chance, because the Anmin Army had already attacked, and since they did not have many organized troops, they each only gathered less than 20,000 people.

In the end, he could only flee back in shame.

When Jiang Li saw this familiar scene, he immediately left some people to defend to prevent the enemy from making a counterattack, and then ordered other soldiers to start capturing the fleeing soldiers.

He is still prepared to let them go temporarily to avoid the possibility that these hundreds of thousands of defeated soldiers will be linked together by people with ulterior motives to cause sabotage in his rear, which would be disastrous.

After fleeing back in panic, the four giants of the coalition forces immediately began to gather their defeated soldiers and prepare for a final resistance.

But at this time, they discovered a good news, that is, the Anmin Army did not chase them.

But at the same time, they also received bad news, that is, He Jian was the first one to escape with his men, and now he has returned to the rear one step ahead of them.

He also used these 30,000 defeated soldiers to control the 200,000 militiamen initially organized by the landlords and gentry.

Since these 200,000 people were carefully selected and armed by the gentry and landlords, some of them had old weapons.

So just this wave of forces gave him some hope of turning the tables, and with the help of these 200,000 militiamen, he quickly occupied Tan Yankai's territory, which was close to Hubei.

Tan Yankai was dumbfounded when he got the news. This guy was fine when he came out, but now he has suffered a great defeat and is back to the situation before liberation.

So he immediately sent someone to negotiate with He Jian, hoping that he could return his territory. Otherwise, when the time came, Jiang Li would be the one to benefit from the conflict between the two sides.

At a time like this, how could He Jian give up the foundation he had obtained? He kept talking to the envoy and was unwilling to return the territory.

But he was also afraid that Tan Yankai would really become depressed and fight him to the death, so he finally allocated a county to Tan Yankai for him to temporarily station there.

The excuse was that they were afraid that something like before would happen again, where there would be a commotion during the handover, giving Jiang Li an opportunity to take advantage of.

After getting such a small escape route, Tan Yankai had no choice but to temporarily accept this condition, even though he knew that this county was the only way for Jiang Li to send troops.

Let’s not talk about the grudges between these two guys for now, and talk about Tang Shengzhi and Zhao Hengti. They each brought more than 10,000 people back to their own territories.

They immediately began to gather the defeated soldiers and recruit young and strong men, and managed to gather 30,000 to 40,000 people in just a few days, of course half of them were new recruits.

But this could barely make them feel at ease. After all, there were still tens of thousands of people, and they were barely able to fight.

Right?

Jiang Li didn't care about their situation and dispersed the troops. In just one day, he captured more than 100,000 defeated soldiers.

He then told these people directly that as long as they surrendered to him and then found a defeated soldier, not only would all their previous crimes be forgiven, they would even receive a reward.

As soon as these words were spoken, the hundreds of thousands of surrendered soldiers immediately became noisy. Jiang Li struck while the iron was hot, dispersed them and asked his soldiers to take them to search for the defeated soldiers.

With the examples set by these surrendered soldiers, most of the defeated soldiers hiding in the mountains and rivers came out on their own initiative and became prisoners.

In just five days, Jiang Li found almost all the defeated soldiers, except for those who were deeply guilty and knew that they would not survive even if they surrendered, and they were still resisting stubbornly.

But Jiang Li was not willing to indulge them. He reorganized these 240,000 surrendered soldiers and immediately let them hold a public trial under the leadership of the Anmin Army.

This brought disaster to the landlords and gentry who had invested money to fight against Jiang Li. It turned out that in order to punish them for this action, Jiang Li not only settled their original crimes one by one.

They also brought up the issue of abducting men and forcing them to join the army, which put the landlords and gentry in big trouble.

Since they had basically all participated in funding the coalition forces before, almost every household could be charged with this crime.

This resulted in the adult males in these people's families, even if they were not killed for their previous crimes, being sentenced to labor reform for ten to thirty years.

Although these landlords and gentry wanted to resist, in order to support the coalition forces, they had already sent many young and strong men among their clansmen and tenants, and even took out all the weapons they could get at home.

At this moment they didn't even have the strength to resist. Facing the army that came to liquidate and confiscate their property, they could only be slaughtered without even making a splash.

In addition, in order to let the people know the truth and avoid rumors, Jiang Li personally wrote an article, carefully explaining the crimes they had committed, and then printed it in large quantities.

He also sent people to spread the message throughout Hunan and its surrounding areas, trying to make it clear to everyone who dared to support Jiang Li's enemies.

He would inevitably be liquidated in the future, and even if he didn't die, he would have to do hard labor for decades. This was a strong deterrent effect, which greatly reduced the resistance his troops would encounter in future battles.

After the public trial, he turned his attention to the bandit problem in Hunan.

Due to the participation of those deserters who were determined to resist, the bandit forces in the major mountains have increased to varying degrees during this period.

In order to surrender, these deserters committed a large number of crimes during this period. Jiang Li freed up his hands and immediately ordered the suppression of the bandits.