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

The bandits in the lower half of Hunan were in trouble as they were mopped up by more than 200,000 surrendered soldiers who were eager to make merit, and more than 100,000 well-trained security troops.

However, in just one month, all the bandits and surrendered soldiers in Hunan were wiped out.

When everything was settled, Jiang Li pardoned the crimes of those soldiers who had made meritorious contributions according to the previous agreement, and selected 150,000 soldiers from the more than 200,000 soldiers to train them into a new army.

In order to ensure their firepower, Jiang Li specially selected a batch of weapons from the equipment seized from more than 400,000 people to arm them.

Because he gathered together the light and heavy weapons of various troops and allocated a batch of light and heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, the firepower of the 150,000 surrendered soldiers at least doubled.

But in order to ensure their loyalty, Jiang Li simply dispersed them all and let his own Anmin Army lead them, teaching them by words and deeds, and changing their previous wrong ideas and habits.

As for the remaining less than 80,000 to 90,000 surrendered soldiers, they were all sent home after a month of ideological education.

In order to appease people's hearts and prevent these nearly 100,000 young and strong people from causing any trouble, he simply gave out a lot of money.

He directly ordered to carry out various road, canal and house construction projects in this half of Hunan, and the work provided food and accommodation and generous wages.

It is precisely because these guys have jobs that they do not gather together to cause trouble. Occasionally there are some sporadic criminal activities, but they are quickly arrested and dealt with according to the law.

Taking over half of Hunan allowed him to gain huge wealth again. However, since they had consumed a lot of food when they previously supported the coalition forces, the amount of food they harvested this time would be much less.

But their money was not consumed too much. After all, money cannot be eaten. Even if they spent it, it was just transferred from the landlord Zhang's house to the Mr. Wang's house, and it would be found out again when the house was searched.

As for the little bit of money and food they gave to the families of the young and strong men who were conscripted, Jiang Li did not touch it.

...

Back to the four giants of the coalition, these four guys have been nervous since they returned because of the defeat, and have been constantly recruiting soldiers.

What's more, with their reckless operation, they managed to gather another 50,000 people in just over a month.

But the embarrassing thing is that they have the people, but they can't get any weapons at all.

It turned out that they had been cobbling together supplies from all over to arm their soldiers, and had only just managed to get to the point where each person had a gun.

But after this battle, they were basically defeated. Many of the more than 10,000 people who escaped lost their guns. They only brought back 10,000 guns.

After more than a month of struggle, they had only managed to piece together four or five thousand broken guns, and even so, none of the three people could get a gun.

The other recruits who had no guns could only hold swords and spears. Just standing there they looked like a peasant army, which was extremely shabby.

Among these four, the strongest one was He Jian, because he gathered 30,000 defeated soldiers and 200,000 armed militiamen who were painstakingly organized by the landlords and gentry.

This made him only slightly weaker now than before the war.

It was precisely because of this that this guy came up with a bold idea, which was to subdue the other three allies and then concentrate his forces to repel Jiang Li.

In this way, not only will his reputation soar, but his territorial strength will also increase dramatically, and by then it is possible that he will even be able to monopolize Hunan.

As for why he had such an idea, it depends on his mentality.

It turned out that he was completely unconvinced by the previous defeat. He always felt that it was Jiang Li who had no moral principles and launched a surprise attack without declaring war, before his army had assembled.

Although he later organized tens of thousands of remaining soldiers for defense, the incident happened so suddenly that he had no time to build fortifications. In addition, the soldiers' morale was low after the recent defeat, which led to his defeat in a short period of time.

As for the later battles after the coalition forces joined forces, he did not participate much in the frontal battles because of his small number of people, which prevented him from clearly realizing the true strength of the Anmin Army.

They felt that their defeat was due to underestimating the enemy, blaming each other, and being unable to face the outside world with one voice.

He believed that as long as they could unite against the outside world and use their advantages in numbers and geographical location to launch a defensive attack, with the help of local gentry and landlords in Hunan, it would not be a big problem to withstand the attack of the Anmin Army.

Having made up his mind, he immediately sent a message to the three people, hoping that they could come and discuss a way to deal with Jiang Li.

Although the four of them had some conflicts, after all, there was the threat of Jiang Li, so there was still a premise for unity and cooperation.

But his idea was beautiful, but the other three did not think so. Not to mention Zhao Hengti and Tang Shengzhi, just Tan Yankai, after he got the news.

He immediately saw through He Jian's plan, but with the threat from Jiang Li nearby, he had no choice but to go.

Tang Shengzhi and Zhao Hengti also had to lead their men on the trip for the same reason.

But they did not dare to approach the city. After all, He Jian had a record of betraying his teammates, and they were unwilling to enter a wolf's den alone, so the three of them gathered together and discussed the matter.

He decided to meet with He Jian in the pavilion outside Yueyang City to discuss a reasonable solution.

When He Jian learned that these three people were unwilling to enter the city and only brought more than a thousand people each to rest in the pavilion outside the city, and also asked him, Commander He, to meet them in person, He Jian was very angry.

But he couldn't say anything about it. After all, he had done such a thing, so it was only reasonable for people to be a little wary.

Putting aside what he was doing, He Jian took two thousand trusted men out of the city.

Looking at the three people sitting in the pavilion from afar, he immediately led his men over.

When he arrived near the pavilion, he immediately asked the team to stop, and brought a team of guards to greet them with smiling faces and enthusiastically.

"You three have worked so hard on the journey, why don't you come to Yueyang City and have a visit? I can show my hospitality as a good host!"

After hearing what He Jian said, Tang Shengzhi and Zhao Hengti were full of dissatisfaction in their hearts, but they did not show it.

But Tan Yankai said sarcastically, "What are you talking about, Marshal He? Didn't you say before that you would temporarily guard the territory for me? How come you have become the landlord now?"

He Jian was very annoyed when he heard that this guy dared to sabotage his plan, but in order to implement his plan smoothly, he suppressed his unhappiness and changed the subject very abruptly.

"Brother Tan is right. Once we get rid of that Jiang guy, I will pack up and leave right away. But let's not talk about this today."

"Let's discuss the next plan. After all, we are all on the same boat, so we can't fight among ourselves!"