Chapter 625 Casualties between the enemy and us!

According to the estimation of the General Staff, the First Army, which was responsible for the task of conquering Yecheng, suffered the most casualties. They lost more than 3,500 people in battle, more than 7,100 people were injured, including more than 700 seriously injured. The total casualties were nearly 10,000 people...
Following the First Army was Guo Zhiping's Third Division. They annihilated Gao Dingshan's Army of the Henan Army in the Battle of Sanchaling, and later attacked Duan Yanfeng's Army of the Qi Army. They suffered about 2,000 casualties and more than 6,100 wounded, including more than 700 seriously injured.

Ranked third was Peng Ce's Sixth Division, which was mainly responsible for auxiliary operations in the early stages, annihilating several local militia forces that wanted to rescue Yujing, as well as later combat missions attacking Duan Yanfeng's unit of the Qi Army. The casualties were relatively small, with only more than 1,000 people killed, more than 3,300 injured, and more than 300 seriously injured.

Last in line was Zhang Meng's Seventh Division, which was the last unit of the Fengwu Army to be deployed to the Battle of Hebei and Henan. It was mainly a strategic reserve force and was only responsible for the combat mission against the sudden attack of the Anqing Army cavalry in the Battle of Zhuo County. About 700 people were killed and more than 1,900 were injured, of which only 200 were seriously injured.

According to this rough calculation, the number of deaths in Fengwu Army in this battle has exceeded 7,000, and the number of injured is more than 19,000. Due to the limitations of medical conditions in this era, it is basically difficult to save the seriously injured. Therefore, if the seriously injured are included, the number of deaths in Fengwu Army this time will be close to 10,000...
Before this battle, all the units participating in the Hebei-Henan campaign absorbed a number of reserve soldiers into the battle sequence in accordance with Ye Mingsheng's orders. Together with the number of recruited militiamen, the total number of troops deployed was about 130,000. As a result, the casualty ratio had exceeded 20%.

Realizing this, Ye Mingsheng felt distressed but also very relieved. In the era of cold weapons, 30% casualties was a red line. Any army that exceeded this ratio without collapsing and could continue to fight could be called a peerless powerful army!

The Fengwu Army under Ye Mingsheng's command, after suffering more than 20% casualties, still maintained the ability to continue fighting. This undoubtedly shows that with Ye Mingsheng's dedicated efforts, the Fengwu Army has become a very powerful army!

Seeing Ye Mingsheng's slightly heavy expression, Ye Kui on the side also advised:
"Sir, this is just an estimate by the General Staff. The actual number of casualties is likely to be smaller. Don't take it too seriously. The soldiers are all following you to fight. They are all looking forward to following you to achieve great things and create a peaceful and prosperous era!"

In response to Ye Kui's advice, Ye Mingsheng smiled and shook his head. He Jingyun was well-known for his seriousness in his work. Since he submitted this casualty report to him, it meant that he felt that the estimated figures in the report were reliable. Therefore, even if there were differences between the estimated figures and the actual casualty figures, the difference would not be too big!

To be honest, in addition to getting this casualty report and making a budget for the casualties compensation for the Financial Secretary, Ye Mingsheng had another idea in his heart, which was to invade Qi and Lu and settle the accounts with Cao Changping, that son of a bitch...
Even though 20,000 Qi troops had been annihilated, to be honest, Ye Mingsheng still felt a little unhappy. Of course, apart from personal feelings, Ye Mingsheng still agreed with Luo Gang's idea in his heart. Keeping Cao Changping around would be a disaster. In this battle between Hebei and Henan, he and Cao Changping had completely fallen out. The temporary alliance of interests that they had formed before because of their joint efforts to target Xu Zhaojie had also been completely broken.

It can be predicted that when Ye Mingsheng and Shangguan Hongyuan have a decisive battle next year, Xu Zhaojie will definitely go north to intervene. Therefore, under Xu Zhaojie's instigation, Cao Changping is likely to act with him. At that time, facing the joint attack of the Anqing Army and the Qi Army, the Fengwu Army will be under great pressure on the southern front. Therefore, it is a good choice for Ye Mingsheng to eliminate Cao Changping in advance and use offense instead of defense.

Although he had such an idea in his mind, Ye Mingsheng did not put it into practice because of the actual situation of the soldiers on the front line. Instead, he wanted to wait until he got the casualty report from the General Staff and understood the specific casualties in this battle between Hebei and Henan before making a decision.

Because the fighting was still going on, the General Staff did not have the time and energy to do the statistics of casualties. Therefore, although Ye Mingsheng knew that the casualties on the front line were not small, he did not have a specific idea. Now that he understood this situation, although Ye Mingsheng felt a little regretful, he temporarily gave up the idea of ​​marching into Qi and Lu...
Although the Fengwu Army can still continue fighting, there is no doubt that after suffering more than 20% casualties, the Fengwu Army is already at the end of its strength. What the Fengwu Army needs now is rest rather than continuing to fight. If it forces itself to fight, there will be a danger of collapse!

After thinking for a while, Ye Mingsheng seemed to remember something and asked Ye Kui:
"In addition to the casualty report, has the enemy annihilation report been sent to the staff?"

Facing Ye Mingsheng's question, Ye Kui thought for two seconds, then found a report from a pile of reports and handed it to Ye Mingsheng, and said to Ye Mingsheng very apologetically:
"The Marshal is here!"

Seeing Ye Kui's flustered and clumsy performance, Ye Mingsheng felt helpless. In order to take good care of the affairs of the Ye Mansion, Ye Mingsheng left his attendant Ye Cheng at home, and then took Ye Kui with him, asking him to temporarily play the role of his attendant.

However, although Ye Kui was loyal and able to keep the secret for Ye Mingsheng, he was a military general after all, and knew nothing about the aide-de-camp, which sometimes made Ye Mingsheng laugh and cry. Ye Mingsheng even thought about transferring Qi Dechao back to serve as his aide-de-camp temporarily.

However, thinking that Qi Dechao was doing very well in the local area and transferring him back would greatly affect his work, Ye Mingsheng gave up the idea and continued to let Ye Kui take the position concurrently. Although the position of aide-de-camp was not a high position, it was responsible for almost all the secrets of the Fengwu Army. Ye Mingsheng was not at ease to let an ordinary person take this position, so he had to put a confidant whom he absolutely trusted in this position...
Opening the report on the annihilation of the enemy sent by the General Staff, Ye Mingsheng's expression gradually relaxed. According to the statistics of the General Staff, in the Battle of Hebei and Henan, the Fengwu Army probably annihilated more than 130,000 enemy troops, of which the Henan Army accounted for the absolute majority. A total of more than 15,000 enemies were killed and more than 50,000 enemy troops were captured. The remaining 40,000 to 50,000 people took advantage of the chaos to escape during the war.

Next was the Qi army, which killed more than 5,000 enemies, captured more than 10,000, and allowed 3,000 to 4,000 to escape. Finally, it was the Anqing army, which killed more than 1,300 enemies, captured more than 4,500, and only a few hundred escaped.

Seeing that the Fengwu Army had nearly 70,000 prisoners, Ye Mingsheng could not help but nodded slightly. Whether in modern society or feudal society, population is a huge wealth, especially in feudal society when machines were not widely used and most of the labor was done by manpower.

And most importantly, many of these prisoners were young and middle-aged people, the backbone of social labor. According to the previous practice of the Fengwu Army, these prisoners were tried, the black sheep among them were sentenced to death to serve as a warning to everyone, and then the innocent people were released.

However, because the Fengwu Army suffered a huge financial and manpower deficit in this war, there were some voices in the Governor's Office and the General Staff, which roughly meant to let these prisoners stay to do labor to repair canals and roads, or absorb some of them into the army as soldiers. Regarding the emergence of these voices, Ye Mingsheng has been thinking about the feasibility recently...

Now seeing this report on the annihilation of the enemy, Ye Mingsheng gradually had an idea in his mind. He planned to deal with the captured Henan Army soldiers according to the original method and release most of them after the cleaning plan was completed. What he needed to do to take down the Fengwu Army regime in Hebei and Henan was to appease the people and ensure that the cleaning plan could fairly redistribute the food and land in Hebei and Henan. The nearly 50,000 captured Henan Army soldiers were the sons and daughters of the Hebei and Henan troops, and behind them were 50,000 Hebei and Henan families. These families were eager for their husbands and children to return to their families. Therefore, letting these people go home would help appease the people and let the people of Hebei and Henan recognize the rule of the Fengwu Army.

As for the captives from the Qi and Anqing armies, since the Fengwu Army has not yet attacked the territories of Qi and Anqing, there is no need to appease the people. Ye Mingsheng plans to exploit their labor and let them participate in the construction of infrastructure such as roads, canals, dams, etc. within the Fengwu Army, letting them work in exchange for food and lodging.

As for absorbing these prisoners into the army, Ye Mingsheng completely rejected this idea!

At the beginning of the formation of the Fengwu Army, in order to ensure the combat effectiveness of the army and eliminate the shortcomings of the local army of the Great Zhou Dynasty, such as low combat effectiveness, extortion, and weak fighting will, Ye Mingsheng also imitated the Qi Family Army and started with the source of soldiers, mainly recruiting farmers, miners, and hunters to ensure the combat effectiveness of the army.

In order to expand the size of the army in the later period, although Ye Mingsheng relaxed some requirements, he still basically guaranteed the quality of recruiting soldiers·······················
However, in the previous battle of Youyan, due to insufficient troops to support large-scale combat, Ye Mingsheng adopted the advice of the General Staff and used captured Yan army soldiers to form the Sixth Division of the Fengwu Army.

Although Ye Mingsheng had taken into consideration that these Yan army prisoners would have some bad habits of local troops, and therefore specially arranged instructors to reorganize them, he was still unable to completely address this hidden danger, so that in the following days, some people in the Sixth Division privately sold weapons, falsely reported battle losses, and bought and sold official positions.

Ye Mingsheng was very angry about this and asked the Military Court to send a working group to the Sixth Division to conduct a thorough investigation. One hundred and thirty-one heads were chopped off and more than three hundred people were punished before this evil trend was barely stopped. With this lesson learned, Ye Mingsheng would naturally not repeat the same mistake.

As for the gap in manpower, they can be recruited from the reserve. Although this is slower than directly taking prisoners, it at least guarantees the quality of the Fengwu Army. Under the work of Xun Ke and others, the soldiers in the Fengwu Army reserve, although they have not experienced the suction of war, their training level, especially the level of operating firearms, is still very high. After fighting a few battles and seeing blood, they are very qualified soldiers.

After re-examining his ideas and feeling that there were no problems, Ye Mingsheng wrote down his ideas and asked Ye Kui to send them to the General Staff and the Provincial Government, asking them to implement the work...

After working for a whole morning, just when Ye Mingsheng was about to take a break, a guard hurriedly came to him and reported:

"Director Huo and Director Gu are outside the mansion asking to see you, my Lord!"

Ye Mingsheng was stunned when he heard this. Although he didn't know why these two people came together, he would not refuse the request of these two trusted generals. He nodded and ordered:
"Let them in!"

"Yes!"

Because the war between Hebei and Henan has ended, Ye Mingsheng has begun to plan to return to Yijing. This matter has been notified, and I believe Gu Sansi and Huo San are very clear about it. Therefore, even though they knew that he would be returning to Yijing soon, these two people still had to walk hundreds of miles to find him. This is enough to show that these two people think this matter is very important and must let him know as soon as possible...

After realizing this, Ye Mingsheng couldn't help but be very curious about what these two people wanted to report to him.

Soon Huo San and Gu Sansi appeared in front of Ye Mingsheng. After the two dusty men greeted Ye Mingsheng, Gu Sansi was the first to speak to Ye Mingsheng:
"Sir, Su Yi sent back an important piece of information from Licheng!"

"Su Yi? Is he still alive?"

Ye Mingsheng asked back with some surprise. After the surprise attack on Yijing failed, Xu Zhaojie sent assassins to assassinate Su Yi and seriously injured him, forcing Cao Changping to break with him and completely join his chariot.

Because Licheng had blocked the news before, Ye Mingsheng only knew that Su Yi was seriously injured. As for other news, Ye Mingsheng was not clear because no news had been sent back for almost a month. Ye Mingsheng had already believed that the deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Department under his command had died young in a foreign land. He was going to ask Cao Changping for his remains so that his soul could return to his hometown and rest in peace...

(End of this chapter)