The Ming army and the Han Dynasty army are the only two armies in history that have always been in a state of combat and have maintained their combat strength well, the Han army is strong because it continues the great martial style of the Spring and Autumn Warring States and the Qin Empire, and the Ming army is strong in the early days because of frequent wars.
In the late Ming Dynasty, the stability of the empire was mainly due to the fact that there were two famous generals who fought for the empire, one was Li Chengliang, and the other was Qi Jiguang!
Li Chengliang and Qi Jiguang, initially one south and one north, later one Liaodong and one Jimen, Li Chengliang first fought in Mongolia and then zhenzhen, Qi Jiguang first ping Wukou and then drove away the Tartars, the former fighting and making trouble did not stop, and the latter was good at fighting without outstanding achievements. Both are world-class masters, no matter what the limelight, but now the former is little known, the latter is a national hero, Gaiyin Li Chengliang raised a tiger, is the head of the crime of qianqiu, Qi Jiguang bowed to the best of his ability, is the glory of the Han family!
Today we will talk about the imperial double bibi of the late Ming Empire.
First, early life
Li Chengliang was a native of Liaodong, his ancestors were in the military, and he lived a life of licking blood with a knife in the messy land of the border plug, but unfortunately he fell in the middle of this road, he did not even have the money to bribe officials to inherit hereditary official positions, he had nothing to do in his early years, but the road was wild enough, and the bad survival patients and growth experience directly created his personality of heavy profits and light righteousness, bravery and fierceness, arbitrary and arbitrary, and the style of relying on personal appeal and excellent war talent to fight.
Qi Jiguang is a native of Dengzhou, a hereditary military position, and although the family is poor, he is fortunate to meet a mentor who is willing to teach him the way of being a man, and it is also difficult to scrape together enough money to inherit his father's military position. Dengzhou was close to the sea, and he witnessed the depth of the calamity of the Ming Dynasty, and although he did not have the opportunity to participate in the battle at that time, he had a hill in his chest and wrote the ancient poem "The marquis is not my intention, but I hope that Hai Boping" will be written. Wen Tao is a martial strategy, lifting a heavy weight, this is Qi Jiguang, looking at his marching operations, there are all plates and eyes, and they are impeccable.
2. Private morality
In the late Ming Dynasty, corruption was a kind of custom, and the guys who did not play cards according to the rules could not continue, plus at that time, if they wanted to take charge of the army, they had to play the whiskers of civilian officials, whether it was filial piety on the road or the expenses of the generals who raised their families, Li Chengliang and Qi Jiguang of the mentor had to be greedy, and they themselves liked such a game.
But the problem is that Li Chengliang's greed is for the sake of the individual, while Qi Jiguang's greed is for his Qi Jijun, the former is private, the latter is public.
Why did Li Chengliang pacify all the Mongol and Jurchen tribes, but leave Nurhaci alone? Not because Nurhaci guys are handsome and have extraordinary temperament, but because people are particularly clever, have eyesight, and will give gifts, but still send car by car. The effect was obvious, Li Chengliang not only tolerated the growth of Nurhaci's troops, but also killed his opponents and helped them eliminate the threat, and then, despite the fact that the Ming people had lived in the Six Forts for a long time and the industry was prosperous, he forced the garrison immigrants to withdraw from the most important forward base of the Ming army and let go of the shackles on the neck of the Jurchens.
Qi Jiguang was also greedy, but his family was poor, but he built the most loyal and powerful army in the late Ming Dynasty! Qi Jijun's salary is generous and he never defaults, and on this point, it is absolutely not enough to rely on the little bit of the Ming court to deduct the head fee, and the reason why he can maintain the supply of the army for decades shows that Qi Jiguang is very capable of making money, and the road is very open and wild. However, he never indulged any enemy because of this, not so did the Wokou who were in trouble with the sea, and so did the Mongols who invaded the border!
By the way, he also had a good relationship with Zhang Juzheng, who was the first assistant at the time, and I didn't quite believe that this was pure emotion. Therefore, Qi Jiguang's personal greed is actually the incorruptibility of Daming!
Military achievements
Liaodong is the hometown of Li Chengliang and the place where he made his fortune, he was born and raised in Si, and he was extremely familiar with the tribes and forces around Liaodong, such as Mongolia, Jurchen and Korea. Li Chengliang's combat style is very late Ming style, that is, with the main general as the core, gathering a small number of elite Ding family generals and fighting small-scale entanglements. Therefore, we can see that Li Chengliang seems to have been winning, but the gains in each battle are not very large.
His raid was initially a general of the dangerous mountain, recruited the troops, and gradually trained the famous Liaodong Iron Horse, which mainly used weapons such as long guns and three-eyed rifles, which came and went like the wind and had extremely strong combat strength. However, the root of his troops to maintain combat strength is wealth, which requires a lot of land and money, and it is impossible to maintain a large-scale cavalry force, so the number of Liaodong Iron Horsemen is always small, and it is more appropriate to say that it is more appropriate to say that it is an armed combat group than a unit.
In combat operations, Li Chengliang firmly believed that attacking as defense was the best choice, whether it was against Mongolia or Jurchen, direct attack, or transfer dissension, Li Chengliang was always the first to act. During Li Chengliang's defense of Liaodong, all the slightly stronger Mongol Jurchens were beaten by him, like Tu Man and Ye He, who were defeated under his blows, but there was one exception, that is, Nurhaci! And it also gives meticulous indulgence.
Li Chengliang's military achievements were mainly in the early days of his military leadership, and in his later years, he had gradually lost control of the situation, and the originally docile Jurchens gradually showed their fangs. Thinking about it, he didn't necessarily want to evacuate the people of the Six Forts, and it was very likely that he had to do it as a last resort, after all, taking the initiative to withdraw was better than being robbed.
Qi Jiguang's military trajectory began at the Battle of Pingwu in the south, but it was really humiliating to fight Wukou. At first, his battle was not smooth, Jiangnan was so rich that no one wanted to live the days of knife head licking blood, until he saw the local miners' weapon fight in Yiwu, which had the Qi family army that was handed down from generation to generation!
The combat strength of these Yiwu miners is so strong that after becoming an army, the Wokou are either "jade crushing" or on the road of "jade crushing"! From this point of view, it is also understandable why the emperors of the past attached so much importance to miners, these muscle men are too capable of fighting!
When the Haiyan River was cleared, Qi Jiguang was ordered to lead the army north, compared to the scattered and arrogant border army, Qi Jijun was really able to fight and disciplined, standing in the heavy rain for a day, so that the veterans of the border army realized what a soldier was.
Qi Jiguang's battle is very methodical, it seems that there are traces to follow, but it is upright, everything is in front of you, but it is invulnerable.
Compared with the Wokou, the nomadic cavalry in the north is too strong, but the Qi family army has reorganized its formation, and every engagement is not greedy and aggressive, encircling the big car, defending and counterattacking, and can rationally use cavalry and terrain, although there are not many battles, but most of them are annihilation battles, and they have won a lot, if they don't fight, they will not fight, they will completely cripple the opponent, and they will be killed!
Moreover, compared with Li Chengliang's selfishness, Qi Jiguang is indeed a bright man with a heart, and has never spared any opponent because of his own selfishness, but none of those who dare to scream in front of me have good results!
In that era, the brilliance of Qi Jiguang, who had no outstanding merits, was covered up by Li Chengliang, but history has its own justice, a tiger breeding is a disaster, a crime is thousands of years, a famous history, and the world admires it! Don't think that it doesn't matter if the flood is terrible after death, the history books remember it!