After three years of development, Zhong Yu's own strength has grown extremely rapidly. Although it falls behind the Ming Dynasty in general, it is not much different.
First of all, the army of Yuguo has been streamlined and reorganized, and some old and weak ones as well as those who were originally from the Ming Dynasty have been eliminated, so that the combat effectiveness of the entire army has been condensed and it looks like some elite soldiers.
Then they continued to recruit new armies, selected outstanding soldiers from all over the country for training, and then enriched them into various armies, greatly expanding the number of armies in the empire.
And in the past three years, through plundering and conquering all over the world, Zhong Yu gained another group of troops.
Now, after three years of accumulated training, Zhong Yu has formed an army of about 1.5 million people, which is exactly the same as the total number of troops in the Ming Dynasty.
As for combat effectiveness, both sides are equally matched, and there isn't much of a gap.
Even because Yuguo was on the defensive side and had certain geographical advantages, and the Ming Dynasty only sent 500,000 troops to the south, neither too much nor too little.
Since Yuguo was fighting on its own territory, facing the Ming Dynasty's attack, it had to detach about 300,000 troops to guard against the attacks of South Korea and Wei in the south. There are basically no enemies to defend on other borders. The only enemy is the Ming Dynasty, so Yuguo can deploy more troops to resist the Ming Dynasty's attack.
When the news came that the Ming Dynasty was going to conquer the south, Zhong Yu began a nationwide military mobilization.
300,000 border troops were left to defend South Korea and Wei, and another 200,000 were left to guard the place. The remaining one million troops were led by Zhong Yu himself and rushed to the Mingyu border, intending to defend the enemy from the country's gate.
The enemy came very quickly. When Zhong Yu had just deployed the defense lines in various places, the Ming Dynasty's 100,000 vanguards had already rushed to the front line and started a small-scale confrontation with Zhong Yu's army.
These small-scale confrontations are nothing. Their impact on the outcome of the entire battle is so negligible that they can basically be ignored.
Even if Zhong Yu's more than 300,000 frontline troops were defeated, or Ming's 100,000 forward troops were defeated, it would be nothing to each of them.
Why did the Ming Dynasty dare to use a mere 500,000 troops to attack the Yu Kingdom, which had millions of people and had geographical and defensive advantages, and seemed not to be worried about defeat at all
This is because whether it is the Ming Dynasty or the Yuguo, they all understand that the key to the victory or defeat of this war does not lie in the soldiers at the bottom, but in the game of the combat power of the two sides.
Although the soldiers at the bottom are important, they are the foundation of a country's rule that cannot be ignored. But its main function is just to suppress local security and maintain the collection of the empire's tax burden.
It is extremely easy to recruit soldiers like this. As long as they have enough resources, the Ming Dynasty can raise an army of tens or millions in an instant, and their combat effectiveness is not much worse than that of conventional troops.
In the same way, what the Ming Dynasty could do, there was finally no reason why it couldn't do it. This can be seen from the more than 400,000 surrendered troops of the Ming Dynasty that he had previously disbanded and demobilized, as well as the original old and weak condition of the Yu Kingdom.
These people are basically at the third level of strength, and their strength is not weak. A considerable number of them are veterans who have fought in many battles.
Therefore, whether it is Daming or Zhong Yu, they don't care at all about these cannon fodders, who can pull up the army at any time.
The real reason why they cannot expand their army aggressively is simply the lack of money and food supply.
As the forwards of both sides engaged in battle, the fighting became more and more intense, with battles occurring at any time across the front lines. There is a local battle involving more than 1,000 people every day, and even battles involving 10,000 people are fought every few days. The battle situation can be described as anxious.
The anxiety of this war did not slowly ease as time went by. Instead, it became even more intense with the arrival of the main forces of the respective armies from the rear.
Especially when the main force of the Ming Dynasty arrived, because they were the attackers, the Ming Dynasty's offensive was extremely fierce. They did not care about the heavy casualties of the soldiers at the bottom, nor did they care about the small number of enemies in their own army. They constantly urged the soldiers to attack and attack again.
It seemed that the entire Ming Dynasty army had only one voice, which was to defeat the enemy on the opposite side at all costs.
The supervision of these senior military officers still has some effect.
Although the soldiers at the bottom had great complaints in their hearts, their resentment also disappeared when their respective commanders supported the attack, and many even took the lead in the charge.
What's more, whenever a soldier attempts to escape from the battlefield and retreat to a safe place in the rear.
The supervising team behind them, which was composed entirely of those officer corps, directly told them with bloody examples that there was no future or hope in being a deserter, and they would only lose their lives in vain.
To be able to serve as an officer in an army, which means commanding more than a thousand soldiers, one must have at least level five strength. Some of the more elite troops, their thousand-man generals are all in the middle or late fifth level, and are extremely powerful among the same level.
As for the generals who serve as generals with ten thousand generals, some ordinary armies are led by peak fifth-level generals, while the elite ones are led by sixth-level strong men.
Nowadays, the Ming Dynasty has an army of 500,000 people, including a lot of elites, probably around 100,000. This means that there are about ten sixth-level generals in the Ming Dynasty army.
Together with some other generals, the Ming Dynasty's expedition army this time consisted of 15 sixth-level officers, two early-level seventh-level lieutenants, and a late-level seventh-level commander. The luxurious lineup of the southern expedition army.
However, although the Ming Dynasty's lineup was luxurious, the imperial army on the opposite side did not fall behind at all.
He has the confidence to unify all the sects in the country, plus he has cultivated and attracted some wandering individuals. Three years later, Zhong Yu already has 83 sixth-level members, plus he has three seventh-level ones that he has attracted. His strength is even better than that of Ming's masters.
If it weren't for the lack of an eighth-level powerhouse, Zhong Yu would have led his army to attack the Ming Dynasty and completely replace this decadent dynasty.
This time, in order to resist Ming's invasion, Zhong Yu brought a total of 40 sixth-level men, plus two seventh-level men of his own, leaving only one seventh-level strong man to sit in the imperial capital and support the rear.
This kind of strength is naturally more than enough to deal with the Ming Dynasty army on the opposite side. Since the news of the Ming Dynasty in Nanjing came to Zhong Yu, he had not taken these troops seriously at all.
He has this confidence. With his strong strength, he can defeat the Ming Dynasty army on the opposite side with a large number of people.
But what really worries him is that after defeating these Ming armies, if the founder of the Ming Dynasty takes action himself, how should he respond
(End of chapter)