Lao Guo wanted to dispel the concerns of the surrendered Horse Gangs by treating them as equals. He wanted them to believe in the imperial court and that they would have a chance to start anew as long as they turned over a new leaf.
Although they had the same time limit and the same roast horse for breakfast, the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty and the surrendered Horse Gangs had different moods. After all, the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty were very happy after winning the battle, while many of the Horse Gangs were wounded. No one could predict what their life would be like after they surrendered. Besides, the horse meat that everyone was eating was once the horse of the Horse Gangs, which was also their comrade-in-arms. How could they be in a good mood when eating their comrade-in-arms' corpses?
In this battle, the Horse Gang suffered heavy casualties. At the same time, the horses that the Horse Gang rode on suffered even greater losses. Out of more than five hundred excellent warhorses, less than two hundred were in perfect condition. Even including the horses that were slightly injured, there were only slightly more than two hundred. The remaining three hundred were either seriously injured or dead. As for the horses, as long as their legs were seriously injured, they were basically useless. Other than being made into horse meat, there was no other use for them.
An adult horse could weigh at least a few hundred kilograms of meat. Five or six hundred kilograms was normal. Even if it was cooked and roasted, it should weigh at least two or three hundred kilograms. However, there were only over 200 Horse Gangs who surrendered, so one horse was enough for their breakfast. Since there were so many soldiers, it only took three or five horses to eat. However, the Horse Gangs lost more than 300 horses this time, so the amount of meat they could eat for a meal was very small, and there were still a lot of horse corpses left.
However, such good horse meat should not be wasted. Not even a bit of it should be left. All of it must be taken away. Lao Guo had 8,000 soldiers under his command. If the horse meat was used to improve the meals for these soldiers, ten horses would be consumed every day. If each soldier ate half a kilogram of horse meat, it would be enough for them to eat for more than a month.
However, the anti-corrosion technology must be done well. Although it was cold now, fresh horse meat could not be kept for too long. If it went bad, it would be easy to have a stomachache.
Salting or drying were good anti-corrosion measures. In this way, the meat could be kept for at least several months. Although pickled products were not good for health, people in this era did not know about this. No one would think that pickled products were bad for health. This seemed to be the most common way to preserve the video.
The surrendered mounted gangsters would not be idle. They would definitely be assigned to work, and work would consume a lot of energy. They would need to eat meat. A portion of the horse meat could also be given to these mounted gangsters so that they could work harder.
The time it took for two incense sticks to burn was more than sufficient. This allowed the soldiers and the surrendered horse bandits to roast the horse meat more leisurely. Many bonfires were lit. One bonfire could satisfy the needs of more than ten people. Dozens of bonfires could satisfy the needs of everyone.
It was quite comfortable to eat and roast the meat. These Horse Gangs usually ate and drank like this, but they mostly ate mutton. They had hardly eaten horse meat. Summer Province was close to the grassland, so mutton was quite common. When the nomads on the grassland had extra cattle and sheep, they would choose to sell them to the merchants. When the merchants bought the nomads' cattle and sheep, they would transport them to Summer Province first, and then to the capital and other places through Summer Province. There were also some nomads who raised cattle and sheep. They would drive their cattle and sheep to Summer Province to sell, so that they could get more rewards. However, sometimes the losses were greater because of the Horse Gangs' robbery on the road.
The surrendered Horse Gangs were all roasting the meat, and the soldiers had to eat in batches. At least there were many soldiers on duty. There had to be someone in charge of the patrol outside the city and the search inside the city, so as to prevent any fish from escaping, or the Horse Gangs with a very low probability of attacking.
As he slept too late last night, Ang Lee also woke up late. He only woke up when the Horse Gangs and soldiers were almost done eating. Moreover, he was awakened by the fragrant smell of horse meat.
"Fragrant, so fragrant!"
Ang Lee followed the smell and walked out of the tent. He saw the guards eating the horse meat.
"Assistant Minister Li."
The guards hurriedly greeted him.
"You guys are eating so fragrant! It smells like horse meat, excellent horse meat. "
As Ang Lee spoke, he also picked up a dagger to cut the fresh meat on the horse corpse.
Then he squatted down and roasted the meat with the soldiers.
When he set out, he didn't bring too many cooking utensils, so it was a little difficult to make complicated dishes. Horse meat was indeed delicious, so he could just eat it directly.
As soon as Ang Lee squatted down, a soldier immediately brought a small stool for Ang Lee. The accompanying cook directly brought the seasonings.
Horse meat was easily overcooked when roasted directly on the bonfire. Moreover, if the outside was overcooked, the inside might not be cooked. Such overcooked and raw meat naturally didn't taste good. By brushing a layer of oil on the horse meat, the horse meat could be heated more evenly when roasting. In this way, the outer meat wouldn't be overcooked easily, and the inner meat would be cooked more easily. Of course, in addition to oil, there were many seasonings that could increase the taste, such as chili from America, pepper native to the Tang dynasty, and some liquid seasonings. The addition of these seasonings would inevitably make the horse meat more delicious.
Li An skillfully used these seasonings to make delicious food, while the soldiers beside him quietly watched. The horse meat in their hands was different from the horse meat that Li An roasted. Just by smelling it, one could tell that there was a difference.
"Come, these are all for you. Roast the meat with these seasonings, it will taste better."
After roasting the meat, Ang Lee naturally sent it to Li Hanlu, and the extra seasonings were given to the guards.
After eating and drinking to their heart's content, Ang Lee and all his subordinates left the hiding place and came to the west gate of Old White Town to join Lao Guo's troops.
At the same time, the soldiers under Lao Guo's command were urging the surrendered horse gangs to work. They were ordered to clean up the dead horse gangs in the city and bury them outside the city to avoid the terrible plague.
After eating and drinking to their heart's content, the horse gangs had no reason to not work. They were divided into dozens of groups, each with dozens of horse gangs, so that they could work more efficiently. There were no carriages, so the transportation of horse gangs mainly depended on horses, which were the unharmed horses of the captured horse gangs. A horse could carry at least two horse gangs' corpses at a time, and the horse gang soldiers themselves could also transport the corpses, but it required two people to transport each corpse.
These jobs could have been done by the officers and soldiers. However, these were dirty, tiring and disgusting jobs after all. Naturally, it was more suitable to hand them over to the newly surrendered Horse Gang. It could also temper the character of the Horse Gang and make it easier to transform the Horse Gang into a qualified civilian.
"Hurry up, everyone. The earlier we finish the work, the earlier we can go to bed."
A group of horse gangs needed five or six soldiers to watch over them, in case they sneaked around or ran away, which would be more troublesome. The soldiers didn't do any work, but just watched the horse gangs working.
"Lao Guo, you're already working!"
Ang Lee came over to greet him.
"Haha! Last night we counted and captured 222 horse gangs in total. The number of horse gangs we killed hasn't been counted yet. Now we're transporting the corpses, and we'll know when we finish. "
Lao Guo said happily.
The result this time was not small, so he was very excited. Even if he only drank some soup, he had made a great contribution.
"Oh, two hundred and twenty-two people, all two! What a coincidence! "
Ang Lee said with a smile.
"After interrogating those who surrendered last night, we found out the locations of more than a dozen Horse Gang nests. Since it was dark and we had limited manpower, we only sent two hundred elites to the main Horse Gang nests. Now, they have occupied that place and seized a lot of loot!"
Lao Guo said excitedly and took out the map he had drawn.
This map was drawn based on Lao Guo's own abstract thinking after he repeatedly verified it from the mouths of the Horse Gang during the trial of the Horse Gang. Though it was not very accurate, it was not far off. With this map, they could find all the nests of the Horse Gang. More than a dozen copies of this map had been made, so that they could hand them over to the generals under his command and let them deal with the scattered nests.
"Old guy, there are so many horse gangs' nests! There are more than a dozen of them. "
Ang Lee looked at the map and said.
"These are only the main nests. We don't count the temporary nests of three to five people or seven to eight people. If we count these nests, we have hundreds of nests."
Lao Guo said.
The so-called nests of three to five people were actually observation posts near the crossroads. In order to resist the encirclement of the soldiers, the horse gangs must have a complete intelligence system. Around the mountain nests, there must be a large number of spies. These spies would hide at the crossroads with a good view so that they could observe everything around. And if they were tired, they also needed a place to rest. Several spies would take turns to monitor the surrounding situation. Therefore, the positions of these surveillance points must have houses where they could rest and eat. These could be regarded as small nests.
The surrendered horse gangs did not work very hard, but because of their large number, they cleaned up the corpses quickly. The cold corpses were neatly placed at the edge of the big pits.
As the soldiers counted the number of people, they threw the corpses of the horse bandits into the pit. After the pit was filled with a hundred people, the soldiers ordered thirty horse bandits to be in charge of burying the corpses, burying the pit.
As soon as a big pit was buried, the big pit next to it was also filled. The horse gangs continued to bury the corpses. There were four big pits like this, but there were not so many corpses. But it was always right to prepare more.
After the third pit was completely filled, there were not many horse bandits left. After a quick count, there were only 37 horse bandits left. In other words, there were 337 horse bandits that had been annihilated and 222 had surrendered. A total of 559 horse bandits had been annihilated and another 50 to 60 had escaped. With this calculation, there were more than 600 horse bandits that had come over. It could be considered a sizable armed force.
After all the bandits' corpses were buried, the exhausted bandits finally had a chance to rest. They sat on the ground and stared blankly at the sky. Some of them looked around as if they were trying to find a way out. However, it was obviously impossible to escape from this place.
Just then, the sound of heavy horse hoofs came from afar. Two thousand cavalrymen had arrived. Lao Guo had arranged for them last night. With these reinforcements, they could attack everywhere and destroy all the nests of the Horse Gang.
When the soldiers arrived, Lao Guo first gave them the drawings and asked them to divide the troops to take down the Horse Gangs' nests according to the marks on the drawings. The 2,000 cavalrymen were divided into five groups, with 400 cavalrymen in each group. Each group was responsible for two or three nests. They could definitely finish the task in one day. If there were a lot of horse gangs in the nests, there was no need to worry. They only needed to block the entrances and exits and send reinforcements.
After arranging the 2,000 cavalrymen, Lao Guo walked to Ang Lee and said, "Assistant Minister Li, let's go to the Horse Gangs' main nest. According to the report of our subordinates, a big box was found there. There were many letters in it. It seems to be the letters between the leader of the Horse Gangs and the spies. Maybe there are letters from the officials in Xia Province. These letters are the best evidence. I have to go there in person."
Ang Lee nodded and said, "Yes, these letters are very important. But the fewer people know about it, the better. It will be troublesome if the enemy is alerted."
Of course, it was a good thing to get these letters. But if the imperial court officials who had colluded with the Horse Gang knew that these letters had fallen into Lao Guo's hands, they would definitely make preparations in advance. In that case, it would be very troublesome to eliminate these vermin, and they might even be bitten back.
This kind of thing had happened in history, and it happened frequently. As for the movies and TV series of later generations, it happened more frequently.
For example, if an honest official obtained the evidence of a corrupt official's evil deeds, the corrupt official knew about it in advance. Therefore, the corrupt official would unite with his accomplices and higher-ranking officials to frame the corrupt official, causing the corrupt official to be inexplicably imprisoned. Alternatively, the corrupt official would dispatch evil forces to capture the family members of the corrupt official in order to threaten the corrupt official, causing the corrupt official to be in a dilemma and fall into the terrible situation of being unable to satisfy both loyalty and filial piety.
Lao Guo's official position was neither high nor low, but there were many officials with higher positions and more favored ministers than him. If some of the favored ministers in the imperial court really wanted to mess with Lao Guo, they could do it. Whether the officials who colluded with the Horse Gangs in Xia Province had the background of the imperial court, whether they had the backing of a high-ranking official in the capital city, and whether they colluded with the Horse Gangs under the instructions of these big shots, these situations seemed unlikely, but could not be ruled out completely. Once such a thing happened, Lao Guo would be in danger. Therefore, it was better not to leak this information.
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