They were already on the brink of collapse. When they heard that the bandits had been defeated, these veteran soldiers immediately launched a counterattack without any orders from their commander.
The offensive and defensive momentum changed instantly.
The old, weak, sick and disabled people in the three camps changed their appearance in an instant. They rushed forward with their weapons in hand, risking their lives, as if they had been injected with chicken blood.
Because the opportunity to achieve success has come!
The Ming army adopted a system of first merit.
The "head" here means brain, and you will get the reward by taking the enemy's head.
However, the first-merit system has many disadvantages. It is better to rob more than to kill more on the battlefield, and it will also lead to the behavior of killing innocent people to claim credit.
Later, the Ming army reformed its military merit system to include first merit plus military merit.
The kills are distributed in teams based on their actual combat performance.
Those who perform poorly will not receive heads or will even be punished, while those who perform well will receive more heads, which will then be distributed equally among the teams.
But this system also has many drawbacks.
When generals reported their achievements to the court and asked for rewards, they still relied on the number of heads. Without heads, even if the troops fought bravely on the battlefield and suffered heavy casualties, they would still be unsuccessful.
The result of this system was that when multiple Ming army units gathered to fight, most generals wanted to take their troops to the sidelines and watch, grabbing the heads if they won, and escaping quickly to preserve their strength if they lost.
This is also an important reason why small troops in the late Ming Dynasty could fight back and forth with the enemy, while large armies of more than 10,000 people would often be defeated.
This phenomenon was particularly evident on the Liaodong battlefield.
Chongzhen stood on the top of the city wall, looked at the one-sided massacre below, and breathed a long sigh of relief.
We won this battle!
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