The overwhelming black-brown locusts occupied every inch of land in Liu Chengzong's field of vision.
They flap their wings in the air and hit everyone they see restlessly. Even the toughest soldiers will be hit by the weak locusts and run away, until people put sacks on their faces to cover themselves from the sharp thorns on the locust legs.
Bleeding scars.
Liu Chengzong immediately ordered people to report the information about the arrival of the locust plague to Hehuang and Gansu. However, taking the soldiers who came from the pass as an example, the troops may not be able to outrun the spreading locust plague.
After that, it’s time to catch the locusts and exterminate them.
The soldiers and civilians under the Marshal's Mansion are all aware of the locust plague and have their own methods of controlling locusts. However, these methods basically treat the symptoms rather than the root cause, because locusts do not live on the land they control.
Drought will never affect all land, because drought only means no rain, and places with rivers and water sources can survive for a while. However, drought causes secondary problems that are extremely serious, and locust plague is one of them.
When there is a drought, there will be a locust plague, because locusts will lay their eggs in river beds and saline-alkali lands. When the rivers dry up and the land is abandoned, the locust plague will come. It is often much more terrible than a drought. A drought reduces production, while a locust plague blocks the sky.
Day, eat up everything in sight.
Solving the locust plague is very simple. Just build water conservancy projects, cultivate the saline-alkali land, plow the saline-alkali land and dry river beds, raise chickens and ducks by the river, and eat all the insect eggs.
But once the locust plague occurs, manpower cannot completely solve the locust plague.
What cannot be solved means that no matter what you do, it will be a net loss.
People can kill locusts, exterminate locusts, and catch locusts. Locusts are grasshoppers, and roasted grasshoppers are a protein-rich delicacy, but this is like raising pigs. In an era when people still don’t have enough to eat, no one will use human rations.
When raising pigs, animals are raised with things that humans don’t eat, or at least humans don’t like to eat. The food utilization rate is very low.
The locust plague means eating up all the food rations that people have worked hard for for a year, breeding like crazy, and then running to another place to repeat the process, leaving only a few bags of grasshoppers on the land.
Once a locust swarm takes shape, it will multiply rapidly. The number of locusts caught and killed by humans is not as many as the locusts they give birth to. There has never been a locust plague that has been exterminated by humans - their survival time is very short.
It only takes three months for a group of locusts to swarm and die, and the larvae produced during this process will survive for five months.
So as the saying goes, a grasshopper after autumn can only jump around for a few days.
When they die, the locust plague will end.
It is for this reason that many locust temples were built in ancient times, and in traditional thinking, locust plagues are regarded as a warning from God to rulers.
There is actually nothing wrong with this kind of thinking, because if water conservancy is in disrepair and fields are abandoned in large areas, there will be no locust plague. However, water conservancy is in disrepair and fields are abandoned, which is a top priority in the agricultural era, and it is a sign of the ruler's lack of ethics. When the locust swarms arrived on the land of Lanzhou for the first time in the seventh year of Chongzhen, everything was chaotic and disorderly.
The sky instantly became dark as if a heavy rain was about to fall. Everyone knew that this year's second crop of crops was finished. Men, women, and children knew that there would not be much food to harvest, and the mountains and plains were filled with people frantically chasing locust swarms.
Bags, sheets, curtains, clothes, and of course the most useful flour bags. People used everything they could find at hand to wave against the impact of the locust swarms, and bags of tightly tied flour bags were thrown on the ground.
, make a fuss with all your strength.
The same was true for the army of the commander-in-chief. Liu Chengzong originally wanted to ride back to the city, order people to open the warehouse and take out the equipment to catch locusts. Who knew that the war horses were hit by the dense locusts and could not walk. When he dismounted and walked, he would trample two or three locusts to death with every step he took. People could only use everything to catch locusts. He ordered the guards to dismantle the tents and use tents and curtains to make several large bags. The soldiers in the camp dug trenches under the leadership of their captains and drove the locusts into the trenches with long poles.
They were immediately buried, and those who didn't get in were beaten to death with shovels.
But the incident happened suddenly, and the troops they sent to the field camp were not even prepared for this. Moreover, compared with the manpower, the number of locusts flying in the sky was too huge, so that the effect was minimal.
Fortunately, the locust swarms came and went quickly. Within half an hour, the black swarms began to fly away one after another, like a short and crazy dream. Some people had just taken their bags from home, and the densely packed locusts were already there.
They disappeared without a trace, leaving only some locusts that were too full to fly and squirmed slowly on the wasteland.
When the dense sound of flapping wings in his ears gradually dissipated, and the world regained its tranquility, Liu Chengzong looked at the devastation in the outskirts of Lanzhou. He just breathed a sigh of relief when he heard someone in the wilderness burst into tears first, and then farmers everywhere started to cry.
Crying in despair.
Gone. The vegetables prepared for winter, the fragrant pears hanging on the branches, and the sorghum and corn that were about to mature were all chewed to pieces and completely gone.
The fields affected by the locust plague cannot be said to be clean. They are just a mess. There is no vegetable field left. The stems and leaves in the crop fields have been chewed up. There is only one root left in the originally prosperous farmland. It is like standing in the field.
Pieces of corpses.
The woods that Liu Chengzong looked at also seemed to have entered winter early and were eaten bare.
His food is gone.
But Liu Chengzong had no time to feel sorry for the food eaten by locusts. He needed an accurate loss accounting and led Lintao Mansion to fight against the locust plague.
He nodded at Yu Linlang beside him, raised his finger to the west, and said in an urgent tone: "Go to Hehuang Dongguan Town to find Chengyun. If Chengyun is not there, find Song Shouzhen and Wu Panlong. Before tomorrow morning, I want them to start from 20
The township security department dispatched forty officials familiar with the affairs of the township to meet me in Lanzhou."
The Yu Linlang selected by Liu Chengzong was called Liu Yiren. Ever since he left the Children's Camp and came to Liu Chengzong's side, his work had always been easy. He had never received such an urgent order. He immediately did not dare to neglect it. He clasped his fists and accepted it before returning to the locust plague.
The frightened war horse turned around and ran towards the west.
It is sixty miles from Lanzhou to Dongguan Town, not counting the boat ride across the Yellow River. Liu Chengzong will see the people of Dongguan Town tomorrow morning, which means that no one can sleep tonight.
As soon as Liu Yiren left, Liu Chengzong called for the disheveled Wang Wenxiu.
Liu Chengzong was the general who watched the parade, and Wang Wenxiu was the brigade marshal who organized the parade.
Suddenly there were migratory locusts in the sky, and the golden drum flags that the army relied on to command were all ineffective. The flags could not be seen, the golden drums could not be heard, and the organization was directly disrupted. In the past half hour, Wang Wenxiu's first thought was not to kill the locusts, but to kill the locusts.
Instead, let the Seventh Battalion of troops participating in the battalion exercises maintain their organizational structure and stay near Fulongping.
But this was entirely Wang Wenxiu's wishful thinking. In fact, when the locusts arrived, the 20,000 soldiers were in chaos, just like spreading beans into an army, from the trench outside the west gate of Lanzhou, through Xigu to the dock on the south bank of the river mouth,
There are troops everywhere on the Forty Mile Road.
Completely going their own way, Wang Wenxiu tried his best and didn't retain even a single battalion.
It cannot be said that they were not retained at all. At least Ding Guodong's Suzhou Camp was not moved. However, this had nothing to do with Wang Wenxiu. Ding Guodong himself had no intention of moving.
Although Ding Guodong was a ruthless man on the battlefield, he was very well-behaved outside the battlefield, because in essence, Liu Chengzong's conquest of Gansu was a completely unreasonable disaster for the Ming army in Gansu. They did not suffer as severe natural disasters as Shaanxi, so they themselves were
There is no treason, and the organization of the Ming Army did not suffer as badly as the Shaanxi Ming Army.
The army of the Marshal's Mansion, even if it was the Ming army in the past, has actually experienced rebellion or desertion on its own, and has been reunited under Liu Chengzong's banner. Each department has a strong sense of autonomy.
This characteristic is true even for several of the most elite and loyal camps. They can all carry out orders from Liu Chengzong well, but when Liu Chengzong's orders do not arrive... they will take action on their own.
Ding Guodong is different. He himself is a very traditional general, and his Suzhou soldiers are also very traditional Ming army soldiers. Relatively speaking, they are more formal in ideology than the most regular army in the Marshal's Mansion. There are no orders from above, so they can
If you don’t move, don’t move.
The three battalions of Luo Rucai, Li Wanqing and Yang Chengzu under Wang Wenxiu are different. The three of them have long since disappeared with their troops - they want to provide disaster relief and catch locusts.
As soon as the locusts descended from the sky, people couldn't see in the distance or hear orders. They couldn't even see Fulongping, let alone Liu Chengzong and Wang Wenxiu standing on Fulongping.
There were less than 3,000 people in the three camps, but none of the three generals could pull away the entire army despite the locusts. Yang Chengzu led more than 1,000 people and ran eight miles to Lanzhou Xiguan Foreign Guard.
Li Wanqing ran halfway to the west to guard the sorghum field.
Luo Ru is a little expert in long-distance running. He is dressed in fancy clothes. He is the most handsome boy in the Marshal's Mansion in the locust-filled sky. The soldiers can spot him. Wherever he goes, the soldiers follow him... But Luo Ru just went to Xigu.
If you ask Liu Chengzong which crop is the least important around Lanzhou at this time, he will definitely say sweet potatoes. Because it gets colder in autumn, the sweet potatoes planted in the ground have stopped growing, and there are not many sweet potatoes planted in the Marshal's Mansion. p>
Sweet potatoes are afraid of cold, and cold mountainous areas are not suitable for planting, and the growth period coincides with wheat and corn. In addition, the growth, harvesting, and storage stages are extremely labor-intensive. In Hehuang, only Dongguan Town planted some because of Liu Chengzong's order.
In Lanzhou, after harvesting wheat in Xigu, they planted a batch of sweet potatoes in rotation and ate the vines as vegetables.
Luo Ru is here to defend the sweet potatoes.
But this ghost guarded sweet potatoes not because he liked to eat them. On the contrary, because he was stationed in Xigu, he ate sweet potatoes as food and suffered from acid reflux, heartburn and farting. From then on, he became anxious with anyone who asked him to eat sweet potatoes - but
On the other hand, whoever says that the Marshal's Mansion will not grow sweet potatoes from now on will be in a hurry.
Luo Rucai ate too many sweet potatoes and swore that as long as he had a bite to eat, he could eat white noodles instead of yellow noodles, and if he could eat yellow noodles, he would not even look at the sweet potatoes.
But the premise is here, there must be a bite to eat. In this era, as a peasant army leader who emerged from the drought in northern Shaanxi, Luo Rucai knows very well that they will still encounter a situation where they will not have a bite to eat. At that time, he will
He must eat black noodles made from sweet potatoes, so he must defend the sweet potatoes.
No matter how good wheat and corn are, they cannot be eaten before they are ripe. Unlike sweet potatoes, except in winter, they can be planted at any time, dug at any time, and eaten at any time. They may be smaller, but the leaves, roots and fruits cannot be eaten.
But, Luo Rucai had a good idea... He ran for thirty miles to Xigu, only to find that the corn and sorghum planted along the way were almost eaten by locusts. Only the sweet potato field was fine and there was nothing wrong at all p>
Like him, locusts don't like to eat.
After hearing the summons, the disheveled Wang Wenxiu rushed to see Liu Chengzong in a hurry. When he saw Liu Chengzong, he was ashamed at first sight and felt that he had not done well with his business affairs.
But he didn't expect that Liu Chengzong didn't care about this matter at all, and was even surprised by his shameful expression: The locust plague has come, which shows that the emperor has lost his virtue. I am not the emperor, and Chongzhen in the Forbidden City should be ashamed. Why are you ashamed?<
/p>
Wang Wenxiu, on the other hand, admitted his punishment before he could speak: "Commander, the last general made a mistake in leading the troops. The seventh battalion..."
"It's just a locust plague, don't be downcast."
Liu Chengzong raised his hand to interrupt and blocked what he had not said. The troops were running everywhere. So far, they only found out that seven battalions were there, but none of them were full of personnel. Counting thousands of people.
Yes, this is normal.
The locust plague is a force majeure. It is indeed a problem for the army to run around, but it is also excusable. After all, they are doing what they should do - if the locusts rush into the official warehouse where grain is stored in Lanzhou, they will eat tens of thousands of troops.
What?
"Listen to me, I will take care of the locust plague, so don't worry about it." Liu Chengzong gave the order to Yu Linqi to return to Lanzhou. He got on the horse with Wang Wenxiu and said as he walked: "Go back to the palace first and summon the generals of the battalions.
Wei Qian'er and Ding Guodong don't need to go."
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As soon as Wei Qian'er and several generals ran over, they heard Liu Chengzong look at him and say something like this, which made everyone dumbfounded: "Where do I have to go, Commander?"
I saw Liu Chengzong stationed beside the horse road and warned: "You don't need to participate in the military meeting and gather your camp. The insects come from the east. This year, the grain crops in the entire Shaanxi rotation are gone. Gongchang Mansion and Qinzhou have tens of thousands of officials."
What will the army eat? You and Ding Guodong gather the troops and rest on the spot first, prepare to set off tonight, and then come to the palace when you are ready."
As soon as Wei Qian'er heard the order, he immediately clasped his fists with Ding Guodong and returned to the military camp.
When the locust plague broke out, Liu Chengzong's face was so gloomy and scary that no one dared to speak. It was not until he entered Lanzhou City that Liu Chengzong asked Yu Lin to ride into the palace to hang up the map. Wang Wenxiu asked: "The commander-in-chief wants to use the locust plague to start a war?"<
/p>
"Start a war?" Liu Chengzong glared and said, "The bugs come from the east. I'm afraid that the army will come to steal my food!"
The reason why Liu Chengzong issued the order urgently was because he was calculating in his mind, and conservatively estimated that there would still be twenty days.
He personally compiled the Marshal's Office's book on famine relief and epidemic prevention, and was very familiar with the locust plague.
The first attack of the locust plague is just a drumbeat before the war. Everywhere the locusts pass through, they will lay eggs in the ground, and then fly away to feed elsewhere. In Lanzhou, there is a high probability that they will fly back.
The eggs in the ground will turn into bugs after twenty days, and then a new batch of locusts will flap their wings and once again lay eggs in the ground that can survive the entire winter.
He can't eliminate the locust plague because the locust spawning grounds have covered the entire Shaanxi Province. There will be a large-scale locust plague next year, but at least he can control the locusts and eggs in Hehuang and Lintao during this winter.
, and establish a set of means to deal with locust plagues.
But the most important thing is that no one comes to cause trouble during these twenty days.
Otherwise, the locust plague will never be over in one wave.