Chapter 55: Drawing fire from the bottom of the cauldron
Chongzhen only brought more than 20 Yiding, plus Gao Qiqian, Lu Jiude and a dozen other eunuchs, and drove an ox cart to the gate of Li Chengdong's military camp. The ox cart contained 20,000 taels of silver.
When Li Chengdong heard this, he quickly led the general out of the camp gate and knelt down to greet him.
"Your Majesty Li Chengdong, I would like to extend my sincere greetings to you." Li Chengdong said respectfully.
"Pingsheng." Chongzhen said, "I've sent you some money."
"Your Majesty, I am scared." Li Chengdong did not dare to stand up and hurriedly explained, "I actually tried to dissuade the soldiers, but the soldiers did not listen to my advice at all."
Chongzhen said: "So Aiqing didn't know about it beforehand?"
Li Chengdong swore and swore: "Your Majesty, I really don't know anything about it. If I lie..."
"Okay, I believe you." Chongzhen thought in his heart, don't you Li Chengdong know? If you don't know, you are a ghost. If I believe you, I will be a fool.
This matter must have been instigated by you, Li Chengdong.
It’s hard to judge the intention, maybe it’s to make money, or maybe it’s to establish prestige.
To put it bluntly, Li Chengdong had just become independent from Gao Jie and had not yet established his prestige, so it was entirely possible that he would use this raise to establish his prestige, and other towns would follow suit.
A general who can fight for the interests of his subordinates can be supported.
Unfortunately, Li Chengdong and others made the wrong calculation this time because they met Chongzhen.
"I don't mean to blame Aiqing." Chongzhen stepped forward and helped Li Chengdong up with his own hands, then held Li Chengdong's hand and entered the military camp together, saying, "I know Aiqing's loyalty."
Li Chengdong is loyal? Even Chongzhen himself doesn't believe this.
Li Chengdong and Wu Sangui are both speculators.
However, Li Chengdong cannot be touched at the moment, at least until Huang De leads his army to arrive.
The other Eighteen Towns' general soldiers are watching. Taking care of Li Chengdong at this time will only make everyone feel at risk. In that case, there is no need to wait for Jiannu to go south, and the Eighteen Towns' border troops themselves will have collapsed.
However, not taking care of Li Chengdong does not mean doing nothing.
We must take this opportunity to bypass Li Chengdong and other eighteen town commanders, directly connect with the lower-level officers and soldiers, and do our best to gain the support of the lower-level officers and soldiers.
I'll give you a blow to the bottom of the cauldron!
Don’t you want to support yourself with soldiers? I’ve robbed all your soldiers!
When entering the camp gate, Li Chengdong glanced at the four silver boxes on the ox cart with eager eyes.
According to the Ming Dynasty's military system, the commander-in-chief was responsible for distributing the military pay for soldiers recruited in border towns, so Li Chengdong felt that Chongzhen would definitely give these four boxes of silver to him for distribution, but he didn't know how much silver there was in total?
According to military practice, he can deduct at least half of it.
However, Li Chengdong was disappointed, Chongzhen did not mean this.
After escorting the ox cart into the camp, Chongzhen said: "Li Aiqing, please arrange for the soldiers to come and collect their pay. According to the establishment, they will come one by one and tell the soldiers that there is no need to worry. Everyone has a share."
"Ah?" Li Chengdong was stunned. What's going on?
Chongzhen asked with a smile: "Li Qing, what's wrong?"
Li Chengdong really dared to say: "Your Majesty, I don't need to bother you with such a trivial matter as payment of wages."
"Ai Qing, what you said is wrong." Chongzhen said with a straight face, "Soldiers are a major event of the country, the place of life and death, and the way of survival. We must pay attention to them, and the salary is the hard-earned money of the soldiers, and it is even more important.
It's so important! Therefore, the payment of wages is by no means a trivial matter. From now on, the payment of wages and silver in the Ming Dynasty will be presided over by me or the imperial envoy, and it will be followed as a rule."
Hearing this, what else could Li Chengdong say? He could only say the right thing.
In the final analysis, unless Li Chengdong dares to rebel, he can only obey.
But obviously Li Chengdong does not dare to rebel, at least not now.
So even if you want to do evil, you can only do it secretly and secretly.
After a while, the soldiers in the camp were organized, and a sentry came first.
The military system of the Ming Dynasty was divided into two types, one was the guard system and the other was the recruitment system.
All the twenty-eight towns in Xuzhou recruit soldiers, and their establishment is divided into units, teams, sentries, generals, battalions, and towns. One unit has five people, one unit has ten people, one team has thirty people, and one unit has nine people.
ten people.
Ninety officers and soldiers stood in a long queue at each post, eagerly waiting to receive their pay.
For soldiers, the happiest moment is when their pay is paid every month.
Chongzhen said loudly: "We are both serving as soldiers and eating food, and we are also working hard for the court. We should not favor one over the other. Therefore, I decided to treat all border towns equally and quote the Guan Ning Army to pay 2 taels of silver per month as a rule!"
The ninety officers and soldiers lined up immediately cheered. Is it the same standard as Guan Ning's army?
The border towns of the Ming Dynasty were different from each other. The Guan Ning army was paid 2 taels per month, while the other border towns were paid 1 tael.
Chongzhen said again: "Because we are moving north from Yangzhou to Xuzhou this month, as a rule, we should pay the branch and pay double!"
Hearing this, the ninety officers and soldiers lined up were even more ecstatic. They didn't expect that the standard had been raised to Guan Ningjun, and they could still receive their pay? This was a good thing that had never happened before.
Gaozong Town had never paid them any salary before.
"Long live thanks!" A soldier immediately knelt down.
"Long live thanks!" One kneeled down, and others followed suit.
Looking at the officers and soldiers shouting long live, Li Chengdong felt a little complicated.
So I bought you off? Your life is too cheap.
Li Chengdong didn't know that Chongzhen's drama of pulling out all the stops had just begun.
"Get up." Chongzhen raised his hands and said, "Hurry up and get paid. There are many people waiting behind you."
The first soldier stepped forward with an eager look on his face. Lu Jiude gave him two silver picks and then asked in a sharp voice: "Whose soldier are you serving as?"
This time I became much more proficient in the high-rise and dive business.
He immediately reminded the soldier: "Be a soldier of the Ming Dynasty."
The soldier then shouted: "Become a soldier of the Ming Dynasty!"
Lu Jiude gave the soldier two more silver coins and asked, "Whose food do you eat?"
After receiving Gao Qiqian's guidance, the soldier shouted loudly: "Eat the food of Long Live Lord!"
With this good start, the soldiers behind him followed suit one after another. Suddenly, the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were eating the food of Long Live Lord, which resounded throughout the military camp.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Li Chengdong's mood became more complicated.
Why do you feel like you shot yourself in the foot?
It took more than ten hours to finally distribute the 60,000 Bian Town salary.
When the 240,000 taels of silver went out, half of the money collected by Liu Zeqing was gone.
Liu Zeqing is not as strong as Gao Jie, and his ability to steal money is not as good as Gao Jie. His family fortune is less than 500,000 taels.
As for the remaining 20,000 brave people of the township and the strong guard troops, they have no pay. Although they have enough to eat three times a day, they can save the food and take it home to their wives and children.
The pay dispute was successfully resolved.
The soldiers all acted honestly.
But this incident is not over yet.
Because blindly showing kindness can only lead to extravagant gains.
Only by combining kindness and power can prestige be truly established.
Therefore, the next step is to use thunderous means to give the most severe punishment to the person who started the trouble.
The investigation of the case naturally had to be left to professionals. Jinyiwei commander Li Ruolian began to exercise his authority and began to continuously summon and interrogate officers and soldiers from various towns.
During this period, Chongzhen was never idle for a moment.
Chongzhen would randomly appear in a military camp in a certain town with two Yiding and two eunuchs from time to time, and then stay with the officers and soldiers of this town all day long, training together, and eating together
The soldiers of the Ming Dynasty who shouted for duty, ate the food of Long Live Lord, and even camped among the soldiers' tents at night.
I have to say that Chongzhen's skills were even more powerful than Zhu Yuanzhang's.
Zhu Yuanzhang only selected 500 elite soldiers from the surrendered army to serve as bodyguards.
But Chongzhen mingled directly with the officers and soldiers in each town, eating, living and training together.
The feeling in the hearts of the officers and soldiers was indescribable when they saw the dignified Ninth Five-Year Planner walking in formation training with him, eating brown rice mixed with sour food together, and sleeping in the same shabby tent at night.
This is the same feeling that French soldiers had towards Napoleon more than a hundred years later.
However, Napoleon ate, lived and marched with the soldiers just to keep track of their physical condition, but he unexpectedly won the enthusiastic support of the French soldiers.
Chongzhen did it deliberately.
Bitterness is the point of suffering, but Chongzhen clearly felt that the soldiers became more enthusiastic when they shouted long live for him. When they shouted the slogan "soldiers need to eat food" before eating, they were not just shouting slogans, but coming from the heart.
Eight days later, on May 23, Huang De led his army to Xuzhou.
When Huang De led his army to arrive, Chongzhen was in the camp of "Ogre" Ma Huabao.
"Be a soldier of the Ming Dynasty and eat the food of Long Live Lord!" After the loud slogan, the officers and soldiers who had been training all morning and were so hungry that their chests were pressed to their backs started to feast.
Those who didn’t know better thought it was more than a thousand pigs eating pig food.
Chongzhen also enjoyed great food because the food had improved significantly.
All fools know what the food of the ancient army was like. Until the Republic of China, the food was like pig food, and the food of the Ming army was even worse than pig food. It can give you a good taste with just one bite.
In short, there are all kinds of deductions from the generals of the town to the cooks.
But Chongzhen broke this chain of interests, leaving these morons at a loss as to what to do.
Because no one knows which town Chongzhen will go to today, let alone when he will go there, and then he will have to eat with the soldiers at the bottom. What should I do? There is no way!
You can only pay enough for food and don't dare to deduct even a penny.
Therefore, the chief soldiers and cooks of each town were made miserable by Chongzhen.
However, the soldiers in various towns enthusiastically supported Chongzhen and became more fond of Chongzhen.
When Huang Degong walked into Ma Huabao's camp with the generals of the ten towns under his command, he saw this scene. Chongzhen and several border soldiers were eating brown rice together, with no vegetables and only a plate of bean paste.
Huang Degong was very emotional about this, but the ten general soldiers under his command looked at each other in confusion.
How could the Holy One be so ruthless? Can he follow the big-headed soldiers and eat such pig food?
"Uncle Jingnan, are you here?" Chongzhen greeted with a smile, "Let's have something to eat together?"
"Your Majesty, Huang Degong, kowtows to the Holy One." Huang Degong did not dare to neglect. He brought the commander-in-chief of the ten towns to pay homage. After getting up, he introduced the commander-in-chief of the ten towns to Chongzhen one by one.
