The entire Jinzhou army was stationed in Dengzhou to rest and recuperate, and they were not making all-out efforts to wipe out the remaining rebels as stated in the memorandum reported to the imperial court.
From last year's Kong Youde Wuqiao uprising to the day he was defeated and killed, this rebellion led by Dongjiang and Liao soldiers has lasted for nearly a year. Man-made disasters are more terrible than natural disasters. Within a year, wherever the rebels went, life was devastated and civilians were killed and injured.
They are exhausted and miserable. Northern Zhili and Shandong are better, but Denglai is already depopulated, especially Dengzhou, which can basically be said to have ten houses and nine empty houses.
Before the rebellion, there were more than 210,000 households in Dengzhou Prefecture. As of the latest data obtained by Dayong yesterday from Song Guanglan, the former Dengzhou Dao, there were less than 3,000 registered households in the prefecture, and most of them were old, weak, women and children.
All the residents of the Central Plains in Dengzhou City were also killed by the rebels. In addition to the more than 12,000 family members of the rebels, there are also 7,000 refugees who were taken in by Dayong and his troops along the way. The total of the two is less than 20,000. Likewise,
Most of them are old and weak women and children. It is really worrying to rely on these old and weak women and children to cultivate the fields in Dengzhou.
But it has become Dayong's job to appease the people and resume production. This is because the court has not appointed new Dengzhou and county officials, and the local gentry has also been slaughtered to pieces by the rebels, leaving no one behind.
He came forward to organize the people to produce and save themselves; on the other hand, the reason lies with Dayong himself, because he wanted to control Dengzhou in his own hands, so as to obtain a base area with less pressure to raise troops.[
Jinzhou is an important military town of the Ming Dynasty outside the customs. After the Apocalypse, it has been exposed to the danger of Donglu attacks almost every year. Therefore, everything in Jinzhou is mainly based on military defense. Although there are some forts around Jinzhou, large-scale farming is simply impossible.
, no one can guarantee that the Jin Army’s cavalry will not come to snatch and set fire to the crops when they are harvested. Moreover, the weather outside the customs has been getting worse year by year in the past few years. There have been droughts for several consecutive years, and the winter is extremely cold. The crops in the fields
It would be good to get one-tenth of the harvest. In addition, Jinzhou is severely short of manpower, and it is impossible to have enough manpower to provide for itself. The so-called strategy of "defend the land of Liao with the people of Liao, and support the people of Liao with the land of Liao"
In fact, it has long been bankrupt. The Han people in the territory of the original Ming army outside the pass had long been killed by Nurhachi when Xiong Tingbi gave up Guangning and Ningjin. There were only a few people left. The "Liao soil raising Liao people" may refer to the current strategy adopted by Hou Jin.
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The experience of going south also made Dayong no longer believe in the court's so-called food and grass supply. After asking Jiang Wanli, he also knew that when Yuan Chonghuan was guarding Ningyuan, the Jin army led by Nurhachi crossed Jinzhou and directly attacked Ningyuan. If Hong Tai led his army to attack again,
Adopting the strategy of encirclement and reinforcements, Dayong had to worry about the consequences of Jinzhou's food shortage. He did not want to place his life on the Ming army in Ningyuan and Shanhaiguan, nor did he want to be trapped in the Daling River like Zu Dashou and wait to die by cannibalism.
No matter how you look at it, Jinzhou is a desperate place, and everything depends on the military strategists who transport it from the rear. Dayong does not have the final say in Jinzhou. In addition to the prefect of Jinzhou, there is also the governor of Liaodong. Without the support of Qiu Hejia, Dayong would not believe it.
Officials outside the customs will give their full support to him as a warrior at all costs.
Once the idea of not being trapped in Jinzhou was formed in Dayong's head, it was impossible to get rid of it. At present, Dengzhou, which has ten rooms and nine empty houses, seems to be a good choice for Dayong. The biggest problem now is that Shi Dayong is only a Jinzhou general, and Dengzhou
The state does not matter at all. What can he do to let the generals of Jinzhou occupy Dengzhou, which belongs to Denglai Governor's Yamen.
Cao Bianjiao proposed a method to Dayong based on what he saw and heard in the northwest. The method consisted of four words - to support the bandits and respect themselves.
The bandits are ready. Li Zhongfu and Geng Zhongming are still operating under the supervision of the Jinzhou Army under the banner of rebels. As long as this rebel army does not disappear for a day, the imperial court will not let the Jinzhou Army return to the outside of the pass.
Dayong believed so, so within a few days after the entire army returned to Dengzhou, an urgent report was sent to the capital. Although the rebel generals Li Zhongfu and Geng Zhongming in the urgent report were staying there honestly
Dengzhou, but this did not affect Dayong's deep concern for the remnants of the rebels in his report.
With a large amount of bribes and "facts", Gao Qiqian, who returned to Beijing, testified for Dayong's report. Yang Yufan, who was busy counting the money from selling grain in Laizhou City, also patted his chest and reported the rebels to the court.
It is true that the activities of the remaining bandits are true, and the Jinzhou Army is doing its best to eliminate them. Supervisor Zhu Dadian once again emphasized in his report that the rebellion of the remaining bandits still needs to be quelled by the Jinzhou Army. If other troops are replaced, the bandits may become stronger again.
With the joint efforts of many parties, the imperial court did not let the Jinzhou army return to Jinzhou quickly. The Ministry of War sent an official document asking Shi Dayong to lead his troops to stay in Dengzhou to fight the rebellion. As for what to do with the people in Dengzhou, the official document from the capital did not mention anything.
, and only allowed the Jinzhou Army to provide relief on the spot if there was surplus food, pending further disposal by the court.
This arrangement was naturally the best for Dayong, so after a week's rest, he immediately started to carry out post-disaster reconstruction, and began to send people with heavy sums of money to the capital to find out who the new Denglai governor was to be appointed by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and who were the prefecture and county officials.
Those of you should be prepared to make friends with these officials in advance to avoid them ruining your hard work by making irresponsible remarks when they arrive. You don't expect them to fully support you, but you should at least shut them up.
In fact, if Dayong knew that the ministers in the cabinet had discussed that, in view of the huge losses in Denglai, there was no point in setting up a separate governor, and he would have vomited a mouthful of blood if he wanted to reorganize the two Denglai mansions under the control of Shandong.
The first thing to do in post-disaster reconstruction is to count the existing population in the territory, select officials, gather the scattered people in one place, and allocate food from the military rations to enable them to survive. At the same time, they must also rush to transport the people before the weather turns cold.
Wheat is planted. Although this cannot restore production to the level before the war, it can at least allow these hungry people to barely survive until next spring.
To seize autumn seeds, it is definitely not possible to rely on these old, weak, women and children, so Dayong sets his sights on the tens of thousands of rebels who surrendered to him
When Pingdu was reorganized for the fifth time, the Jinzhou Army absorbed 2,000 Sichuan troops, consisting of two battalions on the left and right of the infantry, a guard camp, a wolf cavalry army, a small number of light cavalry sentries, and a supply camp, with a total of more than 4,600 people in the army. But in reality,
There are actually only 2,000 armored soldiers, and the remaining 2,600 can only be regarded as half auxiliary soldiers and half combat soldiers.
Along the way, the Jinzhou Army sacrificed more than a thousand soldiers, so the core number of soldiers was only about 3,000. However, the number of rebels who surrendered to the Jinzhou Army reached 50,000. How to reorganize and absorb these rebels became Dayong's top priority
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The establishment of the Zangzang Alliance allowed the military rations in Laizhou City to be continuously transported to Dengzhou. Of course, these rations were not obtained in vain, and Dayong spent a lot of real money for this.
The subordinates all complained about Dayong giving away hundreds of thousands of taels of real gold and silver that he had worked so hard to obtain, and also used hundreds of thousands of taels to buy food that should have been free of charge, but Dayong insisted on doing so.
Jiang Wanli, who stayed in Laizhou and was responsible for purchasing grain, said a few words, "What the world lacks today is not gold, let alone silver, but food. With food, there will be public support and military morale. Without it,
Food, no matter how many and powerful our troops are, they will all be scattered when we arrive."
"If the gold and silver are gone, we can grab it from the enemy again, but if the food is gone, we won't even have the strength to grab it. I don't need to say more about what is more important and which is less important, right?"
After Dayong's words reached the ears of the generals through Jiang Wanli's mouth, most people expressed their support and no longer complained about Dayong's waste of the gold and silver that his brothers had robbed, but there were still a few people who couldn't bear to look at it.
The representative figure is Li Dashan, a bandit guerrilla who always likes to contradict Dayong.[
To him, Dayong only used one sentence to stop him from complaining, "Do you still want to eat human flesh?".