At the end of the day, the chariots and horses set off from Sanghepu towards Shouzhou, and arrived at the gate of Shouzhou City at dusk.
Shouzhou controls the upper reaches of the Huaihe River and has a commanding position. It sends ships to the 500-mile waterway to Shanyang. If there is a change downstream, Shouzhou will send troops very quickly. Therefore, after taking Huaixi by accident, Fengli Army's defense focus began
Shifting to the west, the main force of Jinghai Division and Chen Zhi's Dengcheng Division were stationed in Xinpu (Lianyungang) and Yunti Pass on the east side.
After the Battle of Jingxiang, in addition to Chen Zhi who was ordered to form an independent Denghai town division at Yuntiguan, Zhang Gou and Tang Fuguan were also transferred to the Fengli Army and Huaiyang Army respectively, together with Liu Xilin, Chu Zheng, Han Caizhi, and Geng Quanshan.
, Chen Kuili and other troops, the armored soldiers assembled on the eastern front have reached seven town divisions. In addition, there is the second town division of the cavalry battalion led by Li Liang, with Ge Cunxin and Yang Shi as commanders respectively, and the Jinghai Division as military staff.
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In addition, among the 140,000 captured soldiers, except for the 80,000 captured soldiers, mainly newly attached Han troops and captive soldiers, who were shipped to the Nanyang Shipping Company and the Blackwater Shipping Company for overseas labor service, the remaining 60,000
The captured soldiers will mainly be Suizhou Army, and the Xuzhou Workers' Camp will also be used to raise the reserve troops on the Eastern Front to 120,000 or even higher.
The composition of the prisoners of war in Suizhou was also simple. Most of them were poor people from Jingxiang and Huaixi who rebelled against Luo Xiancheng. Later, Luo Xiancheng stayed in Suizhou for six or seven years. Almost everyone in his family also settled down in Suizhou. However, they were named Luo Xiancheng.
The ghost was obsessed with stealing, and he made a mistake and became a prisoner of war. Unlike the newly attached Han army and the Hulu captured soldiers, the captured soldiers of the Suizhou Army were not only easy to reform, but also could become an important additional soldier for the Huaidong Army in the future.
source.
In order to better transform the 60,000 captured soldiers into soldiers who are loyal to the Duke's government and can fight on the battlefield for the Duke's government, at the same time, the king is in Suizhou, whether it is the families of the 60,000 captured soldiers who are organized into the labor camp,
Regardless of whether the Suizhou generals who followed Zhong Rong, Luo Jian and other generals who joined Dong Yuan were from a small family, Lin Fu always asked him to be properly resettled, incorporated into the civil register, and granted priority in land granting if conditions allowed.
Previously, Luo Xiancheng carried out large-scale farming in Suizhou, which was actually privately occupied by generals at all levels. The soldiers and farming generals had small families, and were actually just serfs of generals at all levels——
The military land reclamation in Shouzhou will also be dealt with at the same time.
When he was about to enter the city, Lin Fu stopped and stood by the roadside, looking at the gradually golden wheat fields on both sides of the road, and Gao Zongting, Ning Zechen, Meng Jin and others beside him, and said: "Dong Yuan has been in Huaixi for several years, and he still works
Got some work..."
"I wonder how Dong Shijun would feel when he heard what my lord said?" Meng Zhen said with a smile.
After working hard for several years, Huaidong took it all without any effort. Now, a total of 1.5 million acres of land in Shouzhou and Haozhou has been transferred to the colonial bank by Lin Fu, becoming Lin Fu's right to Huaidong.
A reward from a general; Dong Yuan had to be in a good mood to see a ghost?
"I don't care what Dong Yuan thinks," Lin Fu laughed. He still feels that calling Dong Yuan into the family is the proudest work of his life. He said to Meng Zhen, "After Yinzhuang took over the army to cultivate the land, although it lowered the price of the land to two or three
Silver dollars per acre, but a large number of people are still extremely poor. They cannot invest in purchasing land, and they cannot simply and rudely drive them away. They plan to make a wedge letter with the farmers in the name of the colonial bank.
They are allowed to pay rent in addition to taxes. After ten years, the land will be classified as permanent property, and the ten years of rent will be transferred to the bank to pay for the sale of the land! This work requires the government, the county and the newly established townships below.
The company will cooperate with the company. Of course, the officials are doing the work for the Colonial Shang Bank, and the Colonial Shang Bank also needs to allocate some extra money to Shouzhou Prefecture, which will be regarded as a subsidy. As for how to make up for it, you can discuss it and make an announcement after it is finalized.
, don’t hide it.”
The annual output of grain in the fields is three stones, and each household is granted land within 40 acres. After the new tax policy, the tax is no more than 1 in 20, and the land rent is also regulated to not exceed 30% of the actual income, that is, it cannot exceed six times the basic land tax - actual
Dong Yuan was stationed in Shouzhou. In order to support the army, he had to take up to 60% to 70% of the harvest directly from the farm every year.
Lin Fu wanted to transfer all the farmland in Shouzhou and Haozhou to Shangyinzhuang, but allowing the farmers to pay less than 35% of the actual rent was already a favor; he even wrote a letter to Xu Geng.
After ten years of continuous payment of rent, the land became private property. For farmers, this was almost a piece of good news that made people cry with joy.
Meng Jin said: "The lord is kind and loves the people like his sons, and the people will also love the lord like their father..."
Do you love the people as your own children? Lin Fu smiled inwardly. It was just the memory of later generations that made him look at ordinary people from a superior perspective, which was exactly what some outstanding figures in the world did not have.
Most farmers live and die on a piece of land that does not belong to them, working from sunrise to sunset; their desire for land is unimaginable by the upper class, so these people will also be the staunchest supporters of the New Deal.
In the past, these people were extremely poor and could not express their strength or voice when they were oppressed at the bottom of society. They were oppressed to the extreme and resisting would only produce extremely destructive power. However, now they are the most determined members of the Huaidong Army.
As members and supporters, their strength and voice can be expressed through the Huaidong Army as a whole, and it is also the core guarantee for Lin Fu to promote the deepening of the New Deal.
After the new tax policy came out, Lin Fu, in particular, directly seized hundreds of thousands of farmlands owned by the Yuanyue clan in the counties outside Jiangning in the name of rewards, and used them to enter colonial banks to pay for the landless and short-land farmers nearby.
Although the Commercial Bank of China was selling the property to collect principal, farmers with no land or little land actually benefited greatly. The most direct manifestation is that the land price in Jiangning plummeted in just half a month.
to pre-war levels.
Those whose interests have been harmed naturally hate Lin Fu to their core; but those thousands of poor farmers who have never even had such extravagant hopes and illusions in the first half of their lives, are they not Lin Fu's fanatical supporters?
Since Lin Fu wants to gradually implement the new soldier system, the old soldiers of the original Huaidong Army, who cannot become non-commissioned officers, will gradually be arranged to retire and be assigned to local areas for land transfer. In addition, new soldiers need to be recruited and filled into the armies to ensure the renewal of the army.
It replaced generations and gradually expanded the number of soldiers to 500,000 or even higher.
People at that time regarded military service as hard labor, and conscription was also a form of exile. Especially in the wealthy areas of Jiangnan, the children of farmers would only eat military rations unless they were desperate. Originally, Lin Fu had no intention of conscripting soldiers from the relatively wealthy counties of Jiangning.
How many soldiers have been recruited, but the recruitment points set up have only received very few applicants for months. Even if the Privy Council and the Military Department do a good job in publicity and repeatedly emphasize that the status of generals is very different from the past, the effect of recruitment around Jiangning Mansion is still very low.
They are all as good as Huaidong, southern Zhejiang and Jiangxi, which are relatively harsh and cold areas, but the work of land transfer is really going on. However, after the new tax policy and the colonial bank's land sales law were promulgated, several recruitments in Jiangning Prefecture
If you click, you will be surrounded by children from poor farmers every day.
Lin Fu called it the mass base: The reason why the Huaidong Army has such strong cohesion is precisely because Lin Fu has been doing solid work in this area for ten years since he has been based in Huaidong. At present, he is just transferring his previous work in Huaidong.
Chongzhou, just make some adjustments and improve the work done in Huaidong, and then promote it nationwide.
Lin Fu and Meng Zhen said: "When I came to Shouzhou, I didn't care much about defense. What I cared about the most was how to deal with the 156 acres of army reclamation land snatched from Dong Yuan. In Jingzhou
In the early stage of the Battle of Xianghui, Dong Yuan directly removed 50,000 soldiers from these farms, and then took these soldiers to Xuchang. The Shouzhou fields were dealt with, and the good results were spread. The soldiers knew that,
I heard that, especially among those who are stationed in the countryside, a large number of their children are still staying in Shouzhou. I don’t think they are willing to go against Huaidong anymore..."
In the past, Meng Jin only thought that Dong Yuan had a great talent that no one else could match, and he also had an excellent grasp of people's hearts. He could control the army by wooing and suppressing different generals. But it was only after he integrated into Huaidong that he truly realized what Lin Fu had learned from
Basically controlling the army, he controls almost every soldier's heart!
When Dong Yuan was worried about the one to two million taels of silver a year for the money and food for his troops, the Privy Council had already set the annual income increase target at 30 million taels of silver in three years.
Meng Jin didn't know if Dong Yuan was feeling hopeless and depressed at this time. In short, he felt that Dong Yuan had no hope of winning.
Meng Jin thought of something and reported it to Lin Fu face to face: "Dong Shijun came to Huaixi, and many salt merchants' sons from Weiyang came to join him. Dong Shijun went to Xuchang to take up his post in a hurry, so how many salt merchants' sons stayed in Shouxian.
Prefecture, at this time, he intends to go north to Xuchang to surrender to Dong's envoy; my lord, please give me instructions to teach Meng Zhen how to deal with it?"
"Those who want to stay are welcome to stay; those who want to leave will not be sent away," Lin Fu said. When these salt merchants' children escaped from Weiyang, they were afraid of being liquidated by Huaidong. In recent years, these salt merchants have come to Shouzhou.
The financial resources of his disciples were almost exhausted; even if they were not consumed and they built large-scale fields and houses in Huaixi, as long as they could follow the rules of the New Deal, Lin Fu didn't want to create extra trouble to settle old accounts.
Shortly after entering Shouzhou City, a messenger rode into Shouzhou from the east and presented a secret letter to Lin Fu.
"Zhen Feng arrived quickly and has already landed at Xinpu," Lin Fu said to the people around him. "I originally wanted to stay in Shouzhou for two more days, but now it seems I have to rush to Xinpu first."
Zhen Feng was the governor of Haiyang County in Goryeo, and he was captured by Lin Fu in the battle of Seogwipo. Later, Lin Fu supported Zhen Feng in forming a Haiyang army to seize the Goryeo throne. The war in Goryeo also raged for five or six years, although
Zhen Feng occupied three counties in the south of Goryeo, but even with the help of the Haidong Army and the Saga clan, the Zhen family still suffered too much in terms of military strength. The two sides formed a tug of war in Hanyang County, Goryeo, and no one could do anything for the time being.