After leaving the Huang family, Li Xuan quickly took the emperor and ministers of the Tang Dynasty and dozens of soldiers to visit several other well-known local wealthy households in Liusha Village.
Every time he went to a house, Li Xuan would do the same thing as he did in the Huang family. In addition to emphasizing that his new army of the Tang Dynasty would not disturb the people or plunder, he would also recruit their direct descendants in the name of cherishing their talents, especially the eldest son.
A type of person.
As for whether these direct descendants of wealthy families are really talented or learned, that is not important. What is important is their identity!
Li Xuan did this and semi-forcibly took away the family's direct descendants. The purpose was very obvious. Even Qian Mengjiu and the others saw it. These were taken away and all were direct descendants of wealthy families who were awarded official titles in the Tang Dynasty.
Disciple, to use a noble terminology, is a proton.
Well, this proton is not the proton in the electron, neutron, and proton. The ancients were not so awesome and had already discovered the secret of the atomic nucleus. Instead, they were princes and princes who voluntarily or were forced to serve as hostages in neighboring countries or even enemy countries. They were referred to as protons.
I won’t talk about things that are too long ago, but let’s talk about something everyone knows: Bald Chiang’s son Chiang II, he was a hostage in the Soviet Union for twelve years, and he was a miserable child who was tricked by his father!
Now Li Xuan is semi-forced to gather the children of these wealthy families in order to make the powerful and wealthy families in these places have some scruples. After all, your eldest son, eldest grandson, and family heir are all under my control. You
If you dare to resist the rule of the Tang Dynasty, the heirs of your family will be in danger.
In addition, this arrangement has another very interesting effect, that is, these hostages are not just hostages, Li Xuan has also given them official positions.
As for Tang Dynasty officials who are all doctors, chiefs, etc., although they, like other Tang Dynasty officials, cannot get a penny in salary, and they are even unwilling to admit this official position, but is this important?
It doesn't matter. Anyway, you are an official of the Tang Dynasty whether you like it or not. Your name is registered in the register. If the Ming army returns to Zhengtai County and wipes out the Tang Dynasty, you will be an official of the Tang Dynasty.
Do mid-level and senior officials still want to live?
is it possible?
Those Ming army soldiers who are eager for merit will chop off your head without hesitation, and then pick up rewards and promotions!
At this moment, for many people, the official position in the Tang Dynasty is not about glory and wealth, but a guillotine. Once you become an official in the Tang Dynasty, there will be a knife called "Ming Army" above your head.
It's hanging, and you never know when it will be cut down.
Li Xuan knew very early on that the pirate ships of the Tang Dynasty could not get off once they got up. No matter whether you were willing or not at the beginning, as long as you got up and wanted to get off again, it was basically impossible.
Zeng Ziwen is like this, and Yang Xiucai is also like this. When Yang Xiucai was forcibly recruited by him some time ago, he was not reluctant. Now, although he is not very proactive, he still has the same things to do.
No less work.
Now as long as these talents can be used, Li Xuan doesn't care if he is sincere!
It's just that Li Xuan's operation is now a bit large-scale. They have passed four medium and large villages along the way and taken away more than ten hostages from large households. This makes Qian Mengjiu a little worried that such a large-scale hostage capture may lead to
Cause resistance.
However, Li Xuan didn't take it seriously. If these big families would resist, they would have resisted long ago. Most of them are still afraid of death, and what Li Xuan took away was only their heirs, not their family heads!
And Li Xuan didn't take away all their direct descendants. If the eldest son died, it would be okay for a second son to inherit the family business!
Li Xuan left such obvious loopholes for them in order to reduce their determination to resist. Of course, there will always be people who resist no matter what, and for these resisting families, Li Xuan will not hesitate to detain them.
On the charge of harboring false Ming spies, they were all arrested and sent back to Huangzhusha to work as coolies. By the way, a lot of property and food could be confiscated to be used as military supplies. There were also fields given to the soldiers who had recently joined the new army of the Tang Dynasty.
In order to expand the army, Li Xuan recruited large-scale troops outside the mountains for the first time. Different from the previous small-scale recruitment of only a few or dozens of soldiers, this time he planned to recruit a total of more than 500 soldiers, plus the existing troops.
, strive to increase the number of troops to more than a thousand.
Even though Zeng Ziwen said that attacking Zhengtai County is not advisable, taking or even controlling the countryside of Zhengtai County is what Li Xuan wants to do. To control a county, it is definitely not possible to rely on the existing three to five hundred people.
, they need more troops.
And more importantly, it is used to resist the Ming army's attack in the future!
In order to recruit soldiers on a large scale, and to recruit soldiers who were of high quality and who were willing to join instead of being forcibly recruited, Li Xuan was rarely generous.
Anyone who applies and passes the recruitment will be immediately given fifty kilograms of grain, and promised to have two full meals a day, and land will be distributed immediately.
Don't think that fifty kilograms of grain is very small, it only costs a few dollars when converted into money, but for those families who cannot afford to eat, it is an extremely valuable sum of life-saving food that can enable the family to survive and not starve to death.
At the same time, the new army of the Tang Dynasty promised that as long as they joined the army, they would have two full meals a day. This was also extremely important. Just being able to have enough food was enough to make many children from poor peasant families work for the Tang Dynasty.
If the above two points only initially attracted children from poor families to join the army, then the most important land allocation system was used to completely stimulate their centripetal force towards the Tang Dynasty.
As long as you join the army, you can get land, but if you want to keep these lands, you must ensure that the Tang Dynasty does not perish.
Because the Ming Dynasty did not recognize the legality of the land allocated to these soldiers by the Tang Dynasty, once the Tang Dynasty was over, the lands they obtained would disappear in an instant.
For their own sake and for their families to have a piece of land that can be passed on to future generations, these soldiers had to fight desperately.
Because at that time, they were no longer fighting for the Tang Dynasty, but for themselves!
These three recruiting conditions devised by Li Xuan can be said to have instantly inspired the enthusiasm of many poor children to join the army.
The number of enthusiastic applicants even exceeded Li Xuan's expectations. In the previous villages, there were at least a lot of people applying in every village, and this was even when the publicity was not very good, and in subsequent visits
There are more and more people.
When it came time to officially recruit soldiers at Liusha Village, more than 200 people came, and many of them came from surrounding villages to become soldiers. This shows that the three recruitment conditions proposed by Li Xuan are very important.
How attractive are the poor.
Li Xuan saw so many people coming to apply, and a smile finally appeared on his face. With so many people coming to apply, he could select dozens or even hundreds of qualified soldiers. If he continued like this, it wouldn't take long for him to have a thousand soldiers.