Chapter 512 Xiangcheng’s decision, everything after the war

For the parties involved, the conversation in the general's account is just one of the two complicated military and civilian matters in the day. Yuan Wenhong, the chief clerk of Jiaozhou Camp, sorted out this thing according to normal rules.

In the same way, according to the Jiaozhou Camp rules, after the things written by Yuan Wenhong are sorted out every day, they have to be handed over to Li Meng for review. If the things are not suitable, they must be cancelled. If the things are suitable, they must be discussed or made direct decisions. This work is actually very hard.

When I was in Shandong, there were great sages like Sun Chuanting, Liu Fulai, and think tanks like Zhou Yang, Ning Gangui, and Yan Jizu. Many things could be shared. The army was in Henan. These people were unable to follow in Shandong's affairs. The one who could talk about these civil affairs was around Yuan Wenhong.

This battle was equivalent to a battle to destroy the country, which was of great significance. Li Meng naturally had to go to the battlefield in person, Shandong, Lianghuai, Hebei, and various military and civil affairs.

The situation in the world has developed step by step according to his plan, and there are still many things to plan in the future. The country of Ming Dynasty has been almost broken until now, and he has to start everything from scratch. It is really a lot of things. Even though he is out, all battles can run according to the plan.

Most of the time I spend every day busy is not a military issue. I only slept for about three hours. Fortunately, after so many years of hard work, I can be considered a good physical foundation and will not be unable to hold on.

But Yuan Wenhong, the chief clerk of Jiaozhou Camp, couldn't hold on. This elegant and famous scholar may not have any good health. Following the army is hard, he has to do official duties and stay up late. He really can't stand it. Every day, Yuan Wenhong's eyes are red and he looks tired.

Being tired is a critical moment. Seeing that the situation in Jiaozhou Camp is becoming clearer and clearer, people like him who are confidential counselors around the commander will have endless wealth and glory in the future. If they lose the chain at this time and delay the future, wouldn’t they commit suicide by regretting it?

Over time, Yuan Wenhong also found some rules. After the matters of camping at night were determined, Li Meng inspected several camps and would read the records and documents he had sorted out in the tent. It took about an hour. No one came to disturb him during this period. Although he was in the tent, he sat quietly by the side and rarely heard anything about him.

Taking this opportunity to rest and raise your spirits as much as possible, and then work hard after reading the notice. This is also Yuan Wenhong is quite talented. He recorded all the words and words that Li Meng said during the day. Li Meng didn't ask many questions at the moment. After following for so long, Yuan Wenhong also understood some of Li Meng's habits, and some habits that made him confused.

Before coming to Jiaozhou Camp, Yuan Wenhong thought that Li Meng was not literate, which was normal. If he wanted to literate, he would have to have some income from his family. When his children went to school, he occupied labor. Li Meng was a military family and had any opportunities to get an education. He could only know how to learn swords and guns, but he didn't have to recognize words at all.

But when I really joined this system, I found that Li Meng recognized words, and seemed to have read many books, but there was a little strange thing. It seemed that he could only recognize regular scripts, and he had to add symbols to break sentences for him. Reading words in a sentence is something that needs to be taught in the private school of enlightenment. The Dashang seemed to have read books, but he didn't know this knowledge. It was really strange.

Duke Li Meng of Qi rarely wrote, usually wrote oral records, and then read and checked, but he could write his own name and had a lot of writing skills. These are all kinds of confusion.

I heard that the Marshal was a dementia person when he was young, but later he was flooded by the sea once. This was when he suddenly became extremely heroic and achieved the current situation step by step.

There are even strange rumors that when Li Meng was flooded by the sea, he was possessed by a real dragon in the sea. This is what happened today. This is the destiny of the dragon!

According to Yuan Wenhong's own opinion, the actions, various decisions and daily behaviors of Duke Li Meng of Qi were really the kind of founding hero. He really clinged to a real dragon. As for those details and those little secrets, it would be better to keep silent, so as not to cause trouble.

Every night in the military tent, when Li Meng was looking at the documentary records, even when Yuan Wenhong was napping, Li Meng knew it and asked this person to take a break.

I have read it one by one. Regarding Gao Jie's disposal, the distribution of the Ma army, and the next moves of the General Chen Liu, the Western Expedition, were all things that had been agreed upon long ago.

As I looked, I saw the plan mentioned in the daytime that the merchants in Shandong and Jiangnan bought land in Henan. I felt it was eye-catching at that time, but now I look at it, the more I look at it, the more I make sense. And many problems can be solved through this plan. The more I look at it, the more excited Li Meng was, and excitedly patted the table.

The noise was not loud, but Yuan Wenhong, who was in a daze, was shocked. He thought the general was interested in summoning each other, so he quickly stood up, patted his long gown, apologized with shame:

"The great commander atones for his sins, and his humble position is a little confused."

Li Meng didn't care about this subsection. Anyway, it was something that happened every day. He kept saying hello:

"Mr. Yuan, come and see, what you have said during the day is that Henan has many wastelands, while the wealthy provinces along the coast have money but no land, which is just right. The more I think about it, the more I feel it makes sense. Come on, let's discuss it..."

This day was the first day of the October 17th year of Chongzhen. This day was a huge deal in later generations. Although at the end of September, most of the main forces of the Shun Army were wiped out, and Jiaozhou Camp had actually gained a decisive advantage within the pass, this night was considered by more people to be more significant.

"Xiangcheng Ce" is a noun that every person who studies the history of Jiaozhou Camp has to mention. With this policy, Yuan Wenhong also earned extraordinary wealth and honor for him and his family and descendants.

The core of Xiangcheng Sect is nothing complicated, just to let local gentry imitate the structure of military farms and buy land to start farms. Of course, such a structure does not have a village protection team.

Since the establishment of Jiaozhou Camp and became famous all over the world, his economic policy was to trade and military farming. These two items have obtained a large amount of gold, silver and grain, supporting Jiaozhou Camp, a strong army in the world. This mainly relies on business, setting up a checkpoint to collect lijin, trafficking in private salt, and foreign trade. The military farming is only to save military rations from this area, stabilize the population, and provide military sources.

Li Meng was a Duke of the imperial court and a general in the standard Ming system. He was not the kind of refugee army that wanted to get cramps and skin when he saw the landlords and gentry. He was also the strongest and largest warlord in the entire Ming Dynasty and even the world. Such a person was naturally much more popular than the Shun Army.

But the landlords and gentry were always wary of Shandong, because Shandong values ​​​​tradition and farmlands are legally owned by Li Meng's family. Many landlords and gentry's land was seized by Jiaozhou Camp. The land is the lifeblood of the landlords and the backbone class that supports the world is the landlords.

Except for a few people in Shandong who have become rich because of Jiaozhou, there are some rich merchants and businessmen in the world who are not big landlords? If you have money, you still have to buy fertile land to be the safest.

If your land may be taken away by Li Meng again, it is even more serious than death. This is also the Jiaozhou Camp is unobstructed in Henan, but in other places, although the Jiaozhou Camp is strict in military discipline, the Ming army is like a bandit, but there are many local landlords and gentry supporting the Ming Dynasty, which will always set a lot of resistance for Shandong.

In the end, Henan was in war and famine, with a population of less than 30% of the original population. A large number of fields were abandoned, and I don’t know how many uninhabited lands were. In the Central Plains, farming in the peacetime season is a good place. Now Shandong wants to sell this large number of land to the rich people in the world.

This undoubtedly sends out a signal that Shandong does not want to invade your land and give you the opportunity to purchase land and merge.

Since it is a wasteland, the land price will definitely not be too high. With the situation where Jiaozhouying is stable, the land here must be a business that will make a profit and never lose money. That is to show the kindness of Jiaozhouying with these big families.

After making this gesture, I believe that people who are still watching the world will definitely make a choice. The world is bustling and everyone is for profit. With such great benefits, no one is fool. If you have that brain is not smart, you will be blind, and then it will be destroyed, which is also an insignificant thing.

In the history without Li Meng, Li Zicheng, the King of Chuang, won victories step by step, and he really had the so-called luck of winning the world. The wealthy families in the world, the powerful gentry, and the landlords in the local area knew that when the dynasty changed, they should look at the direction of the wind and bet accurately, otherwise it would be a situation of being broken into pieces. If the bet is right, it would be a fortune and wealth.

But when Li Zicheng was watching the world, he issued the "Yongchang Edict". The announcement of this edict was equivalent to sending a clear signal to the gentry class who was expecting Li Zicheng to turn to, and also to announce the nature of the Dashun regime. It was also from this edict that the scholars and officials saw that Li Zicheng could not cooperate with them, and that the two sides could not have any room for reconciliation besides destroying each other.

This made the Shun regime extremely unstable. After suffering a rocky failure, the prosperous Dashun regime soon collapsed and could not be maintained. In several northern provinces, even landlords and gentry killed local civil and military officials of the Shun army to welcome the Qing army.

This is an example of the opposite. Compared with this opposite, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, did a completely different job. After Zhu Yuanzhang grew up in the southeast, he soon revealed his news and called the Red Turban Army a "demon". He transformed himself into the general representative of the landlords and gentry in the late Yuan Dynasty, so as to obtain the response of the gentry class and finally conquered the world.

Examples of good and bad are here, and Li Meng naturally knew to win the support of these big families. It was a bit ironic to say that if there were no protection of Li Meng's Jiaozhou camp in the north, Shandong and Jiangnan, and the driving force of the Shandong economic explosion on the surrounding areas, how could these people have such a scale and such peaceful days now?

It is the last part to sell the land and land in Henan, and it is a big deal to allow landlords and gentry from other places to buy it.

Originally, everyone thought that the military farm could only be set up by Shandong itself, and all the land belonged to the Grand Marshal. Now he has given up this benefit. This is a statement. To put it nicely, it is not to compete with the people for profit, but to put it bluntly, it is to make money.

Of course, for Jiaozhou Camp and Shandong, this transaction is not a loss. Henan is much larger than Shandong, and its population is lost too much. With so many wastelands and so many refugees, Shandong is now using troops everywhere, and spending money seems to be a waste of money. It is really difficult to mobilize a large amount of financial and material resources to provide disaster relief and enclosure.

Instead of doing this, it would be better to sell this land to wealthy merchants who want to buy land everywhere but have no peaceful and prosperous places to buy.

Everyone knows that Jiangnan is a fertile land, and Huguang is a land of fish and rice, but there is no ownerless field in Jiangnan. In Huguang, there is either Shunjun or Zuo Liangyu, and there is no need to buy it. Now that Henan has released news, it is natural that both sides take their needs.

After roughly setting up a strategy this night, the so-called "Henan's unowned barren land sells notices and documents", naturally, such major events cannot be easily taken. There are countless follow-up and auxiliary work to be done. Each yamen must arrange personnel to participate. After the discussion, people will be sent to Shandong immediately, and there will be people qualified to participate.

Henan has only won a big victory. Strictly speaking, the territory controlled by Jiaozhou Camp is only a few prefectures in the north of the Yellow River, as well as Kaifeng and Guide prefectures and Ruzhou. There is still a lot of follow-up work to be done. This plan is only proposed in a forward-looking manner and needs to be discussed by all parties.

General Chen Liu, the general of the Western Expedition, wanted to come to see Li Meng, but military affairs were of great importance. Under Li Meng's urging, he led his army to stay in Ye County for a short time and began to march towards Nanyang Prefecture.

However, the success of this situation was beyond everyone's expectations. According to the pre-plan, Tang Er's horse army did not meet with Chen Liu's troops, but went to Henan Prefecture and swept along the way.

Luoyang, Xin'an, Mianchi, Yiyang, Yongning, Lu family, Songxian, and other prefectures and counties in Henan Prefecture changed their banners and became loyal ministers of the Ming Dynasty.

The Shun Army previously concentrated most of its forces to encircle and annihilate the Ming army, and the backbone forces stationed in various places were all drawn out. Now the so-called rebels, that is, local troops, are garrisoned in the local area.

The rebels of the Shun Army were really mixed with dragons and snakes. Many of them were local Ming army rebels, and even local rich armed forces participated. These people were fencemen and might not be loyal to the Shun Army. They just had to bow their heads and surrender when they saw the situation was too high. Now that the wind has changed, there is no reason not to follow the rebels.

In just half a month, the seemingly unbreakable foundation of the Shun Army in Henan began to collapse, which was ridiculous. For Jiaozhou Camp, especially for Tang Er's Ma Jun and Chen Liu's Xuzhou Army, the collapse speed was too fast. Suddenly, a large number of cities and territories were waiting for Shandong troops to take over.

How could a total of more than 20,000 troops be able to suppress so many territory? There are many powerful people in the places that cannot understand the direction of the wind. After establishing a village on the mountain for a long time, they think they have an armed force that can cause trouble in this troubled times and rain, and occupy a piece of territory to become a local emperor.

Such people will naturally not be lenient, and will directly send troops to attack, and it will naturally be easy to eliminate them after attacking them, but this is also annoying.

The army led by Li Meng set out on the way back on the fourth day of October, leaving behind four regiments to assist the prisoners in the aftermath and adaptation.

Before leaving, Li Meng issued an order. Gao Ke, the deputy general of the Xuzhou army who was still guarding Xuzhou and Fengyang Prefecture, led the remaining Xuzhou army troops into Henan to join the Xixi General Chen Liu, and the land in Jiangbei, and was completely handed over to Pingnan General Ma Gang to guard it.

The Central Plains Army was established, with the Western General Chen Liu as the main general. In addition to his army, he was under the command of Tang Er's horse army, three regiments of Yuan Shizhong, a regiment of Guide Dusi Jia Dashan, and two regiments under the newly appointed Zhangde Guard Hao Yaoqin will also be under his command, but they will not be allowed to go to the expedition with the army.

After this time, the troops of the General Chen Liu, the Western Expedition, expanded to nearly 40,000, which was almost the largest number of troops in each army. He is now really worthy of the title of general. The one who changed his status this time was Tang Er, the general commander of the Ma Army, and was promoted to the title of general.

Tang Er was the deputy general of the Central Plains Army and was in charge of the horse army. Tang Er was very happy when he got the promotion, but he also had troubles. The training of the captives of the Shun Army and the horse team could not be delayed, but going out to clean up and suppress bandits is also a big deal. Often, half of the prisoners and half of the Jiaozhou camp veterans were left to train, and he took the other half and half out to fight.

Although the Jiaozhou camp troops did not completely pursue the remnants of the King of Chuang, Li Zicheng did not gather a group of troops on the way back, nor even gathered the troops.

The news of the main force of the Shun Army's defeat was faster than that of Li Zicheng's escape. There were already chaos along the way. In some places where the King of Breaking Li Zicheng walked, there were even people who dared to gather armed militias to take advantage of the situation.

It is said that the thousands of cavalry led by Li Zicheng had no power to touch them along the way, but when they fled like this, the cavalry kept dispersing along the way, Li Zicheng did not dare to take the risk of being arrogant, for fear that the other party would chase after him, and flee so constantly, and disperse. When it arrived in Xinye, there were only more than a thousand cavalry around him.

However, when Li Zicheng arrived in Xinye, Nanzhao County had been defeated by the cavalry of Jiaozhou Camp, which was a matter of a later story. After Li Meng made these arrangements in Henan, he had ordered the eight regiments of his army to return first. He still had some trivial matters to do in Henan.

Li Meng often fought outside, and this was the first time he missed home. It was October now. If he got home, he would be about the twelfth lunar month. When he thought of this, Li Meng was also a little moved. He was old, but he still had to do what he should do. On October 13, Li Meng met someone in the military tent next to Weishi County.

The weather was very cold, and a charcoal basin was moved into the military tent, but this charcoal basin was mainly used for Yuan Wenhong, for fear that he would not be able to withstand it in such weather.

There was a felt paved according to the rules on the ground. There was a person kneeling on the felt, and the man hurriedly knelt down as soon as he entered the tent.

Judging from his uniform, the personal soldiers outside the door knew it. This must have been a surrender again. Recently, the Ming army and Shun army surrendered many of them, but the one who could be met by the general Gao Jie, the general of Yansui, was directly deprived of military power by Li Meng. Now it is equivalent to a commoner. He is assisting the military personnel in the military farming camp in Kaifeng to conduct military farming. I don’t know who this person is today.

This man is tall and has a gloomy face. This is different from the Gao Jie with a flattering smile. In the eyes of the Jiaozhou camp guards who are guarding the gate, these people have been defeated and surrendered. Isn’t it a natural to be humble? He was shocked when he reported it. This is Hao Yaoqi, the general of the Shun Army.

Hao Yaoqi was in a bad mood. After so many years of hard work, such a big situation was wiped out in an instant, and he became a prisoner under the ranks. His status and status changed instantly, how could he feel better?

However, after entering the military tent, Hao Yaoqi knelt down without any delay and praised:

"Mr. Qi, the criminal Hao Yaoqi, please see you. Thank you for your kindness for not killing me!"

When he knelt down, he had already seen Li Meng's appearance. Although he was so sad, he was still shocked. Duke Qi, who had achieved such a great cause, was so young. As soon as he knelt down, he heard Li Meng in the head smile and say:

"No need to be so polite, get up!"

This is not an attitude towards surrendered generals. Hao Yaoqi was even prepared to be humiliated, but he did not expect that Li Meng would treat him with such a smile. What is this? It is really scary to be so kind. Is it going to be beheaded next? There have been many such things in Shunjun.

All the left and right are at this point, and they will die. Hao Yaoqi was just thinking about being a bachelor. After thanking him, he stood up openly. When he saw Li Meng pointing at him and saying, "She smiled":

"Mr. Yuan, Hao Yaoqi is not an ordinary person. He has fought with our Jiaozhou Camp several times, but his team has not separated and he just retreated. He has never seen such an opponent except the Tartars. He is really a talent!"

Hearing Li Meng's praise, he was indeed a compliment, but Hao Yaoqi, who was so upset just now, felt ashamed. Every time he faced Shandong soldiers, he had no victory. He just didn't want the team to suffer too much loss and retreated decisively. Unexpectedly, this became his military achievement and was praised as a talent. It was really a bit ridiculous.

Perhaps seeing Hao Yaoqi's expression, Li Meng explained with a smile:

"Old Hao, don't feel embarrassed. I am a Shandong army and the world, and it is already good to be able to fight you. This time you know the general, and you have less blood and less effort. Lao Hao, you have made contributions!"

Is this praising or scolding? If the person involved was not sure, Hao Yaoqi's face was burning, but he was a little active in his heart. Judging from this, things seemed to be going to develop on the better side?

Sure enough, Li Meng smiled and said:
Chapter completed!