The book had already been sent to various places, and it would take a long time for it to really reach the Song Dynasty and play a role, so Zheng Fei decided to wait patiently while using this time to deal with a few other important matters.

Now although the original Qishan Army has been successfully pacified, the 700,000 troops of the New Heavenly Dao Army are also on standby everywhere, following Zheng Fei's orders to seize the time to adjust and train, and make comprehensive preparations for the relaunch of the Great Song Dynasty, but there are still many things that Zheng Fei needs to hurry up and deal with, the most important of which are two things,

The first is that in the last war, nearly 400,000 "rebel army" of the Great Song Dynasty were caught off guard by the Tiandao army and the Qishan army, except for those who were killed and scattered and fled, most of them chose to surrender, and the number was more than 200,000. Coupled with the Song army in the places where they were captured in the process of sweeping through the Lianghuai, Liangjiang and other roads, the total number of prisoners has now reached a terrifying nearly 400,000!

Although Zheng Fei has captured almost all of the military funds prepared by the Song court for the rebel army, and seized hundreds of millions of yuan of money in the captured states and counties, coupled with the already strong capital and sufficient grain and grass in the southeast, there is no shortage of money and food at all now, but these captives cannot be allowed to sit on their own side, these captives have now become a huge burden, and every extra day of raising them is a huge expense, and a solution must be found as soon as possible.

If it is only tens of thousands of prisoners, even if it is 100,000 people, it is not a problem for Zheng Fei, the last battle of Jingxi Road smoothly "digested" more than 100,000 imperial court troops, but this time it is different from the past, this time the number of prisoners is too much, there are 400,000 people, the slightest carelessness will make a mistake, out of caution, Zheng Fei will gather Zhu Wu, Wu Yong, Gongsun Sheng, Fang La and others to discuss what to do,

Throughout the ages, there have been no more than five ways to deal with captives,

One is to kill, kill all of them a hundred, this is also the simplest and most effective way, not only can completely eliminate all kinds of hidden dangers brought by prisoners, but also save a large number of prisoners to raise money and food, the famous general of the Warring States period in history "human slaughter" Bai Qi is an expert in doing this, a lifetime of conquest, not even the enemy annihilated on the battlefield, even the prisoners were killed by him no more than a million!

The second is to surrender and turn the enemy into your own people, but there are some risks in doing so, for fear that these people will surrender and turn against them in the future.

The third is to turn them into slaves, and the regulation drives them to become laborers, tired and tired of toiling for themselves.

The fourth is to let them do nothing, and captivity feeds them for nothing.

The fifth is the release of the captives, who has shown his mercy.

The fourth one is obviously not good, and the fifth is even more not, letting them go is tantamount to letting the tiger return to the mountain, after they return to the Song Land, they can take up arms again and become an army in a blink of an eye, and they will turn around and attack themselves again, which is also the main consideration why Bai Qi was keen on killing prisoners in the first place.

It seemed that the best way to do that was to kill these captives, but Zheng Fei had always opposed the killing of prisoners, and the Heavenly Dao Army had never executed captives on a large scale. Zhu Wu adhered to Zheng Fei's orders, and did not kill prisoners on a large scale during his reign in Qishan and the southeast, so the method of killing prisoners was also ruled out. Subsequently, after discussing with everyone, Zheng Fei decided to adopt a combination of recruitment and "recruitment".

First of all, you can't surrender everyone, the old, weak, sick and disabled will definitely not work, and the officers with higher official positions will not accept it, because compared to ordinary soldiers, these senior officers basically have families and jobs in the Great Song Dynasty, and since they can become senior officers, they must also have a special connection with the Song Dynasty, these people are the easiest to rebel against the water in the future, once they turn against the water, they will also bring a large number of soldiers under their command to follow the anti-water, then again, today's Song court officials, From top to bottom, how many people have real skills? Therefore, except for a few famous generals and upright people in history that Zheng Fei knows, most of the remaining senior officers and civilian officials cannot be used.

Secondly, the number of people who surrender should also be limited, even if the 400,000 captives are all elite soldiers and strong generals (of course, this is also impossible), they cannot all be collected, because the surrender of the army is the easiest to rebel against the water, before they completely become their own people, they still have to let their army occupy a considerable degree of advantage over them, even if they really turn against the water in the future, it will not have much impact on themselves. For example, this time the Song court made a fatal mistake, they only thought about letting Zhu Wu send 250,000 troops to fight Zheng Fei and defeat both sides, but they didn't consider that letting those 250,000 people enter the Song realm wouldn't be luring wolves into the house? didn't take into account that if Zhu Wu really turned back, what would they use to suppress the thunderous blow of these 250,000 people?

If Song Ting and Zheng Fei swapped places, facing Zhu Wu, Zheng Fei would at least let his army form a three-to-one advantage over Zhu Wu before agreeing to let Zhu Wu's army enter his territory, otherwise, he would rather let Zhu Wu send fewer people. And based on the current total strength of the Heavenly Dao Army, it is estimated that in order to completely control the captives who surrendered, it can only recruit 100,000 captives at most.

Finally, there is a key factor to consider, that is, to break up all the surrendered troops in their original formations, and divide them into pieces and distribute them to various armies, the purpose of this is very simple, to break them apart, even if some of them have bad intentions, it is difficult to gather enough manpower, and it is easier to completely assimilate these captives with the collective strength of the Heavenly Dao Army.

These are Zheng Fei's three principles in recruitment, but there are exceptions to everything, such as when he violated these three principles at the same time when he surrendered Hu Yanzhuo and Liu Fa, but it was also a special decision under special circumstances, and Zheng Fei also carried out a lot of other preventive work at the same time.

After Zheng Fei's discussion with the others, Zheng Fei decided not to turn the captives into slaves or laborers, because that would be inhumane and easy to cause the captives to resist, but decided to take a more gentle way to appease them and make them give up resistance.

They were given agricultural tools and tools, organized to reclaim wasteland, build water conservancy, and so on, and were given a certain amount of wages for their food and drink, and even allowed them to intermarry with the local people and settle down in the local area for those who performed well. At the same time, a promise was made to them that they would only serve for a maximum of three years, and after three years, those who wanted to stay would officially become legal citizens, and those who wanted to leave would be directly released back to the Great Song Dynasty.

For Zheng Fei's later decision, everyone was puzzled, although they knew that Zheng Fei's move was to let these people have a hope for life and offset their will to resist, but they still didn't understand why Zheng Fei wanted to keep them for three years? Is it really going to let them go after three years?

Zheng Fei smiled slightly and said confidently, "Four years later, is there still that enemy called 'Song Kingdom' in this world?" ”

Now that there are countermeasures, Zheng Fei immediately made a specific division of labor for everyone, with Zhu Wu and Wu Yong respectively responsible for the specific matters of "recruitment" and "recruitment".

Liu Fa reported to Zheng Feiyu, "Commander Qiyu, his subordinates are incompetent, and the two of them still haven't surrendered ......." ”

Zheng Fei nodded, laughing at himself, thinking about it, with the prestige and loyalty of those two people, how could they betray the Great Song Dynasty so easily?

"General Liu has worked hard, and it is in my consideration that they are so stubborn, I don't blame you, you can go." Zheng Fei said to Liu Fa,

Liu Fa hurriedly said, "This is all ...... subordinates should do." After speaking, Liu Fa did not leave, but hesitated, looking like he wanted to speak and stopped.

Zheng Fei couldn't help but wonder, "Liu Shuai still has something?" ”

Liu Fa nodded tangled and said, "Commander, those two are good officials, and they have never done anything to violate the law and discipline or oppress the people, and my subordinates want to ask the commander to open up and not ...... them,"

Zheng Fei understood, Zong Ze should have no friendship with Liu Fa, but the Seed Master Dao is Liu Fa's old friend in the northwest, and the relationship between the two is said to be very deep.

Zheng Fei smiled, "I understand what Liu Shuai means, don't worry, even if the two of them insist on not being used by me, I will treat them well." ”

Liu Fa's face was overjoyed, and he bowed to Zheng Fei gratefully, and then retreated.

Zheng Fei looked at Liu Fa's back, and couldn't help but fall into contemplation, although he said this to Liu Fa, but those two people, one is a rare leader and handsome talent, and his ability to command battles is not under Zhu Wu, Liu Fa and others. One is a capable minister who governs the world, and it is even more rare to be loyal to the Chinese nation, and his name has been famous through the ages. Isn't it a pity that such a person has fallen into his own hands but cannot be used? So how can we change their minds and recruit them into our ranks?

Zheng Fei thought about it, and his thoughts couldn't help but go back to those few days ...... a few months ago.