Li Zhengang left that night, and he was in a hurry to return to Guo Sheng's camp near Linqing. After he left, Mo Ming immediately summoned the intelligence staff officer and the artillery commander Li Wenchang, who temporarily acted as the commander of the fortress, to inquire about the situation.

According to the description of the two, it seems that the two places of Denglai have been quite unquiet recently. Laizhou is too far away, but Zeng Hualong, the governor of Dengzhou City, has been making frequent moves recently, he first convened a meeting of the gentry of the three prefectures under his rule, and asked them to donate money and salaries in order to recruit sergeants to avenge the "revenge of the monarch's father" and "stabilize the township". The gentry didn't care much about avenging their father's revenge, they were more concerned about how to stabilize the township, especially the Dengzhou squires who suffered from the people on the east coast donated generously, hoping that Lord Futai could make decisions for them.

Although the gentry in the counties of Qingzhou did not suffer from the plundering of the people on the east coast, they were also tossed by the Dashun Urging Division. According to the different fields and fame, the various families were forced to pay salaries, ranging from 5,000 taels to 30,000 taels, and in addition to some grain, which really cost them their lives. Some landlords tried to distribute the taxes among the yeoman farmers, which was a common means of avoiding taxes, but after being denounced by the overwhelmed yeoman farmers, the gentry's property was immediately confiscated and the land was divided equally among the original tenant farmers.

Before the arrival of the Shun army, some landlords who had no reputation and could not avoid taxes would collude with the village elders and pass on the taxes they should have paid to the homesteaders. After the yeoman farmers were overwhelmed and went bankrupt, they took advantage of the land and took it into their own name, and so on, step by step, to achieve large-scale land annexation. There are countless examples of this at the end of the Ming Dynasty. More than all dynasties. It can be shown that the collective moral level of the late gentry was the lowest at the end of the feudal dynasties. The scale of land annexation is also the most powerful. After the arrival of the Shun army, the first to take these gentry was to take the knife, such as dividing up the money and grain of several clans and large landlords, and at the same time distributing the land equally to the landless peasants, and this is the fundamental reason why they have never been able to effectively control the situation in Shandong - unwilling to protect the interests of the landlords and gentry.

After Zeng Hualong raised a sum of money, he immediately began to recruit sergeants in and around Dengzhou City, and at the same time, he also paid some of the long-overdue military salaries to the soldiers in the city, so that their morale was slightly restored. However, due to the year-long move of the East Coast people in Yantai to attract displaced people. The number of displaced people in the vicinity of Dengzhou City has been greatly reduced, and the officers of the Dengzhou battalion who came to recruit sergeants were very depressed when they saw it. In fact, this situation is not only in Dengzhou City, but also in Ninghai Prefecture, Fushan, Wendeng, and even Qixia and Laiyang near Yantai, and the number of displaced people has greatly decreased this year, and even some landlords' tenant farmers have absconded with their families, which has made a group of Dengzhou gentry crooked their noses.

However, they didn't dare to come to the East Coast to theorize with the ten of them, they knew that the fighting power of the townspeople at hand was weak, and if they reluctantly gathered to fight the East Coasters, they would only end up in a miserable end. The people on the east coast are "sharp-sharp", "well-founded", and "resolute and courageous", this is the understanding that the Dengzhou gentry spent more than half a year summing up according to the intuitive feelings of many people, and this understanding undoubtedly made them even more depressed. Their townsmen couldn't even beat Guo Sheng's soldiers and horses, let alone touch the butt of the big tiger Yiren on the east coast.

If it annoys the people of the East Coast. They gathered a large team to attack their Zhuangzi, do you think Zeng Futai will send troops to protect you? So, ah. Taking advantage of the fact that a large number of displaced people are currently being coerced by the people on the east coast to reclaim and repair the fort, so that they have no time to pay attention to you, it is better for everyone to keep a low profile. Their own tenant farmers are optimistic about their own families, and the homeless people on the road should not stretch out their hands indiscriminately, otherwise they will invite disaster, which is the experience summed up by the Dengzhou gentry through the lessons of blood and tears.

However, this meeting held by Zeng Hualong was not useless, at least under his explicit or covert instigation, the gentry of Denglai Qing Sanfu had a clearer understanding of the current situation. After seeing that various localities had raised troops to attack and kill the magistrates appointed by Dashun, they were greatly encouraged and said that they would immediately form township soldiers after returning to "clean up" the localities. Among them, the gentry of Dengzhou Mansion and Zhaoyuan and Laiyang counties are the most resolute.

After Li Zhengang left, Mo Ming thought about it again and again, and felt that in the next period of time, Guo Sheng's side was likely to send a large number of "displaced people", and the number would be more than 10,000. So, should we send a group of immigrants to the port of Jinshan in Australia in advance? However, he also denied this idea after thinking about it, not to mention whether the navy was willing to brave the unfavorable wind direction (south wind) and bad weather (typhoon) in the summer to sail south, but to say that at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, the people on the east coast had already transported 5,000 immigrants to Australia from Heishui Port and Yuanbo Port in two batches, each with 2,500 people. This amount has reached the transportation limit of the transport fleet between Fort Xinhua and Jinshan Port, and no matter how much it is, it will only be basking in the sun in Australia and cannot be transported. Therefore, how to resettle these displaced people is really a problem.

However, this question will wait for the team that Guo Sheng came to contact. At present, the rebellion of the local gentry in Shandong is becoming more and more violent, as if they want to return all the anger they have suffered in the past few days, and massacre the local officials appointed by Dashun, and even some local people who have taken over their fields have been slaughtered. However, the gentry in Fushan and Ninghai Prefecture near Yantai had already been swept by Mo Ming's troops, and they couldn't play any roles for the time being, which made him a lot quieter for a while.

However, these quiets were short-lived after all, and from June 16, Dashun officials in Denglai and Qingdao fled to Dengzhou in embarrassment. Earlier, they had already known that there was a Ninghai defense envoy "appointed" by Guo Shuai near the road, and his troops were strong and strong. This time, the Shandong gentry counterattacked, the momentum was extremely fierce, and they could not support it, so they fled to other places one after another, and the local power in Dashun was quickly disintegrated.

And their arrival also brought the latest news from the outside world to Mo Ming and others. In the first half of May (lunar calendar), the Qingzhou gentry rebelled, and the Yin, Tongzhi, and defense envoys of Dashun Prefecture were killed together, and Yidu County (i.e., Qingzhou City) fell. Yao Yingfeng, the general of the Shun army stationed in Qingzhou, was killed, and the general Zhao Yingyuan was only spared; At present, Zhao Yingyuan began to contain his scattered subordinates in the countryside of Qingzhou, and it is said that he has obtained "four hundred dozens of horsemen". After the fall of Fucheng, Gaoyuan, Anqiu, Zhucheng, Rizhao and other counties that had vigorously promoted "land reform" in Qingzhou also fell. In the history of Dashun County, Liu Xianqing and others were ordered to "cut the rich and help the poor" in the local area, "regardless of the distance of the property, the owners were allowed to subscribe to the farmland", and issued land "book coupons" to the poor; In addition, Rizhao County ordered Wang Lianghan to "ban the official gentry", torture the "eunuch family since Wanli", and the gentry "The land, cattle, and family members stored by the gentry are all occupied by the small people".

Forcing land reform without strength is doomed to be tragic, and this time the gentry fought back, and none of these people could stand up to them, either fleeing or killing. In mid-May, Sun Zhiyu led dozens of people to escape to Yantai Fortress with dozens of people and was taken in by Mo Ming. On the 17th, Dashun Wendeng County ordered Xing to send someone to Yantai to warn, saying that the Laiyang gentry armed more than 1,000 people to the county border, as if they were going eastward.

"Nima, this group of people really regard me as an official of Dashun!" Mo Ming slapped the table angrily, he really regretted it now, he took this inexplicable Ninghai defense envoy, and now he is in a bunch of troubles. The Yantai of the people on the east coast has faintly become a bright beacon in the darkness, firmly attracting the officials of Dashun who are panicked by the armed counterattack of the gentry, and the six gods have no master. When these people took office, they mostly "rode alone" or brought "one or two retinues", but now only two or three months have passed, and they can only have their own armed forces around them, so they have failed under the counterattack of the gentry, and fled to the nearest Dashun control area. Ninghai Prefecture, Fushan and other places, which were nominally under the control of Dashun, became natural refuge for officials from Dashun in Dengzhou and Laizhou, and even some officials from Qingzhou quietly sneaked here to take refuge.

But Mo Ming is just talking. Dashun Dong Xueli and Bai Bang Zheng Department only had thousands of people stationed on the front line of Xuhuai, and the so-called ten or two hundred thousand soldiers and horses of the four towns in Jiangbei in the Southern Ming Dynasty cowered, but let Dashun occupy several prefectures and counties in the Huaiyang area. Later, when the Dashun army retreated westward, they dared to carry out some symbolic pursuits, but they quickly retreated. When the sporadic cavalry of the Qing army went south, they were so frightened that they were frightened three times a day, and they wanted to escape. Such a garbage character, can't you cooperate with them? The landlords and gentry of Shandong actually hoped that the Southern Ming would go north to recover Shandong, but the four towns of Jiangbei in the Southern Ming Dynasty were really mud that could not support the wall, and they could not be counted on.

As long as the Qing court was not blind, it would definitely not let go of this foreign force, unless the people on the east coast accepted the appeasement of the Qing court - and this was impossible. Therefore, if we don't take advantage of this vacuum period of the forces of all parties to gather more forces to resolutely resist the Qing Dynasty, there will be no chance when the Qing army brigade comes. At that time, the people on the east coast will face the attack of the Qing army alone, and the days without helpers are destined to be very difficult.

On June 22, 1644, Li Zhengang's gang finally returned to Yantai Fortress after disappearing for many days, and he was accompanied by 300 cavalry sent by Guo Sheng to escort him, as well as hundreds of Dashun magistrates and their personal subordinates who were collected along the way. (To be continued......)