In July 1644, Shandong was in chaos.

First, on July 11 (the eighth day of the sixth month), Zhu Shuaiqin of the former Ming clan, who had been elected as the leader of the alliance by the local squires of Dezhou and pretended to be the king of Ji, began to disband most of the army at hand after exchanging letters with Wu Sangui, and officially sent envoys to the Qing court to negotiate surrender. At the same time, he began to draw up a list of "meritorious people" to the Qing court, based on the local power derivation, in order to seek official positions for these people.

Due to the discord with the Texas tyrant Luo Guoshi and others, Zhu Shuaiqin's list naturally does not have the name of someone from Luo Luo, maybe it is full of slander, and it may be that he intends to restrain him to death. Especially after hearing that Zhang Youfang, the newly appointed governor of Dezhou (who has an old relationship with Zhu Shuaiqin), who was newly appointed by the Qing court, was about to take office, Luo Guoshi, who was worried that he would be liquidated, suddenly moved the idea of killing Zhang Youfang, and asked his sworn friend Zhang Guozhi, the governor of Dezhou Cang, to immediately send someone to hunt down Zhang Youfang, and at the same time he himself began to spread rumors in the city that the Manchurians were going to slaughter the city after they came.

However, it is obvious that the mainstream trend of thought in Texas at this time still surrendered to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, so someone soon leaked the news that Luo Guoshi sent people to attack and kill Zhang Youfang, Zhu Shuaiqin immediately sent someone to inform Zhang Youfang, and at the same time sent someone to kill Zhang Guozhi, and Zhang Youfang, who got the news, hid in the military camp of Ezhen Bahana and Shi Tingzhu in Qinggu Mountain. After the arrest and killing of Zhang Guozhi, Xie Sheng and others began to spread the news that Luo Guoshi's younger brother Luo Tiansheng was in the Haikou camp on the east coast, saying that he was secretly colluding with Luo Guoshi and intended to block "my Great Qing Dynasty". At this point, the situation of Luo Guoshi in Texas began to become precarious.

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"Are you saying that the Qing Kingdom has already sent Zhenglan Banner Gushan Ezhen Bahana, Shi Tingzhu and others to lead a large army?" Mo Ming, who was sitting in the headquarters of Yantai Fort, slapped his palm on the table of the Eight Immortals made of fish scales and pine wood in Sakhalin, and stood up with some surprise and asked.

"Yes, the lord has confirmed that this news is true. The Manchurian sat down firmly on the back of the Jingshi Dragon Chair. He has been sending troops to attack and rebel. However, he suddenly withdrew his troops back to Beijing a month ago. A while ago, they also sent Wang Aoyong, a native of Zichuan County, Jinan, who was the new head of the household department, to appease Shandong and Henan. Now it has almost reached the Cangzhou area. With him came the army led by Nabahana and Shi Tingzhu, and the old man looked at the cards sent by their pioneers, and wrote that the two of them commanded hundreds of thousands of troops...... "A middle-aged man who was dusty sat on a stump chair by the door, and lowered his eyebrows to describe the latest information to Mo Ming.

This person is the family of the Texas squire Luo Guoshi, and he came to inform Mo Ming of the latest military situation in Texas at the behest of his master. Mo Ming has always been a little puzzled by Luo Guoshi's move, what is he doing so well? If it is said that he came to take refuge in the people of the East Coast, Mo Ming will not believe it at least at this moment. After all, the people of the East Coast could not protect his family property. Therefore, Mo Ming thought about it and felt that Luo Guoshi's move was probably to leave a way back for himself. If the Qing court really listened to the words of Zhu Shuaiqin and others and wanted to arrest him, he would have to abandon his family and business and flee to Yantai to save his life.

As for the two people he mentioned, Bahana and Shi Tingzhu, Mo Ming had no impression. In the few information given by the local side before coming out, Shi Tingzhu was also mentioned, this person was originally a Ming general, and then he was lowered to Houjin, and that's it. And that solid mountain Ezhen Bahana, he really didn't know anything. He didn't even know how many of his men were. According to the information provided by the locals, a solid mountain should really have 25 cattle records under its jurisdiction. It should be calculated that 7,500 troops should be commanded (300 households and one cow); But in fact, the number of cattle in each banner varies greatly, so the number of commanders is also quite different. The blue flag is under the five flags, and the people are just like that, and then remove those who stay in their hometowns, and divide the troops to dominate and Cangzhou, it would be good if he Bahana could bring 4,000 people. Shi Tingzhu is the same, and it is estimated that the strength of the Han army flag is about five or six thousand.

These two units add up to nearly 10,000 people, plus some of the coats and followers who serve as cannon fodder and logistics baggage, and finally their total strength should exceed 20,000, and the equipment should be good, the number of horses is also large, and the mobility is strong. I just don't know if there are any surrendered Ming troops around them, Mo Ming tends to have them, because they pacified the Changping "Tukou" all the way and occupied a large number of prefectures and counties in Bazhou and Cangzhou, and there should be a lot of Ming surrender troops along the way, and it is estimated that it is likely to be between a few thousand and one or two thousand people. These people are not very good in combat and equipment, but they are more than enough to act as cannon fodder.

In this way, then the size of this force is very large. The total number of troops on the east coast is only more than 4,000, of which no more than 3,000 can fight and can be trusted. With such a small number of soldiers, you can only take a defensive position!

Guo Sheng's gang was very clever, and immediately after the weapons were in hand at the end of last month, he entered Henan westward with three or four thousand soldiers and a huge fleet of chariots and horses, and now he should be almost at the junction of Shaanxi and Henan. And when this guy was leaving, he gave himself the title of "Quanjie Denglai Qingsanfu", and sent people to enter Qingzhou with Yang Wangxiu, the liaison sent by Li Zicheng, and asked Zhao Yingyuan, Yang Wei, Qin Shangxing, Guo Jiangpai, Zhai Wu Monk and others to listen to Mo Ming's moderation.

But this is just an empty word, and it is strange that those characters who are born as bandits and bandits can listen to Mo Ming. It's not that Mo Ming hasn't sent someone to contact them, but the information back is not ideal. At present, Zhao Yingyuan, who has expanded to more than 2,000 people, does not pay attention to it at all, and his tendency to be self-reliant is quite obvious. In addition, those Dashun county commanders, brigade commanders, garrisons, state pastors and others who were transferred from local bandits did not ignore them like Zhao Yingyuan, maybe they still took care of Mo Ming, the legendary "big brother on the road", a little face, and most of them chose to delay perfunctorily. But they are still good, Mo Ming also heard the well-informed Zhai Xiaoshan (Zhai Wu monk's nephew) report that the bandit named Yang Wei also hooked up with Zeng Hualong in Dengzhou City, obviously with the idea of stepping on a few boats.

Nima just wanted to block the Manchus in Qingzhou with such a rabble? Mo Ming is very unoptimistic, at present, there are still Ming troops and squires and landlords in Qingzhou City, and they are not all the way to these nominal Dashun troops. Coupled with the territory of Dengzhou that is still controlled by the "Daming", and the countryside of Jiaozhou, which has been occupied by bandits and bandits, this Denglai land is really chaotic.

However, Mo Ming didn't care whether they were dead or alive, the only thing he cared about was training soldiers and how to feed the forty or fifty thousand people at hand. Those bandits gathered together to raid the countryside like locusts, completely collapsed the local production order in Qingzhou and Laizhou, which had already improved slightly, and artificially created countless teams of displaced people to come to Yantai, where there was legendary food. In the face of these cross-prefecture and county-crossing tide of displaced people, the landlords and gentry of Denglai and the two places generally chose to remain silent and let them go to Yantai. There is no way, the Jiwei of the people on the east coast is indeed a little strong in Denglai and the second place, no one dares to provoke this "sea bandit", everyone knows that the Yi people on the east coast of the road have been collecting population, so let these mud legs go over, out of sight is clean. After the Ming Dynasty or "my Daqing" Wang Shi came over, he would settle the accounts with these Haikou bandits.

After receiving the important information that the Qing army was approaching Shandong, Mo Ming immediately summoned several major officers under his command, such as Xiao Xi, Mao Desheng, Li Wenchang, Liu Zhong, Kurhan (who was the captain of the Yantai Security Team) and Liu Haiyang of the navy, to discuss the military situation together. After discussing it, everyone felt that it was better not to go on an expedition recently, so they would be active in Dengzhou, and by the way, they would collect grain. Today is July 20 (the 17th day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar), and the Qing army will not have much time left for everyone, Mao Desheng thinks that they may advance to the Qingzhou line in more than a month, and then soon threaten Dengzhou. Moreover, the wheat in the fields at this time has generally been harvested, and it is more convenient for the Qing army to collect grain on the spot, and there is a material basis to support the long-term combat of the army.

Now that he has unified his understanding, Mo Ming simply follows the good as he goes. He ordered Liu Zhong's two battalions of Eight Banner warriors to go out to the two wooden stockades that had been built south of Yantai Fort, and sent troops to patrol the vast area around the farmland of the people on the east bank. In a little more than a month, the more than 4,000 acres of sweet potatoes and corn can be harvested, and if something goes wrong at this time, everyone will want to cry without tears. At the same time, with the cooperation of some reconnaissance cavalry, the army units began to march south to Fushan County, Ninghai Prefecture, Dasongwei, and Jinghaiwei, eastward to Wendeng County, Weihaiwei, and Chengshanwei, and westward to the areas around Qixia County and Laiyang County, to carry out what was probably the last "armed tax" of the people on the east coast to the local landlords and gentry.

In general, the levy action has been much calmer than before. After more than a year of contact, the people of the East Coast gradually reached an undeclared tacit understanding with these landlords and squires of Dengzhou, that is, these local powerful factions did not obstruct the people of the East Coast from collecting the displaced people, and the people of the East Coast no longer used violent means to plunder their property. But if you don't beat you Zhuangzi doesn't mean that you will be let go, as the Ninghai defense envoy appointed by Dashun, it is a fart to levy some taxes on the squires in the defense area! And the landlords pinched their noses and admitted in the face of this kind of tax collection action that made them bleed a little but did not hurt their muscles and bones. Therefore, the Ming Emperor did not collect taxes from them, but the strange people of the East Coast succeeded in doing so in 1644!

Ninghai Prefecture and Fushan County, which have been plowed several times by the people on the east coast, are naturally sparsely populated and have barren fields, while Wendeng County, Qixia County, and Laiyang County are relatively wealthy, and some grain can be collected. Therefore, by the middle of August 1644, the people on the east coast had collected a total of 9,000 stone (about 630 tons) of rice, grains, beans and other grains, as well as more than 30,000 bundles of forage and 150 carts from the prefectures, counties, and guards near Yantaibao. At this time, the wave of refugees in Qingzhou and Laizhou due to the rise of bandits finally came to the vicinity of Yantai. (To be continued......)