Since defeating Zhai Xiaoshan's gang of bandits, the "East Coast Yiren" has gained great fame in Dengzhou and even in parts of neighboring Laizhou. Some people who think that they can't protect themselves in the troubled times have come to vote, and what makes people laugh is that a small number of bandits and bandits who have been rampant in the Dengzhou area for many years also took the initiative to come to the door to join the door, asking for "joining", which made Mo Ming very angry, and you treat Lao Tzu as a bandit?

However, the large number of people under the hands of these people is exactly what the people on the East Coast covet. Over the years, the local order in Shandong has gradually collapsed, and the hungry people in the countryside have risen one after another. Some bandits and bandits were mixed in to make a fuss, coerce the homeless people, and plunder everywhere, causing quite serious damage to the order of the villages. There are a few such people among the few armed families who have come to vote this time, but most of their men are hungry people who have fallen into grass because they can't eat, and there are not many real hardcore bandits after all. Therefore, Mo Ming took care of some small groups of relatively easy to control forces and restrained them.

The real bandits naturally couldn't stand the heavy rules of the people on the east coast, and it didn't take long for several groups of people to shout that they wanted to break up and split up. However, they obviously didn't realize what kind of character Mo Ming, the "bandit leader", was unsuspecting, and about 100 of them and some hardcore subordinates were hanged under the southern wall of Yantai Fortress the next day, so that the bandits and bandits who didn't follow them almost peed their pants in fright.

After peacefully driving out a number of would-be bandits, the Easterners took the majority of the remaining population firmly in their hands. By this time, by mid-to-late May, the population of the Ming Dynasty under the control of the people on the east bank of the Yantai fortress area had reached more than 15,000 people—not counting the 3,000 people who had been transported to Heishui Port. And with the reputation of the East Coast people shocked. I believe that in the next period of time. The number of displaced people here will also grow rapidly.

Although this year, a large area of abandoned farmland has been opened up near the Yantai Fortress. Crops such as corn and sweet potatoes were planted, but they couldn't stand such a rapid increase in population. If you continue like this, the food will definitely not be enough to eat, will you go to rob the gentry again? Mo Ming vetoed this idea after thinking about it, the current relationship with the gentry is already very tense, and if you provoke them again, maybe these people will really make up their minds to cut the meat to that Zeng Futai, fund him to recruit sergeants, and clean up the local bandits, wouldn't that make trouble for themselves? For the time being, it would be better to maintain the delicate balance between the two sides. Anyway, after Li Zicheng received the arrival of local officials. Some of these local tyrants and gentry in Denglai have been beaten, and when the time comes, their attention will be shifted to the "pseudo-obedient officials" who want to divide their fields equally, and they can only swallow their anger and dare not besiege them in groups.

However, it is also a problem for the population to continue to increase in this way, and now the total amount of miscellaneous grain in the camp is less than 400 tons, although there are still nearly 800 tons of grain in the two places on Rishiri Island and Blackwater Port combined, but for the more than 20,000 people (including soldiers) who are now in the hands of the people on the east coast, this food is not enough to support them until the end of August, when they can harvest the first crop of grain. Not to mention that it also takes a lot of seeds to sow potatoes on Rishiri Island and Heishui Port right away, and there are six or seven hundred cattle and horses raised on Yantai Port, which is also a huge amount of consumption throughout the day. In this way, the grain stock is even tighter.

We have to find a way to get a batch of food! Today is May 18th. Li Zicheng had personally led an army of 60,000 to Shanhaiguan to recruit Wu Sangui and Gao Erren, while Wu Sangui begged the Qing army and sent squires to surrender to Li Zicheng in order to slow down the advance of the Dashun army.

Time is running out, should we take this opportunity to "borrow" some food from neighboring North Korea? Mo Ming was a little moved, several ships that had been repairing and maintaining at Heishui Port yesterday had just returned, bringing along the way two or three hundred Japanese down-and-out samurai and their descendants, as well as about three hundred tons of grain that had been purchased from Japan with great difficulty. The people on the eastern coast received a large number of cannon fodder samurai, grain, medicinal herbs, and slaves, while the Matsumae domain received a large number of much-needed commodities such as cloth, leather goods, high-quality metal farm tools, and weapons. In general, the trade surplus of the easterners was relatively large, because the Matsumae clan also paid the easterners about fifty or sixty thousand yuan worth of gold for the goods they obtained.

All of a sudden, there was an extra squadron of Japanese samurai servants, and the strength of the people on the east coast was swelling more and more. Mo Ming took a rough inventory, counting 541 people in two companies of the army (plus supplementary soldiers), 187 gunners (plus supplementary soldiers), 1,472 people in two battalions of the Eight Banners Samurai, 276 people in the 3rd Squadron of the Standing Team (newly recruited, supernumerary), 273 people in the newly established 4th Squadron of the Standing Team (Japanese samurai, supernumerary), plus some staff officers, service officers, and miscellaneous personnel, with a total strength of nearly 2,800 people. Among them, with the exception of the newly formed 4th Squadron, the rest of the units have proven to be quite effective and can be trusted.

In addition, there is a group of selected military teams composed of Koreans and Ming people, with a number of about 800 people, and their combat effectiveness is quite suspicious. They can only fight as a baggage force on the battlefield with the main force, and their own combat effectiveness is almost negligible.

The naval strength of the people on the east coast has also been greatly strengthened after this expansion, and there are now 12 large and small ships on the line from Heishui to Yantai, namely: five steam engine sailing ships, two frigate gunboats, two armed transport ships, two merchant ships, and one small fishing boat. Among them, the vast majority of them have combat effectiveness, and with these ships, there is basically no rival in the waters of Northeast Asia, and even the Dutch East India Company Formosa area, far to the south, has no maritime strength that can match the people on the east coast.

Since the strength at hand is so strong, shouldn't it be time to gather a large army and go to North Korea to "borrow grain"? Although the food of the North Koreans is certainly not abundant, but as the so-called dead friends do not die in the poor, Mo Ming of the North Koreans will not worry about the life or death of the North Koreans, he is only worried about how to feed the more than 20,000 people under his hands. Well, this time I went to the west coast of North Korea and brought more than a thousand people, and the North Koreans will definitely be difficult to resist.

However, at this moment, several former Ming Dynasty guards who had fled here from the west brought a shocking news, which overturned Mo Ming's original plan at once. It turned out that as early as nearly a month ago, Li Zicheng had sent the general Guo Sheng to lead 3,000 cavalry (known as 10,000 people) to Shandong, and then sent an additional general Dong Xueli to lead 1,500 troops (3,000) into the Xuhuai line, in order to occupy these provinces that were still outside the control area of Dashun, and by the way, to recruit those local warlords of the Ming Dynasty such as Liu Zeqing, Liu Liangzuo, Huang Degong, Gao Jie and others.

As the supreme general in charge of Shandong under Li Zicheng's command, Guo Sheng's officials and generals appointed to Jiaodongdeng, Lai, and Qingfu will arrive soon. According to the information obtained a while ago, after some urgent deduction, the staff officers unanimously agreed that Guo Sheng's cavalry troops were moving quite quickly and would arrive around Jinan City in the next few days. When you arrive in Jinan, it is not far from Denglai, and it is only a few days away, and Zeng Hualong, the governor who is hiding in Dengzhou City, has to face the impact of the Shun army.

Therefore, now is the best time for the East Coast people to do it. If it is early, it may face the collective backlash of the landlord and squire class of Deng, Lai, and Qingfu represented by Zeng Hualong, although the people of the east coast are now in the beginning of the fortress, and they are not afraid of those rural strong men with low combat efficiency, but there will always be a lot of trouble, and it will also cut off the route of the displaced people, which is quite worthless.

However, it is different now, I heard that the officials and generals sent by the Shun army to various places are going around propagating slogans such as "three-year exemption" and "equal land", which are definitely the mortal enemies of these landlords and literati. Li Zicheng had too deep feelings for the peasants, and for the past two years he had been reluctant to levy taxes and grain from the peasants, but had instead helped them by torturing the Ming court officials, vassal kings, and landlords and gentry, and had also distributed the massive amount of land in their hands to the local peasants.

Guo Sheng, as the highest official sent by Li Zicheng to Shandong, naturally resolutely implemented his ideas. Although Li Zicheng, who was far away in Beijing, had now been reminded by the people around him to realize the huge negative impact of the torture of officials, eunuchs, wealthy merchants, and gentry, and had taken the lead in stopping this kind of behavior in Beijing that was not conducive to his position in the world, the local authorities still had time to correct it. Therefore, the arrival of Guo Sheng and others will inevitably make the officials and gentry in Shandong grit their teeth with hatred. Now that there is such a target to attract firepower, what are the people of the East Coast waiting for? First of all, the few remaining gentry forts in the vicinity are broken, anyway, the people on the east coast have not been able to get their approval, and these people are going to vote for the Tartars sooner or later, so I can't help it, go to your house to "borrow food" for emergency relief, so as not to raise all the enemies in a few months!

On May 19, the East Bank Army, which had only taken one day to prepare for battle, under the leadership of Mo Ming, drove out of the east wall of Yantai Fortress, and then turned south in the direction of Fushan County. The troops they fought this time included two companies of infantry, one artillery company (carrying four 12-pounder cannons), a battalion of the Eight Banners New Army, and the newly formed 4 squadrons of the Standing Force, with a total strength of about 1,600 people. In addition, more than 800 soldiers also poured out of the nest, carrying more than 500 pack horses, commanded by Kim Wugui, and followed behind the people on the east coast, ready to pull people and supplies back.

The whole army marched lightly and at great speed, and it took only three or four hours to enter the territory of Fushan County, and then under the guidance of the leading cavalry, it went straight to the first target. (To be continued......)