Shao Shude left Yantai in a rare way, and then took a boat to Dengzhou Port, which is very close to Yantai. He was accompanied by a whole company of soldiers of the East Coast Army, a battalion of infantry of the Black Eight Banners, and a thousand soldiers, who immediately occupied the Dengzhou Mansion after entering the city, and then packed it up for Shao Shude to live temporarily.

Shao Shude smiled at the miscellaneous servants in the palace who had uneasy looks in their eyes, and then told everyone that they were on vacation these days, and there was no need for them to stay here to serve, and then one of them sent two yuan to send home.

"This Dong Xueli is really extravagant." Shao Shude looked at the maids and servants who had retreated as if they had been amnestied, and said with a complicated face: "It is really unreasonable that more than 400 palace maids in the former Qingzhou Hengwang Mansion let him take more than half of them captive. When Lao Dong comes back, I have to talk to him and dismiss these palace maids to meritorious people as daughters-in-law. Our Blackwater Pioneer Team is not rich now, and we can't allow such extravagant behavior to exist. ”

Captain Li Wenchang, the commander of the Yantai garrison who followed Shao Shude to inspect, nodded again and again when he heard this, but in private, he kept slandering: His old Dong is an old-style soldier, although he used to live a hard life, but in recent years, after the end of the Ming Dynasty, he has enjoyed a few years of happiness, and you let him carry forward the spirit of hard work and simplicity now, which is afraid that it is unrealistic.

Maybe Shao Shude also felt that he was a little more demanding, so he sighed and said: "Now these revolutionary soldiers - well, the servant army - are really not good, many people are still fighting in Jinan, I heard that I have assigned Dengzhou, Ninghai Prefecture, Weihaiwei and other places to them, I have already sent my henchmen back to collect manpower and enclose land to build houses." All of them are old-fashioned. And so on. The cohesion of the troops is bound to decline rapidly. That's it, I can't control them in many things, so I sent someone to warn them to forget it. In today's wartime, the issue of life style is indeed a trivial matter. ”

"Yes, I will send someone to warn Dong Xueli." Li Wenchang nodded, but he was a little envious of Dong Xueli. He has also seen those palace maids in the Hengwang Mansion, and many of them are as beautiful as flowers, Nima. Lao Tzu hasn't enjoyed it yet, you generals are welcome. At this time, Li Wenchang was already thinking about how to beat Dong Xueli, most of this guy would panic for a while when he heard his warning, according to his personality, he would definitely select more than 100 beautiful people among the four hundred palace maids to send them to Shao Shude's mansion, and then the rest continued to enjoy them with peace of mind. Damn, I have to find a way to knock a few beautiful people out of it, and Lao Tzu also lacks warm quilts.

Shao Shude stayed overnight in the Dengzhou Mansion, and the next day he took a large number of entourages to inspect the Dengzhou City Wall that had been rebuilt. There are two reconstructed city walls, namely the outer city and the water city. Among them, the city of water only sent people to gradually clear the silted sea from the south (a place for boats, located in a bay depression. Surrounded by city walls), Shao Shude focused on the outer city.

The outer city of Dengzhou was originally war-torn repeatedly. There are many breakages. After the people of the east bank took over the place, they quickly mobilized a large number of people to rebuild and repair it, among which the original collapsed and damaged parts of the city wall were no longer repaired, but all were rebuilt with masonry, stone and cement transported from Heishui. The new walls are polygonal in shape, with some protrusions used as flank fire, similar to a bastion.

The original intact section of the city wall has also been repaired: the place where the bricks fell off was re-reinforced, the hole in the city wall was also blocked, and some artillery firing positions were added to the city tower, etc., these measures have been completed at present, if there are thousands of brave soldiers to defend the city, it is difficult for the Qing army to attack without artillery. Even if they went crazy and mobilized some deadly heavy artillery, it would be difficult to suppress the east bank artillery at the head of the city, because there was an insurmountable gap between the artillery of both sides in terms of equipment and technology.

The reconstruction of Dengzhou City has been completed, and the Minfu army has been transferred to the area of Ninghai Prefecture. Ninghai Prefecture had undergone a vigorous construction when the Qing army was stationed in Haoge, and the city was quite strong, and now the people on the east coast have to do nothing more than rebuild, that is, to rebuild it into a modern fortress that can reduce the area of the nest bomb, and at the same time to increase the artillery position, otherwise it will be difficult to defend.

Weihaiwei is the same as Ninghaizhou, except that the city is more dilapidated and only lightly renovated during the Qing occupation. After the collapse of the Green Battalion in the second town of Qingdengju Town and Jiaozhou Town, the 700 soldiers of the Green Battalion of the Qing Army who guarded the city surrendered and have now been resettled on Jeju Island, and Shao Shude, the Weihai Guard, decided to hand them over to Xie Qian. This city is also undergoing vigorous repairs and reconstructions, but it may not be in time - of course, the Qing army may not dare to drag the old supply line labor division to the Weihai Acropolis - it is really not possible, and the naval warships will sail over to help defend this coastal stronghold.

"How's the training of the artillery defending the city going?" After inspecting the inside and outside of Dengzhou City, Shao Shude, who was already fifty years old, was a little out of breath, so he sat in the Penglai Pavilion near Shuicheng accompanied by his entourage and drank tea and rested.

Recently, he has been troubled by the matter of dividing the land in Denglai Erfu, and some of the remaining landlords and gentry in Erfu have been in peace with the yellow-clothed thieves for more than two years, who would have thought that at this time there would suddenly be another dispute. The gentry in the area lamented that this yellow-clothed thief was indeed "the remnants of the army", "not sitting in the world", and "it has never been heard of such a harsh treatment of the gentry in ancient times", but due to the murderous name of the yellow-clothed thief, some people also pinched their noses and recognized it after recognizing the reality. Of course, more of the gentry openly resisted, and they bewitched the villagers, contacted the Qing forces in the west, and ambushed the soldiers on the east coast who went to the countryside to collect grain and taxes, causing a bloody case.

Shao Shude was not a hypocritical virgin, so he quickly mobilized an entire Black Eight Banner infantry battalion stationed in Yantai Fort and began to exterminate the rebellious gentry everywhere. However, due to the rebellions one after another, the army on the east bank could not take precautions, so it was not until last week that the rebel gentry in the entire Denglai Second Mansion were wiped out one by one. At this point, the remnants of the landlord and gentry forces in Denglai Erfu have been plowed again and again, and they are basically no longer in the climate.

After the rebellious gentry were dealt with, the work of clearing and measuring the fields continued. In order to create a new class in the Denglai area to fill the power vacuum at the grassroots level after the extermination of the gentry, a large amount of land confiscated from the landlords without compensation was distributed according to the rosters of the servant officers and soldiers who were fighting with the Qing army in Qingzhou and Jinan at that time.

Although the previous Mo Dashuai led the army to crisscross the north and south, and his majesty was unstoppable, in fact, his foundation was quite unstable, and the combat effectiveness of the soldiers under his command was also very average, and he could bully the green battalion of the Qing army with a considerable number of people. There is a lack of spirit that they don't know what the future holds, and they don't know what they're fighting for. In fact, this is also a common problem of the ancient army, not only the East Coast army, but after Shao Shude arrived here, he immediately set the tone of fighting local tyrants and dividing the land in Denglai Erfu. The land under the name of the gentry was given priority to the servant army and the Qing army who had taken refuge, and then to the landless vagrants or tenant farmers.

After the distribution of these lands (mostly concentrated in Dengzhou), the old power of Denglai II Province was swept away, and a new power supported by the people of the East Coast began to come to power. Since these gentry will not agree with the East Coasters in any case, and will not cooperate with them much, it would be better to completely shuffle the cards and replace them with obedient people, and it would not take much trouble anyway. Although this new force supported by the East Coast people may have their own ideas and will after their wings are hardened, it must be many years later, and at least in the short term, they will still be highly dependent on the East Coasters. Not to mention anything else, just saying that the low level of productivity in Denglai Erfu is doomed to the fact that they still need to import all kinds of daily necessities and even food from the outside!

In Shao Shude's plan, the next step is to vigorously develop Dengzhou's agriculture, and at the same time increase economic and trade ties with North Korea, Heishui, Japan and other places, and strive to gradually develop commerce. The inhabitants of Yantai Fort are now accustomed to this kind of life, consuming salmon, saury and sardines brought from the port of Heishui, using hardwood furniture imported from the port of Dabo, and wearing winter clothes sewn from wild sheepskin, of course, these are limited to the families of some of the officers and soldiers of the marching force who have the ability to spend.

However, it is also true that the living standards of the small number of local settlers in Yantai have improved, mainly due to the high level of administrative efficiency and productivity of the people on the east coast. It is believed that with the passage of time, the living standards of the people will gradually improve after the two provinces of Denglai are gradually integrated into the Far Eastern economic system dominated by the east coast. At that time, due to the existence of the demonstration effect, there will be some subtle changes in Shandong and even the neighboring places of Beizhili, Henan, Jiangbei and other places.

However, the long-term changes have not been seen for the time being, but the short-term drastic changes quickly reached Shao Shude's ears: news came from the direction of Qingzhou, more than 25,000 Manchurian and Mongolian troops led by Tan Tai suddenly arrived in Dongchang Mansion, won consecutive battles, and quickly broke several of the most noisy Yuyuan army forces, and the remaining thieves saw that the shape was not good, and they retracted their lairs one after another, preparing to rely on the complex terrain there to maneuver with the Qing army. Of course, if they don't have external assistance, sooner or later it will be a dead word, and the Qing army will just spend some more time and military strength.

In addition, another piece of news was even more shocking: In May, Li Chengdong, Jin Shenghuan, Wang Deren, and other generals in the south were resentful of the unfair rewards and punishments of the Qing army and the excessive extortion and bullying of civilian officials, and on the other hand, they also saw that the Qing court could not handle the situation in Shandong, and they were contemptuous, so they resolutely raised the banner of opposing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty, and made a counterattack, causing chaos in the Qing army's position in the south.

On the other hand, the Qing army in Gansu, Mi Layin, Ding Guodong, resented the matter of shaving their hair and making it easy to obey, and in addition, they were also dissatisfied with the Qing army's plan to transfer them to Sichuan to suppress Zhang Xianzhong's plan to drive the tiger and devour the wolf. He Zhen's department, which had just been driven to the junction of Sichuan, Henan, and Shanxi provinces, was also ready to move, intending to return to Shaanxi and seek revenge on Meng Qiaofang, the governor of Shaanxi.

After these two news reached Dengzhou, they immediately set off waves in Shao Shude's heart. (To be continued......)