On May 15, 1687, a team of soldiers and horses had just walked by a pipeline on the outskirts of Daozhou, Yongzhou Prefecture.

This is a united soldier from a nearby county and township, according to Shangfeng's order, to a large camp outside Daozhou City, ready to receive various tasks at any time. Unity soldiers, as the name suggests, are armed with local regimental training, but they are different from regimental training in the traditional sense, because their commanders and middle-level and senior officers are appointed by the imperial court, and only lower-level officers are elected by the locality, either they are local brave rangers, or they are landlords and wealthy merchant families, in short, it is a strange mixture, and there is still a certain difference from the regimental training in the late Qing Dynasty (such as the Hunan army) in later generations.

In Dashun, a country that greatly admired the Tang system, the United Army had been designated as an important supplement to the main force, undertaking the work of bombing the locality, maintaining law and order, transporting grain and grass, and guarding prisoners. For example, in the battle to clean up the Tusi forces in southern Sichuan and western Xiangxi, the Shun army made extensive use of the unity of various prefectures in rotational warfare, which played a significant role and saved a lot of military spending.

Generally speaking, the unity army is somewhat similar to the militia system on the east coast, that is, they are uniformly trained during the agricultural slack season, and then the imperial court distributes equipment (generally cold weapons, few firearms, and precious equipment such as armor is basically absent), and prepares food, pickles and other supplies to arrive at the assembly site, and then waits for the pick-up.

The basis for the existence of the solidarity system is that the people have sufficient resources to support such training, marching and combat, which requires them to be at least homesteaders with some land, and the destitute tenants who have no place to stand cannot bear this burden, and most of the officers do not look down on these chronically malnourished fellows.

It also supported the nature of the political power (peasant army) at the beginning of Dashun, and when it conquered Huguang, Jiangxi and other places, it was very active in fighting local tyrants and dividing land, although it added a lot of resistance, but it was of great benefit to the establishment of a solid foundation in the local area. In addition, these provinces were in war for a long time at the end of the Ming Dynasty, with heavy casualties (Jiangxi was even captured by the people on the east coast), and there were many terra nullius in the area. Most of these people were yeoman farmers, and after starting a family and running a business in Jiangxi and Huguang, which can be called the land of fish and rice, they now have a thin family background, so the united army system can also begin to spread throughout the country.

This kind of system cannot be implemented in Nanming. Because of the intertwined old local forces, land, the most important means of production in the agricultural era, had long been carved up, and a large number of people had a personal dependency relationship with the landlords, and the degree of exploitation of the entire society was far greater than that of the Shun and Qing states. In this case, ordinary people are still worried about eating, how can they have the energy and physical strength to participate in military training? Not to mention the huge Tusi forces in Liangguang and Yunnan-Guizhou, it is even more impossible for those mountain and wild villagers to be requisitioned by the imperial court to become unity soldiers.

Therefore, the Dashun regime has only a few provinces and a population of just over 10 million, but its war potential should definitely not be underestimated. To put it bluntly, this kind of reserve system is not new, it existed in ancient times, but it can be promoted throughout the country and has been maintained for more than ten years, which is indeed remarkable, enough to beat the Southern Ming Dynasty and its warlords.

And the Solidarity is only part of the country's war potential, and in fact more important than the Reserve Solidarity is the road and water transportation system that the country has been vigorously reorganizing for many years. In order to hold on under the pressure of the behemoth of the Qing court, the people on the east coast sent many batches of engineers in the fields of roads, bridges and canals to help them improve the infrastructure of the country, so as to improve the speed of their logistics and army movements, and reduce the wear and tear on the road.

At that time, the relationship between the two countries was very close, and the people on the east coast exported a large amount of cement, lime, and steel bars to the country, helping them to build a series of permanent wharves and warehousing and logistics centers that relied on their operations, which were of great benefit to improving the military logistics of the country. Later, they also exported a lot of woodworking machines, which helped them to establish a complete system of using wood as a natural resource. Of course, the people of the East Coast have not forgotten to help Shunguo cultivate a group of construction talents, instilled some advanced logistics and transportation concepts, and let Shunguo have a deep understanding of the important role of transportation infrastructure.

It can be said that it was the enlightenment of the people on the east coast that made the monarchs and ministers of Shun understand that infrastructure such as roads, canals, docks, and storage centers are also an important part of national strength, not just money, grain, land and people. For example, no matter how rich you are in the rear, no matter how much grain you produce, if transportation is not good, most of it will not be transported to the front line, and nine out of ten bags of grain will be consumed by people and animals on the way, and only one bag of grain can be delivered to the front. And this small bag of grain that can be sent up, because of the difficult and protracted journey, has been spread a huge cost, because the grain transporters are traveling through mountains and rivers, it is obvious that they are going to miss the agricultural time, and the harvest in this family is likely to be affected.

In the last two decades, as the situation has become more and more stable, the Dashun court has also begun to grit its teeth and squeeze out a certain amount of expenses (most of the country's revenue is spent on the army) and begin to build in Hunan and Jiangxi, two provinces with water systems. They did not choose the relatively expensive road construction, but invested their limited funds in the dredging and widening of the river, and at the same time built a large number of wharves and warehouses along the river, and sent troops on duty.

In all fairness, Shunguo's infrastructure investment in the past 20 years has still had a certain effect, which is mainly due to the water network composed of major water systems such as the Xiangjiang River and the Ganjiang River and a large number of branches. These rivers, if they are cleaned up and maintained every year, can still play a great role, because their coverage is too wide, and they can effectively connect most of the prefectures and counties in Hunan and Jiangxi.

In addition to playing a greater role in military strategy, the improvement of infrastructure also has a great effect on reducing logistics costs between regions and breaking down commercial barriers. According to the theory of the people on the east coast, the establishment of a unified national market without tariff barriers is an important symbol of the great development of commercialization, although Shunguo has not been able to do this now, but at least in Hunan and Jiangxi, it is indeed somewhat close to this. And this seems to explain why the industry and commerce of these two provinces have continued to develop in the past twenty years, so that now the whole society has shown a flourishing scene when it has forced the revolution of the intellectual circles.

There is no doubt that the two provinces of Hunan and Jiangxi are probably the provinces with the deepest degree of industry and the best business conditions in China, except for the areas controlled by the people on the east coast. These two points have brought great benefits to the Li Shun regime, and they have indeed seen this, which can be seen from the increase in the fiscal and tax contributions of the two provinces year after year, and the two provinces of Hunan and Jiangxi are the source of finance and taxation and the foundation of hegemony for Dashun to be able to conquer the south and the north.

This time, there was a drastic change in the court of the Southern Ming Dynasty, the prince Sun Kewang was killed on the way to the court, the henchmen were liquidated, and many generals directly took refuge in Dashun, and there were even people who knelt down and begged Dashun to go south to avenge Sun Kewang. After these news were rushed to Changsha, Li Laiheng immediately convened the ministers to discuss secretly, and finally decided on the strategy of sending troops from Sichuan and Hunan respectively to attack Ming in two directions. In Sichuan, Liu Zhonggui naturally led the overall situation by Sichuan Jiedu, and selected elite soldiers to go south from Dongchuan Mansion, so as to descend to Bai Hua as the vanguard, and went straight to Kunming, which was the idea of smashing Huanglong.

As for Hunan, Hao Ping, commanded by the Silver Spear Army, took charge of the overall situation, and led more than 70,000 elite troops to attack from Yongzhou, Baoqing and other places, aiming directly at the whole province of Guangxi. This is a province directly under the jurisdiction of the Southern Ming Dynasty, and there are no strong warlords in the local area, so there should be little resistance to attack. Li Laiheng estimated that after the Zuo Battalion marched into Yunnan in a big way, many troops in Guangxi would be called to King Qin, which would further reduce their resistance to occupying Gui Province.

And once Guangxi is captured by them, then why should the Southern Ming Dynasty, which only has the territory of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, fight with Dashun? You must know that the most capable troops in Nanming are formed with the backbone of Xiying as the core in the past, and now the old brothers in Xiying are infighting, King Sun of Qin is expected to be killed, and the generals under his command are panicked all day long, and Li Dingguo, the king of Jin, has to support his sick body to appease him, but the effect is obvious to anyone with a discerning eye, not very good!

In fact, if Li Dingguo is given a window period, let him calmly clean up Sun Kewang's old department and smooth out the situation, the situation in Nanming is still promising. But Dashun is not a fool, how can he give you this opportunity? No, as soon as the news reached Chengdu and Changsha, it was the envoys sent by the Dashun Imperial Court who set off faster than the army.

These envoys carried a large number of blank notices with them, and went around soliciting and lobbying officials or generals of the Southern Ming Dynasty in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guizhou provinces, promising high-ranking officials and giving them good land and beautiful houses, and they very much attracted many people to come over, laying a good foundation for the next step of the army's dispatch. Li Dingguo is not unaware of these small actions of Shunguo in the local area, but he can't spare his energy to deal with these things now, and it is very good that he can sort out the situation around Kunming. If you want to blame, you can only blame the dead ghost Sun Kewang, the usurper and self-reliance are already impatient, and everyone has no choice but to make this blow categorically, kill this fang first, and then find a way to clean up the mess in the place.

Yongzhou Mansion as one of the base camps of the Great Shun Southern Expedition, the commander of the Silver Spear Effectiveness Army, Hao Ping, has already rushed to the capital Lingling County with more than 100 relatives in advance, while waiting for the gathering of people from all walks of life, while sending people to investigate, contact, just wait for the army to arrive, it will be swept straight to the whole state with a thunderbolt, and it must be occupied in the shortest possible time - the generals of some prefectures and counties around the state have already communicated with Dashun secretly, but the generals of Quanzhou are stubborn and stubborn, and they want to resist the Dashun Heavenly Army, and they will definitely let him know that they are powerful.

And although the main force set out from Lingling, this does not mean that there are no combat missions elsewhere. In fact, Daozhou is a direction to respond, the Dashun court sent two commanders of the regular army here, and at the same time gathered about 20,000 unity soldiers, out of the dragon and tiger pass into Gui, and then incorporated Gongcheng and other places have been negotiated in the Southern Ming Dynasty to surrender the generals, outflank the Guilin Fucheng, shake the Ming army's will to fight on the front line of Guilin, although it is a partial division, but the task is not light, so the two commanders of about 6,000 men and horses are selected to be the elite of the rear battalion, to ensure that they can control the scene after entering Gui.

The people of Yongzhou also felt the proximity of the war. In the past, the busy Hunan and Guizhou trade has been reduced to a dispensable level, and the walled cities in the border areas are closed to themselves, and there are only two armies of scouts running in the field except for messengers. Many people in Guangxi have even migrated to the south to flee, and they don't have much confidence in the military discipline of the Shun army, and they haven't heard of the army that has not caused trouble to the people in ancient times.

In today's Yongzhou Prefecture, except for a small number of ships transporting manganese ore and tin ore to the north, most of the ships and draft animals have been requisitioned by the government to transport military supplies. Manganese ore and tin ore are to be transported to the wharf of Baling County to be delivered to the Dongguo, which is also one of the bulk goods exported by Shunguo, because of the large quantity and high price, the Dong'an people have to purchase a lot every year, and then transport it to the Sakhalin Industrial Base for smelting and processing. In other words, these minerals were materials that the Dashun Imperial Court could earn hard currency from the people on the east coast, so even at this critical juncture when the war was on the verge of breaking out, they still did not dare to interrupt the supply, so that they did not hesitate to squeeze out the transportation space of some military supplies.

Of course, their deference to the East Coast has only gone so far. I believe that at this time, if the people on the east coast ask them to return to the camp and keep peace with Nanming, it is estimated that they will not get any response. Although Shunguo has a very low posture in front of the people on the east coast, he is not a puppet of the people on the east coast, has its own strategic interests, and is still very independent. Now that the Southern Ming Dynasty is infighting, such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, once it is missed, it may never be owned again, so the monarchs and ministers of Shun have made up their minds to take the opportunity to make trouble, swallowing the territory of the Southern Ming Dynasty in one breath and increasing the thickness of their own land.

At this juncture in front of me, no matter who says it, it's not easy to do it. Once the war machine is in motion, how can it stop if there are not enough sacrifices? Now it is time for the people of the East Coast to abandon the unrealistic illusion of persuading Shunguo to cease the war and think about how to deal with the aftermath. What will be the end of the Southern Ming court? How should the situation in Guangdong and Fujian be stabilized? Do you want to impose sanctions on Shunguo? And so on, and so on, this is what the old men of Ningbo and Denglai should consider.