On February 23, 1644, on the sixteenth day of the first month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng led the main force of the Dashun army to cross the Yellow River from Tongguan and Puban and march to Puzhou, Shanxi. Six days before that, Li Zicheng's envoy had come to Beijing with a card disc, and about the Ming Dynasty held a decisive battle on the tenth day of the third month, and the Ming court angrily beheaded its envoy.

Although Li Zicheng's envoy was beheaded, the news that he personally led an army of 200,000 troops to Shanxi had spread all over the world. However, at this time, most of the warlords and civilian officials in various places began to delay and wait and see under various pretexts.

The local governor of Denglai, Zeng Hualong, was quite loyal, and when he received the news, he immediately sent a letter to the local gentry and clans, and repeatedly asked them to donate money and salaries to recruit soldiers into the king of Jingqin. Helplessly, these local clans turned a blind eye to the danger of their father, they only wanted to enjoy the benefits given to them by the state, but they were unwilling to bear even the slightest obligation, so Zeng Hualong's proposal naturally ended in vain. And after he looked at the few hundred soldiers in Dengzhou City, he sighed and temporarily dispelled some thoughts for fear of causing a rebellion.

On March 5, just as the Qing court sent a letter to the "Marshals of the Western Territory" and agreed to "merge and take the Central Plains", in the light spring snow that was blowing one after another, several ships slowly sailed into the port of Yantai in Shandong, which had just thawed not long ago. Due to the heavy snowfall in winter, only some wooden wharves can be used in Yantai Port, and the first permanent trestle bridge is still under construction.

In fact, there is no shortage of labor in Yantai Fortress now. After transporting 5,000 people in two batches, at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Countless homeless people braved the bitter winter cold to enter the fortress to beg for food. The number of displaced people peaked around mid-December. At that time, more than 200 people entered the camp almost every day. Since then, there has been a slight decline. But it still maintains a scale of about seventy or eighty every day. These people, together with the domestic slaves and tenant farmers captured during the attack on the gentry Zhuangzi in November, caused the population of Yantai Fortress to swell to more than 10,000 people, including about 9,000 Ming refugees.

Such a large population had greatly exceeded the capacity of the Yantai fortress, and as a last resort, Mo Ming urgently ordered the soldiers to organize these displaced people to use the timber transported from Sakhalin Island to build huts for themselves. Originally, the Yantai area, which has a lot of snowfall in winter, is not suitable for all kinds of construction, but at this time, it is not enough to take care of that much, and the row of wooden houses on Zhifu Island can only accommodate about 4,000 people, so such a huge gap can only make them temporarily shelter by themselves.

More than 5,000 of the 9,000 were young men. At this time, the port has thawed, and the weather has passed the most severe cold period, so naturally they can no longer be idle all day. Moreover, after a winter of recuperation, the faces of many of the homeless people who came with a thin and bony feeling as if they were going to die at any time had a hint of ruddy color, after all, sweet potato porridge, millet porridge, salted fish, and the occasional broth that would be distributed had greatly improved their physical condition, and they were already able to do some physical work at this time.

So, as early as the beginning of March, these people, under the organization of Jin Wugui, Luo Tiansheng and others, began to build the city walls, turrets, docks, lighthouses, forts and other facilities of Yantai Fortress. Construction of these facilities began in the first half of last year, and the foundations have already been completed. The walls had already been repaired, and their job was to continue. Until all these facilities are completed.

The construction of the walls in the bitter cold was of course extremely hard, and they were quite short of warm clothing and basic tools for labor, but none of this could justify it. Now the situation in Daming has entered the most critical moment, and Li Zicheng will enter Beijing in less than two months, and then trigger a series of events. Shandong is close to Beijing, and at this time, it is better to quickly cover your head and build the fortress on which you live, and then wait and see what happens while gathering the displaced people.

In order to more effectively direct the work of these displaced people, Mo Ming specially promoted some cadres from among the Koreans and Ming people who had originally taken refuge to manage these new displaced people. The number of these cadres is about 50 people, led by Kim U-gyu, a Korean, and Luo Tiansheng, a Mingren, both of whom are "section chiefs" promoted by people from the east coast, and are already serious "officials" in the eyes of the locals. It was naturally more effective for them, who were born and raised in the local plane, to manage these newly recruited immigrants than Mo Ming's group of soldiers from Italy and Bohemia to manage them directly. Even if something does happen, the Easterners simply need to scapegoat them to maintain their position as detached arbiters.

Therefore, when the six ships led by Lieutenant Li Yi (the first batch of reinforcements that had been together for 43 years) arrived at the wharf of Yantai Port, what they saw was a homeless man with short hair in the style of an East Coaster, working hard under the command of a "cadre" wearing a big hat. Although there was still a light snow outside, these Ming homeless people with red noses and cheeks were toiling to get food to survive. The people on the east coast had issued a rule on how much work each person could complete per day, and if they couldn't do it, they would be deducted from their rations, and if they did too much, they would be rewarded with cash, cloth, and food, so these displaced people generally worked hard. And with their efforts, the Yantai Fortress is also being built little by little at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"I suddenly came from the scorching southern hemisphere to the Shandong Peninsula where there was still snow, and I really didn't get used to it for a while." Li Yi put a tweed coat over his thin navy autumn coat, and then strode onto the dock. The ground on the dock was already very muddy, and later it was trampled by people coming and going, and it was even stepped on into a mud puddle, so that Li Yi's brand-new cowhide military boots were suddenly splashed with mud spots.

Seeing this, Luo Tiansheng, who accompanied Mo Ming to greet Li Yi, immediately motioned with his eyes to several of his subordinates to bring a few dustpans of cinders and fill in these mud pits one by one.

"Hehe, it's snowing all the time to welcome you, I just heard a report from the people below that the new fleet has brought a large number of troops, how many people have come?" Mo Ming chatted and farted with Li Yi while scanning the soldiers who were wearing thick military coats and were rushing out of the cabin.

"An army company, plus a hundred gunners, a hundred supplementary soldiers, and a battalion of the Eight Banners New Army, all of which are old subordinates of Liu Zhong in the past, totaling more than 1,200 people." Li Yi reported it without thinking.

In February, Li Yi arrived at the port of Jinshan in Australia with three sailing ships, and then joined the armed transport ship "Galician Exocet", the transport ship "Hump Niu" and the frigate gunboat "Red Trout", which had been anchored here for a long time, and returned to Yantai Port together. On the return trip, several sail-powered ships even needed steamboats to tow in some sea areas with variable currents and wind directions, so the whole fleet sailed for about 40 days before arriving in Yantai from Jinshan Port, which also proved that pure sail-powered ships are really not suitable for this route.

"After joining this batch of troops, Yantai Fortress will have two infantry companies of nearly 500 people, 200 gunners, nearly 1,500 Eight Banners New Army, and 250 officers and soldiers of the Advance Team. Mo Ming snapped his fingers and said happily: "If I recruit another group of reliable people from among the Ming people at hand and train them to become gunners, then the entire fortress will be impregnable." At that time, even if there are tens of thousands of enemies, as long as the sea control is in my hands, then the fortress will not be easily shaken by them. ”

"It's just that there is still a shortage of cavalry." Li Yi said with a smile, "If there are a few hundred more heavy-armored cavalry, then this fortress can really be attacked, retreated, and defended, and it is not easy for anyone to come." ”

"The cavalry will depend on how the executive committee operates next." Mo Ming also sighed and said, "Actually, I mentioned this issue before I set out to take up my post here, and the reaction of the military department at that time was to help us hire a group of Polish cavalry through the trading post in Riga. After the end of the war in Smolensk, the Poles could not afford to raise so many troops, so they laid off many of the troops that had been drafted during the war. Among them are a considerable number of cavalry, these people have fought with Lao Maozi, Cossacks and even the Turks, more or less have some combat experience, and the cost of hiring is not very high, plus the Poles are ordering a large number of army weapons from us, so this should not be difficult to operate, after all, we are helping the Poles to eliminate their 'excess capacity', but I don't know if the time will come. ”

"The Polish cavalry is not difficult. And it is not difficult for you to write to the Egyptian Mamluk chiefs to recruit cavalry, who have many poor cavalry who want to go to Persia to rob, and as long as we can afford it, they dare not say that a few hundred people can still be hired. The difficulty is how to transport their equipment and war horses to Yantai together, which is very fatal and will occupy a considerable amount of transportation tonnage. Li Yi looked at the sailors who were shouting and neighing, and were carefully hoisting several Finnish horses through the pulley boom, and said slowly.

"Cavalry is very important to us, without cavalry, the battlefield is equal to one-way transparency to the enemy, so how can our infantry be dispatched? Have you been fighting against the city? Mo Ming said, "Okay, don't talk about that." Hurry up and bring all the brothers to the city, Luo Tiansheng, you go find someone to kill some pigs, and eat all of them today! (To be continued......)