Just when Shao Shude made the decision to fight and retreat in the underground command room of Yantai Fortress, Marshal Mo Ming Mo had already led his army into the territory of Yanzhou Mansion. After conquering Surabaya County without bloodshed, more than 30,000 troops turned to the southwest and killed Qufu County, the hometown of Kong Laoer.

On December 10, Dong Xueli, who served as the striker, sent a letter to Mo Dashuai: Kong Zhenkan, the commander of Qufu County, Qingqu, secretly sent people to discuss the "redemption of the city silver". Kong Zhenkan is a descendant of Confucius, the current Qufu County Commander, and this monarch held this position during the Ming Dynasty. After Dashun destroyed the Ming Dynasty, the soldiers arrived in Shandong, and Kong Zhenkan impatiently ordered to worship the dragon throne of the Dashun Emperor, offering ten horses and 1,000 taels of silver, and at the same time acting as a leading party to lead the Dashun army to the more prosperous Linqing.

After the defeat of Dashun, the Qing army went to Shandong, and Kong Zhenkan welcomed the Qing army into the city under the signal of Kong Yinzhi, the contemporary Yan Shenggong, and at the same time, Kong Yinzhi also wrote a few extremely sensual articles to shoot the Qing court's sycophants, and as a result, he was continued to be named Yan Shenggong by Emperor Shunzhi. When the Qing court ordered the whole country to shave their hair and change clothes, Yan Shenggong responded positively and held a very grand shaving ceremony, which objectively boosted the prestige of the Qing court and had a very bad impact.

This time, after Niu Chenghu, the chief soldier of Qingyizhou Town, led his troops to the north, Yanzhou Mansion was empty, and at the same time, the nearby Yuyuan Army and some bandits also came up one after another, plundering everywhere in the countryside, and Qufu County was shocked three times a day. It was easy to survive until Li Qingshan and other drama robbers plundered south, but I didn't expect the yellow-clothed thief to arrive again.

Now the reputation of the yellow-clothed thief is well-known in the four provinces of South and North Zhili, Shandong and Henan. Now tens of thousands of yellow-clothed thieves have entered Qufu by road, Kong Zhenkan and even Yan Shenggong's family are very frightened, especially after the Confucian family, the Yan family, the Lu family, the Meng family and other hereditary families located outside the city Zhuangzi were looted by Ding Mingwu, Du Chong (who joined in Yanzhou Mansion at the end of November), Xie Qian and other soldiers for unknown reasons. They are even more worried that these gang of pirates, who never seem to follow the rules, will cause their whole family to fall into ruin.

Under such a psychological entanglement of sincere fear. Kong Zhenkan came forward to represent several major families and tried to make contact with the yellow-clothed thief. and sent 100 silk horses, 200 pigs and sheep, and 3,000 taels of silver, hoping that the yellow-clothed thief would not go elsewhere for the sake of the saint. It's just that he overestimated the reverence of the Qiu Ba people under Mo Dashuai's command for the Confucian Sage, and Dong Xueli, who served as the vanguard, didn't buy it at all, and he directly asked for 200,000 taels of "ransom silver" and 100 good tribute horses. That's not all, he also quietly instructed Kong Zhenkan to send several beautiful women into the camp as soon as possible to serve Mo Dashuai.

There is no choice. Kong Zhenkan could only ask to see Mo Dashuai to discuss the matter of "redeeming the city silver". At this moment, after Mo Ming heard Dong Xueli's return, he didn't bother to see Kong Zhenkan, but sent Yin Baoheng, the former county magistrate of Yutai County, Yanzhou Prefecture, Dashun and a former member of the Ming Dynasty, to negotiate. Yin Baoheng doesn't look like a student, but he has been in the Dashun Army for many years, and he has long been put aside, even in the face of the descendants of the saint at this moment, he will not let go, and he and Kong Zhenkan are like philistine businessmen, which is really insulting.

By the afternoon. After hearing that Du Chong's subordinates had coerced a group of people who couldn't eat outside the city, they wanted to storm the Confucian Zhuangtian. Kong Zhenkan finally relented, and agreed with the people on the east coast to offer 120,000 taels of ransom silver -- this was the largest amount of ransom silver received by the people on the east coast so far -- 50 horses, 300 silk, and 500 pigs and sheep.

After reaching an agreement with Qufu County, the already growing forces on the east bank continued southward, heading towards Ziyang, the capital of Yanzhou, and Jining Prefecture by the canal. The vanguard was the newly recruited Ding Mingwu of more than 10,000 men -- only half of them had knives and guns, and the rest were filled with hoes, nail rakes, wooden spears and the like -- as well as a team of thousands of horses (mounted horses, donkeys, and mules) of Du Chong's subordinate who had come to join forces on the orders of Ren Fuxing, one of the leaders of the Yuyuan Army.

Behind these men were a strict queue of about 2,400 black hoplites, their iron armor placed on the pack horses at their sides, tended by North Korean soldiers, holding 4.2-meter high spears in their hands, which looked quite imposing from a distance. After that, there is the logistics baggage transport convoy, the main combat troops, and the two departments of Zhai Congge and Qin Shangxing, who served as the rearguard.

Now the size of the army on the east bank is getting bigger and bigger, but the speed of the march is getting slower and slower, no, in the short distance from Qufu to Ziyang, they walked for three whole days - two of them were crossing the river. When crossing the river, fortunately, there was no Qing army horse team nearby, otherwise a charge would have caused most of the troops in the confusion of this righteous man shouting horses.

Mo Ming looked at this chaotic army and was also depressed, in his opinion, among these people, the East Coast Army, the Advance Team, the Cavalry Brigade and Dong Xueli's troops were more clean, followed by Zhai Congge, Qin Shangxing and other troops that had been purged over the years, and others such as Chen Zhilong, Xie Qian, Ding Mingwu, and Du Chong's troops were simply a mess. Mo Ming dared to assert that even if he faced the green battalion of the Qing army in the battle formation, except for Chen Zhilong's department, which still had the strength to fight, the other three families were simply characters who would be defeated with one blow. It's okay to fight a good fight, but if the two armies are on a par with each other, most of them won't be able to survive.

At this time, Mo Ming was a little thinking about retreating. Although there were basically no battles along the way, and the ammunition storage was still sufficient, there were so many rabble in the troops, and the overall combat effectiveness was declining. At the beginning, Li Shutai and Luck Dehun were frightened by the fierce combat effectiveness of the previous East Coast Army, and if they saw the chaotic situation of the East Coast Army at this time, they would have gone out of the city to fight in the field.

In such a tangled and hesitant mentality, the siege of Ziyang County finally began. Faced with the embarrassment of 30,000 or 40,000 yellow-clothed thieves outside the city and 1,200,000 old and weak soldiers guarding the city, the prefect of Yanzhou, appointed by the Qing court, rarely broke out with courage and ordered the large households in the city to donate food and recruit brave men to fight to the death in the city. However, contrary to their wishes, most of the people they raised were green-skinned hooligans, and I am afraid that everyone knows the combat power of these people.

So, after the first cannon fire on December 14, a third of the green skins at the head of the city ran away, and the rest trembled, as if they would flee at the slightest disturbance. On 17 December, a large area near the gate of Ziyang County was bombarded -- the reason why it was bombed for three whole days was because the artillery used a large amount of captured gunpowder of the Qing army, which was of inferior quality, in order to save money.

The besiegers were still a little disciplined at first, but the closer they got to the city walls, the more chaotic they became, and all kinds of emotions such as tension, excitement, excitement, and fear surrounded the so-called "rebel army" who had been mud-legged before, so that in the end they simply poured into the city in a messy form. Even at the gap, some of the rebel soldiers were squeezed to the ground and trampled on, killing and wounding nearly 100 people.

Mao Desheng, who served as the commander-in-chief of the former enemy, was a little unbearable to see these chaotic servant troops, but fortunately, their opponents were just as rubbish. Those green-skinned hooligans were already weak-hearted, and at this moment, in the face of a large group of mud legs with red faces and whimpering mouths, they only resisted for a moment and gave up. Then he took off his coat and plundered the people in the city in groups with knives and guns.

And Ding Mingwu, who rushed into the city, immediately turned red after seeing what these green-skinned people were doing, so they didn't care about anything else, they rushed into the shops and houses on both sides of the street, looting property, raping women, and even some bandit-born people even set fire to the houses, just like a group of demons dancing.

After the army on the east bank found out that the situation was wrong and sent a team of soldiers into the city to maintain order, a third of the entire Ziyang County had been burned, and the people were also killed. At this point, Mo Ming had no illusions about the combat effectiveness, fighting will and military discipline of these servant troops, and in the face of the suppression of the three provincial capitals of the Manchu Seventh General Army, a large army of more than 100,000 troops, he finally confirmed that most of his troops were unusable, and he was indeed unable to face such a large number of Qing troops at one time in the field - especially these people were still relatively capable of fighting the northern green battalion, such as Gao Di, the chief soldier of Qianshan Customs, and others.

After killing more than 300 rebels who had burned and looted in the city with conclusive evidence - in fact, it was far more than - with the correct military law, a group of scouts of more than 10 people who rushed from Yantai finally brought the latest order of Shao Shude, the new commander of the Heishui security guard: fight and retreat, and collect craftsmen, langzhong, and low-level scholars from various counties along the way; At the same time, contact all departments of the Yuyuan Army to go to Dengzhou for development, and if they are unwilling to go to Dengzhou, they should also try to inform the Qing army of the latest movements, so as not to suffer unnecessary losses.

Mo Ming also recognized Shao Shude's order, so on December 18, after holding a meeting of senior generals of the whole army, Mo Ming officially ordered the whole army to retreat in batches, take the line of Jining Prefecture, Tengxian County, and Yizhou, and finally assemble near Haizhou, transport a batch of materials and personnel that are inconvenient to carry, and then enter Qingzhou Mansion along the coastline, and then wait for opportunities to make further plans.

On December 19, Mo Ming ordered Dong Xueli to march lightly and quickly to attack Jining Prefecture, and the rest of the troops marched slowly behind. When he set off, Ding Mingwu embarrassedly reported to Mo Dashuai: Yesterday's iron-blooded style of killing and plundering the rebels who entered the city frightened some people, and these people thought that the military discipline on the east coast was "too harsh", so about two or three thousand people left without saying goodbye last night. After Ding Mingwu finished reporting, Du Chong also came to report, and more than 300 of his subordinates quietly slipped away, obviously feeling that the military discipline of the people on the east coast was too strict.

For these banditry people who did not change, Mo Ming naturally had no intention of retaining them, so he did not say anything, but ordered the two of them to speed up the march and strive to reach the city of Jining Prefecture within two days.

And just when the army on the east bank went to Jining Prefecture, Kong Xigui, the chief soldier of Qing Hebei, and Gao Di, the general soldier of Henan, finally raised materials and equipment, and at the same time, the troops had also been mobilized, and a month after the Qing court issued an edict (that is, on December 18), they entered the territory of Guide Prefecture, while pacifying the local bandits in the province, while collecting intelligence, preparing to enter the territory of the adjacent Yanzhou Mansion in Shandong. (To be continued......)