In the hustle and bustle of Gangneung, time flies by like flowing water. Although the sphere of influence of the official army has been shrinking to the north, the rebel army has not been idle in other directions.

For Zhou Huai'an, when the business and territory are bigger, it not only means more room for growth and development prospects, but also undoubtedly represents more fault tolerance and risk-taking ability. For example, you can place more idle people outside the system as some kind of symbolic mascot or something.

And he really stayed here for a while to appreciate the importance of Gangneung's location and the convenience of its geographical location; It is the so-called "Wuhui in the east, Dongting in the south, Wuling in the south, Yingsi in the north, Bashu in the control, three rivers can be out, and Jingluo is overlooked".

In the words of Zhuge Liang when he was fledgling in history, it is "Jingzhou is based on the Han Dynasty in the north, and the South China Sea is exhausted, connecting Wuhui in the east, and Bashu in the west, which is the country of military force," just a convenient distribution in the Yangtze River, Jingjiang River, and Hanjiang River Chengshui transportation and logistics, in this era when transportation and communication are generally underdeveloped, it is enough to beat many places in the world.

On the Jianghan Plain and Dongting Lake basin where Jingzhou is located, because of the fertile land, moderate climate, abundant rainfall and lakes and rivers full of convenient irrigation, it is a mature agricultural production area with a particularly long history and a high degree of development. In history, Li Bai's "Jingzhou Song" and Li Shen's "Crossing Jingmen" have special descriptions.

In addition, it is already possible to achieve two harvests a year and three harvests in two years in some areas through the interplanting of early rice and winter wheat. Although it is not as frequent as the three-season rice outside the mountains, it is far superior in single-season yield because of the abundant water and soil during the same period of rain and heat.

As a result, the population base fed by developed agriculture is much higher than that of other places, such as Kaiyuan and Zhenyuan, which have the most prosperous household registration in the eight counties of Jingzhou, are known as 300,000 or 400,000.

Now, after being re-cleared by the hands of the Taiping Army, there are still more than 50,000 households, about 180,000 or 90,000 people. And that's just the adult men and women who are required to pay the levy on the books. You must know that according to the custom of the government, the old people and children among the people, as well as a large number of slaves and maids, are never counted among them.

Therefore, although in recent years, many households have been displaced due to wars and tribulations; But as long as there is time to settle down and recuperate, it will be easy to recover in a short time just by accepting the Heluo refugees who are accustomed to fleeing from the north.

Therefore, after Cao Shixiong occupied Jiangling City one by one, he did not make much effort to control the place, but only regularly sent a collection team to sentinel grain, and then sat on the tap of some products to cross the border; It is already enough to support the army and still have the spare strength to supply the rebel army to the main formation, or to help other friendly troops nearby, and even trade everywhere along the land and water for profit.

Now it is the turn of the Taiping Army to operate and manage the eight counties of Jingzhou, where Jiangling is located, and I am afraid that there is still a lot of potential to be tapped in terms of output efficiency and stamina. However, they want to carry out more refined management and the ability to mobilize resources at the grassroots level; There is a need for top-down clean-up and renovation work, as well as more staff stationed at the grassroots level.

Therefore, it is necessary to transfer more ready-made personnel and short-term quick-term apprentices from the Guangfu side to enrich at least hundreds of grassroots positions in the eight counties of Jingzhou. However, until all these human resources are in place, we can only rely on the temporary military management and tuntian system to maintain it for a while.

In addition, the local tea industry, sericulture and textile industry, shipbuilding industry, and trade circulation industry also need time to slowly recover and revivenation. However, the corresponding priority should be placed after agricultural production, which is basically self-sufficient.

But in any case, once the situation in Jiangling is stabilized, it means that after the Pearl River Basin, where Guangfu is located, the second important grain-producing area and regional economic center under the control of the Taiping Army, as well as the corresponding product circulation and resource complementarity, there will be a greater risk tolerance and overall resource mobilization base.

During this period, the three-way march that swept the periphery also had results and feedback.

The first to be rewarded was in Langzhou (now Changde, Hunan) on the West Road. Lei Man, the former Jingnan general who had occupied Wuling City in the state for a short time, withdrew from Longyang County on the west bank of Dongting Lake almost quickly, and sent people to contact the rebels with humble words, and transferred several cartloads of goods as gifts, trying to show that he had no intention of becoming an enemy of the Taiping army.

Immediately afterwards, Zhou Yue, a rebel general of the official army who captured Shaozhou (now Shaoyang, Hunan) in the south, also sent an envoy to congratulate the Taiping army on the victory of the official army in Shannan, and presented a boatload of local products as a gift. But he was originally from the local Tu clan in Langzhou, but in the process of fighting for the state city of Langzhou, he was chased by Lei Man, who was also from the Tu surname;

Therefore, on the one hand, the other party tried their best to slander and smear Lei Man's past experience, and on the other hand, they were also quite vague and tentative of the meaning of the rebel army, as if they wanted to use their strength to join hands to attack Lei Man's side in Langzhou, and were willing to pay enough price for it.

As for Xiang Zhu, the leader of the Shimen barbarians who occupied Lizhou (present-day Lixian County, Hunan) in the northwest, because of the distance and the distance between most of Langzhou, there was no opportunity for formal contact for the time being, except for a corner of Anxiang County bordering Yuezhou under the entrenchment of a group of local soil groups;

According to the information collected by Zhou Huai'an in the local area, this family also has a bad relationship with the previous two, and there are constant conflicts and frictions. Therefore, if nothing else, these three local powers, each with their own grievances, will be the main close neighbors of the Taiping army in the west of Hunan.

In contrast, in the process of small-scale armed reconnaissance and infiltration and interspersing along the river in the north, it was the remnants of several units that were unexpectedly stationed in Xiazhou, Guizhou, and other places, and belonged to Gaihong, the capital of the West Road, and obtained formal contact and channels for water exchanges. Among them is Chai Ping's elder and relation, and the veteran of the rebel army, Uncle Ge Cun, collected the people in the local area.

This is really good news. Although Zhou Huai'an no longer expects the combat effectiveness of the remnants of these rebels, or to be able to play a role in containing and echoing at critical times; However, these theoretical friendly forces possess the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and compared to the threat from Shuzhong downstream, they are at least a disguised barrier and early warning.

The direction of the main offensive to Yongzhou and Daozhou in the south is even simpler, surrounded by spheres of influence controlled by the rebel army on all sides, whether it is the remnants of Yongzhou or the entire territory of Daozhou, it can almost be described as looking out for the wind and surrendering. Therefore, what is more troublesome and troublesome is the local forces that are relatively well preserved, as well as the powerful and powerful people behind them.

So here, Zhou Huai'an can only adopt a more special two-legged walking strategy.

On the one hand, in accordance with the relatively mature experience, means, and procedures, in the cities and towns where the rebels had strong control, the crimes of the gentry, the wealthy families, the big families, and the rich were properly liquidated and tried publicly, as a confirmation of the propagation of the rebels' idea of "doing the right thing for heaven" and "rebuilding peace".

on the other hand, it is to pick out the members of those who have been engaged in the trade and the vigorous rural groups that have been engaged in the trade of capital and those who have been incorporated into other rebel armies along the way; After a short period of assault training and teaching, he went to the countryside in batches to take charge of the "weeding" work of all kinds of wealthy and powerful families in the villages outside the cities.

This is also an authentic play for them. After all, in this troubled world, it is not uncommon for a rich and unkind dog to be wiped out by passing bandits and robbers; It is only arranged for the peacekeepers to strictly prohibit and restrain their senseless acts of indiscriminate killing and destruction, and to prohibit the abuse of women.

As for the corresponding collective plunder under the organization, the individual can divide it into one-third to one-half; Moreover, the garrison in the city will carry out the finishing and aftermath work for them in the name of recovery, and they can also appease and buy people's hearts in disguise.

and the person responsible for receiving the order to do this "dirty work" is the teaching Sima Gao Jichang under Xintou, and another leader of the rebel army named Li Xiang; It can be regarded as a combination of mutual restraint and supervision.

In the end, it was the partial division that went east to Ezhou that encountered some trouble. Because, a large number of local forces claiming to be left-behind rebels, or under the banner of the rebels, are making a mess of porridge; When encountering foreign forces, they will join forces to fight and exclude.

As a result, Wu Xingchen, the captain of the team, also couldn't figure out the enemy for a while, and suffered several losses, and was deceived and attacked by others, losing a lot of materials and personnel; Therefore, after learning a lesson, stopping to repair and supplement, simply attack the city in one go without distinction.

As a result, more than a dozen walled cities and towns were broken in a row, and they were advanced to the city of Ezhou Prefecture to govern Jiangxia; Only under the hostility and vigilance of the city's strict defense of the "other rebel army" slowly retreated to Puqi County with a large number of captures and prisoners.

Of course, this encounter is not a good thing; At least through appropriate internal publicity, most of the Taiping soldiers can better understand and distinguish clearly;

Among the so-called vast rebel army, those are the objects that can be won over and cooperated, helped and recreated; Those are the black sheep of the herd that need to be severely cracked down on and punished; Even spies and traitors who infiltrated the ranks of the rebels and deliberately harmed the great cause.

With this preliminary understanding as a foreshadowing, in the future, it will be further cut off from the forces led by Huang Chao, and there will be no unnecessary resistance and psychological obstacles. Then in the midst of this consideration, Zhou Huaian suddenly received an unexpected news.

"The General's Mansion sent a messenger to Gangneung?。。"

(End of chapter)