Five steam engine sailing ships are moored in the wharf of Yantai Port, the steam engines have begun to be slowly pressurized, and the sailors are loading the last batch of supplies onto the ship with the assistance of the dock workers on the shore. Zamparini greeted his fellow countryman, Sergeant Rossetti, and sat down on the bow deck, silently watching the soldiers and men who were rapidly embarking in the fresh sea breeze.

"I don't know what happened to my hometown, it should be winter now, and the vines at home should have withered." An Dahai moved over and sat down beside Zamparini, took out a pack of free low-quality tobacco from the company's handout, and then grabbed a pinch and stuffed it into his pipe, while a recruit with a young face next to him hurriedly lit An Dahai's cigarette.

"Seriously, Lin Xiaohu, are you sure you're seventeen?" Zamparini also lit his pipe, then looked at the recruit who was lighting a cigarette for An Dahai and asked, "I heard that the chief of the company is your uncle?" It can't be that you came to join the army through the back door, right? You remind me of that poor guy Liu Dayou. ”

"I haven't thought about Liu Da for a while." An Dahai took a puff of cigarette and squinted his eyes to look into the distance, as if he was caught in some kind of memory.

"It's going to be a few years, and we're all first-year privates at that time." An Dahai said in a low voice, "That time I went to attack the tribe of the Xhosa. The Xhosa people were very brave, and we were forced into hand-to-hand combat, and Liu Dayou died in this way. He's a good guy, and he's always kind to people, which is a pity. By the way, I went to his house the year before last to see it. ”

"How's his house doing?" Zamparini suddenly became interested and asked.

"Not bad." An Dahai leaned against the railing. By this time the ships had already begun to start. Slowly left the dock. He is turning around and preparing to cross Kongtong Island and head towards the open sea. "His mother's eyes are completely blind, and the old chief Anda once took her to the county hospital, but unfortunately the doctors can't do anything, and she is currently recuperating at home. Her brother-in-law, your fellow countryman, has now found a job, introduced by Chief Anda, and has gone to work as a handyman in a glass factory, and his income is okay. His sister still grows soybeans at home. They ransomed all those lands with Liu Dayou's pension. Usually herding sheep again, the income is so-so. They now have two children, the eldest son is very cute and tiger-brained, I bought him a wooden saber toy, and the little one seems to like it......"

"That's good, that's good." Zamparini let out a breath and said reassuringly: "Everyone comes out to fight, who knows if Lu Dao will die one day." Today it is someone else, tomorrow it may be yourself. Seeing that his family is doing well, I am also relieved. Feed. Lin Xiaohu, didn't you hear what I said, be clever when you go to the battlefield, don't fucking rush to the front again. As if I can't prove my martial arts without this, I don't want to hand over your ashes to Secretary Lin one day, then I'm afraid I won't have a good life in the future. ”

Lin Xiaohu's face turned red all of a sudden, but because of the power of the chief, he didn't say anything for a while, but the stubborn eyes seemed to show that he was not convinced. An Dahai smiled, patted him on the shoulder and didn't speak.

The ship quickly sailed away, and this time the navy's five sailing ships that stayed in the harbor all set out to transport people to the area of Laizhou Bay, where Guo Sheng had made an agreement, and at the same time handed over weapons and equipment to them. If it weren't for the fact that several other ships had already carried the 102nd Company and some of the Eight Banner warriors and soldiers of the Standing Brigade to the west coast of North Korea to "borrow food", then it is estimated that Mo Ming would have brought all the ships with him. Because according to the agreement, Guo Sheng needed to pay 5,000 stone of grain (about 350 tons) for a large number of weapons, equipment, equipment, and bags handed over to him by the people on the east coast, as well as about 10,000 strong men and women.

In the past two months or so in Shandong, Guo Sheng has almost tortured the gentry of Jinan, Dongchang, Qingzhou, and Yanzhou, and many of them have paid donations ranging from 5,000 taels to 30,000 taels. In addition, he also occupied the treasury of Linqing, Jining, Jinan, Qingzhou, Dezhou and other places, especially the inner treasury of King Heng of Qingzhou, and a large amount of silver taels and grain were raised. The people on the east coast only asked Guo Sheng for 5,000 stone of grain, which was already very face-saving, and there was no lion to open his mouth. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the large landlords in Shandong along the canal collected more than 100,000 stone per year, which is staggering. Of course, the landlords of Shandong still can't compare with their counterparts in the south of the Yangtze River, and the landlord Qian Mou in Suzhou, who "collected 970,000 stones" (about 670,000 tons) in rent at the end of the Ming Dynasty, did not pay a tax of one or two silvers, and the landlords and gentry in Shandong were still far inferior to them.

Although the current situation in Shandong is chaotic, the grain harvest in various places is limited. But Guo Sheng will definitely not have less grain on hand, otherwise he would not have stayed for more than half a month after receiving Li Zicheng's news, and collected mules, horses, and carts in order to transport these grains, gold and silver back to Shaanxi, it is really too much! Li Zicheng had already decided to withdraw the main force to the junction of Shaanxi and Shanxi and Henan, and then confront the Qing army. The 100,000 troops he had gathered at hand, plus the more than 100,000 people who were quelling the Hui rebellion in Gansu and Qinghai, could not afford to rely on the barren land and poor people in Shaanxi, Gansu, and Han alone. Therefore, Mo Ming asked Guo Sheng for 5,000 stone of grain, which is really nothing, according to the analysis of the staff officers, the total amount of grain on hand in Guo Sheng is likely to exceed 50,000 stones, maybe as much as 100,000 stones, in short, 5,000 stones is a small meaning for him.

The fleet sailed at sea for two or three days, and finally arrived at a certain place on the sea of Laizhou Bay on June 26, and the liaison staff officer who went ashore in a dinghy soon connected with the people sent by Guo Sheng with the assistance of Li Zhengang. In fact, Guo Sheng's men were easy to find, because Guo Sheng sent a full 1,200 men to escort some large carts to carry the weapons and equipment he coveted. For this reason, Guo Sheng even left the oil side near Linqing and withdrew to the Qingzhou area with the main force, in order to ensure that he could safely retrieve this batch of vital weapons, even if he gave up the attack on Linqing - he failed to capture Linqing in the end in history.

Guo Sheng "coerced" more than 10,000 strong people to come to Qingzhou Mansion, and frightened the landlords and gentry who had just expelled Qingzhou's great homeopathic power, and they closed their doors one after another, driving the people in the city to go to the city to guard. Unexpectedly, Guo Sheng ignored these people, and directly took a large number of people and cars across the city and went in the direction of Laizhou Bay, so that these gentlemen were happy and couldn't help but wonder about themselves, didn't Guo Sheng have been planning to withdraw to Shaanxi a while ago, and now why are they rushing to that direction? It's really weird.

Zamparini walked out onto the beach in muddy leather shoes, and then quickly beckoned the 20 brothers in the platoon to stand guard at gunpoint on the shore. After a while, more soldiers of the 104th Company also landed on the beach, and after a little formation, they formed a three-line horizontal line with guns and faced inland. They landed with hundreds of men from a military detachment, wearing cotton gloves and carrying hemp ropes on their shoulders, ready to begin transporting grain under the leadership of Kim Go-kyu.

Dozens of cavalry galloped inland from the coast, and Zamparini and others, who were standing in the first row, immediately raised their bayonet-mounted 32-C flintlock rifles diagonally forward under the order of Mao Desheng. The opposing cavalry stopped about one or two hundred meters away from the easterners, and then several officers came out of the crowd and negotiated with the easterners' liaisons. Because of the distance, Zamparini couldn't hear what they were talking about, which made him slightly disappointed.

But the answer was soon revealed, and the officers of the Shun army needed to inspect their cargo. Kim Woo-gyu of the military team unloaded boxes of supplies from the ship, and inspected each box with the officers of the Shun army. Muskets, rifles, leather armor, sabers, armor, spears, the officers of the Shun army were full of joy when they saw it. When the soldiers had dragged the two 4-pounder, four 6-pounder, and four 8-pounder guns from the soft sandy mud to the flat ground with great difficulty, the officers of the Shun army suddenly buzzed and had a lively discussion around the old guns that had been removed from the artillery units of the people on the east coast.

They had never touched such light artillery, which could be towed and walked by only one or two horses, which was very convenient, and was definitely a must-have weapon for marching and fighting. Guo Sheng's troops are also equipped with several artillery pieces, but those artillery can only be regarded as "large-caliber" muskets by the standards of the east bank, which are far from the standard of artillery, but Guo Sheng still regards this small-caliber and explosive goods at any time as a treasure and will not use them easily. Now with this kind of light army field artillery of the people on the east coast, the combat effectiveness of Guo Sheng's troops will definitely rise in a straight line, and it will no longer be helpless to deal with the Manchu cavalry.

In addition to the artillery, the East Coasters also gave them the firing tables they had compiled for each artillery, and explained in detail to their artillery officers the meaning of each data in the firing tables. In addition, a large number of explosive bombs, solid iron balls, tin-clad lead bullets (heated to make red-hot bombs), barrels of gunpowder, cannon brushes, tongs, gunpowder weighing equipment, and other items were also handed over to them. For this reason, the artillery of the Shun army had to send more than a dozen people to stay here to receive emergency training for artillery officers on the east bank.

At the same time, sailors and soldiers also began to load about 5,000 stone of grain brought by the Shun army, as well as more than 10,000 strong men and women. Due to the large number of people and supplies, it may take 2-3 times for the East Coasters to transport them all. On June 27, the first batch of more than 4,000 Ming people boarded the ship, and then the five sailing ships were at full speed and headed straight for Da Mo Port. (To be continued......)