Wang Chongba, a general and liaison of the rebel army from Gangneung, this name sounds quite powerful and domineering, but he is a rough and steady man, with few words but concise and to the point.

In the conversation with him, Zhou Huai'an learned that he was actually the former military envoy of the Heavenly General's Mansion - one of the three vanguard officers under Fei Chuangu; It was an old member who followed his tribesmen from the great drought and famine in Hebei to escape across the Yellow River and defect to the righteous army;

Therefore, as a township party and a subordinate, he participated in most of the battles of the righteous army in the southern and northern wars; And then he was able to be one of the only three remaining military envoys in the old camp of the Righteous Army, and the brave and experienced veteran Fei Chuangu was blue-eyed, and finally dropped out to become a pioneer officer who led another strong soldier to fight in battle.

It was only later that Wang Chongyin and Cao Shixiong joined forces with most of the left wing to occupy Jiangling by surprise attack; As a related person who served under the Yellow King's account, he was inevitably affected and implicated;

First, the veteran Fei Chuangu, who had always trusted him, began to avoid suspicion and alienate him, and then those generals who were also in the vanguard also excluded him openly and secretly, so that after repeatedly fighting bloody battles to defeat the enemy, his troops were always unable to replenish and became weaker and weaker.

Therefore, in the end, he accumulated enough resentment and turned to leave with a group of cronies and old subordinates, and switched to his brother Wang Chongyin, who was recruiting troops and expanding his territory in Jiangling; Since then, he has been the left forward general who commanded the newly established Gangneung Naval Army. Of course, it is said that it is the other leader of the Gangneung Naval Army, but in fact, it is just to lead the transport fleet to and from the Gangneung Waterway.

Most of them were merchant and civilian ships from the region, and there were not many real surface combat vessels; The main escort force is the platoon of the ship's soldiers, bows and crossbows, and some stone-throwing, slapping rods and so on, which can be said to be quite simple and shabby.

However, he mainly dealt with the remnants of the local regiments, officials, rebels, bandits, and even the hungry people who gathered as water bandits after the righteous army left, and never went out of the pool; So this time I became the first choice to go south to ask for help.

Of course, in a sense, this is actually the product of being disguised by the sequelae of Zhou Huai'an's early layout. Now most of the sailors under his command stayed in Jiangling to assist in the defense, and only brought 180 people and hurried over.

Therefore, Zhou Huai'an simply dug out a dozen old and replaced whirlwind cannons, hair rods (catapults) and stone cannons (trebuchets) from the warehouse, and placed them on the bow and tail of the transport river boat team as a reinforcement of long-range projection power; It can be regarded as further narrowing the relationship and favorability.

Before leaving, Zhou Huai'an even signed a new order or encouragement, which has two main contents:

The first is to encourage more women to come out and participate in production and labor, mainly to meet the needs of the expanding workshops, which are divided into short-term odd jobs during agricultural slack time and long-term fixed labor positions with food and lodging; At least in the face of the labor demand for sericulture, textile printing and dyeing, which is strong in export, it can be said that men and women are relatively equal.

Although the purpose of salary calculation is also exploitation and oppression, at least from the bright side, there is a meager salary, which is much more effective than digging food directly from the soil; In addition, as an incentive for women to go out to work, there is also a small amount of in-kind allowance for families after a certain period of time.

And the women of this era do not have the side effects and the stinky problems of etiquette and prevention brought about by the prosperity of science after the Emperor and Song Dynasty; Under the pressure of livelihood, they often have to take on the same role and content of labor as men, and even after their husbands are arrested by Rakshading and left, they take on the burden of supporting their in-laws and children, so in this regard, the rebels can be regarded as opening up a channel for them to increase their income in disguise.

In contrast, those parasitic pastoral feminists who lie on the relatively perfect social welfare system in later generations and talk about equal rights for men and women, but as long as the rights do not talk about obligations, they dream of marrying a rich husband who has a good life, and they can enjoy the life of a young grandmother without work in the second half of their lives, the so-called "new women of the times"; It's just a joke.

On the other hand, it is the need to replenish new blood, and the existence of women's battalions in the rebel army was mainly used to do some logistical chores such as sewing and repairing pulp and washing mines, as well as technical work such as nursing and garment making; The main sources are the shelter and resettlement of the families of the rebels, the widows and helpless women in the society, and the displaced women who have fled. But in terms of the new demand for labour and shortfalls, these people are far from sufficient.

The same need to mobilize every force in society, another accompanying measure was the propaganda of the decision to recruit apprentices in the towns and countryside in the name of the Cooperative of Factories under the Retention of Directors; In fact, it is a disguised encouragement for the people to send out their children who are over ten years old and cannot support them, and receive apprenticeship education that can support them themselves.

It is envisaged that the basic process of starting with the simplest sorting work, working during the day, and training skills and learning culture at night; It is not until he reaches adulthood that he continues to work in the group under the arrangement of the rebels or serves for one or two decades (according to performance) before he is allowed to be released home.

The main purpose is to cultivate seedlings and sparks that are more in line with the needs of the righteous army from the young people whose three views have not yet been formed. They are also a potential supplement to the regular sequence (soldiers) and grassroots political power (officials), industrial workers (technicians), and even various social and professional divisions of labor, in addition to the homeless orphans taken in by the rebels. Therefore, although this part is in a state of continuous loss in the short and medium term, it is fundamentally earned in the long run;

Now the Taiping army outside the ridge is claimed to have 50,000 troops. However, after the transfer of more than 10,000 people from this formation, the remaining garrison force could not help but be a little nervous.

Because a small half of them need to be stationed in the Wuling Pass fortress of the Chenzhou-Lianzhou, Shaozhou-Meizhou generation; A small part was rotated to guard Annam's port, tuntian, and salt works, and some were used to patrol the sea and inland waterways.

As a result, with the exception of a small number of mobile troops left in the two core hinterlands of Guangzhou and Chaozhou, the other dozen or so prefectures used new battalions that were not yet organized to control key areas, while the county level could only rely on a limited number of garrison regiments and half-employed patrol teams from Tunzhuang to maintain daily order.

Therefore, this extraordinary state cannot last long, and once an external force intervenes, the elbow and armpit will change. Therefore, as far away as Chaoxun, Mei, Sanzhou and Guangzhou, they have begun to recruit more young men than they will go out to the battle, and conduct military training for half a year to be prepared.

And Zhou Huai'an was also extremely cautious about going all out this time, and would rather hand over the follow-up of Lianzhou and Chenzhou to Chai Ping, and personally led the team to organize reinforcements, and transferred most of the subordinates who thought they were quite competent.

The mighty army in Guangzhou along the northwest branch of the Pearl River basin along the water skiing, all the way by boat and on foot to take turns to go up to Sihui, Huameng, Huaiji, Cun'an and other counties, can get the corresponding material and manpower assistance along the way, and even a small number of young people who spontaneously came to join the army after hearing the news.

Then turn from Cun'an County to the west and walk more than ten miles by land, and then enter the territory of Hezhou on the edge of the Pearl River Basin; This is already regarded as one of the three management strategies of the Lingxi Jiedu envoy, and the jurisdiction of the Guiguan Jingluo. And the original smooth road with people and boats running side by side and facing each other has also become a winding mountain road that hovers high and low between mountain gorges and valley roads.

Then board the boat from the local Fengyang County and float on the water, continue along the upper reaches of the Xijiang River known as Heshui, pass through Linhe and Fuchuan counties, and then pass through Siqin and Longping counties in Fuzhou, and Pingle County in Zhaozhou, and officially enter the territory of Yangshuo, where the boundary of Guizhou is located in the mountains of Lingxi.

On this way, it can be said that in addition to mountains and mountains, from low and undulating hills to continuous mountain gorges, the huge terrain is divided into fragments, and the villages, towns, and cities inhabited by human beings are limited to the large and small river valleys and basins like isolated islands.

Along the way, you can occasionally see many traces of old and new battlefields, as well as some abandoned military villages and fortifications, or empty half-collapsed earthen forts; However, it was the remnants of the rebel army that attacked Lingxi at the beginning and the officers and troops under the command of the Guiguan Jinglu, as well as the local Tutuan along the way, to carry out the past re-contest.

As the prefectures and counties in the embrace of the mountains in Lingxi, although they have not been completely reformed and rebuilt locally, they have been purged back and forth in the original offensive and war tug-of-war, so the original Rebel Army Left-behind Division also has a small number of garrisons and temporary officials dispatched to maintain it locally.

It can regularly collect some money, grain and materials from the county and countryside to relieve Guangzhou, and at the same time accept the trade convoys sent by the left-behind division, and ensure the basic order of transit transportation, so the basic status quo of semi-autonomy is still maintained for the time being. Although they did not provide any assistance to Zhou Huai'an's army, they were not able to pose any obstacles;

In fact, those who dared to jump out of the mantis arm as a car in front of tens of thousands of troops almost died in the previous tug-of-war battle; As a result, some villages and countryside are still sparsely populated and semi-deserted, and even the frequency of barbarian and mountain activities has become very rare.

Therefore, this time, with the construction of the Liangtai Courtyard and the Grain Institute along the expedition, more than a dozen cities on this line, as well as the towns and villages within 20 miles of the road, will also be re-incorporated under the direct control of Liusi.

But in any case, once you enter the territory of Guizhou, the speed of travel becomes convenient and smooth again; The mountains in the west of Lingxi, which stretch and fall and look at the narrow rivers, seem to have broken through a big gap here, and the terrain has rapidly descended and become flat and open all of a sudden;

Under the light pillars of the low and fine clouds, I saw several shallow rivers with twists and turns, such as coiling dragons and swimming snakes, winding between many rugged and strange shapes, and washed by the rain mottled and whitened isolated hills and stone mountains.

That is, the karst landform of the wide zone in the geographical sense is usually staggered, and the alluvial flats of large and small rivers are staggered in between. In later generations, the so-called beautiful scenery of Guilin's landscapes and rivers in the world seems to have been pulled away here.

In a sense, this is also the most densely populated and rich prefecture in the 47 counties of the 12 prefectures under the rule of the old Guiguan Economic Envoy - Guizhou Shi'an County.

With the assistance of a small number of local rebels stationed in Yangshuo County, the Taiping army found and requisitioned many river boats and large bamboo rafts used to transport goods. Therefore, the walls of Guizhou can be seen here from the morning departure along the lower reaches of the Guijiang River (also known as Lishui) until before dark.

It's just that the closed city gates and the city that doesn't respond no matter how the vanguard rangers call it are, make people feel a little abrupt and unexpected.

"I've been here before, but it's okay. Or the king of the city, don't send him to Yangshuo in person. ”

Wang Chongba, who is the liaison person to the south, couldn't help but be surprised.

(End of chapter)