In June of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the Luzhou Mansion located in the heart of Jianghuai and the two Zhili Prefectures of Chuzhou and Hezhou, the chaos brought about by the two bandits of thieves and the five battalions of Gezuo to conquer the city became more and more out of control.

To the east, the thieves broke through Quanjiao County, to which Chuzhou belonged, and it was only a few dozen miles away from Jiangpu City (Pukou) on the other side of the Yangtze River in Nanjing.

To the west, the thieves broke through Shucheng and Lu'an, which belonged to Luzhou Prefecture, backed by the Yinghuo Mountains, advanced and retreated freely, and seriously threatened Tongcheng County, the northern gate of Anqing Prefecture.

It is reported that the thieves have captured Lujiang County, south of Chaohu Lake, and have not only robbed 300 large ships of Shuangqiao, but are also recruiting shipwrights to build warships, training sailors in Chaohu Lake, and claiming to invade Nanjing. There is also conclusive news that the thieves are wantonly coercing the people to follow the thieves, and there are 36 battalions of old sentries and 24 battalions of small sentry, with a total strength of no less than 200,000!

Nanjing was the political sub-center of the Ming Dynasty, and Jiangnan was the tax center of the Ming Dynasty, and it was a place that the Ming Dynasty could never lose.

The situation in Jianghuai is so erosive, of course the righteous men and gentlemen in Jiangnan will not be idle. The Nanjing Imperial Historians sent a snowflake to the Jingshi, impeaching Gao Douguang, the governor of Fengyang, and Zheng Eryang, the governor of Anluchi, who were responsible for the situation.

Zheng Eryang, who knew that he couldn't escape the lock, gave a death order in desperation, and all the ships in Anqing, Taiping, and Chizhou along the Yangtze River were all down to the Yangtze River.

Why?

Loaded with displaced people and sent to the upstream Yiling, the burden was thrown to the Shu Wangfu in the rich world!

Zheng Eryang explained in the text: If there is no ship, the thieves will not be able to cross the river, and the south of the Yangtze River can be safe; If there are no people, the thieves will not be able to expand the army, and Jiangbei can still be cleaned up! Therefore, anyone who hides a ship and hostages the homeless people will be severely punished as a thief!

Of course, there will always be a gap between the spirit of the document and the real intentions of the leadership. A month later, when the cavalry carrying the decree arrived in Anqing but could not find Governor Zheng everywhere, this resolute wording made the governor's subordinates who had previously shouted loudly feel that something was wrong.

Zheng Eryang disappeared mysteriously, and his life and death are unknown. The responsibility of going into battle naturally fell on Gao Douguang, the governor of Fengyang.

But this Governor Gao is an old literati, and he is very good at reciting poetry and writing, engaging in education, and doing ideological work, but he has no courage to lead the troops into battle. Perhaps he thinks that the probability of survival is greater than that of being arrested in the first battle. So Gao Douguang simply avoided the governor's yamen, entertained himself with poetry, singing and dancing every day, and enjoyed his last life to the fullest.

As a result, the drudgery of going into battle fell on the eunuch in Wenchen's mouth, and the head of the great eunuch Lu Jiude was left behind.

Battlefield veteran Lu Jiude is also not ambiguous. He sent the right governor, the Fengsi chief soldier Mou Wenshou (Note 1) and the Beijing Battalion Commander Huang Degong (Note 2) to send troops together to prepare to recover Luzhou.

Mu Wenshou, who was born in the Shizhou Wei family, sent the deputy general of Xuzhou according to the custom, and Liu Liangzuo, a fierce general known as "Huama Liu", led his troops to attack, and he personally led the children of the Mu family to defend the Fengyang Mausoleum and ensure the smooth flow of Cao Yun.

Huang Degong, the chief soldier of the Beijing camp under the direct jurisdiction of Lu Jiude, did not have a high-sounding excuse like Mou Wenshou, and he was reluctant to shirk the good thing of cutting off his head in battle. As a result, the two armies of Former Huang and Later Liu marched towards Luzhou City under the leadership of Lu Jiude.

The war is about to break out, and the outcome is still undecided.

However, most people are optimistic about Huang Degong and Liu Liangzuo. After all, the two of them are almost the nemesis of the pair of thieves and Gezuo's pair of thieves, and the two armies have never been defeated in the confrontation!

If the world thinks like this, they will not flee their homes, deposit their life savings in Huitong Qianzhuang, and give the Shu Wangfu a chance to fish in troubled waters; Liu Hongting also judged so, so she wanted to secretly make it bad, so that Lu Jiude's old nest Fengyang would not be able to live, and Huang Degong and Liu Liangzuo would not be able to exert all their strength to sacrifice the thief Ge Zuo.

To make the court bad, of course, it is inconvenient for the Shu Wangfu to jump to the forefront. Liu Hongting needs an agent who can replace the Shu Wangfu's big fight, Long Qisheng Qianxin

The four battalions of Wen, Mo, Yang, and Ma, who were rescued by great suffering, plus Liu Chao, who was an old man with a strong heart, happened to be the best candidate in her mind.

However, no matter how good a plan is, it needs a condition to start, and the same is true of Liu Hongting's plan. This plan has nothing to do with silver tickets.

She needs to get a batch of grain, a batch of grain in just the right amount, which can not only allow the four battalions of people and horses to do things with peace of mind in a short time, but also allow the Shu Wangfu to choke their lifeblood at any time, withdraw them to the river if necessary, and smoothly reorganize according to the ideas of the prince, and completely eat this powerful army.

But at present, the most scarce materials in Huai'an Province are not gold, silver and salt, but grain.

……

Nostalgic old people often say that one stone of grain is three to five hundred wen in the Wanli period. The people are more than self-sufficient, and they can also raise a few nests of chickens and a few pigs. After a busy day, you can also warm a pot of wine and drink a few glasses.

But I never expected that in the last years of Wanli, the Ming Dynasty quickly turned from prosperity to decline, and there were some signs of the end of the world.

Droughts and floods, rain and snow, frost, locusts, hail, thunderstorms, gales, dust and fog, earthquakes, except for volcanoes that did not erupt and the sea did not erupt, the Ming Dynasty withstood all the natural disasters that people can imagine in just a few decades.

Natural disasters are already cool, and man-made disasters are even worse.

From the year of the Apocalypse to the year of Chongzhen, under the attack of the Tartars outside the gate and the thieves inside the gate, there are no more peaceful areas under the Great Tomorrow that can allow the people to serve the fields and cultivate production.

The famine began in Shaanxi Province and gradually spread to Henan, Beizhili, Shanxi, and from North China to South China, and finally broke out in a nationwide famine that lasted for many years.

Food, as a necessity for human survival, is also a very scarce material even in the rich land of Zhejiang, which used to be "half of the world's taxes".

In the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, there was a nationwide drought. The drought in Huizhou, to which Nanzhili belongs, is a dead body. Su, Song, Hu and other places successfully escaped the drought, but did not escape the monstrous floods of summer;

In the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, the Ming Dynasty suffered a nationwide drought again, but the scope of the disaster was shifted. Southwest China, such as Sichuan and other places, has good weather and bumper grain harvests. However, the Lianggi, Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, and Huguang areas have once again become the hardest-hit areas of the drought locust.

Although the disaster situation in Yingtian, Suzhou, Songjiang, Huzhou, Huizhou and other prefectures has not developed to the terrible point of thousands of miles of red land and scorched vegetation like Shandong and Henan, it is still rainless and full of locusts for several months; Hungry people are everywhere, and beggars are everywhere.

In the early spring of this year, the disaster situation in Nanzhili and parts of Zhejiang continued to develop.

The center of the disaster in Songjiang Province was shifted to Liu Hongting's hometown of Taicang Prefecture.

In Taicang, the price of winter rice has risen to four taels and one stone.

Outside the gates of the famous temples in Taicang Prefecture, Yihui Temple and Longfu Temple, thousands of victims gather every day to beg for porridge relief. On the road, he starved to death, and corpses were rolling in the river. Outcasts at the city gates are in groups, waiting to be taken in or adopted by well-wishers. Unfortunately, only a few of them survived, and many more children lay on the ground, waiting for the end of their short lives: to be turned to dust in the grave, or to smoke in the flames, or to be turned into hungry things in the wombs of others.

In addition to Songjiang, Suzhou and Huzhou in Nanzhili are also areas that have been severely affected.

The disaster center of Suzhou Prefecture is in Wu County, Fuzhi, and the disaster situation is slightly better than that of Taicang, and the price of rice is as expensive as 323 yuan per stone, and 222 yuan of wheat stone;

Huzhou Prefecture on the shore of Taihu Lake, the center of the disaster is in Fuzhigui'an and Wucheng counties. In both counties, locust plagues are more terrible than droughts. Wherever the locusts go, they are swept away like dark clouds, and the seedlings, reeds, and even leaves of the trees are immediately chewed up. Bandits took advantage of the situation, and the plague followed. The people were hungry with Guanyin soil, their stomachs were distended like drums, and they were suffocated to death. The old and young are dying on the side of the road, the sturdy and smug are scattered, the urban and rural houses are half empty, and the trees are stripped of their skin. Raise your eyes, a living hell on earth!

Shangshu. Taijia has clouds: Heaven is evil, it is still violated; and thou shalt not live.

The tax center of the Ming Dynasty suffered such a tragic natural disaster, but the imperial court did not forget to loot the people's wealth for a moment.

Taking Taicang as an example, the people suffered a disaster, and the court urged them to pay. Natural disasters are not over, and man-made disasters are coming!

Perhaps the emperor's conscience was not clear, and he finally issued an order to allow one-third of the rice to be changed from rice to wheat, and the price of each stone was discounted by one or two or five yuan. This is all the grace that the imperial court has given to the people in the disaster area (Note 3)!

……

The Jiangnan disaster, the Jiangbei region, which is only separated by a river from the south of the Yangtze River, naturally cannot escape the clutches of natural disasters.

Yangzhou, Huai'an, and Taizhou, the famous rice city in Jiangbei, were all affected to varying degrees. The influx of displaced people from war-torn areas such as Chuzhou and Hezhou in neighboring areas has made Jiangbei's grain shortage even more severe.

At this time, it was not a great difficulty to raise a large amount of military rations in Huai'an Mansion and transport them to Bozhou, which is thousands of miles away at the junction of the two provinces of Zhiyu!

In early June, Liu Hongting and Chen Ying finally scraped together 5,000 stone of grain and obtained a transportation permit in Caodu Yamen.

Five thousand stone grains are not far from Long Qisheng's hope value.

The 7,000 men and horses had to eat food, the soldiers who had been incorporated into Zhuxian Town had to eat food, and the people in Bozhou and Luyi had to eat food along the way to Huai'an.

Long Qisheng didn't know the exact total number of the four battalions at present, nor did he know how many people were going to be withdrawn. However, he was soberly aware that this grain was definitely not enough, and the four battalions of men and horses held out until the middle of August, when the rice in Huaibei was ripe.

For this matter, Long Qisheng approached Liu Hongting, but the only promise he made was Liu Hongting's vague reply: At present, the grain is very tight, and he will find a way to wait until the autumn grain is on the market.

Long Qisheng knew that this matter was difficult to do, and he didn't dare to blame Liu Hongting. From Yongcheng to Huai'an, all he saw were deserted villages and dying starvation. Outside the city gate of Huai'an Mansion, there are thousands of people who grab porridge every day to continue their lives.

Chen Yingdao, who is in charge of putting porridge, said that most of these displaced people are from northern Henan, Shandong. I thought that Jianghuai had food, and the canal could also rely on pulling fiber to earn food, so my family lived here. Who would have thought that Jianghuai is not only short of food, but also lacks conscience!

The Cao gang on the canal were afraid that the homeless people would rob them of their jobs and break their rules for making black money, so they colluded with the owners of the boats, the tax collectors who closed the locks, the Cao soldiers who sailed the boats, and even the Cao Governor Yamen in the city (Note 4) to strictly prohibit the homeless people from working on the canal to earn money.

The displaced people could not earn money in Huai'an, and they did not dare to continue south, so they had to stay in Huai'an, Yangzhou, and Yizheng to beg for a living.

Therefore, Chen Ying suggested that Long Qisheng that since the people of Bozhou were going to retreat south, it was better to let the officials and soldiers retreat south, so that they could reduce their mouths for eating. When they arrived in Huai'an, they would pick up the displaced people from Huai'an and transport them to Huguang or Sichuan.

Chen Ying also emphasized that this is just his personal suggestion, and does not represent Miss Liu, let alone the Shu Palace.

Brother Long is entrusted by the son of the world, so he can naturally make a decision on the spot. The officers and soldiers of the four battalions should withdraw first, how much, and how to withdraw them, all of which were decided by Brother Long and the generals of the officers and soldiers.

Note 1: Mu Wenshou is a native of Shizhou, and his hometown is in today's Lichuan.

Note 2: Huang Degong was reappointed as the general soldier of Luzhou after the recovery of Luzhou, and he should have been the position of the Beijing camp before.

Note 3: In 1645, the Manchu Qing Dynasty crossed the river, and the Hongguang small court perished. The Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions calmly accepted the rule of the Manchus, and did not rise up in revolt until the issuance of the shaving order. Some scholars have discussed this phenomenon of regional group non-resistance, the reasons for which are the Donglin Party, the toad Tianzi, the budding capitalism, and the Susong heavy tax area, but they have omitted the rare natural disasters in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the last few years of the late Ming Dynasty and the clumsy performance of the imperial court in natural disasters, which should not be.

Note 4: The Yamen of the Caoyun Governor of the Ming and Qing dynasties were stationed in the Huai'an Mansion.

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