November 10, 1647, outside the city of Lijin.

Zhou Zuoding, deputy captain of the Third Brigade of the Advance Team, who had just landed on the beach, looked at the convoy that was ready to go, then turned around and said to a young man standing respectfully behind him: "Cai Zhanglu, the grain that the marshal promised you is here." Seeing that the weather is getting colder, you should do your best, and if you are short of manpower, you will requisition the local people, and I have left five hundred soldiers to assist you, in short, don't make all this food cheap. ”

Cai Huaze looked at the endless wheat fields outside Lijin County, and said with a smile: "Don't worry, Deputy Captain Zhou, I will definitely clean up this wheat field and leave not a grain of grain for the tartars." ”

Cai Huaze occupies the position of head of the brigade in the Dashun Army, this is not a high-ranking officer, but he is Guo Sheng's general, so in the hearts of Li Guo and others, he is absolutely upright and his own person. Therefore, when he took the returning East Coast gunboat to Yantai to contact the East Coast people, Guo Sheng strongly recommended Cai Huaze to serve as a liaison officer.

They departed from Yuezhou in September, joined up with a steam-engine sailing ship on the shore of Daishan Island in the later world, replenished some fresh water and coal, and then sailed north along the coastline together, arriving at Yantai Port in mid-October.

After arriving in Yantai, Cai Huaze first exchanged pleasantries with Li Wenchang, an artillery captain guarding Yantai, and then placed a group of orphans of Shunjun soldiers with a number of about 1,000 people in the residential area of Zhifu Island. In addition to these people, there were also 500 young women captured by the Shun army from the Qing army-controlled area of Hubei, and these people were quietly "sent" to the people on the east coast by the Shun army. In reward for their great support to the Shun army for several years.

No, this time Cai Huaze represents the Dashun regime again. Although Mo Minggang sent five artillery pieces, 50 pairs of armor, 400 muskets, and 1,500 spears to the Shun army Li Guo, Gao Yigong, Liu Fangliang, and Yuan Zongdi who were far away in Yuezhou, the Shun army, which had just been defeated by Kong Youde, Shang Kexi, Geng Jingzhong, Shen Zhixiang, and others in the battle for Hubei, was cramped in most of Hunan, and there was a shortage of food and weapons.

In particular, they have been planning to counterattack Hubei recently, which requires a lot of military funds and food, and the cost of building a few fortresses is definitely not a few, so they really have no choice but to come to the east coast at this time. Their troops suffered considerable losses in the repeated tug-of-war with the Qing army in the past year, and not only did the Shaanxi and Gansu veterans with rich combat experience suffer heavy losses, but they also suffered an extreme shortage of ordnance, mules, horses, and medicines. By the middle of this year, when there was a shortage of young people, the army that had expanded to more than 200,000 people even began to run out of food.

In this extremely embarrassing situation. Hao Shaoqi, Wang Jincai, Ma Jinzhong and several other people did not say goodbye. They took away 130,000 of the 230,000 horses in the intruding army, and then ran to Hengyang to vote for He Tengjiao and Du Yinxi. These foreign generals who were not from Li Zicheng's lineage had already colluded with the Southern Ming Dynasty for a long time, and the Southern Ming Dynasty was defeated in the southeast battlefield at this time, losing several provinces in a row, and there was almost no combatable soldier at hand. At this time, I saw someone coming to vote. Naturally, he was overjoyed. Although they are from the thieves. But at this moment of life and death, I can only pinch my nose and admit it, and it is important to save my life first.

Hao Shaoqi and others can vote for Nanming, but Li Guo, Gao Yigong and others can't pull their faces for the time being. However, they also showed some kindness to Nanming. They took the initiative to withdraw from the two counties bordering the Southern Ming He Tengjiao Department to show that they did not want to compete with them for Hengyang, and their goal was to go north to Hubei and recover Jingxiang.

However, the recovery of Hubei is really an unattainable task for the current Dashun regime. First of all, the troops of Kong Youde and others are brave and good at fighting, and they are very difficult to provoke. Perhaps at the beginning, the more than 40,000 people led by Li Guo were not afraid to fight with him, but today, when the army has been greatly expanded and a tug-of-war has been going on for a year, the Shun army, which is inferior to Kong Youde in terms of reserve troops and ordnance replenishment, has gradually become inadequate. At this time in history, the Shun army was transferred from the direction of Nanjing and Wuchang to wait for the soldiers and horses of the Eight Banners, and was defeated in one fell swoop, and then Kong Youde and others then covered up and killed, so that the Shun army could not stand at all, and retreated all the way from Hunan to Guangxi.

And in this time and space, because Mo Dashuai galloped across the Jiangbei region, besieged Yangzhou City and bombarded Shi Tingzhu, the majesty was simply unparalleled, and all the main forces of the Eight Banners in the south of the Yangtze River were attracted to Jiangbei. That's not all, a large number of green battalion troops who were going to Hubei were also transferred to Jiangbei to encircle and suppress the yellow-clothed thieves. In this way, Kong Youde and others, who did not receive key supplements, fought hard, and after barely recovering most of Hubei, they could only stop at the front line of Jingzhou and Yuezhou, licking their wounds while waiting for the arrival of reinforcements and supplies.

And the Dashun group, which suffered more casualties than Kong Youde and others, seized this rare respite opportunity to recuperate, especially after Hao Shaoqi and others took away more than 100,000 horses, Li Guo, Gao Yigong and others, who only had 100,000 people left, were the most vulnerable at this time, and they were now short of everything, even food. Therefore, when Cai Huaze came to Shandong this time, a major task was to find a way to get some food back to help the emergency. Of course, it would be even better if there was something else to be obtained besides food.

asked the people on the east coast, who were already short of food, to ask for food, and the Dashun gang obviously didn't understand the situation. However, if this matter is put aside, it will naturally be useless, and the people of the East Coast will not have enough food to eat. But today, when the situation in Shandong has changed greatly, Mo Ming, who received the request of Cai Huaze and others on the way to the march, only said lightly, "You are in a good hurry", and then instructed them to go to the field to cut wheat by themselves.

At the end of October, it was time to harvest the wheat, and due to the war and other factors, large areas of wheat fields in the field were left unmanaged. It is a pity that this grain is wasted, so as early as mid-October, Mo Ming, who was leading the main army to Binzhou to fight, ordered the Yantai Fortress to send some soldiers and reserve soldiers to harvest grain in the area where the Qing army had been swept away in Denglai Qingsanfu. Of course, they don't have to harvest the grain themselves, they just need to run to the field and use knives and guns to coerce the local people to harvest it themselves.

However, the people of the East Coast also know how to measure and will not do things absolutely. Especially in Denglai Erfu, where they have a certain foundation, they generally only take half of the grain they harvest. The remaining half was distributed to the poor people, making the local gentry lament and anger, and scolded the people on the east coast as "the style of the sea and the remnants of thieves".

In Qingzhou and Jinan, where the Qing army was more stubborn, Yantai Fort on the east bank sent a battalion of black soldiers and 2,000 Korean soldiers to collect wheat on a large scale in several counties under their control, such as Yidu, Linqu, Zichuan, Changshan, Xincheng, Gaoyuan, and other places. After the harvested wheat is dried on the spot, it is loaded into trucks and transported to the seaside, and the people on the east coast will take 70% of it, and the rest will be distributed to the poor people. As for the gentry. That's not a grain of grain.

After entering November, Wei Boqiu, who was organizing the transfer of immigrants in the rear, also sent out all the four squadrons led by Zhou Zuoding, and by the way, sent the last few boatloads of supplies and supplies to Mo Dashuai, who was near Binzhou. At the same time, pull back a batch of loot. After all, it will be more than half a month. The Bohai Sea may be about to freeze. At this time, it is better to seize the time to transport more things.

Cai Huaze and the 400 soldiers of the Shun army who came with him came to Binzhou under such a background. The grain of Lijin, Zhanhua and Haifeng counties in Binzhou was "sent" to Cai Huaze by Mo Dashuai, after all, the manpower on the east coast has almost reached the limit, and Yantai Fort has sent all the people who can be sent out to collect the grain. In this way, there are still large areas of prefectures and counties that are difficult to take care of -- this is the case in Binzhou. Since this is the case, it is better to throw it to Cai Huaze and the others, he has four hundred people on hand, and it is not a problem to control two or three counties, so let him toss it. It's their own ability to cut as much wheat as they can go back, and the opportunity has already been given anyway, so play with yourselves.

As for Binzhou City, it was controlled by 500 soldiers from the east coast brought by Zhou Zuoding, and they did the same thing as they did in Dengzhou, Laizhou and other places, requisitioning and distributing people to harvest grain on the spot, then drying it and storing it, waiting for Zhou Zuoding's transport convoy to return from Mo Dashuai's camp.

The 1,000 soldiers led by Zhou Zuoding requisitioned thousands of masters in Binzhou City to transfer supplies for the front line. When they returned, they usually brought back large quantities of gold, silver, silk, books, livestock, and prisoners, which were to be transported to the east coast transport ship anchored off the coast of Lijin County, along with grain harvested in several counties near Binju, and then transported back to Yantai or Jeju Island for storage.

And just when the Qing army shrank its front to the vicinity of Jinan and abandoned a large number of prefectures and counties in Jinan, Qingzhou, Laizhou, and Dengzhou to the people on the east coast, Mo Ming, who was stationed in Qingcheng County, was also very entangled at the moment, whether to continue to move forward and approach Jinan City, or to accept it when it was good? After convening a military meeting, due to the big differences between everyone, Mo Ming, who did not get any results, decided to move forward and take a look at the situation first. Anyway, the Qing army's troops in Shandong suffered heavy losses, and it would not be able to threaten the increasingly large East Coast Army for a while.

Guided by such a line of thinking, tens of thousands of troops on the east bank marched to Keqidong County on November 14; On the 17th, he arrived in Jiyang, defeated 2,000 Qing defenders after a night of fierce fighting, and conquered the city. At this time, the righteous army Ding Mingwu also went west to fight hard and recovered Yucheng County, a large number of Yuyuan troops rushed to meet Ding Mingwu after hearing the news, everyone was gearing up, eager to try, ready to go to Jinan to go.

On November 18, in view of the increasingly severe situation in Shandong, the Qing court officially issued an edict: transfer Yi Yonggui to serve as the general soldier of Linqing, and Tong Yangliang to serve as the general soldier of Dengzhou, and each of them led his troops and horses to Jinan Mansion immediately, and together with Niu Chenghu, the general soldier of Yizhou who was also going north, and Li Shuitai, the general soldier of Binzhou coastal defense who had retreated to Jinan, accepted the unified command of Le Ke Dehun to assist in the defense of Jinan; In addition, Lu Guonan, the general soldier of Baoding, Gao Di, the general soldier of Henan, and Kong Xigui, the general soldier of Hebei (referring to the three prefectures north of the Yellow River in Henan Province), also led their troops and horses to Dongchang Mansion as soon as possible, and accepted the command of Mele Zhangjing Lai Fu, who was sent here by Luck Dehun, to exterminate the Yuyuan thieves as soon as possible.

In order to calm the situation in Shandong as much as possible, the Qing court dispatched seven general troops to Shandong at once, and almost mobilized all its mobile forces in the north. This is not counting, it is said that in the capital, Jierharang is ready to lead tens of thousands of Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners soldiers and horses to the south, and the Shandong issue, which was suddenly detonated by the yellow-clothed thief Mo Dashuai, has once again become the focus of the Manchu Dynasty and the opposition. (To be continued......)