The story returns to Sichuan from the Central Plains.

In the middle of the first month of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the triangle of the Jialing River and the Qujiang River, which was once full of gunsmoke, finally calmed down.

A standoff has entered between the Turbulrs and the Protectors.

Zhu Pingjian, the son of Shu who sits in Guang'an, will not be idle. He immediately took advantage of the short period of recuperation and the prestige after the great victory to fully implement his long-planned plan for the reorganization and transformation of the Protector Army and the construction of Wangzhuang in northern Sichuan. The time required for this plan is initially expected to be one and a half months. After mid-February, the Protectors will launch a new offensive as planned, leaving the local tyrants with no time to plant rice and plough the fields, starving to death and trapping them.

Chen Youfu and Luo Jingyun's Fourth Regiment, which were the arrowheads of the National Protector Army, commanded He Qiukou's two brigades to protect the village, and the three squadrons of the "Changpingshan Heroic Battalion" of Lin Yan's "Changping Mountain Hero Battalion" and Sun Deren's Pengzhou Fortress were deployed along the Ba River, a tributary of the Qujiang River, and the flood land was deeply wedged into the lofty mountains and mountains of Bashan. They took advantage of the natural villages along the Ba River and actively built fortifications in preparation for attacks from Ba Shan.

The three companies of the 8th Battalion of Lu Yinchang and Cao Xun were stationed in Qu County, and the Qu County Huzhuang Brigade, which was formed and rebuilt from the 8th Battalion, carried out the task of gathering the fleeing people and establishing Wangzhuang under the leadership of Zhou Zizhuang and Fan Mingshan.

The Zagu battalion was stationed in Sanhui Town, a key point north of Qu County. They won their first battle, suffering heavy casualties but high morale. Zhu Pingjin, the son of Shu, fulfilled his promise to them, exempted them from the status of babies, and became a professional warrior who led the army. A large number of Han soldiers from Hezhou regimental training were supplemented into the Zagu Battalion, mixed training and run-in with the Tusi soldiers, and prepared to be reorganized into the new 17th Battalion.

He Qiukou personally commanded the Ninth Battalion and the four squadrons of the Pengzhou and Yingshan Huzhuang Brigades to form a mobile detachment, and coordinated with the 1st Regiment occupying Yuechi County to carry out east-west maneuvers based on Yingshan County to intercept possible enemies in the north and south.

The first regiment of He Zengshan and Li Cunliang captured Yuechi County, but the local rebels' guerrillas were still plundering in the countryside. In particular, Wang Gao and Wang Guangxing, the Black Tiger Mixed Sky Star who fled from Yuechi County in a hurry, went out of Yuechi North with more than 200 cavalry, and each horse was carrying a large burden full of gold and silver. Therefore, the first regiment wanted to consolidate Yuechi, and exterminating the remnants of the bandits became the first priority.

The captives of Yuan Tao's department, the king of heaven, confessed that they did not see the black tiger mixed with the sky star Wang Gao and Wang Guangxing's caravan coming.

According to the analysis of the obvious indication that there were still more than 10,000 taels of silver left in Yuechi County, Wang Gao and Wang Guangxing, the Black Tiger Mixed Sky Star, were likely to have to leave a lot of gold and silver because of the shortage of horses and the overloading of horses.

Horses carrying too much gold and silver will no longer be able to carry men, and the speed of the march will inevitably drop dramatically. When Wang Gao and Wang Guangxing found that Yuan Tao was attacked and it was not appropriate to continue to venture into the convergence, they hid in the Jincheng Mountains in the north of Yuechi County to temporarily avoid the limelight.

The Jincheng Mountains are not barren mountains and mountains, it is a famous Taoist mountain in Sichuan, which stretches from east to west, and there are many Taoist temples of different sizes. A team of more than 200 people can easily hide in a certain Taoist temple. Li Cunliang, a serious Jinyi Wei Qianhu, then sent his subordinates to conduct an inventory with a focus on Taoist temples, and forced the Black Tiger Mixed Sky Star Wang Gao and Wang Guangxing to show up with the strategy of fighting grass and startling snakes, so that the two battalions of the first regiment that undertook the task of clearing up and coordinating with the He Qiu Kou Department in the north of Jincheng Mountain surrounded and annihilated the Black Tiger Mixed Sky Star Wang Gao and Wang Guangxing in the mountains.

The 10th Battalion of the 1st Regiment suffered heavy casualties in the Guangmenpu offensive battle, and was ordered to stay in the county seat, and set aside troops to wipe out the local tyrants in the countryside one by one with the cavalry.

After Song Zhenzong was promoted to commander of the theater, the third regiment was handed over to Tan Sigui, the commander of the fourth battalion who broke the bandits in Luodu.

Tan Sigui currently has no combat mission, and his duty is to ensure the safety of Luo Du and ensure the smooth completion of the adaptation and transformation work.

Today, Luodu has become a large military base, full of barracks, prisoner camps and reform camps. On the outskirts of the town are the Fourth Battalion, the Fifth Battalion of Tianquan Tusi, the First Battalion of the First Baggage Battalion, the remnants of the Hezhou Regiment Training, the Peach Blossom Guardian Team, the remnants of Zhao Ronggui, and the Fourth Company of Fire Guns and a Tiger Squat Artillery Company that have just been equipped with equipment, and the Qujiang River is the naval army of Yu Dajiang and He Gui, and the whole town is as solid as gold.

On both sides of the Xixi River in the south of Guang'an City, there is also a main force of the National Protector Army. The 1st Battalion was separated from the 1st Regiment and was directly under the command of Zhu Pingjin.

The two companies of the 1st Battalion, together with Dong Bu's 3rd Cavalry Battalion, monitored the camp of Zhao Ronggui's former official army on the Xixi River, and the camp was occupied by Liu Weiming, the rebel king who had accepted the recruitment. The north bank houses the leader, and the south bank houses the hairy dog, and the two are separate and not connected to each other.

There are more than 14,000 local tyrants, men, women, and children, and they are no more than 4,000. They stubbornly guarded the food and silver that were stained with the blood of unknown people, looked at the officers and soldiers of the Protector who came in and out with extremely vigilant eyes, and stared at the clothes of the Protector with extremely envious eyes.

In order to smoothly transform these local rioters, Zhu Pingjin and Sun Hong tailored a special method for them: man-to-man tactics. More than 100 soldiers from poor backgrounds in the National Protector Army and more than 100 scholars from Nanchong, Baoning, and Miantong who had passed the Shu examination formed a task force. The members of the task force went through three days of personal training by Zhu Pingjin, and then formed a working group in pairs, responsible for dozens of households and 100 people, caring for them in their daily lives, educating them ideologically, and convincing them with facts.

Of course, in the course of work, the task force should also identify the dangerous elements and backward elements among the counterparts and report their opinions on how to deal with them. And their handling opinions are often the difference between life and death.

……

In order to complete the reorganization and transformation plan of the prince Zhu Pingjian, Shu Guoping and Sun Hong, the specific implementers of the plan, both went to Luodu.

As chief of the General Staff, Shu Guoping was responsible for reorganizing the National Protector Army, officers and troops, and various regimental training forces assembled in Luodu, and reorganizing them into five infantry battalions, the fourth, fifth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth infantry battalions, the first and second battalions of baggage, the first engineer battalion, and the Huzhuang brigade in the four prefectures of Guang'an, Yuechi, Dingyuan, and Hezhou.

One of the key points of the adaptation is the fifth battalion of Tianquan Toast.

The 5th Battalion is one of the oldest battalions of the Protector Army, having participated in almost all the battles of the Protector and its predecessor, the Protector Caravan. The style is brave and the achievements are outstanding.

However, the battalion has always been under the control of the Tianquan Gao family, with low political consciousness, lax military discipline, and deep vices, and there is a serious personal dependence between soldiers and officers. The officers beat and scolded the soldiers, withheld their salaries, and the soldiers robbed on the battlefield.

As Zhu Pingjin's position became more and more secure, the transformation of the 5th Battalion finally began.

Gao Qingxi, the commander of the fifth battalion, used to be the head of the guard of Gao Antai, the third son of the Gao family, and after the assassination of the second son Gao Dengtai in Luzhou, he was severely punished internally by the Gao family. Gao Qingxi expressed his support for the reorganization of the Fifth Battalion and accepted the appointment of the deputy commander of the Third Regiment, so the reorganization was carried out relatively smoothly.

The 5th Battalion was broken up and split into five discontented companies and two platoons. five companies with five battalions; The two platoons were transferred to the guard battalion, and a nominal Tianquan guard company will be established in the future to show Zhu Pingjin's continued trust and favor in the Tianquan Gao family. After the reorganization, the Tianquan Tusi Infantry Battalion as a whole no longer existed.

The second focus of the reorganization is to strengthen the firearms of the battalions.

Together with the fourth company of firearms and the Tiger Squat Artillery Company, which have completed their equipment, the Firearms Bureau has recently sent more than 600 firearms and 16 Tiger Squat guns. The outstanding performance of firearms on the battlefield is obvious to all, and the reality that there are too many monks and few porridge has made the heads of various units start to fight openly and secretly, and the lawsuit has reached Zhu Pingjin.

Shu Guoping believes that the establishment of troops should be basically unified, so that it will be easier for command and supply. Therefore, all the four fire companies near Guang'an were disbanded and expanded into eight companies, one for each battalion, and included in the battalion combat formation. His train of thought was that it was better to wait for the fire than to wait for the fire gun. It doesn't matter if the firearm is not enough for the time being, it will be gradually replenished in the future.

The shortage of Tiger Squat artillery is even greater, and the establishment of one artillery platoon per battalion can only be equipped with one or two guns for the time being.

The third focus of the reorganization is the creation of a new branch of the sapper.

According to Zhu Pingjin's division in his previous life, the sappers can be roughly divided into engineering troops and combat sappers according to their nature; According to their affiliation, they can be divided into reserve engineers and team engineers. The engineering corps can be further subdivided into railway troops, boat and bridge troops, airports, wharves, barracks, water supply infrastructure repairs, and so on.

Combat sappers are very different from engineers. Demolition, mine-laying and demining, improvised bridges and fortifications are their forte.

Shu Guoping didn't have as much stuff as Zhu Pingjian's head. He compared the responsibilities of the imperial court to the Ministry of Works, and simply understood the sappers as engineering construction, which is obviously a bit narrow. Zhu Pingjin had no choice but to personally intervene and position the newly built engineer battalion as a training battalion, which was subdivided into four teaching companies: roads, boat bridges, blasting, and barracks. In the trained troops, the engineers are used as reserve engineers, and the combat engineers are scattered and used as subordinate engineers.

The military and political work of the Protector Army are inseparable, and compared with Shu Guoping, the burden of the supervising army Sun Hong is heavier.

This "heavy" does not simply refer to the amount of work, but to the difficulty of the work. Because the object of Sun Hong's work is tangible people and intangible thoughts.

According to Zhu Pingjin's will, whether the local rioters surrendered or surrendered, whether they were released to the township for reclamation or sent to a prisoner of war camp, they must first carry out a thorough ideological transformation. For this reason, Zhu Pingjin invented a new word called "brainwashing", which means to rinse their dirty brains with clean spring water.

The local rioters must be brainwashed, and the Hezhou regimental training and the Peach Blossom Guardian Team, which have recently joined the National Protector Army, as well as the remnants of the official army Zhao Ronggui, must also be brainwashed.

The essence of brainwashing is to let the baptized have a clear concept of right and wrong, that is, to let the baptized understand and support the purpose of the National Protector Army to "protect the country and the people, and the world is peaceful", and realize that only under the leadership of Zhu Pingjin, the wise and martial son of Shu, can the ultimate goal of peace in the world and prosperity of everyone be achieved.

The basic content of brainwashing is the study of military regulations, and the absolute respect and obedience of the baptized to military regulations are cultivated.

The main method of brainwashing, in addition to the systematic explanation of theoretical knowledge, also has three special magic weapons: first, the grievance movement founded by Zhu Pingjin in Bifengxia; the second is to participate in various study classes; The third is a sharp new way: criticism and self-criticism.

The rapid expansion of the armed forces has once again set off a huge demand for grassroots cadres.

Nearly 1,000 grassroots officers and soldiers who have made meritorious contributions to the war have been promoted by recommendation and participated in the training course for field officers.

Officers know that the people they select are to be trustworthy; The soldiers also knew that the people they elected were worthy of trust. The combined force of the two positive energies has enabled the vast majority of outstanding talents in the grassroots units to become lower-level officers and non-commissioned officers at the company and platoon level through promotion. These officers and non-commissioned officers are the inheritors of the excellent genes of their own troops, and if they lead the new troops, they will pass on the excellent genes from generation to generation.

……

At the same time as the reorganization of the army near Guang'an, there was also the construction of Wangzhuang. However, Zhu Pingjin was not too worried about the construction of Wangzhuang. Because the major policies have been decided, and Li Chongwen, who has to worry about everything, has rushed to Guang'an.

Zhu Pingjin is still more worried about Feng Ruhu's department and Ding Xianjue's department in Dazhou.

Zhang Wei, who went to Dazhou to deliver the message, reported that after the capture of Dazhou, a large number of local people who had lost their rations and homes had to join the army in order to survive and eat food. Feng Ruhu and Ding Xianjue, in the face of the surging tide of joining the army, engaged Han Xin to point troops, the more the merrier, and in an instant, the army expanded more than twice.

After discovering that the various units of the Yellow Harrier were actually fleeing from all sides, Feng Ruhu, Cai Shaoyun, Ding Xianjue, and Xu Gou'er almost immediately launched a three-way centrifugal attack.

Feng Ruhu and Cai Shaoxuan led the main force of the Protectorate Army to attack and advance in the direction of Xinning (now Kaijiang) and Kaixian, and made contact with Wei Chen, who occupied the five counties of Kuizhou;

Ding Xianjue led his troops along the Zhou River to Dongxiang (now Xuanhan County) and Taiping (now Wanyuan County), and got in touch with Tan Hong, the general of the Taiping Battalion, who was sticking to Dongxiang;

Xu Gou'er, Liu Mianwu, and Li Ying led the first section of the National Protector Army and the Linshui Regiment to advance to Liangshan (now Liangping), Dianjiang, Changshou, Fuzhou, Fengdu, Zhongzhou and other counties in eastern Chongqing in the southeast of Dazhou and west of Dazhu, and got in touch with Zeng Ying's troops who stayed in the area.

The unrestrained expansion of recruitment has greatly diluted the old foundation of the National Protector Army. According to Han Dashu, the acting company commander who stayed in Dazhou, he had only one veteran from Chengdu, his third brother. Although the father and son were company commanders and platoon commanders, they were actually regiment commanders and battalion commanders, because they had 500 strong men, 1,700 women, and 800 old people and children, totaling more than 3,000 people. Han Dashu and his son used the temptation of distributing food to let these more than 3,000 people guard the important city of Dazhou.

Zhang Wei ran away for a few days with Zhu Pingjian's will in hand, but only saw a letter left by a company commander and Feng Ruhu asking for food, silver, weapons, and cadres. Zhu Pingjin's plan to use Feng Ruhu to win over Ding Xianjue, or use Ding Xianjue to suppress Feng Ruhu, completely failed. Zhu Pingjian, who received the report, wondered in his heart, could it be that there was a Napoleon under his command who swept through thousands of armies?

However, for Feng Ruhu, who used his food and silver to expand his military strength unscrupulously, he couldn't help but slap the table in an extremely depressed mood: "Feng Ruhu, you X!" ”

……

Zhu Pingjin slapped the table in Guang'an, and hundreds of miles away at the edge of the dam in western Sichuan, a grand water release ceremony with the spontaneous participation of tens of thousands of people was being held.

I saw that under the impact of the river, one by one the pestles fell down one after another, and the scene was magnificent.

People go to higher places, and water flows to lower places. The water of the Baihuahua Minjiang River was unblocked, and it plunged headlong into the mouth of the treasure bottle with a lower elevation, and then poured into several large rivers of the Neijiang River through it. Amid the deafening cheers and gongs and drums on both sides, the Minjiang River flows westward, bringing essential water to the thousands of miles of fertile fields and shipping channels of the Chengdu Plain.

Zhao Shutong, the old eunuch upstairs in Qinyan, looked at everything in front of him, brushed away the tears on the face of the little eunuch Ding Yuan with his dry and frozen rough hands, and muttered: "I can't imagine that the old slave who is about to die can still enjoy the Erwang Temple, this life!" ”

Ding Yuan, the little eunuch with tears on his face, also replied softly: "The prince replied: This time the first year of the canal is repaired, and Zhao's husband has made great contributions. If Zhao's husband can repair the official canal weir, this weir will be renamed Shutong weir! ”