Chapter 236: Daydreaming

The thousands of soldiers brought out of Dengzhou are all generations of military households of Dengzhou Left Guard, and they are naturally managed by the thousands of households in the headquarters, and they are born and raised. Going to Jizhen to fight against the Mongolian Tartars was naturally full of reluctance.

Now that the imperial court has come to the office of the hometown of the class teacher's meeting, after the officers and officials at all levels have passed on the news, these officers and soldiers have not paid the slightest attention to the prohibition of noisy noise in the barracks, and they all spontaneously cheered loudly. The officers will not have any management minds.

They were also shouting happily there, and Jiang Feng himself took more than a hundred people and arranged these soldiers to be led home by the thousands of households of the Dengzhou Left Guard. He took his subordinates back to Yantai Mountain with a fast horse, and Liu Twelve was escorted back by more than a dozen people in a carriage because of his inconvenient legs.

The 2,000 Jiangfeng "family members" stationed in the military camp at the foot of the Qianhusuo Mountain in Yantai Mountain were asked to prepare for the expulsion ten days ago, and many people thought that they were going back to Tianjin, but when Jiang Feng took away the 2,000 guards, these people were very surprised, and they still left about 200 people here in the private harbor.

What they are worried about is not that those straw bale military households on the mountain will have any reaction, now these people eat well every day, and they are willing to work, so naturally there will be no hidden dangers, but the private port of Yantai Mountain does not dare to say that it is completely safe, and the captain of the Rooster, Aguya, and his crew are ordered not to go out of the prescribed range until Jiang Feng returns, of course, food and drink are still the same.

The large and small guns on the Spanish brig were all dismantled, except for Jiang Feng who took away the three Franc machines, the rest were placed on the dock. Monk Li's men were also mobilized more than 100 people, except for Monk Li and Jiang Feng's ships, the rest of the ships were not allowed to enter the private port in January and March this year.

The Jining Canal is accessible, and it is not only the grain ships and the goods from the north and the south, but also the soldiers and horses of the Jingshi and Nanzhili who can be sent here at any time, and now the soldiers and horses of Yanzhou and Dongchang are basically gathered around the city of Jining, and there are about 15,000 people.

Because of the canal, so do not worry about supplies, slowly recover from failure, this is a hard bone, easy to gnaw down, more than 20 counties in Yanzhou Prefecture and gentry and even officials, as long as they can escape are gathered in Jining. Since it is a hard bone, naturally no one wants to gnaw it, although Jining is now known as the richest place in Shandong, but it is also the most difficult place to touch.

However, if you really know the art of war, you should concentrate your soldiers and horses to attack Jining City first, and conquer this place, first, you can get rich money and food, because there are quite a lot of transit warehouses there, and secondly, according to the situation there, in addition to the soldiers and horses who are defending Linyi, all the soldiers who can fight in Yanzhou are gathered in Jining, relying on the supplies there to recover slowly. Although there will be relatively large damage to Jining, it can control the canal hub after it is defeated, which is a huge bloodline of the Ming Dynasty that runs through the north and south.

At that time, the situation was different, but Caokou was not an army, naturally there was no long-term and clear plan, under the persuasion of Wendao and others, Jining now gathered too many soldiers and horses to fight, if it is fought, I am afraid that I will lose my dominant position in Lunan.

There is a vassal king in Linyi, although the army of the two guards does not dare to come out, but they are defending the city to the death, and the relatives are killed, which is a big crime, not to mention that if it is a siege of Linyi, I am afraid that the soldiers and horses of the provinces will soon be overwhelmed by the army, so now when the foundation is not stable, this is not suitable.

The other four prefectures in Shandong are all in good faith, so it is better to consolidate the territory of Lunan now, and Chen Deaf, who thought that he understood the general trend, led his 1,500 horse team to drive more than 6,000 young men under the encouragement of his subordinates, preparing to besiege Rongyang City.

Although his subordinates also acted recklessly in the several counties they occupied, they maintained the basic order, and the grain stocks turned out by the large families and the proceeds of their looting could maintain the expenses of nearly 10,000 soldiers and horses. There is still a certain amount of combat effectiveness, but the more than 500 knights in the former core still dare to fight.

There were still some small bands of ringing horses in the 1,500-strong horse team, which was much stronger than those who were forced into battle.

Picking cheap things is naturally something that everyone has to do, not only Chen Deaf's men and horses gathered under Rongyang City, what White Lotus Sect, the white-clothed divine soldiers who don't know the truth or falsehood. There are also large and small groups of people and horses all surrounded under the city of Rongyang, and a rough calculation turns out that there are nearly 40,000 horses.

But it's really good to be able to fight four or five thousand, everyone knows that the rich people in Yanzhou not only fled into Jining, but also many people fled to Rongyang because of the distance and the chaotic people.

Most of the peasant uprisings in the Chinese dynasties started with most of the just, which is not too much of a problem, but after the formation of a destructive force. The disorderly people often form a torrent of destruction, and more degradingly, it is more like a plague of locusts in transit.

When the peasants engaged in production become mobs, they are only engaged in plundering, and they will only sit back and eat. A month ago, there was a raging fire everywhere, and all kinds of forces emerged one after another. At the beginning, because the money and grain stored by large families and the government were quite abundant, they were also supported for a period of time.

Up to now, there are many forces and gangs that have dispersed naturally without anything to eat, and the rest are all organized or deep-rooted, for example, Chen Deaf had a team of hundreds of people under his command back then, and he also had experience in big cottages, and the remaining White Lotus Sect was almost a professional household of rebellion.

There are also some local tyrants in the countryside who gathered people, these can be regarded as existing, but these lucky surviving forces are still facing the dilemma that the supply is about to be exhausted, and the people under them are about to disperse, like the Qin Zongquan Department under Huangchao in the late Tang Dynasty cannibalism, and now the famine has not reached that extreme situation, not so much that the peasants can't survive to rebel, but because at some critical line, someone pushed.

Second, these people don't have the guts.

Yanzhou is the largest province in Shandong, and there are thirty-four county towns under its jurisdiction at the peak, although it has been changed several times, but there are still more than 20 under the management, and there are rich places like Jining, and there are also big cities where vassal kings like Linyi live. Since it is the place where the city is located, it is natural that the city is built extremely tall and wide, and there are soldiers stationed here.

Rongyang is located in the central hinterland of Lunan, if it is a natural transportation hub on land in peacetime, it is accessible to all places, and the mountainous Lunan region is a rare plain area, but now this is a real shortcoming, and more and more people from all over the country are fleeing to this side.

But the surrounding rebels quickly surrounded this side, and it became a dead end, or if it was to catch turtles in the urn, the soldiers and civilians in the city were those turtles.

Cui Chenxing, the prefect of Yanzhou, went up to the city wall to observe the enemy situation accompanied by several generals, and looked at the black rebels under the city, and suddenly felt a little dizzy.

However, Cui Chenxing knew that he had no way to retreat, if the city of Rongyang was broken, it would be a big crime to lose the city if he ran out, if he couldn't run out, after the city was broken, the wives and daughters in the city would definitely be treated badly, and I am afraid that nothing should be mentioned at that time.

Thinking of this, Cui Chenxing, the prefect of Yanzhou, turned around and gave a big salute to several officers around him, although it was an urgent moment, but Cui Chenxing's action still startled several officers around him who were only a thousand households at the highest level, and they dodged away one after another, Cui Chenxing said quite solemnly:

"The people of the Ming Dynasty and the Cui family will be entrusted to the generals, if the city is broken, you and I will all fall into a place of no return."

Several officers replied in unison:

"Our family lives in the city, so we naturally have to defend the city desperately, don't worry!"

The rebel army besieging the city kept people scattering, and they kept grabbing people from the surrounding villages to replenish them, demolishing all kinds of houses, cutting down the relatively scarce trees around, and tying them up into siege equipment, and then the peasants, who were still holding hoes and sickles a month or two ago, were forced to start the siege of the city by the rebels of various righteous names.

The villages and the houses of large families without strong protection will not play a role in resisting the mob and rebels like locusts, and the crowds will swarm and be easily opened.

But Rongyang City is the capital city of Yanzhou, it has not been affected by military disasters for a hundred years, although the city wall and various precautionary measures are old, but it does not affect the use, there were more than 3,000 soldiers in the city, and the sturdy men of the large families who fled into the city from all over the city are also spontaneously guarded in the city under the organization of the prefect's yamen.

How could the defensive measures of those door panels, those ladders tied with tree trunks capture such a big city, although the people under the city rushed to the top desperately, they were still beaten down by the rolling wood and stones on the city, and the two sides were so deadlocked. Compared with the increasing deaths of the rebels under the city, most of the casualties in the city were on the first day of the siege, and Chen Deaf's men shot the bows and arrows in their hands without fatality.

I don't know where they got the best bows and arrows, many of the officers and soldiers of Rongyang City were taken by surprise, and 100 people were killed and wounded. But the bow and arrows in Chen's deaf hands are not endless, and this time the waste used up the small amount of inventory, which made Yanzhou Mansion, Rongyang, stabilize the situation.

The White Lotus Sect claimed to be the force passed down by Tang Sai'er, and it ate up all the looted grain. Naturally, if you go to other fellow disciples to borrow grain, you will not get anything. Among the forces under the city, Chen Deaf's power is the largest, and the grain and grass in his hands are also the most sufficient.

God knows if these White Lotus sects worshiped the Buddha Mother and fainted, and actually wanted to rob Chen Deaf's food and grass, but they were discovered by the heavily guarded horse team, and they didn't care about the slightest bit of everyone's joint efforts to attack the city, and directly commanded their subordinates to cut and kill them, and the difference in combat effectiveness between the two sides was not a problem, and they could resist there.

The so-called "Divine Army blessed by the Buddha's Mother" immediately scattered in all directions, although these people had eaten up the food, but there was still a lot of gold and silver left from the looting, which naturally fell into the pockets of Chen Deaf's "Pingtian Army".

There was no shortage of food in the Yanzhou capital city of Rongyang, and the soldiers in the city knew that if they were defeated and retreated at this time, the mob who had been fighting with them for so many days would not have any mercy and forgiveness for the captives. Therefore, it showed a fighting will that was quite different from the average level of the Ming army, and fought to the death in the city.

The prefect of Cui Chenxing also led the officials to fight in the city, and their families were all in the city, so in order to protect the family, they were naturally more tenacious and tenacious.

At this time, it is the time of the first month, if it is on weekdays, it should be a joyful celebration of the Spring Festival, in a joy, but now there are bloody killings up and down the city of Rongyang, which is extremely tragic.

Chen Deaf was a little unable to hold on, although his subordinates were well maintained, but watching his food and grass decrease day by day, his young men who had been held hostage continued to disperse, not counting the dead and wounded. was also a little unable to hold on, and on the night of the fifth day of the first lunar month, Chen Deaf called Wen Dao over.

"If it goes on like this, I'm afraid that Rongyang hasn't been beaten down yet, and our own old capital will be lost, and now we have a lot of fish, but it's really not good, let's go back to the mountains and fall into the grass, why bother to die in this city."

"General, Rongyang City is the center of Lunan, there are people in it who have food, if we knock this down, you can be the king, General."

As soon as he heard the title of this king, Chen Deaf's brain was stunned, and he was still a little sober, and he said hesitantly:

"But our supplies are a little insufficient, what should we do?"

"Don't worry about this, these are straw bales all around now, it's better to ...... than waste food"

That night, the soldiers who were tired of a day defending the city suddenly heard the noise of the men and horses under the city, and thought that the thieves were preparing to attack the city at night.

Regarding what happened under the city this night, the people in the city guessed the next day, and Chen Deaf, who had an absolute advantage, suddenly attacked in the middle of the night, swept away all the large and small forces that attacked the city together, and scooped up the gold, silver and food they plundered into his own hands.

Now more than 10,000 people under the city are controlled by Chen Deaf, the next day all repaired for a day, Chen Deaf's personal guard horse team is a nervous patrol, if there are people who escape, they will be killed mercilessly, everyone knows that tomorrow there will be a more tragic siege battle.

Lunan is not the world, he is just a corner of the world, when Chen Deaf was carried away by the emperor's dream here, the soldiers and horses of the Ming Dynasty were already nervously mobilized.