The weather in February of the eleventh year of Chongzhen was cold and dry, and there was no snow for the whole winter, which was by no means a good sign. Pen ~ fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info standing on the not-so-high city wall of Jinghai County and looking around, you can only see a decayed brown land. Farther away, there is a line of white, which is the sea ice on the Bohai Sea.

Although it was already afternoon, there was no one on the street. It has not been a long time since the Manchus last broke through, and the vitality of the city is far from recovering.

Wang Zhiguo, the magistrate of the county, was also on fire in the county government at this time. Years of drought, coupled with constant wars, have made the entire Ming Empire a mess, but Jinghai County is an exception, Jinghai County is now exceptionally stable, so stable that there is almost no possibility of turmoil. Of course, this is not because Wang Zhiguo, the magistrate of the county, is capable, but because Jinghai is now an empty city.

In the drought for many years, many villagers have become displaced people and disappeared into the unknown corner of heaven and earth. Then there was the successive invasion of Jianxin, each time which caused the population under Jinghai's rule to suffer huge losses. The last time Jianyan broke through Jinghai, almost all the residents in the city were plundered, and now it is not a long time since the last breach, so there are not many people in the entire county, and most of the houses are empty. Without people, there will naturally be no mess. So Wang Zhixian has nothing to do all day long, but it is really extraordinarily leisurely.

Wang Zhixian roasted the fire for a while, and the sleepiness gradually came up, and he was about to close his eyes and squint for a while, when he heard someone shouting: "Master, there is a team of people coming towards the county seat." ”

Wang Zhixian was taken aback, and hurriedly went out to the city wall, but saw a group of men and horses approaching Jinghai City from the south. At the head of the line were a dozen cavalrymen dressed in colorful costumes, followed by a group of infantry, and then a long column of carriages, which I didn't know what was pulling.

"Shut the gates!" Wang Zhixian ordered that at such times, it is always right to be more careful. Although this order is actually of little use, because the section on the north side of the city wall has been stripped off during the last construction of the wall, and because of the lack of manpower, this gap has not been plugged until now.

The group of men and horses gradually approached Jinghai, and now Wang Zhixian could see the flags in the hands of those people clearly, and determined that they were the officials and soldiers of the imperial court. However, this did not make Wang Zhixian breathe a sigh of relief, because in many ways, the officials and soldiers of the imperial court are actually not much different from robbers, and even many times, they are more powerful than robbers. There was a proverb at the end of the Ming Dynasty that said: "A thief comes like a comb, and a soldier comes like a grate." That's what he said, because the imperial court was in financial difficulties and couldn't afford military spending, and the military discipline of the army was in shambles. Later, Li Zicheng was able to play the slogan of "suppressing the soldiers and reassuring the people", and he was actually popular, and it can be seen what kind of virtue the Ming Dynasty army is.

The group stopped not far from the city gates. One of the knights who took the lead rode to the city, claiming to be a subordinate of Zheng Zhilong, the general soldier of Fujian, escorting important supplies into Beijing, and now he was going to enter the city for a night.

"Absolutely not!" Wang Zhixian thought to himself, "If you let this group of Qiu Ba enter the city, I'm afraid there won't be even a single brick left in the city." Then he shouted to the city: "I have crossed the border with the army of visitors, and I have never entered the city!" You can first send the military department to the county for inspection, and then you can camp and live outside the city. You should be restrained and deployed, and you must not enter the city to harass the good people! ”

When the knight heard this, he ran back to the ranks, and after a while someone rode to the place where he was shot away from the wall, and then jumped off his horse, holding up a scroll of paper in his hand, and said: "This is the text of the Ministry of War, do you want to see it?" ”

Wang Zhixian asked a basket to be lowered from the city wall with a rope. The man put the paper in the basket, then took a step back, and the basket was pulled up.

A government official handed this document to Wang Zhixian, who opened it and looked at it, and sure enough, it was the text of the Ministry of War, saying that the subordinates of the Fujian General Army would escort the captured Hongyi cannon and the heads of Korean sailors and Jianyan into Beijing. Wang Zhixian looked at the escort army mentioned in this line and there were only a few hundred, but the number of people in this team was definitely more than two thousand. He frowned and said, "How do you have so many people?" Anyway, since you have the text of the military department, this officer will wait for you to camp under the city, spend the night, and wait for tomorrow after dawn, and then leave as quickly as possible. ”

According to the system of the Ming Dynasty, the local officials had the responsibility to provide the grain and grass needed for the passage of the guest army. However, my Ming system also stipulates that on the first day of the entry of the guest army, the magistrate does not have to take care of their food. In the future, you will need to take care of one meal a day at most. If an army marches fast, he will find that he will starve one day every other day. On the contrary, if he marches slowly, he should walk for as many days as possible in the boundaries of a certain place, so that he can be guaranteed to have food at all times.

Therefore, in general, the guest army will always deliberately delay the journey when marching, and the magistrate needs to use all means to drive away these guest troops who refuse to walk.

This group of Fujian officers and soldiers did not say much, but set up a camp outside the city gate, but did not harass the place much. However, Wang Zhixian was still very worried, because according to the rules, Jinghai County should provide them with a meal tomorrow. And the current warehouse in Jinghai County can barely support the hundreds of soldiers on the military department to provide a gruel, but if this guest army follows the habit of the guest army and does not leave, then it can really empty Jinghai's warehouse in the blink of an eye.

So Wang Zhixian didn't sleep all night, and kept thinking about various ways to drive these guest troops away as soon as possible.

However, early the next morning, to Wang Zhixian's expectation, early the next morning, those guest troops actually set off early in the morning.

"Why are these Fujian people so honest? How did you just leave? Wang Zhixian looked at the Fujian official army that was gradually moving away on the city wall, and his heart was full of doubts.

In fact, this is not because the moral character of the Fujian official army is better than that of the officers and soldiers in other places, although considering that most of Zheng Zhilong's subordinates are Haikou bandits, in the late Ming Dynasty, generally speaking, robbers will generally be a little more disciplined than the official army, and Haikou is also a kind of robbers, so Zheng Zhilong's soldiers should be relatively more disciplined. Of course, it is not because Zheng Zhilong's soldiers are not short of money, although compared to other generals, Zheng Zhilong is not very generous, and even so arrogant that he doesn't pay attention to the little military salary given by the imperial court. His well-fed soldiers had a real reason to despise the little gruel that was provided in the localities.

The real reason why these people went so simply is actually because this team is not only a team escorting cannons and prisoners, but also a caravan. In the approval document of the Ministry of War, this team is only a few hundred people, and the rest of the personnel are all caravans. In the convoy at the back of the team, in addition to the cannons and the supplies of these hundreds of people, there were more kinds of goods, from the less valuable whale oil and cotton cloth, to the more valuable sugar, and then to the more valuable Long Yanxiang. It can be said that it has everything. Don't look at the treasury in Beijing that is empty enough to starve rats to death, but in the hands of those dignitaries, there is too much silver to spend. Most of those things can make a fortune when they are trafficked to Jingshi, and with this kind of motivation, they will of course work very hard to get started.

Wang Zhixian originally thought that he would no longer deal with these Fujian officers and soldiers. After more than ten days, this group of Fujian officers and soldiers once again came to the county seat of Jinghai. Also like the last time, an officer showed Wang Zhixian an approval from the Ministry of War, but this time it was not enough, but the content of the approval did not indicate that they had passed through Jinghai County legally, but informed Wang County that this Fujian army was to be stationed in Jinghai County and be responsible for the security of Jinghai Port.

This time, the leading officer of this army was allowed to enter the city to see the governor.

"The next official is Guo Huaiyi, a staff general under the command of Lord Zheng, the chief officer of the Denglai Water Battalion, who was dispatched by the military department to Guidi to deploy defenses. I came to meet the magistrate. The officer was a middle-aged man in his thirties, and as soon as he saw Wang Zhixian, he immediately came up and down to pay respects.

Zheng Zongbing of Denglai Water Battalion? Wang Zhixian remembered that he had also seen it in the newspaper not long ago, saying that it was Zheng Zhihu, a Fujian staff general, who was promoted by the imperial court to the chief soldier of the Denglai Water Battalion because of his great merits.

According to the system of the Ming Dynasty, the general was an official of the third grade, while the Jinghai County Commander was just an official of the seventh grade, and the official rank was actually very different. But at this time, it was the time when the nobles and martial arts were at the extreme, so a third-grade general went to visit a seven-grade magistrate, which was also a very normal thing in the eyes of the people at the time, and Wang Zhixian himself did not feel anything wrong.

Then these soldiers set up barracks on a high ground by the port outside the city, and in March, after the sea ice slowly thawed, ships brought more men and supplies, and a larger port and a small walled city were slowly built, and Wang Zhixian even saw that artillery was erected in that small walled city.

At the same time, Wang Zhixian also found that the soldiers in the walled city have also changed, and there are many more half-grown child soldiers. It is not surprising that many of the military nowadays have such half-grown children, but it is rare that these half-grown children are equipped with muskets. However, Wang Zhixian didn't take this matter too seriously, because in the face of a bigger change, these changes are really nothing. This change is a huge change in the prosperity of the port.